A Thread So Thin (9 page)

This was hard for me, but it was ten times harder for Mom, I could tell. She knew exactly what I was talking about. She simply wasn’t able to do things the way she had once, but she couldn’t bring herself to admit it for fear that, if she did, she’d have to give up her independence.

But what could I do? I couldn’t just fly blithely back to New Bern and hope that everything would magically turn out for the best, that the next time she fell she’d be as lucky as she had been this time. She was my mother. When I was little, she’d taken care of me. Now it was my turn to do the same for her, but she wasn’t making it easy.

“Mom, what if we looked into getting you some help? Some kind of companion who could help with cooking and driving? Might be good company for you.”

Mom’s head snapped up like it was on a spring. “I am not lacking for company, Evelyn! No! I mean it. I am not going to have some stranger in my house. And I am not moving to Connecticut and that is that.”

Her eyes were blazing. If she still could, she’d probably have docked my allowance or sent me to my room. But she can’t do that anymore. She can’t do a lot of things anymore. The balance of power between us is beginning to shift. Our roles are starting to reverse and we both know it. I don’t like it any more than she does, but there it is.

I had to do something. The direct approach had failed miserably, so I took another tack.

“Well, what if you just came out to visit me for a while? Just for a couple of weeks? New Bern is so nice. You’d love it. I know you would.”

Mom made a face. “Oh, don’t be silly. What would I do with myself? You’ve got a business to run. The last thing you need is some useless old woman getting in your way.”

“Don’t talk like that. You’re not useless. In fact, you’d probably be a big help to me.”

“How?”

“You could teach some of my classes.” I’d blurted this out almost without thinking, but as soon as I spoke, I realized it was true. Mom is a wonderful quilter. Machine piecing, hand piecing, needle turn appliqué—you name it and she can do it.

Mom gave me my first quilting lessons back when I was a little girl, and even after all my years of study, practice, and teaching, I still think she is the better quilter.

If I have any skill with a needle, it’s because of her. Or, as Charlie might say, “You don’t just lick it up off the rocks.” Meaning that a lot of the talents we think of as belonging to us alone are actually inherited from those who’ve come before.

Charlie made his first banoffee pie in the warmth of his mother’s kitchen. I stitched together my first nine-patch block in Virginia’s sewing room. And so it goes and the torch is passed.

No, indeed, you don’t lick it up off the rocks.

“Yes!” I said enthusiastically, realizing that it really was a good idea. “Why not? I don’t have another skilled teacher in the shop. If you could come visit for a few weeks and take over a couple of my classes, it would be a huge help to me.”

Mom looked at me carefully, gauging my sincerity. I could see the idea intrigued her, so I plunged ahead, a little too quickly.

“And if you liked it, you might want to stay. New Bern is
such
a nice little town—”

“Stop, Evelyn! Stop right there! I know what you’re up to and I’m not having any of it. I told you before.” She pointed her fork at me like an admonishing finger. “And if you bring it up again, I am going to get up from this table and leave the restaurant and I don’t care if I have to walk home. Do you hear me?”

I took another bite of soup and changed the subject.

No matter what Mom said, we weren’t done with this. I realized that. But round one went to Virginia Wade.

C
harlie phoned me on Monday night and, as usual, he got straight to the point.

“When are you coming home? I miss you.”

I smiled. Charlie sounded cranky. I had no problem envisioning the scowl on his face, but it was nice to be missed. Hearing his voice, I realized I missed him, too, and for some reason, this pleased me.

“I know. I want to come home but I can’t. Not yet.”

“Things not going well with Virginia? Is she all right?”

“Yes. More or less. She’s not ill or anything. For her age, she’s actually pretty healthy. Certainly as feisty as ever,” I said, recalling the imperious tone she’d used with me in the restaurant. “But she really shouldn’t be driving. And she won’t admit it, but I think she’s lonely. In the three days since I’ve been here, the phone hasn’t rung once and no one has stopped by. So many of her friends have passed or retired and moved. I don’t think she has many contacts left in town. And she needs to eat better. She’s losing weight. I don’t know how much, but more than she should.”

“She’s not eating?” Charlie was horrified. “That’s terrible! She should come out here for a while. Bring her to the restaurant. I’ll work up a few special dishes for her. A week at my table, maybe two, and we’ll have her back at fighting weight.”

I laughed. “Fighting weight isn’t a problem, my love. Mom can still spar with the best of them, at least verbally. Seems we’ve done nothing but fight since I arrived. We’re either arguing or trying to bite our tongues and
not
argue, which makes for a lot of uncomfortable silences. She just refuses to admit she shouldn’t be living alone. At this point in her life, she needs a little support. It wouldn’t take much. She’s as sharp as ever. But she refuses to let me find someone to come in and help her and she refuses to come to Connecticut, even just for a visit.”

I sighed. “The bottom line is, she doesn’t want anything to change. But things have changed. Deep down, she knows it.”

“You must feel like you’re banging your head against a wall.”

One of the things I love about Charlie is his ability to speak plainly. He didn’t tell me everything would be fine, or offer me advice, or, like so many men, grab a toolbox and sledgehammer and try to fix things. Not that the urge to play Mr. Fixit is necessarily a bad one, but there is a time to jump in and take charge and a time to listen. Charlie Donnelly knows the difference.

“Yes. I just keep putting forth the same arguments and getting nowhere. Thank heaven for quilting! That’s the one thing we can talk about without it blowing up into a fight. I suggested we go on our own little shop hop. We visited all the quilt shops in Green Bay and we had a great time. I’ve been a quilt shop owner for so long that I’d almost forgotten how nice it is just to be a customer.”

“But I bet that didn’t stop you from taking notice of what those other owners were doing right and wrong, did it?”

I laughed. Charlie knew me so well.

“No, it didn’t. I was jotting down some notes when you called. And I took a few pictures of some displays I liked. But mostly I just enjoyed Mom’s company. Charlie, she has such an eye. Her color sense is flawless. She picked out some fabrics for a wall hanging with birds and birdhouses…. Did I tell you how she loves birds?”

“No.”

“She must have six feeders in her yard. I bet she’s feeding half the birds in De Pere. They eat better than she does. Anyway, you should see the fabrics she chose—gorgeous combinations. And there was no hemming and hawing about it. She just walked down the aisle of the shop eyeing the bolts, grabbed the ones she wanted, eight fabrics in all, and was right on the money the first time. She didn’t have to fuss and fret and lay out the fabrics to see what worked and what didn’t. She just
knew
. She’s got such a gift.”

“Are you surprised? You got it from her and she probably got it from her mother. You don’t just lick it up off the rocks, my girl.”

“So I’ve heard. I wish she’d come to New Bern. Even for a visit. She’d have a wonderful time hanging out with me at the shop. Everyone would just love her. And she really could be a help to me. She doesn’t believe it; she thinks I’m just saying that to flatter her, but it’s true!”

Charlie clucked his tongue sympathetically. “Poor darling. You sound exasperated. You should come back home and let old Uncle Charlie feed you a good dinner, pour you a nice glass of wine. Then we could build a fire in the fireplace and I could rub your feet. Or anything else you’d like me to rub.”

“Listen to you,” I teased. “Turning a woman’s distress to your own nefarious advantage. Cad.”

“Not so! I was just suggesting a way for you to forget your troubles.”

“Uh-huh. Sure you were.”

“Seriously, I miss you. Come home.”

“I will. I want to. But I can’t until I get things settled with Mom, make her see reason. Speaking of which, I’d better hang up. She’s in the sewing room cutting out her wall hanging. I said I’d help.”

“Give Virginia my best. I’ll talk to you later. I miss you. I love you.”

“I love you, too, Charlie. A bunch.”

When I went into the sewing room, Mom was standing at her cutting table, rotary cutter in hand, humming to herself as she deftly sliced fabric into quarter-square triangles.

“How is Charlie?”

“Fine. He said to tell you hello.”

Mom nodded. “I like that man. At least, I like the way he sounds, that Irish accent of his. Does he look as good in person as he sounds on the telephone?”

“Better.”

“Really? Well, that’s nice. And he cooks too. And he’s so funny.” Mom shook her head. “Why don’t you marry him, Evie? If I were you and had a handsome, funny Irishman who can cook chasing me, I wouldn’t be running quite so fast.”

I unfolded a fat quarter of cardinal red fabric prior to cutting it into two-and-a-half-inch strips. “Thank you, Mother. But you’re not me.”

“I’m just saying…”

“Mom,” I said in a warning tone.

“All right. All right. It’s none of my business.”

She went back to her cutting, slicing squares on the diagonal, but not for long.

“It’s just that you’re not getting any younger, Evie. After fifty, most of the best fish in the sea have already been hooked. Charlie sounds like a catch.”

“I’m sure he’ll be happy to know you think so. And I agree with you. If Charlie were a tuna, he’d be sushi grade.” I smiled to myself, thinking how Charlie would have appreciated the culinary reference. “But, at the moment, I’m perfectly happy with things as they are. For the first time in a long time, my life is going along exactly as I want it to. I’m not anxious to make any big changes.”

“Well, that’s fine for you, but what about Charlie? How long do you think he’s going to be willing to wait for you, Evie? Charlie seems like a good man, but he’s still a man, and if there’s one thing I know about men—” Her lecture was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone.

Saved by the bell.

“Are you going to get that?” I asked.

“Why?” Mom continued her cutting. “It’s probably for you. Nobody would be calling me after eight o’clock on a Monday night.”

Thinking it might be Charlie again, I jogged to answer the phone, the same old wall-mounted, dial-up model that had hung in Mom’s kitchen for as long as I could remember.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mom.”

It was Garrett. I was surprised. He’d called earlier in the day to let me know that things were going fine at the shop and that he planned on going into the city to see Liza in the evening. I hadn’t expected to hear from him again so soon.

My heart immediately switched into mother mode, pumping a little faster, worried that he might have been in an accident, or that Liza had broken up with him, or that while he was walking down the street, a team of careless Acme movers had dropped a piano on him. When it comes to her children, a mother’s heart can conjure up an infinite number of calamities to contemplate.

“Honey, is everything okay? Did something happen?”

Probably sensing my concern from the other side of the house—after all, she’s a mother, too—Mom padded into the kitchen. “Is that Garrett?” she whispered. “Is everything all right?”

I shrugged silently.

Garrett laughed. He knows how my mind works. “No, Mom. Nothing happened. Well, nothing bad. Everything is fine. In fact, everything is just great.”

I blew out a relieved breath of air, unaware that I’d been holding it in, and relaxed my tensed shoulders, at least for a moment.

“Liza and I are engaged!”

What?

“Mom? Did you hear me? I asked Liza to marry me and she said yes. We’re engaged!”

Engaged? My son, my baby was engaged? Without thinking, I blurted out the exactly wrong thing.

“Oh, Garrett…I…Garrett…Are you sure?”

He was quiet for a moment before speaking very carefully and evenly, making me realize that Liza was standing right next to him.

“Yeah. It just happened and I wanted you to be the first to know. No, we haven’t set a date yet. Probably in the summer.”

The tone in his voice told me he was absolutely serious about this. I could be happy for him, or not, but either way, he was getting married.

I closed my eyes and bit my lip, hoping that Liza had been standing far enough away from the phone that she hadn’t heard my first response.

“That’s wonderful, Garrett. I’m so happy for you.” I backtracked as best I could.

“Thanks. Do you want to talk to Liza?” This wasn’t really a question and I knew it.

“Sure. Put her on.”

“Hi, Evelyn,” she said cautiously. “Big news, huh?”

She had heard me, I could tell by the sound of her voice, and she was hurt. That was the last thing I wanted.

I love Liza, truly love her. But I also know her, perhaps a little better than a prospective mother-in-law should. Liza wasn’t the same angry, embittered nineteen-year-old who had walked into my quilt shop three years before, bent on punishing the world for all the pain she’d known in her young life. She had grown up so much since then. But she was still nursing a whole collection of scars and half-healed hurts.

Liza is a wonderful young woman and I was sure that, someday, she would be a wonderful wife and life partner to someone. When the time was right and if she still loved him, I had no doubts that Garrett and Liza could be very happy together, but today? Now? I wasn’t so sure.

Still, the decision had been made. Garrett is a grown man. He wasn’t asking for my opinion, only my support.

“Very big news. The biggest. Congratulations, Liza. I wish you every happiness,” I said, which was true. “Have you told Abigail yet?”

“We’re calling her next. Do you want to say good-bye to Garrett?”

I said I did, told her congratulations again. Before Garrett could get on the line, Mom interrupted.

“Wait a minute. Let me talk to her.”

“Liza? Hold on. Mom wants to talk to you.”

Mom took the phone and grinned, bowing her mouth into a smile that beamed excitement and approval right through the receiver.

“Liza? It’s Grandma Virginia. I just wanted to tell you how happy I am for you and Garrett, dear. This is wonderful news! Evelyn has told me so many, many good things about you. I’m sure you and Garrett are going to be very happy together. I can’t wait to meet you. When I get out there, maybe I can throw a bridal shower for you.”

When she gets out there?

“That is, if I can get Evelyn to yield her prerogative as mother-in-law elect. I’m sure she won’t want to, but maybe I can arm wrestle her for the privilege.” She laughed. “Well, I just wanted to tell you how thrilled we are, dear.”

She paused, nodding and listening, before Liza said good night and handed the phone off to Garrett. Mom repeated her enthusiastic congratulations to Garrett, then gave me the phone so I could do the same.

I hung up the phone and turned around to see Mom standing with her hands on her hips.

“Evelyn, what in the world was that about? Your only son and his bride-to-be called to share their happiness, and you just burst their bubble. What were you thinking?”

“I know. I know. I didn’t mean to, but…I’m not sure this is a good idea, for Garrett or for Liza. Liza’s a wonderful girl, but she’s so young. And she’s carrying around a lot of baggage from the past. Dating is one thing, but marriage? I’m not sure she’s ready for that. And I bet I’m not the only one who thinks so,” I said, remembering the supposed “marital research” she’d been conducting at our last quilt circle meeting.

Suddenly, it was obvious to me that Garrett had proposed before our meeting and that Liza, uncertain in her response, had been trying to ask our advice on the subject without doing so directly. Liza and I were pretty close, and when she was facing a difficult decision she often used me as her sounding board. But since the decision involved Garrett, maybe she hadn’t felt she could come to me directly.

“I’m sure Liza has doubts. I could hear it in her voice. Couldn’t you?”

“Well, how would you expect her to sound? She has to know you’re something less than thrilled by the news. You didn’t exactly mask your misgivings, did you?”

I rubbed my forehead, trying to massage out the headache I felt forming behind my eyes. “I know. I’m sorry. It just caught me by surprise. I can’t help myself. I’m just not sure this marriage is a good idea. If they’d just wait a few years…”

“That’s not your decision, Evelyn. Garrett and Liza are adults. They have to make their own decisions. And you have to make the best of it,” she said, lowering her chin and peering at me over the tops of her glasses before walking over to the stove to turn on the gas burner.

“Did I ever tell you about what happened when your father and I got engaged?” she asked as she filled the teakettle with water.

“No.” I sat down at the old wooden dinette.

Mom turned on the back burner and set the kettle on the flame. “I met your father at a church picnic. His people were pillars of that church, literally. His grandfather dug and poured the foundation with his own two hands. The Wades were farmers, like everybody else, my family included. But their farm was big, a lot more productive and profitable than our place. Of course, that wasn’t just because they had more land than we did. My father was a drinker, a drunkard actually. That’s what they called it back then. Daddy wasn’t a bad man. He was always good to me and my sisters, but he just had this weakness. He tried to quit the bottle”—she paused and squinted, trying to remember a number—“oh, more than a few times, but he never could.”