Not Perfect(53)

Even though he was clearly going to ask something about her marriage, she was not prepared for such a direct question. And she thought the question might be more about what she wasn’t than what she was. Was she married? Yes. Happily? That was a whole other story, more complicated than she had even realized until recently.

She was relieved when Michigan intercepted the ball, and it gave her a few seconds to think. He turned back to her, waiting.

“Well,” she said, stalling. “That requires much more than a simple yes-or-no answer, but I can tell you that my husband and I have not been living together for a while now, and our lines of communication are very bad, as bad as you can imagine. I guess I’m not ready to talk about it all yet, and I don’t even understand a lot of it at this point, so maybe we should just—” The rest of her words were swallowed by the crowd as Michigan scored another touchdown. Toby was on his feet. As the sound died down, Tabitha heard a phone ring. She realized it was Toby’s phone, which he had propped on his backpack. She could see the display had a local 215 number but no name.

“Hey, your phone’s ringing,” she said, pointing.

“Oh, thanks,” he said, leaning over to grab it. He looked, then answered quickly.

“Hello?” he said. “Wait, I just need to go outside.”

He pointed to the phone as if to say, “I have to take this, I’ll be right back.” She nodded. He pointed to his backpack. She nodded again.

As soon as he was gone, she let out a huge breath, which she didn’t even know she had been holding. What the heck was she doing? She had to get out of here. She looked toward the front of the restaurant where the buffet was usually set up, but there wasn’t anything there. Maybe they waited until halftime; she didn’t know. What she did know was that she wanted to bring the kids a good-enough dinner. Fern had been so sweet the other night, wanting to buy dinner. But Tabitha had told her to save her money, though she did wonder later where the money had come from in the first place. When she asked her, Fern just shrugged it off without an answer, and Tabitha decided to let yet another thing remain unknown.

In a few minutes, Toby was back, looking pale.

“I am so sorry,” he said, turning his chair into a tiny ball again and stuffing it in his backpack. “You can keep sitting there, I’ll get it from you another time.”

“Are you okay?” she asked. “Is your daughter okay?”

“Oh yeah, thanks, she’s okay, thank goodness,” he said. “It’s my mother. She fell, and her aide is taking her to the emergency room. I’m going to meet them there.”

“Can I do anything?” she asked. “Please, take the chair.”

“No, no, really, I have to get going,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I’ll call you.” When he said this last thing, he lifted up his phone and pointed. She smiled, but then felt bad about smiling if his mother was suffering.

“Okay,” she said. “I hope your mother’s okay.”

Once he was gone, she felt silly sitting in the chair, and she realized she had no idea how to dismantle it. There was still no sign of the buffet, and she started to worry about dinner. The kids were going to be starving when she got home and, worse than that, they were excited about the food. She stood and tried to fold the chair into itself, but it just didn’t budge, and she kept knocking into people in the process. She gave up and stood there, feeling stupid and stranded. She shoved her hands into the pockets of the jacket she was wearing and felt a piece of paper. She pulled it out. It was a tiny square of yellow, lined paper that looked like it was torn from a bigger piece. In green pen there was a phone number written out in Stuart’s handwriting. It wasn’t a local number, but she didn’t recognize it. The area code was 906. It looked familiar, but she couldn’t place it. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and googled it. Oh, Marquette, Michigan. All that frantic searching for a number, and it was right there in the closet all that time. She stuffed it back into the pocket, lifted the chair like it was a mannequin, and worked hard not to hit anyone as she left the crowded bar. Once she was outside, she tried again to see if there was some secret lever or something that might fold it up, but she couldn’t see anything. She thought of texting Toby to ask, or sending a silly picture of her sitting in the chair on the sidewalk, but of course she didn’t do it. She imagined him getting it while he was at the ER with his injured mother.

She decided she’d take the chair home, and then they’d figure out what to do for dinner. Maybe Levi would want to keep the chair in his room until she could get it back to Toby.

Thankfully, the chair was light. Tabitha got a few strange looks on her short walk home, but she didn’t care too much. Just as she entered her apartment building, her phone rang. It was in her other pocket, the one that didn’t have the slip of paper in it, and it seemed so hard to get to. She ignored it and headed to the elevator. It rang again just as the elevator doors closed, but then it stopped. As she got to her door it rang again. She put the chair down and pulled out her phone—it was Levi. She fished her keys out of her pocket and rushed inside, leaving the chair in the hall.

“Hi, you guys, I’m home,” she said, jogging toward the living room where she had left them. Levi was standing up, his phone in hand. Fern was sitting on the floor with her back against the couch, her leg straight out, looking panicked.