Hanging by a Thread (20 page)

I turn to a clean page and begin sketching, lightly delineating a pair of figures—one thin, one…not so thin. Then I stare at them, trying to visualize the perfect dress, hoping against hope I can distract myself enough to ward off the memories of something not worth remembering.

It doesn't work.

I may not have learned much about life, but I do know this: The more you'd like to forget about certain events in your past, the more you can guarantee they'll come back and haunt you.

I draw the first line, only to immediately erase it.

To be perfectly honest, if I could expunge my twenty-second year from my history, I'd be a happy camper. However, since The Months Ellie Forgot She Had a Brain aren't going to go away, and since those months produced a child who isn't going to go away, either, I knew I'd have to face the issue of who her father is at some point. I was hoping on my deathbed, when I'd be too riddled with pain to see the agonized look on her face.

My second attempt at a neckline goes a little better. No, actually—I erase it again—it needs to be lower. All those boobs, might as well show 'em off a little, right?

I don't suppose our little revelation back there came as any big surprise. But hard as anyone might find this to believe, we honestly thought we were making not only the most logical, but the kindest, decision we could have, given the circumstances.

Which were? you might ask.

Pause for a big sigh here. As well as a tiny plea in my own defense, which is that I had never before, and have never since,
slept with two men within a forty-eight hour period. Nor have I ever engaged in pity sex. Pity gorging, yes, but not pity sex. However, after Daniel's bombshell, I was lower than a smashed roach on a subway track. I barely remember getting home, although I do remember refusing to sob on the train. Then, both because I still possessed a shred of pride and because I couldn't bear the thought of listening to my father's and grandfather's threats against Daniel's life for the rest of mine, I sort of gave them the impression that I was the one who broke it off. Unfortunately, in my zeal to avoid recriminations, I also left myself with no visible means of sympathy. For a woman with freshly pureed emotions, this was not good.

Hmm. The sleeves. Gotta have sleeves of some kind, too many wobbly upper arms in this bunch…

My stoicism, aided by copious infusions of cheesecake and Cherry Coke, worked well enough for the first twenty-four hours. (Sugar highs—the poor woman's Percoset.) However, unbeknownst to me, while my heart was being ripped asunder by Daniel The Schmuck in Manhattan, Luke and Tina had split up in Queens, a fact I discovered on Day Two.

Wrist length? No, elbow length for June. And something…yeah, like that.

It was early April. Opening day at Shea Stadium. Dad and Leo had gone out to the game (an annual ritual they were far more likely to observe than donning yarmulkes and prayer shawls at Yom Kippur) leaving me alone in the house with a new cheesecake. I had my fork poised for that first, exquisite bite when our doorbell blatted out the opening notes of the
Star Wars
theme.

Luke.

Word gets out fast around here. However, I certainly didn't expect him to show up in the middle of the afternoon. Or that, when I opened the door, I'd actually flinch at how awful he looked. On some men, scruffy looks sexy. On Luke, the impression is more that of a stray dog needing a bath and a flea dip.

“Tina and I split up,” he said, which was about the only thing right then guaranteed to jolt me out of feeling sorry for myself.

“Oh, my God!” I grabbed his hand and dragged him into the house, only to immediately drop it and subtly put some distance between us. He didn't smell all that great. “Why?”

The picture of abject misery, he sank bonelessly onto the sofa. Fillet of James Dean. Three days past his sell-by date.

Big, soulful, sad brown eyes (hmm…maybe now I understand the wanting-to-take-all-the-dogs-home phenomenon) looked up at me. “Dunno.”

Actually, I did know, but I wasn't sure whether this was the time to mention it. He and Tina had been going together for nearly seven years by then. So she was getting pretty anxious for a ring. Yes, they were still really young, but as she so succinctly put it, how long can you keep screwing somebody without getting married? Which, translated from Tinaese, meant Please God, don't let me end up like my mother.

Trouble was, as ready as Tina was to get married, I knew Luke wasn't. Not that there was anybody else for him, I don't mean that. Despite all that stuff he said in my kitchen a little while ago, the fact was, and forever shall be, that at that point he only had eyes—among other body parts—for her. So it wasn't Tina he wasn't ready for, it was donning the cloak of Husbandhood that was giving him palpitations. See, despite his mother's tenacious grip on modern life, Luke was solid nineteen-fifties. You know, when a
real
man supported the wife and family and he damn well didn't get married until he could. And Luke couldn't, not then.

But apparently, Tina didn't want to wait—

Fuhgetabout a waist, half these girls don't even have waists…

—so she'd broken it off, taking what I suppose she thought was a calculated risk that he'd come to his senses. Which actually, for Tina, was a pretty gutsy move.

Anyway. The guy was, literally and figuratively, a mess. We think women take breakups hard? I've seen more upbeat blood-
hounds. At least women rant and sob and generally give voice to their feelings (which Tina did, later that night. But I digress.) Luke just…sat there. Boneless and morose and smelly. So, in desperation, I spewed out the one thing I figured might take his mind off his misery: my cheery news about Daniel.

Just like that, Just Shoot Me Luke disappeared. Color flooded sallow, unshaven cheeks; fury set dull eyes ablaze.

“The sonuvabitch was
married?
” He jumped up from the sofa, nostrils flared, fists clenched. “Is he still there, back at the apartment? 'Cause I'll go right over there and whip his ass if you want—”

Just like that, the sobs I'd been holding back for two days gushed forth like lava from a volcano. And once they started, I couldn't stop.

Here's where things get blurry. I remember sitting on the floor, bawling like a three-year-old, and Luke making like he was going to hold me only I must have recoiled or something because he didn't, and then we were breaking into my father's bourbon stash, which, judging from the layer of dust on the bottle, hadn't been touched for some time. I might have fleetingly wondered if bourbon gets stronger as it ages. Or maybe not. Anyway, from then on, we're talking fragmented images involving Luke realizing how bad he smelled and wanting to take a shower, only then I was somehow in the shower with him because he was too drunk to do it himself and I was afraid he'd fall over and crack his head open or something. And then my clothes were all wet so I took them off, too, totally forgetting—or not caring?—that I was undressing in front of Luke. Who was rapidly sobering and hardening, right there in front of me.

And then we were kissing, and the water was pouring over us, warm and soothing, and I think we were both crying a little, I couldn't tell with the water running down our faces, but I was very aware that Luke is an excellent kisser, and suddenly, there we were, having hard, frantic sex. In my shower. Stand
ing up. Not the first time I'd had an orgasm there, but definitely the first time I'd had company for the occasion.

Then it was over. Oh, boy, was it over. Luke unwrapped me from his waist and set me down, looking at me as though he'd never seen me before, then nearly ripped the shower curtain off its rings in his split to get out of the tub.

He was dressed and gone before I even had a chance to get dried off.

I look down at the sketch, only to rip the page out of the book and crumple it up. A warm, unpleasant flush creeps over my skin; I can't quite catch my breath, as if my lungs have shrunk or something.

I can't do this, I can't
….

How on earth did I get through that evening, when Tina came over to cry on my shoulder? And did I really squeal with excitement a week later when she showed me the adorable little engagement ring Luke had given her?

I suppose I did. After all, that's the way things were supposed to work out. Luke didn't ask me not to tell Tina what had happened, but he didn't have to. Our soggy tryst was nothing more than a moment of drunken insanity. In theory, he hadn't been unfaithful to her, since they weren't together at the time. But I know he felt he'd betrayed her trust as much as if they'd been married. And had I not gotten pregnant, I doubt either of us would have ever mentioned it again.

Tina'd had enough crap dumped on her in one lifetime. The last thing either of us wanted to do was hurt her. I mean, if you could have seen how radiant she was in those weeks leading up to her wedding, her obvious relief at finally, finally having something good come her way…how could Luke or I even think of bursting her bubble? Especially since—we told ourselves—we didn't actually
know
it was Luke's baby. Whoever's baby it was, the whole thing was a fluke (or so I thought, not knowing then what I do
now, that, uh, yeah, you
can
get pregnant while on the Pill. Odds may be slim, but slim is a helluva lot different than nonexistent.).

Except that Daniel had indeed insisted on also using a condom every time we had sex. And that Luke and I didn't, since I don't normally keep a stash next to the shampoo.

My father and grandfather accepted my news—when I finally got up the nerve to tell them—with equal parts shock and resoluteness. But once I started showing, they both really got into it, one or the other bringing home something for the baby almost every day, it seemed like. Starr may not have been planned, but she's always been loved.

But by nobody more than the man who's always assumed she's his daughter.

I'll be the first to admit this is a bizarre situation. And one a lot of people aren't going to understand, whenever the truth comes to light. Especially our never finding out for sure whether or not Luke
is
Starr's father. I guess neither of us saw much point, since Daniel—even if I had known how to contact him—had made it crystal clear he wasn't interested in the daddy bit. At least, not again. And not with me. But now, more than five years later, we've got this huge, tangled mess I'm not sure we can ever fully untangle. Try to loosen one knot, and you only tighten all the others.

“Mama!” The front door slams shut. “I'm back! Where are you?”

“In here, honey.”

Starr clomps into the living room in her boots, her smile drooping when she sees me. “What's wrong?”

I plaster on a smile of my own and shake my head. “Nothing. Just…frustrated with my drawing, that's all.”

“Oh.” She comes over and plops her skinny little butt beside me on the sofa. Before I can stop her, she's found the
wadded up sketch and unwadded it, smoothing it flat against her thighs. “What's wrong with this?”

“It didn't come out the way I wanted it to, that's all.”

“I think it's pretty. I wish I could draw as good as you.”

“As
well
as me. And I'm not really that good.”

“Well,”
she says.

“Well, what?”

She huffs one of her little sighs. “You said good instead of well. Like I did.”

“Oh. No, when I said good, it was right.”

“That doesn't make a bit of sense.”

Does anything?

“You need to go get ready for bed, sweetie.”

“Yeah, in a minute,” she says, scrutinizing the sketch like an art expert a Rembrandt. “C'n I have this if you don't want it?”

“Sure. Live.”

She beams at me as if I've just given her the moon—if not a real Rembrandt—then scampers out of the room. Seconds later, I hear little boot thuds against the stairtreads as she goes up to her room.

I turn to another clean page and start over.

Maybe this time, I'll get it right.

A
laid-back, slightly exhaust-scented spring breeze teases the new blue-and-white checked café kitchen curtains as I scrape out the canned spaghetti sauce into a pot on the stove. Rap music blasts from an apartment across the way, competing with a loud, rapid-fire argument in some unrecognizable language. An ambulance screams up Atlantic Avenue; every dog in Richmond Hill starts howling.

Ah, spring in the city. Gotta love it.

“Whatcha making?” Starr asks at my elbow. Worry lurks at the edges of her words.

“Spaghetti.”

I don't have to look at her to see the frown. Or that the cat, whom she's got in a death grip, is mirroring her expression. The late-afternoon sun has turned the freshly painted white walls—I finally got rid of the pumpkin-orange—a pretty peachy color. A color that makes me happy, I decide, adding
it to my mental “things to be grateful for” list. All in all, despite the million and one unresolved issues littering my brain, it's been a good day. Since seven o'clock this morning, I've unclogged a toilet, unstuck a stubborn window, finished the mock-up of Heather's dress before she has a cow, gone grocery shopping and planted pansies in the two new window boxes I bought. And now I'm making dinner for my child. I am hot stuff.

“Leo didn't make it like that.”

Okay,
warm
stuff.

However, I refuse to let a five-year-old with a serious lack of diplomatic skills destroy my good mood. I peer into the Dutch oven on the back burner to see if the water's boiling yet. It isn't.

“I know. But it'll be fine,” I say, as I've said at least three dozen times since Leo's death.

Frito squirms to get down; after a second or two of clashing wills and some kitty cussing, Starr finally concedes. “So how come you don't know how to cook?” she says as the cat stalks off, his fur all spiked like a punk rocker.

“Hey. I cook.” As if to prove my point, I stir the sauce. “I put stuff in pots, you get hot meals. Besides,” I say before she can poke holes in my theory, “you don't cook either.”

“Hello? I'm five? I'm not allowed to touch the stove?”

I have no comeback for this.

“When's Luke coming back?”

“I don't know, baby.” My stomach's jumped at her question, but I don't let on. He's been gone most of the past couple of weeks, overseeing the plumbing installation for some corporation's new headquarters in New Paltz. I dump half a package of dry pasta in the boiling water. “This week sometime, maybe.”

She nods, then wanders out of the kitchen. Frito jumps up onto the microwave stand to stare at me. This is his thing. Staring. For hours. At me.

Now with Starr, he's cuddly and purry. Me, he stares at. With
barely tempered disgust. Why, I have no idea. I feed the damn thing. Change his litter pan. I even went out and bought him this cushy little faux sheepskin-lined bed. Which he never sleeps in. Forked over nearly three hundred bucks to the vet when the stupid animal scarfed down a length of thread with a needle attached to it. And still, after a month, he stares. Oh, and if I try to pet him? He flinches. I'm good for food and a clean pan, but God forbid I should
touch
him.

So maybe I'm not exactly a cat person. Especially cats who could give Freddy Krueger a run for his money. But I'm doing my best here. Why doesn't he get that?

And while I'm thinking this, the damn thing jumps off the stand straight at my chest, shaving five years off my life and knocking over a half-full can of Diet Coke I'd left there earlier. I watch in helpless rage as soda spatters all over the floor I'd just washed. Okay, so maybe I hadn't
just
washed it, but it was a helluva lot cleaner than it is now.

“Stupid cat!” I yell, but all I get is this smug, yellow-eyed glare that clearly says,
“Hey. It wasn't me who left the can there, was it?”

By the time I finish cleaning up the mess, the sun has shifted, the glow from only minutes before all but gone.

Just like the glow from my earlier contentment.

As the last of the peachy color fades from the walls, I toss the Coke-soaked paper towels into the garbage and sigh. Aside from still missing Leo like crazy, it's not as if this past month has been horrible or anything. On the whole, I have nothing to complain about. I might miss going into the city, but I sure don't miss Nicole Katz. And while I'm still no threat to Emeril in the cooking department, I'm proud to say that—thanks to Luke—I can now change out the inner workings of a toilet, stop a leaky faucet and do minor electrical repairs without batting an eye. Or frying myself. But here I am, once again feeling…unsettled. As though I'm marking time.

Do all stay-at-home moms go through this, feeling as though they're treading water in the middle of the ocean, having no idea where the nearest land is? Or is this just me, being weird?

Maybe I don't want to know the answer to that.

But seriously, how did Frances do it, with six boys? And Liv, who's still in the middle of it? She finally had her baby last week, by emergency C-section. Since her husband couldn't take that much time off, and since no other family members were available for various reasons, I volunteered to take up the slack. So suddenly I had a houseful of boys during the day. Yes, I know, there were only two, but two boys in a house is a house
full
of boys. How can two measly little kids manage to be in fifty places at once? I don't get this.

Just as I don't get why I'm stewing over something that's not even the real problem, and I damn well know it. It's not being home full-time, or being a mother full-time, that I feel so unsettled about. It's this whole Luke and Tina business that's got me ready to scream.

The spaghetti's done; I carefully upend the full pot over the colander in the sink, wishing I could somehow steam my brain open. Up until a few weeks ago, our roles were more or less clearly defined. But now I have no idea how I'm supposed to act, what I'm supposed to feel—or let myself feel—what I'm supposed to
think.
It was easy—well, maybe not easy, but predetermined at least—when Tina (who I keep thinking I should call, but what would I say?) was in the picture. I simply ignored my attraction to Luke. Stuck my fingers in my ears whenever it tried to jump up and down and get my attention. And for the most part, it worked. Not all that hard when despite Tina's assertion otherwise, it's one-sided. Maybe I can't help what, or how, I feel about somebody, but I sure as hell can choose what to do about it. Up to this point, my control over my emotions has relied heavily on a combination of denial, never being alone with the man and keeping busy.

Since the first two of those are obviously shot to hell, I'm left with number three.

At least there's Heather's wedding. Otherwise known as The Circus. Even with Tina officially out of the wedding party (her decision), we're up to fifteen attendants now.
Fifteen.
I swear she's dragging 'em off the street. But besides needing the work (since picking through the trash for aluminum cans doesn't appeal) if this doesn't take my mind off the Great Luke Dilemma, nothing will.

Except I wonder…
and then what?

Yes, things are peaceful (relatively) and on an even keel (for which I should be grateful), but why do I feel as though I'm in the eye of the storm? That for all the changes and upheavals I've been through in the past few months, I ain't seen nothin' yet?

“Is dinner ready?”

“Yeah, sweetie,” I say to my kid. She comes to the table and slips into her chair—she's finally tall enough not to have to step up on the rung first—her expression resolute. I've really got to learn how to cook. As in, chopping and measuring and all that fun stuff. However, I no sooner set her milk and bowl of spaghetti in front of her than the doorbell rings. Her eyes light up.

“Maybe it's Luke!” she says, bolting from her chair and streaking down the hall to the door.

But I can tell, through the sheer-curtained glass pane, it's not Luke. Starr undoes the three locks with a dexterity a concert pianist would envy and yanks open the heavy door, only to let out a moan of disappointment.

“Hi…honey,” Jennifer says to my kid with an expression not unlike Starr's when she had to eat those stewed tomatoes. Her linen jumper is wrinkled just enough to prove no polyester was used in the making of this garment; her white T-shirt is the finest gauge cotton Stuart's money could buy; her clunky Mary Janes are hideously trendy. “Guess you were expecting someone else, huh?” Then she turns her stiff smile on me. And opens her arms.

Just as I notice the mountain of classy taupe luggage stacked behind her.

Uh, God? You and I need to have a
serious
talk.

 

I desperately want to believe I'm dreaming, but I've pinched myself three times already and all I have to show for it are a trio of red welts on my arm.

And my sister, sitting at my kitchen table.

Where she obviously plans on staying for a while.

My sister, who wanted nothing more to do with this house, this borough, this family, has moved back in. And I have six pieces of Gucci luggage in my foyer to prove it.

“Only temporarily,” she says, sipping from a bottle of Dasani. I offered her dinner, but I guess canned Hunts spaghetti sauce isn't high on her list, either.
Quelle surprise.
“Until Stuart finds another job.”

Starr is sitting at my side, shoveling in her spaghetti, silently taking this all in. Probably better than I am.

“And where is Stuart again?” I ask.

“Chicago. Uh…excuse me,” Jen says, then sneezes loud enough to stun Hackensack. “But he's off to Indianapolis tomorrow—” her smile fades “—then Lansing.”

Lansing? Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Seems they had to sell the house after all, before they lost it. The good news was, a buyer snatched up the property within forty-eight hours of their putting it on the market, proving that
somebody
still has money out there. The bad news was, the new owner wanted to take immediate possession. Not being in any position to argue, my sister and brother-in-law agreed. So, while Stuart is doing the grand tour of the Midwest in search of a new job, my sister is—dare I say it?—homeless.

Or she was until she remembered she could suck it up and come back here.

Not that sucking up's one of Jen's strong points, but I imagine she'll improve with practice. We all do.

“Where's your furniture?” We're talking a five-thousand-square-foot house. Or so I hear. I've never actually seen it (and now I guess I won't). Gee, you could wander around for hours and never see the person you were living with. Which might account for the longevity of my sister's marriage.

Long, heavily coated lashes drift down onto pale, perfectly made-up cheeks, followed by a despondent sigh. “We were able to store some of it in Stuart's parents' garage, since they're down to three cars now—”

Don't say it, Ellie.

“—but we had to sell the rest.” Another sneeze. “At a loss, as you can imagine.”

The resultant silence, in which I try desperately—well, maybe not desperately—to drum up a smidgen of sympathy for the obviously distraught blonde in front of me, is shattered by my daughter's slurping up the last of her spaghetti. Delicately blowing her nose into a tissue, Jennifer looks at Starr, whose gaze is nailed to her aunt.

“Don't you know it's rude to stare, little girl?”

“Sorry,” she says, not moving.

“And don't you ever smile?”

“When there's something to smile about, sure.”

God, I love this kid.

Jen and Starr glare at each other for several seconds, then Jen swings her attention back to me. Her eyes are beginning to get kinda puffy.

“I suppose you're wondering why I didn't simply find an apartment or go to a hotel while we're waiting—”

You might say.

“—but Stuart thought it made more sense to set aside the proceeds from the sale of the house and furniture so we can start over once he finds a new position.” She sneezes again,
then says stuffily around her tissue, “What's the sense of wasting it on rent when I can live here for free?”

Of course, what Stuart didn't take into account when he came up with this amusing little plan was that living under the same roof with my sister for more than, oh, twenty minutes might well drive me to hire a hit man.

Then again, maybe he did.

Frito picks that moment to meander back into the kitchen, all pigeon-toed macho swagger. Cat and sister catch sight of each other at the same time; they both freeze, their expressions equally horrified.

“Ohmigod! Ohmi
god!
” Jennifer shrieks, grabbing a napkin and holding it over her nose. “No wonder I'm sneezing! I can't have a cat in the house! You know I'm allergic!”

Ah, yes. Now I remember. We couldn't have any pets because both my grandmother and Jennifer were dander-in-tolerant. For the first time since this cat's taken up residence, a surge of genuine affection sweeps through me.

“Well, since you didn't exactly clear your stay with management,” I say as the cat yawns, stretches, then begins to slowly, torturously head in Jennifer's direction, “there wasn't a whole lot I could do, was there?”

About two feet from my sister, Frito decides to sit down and do the bath routine. But not before I catch what I swear is a wink.

Jen, however, hasn't so much as twitched a muscle. The slightest nudge, she'd topple over and shatter.

“Jen? He's not a dinosaur. Not moving won't trick him into thinking you're not there.”

This apparently prompts the woman to leap from her chair and scream,
“Get him out of here! Get him out of here! Get him out of here!”
whilst flailing her arms enthusiastically about and hopping up and down as though stomping grapes.