The Wishing Thread (28 page)
Saturday morning came to the Stitchery on the heels of a passing rain shower, and all of Tappan Square shimmered. Clusters of purple asters and pots of hardy mums trembled on the roadsides. Scarecrows in floppy hats smiled where they had been strapped to mailboxes. Gauze-fettered zombies, strung from porches, turned slow circles in a cheery breeze.
Most of Tappan Square was still sleeping and did not know that strangers were visiting their corner of town. A survey crew had arrived just after dawn, with their tripods and hard hats and cups of coffee steaming in bare hands. They worked quickly, fanning out, signaling, talking into their phones. They were measuring the outline of a neighborhood that soon would not be there, drawing invisible lines around buildings to be felled like so many acres of trees.
At one point in its history, Tappan Square had been an actual square, a small public park, and the Stitchery perched on its western lip. Each morning the people of Tarrytown walked their dogs or, if they were feeling spritely, spread out their picnic blankets over the dewy grass. To the children who sprinted and turned cartwheels on the great green lawn, it seemed that Tappan Square Park went on forever, that it would always go on. But eventually, when the first automobile factories opened along the waterfront and tens of thousands
of employees needed housing, the park was filled in with as many identical two-story Colonials as could fit on the dirt, and a neighborhood was born.
Aubrey was sleeping while the surveyors were crossing the street in front of the Stitchery, looking up at the windows of the old, peeling house. She slept and slept. She was dreaming of Vic, dreaming of his thumb pressed into the hollow at her throat, dreaming she fit herself against him, skin-to-skin. Though her mind was sluggish her body was burning, awake and hot on the precipice, engulfed by the blur of sensation from a knee that was not there, pressed between hers, by the slick of shoulder blades that were not there, straining under her palms, by livid muscles, by the iron heat of hard weight, by a thousand live wires of electricity bowing and tangling and snapping under her skin until—bitter disappointment—the phone. Ringing. The power must have come back on in the night.
Slowly, she wandered downstairs. She was surprised to find Meggie in the kitchen, sitting cross-legged at the table and sipping coffee.
“You’re up early,” Aubrey said. “Who was that on the phone?”
“Vic.”
“Why didn’t you get me?”
Meggie looked up, grinning. “I took a message.”
“Okay—what’s the message?”
“He wanted to give you a lift to the Tappan Watch meeting tonight. So I told him, you’d love that.”
“Oh,” Aubrey said. She might have given Meggie a hard time for interfering, but in truth Meggie had done the same thing she would have done. “Well, thanks.” She poured herself a mug of coffee. She needed it; she was still feeling weak from last night’s exertions. “The Watch is meeting at six.
We’re going to hash out a plan to really drum up some awareness for our situation. If we kick up a big enough fuss, maybe the council will have to vote it down.”
“The public shaming approach. I like it. Mariah would be proud.”
Aubrey looked at her. “Do you mean, of me?”
“Of course I mean you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re fighting the good fight. Even though she’s gone.”
Aubrey glanced at her sister, who had deposited herself cross-legged in a kitchen chair. “You could come, you know. To the meeting tonight?”
Meggie scoffed. “And crash your hot sexy date at the fire hall?”
“You and a few dozen other people.”
“I don’t know,” Meggie said, musing. “It’s been a while since I raised hell in Tarrytown.”
Aubrey smiled.
“I guess we’ll get a lot more money for selling the Stitchery if we don’t let city hall tear the whole neighborhood down.”
Aubrey said nothing, saddened by the idea that Meggie still wanted to sell the Stitchery out from under her. She’d hoped that last night had changed something. If Meggie noticed her disappointment, she didn’t let on.
“Hey. Here’s a question,” Meggie said. “Do you know where Bitty is?”
“She’s not here?” Aubrey absentmindedly peered into her mug and considered dumping her coffee down the drain. It was a little strong for her taste, but she hated to waste it. “She didn’t tell you where she was going?”
“I only just woke up,” Meggie said.
“She probably went grocery shopping or something.”
“Mmm,” Aubrey said through another swallow. Tremors of last night’s revelations were still echoing at the periphery of her brain. Craig’s sultan-like bravado. Bitty’s sad eyes. The great cavernous cistern of power Aubrey had discovered deep inside.
She noticed a packet of bundled papers on the counter, folded in thirds, with Bitty’s perfect handwriting on the front. It said A & M.
“Meggie?”
“What?”
Aubrey reached for the bundle. She was afraid to open it. She didn’t want to know if it was possible that, after everything, everything that had happened, Bitty was gone.
Dear sisters
,
Last night after Craig took off, I promised I would come clean. But I’m not good at this whole opening-up thing. Writing’s the easiest way to explain
.
Let me start where I left off—where we left off from one another. Twelve years ago, after I moved out of the Stitchery, I called to tell Mariah that I was pregnant and that Craig and I would be getting married. I was happy. Or at least, I thought I was. I was going to have a husband. A family. A house of my own
.
Mariah didn’t take the news well. She begged me to come back. She said I was making a bad decision. I practically hung up on her. I was trying to make a better life for myself, but Mariah had never been able to see it that way
.
Anyway, a week before we were slated to take our vows, Craig began to act odd. He avoided me. He fell asleep on the couch and didn’t come to bed until morning. He started
saying maybe we didn’t have to get married right away. Maybe his parents would accept a long engagement instead
.
For days this went on. And then I found a pair of thick charcoal-gray gloves hanging from a hook in the entryway. Handmade. Craig confirmed my suspicions: Mariah had mailed them to him as a wedding gift. He had no idea about the spells
.
Now—to be clear, I don’t believe it was the gloves that made him have second thoughts about marrying me. But it was the principle of the thing, that Mariah would attempt to meddle like that when Craig and I were already having a vulnerable moment. I called her and she didn’t deny it. I threw the things away. I vowed I would never let myself get close to Mariah again; I would do little more than be polite
.
After the wedding, Craig stopped acting so weird. At least for a while. But in recent years, things changed again. And it burns me to say it, but maybe Mariah was right after all
.
The fundamental problem of our marriage can be summed up in four words: He has a mistress. I discovered her about eighteen months ago when a neighbor gave me a tip. At first I was upset, but then I thought about it a little more. I decided an affair might be good for him. I felt really … big. Like I was a big person to be able to understand why my husband was cheating and permit it to go on. And also, rich men do have affairs, just like they have Jaguars, expensive pens, and pretty wives. I knew what I signed up for when I married him. I figured the thing would run its course, and I would allow it
.
But then, he began to get arrogant, flaunting. He pays her rent with our bank account (it’s his money, of course, but I keep his books). He treats her to dinners and buys her jewelry and groceries. He takes care of her. She has become
his life in the wings, the life when he’s not on stage. And me? I’m the mother of his kids, his cook, his housekeeper, his interior decorator, his accountant, his live-in nanny
.
He’ll never willingly divorce me; divorce would be too crass, too lowbrow, for him. That’s why I fell for him to begin with, knowing that once I married him, I would be married forever. But I didn’t see the difference, then, between being married and being owned. He’s made it clear that he’ll use the children as leverage, if he has to, to keep me with him—just like he’d fight to keep his house, or his car, or any other thing
.
It’s my own fault, I suppose. I should have pitched a fit about the affair the moment I discovered it. Twice over the last year I tried to leave him. I took the kids and his credit card and got us a hotel. I tried to get away. But he’s got me right where he wants me, and there’s nothing to do but go back to him, again and again
.
How can a woman leave her husband when she has nowhere to go? Craig had suggested I quit school when I got pregnant, and I very willingly agreed. Now I couldn’t get a decent-paying job if my life depended on it. Maybe I could give up my highlights and waxing, my gym membership and my cell phone data plan. But even if I did all of those things, I still could not support my children
.
Do you know what that feels like? I am the poorest rich woman in the world
.
And here’s one more confession. Probably my worst one
.
Aubrey, when I learned that there was a potential that we might sell the Stitchery, I thought of myself. Selfishly and unfairly, I thought of myself
.
The money from selling the Stitchery would have given me the resources I needed to leave Craig and take my
children with me. I saw an escape route. Freedom. For my kids, for me
.
I was sure that I could convince you to sell
.
But after last night, I realize I don’t want to anymore
.
I’ve missed you, both of you. I didn’t realize how badly. When I left the Stitchery, I thought that if I didn’t uproot myself quickly there was a danger I would chicken out and not do it at all. Meggie, I imagine you know something about what that feels like
.
But for the first time in my life I’m actually glad that the Stitchery exists, and that, Aubrey, you’re still in it. I don’t want to go another year without you guys in my life. I don’t want to go another day. I want my children to know their family. Mariah was right: We’re stronger together than we are apart. I’m only sorry it took so long for me to come around
.
Okay—there’s just one more thing to say. Last night, I watched Craig’s face as I talked him down from the ledge, as he held the scarf in his hands, and I saw his anger mellowing, I saw him calming down. I thought it was magic. For a second, I almost believed. That strange blue light had convinced me
.
As I write this in the middle of the night while you both are sleeping, the power company has a truck parked outside the Stitchery; I think a transformer blew. And now that I’m thinking more clearly, it makes sense to believe that Craig’s change of heart came about because of the fact that I assured him everything was fine, that he was overreacting, that the kids and I would be home again shortly, and that he should enjoy “his freedom” while he could. It was all very explainable and normal, watching reason set in
.
If I ever saw proof that there’s magic in the Stitchery, I
would be the first to believe. But at this point, I’m thirty-two and I haven’t seen anything conclusive, so I’m not holding my breath. I am, however, willing to admit that just because there’s something about the Stitchery that I personally don’t get, doesn’t mean there isn’t something to get at all. I’m not saying it right. God, this is hard. The point is, maybe a Van Ripper belongs in the Stitchery. And maybe the Stitchery belongs in Tappan Square. And maybe Tappan Square belongs in Tarrytown. Even if I don’t
.
I think that’s everything. I’m going out for a long run
.
Your loving, imperfect, exhausted sister
,
Bitty
After Meggie read her sister’s letter, she didn’t have time to talk things over with Aubrey—which was a good thing because she didn’t want to talk things over. Aubrey glanced up at the clock and almost lost her coffee through her nostrils because of how late she’d slept. Then she blustered around the house like a tornado, getting ready for her shift at the library. Meggie hadn’t bothered to point out that Aubrey left the Stitchery with a backward sweater and mismatched socks. She suspected it wasn’t the first time.
Now, with Aubrey gone, Meggie was alone … alone with Bitty’s confessional. It made a gloomy moue at her from the kitchen table. To keep herself from tearing the letter to bits, Meggie threw on some clothes and took herself for a walk around the block. She felt angry and pinched and ready to burst. She did not know why.
Outside, she found she’d underdressed for the chilly afternoon, but she did not return to the Stitchery for her jacket. The neighborhood was as cramped as it had ever been. Without a garage or driveway in sight, every person who had a car
in Tappan Square had to park on the too narrow street. If the choked thoroughfares were human arteries, as lined with cholesterol as the streets were with traffic, the village of Tarrytown would have stroked out by now.
She shoved her cold hands into her pockets and walked fast. Her breath went up in little puffs like gunpowder. She felt like there was a hard rope tied around her chest. What was making her so surly? She hadn’t woken up this way. She supposed that it had to do with Bitty’s unburdening; Bitty had heaved off all the heavy stones of her life’s labors, and Meggie felt they had piled right on her own chest.
Bitty hardly ever talked about her problems—either because she wanted everybody to think her life was perfect, or because she didn’t want to worry anyone. And so Meggie could not claim that her sister was whining, or moping, or wallowing in annoying self-pity. But even though Bitty had never complained aloud about her marriage until her sisters had demanded to know what was going on, the miasma of her personal dramas niggled into every crack and crevice, ballooned into corners, edged out air particles, blotted out the damn sun. And Meggie wished, just once, that she could confess to her sisters what
she
had been doing for the past four years. What
her
life had been like. She wished that her sisters would have given her the common courtesy of healthy suspicion, maybe with a hint of wholesome familial prying. But—they took her at her word.