Hanging by a Thread (22 page)

Luke gets this funny look on his face. “Oh, and like mine's so great?”

I am such an idiot.

But not so much of an idiot as to pursue this line of conversation.

Apparently, neither is Luke, who walks over to the sofa and flops into it with a loud, worn-out sigh. “I'm just worried about Jase, is all. Mom told me he's been acting weird lately.”

“Lately?”

“Okay, weirder than usual. I mean, come on, El—none of the rest of us moped around like some sad-eyed mutt all the time.”

I bite my tongue. There were periods during Luke and Tina's tumultuous relationship when Luke made Jason look downright jolly by comparison.

“He's got a crush on me, Luke. That's all. And he's…sensitive.”

“You saying the rest of us aren't?”

“You really want to go there?”

Luke makes a face, then says, “Yeah, well, he better damn sight snap out of his
sensitivity
before he finishes school and comes to work for Pop.”

A piece slides into place. “You're assuming an awful lot, aren't you?”

“Whaddya mean?”

“Maybe Jason's been acting so strange lately because he knows everyone expects him to go into the family business, only he doesn't. And he can't figure out how to tell you guys.”

Luke angles his head. “He say something to you?”

“No. Just speculating.”

“Well, that's nuts,” Luke says with an incredulity usually reserved for Elvis sightings and adding three inches to one's penis. “We've all gone in with Pop, why wouldn't he? Besides, what else would he do?”

“Maybe that's for him to decide? I mean, really, does he look like somebody who'd be happy unclogging toilets?”

“Got news for you, babe—
nobody
likes unclogging toilets. Except maybe J.J.”

Jimmy, Jr., Luke's oldest brother. We both smile. Then I glance at the clock, realizing that Heather, et al., will be here in less than an hour. Terror pulls up a chair and plants its big old butt right next to me. I glance over the sketches, my heart racing, then hold one up so Luke can see it.

“Whaddya think?”

I'm too far away for him to see clearly, so he has to squint. No self-respecting Scardinare male would ever let a little thing like nearsightedness come between him and his machismo. “It's a dress. So?”

“But do you think Heather will like it?”

His dark gaze shifts from the sketch to my face. “And I repeat—it's a dress. What do I know from dresses?” He shrugs. “Other than it's easier to mess around when a woman's wearing one than when she's wearing pants.”

I throw a plastic S-curve template at his head. Well, in the general direction of his head. Blood's such a bitch to get out. Luke yells “Hey!” and ducks, just as Jennifer ventures downstairs.

Which is odd, because Jennifer never ventures downstairs. And never did, even when she lived here for real. Dad and I
must've played a million games of Ping-Pong, but Jen never joined us, not even once. But here she is now.

My sister and Luke do the cold, hard look thing for a few seconds. As you may have guessed, they weren't exactly chums when we were kids. She's not quite all the way down the stairs, one spiked heel still poised on the step above, as if she's contemplating flight.

If only.

She crosses her arms over something tiny and silky and expensive. “Hello, Luke.”

Maybe it's just me, but I don't know another living soul who actually says, “Hello.” Not around here. Hi, hey, yo…but never “hello.”

“Jennifer,” Luke says with a big, laconic grin, stretching his legs out and crossing them at the ankles. “Our rose among the thorns. How's it goin'?”

I can tell she's holding back a bristle. “Fine. I hear Petey's getting married?”

“Yep. In a cuppla months.”

She nods, hesitates, then comes all the way down the stairs. “And, um…I'm really sorry about, you know. You and Tina.”

Wait a minute. This is my sister. Sounding as if she actually cares. About somebody else.

Did somebody suck out her brain and replace it with a human one?

Luke looks equally wary. With good reason. All our lives, Jennifer was only nice to any of us when she wanted something. Then the minute we'd hold out an olive branch, she'd rip a chunk out of our butts.

“Thanks,” Luke says. “But maybe it was for the best.”

“You two were so close, though. It must've been hard.”

“Uh, yeah.” His eyes bounce from her to me then back to her. “It was.”

She sits beside him on the sofa, one foot tucked up under
her tush, her cheek resting on her knuckles, her expression positively dripping with sympathy and genuine interest.

“What happened?” she says softly, and the hair lifts on the back of my neck.

“Lu-uke!” Starr shrieks from the top of the stairs. “You said you were going to play Nintendo with me!”

Luke shoots up off the sofa like he's been goosed, mumbles something about “Gotta go,” and does. Taking the stairs two at a time, in fact.

“He's really devoted to her, isn't he?” Jen says.

It takes a second. “Oh. Starr. Yeah. He is.”

“Almost like a daddy.”

Maybe that was simply an idle comment, maybe not. Maybe she was coming on to Luke, maybe I'm reading things into what was nothing more than a simple, concerned inquiry. But I have neither the time nor energy to get into any of it with her now, not with Heather due any minute.

“Starr's lucky to have Luke in her life,” I say.

Jen gives me a funny look, then gets up and walks over to the mock-up of Heather's gown, which I've arranged on the mannequin. I can't approximate a tulle skirt from muslin, but even so, it looks pretty damn good. If I do say do myself.

“Heather's dress mock-up,” I say. “She's coming for a fitting in a few minutes.”

Wordlessly, Jen skims a finger over the décolletage, then pivots, catching sight of the sketches on the table. She picks one up and studies it, her expression stony, glances at the others, then at me, then leaves without saying another word.

Not that this is any surprise. Her criticisms of my designs when we were younger were ruthless. And she had no qualms about entertaining the few friends she had at my expense: to this day, I can see Stacey McMillan and Eve Graciano, sitting with Jen on her bed and hooting with laughter over the sketches I'd thought I'd safely hidden under my mattress. What does
surprise me this time is her lack of comment, since I've never known my sister to sidestep any opportunity to put me down.

What the hell is she up to?

“N
ow remember,” I say to Heather's reflection in the three-way mirror I bought for cheap from some going-out-of-business dress shop over on Lefferts Boulevard, “this is only muslin, so it's stiffer than the satin and tulle will be. And if you don't like something, go ahead and tell me, it's okay, I can fix it.”

Once again, bosoms abound in my house, since Heather has brought half the female population of Richmond Hill to the fitting. I'm getting used to it.

“Ohmigod, Heather, turn around so we can see—”

“Christ, if it looks this good now, can you imagine what it's gonna look like in the real stuff?”

“Holy shit, you look absolutely freakin'
gorgeous!
”

Then Heather's grandmother—four-foot-ten, droopy stockings and droopier boobs, six strands of boot-polish-black hair yanked back into a bun, pokes me in the arm like the witch test
ing Gretel to see if she's fat enough and says, in a Harvey Weinstein voice, “Is good.”

I breathe a major sigh of relief.

“Turn around, for God's sake,” Sheila says, impatiently wagging her hands, only to let out a gasp when Heather does.

“Christ,” Joanne intones, and the room falls silent.

Heather bursts into tears.

Wait. What?

Then I get the wind knocked out of me when Sheila hauls me into a Giorgio-laced hug. For a second, I wonder if I'll live to see tomorrow, until she holds me back, tears shining in her eyes. “It's perfect,” she says. “I don't know what you did, but it looks ten times better than the one in the magazine. Am I right?” she asks the rest of the room, and everybody agrees.

I turn to the bride, who's once again ogling herself in the mirror. It's true, I took a few liberties with the design, like angling the waist and widening the neckline and adding a wide collar to emphasize the girl's lush, creamy shoulders and cleavage. See, the minute I looked at her, I thought of those Dutch masters paintings, with all those rosy, round ladies about to burst out of their corsets, their necks and shoulders and tops of their breasts alluring and innocent at the same time. “Heather?” I venture. “What do
you
think?”

“What do I think? Ohmigod—I look
totally
hot in this.” She grins at me in the mirror. “Hey—d'you think you could maybe make up something like this top for me to wear with jeans or something?”

I hadn't thought of it, but…“Sure. Why not?”

“So,” Sheila asks. “You got the fabric yet?”

“Just swatches.” I cross the room to get them. “I wanted to make sure it worked before I invested in thirty yards of tulle.”

“Really? That much?”

“That much. I got a piece of lace, too, but I'm not sure we
still want it. What about beading on the collar instead, with paillettes sprinkled across the skirt here and there?”

Five faces go blank.

“Trust me,” I say.

“And what about the bridesmaid dresses?” Heather asks.

Ah, yes. The moment of truth. I pick up the sketches and hand them to Heather. “Bride first,” I say when the horde tries to crowd around. “Because if she hates them, there's no point in continuing the discussion.”

“Hate them?” Heather says, leafing through them. “Why would I hate them? They're fabulous. Especially this one. I can so see everyone in this, can't you, Ma?”

She hands it to Sheila, who's immediately swarmed by everybody else. Including me, since I have no idea which one she's picked.

“Yeah,” Sheila says, nodding. “This could work.”

“Lemme see,” Joanne says, snatching the sketch out of my view. Waxed eyebrows lift. “I'm not sure about this rose…”

“I like the rose,” Heather says.

“And all that chiffon…I dunno. It's so…bridesmaidy.”

“Well, duh.”

The girl is learning. Her sister, though, is doing the narrow-eyed, you-lied-to-me look. “But I thought you said we'd have something we could wear again?”

“Like my attendants are gonna look like they picked their dresses off the markdown rack at Macy's.”

“But you
said
—”

“Hey.” One square-nailed hand, daintily speckled with little rhinestones, lands on a hip complete with early-onset cellulite. “My wedding, my choices. Deal with it.”

Oops. I think maybe I know who got my sister's brain.

Anyway,
I finally see which gown they picked, a no-waisted dress that should—in theory at least—work for the fat girls, the skinny girls and the pregnant girls, ankle-length, uneven
hemline, three layers of chiffon, draping at the left shoulder, fluttery little sleeves to mask wobbly upper arms, but still airy enough for June.

Joanne is sulking, but Heather is thrilled. “Can we do this in pinks and mauves?”

“You have got to be kidding?” Joanne says, as the maid-of-honor (Tiffany) squeals “Yes!” and Sheila presses her hand to her bosom and says, “Christ, this is gonna be so beautiful!”

“What about your redheaded cousin?” I ask.

“Cissy?” Heather shrugs. “Two words:
Loving Care.
Well?”

Guess it's settled. God knows
I'm
not gonna cross Bridezilla.

I show her the sample card I begged off the wholesaler on 47th Street before I quit my job at Nicole Katz. Sixty-five colors of polyester chiffon with coordinating taffeta for the lining, more shades of pink than a sunrise in the Bahamas. I suggest we use three different colors for the layering; we pick them out, I calculate how much the fabric will cost, add on for my labor, and give Heather a price for the dresses. Since I can get the fabric for cheap, and I'm not going to charge her full price for my labor since this is such a big order, each dress will probably cost about the same as they'd pay pretty much anyplace else.

“But I'll have to pay cash for the fabric upfront, so…”

“Not a problem,” Sheila says, getting out her checkbook.

Gotta admit, I really like this part.

I take Tiffany's and Joanne's measurements, then tell Heather to make sure the other girls call me within the next week so I can get theirs. It's not until they've gone that it hits me:

I now have to make sixteen (yes, they added one more) dresses in eight weeks.

By myself.

Am I out of my MIND?!

Stupid question.

 

“Did you know you have sixty-seven bottles of nail polish?”

I look up from the dress form, where I've been trying to figure out this pattern that looked like a piece of cake on paper, and over at Starr, who's come downstairs after I could have sworn I'd put her to bed. I attempt to process the myriad thoughts her comment provokes, but they all collide in my head and are now lying prone like the Three Stooges after a pratfall.

“No I didn't, why are you up, and how long have you been able to count that high?”

Settling cross-legged on the sofa and yanking her Snoopy nightshirt over her knees, she huffs a sigh. “Since I was three. Honestly, Mama, where have you
been?
Actually, I can count to a thousand. Wanna hear?”

God, no.

“Not right now, honey, okay?”

“Okay. Anyway, I'm up because it was boring in bed.”

“That's kind of the whole point of going to bed, isn't it? I mean, who wants to be stimulated when you're supposed to be going to sleep?”

“What's stimulated mean?”

“Excited.”

“Oh.” Obviously, she chooses to ignore her mother's lame attempt at logic, instead getting up and padding over to the cutting table, clutching the forlorn Oscar to her chest. “Whatcha doing?”

“Making a pattern.”

“Oh. Is it fun?”

“It is, actually. Like putting together a puzzle. Except when the pieces don't fit. Then it's not so much fun.”

“Oh.” Silence. Then: “How come Aunt Jennifer cries so much?”

I stab myself with a pin as my eyes shoot to hers. “What're you talking about?”

“She cries in her room, sometimes for a really long time. Don't you hear it?”

I shake my head, as if doing so will settle this new revelation into place among the five million other ones. “No. Is that why you can't sleep?”

“Sometimes, yeah.” Starr reaches down to scratch her butt through the thin flannel. “But mostly it's because my head's too full. So I have to keep thinking until it's empty, and then I can go to sleep.”

She thinks
her
head is full? Right now, mine's like a Dumpster that should've been emptied a week ago. But somewhere in there, it occurs to me we haven't had to deal with any monsters recently. Yay.

“What's your head so full of you can't sleep?”

One shoulder bumps. “I don't know. Stuff.” After a moment, she says, very softly, “Leo.” Her eyes lift to mine and my throat gets all tight. “I really miss him,” she says.

“Yeah. Me, too.” I hold out my arms. “C'mere, stinker.” She crawls up into my lap, no mean feat since I'm already precariously balanced on this stool. Then we just sit and cuddle for a few minutes, not talking. Or crying. There's a sniffle or two, but that's about it. Should I be worrying, that she still hadn't really cried?

I try to smush down her hair, but it just sproings right back. “Do you think Aunt Jennifer knows you know she's been crying?”

“Nuh-uh. 'Cuz she keeps her door closed. Except one time she didn't, and I saw her. I was gonna ask her what was wrong, but she got up real fast and shut the door.” Her mouth screws up. “I don't think she likes me very much.”

“I'm not sure Aunt Jennifer likes anybody very much, sweetie. Don't take it personally.”

“Do
you
like her?”

“She's my sister. I'm supposed to like her.”

“That's not what I asked.”

“No,” I say. “Not very much.”

“How come?”

“Because she wasn't very nice to me when we were kids.”

“Andy says Jesus says we're supposed to love everybody, even the people who are mean to us.”

Oh, brother.

“That's a nice philosophy—”

“What's that mean?”

“Um…a way of looking at things. But it's not always easy.”

“Oh,” she says on a huge yawn. Hallelujah. I am much too tired to go any farther down this road tonight.

“You ready to get back in bed?”

“C'n I sleep down here on the sofa until you're ready to go up?”

“Sure.” She crawls back up onto the sofa and basically passes out. I cover her with an old afghan; Frito climbs up on it and does this kneading routine, purring like a jackhammer for several minutes until he curls up against Starr's legs and also passes out.

You got any idea how hard it is to stay awake with two sleeping bodies six feet away? After another twenty minutes, I realize this is pointless—I can't drape if I can't see. So I shut everything down and off, then heft my daughter upstairs—although not before Frito and I exchange several heated words—to tuck her back into bed. Then I pause, listening to Starr's deep, even breathing, Frito's purring…and the faint but unmistakable sound of weeping next door.

Once in the hall, I stand outside Jen's door for a good minute, trying to decide what to do. I may not be all that big on religion per se, but I got the basics down. I know all about turning the other cheek and the Golden Rule, but…

But I'm tired. And I'm no saint. If wanting to save my own hide, for once, is a horrible thing, so be it. If Jen wants to tell
me what's going on, fine. I'll listen. After all, I'm probably the best damn sounding board in Queens.

There's something to carve on my headstone, huh?

So I tiptoe to my own room, where I peel off my clothes and fall into bed, wondering how the hell I managed to accumulate sixty-seven bottles of nail polish when I haven't even worn the stuff since I had this kid?

 

Mrs. Patel's flamingo is decked out for May in a lovely wreath of plastic daisies and a fetching little straw hat, perched at a jaunty angle. The bird looks rather pleased with himself, actually, as Starr and I pass with our creaking grocery cart, filled from our Saturday morning shopping expedition. I find this somehow reassuring, Mrs. Patel's removing the burden of my having to remember what season it is. Of course, this didn't used to be a problem when I actually ventured out into the world every day, but these past few weeks there's been so little difference in my days, I need these little reminders to keep me grounded.

And I swear to God, I'm not whining again. No, seriously. I've got a lot to be grateful for—getting to hang out more with my kid, watching Heather's gown blossom from idea to reality, not having to bust my butt to make the train every morning. And there's a lot to be said for going to work in old sweats. Or my jammies. It's just that, well, the days do tend to blur into each other a bit. And sometimes it gets to me, that's all.

For instance. It suddenly hit me yesterday that it's been three weeks since Jennifer moved back, and I still don't know what her plans are. If any. She spends most of her time in her room, occasionally venturing out to go potty and eat. Sometimes she leaves the house for several hours, but she doesn't volunteer where she is going. Or say anything when she comes back. I suppose this is a good thing, right? I mean, it's not as if I
want
to talk to her. But her avoidance is beginning to bug me. If anybody's supposed to be avoiding anybody else, it
should be
me
avoiding
her.
She's taking all the fun out of it, dammit.

And there's something else that's setting my teeth on edge. While I've had plenty of occasion to see Jen pissed, or affronted, or irritated, or just plain wacko, never once that I can remember have I actually seen her identifiably
unhappy.
Which she obviously is now, and which obviously makes her—I don't believe I'm saying this—human.