Not Perfect(92)

“Can I take them out to dinner tonight?” he said, sitting forward on his chair. “I am desperate to be with them.”

She still needed to know some things. She wasn’t ready to have this conversation be over, either.

“Let me think about it,” she said. “But first, I have to know, what was the threat about? What would you have told people I did? What, specifically, were you referring to?”

He sat back in his chair and pulled his jacket over his lap.

“I was crazed,” he said, like that explained it. “I hadn’t thought it through.”

“I don’t buy that,” she said. “Clearly you were referring to something.”

“Do you remember those last few days when your mother was sick, and we took turns sitting with her? I was so unhappy then. I tried to hide it, and I felt I owed it to you to do all I could to make things okay between us. So when your mother was so sick and so demanding, I didn’t think you could take it anymore—it had already gone on for so long. That’s when we started talking about the morphine. You were so tired, so out of it. And I wasn’t positive, because we never talked about it, but I was fairly sure you had lost track of how much your mother had had. I could see the panic in your eyes, I saw you reading and rereading those labels over and over. But I was the one who gave her too much. When you weren’t looking, when you were with the kids or taking a quick rest those last two days, I slipped her more and more morphine. I had heard stories of people lingering for weeks and sometimes months. She wasn’t really living anymore, she wasn’t happy. I felt, and still feel, it was a kindness. I thought maybe if she died, the pressure would ease a little and we could be happier together. We could go back to our apartment and try to enjoy our lives. But that wasn’t the case, that was never going to be the case.”

Tabitha felt herself relax even more, though for a brief moment she wondered if she should be even angrier with him for doing that. How dare he? But really, despite everything, he was now giving her gift after gift.

“Oh, okay,” she managed to say. “I wasn’t sure which thing you were referring to. I thought maybe the peanut oil.”

“The peanut oil?” he asked, like it was the last thing he would be referring to. She couldn’t believe it. “No, not the peanut oil. We don’t even know what happened with that. Are you still thinking about it?”

“Forget it,” she said.

“Well,” he said, gathering his jacket like he was thinking of getting up soon. “Thank you for letting me sit with you and talk about these things. I feel like I’ve been to a confessional.”

She took a good look at him, and the truth was, he did look a little lighter.

“Okay, you can take the kids out tonight,” she said quickly, before she changed her mind. But as soon as she’d said it, she did change her mind.

“Terrific,” he said, just as she was about to take back her offer. She could see his eyes brighten with sudden tears that he didn’t wipe away. “That is terrific.”

“Look, honestly, I’m not sure about this,” she said. “I don’t want to make this easy for you.”

Stuart nodded, letting a tear that welled up in his left eye fall down his cheek before he wiped it away. She thought he knew exactly what he was doing, which made her angry all over again, but then she thought of the kids.

“If you ever, ever hurt those kids, or disappoint them, or disappear again, or not show up when they are expecting you, I will stop letting you see them,” she said. She knew his next line would be something about how he’s the lawyer, at least that might have been his next line before, but right away she could see that he wouldn’t say that today.

He just nodded again.

“I’ll have them in the lobby at seven,” she said. “We can sit there and tell them what’s going on before you take them out, okay? We have to start to be honest with them. They deserve to know.”

“I agree,” he said.

She felt herself softening toward him, but only for a moment. She had already given him the best thing—time with the kids. She was still so angry—for all of it—but she was so grateful about the morphine. As completely awful as it was that Stuart had used her confusion about it against her, at least she didn’t have to live with the guilt anymore. She watched as Stuart got up. He hesitated for a second, this was the time he would lean in for a kiss or a hug, and the physical realization that that would never happen again, that they would probably never touch again, had a palpable presence. She still didn’t know where he was staying or what he would do now. She did know that she would start the divorce process the next day. She threw out her latte and bought a Starbucks gift card. She shouldn’t be using Nora’s money, but she reminded herself that she would soon have money from her share of the sale of the apartment and health insurance through her new job—something they were surprisingly generous about. She didn’t even care anymore if she ran into someone she knew in her new office.

She crossed Eighteenth Street to the small grocery store and was happy to see Marlon at his usual check-out lane. He didn’t have a customer at the moment, so she entered his line. He raised his eyebrows as if to say, “Where is your stuff?” She handed him the gift card—her first official payback effort.

“Thank you for helping me that day,” she said. “You will never know how much it means to me.”