Not Perfect(62)

Tabitha thought she could just lift the box and run. Nora would never be able to find her, and with a bad leg she wouldn’t even be able to try to come after her. Oh my god! Tabitha thought to herself. What is happening to me?

“Do you have another game, Nora?” Tabitha asked, thinking she needed some time to think. “Anything else?”

“Only cards, and I love Monopoly,” Nora said. “I was hoping someone would play with me today.”

“Speaking of which, why are you alone again?” Tabitha asked. “Shouldn’t there be someone here with you?”

“You’re here with me, dear,” Nora said. “You’re someone.”

“That’s true,” Tabitha said, letting it go. She walked to the shelf and pulled out the Monopoly box. She walked back to Nora and placed it on the small table in front of her. She’d let Nora open it. She watched as Nora pulled the top off. It took effort, and Tabitha knew she should help, but she felt she should let this play out as much as possible without her direct involvement. Once the lid was off, Tabitha saw all the money. It was there, bright and beautiful. Without a word, Nora got to work setting up the board and giving each of them the right amount of money for their banks. She watched Nora touch the bills. They might as well have been play money for all the respect she was giving them.

“Sit, dear,” Nora said, slowly putting her legs down one at a time, so she was at a better angle. As she set the second leg down, she groaned.

“What happened to your leg?” Tabitha asked.

“Oh, silliness!” she said, waving it off. “Pure silliness!”

“You go first, Nora,” Tabitha said.

“Don’t mind if I do,” she said, putting her hands together and rubbing them. She rolled and moved her piece. A clock chimed nine times, and Tabitha couldn’t believe it was still so early. She felt like she’d lived a whole day since she had said good-bye to the kids. She had two hours, then she’d go home and change for her lunch with Toby. Maybe she’d get one more coffee on the way.

They took turns for an hour, buying hotels (Nora’s favorite thing to do), paying each other, and each spending some time in jail. Tabitha kept thinking, I’m going to take it now, I’m going to take it now. But she just couldn’t do it. If she pocketed any of the bills, Nora would notice the next time she set up the bank. This was a bad idea.

“Can I use your bathroom, Nora?” Tabitha asked. She had to wrap this up. She wanted to leave, and she needed a moment to pull herself together.

“Of course, dear,” Nora said, putting her leg back on the ottoman and sitting back, away from the table, with a sigh. “It’s just through there.”

Tabitha hadn’t been beyond the living room before. She walked down a short hallway and saw a bedroom with a neatly made bed ahead of her and a bathroom on her left. It was bright yellow, and the light was on. She went in and closed the door, even though she didn’t really have to go to the bathroom. What she needed was to think. As she moved to the sink to wash her hands, she saw a big glass mason jar full of money. She looked closer. What was going on? There were tens, twenties, one-hundred-dollar bills. So many of them. Why did Nora have all this cash? Was it that she didn’t trust banks? She’d heard of that before, but she piled the people who didn’t trust banks into a category with the people who thought the landing on the moon was a fake, set up in a television studio somewhere. Nora didn’t seem that out of touch. She was really starting to like her, more than she probably should. Tabitha wiped her hands on a yellow towel with an embroidered sun, making sure they were completely dry. She reached into the jar and pulled out a twenty, then a ten. She looked at the bills, they seemed as normal as any bill she had ever seen. She stuffed them back in and just stared at the jar. She turned to leave, just walk away, and she saw a piece of yellow construction paper taped to the back of the door saying: TAKE ME and YES, THAT MEANS YOU and MONEY MIGHT NOT GROW ON TREES, BUT IT DOES GROW IN JARS.

What was going on here? This entire thing had to be the most elaborate setup in the history of television. But, she kept asking herself, how did they know she was going to keep coming back? She turned back to the jar. It was a big jar. She bet there were thousands of dollars in that jar. She reached in again and pulled out a twenty, then another one. It didn’t even begin to make a dent in the stash.

She thought of Fern, and the medical bills, and how much she wanted to be able to get everything bagels and anything else she wanted while they were trying to figure out what was wrong with her leg. “And please, please don’t let that be anything terrible,” Tabitha said out loud, startling herself. And, on top of all that, there were signs telling her to take it! But really, she didn’t know who those notes were meant for, or if they were even real. Tabitha knew it would be weeks before any of the doctor or hospital bills started trickling in, but she felt them out there, tracking her down, eyeing her, coming her way. She had managed to pay the minimum balance on her credit card each month, the one with her maiden name on it, but that was going to get harder to do.

She’d been gone too long. She had to go back to Nora. She wanted the money. Just a little more. Would Nora really notice if some of it was gone? She couldn’t even walk, there was no way she counted it regularly. She reached in and fished around for a fifty and a hundred, then another one of each. She folded the bills and slid them into her pants pocket. She made sure everything looked fine and she walked out, deciding to leave the light on the way she found it, in case that was some kind of trick.