Not Perfect(8)
When five days had gone by, long enough to have her concerned, she started to consider what might be going on. The night before he left, she’d learned things that she never knew. Really, she saw a completely different side of him that night, one she had never seen during their marriage. Now, despite her efforts to find him, she still had no idea where he was.
She looked at the list.
Item number one: The Note.
The note was mostly the same as they always were, though of course completely different. The other notes, which he left when he embarked on a work trip, began with My Dearest Tabitha. The other notes were neatly written, almost like he had written a first draft and subsequently taken a long time to write them perfectly, prettily even. They usually fit nicely on the piece of paper, centered right in the middle. This one, the most recent one, began Dear Tabby. He did sometimes call her Tabby, when he was being playful, which was more and more rare as the years went on. Had he even called her Tabby since they had moved into this apartment? It was what he had called her when they first got together and into the beginning of their marriage. Her maiden name was Taylor, so growing up she was Tabby Taylor. Her parents wanted her to have a cute, perky name. When she married Stuart Brewer, they laughed. From a Taylor to a Brewer. The Tabitha came when the playfulness left. When had that been, exactly? But now again, with the most recent letter, Dear Tabby.
This note was scrawled, so messy that it was hard to read some of the words. It looked like it was written in a hurry, definitely not written and rewritten. She had folded the letter up so she didn’t have to look at the last sentence every time she pulled it out along with the list, looking for clues. His other notes certainly didn’t end the way this one did.
Item number two: No talking once he left. Cell phone already turned off, and no call from a landline.
The other times she could usually still reach him while he was traveling, before he got to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula or whatever other far-flung place he was headed, where his lawyerly skills were needed and his clients resided mostly, it seemed, without cell-phone service. When she woke up and found a note, she would call and he would answer, either still in an airport or in a car. They would talk quickly, he would explain where he was going, real or not real, and she would let herself believe him and tuck it away, get through the next two or three weeks without him. She wanted to believe him, it was so much easier that way.
Item number three: No sex for four months, and then sex the night before he left.
This item was initially just as perplexing, though maybe not quite so now that she knew what she knew. They had never had a great sex life, but it seemed okay. They did it at all the times she thought they should—their wedding night, when they wanted to get pregnant, when too much time had gone by—but they were rarely spontaneous, rarely moved by a true sexual attraction. She had been aware that they hadn’t done it in a long time, the longest they had ever gone as a married couple. But then the night before he left he came to her, and they had sex, good sex, or so she thought at the time. But that was when everything started, at least when her true awareness of it all began, and even though it was on her list, she wasn’t quite ready to unravel that yet, though she was fairly certain it was one of the keys to where he was now.
Item number four: The last supper.
This item referred to the fact that he had not eaten dinner with them for weeks, months. He always had to work late, and their normal pattern was that Tabitha would eat with the kids and Stuart would eat at the office or on his way home. Only on weekends did they sometimes eat dinner together. The truth was, Tabitha didn’t mind. It was easier to eat with just the kids. But the week leading up to what Tabitha was now thinking of as The Disappearance, Stuart came home for dinner every night. Every single night. He just showed up, looking drained and, now that she thought about it, somewhat shell-shocked. He wasn’t demanding or even opinionated about what they ate—hot dogs, macaroni and cheese—he just slipped in, took his seat at the big wooden table in the kitchen, and ate with them. There was no discussion about what had changed or if it would continue. In the way she spent much of her marriage, she just didn’t know what to expect, didn’t know what Stuart was thinking, didn’t feel like she knew Stuart well at all. And Tabitha was surprised to see that she liked his being there and looked forward to it. On the last night, a night that she did not, of course, know would be the last night, she began to think of Stuart when she decided what to cook for dinner. That evening she made cherry chicken—chicken rolled in bread crumbs and french-fried onions, topped with a sweet-and-sour dark-cherry sauce. It was Stuart’s mother’s family recipe from his childhood in Michigan, where cherries were abundant. He had eaten every bite, and when he was finished she thought for a second that she saw tears in his eyes. She still wondered if that was, in some way, what set everything in motion. No, she told herself now, it was already set in motion, wasn’t it? She quickly glanced at the last three items.
Item number five: The fight.
Item number six: Stuart’s Michigan T-shirt in the closet.
As she read through each one, she immediately went on to the next one. She just didn’t have the energy to dissect these now. Also, there were other items she should put on the list, two in particular. She knew that. But she wasn’t ready to yet.
Tabitha looked at the clock and realized it was late, very late, and the kids were going to miss the whistle. Where was Fern? She usually came in to get Tabitha up before getting herself ready. She was such a good girl. But where was she now? Tabitha put the notebook back in the drawer, covered it with random stationery and pencils. She didn’t want one of the kids to find it. She went to Fern’s bedroom. It was still dark. Tabitha pushed the door open and walked to the bed. Fern was out cold, breathing through her mouth as though congested. She reached out to touch her forehead. It was hot.