Not Perfect(68)

The next fifty-nine minutes were a sensual blur, and when a tiny alarm went off she wanted to cry.

“Really, you set an alarm?” she said.

“I promised you an hour, that was an hour.”

“Can I have another hour?”

“If you can spare it. The room is ours until tomorrow.”

“I can’t,” she said. “I should go. The kids. Are you going to stay?”

“Not without you,” he said. “It will be too lonely.”

They got dressed quietly. Crazy things ran through her mind. They could meet back here later—or in the middle of the night! But she couldn’t, she knew she couldn’t.

“Hey,” he said. “Can you come back in the morning? After the kids go to school? We could order room service.”

“I’ll see you here at eight fifteen.”



Tabitha was shocked to find that Levi didn’t mind going to see the rabbi. It was almost like he felt he deserved the punishment of it, or at least that was what Tabitha gathered when he nodded once at being told they had a meeting that afternoon. She told him before he left for school, before she went back to the hotel to meet Toby for another wonderful hour full of sex and room-service pancakes and bacon. But now that they were here, sitting in the rabbi’s office, Tabitha could see it was something else.

“I just don’t want to do it,” Levi said, leaning forward in his chair, his hands on his lap. His voice was clear and strong, not that mumbling sort of response that a young teenager often gave in the presence of authority.

“I hear what you’re saying,” the rabbi said gently. He leaned back in his chair. “But can you explain to me why, so I can understand it better?”

Levi looked at Tabitha. She had to pull herself back to the moment. She was thinking about Toby and how he focused on her for most of their time that morning, completely undemanding, wanting only to know what made Tabitha feel the best. Her cheeks flushed red now as she nodded toward Levi.

“Well, my dad has been gone for a long time,” Levi said. “And I don’t know when he’s coming back. He always works a lot, and I thought this would be something we could do together. I tried, I really did. I’ve even started my mitzvah project, the one he suggested, but without him here, I just don’t want to do it.”

“What about your mom?” the rabbi said, nodding toward Tabitha. “What if she helps you? What if you can do it with her?”

“It’s not the same,” Levi said, sounding more like a whiny teenager.

“It’s not the same,” Tabitha agreed, backing him up. “I never had a bat mitzvah—I’m learning as he does it. Stuart had a bar mitzvah. This is something he always wanted for Levi.”

“Well, let me ask you the obvious question,” Rabbi Rosen said. “What does Stuart have to say about this? Is he willing to have Levi give it all up so he can continue to stay away taking care of business? Might he consider cutting his trip short, or at least making a few trips home here and there to help? We’re not that far away from the big day.”

Levi looked at Tabitha again and raised his eyebrows. Yes, yes, she wanted to say, These are all very good, obvious questions. I just don’t have the answers.

“Well,” she said after a too-long pause. “He is extremely hard to reach.”

She did not want to blatantly lie to the rabbi. She thought, at this point, he would see through her and know she was lying. He probably already thought she was nuts and undependable, if rabbis thought things like that.

“Can I give it a try?” Rabbi Rosen asked.

Tabitha wondered if Stuart would answer his cell phone if the rabbi called. She doubted it. She flashed back to the other day and Fern’s strange conversation with Stuart, still not at all sure what was going on there.

“Look,” Tabitha said, after she ran three other sentences through her mind: I’ll try him again. Let’s give him more time. I don’t think it will make a difference. “To be perfectly honest, as far as I can tell, he is unreachable.”

It was the first time she’d said anything like that in front of Levi. He didn’t even flinch or look up at her. Was this not a surprise to him?

“Well, he must be pretty caught up in whatever he is doing,” the rabbi said in his gentle voice. “Here’s what I propose. Levi, let me know if this might work for you. You are so close. You know your Torah portion, you’ve probably already done plenty for your project. Let’s keep it simple. Don’t even think about a party or celebration if you don’t want to. You can do that down the road—when everyone you want to be here is here.” He paused, and Tabitha took note that he didn’t say, “When your dad is here.” But he also didn’t not say it.

“I’ll call you to the Torah, we will do the barest minimum. You don’t even have to give your D’var Torah. But once I call you to the bima, and you have read from the Torah, you will officially become a bar mitzvah—anything else you want to do or don’t want to do is up to you. And that will be something that can’t be taken away from you. Believe me, it isn’t easy to get back to this place, learn a whole new Torah portion. Once people let it go, they rarely do it again.”

“Fine,” Levi said, looking up from his lap. “That sounds okay.”