A Single Thread (Cobbled Court) (26 page)

“Dad? What are you doing here?”

My eyes flew open. Rob stood at the foot of my bed holding a dozen red roses.

T
hough Evelyn was still in the hospital, we decided to hold the quilt-circle meeting as usual on Friday night. We had quite a bit of work to do. The three quilts that Cobbled Court was contributing to the Quilt Pink project had to be bound so they could be sent off to the auction by the deadline.

The three of us had worked in the shop all day, Margot and I waiting on customers while Liza and Garrett took inventory. At closing time, Garrett took his laptop computer and went upstairs to Evelyn’s apartment. Liza said he was working on some new ideas for the Web site. It’s not every young man that would leave a lucrative career on the other side of the country to come home and take care of his ailing mother. I liked Garrett. Too bad his father was such a louse.

After we locked up, we reconciled the register. Unfortunately, that didn’t take long. With Evelyn in the hospital and unable to teach any classes, sales had been very weak. Once everything was in order, Margot went into the break room and took a tray of sandwiches she’d made out of the refrigerator, while I sliced up a plate of oranges and Liza popped a bag of popcorn in the microwave and poured some diet cola into three glasses. That was dinner.

We carried everything into the classroom and sat down to sew the quilt bindings, using the blind stitch that Evelyn had taught us so that, when the quilts were completed, it would be all but impossible to see the threads that joined the binding to the quilt edge. We arranged our chairs in a circle so we could talk while we worked. There was certainly a lot to talk about.

“Honestly,” I said. “I don’t know how he found the nerve. Waltzing into Evelyn’s hospital room with flowers in hand after he’s taken up with another woman and then divorced poor Evelyn. I never heard of such bad taste. The man is utterly déclassé.”

Liza frowned at me and then bent back over her sewing. “Abigail, not so loud. He’s staying right upstairs in the apartment. He might hear you.”

“Oh please! As if I care. Besides, I doubt he knows what déclassé means. He doesn’t look like the sort of fellow who has studied a great deal of French.” Liza glanced up quickly from her work, unable to suppress a little smile.

“Well, the cowboy boots are kind of interesting,” she commented. “I can see them in Texas, but you’d think he would have thought to switch to snow boots or loafers once he hit the Connecticut border. Not that I want to dictate anybody’s fashion choices, but they aren’t very practical around here. I was looking out the window yesterday and saw him walking through the courtyard and next thing I knew, bam! He slipped and fell on the ice.” Liza paused a moment to put the end of a piece of thread into her mouth to wet it, then slipped the pointed end through the eye of a needle before continuing.

“And I mean, he’s from Wisconsin originally! You’d think he’d know that snow and cowboy boots don’t go together.”

I shifted my reading glasses down the end of my nose so I could see my seams better. I hated those glasses. They made me look old. I’d never have been caught dead wearing them in public, but they were a necessity when I was quilting, especially after dark; besides, Margot and Liza didn’t care how I looked.

“That’s exactly my point,” I added. “Everything about that man is affected. I don’t like him, and I don’t trust him. What’s he doing here anyway?”

Margot, who eschewed what she called gossip and I called a simple exchange of viewpoints, had been listening quietly and working diligently during this whole exchange. Now she finally broke in. “It does seem a little strange,” she admitted. “Him coming here after the surgery and then just moving in to Evelyn’s apartment even though they’re divorced. She didn’t ask him to come, did she?”

Liza shook her head. “No. Definitely not. Garrett told me that Evelyn had called him a few weeks ago, told Rob about her cancer, and that they’d had an argument. Evelyn hung up on him. The apartment is so small that Garrett overheard the whole thing. He wouldn’t say so, of course, but I think that even Garrett is wondering what his dad is doing here. It must be a little awkward for him.”

“Exactly! And it’ll be a lot more awkward when Evelyn is discharged from the hospital tomorrow.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. In spite of what I’d said to Liza, I really didn’t want Rob Dixon to overhear our conversation. “Evelyn only has one bedroom, which, I assume, Rob is using right now. Garrett is sleeping on the sofa.” I peered meaningfully at the others over the tops of my reading glasses. “Where do you suppose Rob is planning on sleeping after Evelyn gets home?”

“Abigail, stop that,” Margot clucked with a disapproving wag of her head. “Evelyn and I already decided that she’s going to stay with me for a while. That way she won’t have to climb the stairs and will be able to rest better without all the noise from the shop. Rob can stay on in the apartment if he likes.” Margot took the pair of snips that she had hanging on a ribbon around her neck and cut the end of a thread.

“Of course, I’m sure he’ll be leaving soon,” she continued. “His presence seems a little strange to us, but, after all, he was married to Evelyn for close to thirty years and they still have a son together. I’m sure he must have some kind of feelings for her. Maybe he just felt like he ought to show up to support her. No matter what happened between them, I think he genuinely wants to help. Yesterday he gave me a hand carrying and shelving the new spring fabric bolts. That was nice of him, don’t you think?”

Liza just shrugged in response. I decided to keep my thoughts to myself as well. I supposed Margot could be right, but I really didn’t think so. Margot was an innocent, always trying to see the best in everyone, so much so that at first I’d doubted her sincerity. I mean really, how could anyone be that sweet? But Margot was. I had to admit, she’d grown on me. And sometimes, I’d discovered, she was right. There were people in the world who truly did operate from good intentions, with Margot leading the pack. I just didn’t happen to believe that Rob Dixon was one of them. In her heart, I could tell that Margot didn’t think so either. Margot might be an innocent, but that didn’t make her a fool.

Margot picked up the now-finished quilt she’d been working on and took it to the ironing board for a final press. “Still,” she said, tipping her head to one side as if trying to see the situation from a different angle, “you’d think he’d have gone home by now. Why hasn’t he?”

Liza gave voice to the exact thought that was going through my mind. “Because he wants something, that’s why.” I lowered my head over my quilt and smiled to myself. It was good to know that my niece had inherited some of the Burgess common sense.

“Well,” I said, “one thing is for sure. If he left right now, it wouldn’t be a second too soon for Charlie. Did you see the look on his face when Rob breezed past him in the hospital corridor and barged into Evelyn’s room? He didn’t introduce himself, but the cowboy boots were a dead giveaway. I thought Charlie was going to chase him down, rip those roses out of his hand, and shove them down Rob’s throat.”

Liza grinned. “I like Charlie.”

“So do I,” echoed Margot. “At first I thought he was a little gruff, but he really is so sweet.”

“I’ve known Charlie for almost twenty years, ever since he moved to New Bern and opened the Grill. You won’t find a kinder, more tenderhearted man on the face of the earth than Charlie Donnelly. I think that’s why he puts on that brusque businessman act. He’s afraid that if people knew what a softhearted soul he really was, they’d run ragged over him. Which, of course, might be true.”

“Did you see that box of crayons?” Margot laughed. “What man goes to the trouble of finding such a perfect gift? He’s obviously crazy about Evelyn, but she doesn’t seem to get it.”

“Or maybe she’s just not interested,” I posited. “Just because he’s in love with her doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s in love with him. Maybe she just wants to keep their relationship platonic.”

Margot sighed as she set the hot iron in its holder and folded the now-finished quilt. “Well, I can’t think why. If a man showed up at my doorstep with presents and jokes, and brought meals to my bedside so I wouldn’t have to eat hospital food, I’d fall in love with him that quick!” She snapped her fingers. “Why can’t I find someone like Charlie? For that matter, why can’t I find anyone at all?”

“What about Tom, the guy who works at the post office?” Liza asked. “When we went to pick up the mail, he gave you a big smile, then held up the line for at least three minutes chatting you up. The people behind us in line were getting really ticked off.”

“Engaged,” Margot said in a flat voice. “Men like me. I have all kinds of men friends, but they’re all either married or about to get married. Even when I meet a single guy that I think I could go for, they always start telling me their problems with women and I give them advice, which they follow, and next thing you know, they’re engaged too!” Margot let out such a disgusted growl that I couldn’t keep from chuckling.

“I’m not kidding,” she said. “That’s happened to me three times! Men like me, but they never seem to fall in love with me. I’m like everybody’s favorite kid sister. Why is that? Why can’t somebody fall in love with me?” she wailed.

Looking at the shapeless jumper and scuffed flats Margot was wearing, her colorless lips and eyelashes that had never known the touch of a mascara brush, I had some opinions. Margot was a genuinely pretty woman with an intelligent mind and an endearing personality, but she could definitely use some lessons in the art of female allure. I was about to make a few suggestions, but Liza spoke before I could say anything.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “You just haven’t found the right man yet. You will.” Liza looked to me for support. “Isn’t that right, Abigail?”

“Yes,” I said quickly. “Of course. It’s just a matter of time.”

Margot looked doubtful. “Well, I hope you’re right. I’m going to be thirty-six years old in a few months. I’d always figured that, by now, I’d already be married and have children, preferably two or three.”

“You’ve still got plenty of time,” I said. “Besides, better to wait for the right man to come along than marry in haste and repent at leisure.”

“Trust her,” Liza chimed in. “She knows what she’s talking about. And by the way, speaking of waiting for the right man, I haven’t seen Franklin around lately. Are you mad at him again?” Liza winked at Margot, and I suddenly had the feeling that I was the punch line of a joke whose point I’d missed.

“Franklin? No, I haven’t seen him recently. I’ve been too busy with all this Evelyn business and my work at the shelter. I imagine we’ll get together for our monthly business meeting in a couple of weeks. Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” Liza said and began folding up her project and putting away her sewing notions. “Just wondering.”

I
heard the front door open and close, footsteps, and Margot’s voice calling my name. I didn’t answer, hoping that maybe she’d think I was sleeping and go away, but she didn’t.

The bedroom door opened, and Margot peeked in. “Oh, there you are. Didn’t you hear me call you?” I just shook my head, a lie.

She held up a disposable aluminum dish with a white cardboard top. “I’ve got your lunch—Charlie’s special chicken pot pie. I hope that’s all right. Charlie said he called over here to ask what you wanted for lunch but nobody answered.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “I’ll have it later. I’m not very hungry right now.”

“Oh.” She sounded a little disappointed. “Well, all right. I’ll just put it in the refrigerator.” She turned to go into the kitchen but then paused at the door just a moment and tilted her chin up and breathed in, as if she was sniffing the air for scent of a coming storm.

“Evelyn, is there anything I can do to help you? You barely touched your breakfast or your dinner last night. Maybe we should call Dr. Finney. I’m worried about you. Are you in pain?”

I was. But there is pain and then there is pain, the kind that seeps in through your pores and joints and nostrils and refuses to be banished by something as simple as a couple of white tablets you take every three to four hours as needed. It’s the “as needed” part that gets you in trouble. There is no end to it.

I looked into Margot’s sweet, troubled face. I felt bad for worrying her, but then there were so many things I felt bad about. Where to begin? How to explain? I’d gone to sleep in the white-hot light of a sterile operating room and woken up in a fog that had become a black and ever-thickening miasma of despair. It had seeped into my mind and heart, blocking out every ray of light, filling my throat and nostrils so that with every breath I took, I inhaled hopelessness. I couldn’t explain it, couldn’t control it, and couldn’t make it stop.

Margot, with her thick fringe of brown lashes ringing caring eyes, had no experience with this kind of pain. I hoped she never would. I didn’t even want her to know that such desolation existed, so I just told her what she wanted to hear.

“I’m fine, just tired and sore. That’s all. I’ll eat later. Promise.” I tried to smile, but my lips felt like they were lined with sandpaper, scraping across my teeth into a grimace.

“All right,” Margot said doubtfully. “I’ll just put this away and then run back to the shop. Things are going well. All the customers are asking about you.”

“That’s nice.”

“Oh, and did I tell you? Rob installed the new display case. Then he fixed the copier and the tension on that broken sewing machine. You never told me he was so handy.” She waited a moment for me to say something. “He keeps asking if he can come over and see you. Charlie too. He—”

“No!” I interjected before she could say more. Margot’s eyebrows shot up, and I took a deep breath, told myself to calm down. “I mean, not yet. I’m still so tired. Visitors wear me out. But tell them both I said thank you. All right?”

She nodded her agreement. “You’re going to take a nap? That’s good. You just need a lot of rest, Evelyn. You’ll be back to your old self soon.” She smiled, and I wondered if she was trying to convince herself or me. “I’ll bring you some soup for dinner. Call the shop if you need anything at all.”

“I will.” I lay down on the bed and rolled onto my side, my face turned toward the wall. Margot went into the kitchen and puttered around for a few minutes, but before she left, she came back into the guest bedroom.

Feigning sleep, I kept my eyes closed. Margot tiptoed up to the edge of the bed and pulled the broken-heart quilt up over my shoulders. She stood at the edge of the bed for a long moment, not moving, standing over me the way a mother stands over the sickbed of her child. Finally, she bent down, brushed her fingertips lightly over my hair, and whispered, “It’ll be all right. Just rest now. I’m praying for you, sweetie. We all are. It’s going to get better. It will. Soon.”

Margot crept out of the room and closed the door quietly behind her. The center of my chest throbbed in a place deeper than the cut of the surgeon’s knife. For a moment, a silent, desolate groan—half prayer, half flag of surrender—rose from the black like an arm reaching out from the deep, fingers opening and closing on empty air, blind, desperate, grasping for a lifeline.

Help me. Please. I can’t do this alone.

There was no gentle creeping, no whispered worried voices afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing and making things worse than they already were. I heard the sound of heavy feet treading on wooden floorboards and a decisive turn of the knob before the door flew open, banging against the wall like it been blown by a hard wind. She didn’t have to say anything; I knew who it was. Mary Dell had come to town.

“Evelyn, get up!” she commanded. Before I could consider a response, she threw back the bedclothes. The room was chilly without the protection of the broken-heart quilt. I shivered in my nightgown. “Get up,” she repeated. “You’ve been lying here for almost two weeks. That’s long enough. Now get up.”

Her tone was impatient; it didn’t occur to me to argue. I sat up and hung my bare feet over the side of the tall, antique bed, my toes barely brushing the cold wooden floor. I wrapped my arms over my flat chest protectively and looked up. Mary Dell towered over me. Her face was stern.

“You’re supposed to be filming your show,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“Came to ask the same question.” She turned around, and for the first time I noticed Margot clinging to the doorjamb, half in the room and half out of it, as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do next.

“Would you excuse us for a minute? I’ve got to smack some sense into my friend here, and I’d just as soon do it without any witnesses.”

Margot’s eyes grew wide, not quite sure what to make of this, and gave me a questioning look.

I nodded. “It’s okay, Margot.”

She bit her lip, not sure of the wisdom of leaving me alone with Mary Dell, but after a moment she took a step back. “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need anything,” she said and shut the door.

Mary Dell waited to hear the sound of receding footsteps and then turned to face me again. “What is the matter with you? Since you refused to take my phone calls, I finally called Garrett to see how you were doing and he told me that you were depressed, feeling so sorry for yourself that you wouldn’t see anybody, wouldn’t even get up out of bed.

“When he told me that, I didn’t believe him. ‘That can’t be right,’ I said. ‘No way is my friend Evelyn Dixon lying around having a pity party for herself for two weeks. It is simply not possible that Evelyn, the woman who rose up like a phoenix from the ashes of divorce, found the guts to pick up and move to a new state, build a new life, pick up her old dreams where she’d let them lie, and open a quilt shop in spite of the protests and predictions of the naysayers—there is just no way that a woman with that kind of backbone is going to let her spirit be crushed by cancer. I just refuse to believe it!’”

She shook her head as if, even looking around and seeing the evidence of my withdrawal into depression, the blinds drawn to keep out the daylight, the litter of crumpled, damp tissues that filled the wastebasket, and the curling edges of the cheese sandwich that was supposed to be my lunch but sat untouched on the nightstand, she still couldn’t quite believe her eyes.

“But Garrett assured me that was the case. I wanted to get myself a second opinion, so I talked to those new friends of yours: Margot, and Liza, and that Abigail. She’s different, isn’t she? Not exactly the soul of warmth, but she sure is fond of you. I even talked to that scum-sucking scab of an ex-husband of yours. What’s he doing here anyway?”

I started to say something, but Mary Dell didn’t give me a chance.

“Never mind. We can talk about that later. Anyway,” she said, taking a big breath as she returned to the subject at hand, “when they all told me that, I just had to come up here and see for myself, because I was sure they were wrong. I told the television producer that everything was going to have to wait for a couple of days, that the whole film crew was just going to have to cool their jets while I flew up to Yankeeland to correct these malicious rumors that were flying around about one of my dearest friends. But look at you!”

She moved her head slowly from side to side, murmuring the classic Southern mantra for disbelief and disappointment. “Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. What happened? Here you are, looking like something the cat dragged in, lying about in this musty old room that smells like the windows haven’t been opened in about a year, letting everybody else do your work for you while you lay here feeling sorry for yourself and worrying everybody half to death. Evelyn, I want a straight answer. What’s the matter with you?”

I wanted to start crying again, but curiously, finally, I was out of tears. The burning sensation behind my eyes migrated to my throat, erupting into a belch of angry words.

“Don’t, Mary Dell,” I warned. “Don’t start with me. You don’t know what it’s like. So don’t you stand there and tell me that I’m feeling sorry for myself. Nobody has hacked off pieces of you. You’re not going to have to live the rest of your life wondering if they really did get it all, if the cancer is going to come back to finish you off. You don’t know what I’m going through.”

She put her hands on her hips and opened her mouth as if she was about to begin lecturing me again but then thought better of it and pressed her lips into a tight line. She walked across the room to the window. “You’re right,” she said and turned to pull the cord on the window blind. “I don’t know what you’re going through. So tell me. Talk to me.”

Bright light streamed though the glass directly into my eyes. I turned my head and screwed my eyelids shut. “I didn’t know…I wasn’t prepared,” I stuttered, struggling to find words. “My doctor and I had talked through this whole thing, discussed exactly what would happen during the operation, and what my options would be for reconstruction, the possibility of followup with chemotherapy or radiation, and we even discussed the mental side of this. She warned me to expect a roller-coaster ride of emotions and I…I thought I understood. I thought I had a handle on it, but I didn’t. Not even close.”

Mary Dell leaned back, resting her weight against the windowsill. Listening intently, she tipped her head to the side, making it easier to look her in the eye, damming the late afternoon sunbeams until they pooled behind her and spilled sunlight through frizzed tendrils of hair, making each gray-blond strand glow pink and gold, glinting against the myriad crystal beads of her dangly earrings so that illumined shadow phantoms spun around her head, giving her the aura of some angelic, benevolent being.

“Before the operation, I’d worked it all out in my mind logically, like I was talking about someone else, you understand?” I don’t know if she did or not, but she nodded.

“Of course, I was going through with it; it was the sensible course of action! My breasts or my life? There was no choice! But why is that? Why didn’t I get a choice? Why did this happen to me? What did I ever do to deserve this?” I pushed myself off the bed and stood in front of my friend. My voice and my hands clenched in anger.

“Why?” I demanded. “Tell me why!”

“I don’t know. No one does.”

“Do you have any idea what it’s like? Can you imagine? Everyone keeps saying how lucky I was to have caught it in time, and isn’t it wonderful what they can do with reconstructive surgery these days. If one more person says that to me, I swear I’m going to slap them! What do I have to feel lucky about?” I barked out an incredulous laugh and covered my flattened chest with both hands.

“Do you know what the reconstruction surgeon calls them? Mounds. Not breasts—mounds. After I’m healed, they will put implants in my chest and then tattoo on something that is supposed to represent nipples. There will be a swelling where my breasts used to be, but they won’t be breasts; they will be mounds.”

My anger wasn’t spent, but I was. Drained and exhausted, I covered my eyes with one hand. “I’m alive. I know I should be grateful for that, but I don’t feel grateful. I feel cheated. For the last few years, everything I knew myself to be is being subtracted piece by piece. I keep losing parts of myself—my marriage, my family, my home, and now even my womanhood. Who am I supposed to be now?”

I opened my eyes, looking for answers in Mary Dell’s patient gaze. “If this is it, if I’m going to be subtracted bit by bit until there is just nothing left, then why doesn’t God just get it over with? It’s easy to say I should get up and move on with my life. Sometimes I even say it to myself, but what kind of life will it be? Will I ever know love again? Will any man ever find me desirable again? And even if he did, will I be able to respond? Yesterday I took off my clothes and looked in the mirror. I look like some worn-out rag doll, all jagged tears and mismatched patches. Who could ever want me? And what will I lose next? My business? It’s the one good thing that happened to me during these last awful years, and I’m inches from losing that too, and what was left of my life savings with it. What am I supposed to do if that happens? I’m fifty years old. Too old for second chances—make that third chances. I can’t face the idea of losing anything else, Mary Dell. I can’t.”

Shifting her weight forward, she stood up and walked toward me, moving out of the glow of celestial radiance into the ordinary light of day so I could see that she wasn’t an angel at all, just Mary Dell. Just an old friend who’d known pains and fears of her own and was willing to drop everything and fly across the country to listen to mine. Just Mary Dell. Just what I needed, just when I most needed it.