Hanging by a Thread

by Karen Templeton

  Her silence makes me turn. She seems to be considering how to answer my question, as a sudden breeze whips her curls into a froth around her face.

  “It’s scary as all get-out,” she says at last. “Knowing I could lose my shirt. That I now have to pay for my own health insurance. It’s a real shock after working for big firms. Taking the safe road. Oh, God…bless you,” she says as a taxi pulls up in front of me and she herds her charges toward it. After she gets them in, she turns to me, our gazes level since I’m now standing on the curb. Her brown eyes are huge and unnervingly imploring, as if she’s been sent to warn me of something. And I can tell she’s as perplexed about why she’s answering my question as I am about why I asked it to begin with.

  “But you know what?” she says. “I’ve never been happier. And I knew the longer I waited, the harder it would be to take the plunge.”

  “Mom-mee!” the blonde calls out. “I’m cold!”

  With a smile and a “Thanks again,” she gets in, slams shut the door, and they go shooting off up Sixth Avenue.

  Huh.

  I turn south to walk the few blocks to Washington Square and the subway, yanking my cell from my purse. I call home, tell Leo I’ll be there in about forty-five minutes, then punch in Tina’s number. Of course, I get her machine, since she works until six, at a lumber supplier in Long Island City. I toss the phone back into my purse and find my mind wandering, back to that dress. The one with the dropped waist, in the showroom. How to change it to make it work for, I don’t know, somebody like me.

  With the exception of my sister, the women in my family, on both sides, tend to be short and bosomy. My hunch is that Starr will follow in this genetic tradition, even though she’s got spaghetti strand appendages now. So did I at her age. Imagine my shock when I awoke one morning to find these bizarre protuberances jutting out from my chest.

  At twelve, I was already a D-cup. They should make it a rule, when you get breasts that early, that you have to put them away for later. Like the pearl necklace my great-grandmother gave me for my sixth birthday that I wasn’t allowed to wear until I was deemed mature enough to handle the responsibility.

  I’m okay with them now, though. My breasts, I mean. The necklace, sad to say, vanished in the back seat crevice of Donny Volcek’s father’s Taurus on prom night. The good news, though, is that a Taurus’s interior is definitely roomier than it appears from the outside.

  As I was saying. I came to terms with my short, bosomy self some time ago. That’s not to say I don’t have body issues from time to time. Like whenever I go bra shopping. Or try to find a pair of jeans that even remotely go where my curves do. You know what I’m talking about, right?

  Men don’t have these problems. All a guy has to do is yank on a T-shirt or a sweatshirt or something and he’s done. No wires to pinch, no straps to slip, no overflow ooching over the sides or between the zipper that refuses to close unless you lie flat on your back and give up breathing. Okay, so men have the tie thing to deal with, but please. How many men wear ties these days? At least on a full-time basis. When you’re a D-cup, you damn sight wear a bra every single day or by the time you’re sixty you have to kick your ta-tas out of your way when you walk. This is not something a man has to face.

  Not too often, anyway.

  I fall in with the herd resolutely filing down the stairs to the subway entrance, wishing I had something to anesthetize me for the long subway ride.

  Wishing that adorable little apartment were mine.

  What is it with me tonight? First my reaction to Ginger’s wedding ring, now the apartment. I am not—normally—a covetous person, wanting things that belong to someone else. Especially things I couldn’t afford in my wildest dreams.

  I swipe my Metrocard and meld into the pack on the platform, while way, way back in my brain, something blips, very faintly, very quickly. Hardly enough to register, really. But it was there, I can’t deny it, like not being able to deny that, yes, that was a rat skittering across your path:

  Resentment. That if I hadn’t had Starr, maybe things would be different.

  As I said, the feeling is fleeting, like the shudder from seeing that rat. But that it surfaces at all gnaws at me. Just like that rat.

  And now that I’ve beaten that metaphor to death…

  A gush of heavy, stale air and an increasingly loud series of mechanical groans and whines heralds the train’s arrival. Doors open, bodies get off, bodies get on, doors close. I find a seat, amazingly enough, settling in and forcing myself to think about all the things I have to be grateful for. One of my mother’s tricks, whenever either one of us was tempted to feel sorry for ourselves.

  We used it a lot, there at the end.

  But there were days when thoughts of losing her crowded my brain to the point where trying to find something positive about my life seemed as insurmountable as my being able to come up with a cure in time to save her.

  “So start small,” she’d whisper in the North Carolina accent nearly twenty years in Queens hadn’t been able to budge, her smile strained against skin so fragile-looking I was half afraid it would tear.

  “I got an A on my math test,” I’d say. Or, “Nancy DiMunzio wasn’t at school today.” Or, “My zit’s all gone.” Or, depending on whether or not this was one of her good days, “Jennifer and I actually got through breakfast without biting each other’s heads off.”

  If she had the energy, she’d chuckle, then add something of her own to the list. That she’d had me was always part of it, a thought that tightens my throat even fifteen years later. In any case, we’d go back and forth, and before I knew it I’d filled a whole loose-leaf page.

  So tonight, I shut my eyes, shutting out the whispers of discontent, and start small. I’ve got a seat on the train, I think.

  The man next to me doesn’t smell like a distillery.

  My daughter makes me laugh.

  I’m not having my period.

  I open my eyes and fish a tiny sketchbook out of my purse, flipping through a few ideas I had for altering some of my grandmother’s dresses. I jot down what I’ve already listed, then add to it. By the time I get home, I’ve got more than fifty items. Crazy.

  Leo’s in the kitchen, basting a chicken. The house smells like Heaven. I mentally add this to my list.

  “Where’s Starr?”

  “Gomezes’. You got a phone call.”

  My stomach jumps, which doesn’t stop me from trying to pinch off a piece of chicken skin. “Who from?”

  “Heather Abruzzo, I wrote it down. Didn’t you used to hang out with some girl named Abruzzo?”

  “Heather’s older sister. Joanne.”

  “Joanne, now I remember. Cut that out!” He smacks at my hand, but the prize is already mine. “It’s not done yet.”

  “What’d she want?” I say around the sizzling hot, succulent piece of garlic-and-pepper seasoned chicken skin.

  “Something about her wedding dress. I think maybe she wants you to make it?”

  Uh-boy.

  chapter 6

  A week later, my living room is wall-to-wall big hair and Queensspeak. It seems that not only does Heather want me to do her dress, she wants me to come up with something that will work for twelve—at last count—bridesmaids, ranging in size from a 4 Petite to a Woman’s 24.

  I tried to talk her out of it, I really did. Not that (now that I’m used to the idea) I’d mind making Heather’s dress—with her curvy figure and those deep blue eyes and all that dark hair, she’s going to be a knockout in white. But a dozen bridesmaids? I think not. Besides, I pointed out, by the time she buys the fabric and pays me for my time—her sister and I weren’t that close, for pity’s sake—she’d do just as well, if not better, buying from Kleinfeld’s.

  “Right. Like I’m gonna find dresses that’ll work for everybody at Kleinfeld’s,” she said over the phone when I called back. “And everybody still talks about that dress you made for Tina, and that was five years ago. God, that was one fuc
king gorgeous wedding gown.”

  Hard to resist a compliment of that magnitude. Of course, she would bring up Tina, who remains amazingly elusive for somebody I used to talk to no less than three times a day.

  Anyway, not wanting to appear rude—and needing time for the head-swelling to subside from her praise—I told Heather we’d talk about it. The plan was, since I’ve yet to meet a newly engaged woman who doesn’t go “just looking” for bridal gowns within a week of getting the ring, that she’d find the gown of her dreams before she and I got together, and my involvement would become a nonissue.

  Next thing I know, she shows up at my house armed with twenty bridal magazines, her sister Joanne (who’s been married for four years and has three kids), her mother Sheila (who looks like an older, drier version of her daughters), her best friend Tiffany (there’s one in every bunch) and the worst case of wedding lust I have ever seen. And I’ve seen some pretty bad cases over the years, believe me.

  So. Here we all are, in my teensy living room. It’s like Fran Drescher night in Vegas. The clashing cheap perfumes alone are enough to knock me over, let alone the noise of—let me count—sixteen women all yakking at once. Unfortunately, Heather’s dress hasn’t yet “found” her, as she puts it. So she’s enlisted the help of the entire wedding party. Which, by the time she included her sister, her sisters-in-law-to-be, three cousins she couldn’t get out of including and five of her closest friends, swelled to the monstrous proportions you see here. Except for Tina, who’s supposed to be here but isn’t.

  The crowd is beginning to make hungry noises; grateful for the excuse to escape for a few minutes, I hustle out to the kitchen where Leo and Starr are hiding out, playing checkers.

  “Quick. I need mass quantities of food, here.”

  “I just bought chips and cookies,” Leo says, not bothering to look up from the board. “In the cupboard.”

  I grab bowls and plates, rip open bags and dump out treats, stealing a Chips Ahoy for myself. Also not looking up, Starr says, “What’re they gonna drink?”

  Good question. I open the fridge to half a bottle of probably flat root beer, a carton of Tropicana, a jug of ice water and a gallon of two-percent milk.

  “I could go to the store, pick up a few things,” Leo says.

  “Two twelve-packs of Diet Coke,” I say without missing a beat. “From the refrigerator case so they’re already cold.”

  From the coatrack by the back door, my grandfather grabs his parka, hands Starr her puffy coat. “You know,” he says as he opens the door, letting in a blast of frigid air, “that could be you one day, planning your wedding in our living room.”

  I find this a highly unlikely possibility, but this is not the time for a reality check. So all I say is, “Believe me, if I ever even think of having twelve bridesmaids, you have permission to shoot me.”

  I cart bowls of goodies back out, barely having time to set them on the coffee table and jump out of the way before the pack attacks. I do notice, however, that Heather’s begun to slip into the Fried Bride stage. Her lipstick’s gone, her hair is sagging and she’s got that desperate, panicked look in her eyes. “This one’s not bad,” she says for at least the hundredth time. And for the hundredth time, she is pelted by a barrage of objections.

  “Oh, no, that’s way too plain, honey—”

  “It’ll squash your tits—”

  “You can’t be serious. Long sleeves in June?”

  “All those bows? What? You wanna look like you’re six?”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, baby, but that’s made for somebody with a much smaller ass.”

  A word of advice—choosing a wedding dress by committee is a seriously bad idea.

  She looks up at me, tears glittering in her eyes.

  “Why don’t you give it a rest for a moment?” I say.

  “Yeah,” Joanne says, brushing cookie crumbs off her front. “Maybe we should talk about the bridesmaids’ dresses?”

  Panic streaks across Heather’s face. “We can’t do that! Tina’s not here!”

  Oh, yeah, like this poor woman needs one more opinion. “Heather?” I sit down beside her, put my arm around her shoulder and hand her a cookie. “You can do this, honey.” She takes the cookie and nibbles on it, but her brow is a mass of wrinkles. “Now, do you—you,” I repeat, “have any ideas?”

  “Well…not really. Except I know I want something the girls can wear again.”

  Naturally, that brings a chorus of “Yeah, that’s right,” along with the sporadic fire of bridesmaid-dresses-from-hell stories. However, unless she’s planning on putting the girls in halter tops and suede miniskirts, ain’t gonna happen. Like “Just relax, this won’t hurt a bit,” the concept of recyclable bridesmaids’ dresses is a myth.

  “That’s a great idea,” I say, because, really, who wants to know it’s gonna hurt, right? “What colors do you have in mind?”

  “Colors?”

  Oh, boy.

  A sane, solvent person would gently extricate herself right now. Since I am neither—and since Sheila Abruzzo has already given me a hefty check up front—I smile and start tossing out suggestions. By the time Leo gets back with the Diet Cokes—at which point we get a rerun of the swarming locust action—we’ve narrowed the choices down to yellow, magenta, lavender, dark green, mint-green, pearl-gray, or some shade of blue.

  “You know what?” I heft a Modern Bride off the teetering stack at her feet and lay it on her lap. “Maybe once you find your dress, the color scheme will come to you….”

  My attention is snagged by Leo’s psst-ing me from the kitchen. I excuse myself, threading my way through the sea of lush Mediterranean womanhood.

  “What?” I say when I get there.

  “It’s Tina.”

  “That’s weird, I didn’t even hear the phone ring—”

  “Not on the phone. Here. In the kitchen.”

  She’s sitting at the table, the green tinge to her skin clashing horribly with her mustard-colored sweater, letting Starr try on her necklace. Tina’s always been really sweet to my daughter, but her affection has always seemed…cautious, somehow. As if she’s afraid to let loose.

  “C’mon, Twinkle,” Leo says, “Time to get jammies on.”

  “Aw…”

  “Now.”

  With a huge sigh, Starr hands Tina back her necklace and troops off after her great-grandfather.

  “God, she’s getting so big,” Tina says. “Who’s she look like?”

  “Judith,” I say, referring to my father’s mother. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Yeah, you’re right, I don’t know why I didn’t notice it before.”

  The conversation comes to a dead halt; I try kicking it back to life by saying, “Uh…Tina? Aren’t you supposed to be in there?”

  “Would you be, if you had a choice?”

  Point taken. I sit down beside her. “So how come you didn’t return my calls?”

  “Sorry. I just wasn’t feeling real sociable, that’s all.”

  I take her hand and say gently, “Luke’s so happy about the baby.”

  Her lips stretch into a thin smile. “I know. But please, El, not a word to anybody else. In case, you know, something happens.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen, honey.”

  She nods, not looking at me. Then, on a sigh, she glances toward the door. “So is it a total zoo in there?”

  “Total. And you’ve been missed.”

  I’m not sure she’s heard me, her attention focused on the sporadic explosions of laughter from my living room. Suddenly, her gaze meets mine.

  “I’d forgotten, how crazy and fun it all was. How happy I was. How I thought…” Tina shakes her head, removes her hand from mine. “Pete and Heather are so good together, you know?”

  “So are you and Luke,” I say through a thick throat. “And you damn well know that—”

  The kitchen chair nearly topples over, she gets up so fast. “I’m sorry, I thought maybe, once I got he
re, I’d feel better, I’d be able to do this. But…I don’t know, maybe it’s hormones or something.” She’s slipped her coat back on, the same faux leopard job she had on the other night. “I’ll call you, I promise,” she says, then vanishes out the back door.

  The woman is going to drive me nuts.

  But then, I think as I rejoin the madness in my living room, I apparently don’t have far to go. Elissa, Heather’s size 24 cousin, corners me with a plea to steer Heather away from choosing a sleeveless attendant’s dress; I say I’ll do what I can, only to find myself nose-to-chest with the only redhead in the bunch besides me, some friend of Heather’s I only know by sight, making an impassioned case against magenta.

  And suddenly, don’t ask me why, I’m up for the challenge. Of course, four months from now may be a totally different story, but at the moment, I actually think this might be kind of fun. If nothing else, I’ll be too busy to worry about things I can’t control.

  Dressing these chicks for the biggest day in Heather Abruzzo’s life—now that, I can control.

  Across the room, Heather lets out a shriek, clamping her hand to her chest like she’s just been shot. “Ohmigod! Ohmigod! I found it!”

  After I elbow my way back over, kohl-smudged eyes lift to mine, shimmering with a mixture of hope and dread. Hands shaking, she holds out the picture, as if offering up her first-born. Sixteen sets of eyes fasten on my face as I take the open magazine from her. Sixteen sets of bosoms collectively hitch with bated breath.

  The girl has chosen well, I must say. We’re talking enough tulle to outfit an entire “Swan Lake” corps de ballet, but the beading is minimal, there’s no lace, and—with a few adaptations to camouflage the, shall we say, weaker aspects of Heather’s figure—the pattern’s a piece of cake.

  “I can do this,” I say at last, and a roar of joy goes up from the crowd.

  Power’s a heady thing, you know?

  I may have to resort to a tranquilizer dart to get my daughter to sleep tonight. Since I put her to bed an hour ago, she’s been back up three times. Like one of those trick birthday candles you can’t blow out. By this time I’m in bed myself, although I never have been able to go to sleep as long as she’s awake. Unfortunately, the little monkey knows this.