The Imperfects

by Amy Meyerson

  “I’m starting a new business,” Deborah says. “Flower arrangements. Want to help me?”

  Beck has never shared her mother’s love of flowers, and she certainly knows better than to go into business with Deborah. Still, Beck says, “Sure, until I figure out what’s next.”

  The taller, thicker mover knocks on the wall to get their attention.

  “That’s everything.” He holds a clipboard in one hand, a padded envelope in the other. Beck crosses the living room to complete the paperwork. As she signs the agreement, he reads the name on the package. “One of you Deborah Miller?”

  Confused, Deborah takes the envelope from him and sees it has no return address. She tears it open and peaks inside. It’s filled with packets of seeds. Delphinium, blue thistle, snapdragon, daffodils, and chamomile. Deborah gasps, rushes upstairs, shutting the bedroom door behind her. She leans against the closed door and hugs the package to her chest.

  Weeds, Tyler had called the bouquet when it arrived after her first date with Viktor.

  * * *

  The Johnsons have to take out a loan against the sale of the house, but they have the money to pay back Ryan’s company plus enough for three months’ rent on a new place. It’s significantly smaller than the home they owned but in the same school district. The children have to share a room. At first, they both adamantly refuse, but despite their initial complaints, Lydia and Tyler enjoy the shared space. Ashley lets them have a TV, and they play video games late into the night, stumbling downstairs in the morning with glazy eyes.

  On the morning of Ryan’s sentencing, Ashley is dressed in one of her old skirt suits. Ryan’s lawyer thinks it’s a good idea, Ashley accompanying Ryan to the hearing, a reminder to the judge of the family he’s leaving behind. When the children tumble into the kitchen where Ryan is packing lunches, Lydia looks at her mother’s formal clothes, worried. The kids know that today is the day. Lydia’s troubled gaze forces Ashley to consider how today will be for her children, taking the bus home, returning to this empty, foreign house. Ryan’s lawyer assured him that the judge will give him two weeks to turn himself in, that he won’t be incarcerated on the spot. As the kids eat their pancakes, Ashley pulls Ryan aside.

  “I can’t come with you today.”

  “Ash—”

  “I need to be here, for the kids. I don’t know what I was thinking, that we’d let them return home alone.”

  Ryan nods. He hadn’t considered this, either. “You’ll drop me at the train after we drive the kids to school?”

  The image of Ryan taking the train home alone breaks her heart, too, but this is part of his punishment; it isn’t a debt his children can pay for him.

  “So, this is it,” Ryan says to his wife when she pulls into the train station’s parking lot. Together, they watch the crowd waiting on the platform. “I’m sorry. I don’t know if I’ve said that enough. I’m really sorry. Sorry for everything I’ve—” Ryan continues to list everything he’s put her through. Ashley can’t listen. He has apologized so much that it’s starting to have the opposite effect on her, stirring the anger that otherwise lays dormant.

  She doesn’t want to fight, so she points toward the platform and tells her husband he doesn’t want to be late.

  Driving home, Ashley cannot fight the tears. Her eyes become so blurry that she has to pull over. Before she convinces herself otherwise, she dials her sister, who still hasn’t apologized. The line continues to ring, and Ashley fights every impulse to hang up, until Beck’s voicemail picks up and all she can manage to say is, “I need you.”

  She dries her eyes, blows her nose, and pulls into traffic. A few moments later, her phone rings. She feels a flurry through her chest. But it isn’t Beck. It’s a 212 number she doesn’t have saved.

  “Ash, it’s Georgina.”

  “Hi,” Ashley says, confused. Why is Georgina calling her? There’s no diamond. No promise of a commission.

  “Listen, I only have a sec. I wanted to call you right away. I heard you’re looking for work.” Ashley grips the steering wheel, embarrassed. All those informational interviews. Of course old friends talk. And this is just the beginning of the talk about Ashley Johnson. “There’s an opening in Bartley’s publicity department you’d be perfect for.”

  It’s an associate position rather than the head of a department, but a foot in, with solid pay and long-term possibilities.

  “And they want me?”

  “You’ll have to interview, of course. With my recommendation, it’s yours if you want it. Won’t it be fun, working together?”

  Immediately, Ashley plans to say yes. Instead, she asks, “Can you give me a few days to think about it?”

  “Sure,” Georgina says, unable to mask her surprise. “But I’ll need to know soon. This is a personal favor. They won’t hold the job forever.”

  Perhaps Georgina feels guilty for alerting the Italians—an act she’ll never admit—or maybe she pities Ashley now that her family lost the diamond. Either way, Ashley does not want a job as a personal favor. She wants a position because she’s good at what she does.

  “I’ll let you know early next week,” she says.

  She decides not to mention the position to Ryan. As soon as she tells him, she’ll have to take it. It would be crazy not to accept. Still, her gut tells her to pass. She decides if she does not come up with a logical reason to say no by the following week, she’ll interview for the opening.

  That evening the Johnsons have more pressing concerns. Their new house is two miles from the train station, and Ryan texts to say he’ll walk back. He arrives forty minutes later, jacket dangling over his arm, tie loose, shirt and hair wet with sweat despite the brisk weather.

  “What’s for dinner?” he says as he walks in. “I’m starving.” His voice is upbeat, but his face is forlorn. Ashley can’t decipher his expression, so she takes his jacket and tells him there’s a pizza in the oven.

  Lydia and Tyler are disturbingly well behaved as they nibble on their crust, waiting for their father to declare his fate. Ryan inhales a piece of pizza. When he reaches for another, Ashley intervenes. “Ry, what happened?”

  “The judge followed the recommendations in the presentencing report. Eighteen months. It could have been worse.”

  “Could have been worse? That’s a year and a half.” Lydia throws her half-eaten pizza onto her plate and races down the hall. Her door slams. Ryan stands, but Ashley stops him.

  “Leave her be. She needs to be mad right now.” I need to be mad, too, Ashley thinks. It makes no difference that Ryan could have gotten a longer sentence. She just hopes he won’t start apologizing again because if he does she’ll explode.

  Ryan sits back down, and Tyler walks over to hug his father. As Ryan strokes his son’s hair, neither of them speaks. Ashley watches Tyler be vulnerable. Maybe, if Ryan had learned this, too, the Johnsons wouldn’t be here, with their patriarch about to turn himself into federal prison.

  The next morning Ashley’s phone rings, and again she assumes it Beck. Again, she’s disappointed by another number she doesn’t recognize, this time from her local area code. Why hasn’t Beck returned her message? She knew the date of Ryan’s sentencing. Ashley hadn’t asked for an apology; she’d asked for something Beck could give. As she hits the call button to answer her buzzing phone, the anger returns.

  “Is this Ashley? This is Mrs. Whitmore. We bought your house.”

  Immediately, the frustration turns to panic. The papers have been signed. The money paid, all cash. Why is she calling?

  “I’m so glad I reached you. We’ve been having trouble selling our old house and realized we should probably hire a stager. The person who staged your house did such a good job—I’m hoping you might share the company’s number?”

  “The stager? I didn’t hire anyone. I did it myself.”

  Mrs. Whitmore laughs. “You
wouldn’t be available, would you?”

  Although Ashley knows she’s joking, she says, “Actually, I would.”

  When they hang up, her phone buzzes almost instantaneously. Only, it isn’t Mrs. Whitmore, sending her the address to her old home. I’m here, Beck’s text reads. Tell me what I can do.

  * * *

  Twenty-four days after Viktor and the diamond disappeared, the baby is four days late. Kristi has scoured the internet for ways to self-induce. She tries acupuncture, Szechuan stews, ghost pepper hot sauce, castor oil. She twists her nipples and does squats. Nothing has an effect on the baby, curled up and stubborn in Kristi’s womb. The only thing she does not try, for obvious reasons, is sex. The doctors have scheduled an induction in three days.

  Since Jake returned to LA, he’s settled into a new routine. He checks in with Kristi each morning before he sits down to write, then calls her again in the afternoon as he walks to work. He got a job as a barback at a mixology bar designed to look like a tree house. The line outside makes him feel old, and more people light up cigarettes than he thought still smoked in LA. But the pay is good, the shifts so busy that the hours pass quickly. He returns to Rico’s exhausted enough to pass out on the couch, only to begin the cycle again the next morning.

  He has to do more research than he anticipated, but he works on the script at a steady clip, chipping away scene by scene, writing with a sense of clarity he’s never had before.

  The script makes him think of the Millers, even though they aren’t in it. Jake used the photograph Beck and Deborah found, of Helen in her fur stole with Joseph’s arm around her shoulders, as inspiration for his story. In the script, this is Helen’s wedding night, the first time she wears the orchid brooch. In the script, Joseph is not married. He does not have another family. He does not die and leave Helen alone. It reads so right that Jake begins to believe it’s true.

  In a few weeks, he’ll have enough money saved from his new job to rent his own apartment. For now, he heads to Rico’s, relieved to find the living room dark so they won’t have to hang out. Jake is so tired he falls asleep in jeans that smell of beer and cigarettes, his teeth unbrushed. A sleep too heavy for dreams, too heavy for ringing phones.

  Rico shakes him. “Jake? Jake?” Jake mumbles and rolls over. The shaking becomes more forceful, and he blinks one eye open. Rico holds out his phone.

  “What time is it?” Jake asks, scratching the back of his head. He darts up when he sees it’s four thirty and has seven missed calls from Kristi. His fingers fumble as he tries to call her back. Mrs. Zhang picks up on the first ring.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Kristi went into labor a few hours ago but it was too dangerous. She had a C-section. She’s recovering now.”

  “Is she okay? The baby?”

  “Yes.” He can’t tell if there’s accusation or worry in her voice.

  “I’m on my way.”

  Jake throws on his shoes without tying them, grabs a sweatshirt, and races toward the door, but Rico stops Jake. “You smell like an alcoholic.”

  Jake begins to protest that he doesn’t have time to change, but Rico is right. He can’t turn up at the hospital in the middle of the night smelling like he’s been at the bar, even if it’s the bar where he works. He mines a T-shirt and jeans from the pile of clothing in Rico’s corner. While not exactly clean, they’re pristine in comparison to the clothes he was sleeping in.

  The twenty-minute drive to the hospital feels interminable as he curses at himself for sleeping through his daughter’s birth. He manages to hit every red light, or so it seems, making the drive that much more painful. He and Kristi have been in a good place. Not where he wants to be, but companions, teammates. And now—now he flakes the one moment she actually needs him. Everything she’s said about him, every reason she doesn’t want him as a partner, it’s all true. Even when he tries to be better, he still manages to fuck it all up.

  Mrs. Zhang meets him in the hallway and rushes him into the room. When they enter, Kristi’s sleeping. Her eyes drift open when she hears them. She’s hooked up to an IV and a catheter. Her skin is blotchy, hair oily and wispy around her face. She’s never looked more beautiful.

  He rushes to her side as she futilely tries to sit up. “Kris, I’m so sorry I wasn’t here.”

  “Oh, Jake.” She strokes his hair.

  “I’m so sorry I missed it, Kris. Our daughter’s birth.”

  She shushes him. “You’re here now.” She motions toward the corner of the room where somehow he’s missed the bassinet. Jake walks over and sees the baby, his daughter, swaddled in pink. Her eyes are crusted shut, her head somewhat misshapen. They say children come out looking like their fathers, but Jake just sees Kristi across his daughter’s face.

  He lets his daughter sleep and returns to Kristi’s bed. Without being detected, Mrs. Zhang has tiptoed out of the room. They are alone, and Kristi lets him embrace her.

  “Helen,” Kristi says as Jake pulls away. “We should call her Helen.”

  Jake Miller is not a crier. He didn’t cry when his father left, on those nights in high school where Beck had crawled into his bed and snuggled with him, softly sniffling and asking if it was her fault their dad was gone. He didn’t even cry when Helen died, when he sprinkled dirt onto her casket. Today, as he says his daughter’s name for the first time, “Helen,” his eyes overflow.

  Once Kristi has fallen back to sleep, Jake steps into the hall to call his sister. It’s been almost a month since the diamond went missing, since he’s spoken to Deborah or Beck.

  “It’s perfect,” Ashley says when Jake tells her his daughter’s name.

  “Can you come out to meet her, our Helen?” He’s finding every excuse to say her name. Helen, his daughter. Helen Zhang Miller. Helen, finally a Miller.

  “I want to. It sounds like the best escape. We have so little time left with Ryan, though. And I know it probably sounds like a line, but I don’t have the money.”

  “Sure,” Jake says, unable to fight the disappointment. Mr. Zhang is driving down from San Jose. Kristi’s cousin, who lives in Santa Monica, is visiting in the morning. He wants his family here, too. Ashley, Lydia, and Tyler.

  “You’re coming home in March, right?” Ashley asks. “Maybe you can bring Kristi and Helen Jr.?” Helen Jr. rolls so effortlessly off Ashley tongue that Jake realizes that’s what they will call her, as unconventional as it may be.

  “March?”

  “For the unveiling. Beck is planning it around the kids’ spring break, so they don’t have to miss school.”

  Jake forgot all about the Jewish tradition of unveiling the gravestone, that March will mark one year since Helen’s death. One year of mourning. Of searching. Of finding. Of losing. Helen, Kristi, the Florentine Diamond, Beck, even Deborah. The cycle seems complete; lost, found, lost again. A closed circuit.

  “Jake, you have to come. Please. It’s up to you to fix this.”

  “They have phones, too. They could call me.”

  “You know them. They won’t. They’re embarrassed. It’s their fault, everything with Viktor.”

  “You’re in touch with them, then?”

  “Starting to be. We’re going to go down for Thanksgiving. They aren’t perfect, none of us are. But we’re the only family we have.”

  Jake knows she’s right. He’s working on being a better person, for Kristi, for Helen Jr., but there are only so many relationships he can work on at one time.

  “I’ll think about it,” he tells her, and they both know that he’s made up his mind.

  * * *

  By March, the Florentine Diamond has been missing for five months, and still, no one has seen or heard from Viktor. No one other than Deborah, who gets a new package of seeds every Monday. Tulips, lilies, sunflowers. All organic, non-GMO. Their sprouts have overtaken the third bedroom, Helen’s former sewing
shop now a greenhouse. Soon, Deborah will plant them outside. She’s told no one about the seeds—not the FBI, not Beck, either.

  On the week of Helen’s unveiling, Viktor sends Deborah orchid seeds. Orchids are notoriously fickle. Deborah will not be able to grow them from seed. Still, he remembered the anniversary of Helen’s death. Despite his betrayal, Viktor still loves her.

  The morning the Millers unveil Helen’s tombstone is balmy. No jackets are needed to fight the wind. No boots to wade through patches of snow. Just bare earth where the grass begins its regrowth and green buds that pock the tree branches.

  Ashley and Beck weave their arms through their mother’s, steadying her across the uneven incline. Lydia and Tyler race ahead toward Helen’s grave where the rabbi waits beside the tombstone covered with a white sheet.

  “So Jake really isn’t coming?” Deborah asks.

  “We’ve been over this,” Ashley says. “He’s got a lot going on with the script and Helen Jr.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Beck says.

  “It’s Helen’s unveiling,” Deborah protests.

  “I don’t know what you want me to say. I tried. He’s not coming.”

  They arrive at the graveside where Beck nods to the rabbi that she can begin. Before she does, Beck asks Ashley, “Is it any good, the script?” She knows Ashley has been in regular touch with Jake, that she gets weekly pictures of Helen Jr., that she’s read drafts of his script.

  “It’s excellent.”

  The rabbi begins with a psalm in Hebrew, one that Beck selected.

  As the rabbi translates, “Happy is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is pardoned,” Deborah thinks Beck chose this psalm for Viktor, that, like Deborah, she misses him.