A Slender Thread (32 page)

Oliver pulled away and stood. “I'm not going to let you make this mistake again. Mags, we're meant to be together.”

“I'm not making a mistake,” Margot said. “I just need this summer.”

“And then what? The fall? The winter? The years are flying by.”

“But Lacey's worse.”

He stood. “So you're willing to be apart all summer?”

“You're the one who's leaving.”

“That's how you think of it?”

“Okay, I know the work out there's important. Go ahead. It's only one summer.”

“A lot can happen in a few months,” he warned.

“What are you saying?”

“I think you're making a mistake.”

She shook her head.

“You won't change your mind?”

“No, Oliver. This time I'm right.” She remembered how Teddy had pushed her to do things. She wasn't going to let Oliver do it too. She'd had enough.

 

Alex tapped on the door of Lacey's studio and stepped in. It had been a week since his mother's funeral. She was bent over her loom, a basket of fabric pieces on the floor by her feet. She reached down and picked up a strip, not seeming to pay attention to the color, and placed it inside the shed before moving her feet to activate the loom.

“Can we talk a minute?” he asked.

She continued to work, this time sliding the shuttle across, pedaling her feet, and moving the shuttle back in the opposite direction.

“Please, Lacey.”

She stopped, resting her hands in her lap. “What is it?” She didn't meet his gaze.

Alex tried to quell his growing anger. Lately, Lacey seemed to make it her mission not to talk to him when they were alone. That morning, just as it was growing light, he had reached for her. She had rolled onto her back closer to him. Her breathing softened. The moment her eyes opened he touched her cheek, then kissed her ear. Then without pausing, she threw back the covers, and went to the bathroom to shower.

“I feel like you're avoiding me.”

“I don't . . . mean to.” She leaned back in her chair. “I'm sad. I miss Edith.”

“I do too. But we have to go on. Mom was already gone from us.”

“Like I'll . . . be.”

“Lacey, stop. You can't think like that.”

She pursed her lips and stroked the tapestry in the loom.

“Did you have trouble sleeping again?” he asked.

“I was up. In the night. Toni.” She picked up the shuttle and resumed her work. It was as if she had to constantly be doing something, her body always in motion.

“Is she okay?”

“Ryan called her.” She took a big breath of air. “To say good-bye. He's leaving for Africa.”

“I see,” he said.

“He shouldn't have called.” Lacey reached for another rope of fabric. Her hands threw the shuttle from side to side. “He made her upset . . . all over again.”

“Can't you stop for a minute?”

Lacey sighed and hugged her hands to her waist.

Alex continued now that he had her attention. “I wish we weren't having this graduation party. The cooking is too much for you. You'll wear yourself out, Chief.”

She shook her head. “I want it to be . . . normal for the girls. Besides, Margot will be back. She'll help.”

“We can't expect Margot to be here all the time.” He looked away, knowing the difference his sister-in-law made to the household. Those few days before his mother's funeral, Margot had helped with everything—running errands with Lacey, doing laundry, cleaning up the kitchen, even taking Wink to an interview for her summer internship at the science center. Mostly, it had been a relief to have her with them at meals, easing the conversation along, gently trying to cheer them all during that sad time.

Lacey sighed. “You don't . . .”

“What don't I?” he said.

She met his gaze, and for just a moment her expression softened, as if giving him a brief glimpse of all that was churning inside her mind. “When I stay busy.” She reached for the fabric scraps at her feet. “I forget. I forget the bad things.”

“Italy will be good for you,” he said. “A real rest.”

“You think that . . . that going . . . away will change anything?” Her lips quivered.

“Lacey, we've got to try.” He brought the desk chair closer to her loom and sat beside her. “Mom's death has been hard for you.”

“Don't forget Toni.”

“She'll get over Ryan.”

Lacey looked up at the ceiling and shook her head. “If you only knew.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Last night. Crying again.” She paused.

He reached for Lacey's hand. “Lace, you're the one holding us all together. I haven't thanked you enough, especially for planning Mom's service.”

“Margot helped.”

“With your direction.”

Lacey took a piece of fabric larger than the other scraps from the basket. She made a small tear in the cloth and then pulled the two halves apart.

Alex glanced downward. “What are you doing with those?” He touched the edge of her basket with his foot.

“Do you . . .” She paused. He could see her struggle—the pursed lips, the tremble of her head. “Recognize,” she said forcefully, adding, “Do you recognize them?” She lifted a handful of the scraps from the basket.

The long strips of cotton dangled from her hands. He shook his head.

“The girls' dresses. When they were kids.” She grabbed another wide strip and ripped it in two, tearing this one faster.

He took a piece of the cloth, studying the tiny white flowers on a green background. He remembered the matching sundresses Lacey had sewn for the twins when they were little. “Why have you ripped them up?” Lacey had saved many of the girls' special outfits over the years. They were stored in neatly labeled boxes in the crawl space off their bedroom. She had said she was keeping her favorites. Now the little green dresses had been torn into strips and knotted together to form one long strand. It was just cloth, but seeing them in tatters seemed so cruel.

“But you were saving them for—” He closed his mouth. She had been saving them for the grandchildren she would probably never see, for babies she would never hold. Lacey looked into his eyes as if she were reading his thoughts.

“I'm making . . . a tapestry.” She drew her hand across the emerging piece in the loom. The weaving was unlike her usual work, work that was smooth, even, and ordered. The ripped scraps of fabrics from the girls' dresses all but disappeared into the chaotic mix of line and textures.

Alex couldn't think what to say. The quiet but intense destruction going on in the studio sickened him.

“I'm calling it . . .” She paused and swallowed. “Commencement,” she said. “I'll look at it. And I'll remember.”

M
argot shifted on the folding chair. They had taken their places in the vast rows of seats set aside for family and guests at the twins' graduation ceremony. It was a humid afternoon, unusual for June. Margot's skirt was already sticking to the backs of her legs. Her mother, born in South Carolina, would have called it swampy weather. She imagined a June afternoon in the South feeling exactly like this, the warm air syrupy and thick.

Her mother had come to her own high school graduation in Concord. Margot remembered how her mother had stayed close to her father's side and smiled vaguely, looking fragile in a blue linen dress. Lacey had been home from college for the summer and had taken their mother shopping for the new outfit. Lacey saw to it that her mother was there for the occasion. Margot had not appreciated then what it must have taken for her father and Lacey to get Helen out and ready: keeping a vigilant watch, seeing to it that she never had the car available to restock her secret stash of alcohol, making her eat, getting her to a hair appointment, and on the day itself, gently coaxing her along, allowing sufficient time for her to fix her makeup and dress.

Margot pushed her dark glasses up onto her head. Her eyes themselves felt hot and in need of air. She breathed in deeply, pushing aside the long-forgotten day of her graduation, a day when her one desire was for the ceremony to be over so she could go home and get ready for the summer at Bow Lake.

“I remember Wink and Toni as babies,” Kate said, turning to Margot. She and Hugh were sitting on Margot's right, and beyond them Alex and Lacey. So much had happened since Kate and Hugh had sat at the Georges' Thanksgiving table the previous November.

“Where has the time gone?” she added with a wistful sigh. Kate and Hugh had known the girls all their lives. Margot knew Lacey considered them part of the family.

Margot nodded, as if she had been pondering the same question. Hugh's head was bent toward Alex. They were talking softly together. Lacey sat at the end of the row, closest to the aisle where the students would walk toward the podium and their seats in front. She appeared to be watching the crowd, taking stock of the arriving families, all families she had come to know well over the years at soccer games, bake sales, theatrical productions.

“Exciting to see them so grown-up,” Margot said, feeling the need to say something. She liked Kate, but never knew quite how to relate to her. Being a dean at the academy as well as a teacher, Kate made Margot feel like an adolescent again, in some way not measuring up.

“It's too bad Oliver couldn't be here,” Kate said.

“He's working in California for the summer.”

“Where in California?”

“The Wine Country. Sonoma.”

“That's so gorgeous,” she said. “Hugh and I went for a long weekend for our anniversary. Our twenty-fifth. Have you ever been?”

“We were there last month. You're right. It's beautiful.” Margot shifted in her seat. She could feel perspiration behind her knees.

“Will you be going too?”

“I'm afraid not.” Her stomach growled. “I didn't want to miss this. I wanted to be able to have time with Lacey at Bow Lake in August, too.”

“I see,” Kate said, looking mildly surprised by this explanation; then she turned her attention back to Hugh. Margot fanned herself with the program in her hand. The slight movement of humid air offered little relief. She wanted to savor this important day in Wink's and Toni's lives, but her thoughts kept going back to Oliver.

Why couldn't he understand? Her sister was ill, for God's sake. How long would Lacey have? Margot had tried to block out the eventual end of her sister's life. Once communication went, what would be left? The body itself would slowly degenerate. The hideous thought of caregivers, nursing homes, the realm of the aged would come all too soon. Five more years? Possibly ten?

The last several days in New York with Oliver had been awful—one argument after another. He had insisted that Margot couldn't cure her sister, that she needed to live her own life too. How could she turn her back on him? He wanted a future with her. Didn't she care about that? On and on it went. Nothing had been resolved except that Oliver had gone to San Francisco without her. Was this the beginning of the end of their relationship?

Now, under the hot sun, the prescribed commencement music wafted over the crowd gathered on the football field. Was it “Pomp and Circumstance”? Margot wasn't sure. She turned and watched the young people gathering to make their final walk as high school students. They wore sky blue robes instead of the standard black, yet signs of each one's uniqueness abounded. Earrings, tattoos on necks and ankles, sandals, boots, bare legs, the pant legs of jeans, flowing skirts peeking below hems, each graduate imagining he or she was different now, ready to spring into freedom, official adulthood, leaving childhood behind. The sun was bright. Margot put on her sunglasses again.

Lacey craned her neck, seeming to watch for her own two girls in the clumps of seniors assembling in the distance. She was running now for an hour every morning. Her skin held the beginning of a summer tan. Margot marveled at Lacey's energy. Her physical body was becoming stronger and stronger, despite the failing in her brain. Since she had given up her volunteer work she now spent more time in the garden, a place where she never had to speak. An enormous pile of composted cow manure had been delivered from the garden center and Lacey had been transferring it by wheelbarrow to the flower beds before shoveling it around the base of each plant. Margot had offered to spread it, but Lacey had adamantly refused.

Margot had arrived yesterday in time to help with the cooking for the picnic supper they were hosting that night for the girls and their friends. With Lacey's guidance she made four dozen brownies and a pound cake. After that was done she boiled the potatoes for potato salad and made the barbecue sauce for the chicken that Alex would cook on the grill. The party would start at six that evening.

In many ways the household had regained its regular rhythm, yet it was as if an unseen hum vibrated among them like an undercurrent. It had no definable sound but was more like a worrisome subliminal rumble that alerted you to something, that kept you on guard.

The groups of students began to shift into formation. The music changed and the crowd stood. Margot pulled her skirt away from her legs.

“Here they come,” Kate said. Two by two, the students made their way forward to the designated seats in front of the podium. With grinning faces, hurried waves toward parents, attempts at solemnity, they marched by. Margot tried to see her nieces beyond Kate and the others. Hugh's broad back kept blocking her view. A moment later she caught a glimpse of Wink and Toni passing their row. Wink's mortarboard tipped precariously. Margot had watched earlier that morning as she struggled to secure it with bobby pins.