A Thread So Thin (19 page)

M
arch in New England is pretty ugly.

The snow has mostly melted, exposing muddy swatches of soggy earth and streets littered with gray, gritty sand. As I walked down the street from Aunt Abigail’s house to the quilt shop, the whole landscape was sober and sodden and tired, as if Mother Nature was suffering from a painful hangover. The scene matched my mood perfectly.

I thought about Zoe and Zoe’s mother and her four husbands—soon to be five. Five husbands? How does a thing like that happen? How does a woman
let
that happen?

If I get married—I mean,
when
I get married—to Garrett, I’m doing it once. And making it last. Forever. If I can. If I have anything to say about it.

Will I have anything to say about it?

I’ve been away from New Bern for too long, and I’m so worn out. It’ll be good to spend a whole week at home, just relaxing and hanging out with Garrett. It’s crazy, but we’ve probably seen each other less since we got engaged than we did when we were dating. Maybe, by the time I go back to school, I’ll be feeling calmer about everything.

I turned the corner into Cobbled Court, so named because of the cobblestones paving the wide courtyard and the narrow alleys that lead to it. It’s a funny little corner, and because of its tucked-away location, it’s not exactly the greatest place to put a retail business. But I can see why Evelyn fell in love with it. There’s just something magical about this little courtyard with its old-fashioned cobbles. It’s like a secret walled garden, hidden away from the worries of the world. At least, that’s the way it seems to me. The minute I enter it, problems wither and drop away like leaves in autumn, spent and weightless, ready to be swept away by a passing gust of wind.

And today, the sensation was even stronger. The moment I turned the corner, I started to laugh.

Each of the four corners of the courtyard was “planted” with enormous daisies—bright green stems constructed from columns of twisted balloons, each topped by a daisy blossom made from six big white balloon “petals” surrounding a yellow balloon center. But that wasn’t all. The painted front door of Cobbled Court Quilts was topped by an enormous balloon arch with more daisies evenly spaced along an expanse of long, lighter green balloons, twisted into crazy shapes to simulate leaves and vines.

The whole effect was whimsical, lighthearted, and absolutely perfect. It must have taken hours for Evelyn and Margot to create this balloon garden entrance to my bridal shower. I couldn’t believe that they’d gone to so much trouble for me.

As I approached the door, I saw a sign saying…

I went inside.

Someone had pushed back the center shelving units to make room for tables covered with hot pink tablecloths and spring green napkins with handmade napkin rings—daisies, of course, to match the clear vases brimming with fresh-cut daisies sitting in the middle of each table. I smiled, knowing that Margot had chosen the palette—pink and green are her favorite colors.

The daisy theme had been carried in from the courtyard to the shop, where more giant balloon daisies sat in the corners of the room, these with stems slightly bent, as if they were leaning down to hear some interesting gossip. Once the guests arrived there would probably be plenty of gossip worth hearing.

How many people were they expecting? I’d have figured maybe twenty people would want to come to my shower—twenty-five, tops. But the tables were set for twice that number. Speaking of guests, where was everybody?

I called for Evelyn and Margot. No one answered. I heard footsteps overhead and decided to go upstairs.

Walking toward the stairs, I passed the refreshment table. An empty crystal punch bowl sat in the middle of the table, waiting to be filled with whatever fizzy concoction had been chosen for the guests. If Margot had anything to say about it, I was sure it wasn’t just fizzy but pink and fizzy. Crystal tiered trays flanked the punch bowl. They were loaded with dozens of individually decorated daisy cupcakes, with white icing petals and green icing leaves radiating from the yellow sugar center of each cupcake.

Seeing them, each one carefully and painstakingly decorated, stopped me in my tracks. I hadn’t had cupcakes since before Mom died.

Since it was just the two of us and since we couldn’t afford big parties, every year my mom baked a batch of special cupcakes on my birthday. We’d eat two ourselves, mine with a candle on the top for me to blow out after Mom finished singing “Happy Birthday, Dear Liza”—always way off-key—and the next day I’d take the leftover cupcakes to school to share with my classmates.

Mom would decorate the cupcakes herself, according to whatever I was “into” at the time. I remembered the blue Cookie Monster cupcakes during my
Sesame Street
phase, which was followed by smiling blondes with long, flowing tresses during my Barbie phase, and black stallions with long, flowing manes during my horse-crazy phase.

Later, when I got older and angrier, it became harder for Mom to find themes for my cupcakes, but she never gave up. The last cupcakes she made for my birthday, before she got sick, were decorated with red frosting topped by the Metallica logo, my band of the moment, in black lightning-bolt lettering. At sixteen I was embarrassed to have anyone know that my mom still made me cupcakes on my birthday, so I’d tossed them in the Dumpster on my way to school.

I wish I’d known those would be the last cupcakes she’d ever make for me. If I had, I’d have crawled back into that Dumpster, pulled out every cupcake, and carried them through the front door of my high school shouting, “My mother, Susan Burgess, the best mother on the face of the planet, baked these for me!”

But it’s too late for that. You only get do-overs in games of schoolyard dodgeball or hopscotch. They don’t count in real life. Real life you’ve got to get right the first time because you never know—the first time could be the only time, or the last time. Real life doesn’t leave room for mistakes.

With that in mind, I climbed the stairs, hoping to find Evelyn and Margot and tell them—before the guests arrived and we were surrounded by noise and confusion—how much I appreciated everything they’d done. Not just for the shower, and the decorations, and the cupcakes, but everything—for putting up with me and my moods, for making me feel wanted and loved, for being my friends. I don’t deserve them.

When I pushed on the door to the workroom, I was surprised to catch a glimpse of not only Margot and Evelyn—the official hostesses—but Ivy, Grandma Virginia, and Garrett. And all of them, Garrett included, were sitting in a circle with sewing needles pinched between their fingers and holding the edge of a quilt, hurriedly stitching on the binding. It was a big quilt, queen-sized at least, with some beautiful colors and black in the border to make them pop, but I couldn’t see the rest of it because Garrett’s and Evelyn’s backs were to me, blocking my view.

An hour before the shower and they were working on a quilt? What were they up to? I stood back quietly and listened.

Evelyn, who always wore reading glasses when she did hand sewing, peered over the tops of them to look at Garrett’s work and frowned. “Honey, try to keep your stitches a little smaller. And space them evenly. Make sure you’re taking just a tiny bite of the fabric, and run the thread up under the edge so you can’t see it.”

“Mom,” Garrett said with half a grin, “I told you I wouldn’t be any good at this. I only agreed to help because you were so desperate to get it done in time. You can always take my stitches out and redo them later.”

Virginia leaned over and examined her grandson’s handiwork. “We may have to.”

“Everybody’s a critic,” Garrett said. “Personally, I think this is all a plot you cooked up. You didn’t ask me to help just because Abigail didn’t show up at the quilt circle….”

“Again,” Evelyn said, stabbing the binding with her needle. “Leaving us shorthanded…again. We’d have had this quilt finished days ago if she’d helped us like she said she would.”

“Evelyn,” Virginia said evenly, “let it go. We’re going to finish on time and that’s what matters. Thanks to Garrett. And his big, uneven stitches.” She winked at him. “Hurry up, dear. We’ve got to finish this up and go downstairs to put out the rest of the food. Just a few more inches to go now.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just heap more abuse on me,” Garrett said good-naturedly. “Enjoy yourselves at my expense. But don’t think I buy that Abigail excuse for one minute. You planned this whole thing, didn’t you, Mom? You’ve always been sorry you didn’t have a girl. Now you’re trying to turn me into one.”

Margot giggled. “Oh, Garrett, don’t be silly. Lots of men quilt. Some of our best customers are men. You know that.”

“Okay. But I’m not one of them, got it? You’re all sworn to secrecy. If word of this gets out, I’ll have to take up bear hunting or bungee jumping or cave diving or some other stupidly dangerous hobby to regain my lost sense of masculinity,” he said, pointing the end of his needle at the women. “If I’m eaten while wrestling alligators in the Amazon, it will be on your heads. I mean it. And whatever you do, do not tell my bride that you roped me into sewing a quilt.”

“Why not?” I asked. “You look so cute doing it.”

“Liza!” everyone exclaimed at once.

Garrett jumped to his feet, dropped his needle, and came over to give me a kiss.

“What are you doing here? The shower doesn’t start for another hour.”

I glanced at my watch. “Make that fifty-four minutes. What are
you
doing here? And all of you? Some hostesses you are. Shouldn’t you be downstairs pouring almonds into nut cups or something?”

Ivy looked at Margot, her eyes twinkling. “Well, you’re the head bridesmaid, this is your show. Should we tell her?”

“Tell me what?”

Margot’s face lit up. She clenched her fists and held them in front of her mouth, as if the effort of keeping whatever secret she was trying to keep left her in danger of exploding. Finally she exclaimed, “It’s for you! It’s your present! From all of us! We wanted to wrap it before the shower, but since you’ve already seen it….”

Her hands fluttered, beating the air like birds in flight. “Isn’t it beautiful!” She turned to face the table where the beautiful quilt lay, waiting for a final few stitches to its binding.

“Beautiful” is such a puny little word, at least in comparison to that quilt, flat and pedestrian and faded, like the difference between a photograph of a quilt and seeing the quilt itself. I’ve never, ever seen a picture of a quilt that did justice to an actual quilt, and probably my words will be just as inadequate, but I’ll try.

The colors in my quilt…Oh, the colors! Pulsating patches of color! Vermillion and emerald and cobalt and fuchsia and jade. Orange and cherry red and lime green and bright banana yellow. Amethyst and azure and aubergine. Garnet and sapphire and amber and lapis. Colors! Dozens of colors, diamonds of colors joined into perfect eight-pointed jewel-stars, multicolored and multifaceted, like rainbow flashes of light blinking from the glass planes of a crystal bead set in a sunny window. Colors and colors and colors! Star diamonds of color and light set into and surrounded by larger triangles of more colors, eight of them, each of the eight triangles a different shade so that no two stars and no two blocks were the same. The star blocks were bordered in black, making the colors even deeper, richer, and more alive. And that first border was surrounded by a second border made from rectangle patches of still more brilliant jewel-toned patches, like gemstone baguettes in a jeweler’s window, and the whole thing was surrounded by a final, wider band of inky, velvety black to complete the picture.

It was a quilt that took your breath away, a quilt that could bring tears to your eyes. It was beautiful.

“Do you like it?” Virginia asked, smiling because the look on my face had already answered her question.

“Virginia designed it,” Margot added. “I was all for doing a double wedding pattern, but Virginia convinced us that stars would be better for you. It’s called Star-Crossed Love.”

“I love stars,” I whispered.

Margot nodded. “Virginia knew that. So she sat down and sketched out the design. She picked out all the fabrics too.”

“All my favorite colors. All the colors there are.”

“And we all worked together on the cutting, piecing, and quilting. Did you see? It’s hand quilted—the whole thing!”

I leaned forward and traced my finger carefully along a serpentine vine of leaves and flowers, the most intricate quilting I’d ever seen. How had they ever done it?

“We’ve been stitching on it every spare moment we had for the last month. I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to finish in time. Come to think of it, we didn’t,” Margot said with a giggle.

“It’s beautiful,” I said inadequately. “Simply beautiful. Thank you all so much. And I want you to know how much…I want you to know…” I stopped. I just couldn’t find the words to say what I meant.

I’d never dreamed of having friends—and family, a husband, and mother, and grandmother—who would mean so much to me. Suddenly, I was deeply aware of how little I deserved them and how much I needed them and how frightening it was to know that.

I wanted to tell them all that and a million things more. I wanted to tell them the truth, about me and them and everything, and to say it all before it was too late, before the moment passed, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know the words.

And so I cried. Not a pretty, silent stream of tears, not a soft and sentimental ladylike weeping suited to a bride, but a floodgate-bursting bawl, open-mouthed, keening sobs, complete with the running nose and mascara to match.

It wasn’t pretty.

I don’t blame Garrett for standing there helplessly, not knowing what to do or say, not picking up on the look on Evelyn’s face, the not-so-subtle shift of her head as she silently prodded him to put his arms around me. Garrett has worked around women for a long time now, but he’s never been comfortable with tears or big emotional displays. Garrett is the most even-tempered guy in the world. I have never seen him furious, or flustered, or depressed, or wildly elated. In other words, he’s exactly the opposite of me.