Liza grinned. “I like Charlie.”
“So do I,” echoed Margot. “At first I thought he was a little gruff, but he really is so sweet.”
“I’ve known Charlie for almost twenty years, ever since he moved to New Bern and opened the Grill. You won’t find a kinder, more tenderhearted man on the face of the earth than Charlie Donnelly. I think that’s why he puts on that brusque businessman act. He’s afraid that if people knew what a softhearted soul he really was, they’d run ragged over him. Which, of course, might be true.”
“Did you see that box of crayons?” Margot laughed. “What man goes to the trouble of finding such a perfect gift? He’s obviously crazy about Evelyn, but she doesn’t seem to get it.”
“Or maybe she’s just not interested,” I posited. “Just because he’s in love with her doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s in love with him. Maybe she just wants to keep their relationship platonic.”
Margot sighed as she set the hot iron in its holder and folded the now-finished quilt. “Well, I can’t think why. If a man showed up at my doorstep with presents and jokes, and brought meals to my bedside so I wouldn’t have to eat hospital food, I’d fall in love with him that quick!” She snapped her fingers. “Why can’t I find someone like Charlie? For that matter, why can’t I find anyone at all?”
“What about Tom, the guy who works at the post office?” Liza asked. “When we went to pick up the mail, he gave you a big smile, then held up the line for at least three minutes chatting you up. The people behind us in line were getting really ticked off.”
“Engaged,” Margot said in a flat voice. “Men like me. I have all kinds of men friends, but they’re all either married or about to get married. Even when I meet a single guy that I think I could go for, they always start telling me their problems with women and I give them advice, which they follow, and next thing you know, they’re engaged too!” Margot let out such a disgusted growl that I couldn’t keep from chuckling.
“I’m not kidding,” she said. “That’s happened to me three times! Men like me, but they never seem to fall in love with me. I’m like everybody’s favorite kid sister. Why is that? Why can’t somebody fall in love with me?” she wailed.
Looking at the shapeless jumper and scuffed flats Margot was wearing, her colorless lips and eyelashes that had never known the touch of a mascara brush, I had some opinions. Margot was a genuinely pretty woman with an intelligent mind and an endearing personality, but she could definitely use some lessons in the art of female allure. I was about to make a few suggestions, but Liza spoke before I could say anything.
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “You just haven’t found the right man yet. You will.” Liza looked to me for support. “Isn’t that right, Abigail?”
“Yes,” I said quickly. “Of course. It’s just a matter of time.”
Margot looked doubtful. “Well, I hope you’re right. I’m going to be thirty-six years old in a few months. I’d always figured that, by now, I’d already be married and have children, preferably two or three.”
“You’ve still got plenty of time,” I said. “Besides, better to wait for the right man to come along than marry in haste and repent at leisure.”
“Trust her,” Liza chimed in. “She knows what she’s talking about. And by the way, speaking of waiting for the right man, I haven’t seen Franklin around lately. Are you mad at him again?” Liza winked at Margot, and I suddenly had the feeling that I was the punch line of a joke whose point I’d missed.
“Franklin? No, I haven’t seen him recently. I’ve been too busy with all this Evelyn business and my work at the shelter. I imagine we’ll get together for our monthly business meeting in a couple of weeks. Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” Liza said and began folding up her project and putting away her sewing notions. “Just wondering.”
31
Evelyn Dixon
I heard the front door open and close, footsteps, and Margot’s voice calling my name. I didn’t answer, hoping that maybe she’d think I was sleeping and go away, but she didn’t.
The bedroom door opened, and Margot peeked in. “Oh, there you are. Didn’t you hear me call you?” I just shook my head, a lie.
She held up a disposable aluminum dish with a white cardboard top. “I’ve got your lunch—Charlie’s special chicken pot pie. I hope that’s all right. Charlie said he called over here to ask what you wanted for lunch but nobody answered.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I’ll have it later. I’m not very hungry right now.”
“Oh.” She sounded a little disappointed. “Well, all right. I’ll just put it in the refrigerator.” She turned to go into the kitchen but then paused at the door just a moment and tilted her chin up and breathed in, as if she was sniffing the air for scent of a coming storm.
“Evelyn, is there anything I can do to help you? You barely touched your breakfast or your dinner last night. Maybe we should call Dr. Finney. I’m worried about you. Are you in pain?”
I was. But there is pain and then there is pain, the kind that seeps in through your pores and joints and nostrils and refuses to be banished by something as simple as a couple of white tablets you take every three to four hours as needed. It’s the “as needed” part that gets you in trouble. There is no end to it.
I looked into Margot’s sweet, troubled face. I felt bad for worrying her, but then there were so many things I felt bad about. Where to begin? How to explain? I’d gone to sleep in the white-hot light of a sterile operating room and woken up in a fog that had become a black and ever-thickening miasma of despair. It had seeped into my mind and heart, blocking out every ray of light, filling my throat and nostrils so that with every breath I took, I inhaled hopelessness. I couldn’t explain it, couldn’t control it, and couldn’t make it stop.
Margot, with her thick fringe of brown lashes ringing caring eyes, had no experience with this kind of pain. I hoped she never would. I didn’t even want her to know that such desolation existed, so I just told her what she wanted to hear.
“I’m fine, just tired and sore. That’s all. I’ll eat later. Promise.” I tried to smile, but my lips felt like they were lined with sandpaper, scraping across my teeth into a grimace.
“All right,” Margot said doubtfully. “I’ll just put this away and then run back to the shop. Things are going well. All the customers are asking about you.”
“That’s nice.”
“Oh, and did I tell you? Rob installed the new display case. Then he fixed the copier and the tension on that broken sewing machine. You never told me he was so handy.” She waited a moment for me to say something. “He keeps asking if he can come over and see you. Charlie too. He—”
“No!” I interjected before she could say more. Margot’s eyebrows shot up, and I took a deep breath, told myself to calm down. “I mean, not yet. I’m still so tired. Visitors wear me out. But tell them both I said thank you. All right?”
She nodded her agreement. “You’re going to take a nap? That’s good. You just need a lot of rest, Evelyn. You’ll be back to your old self soon.” She smiled, and I wondered if she was trying to convince herself or me. “I’ll bring you some soup for dinner. Call the shop if you need anything at all.”
“I will.” I lay down on the bed and rolled onto my side, my face turned toward the wall. Margot went into the kitchen and puttered around for a few minutes, but before she left, she came back into the guest bedroom.
Feigning sleep, I kept my eyes closed. Margot tiptoed up to the edge of the bed and pulled the broken-heart quilt up over my shoulders. She stood at the edge of the bed for a long moment, not moving, standing over me the way a mother stands over the sickbed of her child. Finally, she bent down, brushed her fingertips lightly over my hair, and whispered, “It’ll be all right. Just rest now. I’m praying for you, sweetie. We all are. It’s going to get better. It will. Soon.”
Margot crept out of the room and closed the door quietly behind her. The center of my
chest throbbed in a place deeper than the cut of the surgeon’s knife. For a moment, a silent, desolate groan—half prayer, half flag of surrender—rose from the black like an arm reaching out from the deep, fingers opening and closing on empty air, blind, desperate, grasping for a lifeline.
Help me. Please. I can’t do this alone.
There was no gentle creeping, no whispered worried voices afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing and making things worse than they already were. I heard the sound of heavy feet treading on wooden floorboards and a decisive turn of the knob before the door flew open, banging against the wall like it been blown by a hard wind. She didn’t have to say anything; I knew who it was. Mary Dell had come to town.
“Evelyn, get up!” she commanded. Before I could consider a response, she threw back the bedclothes. The room was chilly without the protection of the broken-heart quilt. I shivered in my nightgown. “Get up,” she repeated. “You’ve been lying here for almost two weeks. That’s long enough. Now get up.”
Her tone was impatient; it didn’t occur to me to argue. I sat up and hung my bare feet over the side of the tall, antique bed, my toes barely brushing the cold wooden floor. I wrapped my arms over my flat chest protectively and looked up. Mary Dell towered over me. Her face was stern.
“You’re supposed to be filming your show,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“Came to ask the same question.” She turned around, and for the first time I noticed Margot clinging to the doorjamb, half in the room and half out of it, as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do next.
“Would you excuse us for a minute? I’ve got to smack some sense into my friend here, and I’d just as soon do it without any witnesses.”
Margot’s eyes grew wide, not quite sure what to make of this, and gave me a questioning look.
I nodded. “It’s okay, Margot.”
She bit her lip, not sure of the wisdom of leaving me alone with Mary Dell, but after a moment she took a step back. “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need anything,” she said and shut the door.
Mary Dell waited to hear the sound of receding footsteps and then turned to face me again. “What is the matter with you? Since you refused to take my phone calls, I finally called Garrett to see how you were doing and he told me that you were depressed, feeling so sorry for yourself that you wouldn’t see anybody, wouldn’t even get up out of bed.
“When he told me that, I didn’t believe him. ‘That can’t be right,’ I said. ‘No way is my friend Evelyn Dixon lying around having a pity party for herself for two weeks. It is simply not possible that Evelyn, the woman who rose up like a phoenix from the ashes of divorce, found the guts to pick up and move to a new state, build a new life, pick up her old dreams where she’d let them lie, and open a quilt shop in spite of the protests and predictions of the naysayers—there is just no way that a woman with that kind of backbone is going to let her spirit be crushed by cancer. I just refuse to believe it!’”
She shook her head as if, even looking around and seeing the evidence of my withdrawal into depression, the blinds drawn to keep out the daylight, the litter of crumpled, damp tissues that filled the wastebasket, and the curling edges of the cheese sandwich that was supposed to be my lunch but sat untouched on the nightstand, she still couldn’t quite believe her eyes.
“But Garrett assured me that was the case. I wanted to get myself a second opinion, so I talked to those new friends of yours: Margot, and Liza, and that Abigail. She’s different, isn’t she? Not exactly the soul of warmth, but she sure is fond of you. I even talked to that scum-sucking scab of an ex-husband of yours. What’s he doing here anyway?”
I started to say something, but Mary Dell didn’t give me a chance.
“Never mind. We can talk about that later. Anyway,” she said, taking a big breath as she returned to the subject at hand, “when they all told me that, I just had to come up here and see for myself, because I was sure they were wrong. I told the television producer that everything was going to have to wait for a couple of days, that the whole film crew was just going to have to cool their jets while I flew up to Yankeeland to correct these malicious rumors that were flying around about one of my dearest friends. But look at you!”
She moved her head slowly from side to side, murmuring the classic Southern mantra for disbelief and disappointment. “Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. What happened? Here you are, looking like something the cat dragged in, lying about in this musty old room that smells like the windows haven’t been opened in about a year, letting everybody else do your work for you while you lay here feeling sorry for yourself and worrying everybody half to death. Evelyn, I want a straight answer. What’s the matter with you?”
I wanted to start crying again, but curiously, finally, I was out of tears. The burning sensation behind my eyes migrated to my throat, erupting into a belch of angry words.
“Don’t, Mary Dell,” I warned. “Don’t start with me. You don’t know what it’s like. So don’t you stand there and tell me that I’m feeling sorry for myself. Nobody has hacked off pieces of you. You’re not going to have to live the rest of your life wondering if they really did get it all, if the cancer is going to come back to finish you off. You don’t know what I’m going through.”
She put her hands on her hips and opened her mouth as if she was about to begin lecturing me again but then thought better of it and pressed her lips into a tight line. She walked across the room to the window. “You’re right,” she said and turned to pull the cord on the window blind. “I don’t know what you’re going through. So tell me. Talk to me.”
Bright light streamed though the glass directly into my eyes. I turned my head and screwed my eyelids shut. “I didn’t know…I wasn’t prepared,” I stuttered, struggling to find words. “My doctor and I had talked through this whole thing, discussed exactly what would happen during the operation, and what my options would be for reconstruction, the possibility of followup with chemotherapy or radiation, and we even discussed the mental side of this. She warned me to expect a roller-coaster ride of emotions and I…I thought I understood. I thought I had a handle on it, but I didn’t. Not even close.”
Mary Dell leaned back, resting her weight against the windowsill. Listening intently, she tipped her head to the side, making it easier to look her in the eye, damming the late afternoon sunbeams until they pooled behind her and spilled sunlight through frizzed tendrils of hair, making each gray-blond strand glow pink and gold, glinting against the myriad crystal beads of her dangly earrings so that illumined shadow phantoms spun around her head, giving her the aura of some angelic, benevolent being.
“Before the operation, I’d worked it all out in my mind logically, like I was talking about someone else, you understand?” I don’t know if she did or not, but she nodded.
“Of course, I was going through with it; it was the sensible course of action! My breasts or my life? There was no choice! But why is that? Why didn’t I get a choice? Why did this happen to me? What did I ever do to deserve this?” I pushed myself off the bed and stood in front of my friend. My voice and my hands clenched in anger.
“Why?” I demanded. “Tell me why!”
“I don’t know. No one does.”
“Do you have any idea what it’s like? Can you imagine? Everyone keeps saying how lucky I was to have caught it in time, and isn’t it wonderful what they can do with reconstructive surgery these days. If one more person says that to me, I swear I’m going to slap them! What do I have to feel lucky about?” I barked out an incredulous laugh and covered my flattened chest with both hands.
“Do you know what the reconstruction surgeon calls them? Mounds. Not breasts—mounds. After I’m healed, they will put implants in my chest and then tattoo on something that is supposed to represent nipples. There will be a swelling where my breasts used to be, but they won’t be breasts; they will be mounds.”
My anger wasn’t spent, but I was. Drained and exhausted, I covered my eyes with one hand. “I’m aliv
e. I know I should be grateful for that, but I don’t feel grateful. I feel cheated. For the last few years, everything I knew myself to be is being subtracted piece by piece. I keep losing parts of myself—my marriage, my family, my home, and now even my womanhood. Who am I supposed to be now?”
I opened my eyes, looking for answers in Mary Dell’s patient gaze. “If this is it, if I’m going to be subtracted bit by bit until there is just nothing left, then why doesn’t God just get it over with? It’s easy to say I should get up and move on with my life. Sometimes I even say it to myself, but what kind of life will it be? Will I ever know love again? Will any man ever find me desirable again? And even if he did, will I be able to respond? Yesterday I took off my clothes and looked in the mirror. I look like some worn-out rag doll, all jagged tears and mismatched patches. Who could ever want me? And what will I lose next? My business? It’s the one good thing that happened to me during these last awful years, and I’m inches from losing that too, and what was left of my life savings with it. What am I supposed to do if that happens? I’m fifty years old. Too old for second chances—make that third chances. I can’t face the idea of losing anything else, Mary Dell. I can’t.”
Shifting her weight forward, she stood up and walked toward me, moving out of the glow of celestial radiance into the ordinary light of day so I could see that she wasn’t an angel at all, just Mary Dell. Just an old friend who’d known pains and fears of her own and was willing to drop everything and fly across the country to listen to mine. Just Mary Dell. Just what I needed, just when I most needed it.
She crossed the room. For a moment, I thought she was going to put her arms around me and tell me it would be all right, but instead she pushed past me and started making up the bed, straightening the sheets and tucking them in so tightly I’d have had to pry them loose to get back into bed.
A Single Thread (Cobbled Court) Page 26
