A Single Thread (Cobbled Court)

by Marie Bostwick

  I began sobbing even harder, this time with relief. Everything was going to be all right. David wasn’t angry. I was pregnant, and he was telling me it was all right! For a moment, the terror in my breast gave way to elation. I was going to have David’s baby!

  But my joy was short-lived.

  “Don’t worry,” David whispered into my hair as he held me. “It will be all right. I’ve got a friend who knows a doctor who can take care of it. No one will ever have to know. Everything will be fine. I’ll be right beside you the whole time.”

  And I did it. Even though I wanted my baby. Even though I knew it was wrong. I did what David wanted because I couldn’t bear the idea of living without David and I knew that if I had the baby, he would leave me. So I did it. Late at night, after business hours, David drove me to the doctor’s office, and I walked up the stairs to a cold, white examining room and had an illegal abortion.

  I have never told anyone about this before. Don’t ask me why I did it. I have no good answer for that. I will not try to make excuses for what I did, because it was inexcusable. Only know that however harshly you may judge me, it cannot be as harshly as I judge myself. I have regretted it every day of my life.

  That night, David supported me as, weak and in terrible pain, I slowly climbed back down the stairs. He helped me into the station wagon and took me home. The doctor said I would be fine in a day or two, but it took much longer for my body to heal. I was never again able to get pregnant. Healing my spirits took even longer. For weeks that stretched into months, I felt sad and depressed. Sometimes I would start to cry for no reason at all. But, of course, I hid all this from David. As I knew only too well, there were two things he would not tolerate, self-pity and commitment, so I made sure not to bother him with either. After all that had happened, I still couldn’t bear the thought of losing him.

  But in the end, none of that mattered.

  One day, David came home and said he’d received a grant to study sculpture in Rome. At first I was excited, thinking he meant to bring me with him, but before long I realized that he was going alone. He said that the grant was a small one, not enough to support us both, and that Rome was expensive. The place he was going to live, he said, was small and filthy, and I would hate it. I told him I didn’t care, that I would get a job to help with expenses, but he wouldn’t be swayed. He was going to Rome alone.

  “It’s just for a year, baby. Then I’ll be back. Why don’t you move out to Connecticut with your mother and Susan for a while? You know how much Susan misses you. Think how great it would be for you to be able to spend some time with her. Especially now. She’ll be off to college soon, and you’ll never have another chance like this.” He leaned over and kissed me on the forehead.

  “It’ll be great. A year will fly by so fast you won’t believe it. This is my big break. This will make my reputation, and I’ll finally be able to make a decent living as an artist! When I get back, I’ll come out to Connecticut, and we can talk about our future.”

  And because I wanted to believe him and knew that if I complained he’d never come back, I did what he wanted me to.

  Three weeks later, we loaded the station wagon with the last of my things from our now-empty loft, and David drove me to Winthrop. He left the car for me, so, after we unpacked it, I drove him to the train station so he could go back to New York and catch a cab to the airport. Traffic was terrible. When we arrived at the station, the train was getting ready to leave. David had to run and left without kissing me good-bye.

  It would be two years before I saw him again.

  Other than the pleasure of being reunited with my little sister, living at home was just as bad as I’d thought it would be. Mother was as impossible as ever, disapproving of everything and everyone. She was particularly vocal in her criticism of me, frequently decrying my stupidity at letting David leave the country without extracting a ring from him and making a lot of speeches about not buying cows when milk was free.

  “How could you be so foolish, letting him just dump you off on my doorstep and then breezing off to Europe? And what are you supposed to do now? You’re a beautiful girl, Abigail, but you’re nearly twenty-three years old! Beauty is fleeting. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about,” she said bitterly. “The second the flower begins to fade, they’re off to greener pastures. I don’t care what these women’s libbers say, it’s still a man’s world. Marriage is the only protection a woman has. What if he doesn’t come back—”

  “He is coming back! I’ve told you that a thousand times.”

  Mother smirked. “So you say, but what if he doesn’t? I hope you don’t expect me to support you, because I can’t do it. Slaving away day after day in that office for a measly three hundred and twenty dollars a month,” she muttered. “When I think about your father and all the thousands he frittered away on cheap floozies, leaving us all with a single—”

  “Stop it, Mother. I don’t want to hear it anymore. And I don’t expect you to support me. I’m going to get a job.”

  And I did. I had graduated from NYU with a BA in Humanities and a minor in Art History, which was perfect for the life I’d planned on living in Manhattan, running a gallery filled with David’s sculptures. However, in Winthrop, the job market for someone with my education was nonexistent, not that it was much better anywhere in Connecticut. Still, I decided to try my luck in New Bern, and, that day at least, I was lucky.

  Resume in hand and wearing the darling Mary Quant dress—a black sleeveless bodice with white pleated skirt and stand-up collar, that David bought me as a going-away present (or perhaps it was intended as more of a consolation prize)—I marched into the New Bern Art Museum to ask for a job. As luck would have it, there was a board of trustees meeting going on that day. Forty-three-year-old Wolcott Wynne III was on the board. He saw me come in, pulled the museum director aside, and, next thing I knew, I had a new job…and a new admirer.

  Woolley asked me out to dinner that day, and when I refused, he came back to the museum every day for nearly three weeks to make the same invitation. Eventually, I relented. Woolley was a nice man, if a little arrogant, good looking, athletic, and very persistent. He took me to expensive dinners, the theater, sent flowers, brought me gifts, and almost from the first made his intentions very clear: he wanted to make me his wife. I liked Woolley. He was fun to be with, and I was happy to have him squire me about, but I knew I could never love him. My heart still belonged to David. I told Woolley so, but that didn’t seem to discourage him. Every time I told him that David was coming back, he’d just nod slowly and make this “We’ll see” face. It was very irritating.

  David wrote, regularly at first, then with less frequency. Sometimes, when weeks had gone by with no word from him, I’d get angry and tell myself that I was going to end it and move on with my life. But about the time I did, a letter would arrive full of apologies, explanations, and the endearments I longed to hear, and I would forgive him yet again.

  As the end of his year of study approached, David wrote and told me that he had been asked to stay on at the studio for a second year and that it was too good an opportunity to pass up. I tore up his letter and sat down to write one of my own, telling David exactly what I thought of him and his broken promises, but I lost my nerve. I threw the letter away and wrote another, saying that I was happy for him and not to worry about me. For spite, I threw in a couple of lines about my new friend, Woolley, and what a good time we’d had when he’d taken me into the city to see George Feyer at the Café Carlyle. I hoped that hearing about my adventures with Woolley, a wealthy, powerful man who took me to elegant places David could never dream of affording, would make him jealous and he would change his mind and come home, but it didn’t work. He just wrote back, saying that he was glad I wasn’t too lonely.

  And as all this was going on, Woolley kept pursuing me. One Saturday morning just a couple of weeks before David was to return, Woolley showed up on our doorstep with three dozen yellow roses and a three-c
arat diamond engagement ring. Right in front of Mother and Susan, he got on his knees and proposed again, and, again, I turned him down. I was really angry with him for pulling that particular stunt. He knew that the minute he left, Mother would be all over me, pressuring me to reconsider.

  “Abigail, have you lost your mind!” she screamed. “You’re going to give up the chance of a lifetime, on the barest hope that this time David won’t run off and leave you whenever he gets a whim? You can’t trust that man, Abbie! I know what I’m talking about. You can’t trust anyone in this world. Even the people who say they love you will let you down. But security? Social position? Money in the bank? Those are things no one can take from you.”

  “Mother, I don’t love Woolley Wynne, and I’m not going to marry him!”

  “Love,” she snarled. “What did that ever get anyone besides a broken heart? You must be the stupidest, most selfish girl on the face of God’s earth. Have you ever considered what it would mean to me or to your sister if you accepted Woolley? Forget me and the fact that I’ve been working my fingers to the bone to support this family for years; think what this could mean for Susan! She could go to a good college, have a chance at life! But no, all you can think of is yourself and that good-for-nothing David.” She threw up her hands in disgust. “Listen to me, Abigail, and save yourself some heartache. David doesn’t love you. If he did, he’d have asked you to marry him a long time ago.”

  That might have been one of the only intelligent things my mother ever said to me, but it didn’t matter. All I cared about was that David was coming home, and somehow, when he did, I was sure everything would be all right. And for a while, it was.

  David returned to the States in June, just in time to attend Susan’s high-school graduation. He didn’t have a dime left of his grant money, so I begged Mother to let him stay with us for a while, until I could save up enough money at my museum job so we could get an apartment in the city. Mother agreed, but reluctantly. Though in the old days, before she’d turned on him, Mother had been happy to let David stay in the guest room, she now insisted that he had to sleep in the garden shed.

  “I won’t have you two cavorting around the house doing God knows what in front of your sister,” Mother said. “I don’t want Susan getting any crazy ideas in her head. Not like you did,” she said, giving me a look meant to convey her complete disappointment in me.

  I was ready to lash into her, but David cut in before I could say anything. He thanked her profusely and proposed that he spend the summer painting the house for her, by way of repaying Mother for her kindness. Mother accepted his offer—the house was in desperate need of painting—but I could see she wasn’t won over.

  One day in July, a thunderstorm blew out the power at the museum and we closed early. I went right home, thinking it would be nice to have dinner ready when Mother got home from work, hoping that would put her in a better mood. I ran into the house, dripping wet from the rain, and called for Susan, but she didn’t answer. I supposed she’d gone to a friend’s house. Thinking what luck it was that David and I were home alone a good three hours before Mother was due, I grabbed a bottle of wine and two glasses from the refrigerator and ran out to the garden shed to find David.

  He was already undressed, lying in the narrow iron bedstead that he and I had found in the attic and repainted. Susan was with him.

  There were tears, and scenes, and dramas that I don’t care to replay anymore. What’s the point? At the end of it, I drove away in David’s decrepit station wagon, found Woolley at his office, and told him that I did not love him and didn’t expect I ever would, but that if he still wanted me, I would marry him.

  Two weeks later, I did. Woolley wanted a church wedding, but at my insistence we eloped to Reno. I wanted to be married in private, without my family.

  I never slept another night at our house in Winthrop. When I saw my mother, I would meet her somewhere else because I didn’t want to be reminded of what had happened there.

  Over my mother’s protests, Susan moved in with David, just as I had. I suppose she loved him, just as I had. Poor thing. She deserved my pity far more than my wrath, but I couldn’t see that at the time.

  I didn’t see or speak to Susan for the next seventeen years, not until Mother died. David, thank heaven, had had the good taste to stay away from the funeral, but Susan came. It was awkward, but we were civil to one another. And oddly, in spite of all that had gone on before, it was almost a relief to see her again. But I was worried about her. She was only thirty-four, but she looked old and tired. I kept thinking about her.

  A month later, I worked up the nerve to call her on the telephone, with the excuse of telling her that mother had left her a small bequest and asking where I should have the money wired. In truth, there was no bequest. At the funeral, I had noticed Susan’s worn-out shoes and threadbare coat. I guessed that David wasn’t doing any better job of providing for my sister than he had for me. When I called to tell her about the check, her tearful reaction of gratitude confirmed my suspicions; Susan was desperately in need of money. I wasn’t entirely ready to forgive her, but I couldn’t bear the idea of her being hungry or out on the street because she didn’t have enough to pay the rent.

  After that, Susan and I talked on the telephone on three occasions, and each time it was a little less awkward. I believe that, given time, we would have eventually reconciled, but then something happened….

  Susan and David lived together for seventeen years. Then, just as I had, Susan became pregnant. But unlike me, she refused to abort her baby, and when she refused, David walked out.

  And after that, I never spoke to her again. You see, in the end it wasn’t a man or her betrayal that came between us. It was me—my shame, my pride, and my terrible envy. Eventually, I would have forgiven her for taking David from me, but I could never forgive her for finding the courage that I lacked and, in doing so, getting the one thing I so longed for, the thing that all of Woolley Wynne’s millions could not buy for me—real love.

  “And that was what you were to her,” I whispered, trying to keep my voice steady and failing. “You were the love of her life. I envied her so. It seemed that everything I had wanted in life, Susan had taken from me. I see now that it wasn’t true. I made my own choices, if only by refusing to choose or to stand up and say no when I had the chance. There is so much I’d do differently. If only…” I tried to stop and steady myself, but it was no good. I could not stem the tide of tears.

  “If only I had realized it sooner. Everything could have been so different for all of us. I’m sorry. Dear God. Liza, I’m so, so sorry. It’s my fault. I know you can never forgive me. It’s all my fault.”

  While I had talked, Liza sat silent and small in one of the big wingback chairs that flanked the library fireplace. As she listened, she seemed to shrink into herself, drawing her arms closer into her body, curving her back into the chair cushions as if trying to put as much physical distance between us as possible. Silent tears streamed down her cheeks as she heard, for the first time, the sad and secret tale of her own ancestry.

  Now she got up from the chair and walked across the room to the sofa where I was sitting, weeping. I felt a tentative touch on my shoulder and heard Liza’s hoarse voice.

  “I have to, Aunt Abigail. I don’t want to forgive any of you, not you, or Mom, or that lying scuzzball that fathered me either, but somehow I have to. We already know how things will turn out if I don’t. This has been going on for too long, through too many generations of this family. I don’t want to live like this anymore. I’ve got to forgive you, Aunt Abigail. I do. You forgive me too, okay? We’re all we have left.”

  29

  Evelyn Dixon

  “Mom?” Garrett’s face looked anxious as he leaned over me. “Mom? How are you feeling?”

  “Great.”

  It was a lie. Everything hurt: my head, my arms, and the flattened expanse on my chest, the place where my breasts used to be.

  “Honey,
could you get me some water? I’m so thirsty.”

  “Sure.” He took the plastic cup from the nightstand and went to the sink to fill it.

  “Your lips are all chapped.” Blinking, I opened my eyes and saw Margot, flanked by Abigail, Liza, and Charlie. Margot dug into her handbag, pulled out a tube of lip balm, and used a finger to rub the balm on my cracked lips.

  “There. I bet that feels better.”

  I nodded and then took a sip from the straw Garrett held to my lips. The water tasted good.

  “The doctor was here a little while ago,” Garrett said, “but you were still asleep. She said everything went fine. She has to wait for the final lab reports, but she thinks they got everything this time.”

  I looked down at my flat chest. “Well, that’s good. If she has to go in again, I’ll be the only woman I know who has to buy bras size triple A inverted.” I tried to smile, but it wasn’t easy.

  As much as I had tried to prepare myself for this moment, for waking up and seeing myself without breasts for the first time, it was still a shock. I felt like I had fallen asleep and woken up to find myself inhabiting a different body. My shape, my weight, the very mass and volume of my being had changed. I didn’t recognize myself anymore. I was trying my best to put up a brave front, but it was too hard. Everything was too painful. A tear rolled down my cheek.

  “Look at me,” I whispered. “What did they do to me?”

  Garrett swallowed hard and squeezed my hand. He didn’t know how to answer me. Abigail came to his rescue.

  She moved to the side of the bed and leaned down toward me. “It’s all right, Evelyn. Everything is going to be all right soon. You’re tired, dear, and you’re hurting. It’s all right to cry.”

  Liza nodded, and her eyes were solemn. “Yeah. Abigail’s right. You can cry if you want to.” She took my other hand and held it tenderly. “Just remember that it’s going to be worth it. You’re going to get well. After all,” she said. “We’ve got a deal.”