“Oh, well I will definitely try,” she said. She slung her bag over her shoulder, trying not to crush the food already in there, trying not to think about what she wouldn’t do to have a refrigerator full of leftovers from the fancy steak house. She held the covered plate in her hand. It was not a paper plate, and she worried someone might say something. “It was nice to meet you,” she said.
“Well, we didn’t really meet,” he said, sitting back and smiling. “I’m Toby.”
“Oh, right. I’m Tabitha.”
“I graduated from U of M in 1989,” he said. “How about you?”
She hesitated. She knew it was a big school, but that was one year before Stuart graduated. It was unlikely, but not impossible, that they could have known each other. She was getting in so much deeper than she meant to. She also graduated from college in 1990, though not from Michigan. She was taking too long to answer.
“I was class of 1994,” she said, quickly calculating that he would have already graduated, so there was less likelihood of any potential crossover.
“I loved Ann Arbor,” he said wistfully, like he was settling in for a long conversation.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, but I really have to go,” she said. “Go Blue!”
“Go Blue!” he said back, smiling.
Now she was lying and stealing. But once she was out the door, she felt better. She wasn’t really stealing the food—that was meant to be taken—but the plate? She probably shouldn’t have taken that. She could bring it back. She’d wash it and bring it back the next time she came to take more food. Okay, now she really felt better. And did it even have to be a Michigan happy hour? It wasn’t like anyone asked to see a card or anything, though there was the singing, which luckily she could keep up with, and that awkward conversation with that man. Another school’s happy hour might be better. She would be ready with a graduation date next time. She could come up with a whole story. Though finding another one might be complicated. How would she know when they were? She would have to just show up and hope.
She walked by Harry, the evening doorman. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even seem to think anything. Nobody would ever suspect that she would steal this food. He probably thought it was from a friend. She smiled and let her shoulders relax a little in the elevator.
That feeling didn’t last long. She could hear it before she saw it or smelled it. Why didn’t they text her? She ran to the door, losing some of the items on the plate as she jostled it open. Inside she found Levi sitting on the bathroom floor with his head in the toilet, and a sweet, sweet Fern sitting behind him, rubbing his back.
“You’ll feel better soon, I promise,” she said. “I did.”
“Oh my gosh you guys, what happened?” Tabitha asked, trying not to sound panicked and hoping nobody ever found out about this. Talk about the worst mother in the world award! Talk about Whac-A-Mole.
“Well, we were each sitting where you left us—I was watching Hannah Montana, which is my favorite show, so I really didn’t want to miss it, and Levi was reading in his room. I don’t know what book he was reading. I think it was something about flies. Then Levi started to moan, so I went to see what was wrong,” Fern explained like she was giving a police report or something where every detail was important. Tabitha eased to the floor and sat back on her heels. “When I went to his room, he was lying on the floor rolling around. He said his stomach hurt. I told him to come to the bathroom with me, because I know how that goes. I picked this bathroom so my bathroom wouldn’t get dirty.” She smiled for a second, forgetting what brought them to this point, then quickly adjusted back to a serious expression and returned to rubbing Levi’s back. He was so quiet, Tabitha wondered if he’d fallen asleep, and just as she moved closer to him to check, he threw up, a big, violent push of vomit that mostly made it into the toilet bowl but also splattered a little onto her.
“Oh, Levi,” she said gently, adding her hand to his back. “I’m so sorry you feel so bad.”
“What is that smell?” he groaned.
She realized she’d placed her bag full of food, along with the plate, just outside the bathroom. She jumped up and rushed it to the kitchen, where she quickly washed her hands with hot water.
“Fern,” she called.
Fern appeared eagerly at her side.
“I picked up some dinner,” she said, keeping her voice down. “Do you want anything? How’s your appetite?”
Fern chose just a roll, which Tabitha put on a plate, next to a big glass of ice water. She carefully wrapped and froze everything else, even the things that she didn’t think would freeze well. She kept one slider out for herself, which she planned to eat later, and she spent the next two hours on the bathroom floor soothing Levi.
CHAPTER FIVE
It took two days to get back to normal. Or at least, it took two days to not be a sick house anymore—normal was a whole other story. Tabitha was so glad that the first day back at school for both kids coincided with another job interview. Fern could have gone back the day before, but it just seemed like too much work, so Tabitha let her stay home and watch television. As everyone felt better and hungrier, Tabitha defrosted portions of the food from the sports bar. Overall, it was pretty relaxing.
Tabitha took her time getting dressed. She settled on a suit that cost hundreds of dollars, shoes that cost almost that, and a designer silk blouse and scarf, which reminded her to check the website of the consignment store on Chestnut Street later. She had taken in a bunch of clothes to sell about a month ago, but so far nobody seemed to want any of her things. Maybe she should consign more.
She chose a necklace studded with colorful semiprecious stones and put on a full mouth of lipstick. It was a different kind of interview today. Instead of going to an office, she was meeting her interviewer for breakfast at the fancy restaurant on the second floor of the Rittenhouse Hotel, since that was where he was staying. She was trying for a management position at a pest control company that was branching out into new cities, so she was meeting with the son of the company’s founder. It must be a lucrative business for him to stay at such a nice hotel, one of the nicest in the city. Or maybe he has family money. She shook her head. It really didn’t matter either way. Despite the elegance of the setting for the meeting, she knew she was being considered for a job that would basically be answering phones and coordinating appointments, but she didn’t mind. It was a manager position, and they were offering a whopping eighteen dollars per hour, which seemed like quite a bit to her now. The office, which was still being built, would be on the fifteen-hundred block of South Street. She had walked by it last week. It wasn’t impossible that someone she knew would come in there, but she was relying on the likelihood that most people she knew already had their pest control people. This company—unfortunately named “Ratface”—hopefully would appeal to the younger crowd of first-time homeowners.
“Ready?” Fern called into her room. Tabitha glanced at her watch. There was no way she was going to get them to school and be back in time for the meeting. What was she thinking?
“Coming,” she called, taking one last look at herself. Nobody, in a million years, would ever think she was broke. She walked toward the door, then came back, pulled off the necklace and scarf. She realized she was dressing more for the restaurant and less for the interview. She didn’t want to appear like she didn’t need a job, or worse, that she was above it. She quickly pulled off her shoes and chose much less expensive ones. She wished she could start over, but there was no time for that.
Out in the living room she found Levi slumped over on the couch.
“You okay, Monkey man?” she asked gently. He jumped.
“Yeah, fine,” he said, sitting up, then standing quickly.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Okay, good, because I need you to do something for me,” she said. Levi turned to her and raised his eyebrows. He probably thought she was going to ask him to run something down to the
garbage chute. “Can you walk Fern to school today? Just the two of you? I have an interview this morning, and I’m afraid I won’t make it in time if I walk you guys all the way to school.”
“An interview?” he asked. “For what?”
“I told you, I’m thinking about going back to work,” she said slowly, not at all sure that she had mentioned it. “This is just preliminary.”
When Levi didn’t say anything, she said, “So, do you think you can do that? Get the two of you to school safely?”
“Yeah, I can do that,” he said, perking up. Tabitha thought she even saw a tiny smile start at the corners of his mouth. She shut her eyes for the briefest second, hoping she wasn’t making a terrible mistake. What if something happened on the way there? What if Levi didn’t help guide Fern across the street? No, she told herself, he would. She stopped short of asking him to text her when they got there. She knew that would just add to her anxiety, and probably a lot of phone checking during the interview. She watched as Levi helped Fern gather her backpack.
“Bye, Mommy,” she said. Fern liked this, too, Tabitha could tell.
“Bye, sweet girl,” she said, trying to act like this was perfectly normal. “Bye, Monkey.”
When they left, she stood at the window and watched. It took a long time for them to get all the way downstairs and out. Once they were on the sidewalk, she could see there was some discussion about which way to go, and they ended up going slightly out of their way so they could walk through the Square, which she knew Levi was doing for Fern. Tabitha smiled a little as she watched, until she couldn’t see them anymore. Now she had a whole twenty minutes to kill. She didn’t know what to do with it. She had the time to change her outfit, but she didn’t really feel like it anymore. She felt tired. She forced herself to move toward her bedroom, just to consider other clothing options, and as she did her phone rang. She glanced at the number but didn’t recognize it.
“Hello?”
“Hello, I’d like to place an order, but not for right now, it’s a lunch order.”
Tabitha hesitated.
“Is that okay? Are you still doing lunch? I should have asked that first.”
“Um,” Tabitha said, not sure how much she wanted to say.
“Is this Tabitha’s Pantry?” the male voice asked, sounding a little embarrassed. “Your app is glitchy today—it won’t let me place an order, so I thought I would call. This is the number I had saved in my phone.”
“Yes, it’s Tabitha’s Pantry,” Tabitha said. Her former business had failed on so many levels. She would so much rather put her energy into it than any of these crazy jobs she was going for, but, of course, she couldn’t, for too many reasons. “We aren’t open.”
“Oh, okay. Are you open tomorrow? We were talking about your amazing egg salad, and I wanted to order ten sandwiches. We’re having lunch meetings all week. I know you did those boxed meals for dinner, do you do them for lunch, too?”
Tabitha shook her head and started to talk three different times before settling on her answer.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “We’re closed for the foreseeable future.” And she hung up. She looked at her phone like it was going to ring again, like the man on the other end wasn’t going to take no for an answer. He was going to demand ten egg-salad boxed lunches. And she could do it. She would love to do it. She would gently place the eggs in the pot and let the cool water pour over them. She would boil them slowly. Once they were ready, peeled, and grated, she would mix them—her favorite part—with simple Hellmann’s mayonnaise, salt, pepper, and dill. Everyone always asked what was in that egg salad? Customers were always guessing—“Was it pickle juice?” “Was it nutmeg?” It had to be something magical, something nobody else would think of, but no, sometimes simple was the best thing; sometimes simple was perfection. Once the salad was made, she would build the sandwiches on the grainy bread from Metropolitan Bakery, just south of the Square. She had tried to make her own bread, and it had turned out fine, but there was nothing better than that bread from the bakery. After that, she would put together the boxes. Maybe she would make homemade chips, using her mandoline and small deep fryer, or a pasta salad with peppers and cherry tomatoes, using her favorite cider vinegar (of which there used to be plenty) from a tiny island in Canada, and then add a miniature brownie and chocolate chip cookie to each box as the finishing touch. Or she might make an Asian slaw and peanut butter cookies. At that last thought she leaned against the back of the couch and tried not to think about the worst day, the awful phone call. But was that the worst day? Or was the other terrible day, the one with her mother, actually the worst day? It was hard to know. Without all the information, it was impossible to know. And she didn’t have all the information. Maybe she never would. Maybe it was better that way.
She glanced at her watch. She hoped against hope that Levi and Fern made it to school without incident. She thought about texting Levi, but didn’t. Better to not text than to text and get no answer. She had to get him to agree to the Find My Friends app or look for another one that didn’t require agreement on the part of the person you were trying to find. She sighed and walked out, not changing, not grabbing a sweater, not feeling ready at all.
As soon as she entered the hotel just across the Square, she was glad she hadn’t dressed down too much. She walked by the doorman and smiled, feeling like she belonged, and she knew she looked the part. She decided to walk up the one flight instead of taking the elevator. It would give her more time. At the hostess stand she struggled to remember the man’s name. Hiffen, that was it.
“I’m meeting Andrew Hiffen,” she said.
“Right this way.”
The restaurant was nearly empty. She spotted a young man sitting at one of the prime tables near the window, but she dismissed him. Far too young. Sure enough, though, it was her destination.
“What’s the scariest thing you have ever seen, or that you could imagine seeing?” he asked, before she had a chance to sit down, before she even had a chance to introduce herself. It was that awkward moment when the hostess was pulling out the chair, and she didn’t want to miss the seat. She settled into it and yanked it forward, a little too hard, nodding to the hostess.
“The scariest thing?” she repeated back to him. There were so many things in the running, honestly. But she knew what he wanted. She could play this game.
“The face of a rat,” she said.
“Exactly.”
How old could he possibly be? Twenty-five? On the one hand she hated that such a young person could have so much control over her fate, and on the other she thought he might be easy enough to please. She could figure out the answers that he hoped to get to his questions.
“I’m thinking of the French toast,” he said, surprising her. She hadn’t given the menu any thought; she was still gearing up to reach across the table and say, Hi! I’m Tabitha Brewer. But that moment had passed, so she let him lead the conversation.
“Good choice,” she said warmly, looking at her menu. Maybe if she just supported everything he said, he’d give her the job.
He ordered, and she decided to get the same thing. She loved French toast. Her mouth watered just thinking about it. If only she could take some home for the kids. But she knew that wouldn’t be the right thing to do. And she was sort of glad—it meant she could eat it all and not feel bad.
“I got in last night around nine,” he said, without any prompting.
“Was that the time you expected to get in?”
“More or less,” he said.
She waited, but he didn’t say anything else, and he certainly didn’t ask anything about her career, her hopes and dreams, what she thought she might be able to contribute to the company. She was about to begin offering that information, unsolicited, when the food arrived. Tabitha willed herself to not worry about a single thing while she ate, and she pretty much succeeded. Andrew Hiffen ate only one piece of French toast, then inched his plate toward the middle of the
table.
“So good,” he said, surprising her again. For a second she had worried he didn’t like it.
“Yes, it really is so good,” she said.
“Let me just make a quick call,” he said, pushing back from the table and getting up.
“Sure.”
While he was gone, she slipped the one unopened miniature bottle of maple syrup and one tiny jar of blueberry jam into her purse. She thought for a brief second about eating his French toast, too, what a shame to let it go to waste, but then he was back. She wouldn’t have done it anyway.
“So I talked to my father, and he said we still have a few other candidates to meet before we make the final decision,” he said, not quite looking her in the eyes. Shoot. She thought this was going to be easy. “We hope to have everything in place in the next few weeks or so—a month at the latest.”
“That sounds good,” she said, trying to remain upbeat. “I would really like this job. I didn’t have a chance to tell you, but I am very organized. I like talking to people on the phone. I’m good at creating and implementing schedules, even when things get busy, or I should say, especially when things get busy.”
“I’ll tell my father,” he said. “I really hope it works out. You seem nice.”
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