Not Perfect(88)

Toby didn’t call again. Not Saturday. Not Sunday. On Monday morning, when the kids were in school, Tabitha got dressed. She was supposed to have an orientation with the pest control company later that day, but she had a few hours. The relief she felt about finally making money was huge, and she sang a little while she chose jeans and a pink cashmere sweater. She grabbed her purse and walked out, turning right toward Walnut Street. She didn’t let the actual thought of where she was going form in her head. She told herself she would just see where she ended up. But she knew.

When she got to Nora’s building, she walked right in and to the elevators. She would feel better if she planned to return the money, but she felt pretty good that she didn’t plan to take any more. Maybe, once she started getting a regular paycheck, she would be able to bring some back. If Nora didn’t want it, at least she could leave it for someone else who might.

She opened the door slowly.

“Nora?” she called.

Tabitha heard footsteps and waited, surprised, since Nora usually called back. A woman dressed in teddy-bear scrubs came around the corner and down the hall. She looked stern.

“Yes?” she said.

“I’m a friend of Nora’s,” Tabitha said, realizing how disappointed she was. Did this mean Toby wasn’t there?

“She’s napping now,” the woman said. “It took me a while to get her to relax, and we don’t appreciate unannounced guests.”

We or you? Tabitha wanted to ask. She had a vision of storming by the aide, of waking Nora and asking if she wanted a visitor now. Tabitha looked at the woman. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

“Can I tell Nora who stopped by?” she said, continuing to talk in a formal tone.

“Tell her it was ‘that dear girl,’” she said, stepping back into the hall.

The woman smirked at her, like she thought she was trying to be cute or something. She nodded and waited for Tabitha to be fully out before closing the door without a sound.



On the last day that Tabitha and her mother had an actual conversation, Tabitha did hug her. She walked over to her bed and leaned in, feeling the soft, light-purple cashmere of her sweater and thinking: This feels surprisingly good, why didn’t I do this more often? Of course, she didn’t know it would be the last time they would ever speak to each other, or the last time they would ever really touch, at least with any meaning. Tabitha had been mostly sleeping at her mother’s apartment for the last few days, though she had hated it. They were all there, on a death watch, though they didn’t know how quickly it would come. Even the kids had settled in, sleeping in the guest room, watching television shows endlessly.

On that day, Tabitha had sat on a chair at the end of her mother’s bed. Her mother was sitting up, though she wouldn’t be for much longer. She looked like a baby, or like a puppet with a big head as Levi had said once, with such strong emotion it had surprised Tabitha.

“I want you to know that I will be okay,” Tabitha had said. She had wanted to say those words for a while. She wanted her mother to know. “I have a family. I will be okay.” At that moment she’d had no doubt that that would be true.

It was just a few hours later that her mother’s breathing became so labored, it was alarming. Should they take her to the hospital? They all wondered. It would have been one more in a long string of recent hospital visits that patched her up just enough to come home and continue to suffer. No, they all agreed. This time they were going to wait it out, see if she could pull through on her own. Really, it had already been decided, weeks before, but it was hard to not at least discuss the possibility again. The aide suggested that Tabitha call her mother’s doctor to tell him what was happening. He agreed with their decision and prescribed liquid morphine, to make her comfortable, he had said.

They started giving it to her that night, little drops under her tongue. At first she took it like a little bird, opening her mouth and accepting it. Slowly she became less involved in the process, but she never fought it. It was surprisingly easy to give it to her. They were overly careful at the beginning, not giving her more than the label said, even if she became fitful before it was time for the next dose. Tabitha began to have trouble sleeping. She didn’t want to do this anymore, but she felt so bad about feeling that way. She quickly lost track of the last dose, and then the next one. She wasn’t sure when they were given, how much they were supposed to be. Had she just given her mother morphine? No, that was hours ago. But then she would give her a little and panic: Had it really been hours, or minutes?

She told herself everything would be better once it was over, and they could finally come together as a family when this wasn’t pulling at them anymore. And pretty quickly her mother faded away. Nora couldn’t rouse herself out of her stupor anymore when Tabitha called a loud, “Hi!” to her. She had always, always responded to Tabitha before, no matter how sick she was. At that point, though, she didn’t react to her at all. She just lay there, and they could hear her breathe, every single breath.

In the end, Tabitha had no idea how much morphine her mother had. And in the end, it didn’t matter, because by morning, Nora Michelle Taylor was dead. But it did matter. Tabitha went over it so many times in her head, had she or hadn’t she given too much? She would never know.





CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO