A Thread So Thin

by Marie Bostwick

  When I told her that Aunt Abigail was having one of her dresses messengered to me from New Bern and wanted me to wear it on my date with Garrett, Zoe made a face, stuck her finger in her mouth, and pretended to gag.

  “Is she serious? Isn’t your aunt older than the Chrysler Building? There is no way you can wear one of her old dresses out on New Year’s Eve. She’s probably worried you’ll go out on the town with—horrors!—a hemline that’s actually above your knees and that Garrett will be so senseless with lust at the sight of your bare legs that he’ll put a roofie in your drink and take advantage of you while you’re unconscious or something.” Zoe ambled over to the tiny, cube-shaped refrigerator that sat between our beds, pulled out a diet soda, and popped the top.

  I shook my head. “She’s not like that.”

  She isn’t. Actually, Abigail has very good taste in clothes. Unlike a lot of older women with money to burn, she doesn’t go around buying fabulous designer fashions that were created for twenty-five-year-olds but look ridiculous on a sixty-five-year-old. Abigail says that at her age, “Beauty is a ship that has sailed. The most I strive for at this point is to be clean.”

  That’s silly. I’ve never seen her look anything less than beautiful. Her clothes are very fashionable, great fabrics, but always age appropriate. When I’m her age, I hope I look half as good as Aunt Abigail.

  But that’s just it. I’m not her age. Abigail has great clothes, but I couldn’t imagine that anything in her closet was going to look good on me. Especially not for New Year’s Eve in New York.

  “Just wait and see,” Zoe said between slurps of soda. “Aunt Abigail’s henchman is going to show up at your door with something that has long sleeves, a granny skirt, a turtleneck, and matching opera gloves. Something long and lumpy. Maybe a full-length snow parka. I’m telling you, Liza, she’s just worried about you showing off too much skin. When the delivery guy shows up, let me answer the door. That way, you can always lie, you can say you had to go out before he came and never saw the dress.”

  Not so long ago I’d have had no compunction about lying to Aunt Abigail, but I like to think I’ve grown up a bit since then. Even so, when I heard a knock on our door, I let Zoe get to it first. I stood behind her, nervously eyeing the white dress box as she signed the delivery confirmation slip and closed the door.

  Zoe carted the box into our room and tossed it on my bed. We both stared at it. “Well? Do you want to open it? Or should I?”

  It was a big box, big enough to hold a lumpy, full-length snow parka. I hoped it didn’t.

  “No. It’s all right. I’ll do it.”

  Taking a deep breath, I took the box top off, pulled back the layers of white tissue paper, and gasped at the sight of the most exquisite evening gown I had ever seen in my life! The design was simple: a long, straight sheath of ivory silk, with a knee-high slit in one side. The fabric of the dress was covered with long, wavy lengths of thin silver ribbon, stitched with silver thread, making a subtle and beautiful pattern, like wind rippling over water. The ribbons ran vertically from the long hem up the full length of the skirt until they ended, cutting off at varying points along the tight-fitted, V-necked bodice, fading away one by one, so that the fabric at the shoulder seams of the sleeveless gown was a simple expanse of shimmering silk. It was the most beautiful dress in the world.

  For a moment, we stood there, speechless, but Zoe found her voice first.

  “Liza,” she said, “I take back everything I said about your aunt Abigail.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well? What are you waiting for? Try it on!”

  It fit perfectly. When I went to zip up the back I realized it didn’t have one. The fabric in the back of the gown scooped into three graceful folds that fell just to the curve of my hip.

  Zoe whistled. “Liza, I’d kill to have shoulder blades like yours. They’re gorgeous.”

  I turned around and peered over my shoulder to check out the view from the rear. “Thanks.”

  Zoe picked up some discarded tissue paper and went to put it in the dress box. “Wait a minute, Liza. There are shoes in here too.” She held up a pair of four-inch stiletto sandals whose straps were strings of tiny rhinestones. They were perfect. I sat carefully on the edge of my bed, trying to slip on the sandals without wrinkling the dress. Zoe continued ferreting through the box.

  “Oh, my gosh! And diamonds! Big ones!” I lifted my head and saw Zoe staring wide-eyed into a black velvet bag.

  “Let me see that.” She wasn’t lying. I took the bag and pulled out an enormous diamond choker.

  The dress and shoes were new to me—I’d never noticed them in Abigail’s closet—but the diamonds I recognized. It was the choker that Abigail’s first husband, Woolley Wynne, had given her as a wedding present. He died many years before, leaving Abigail a very wealthy widow. Abigail kept the choker in a safe deposit box and had shown it to me once when we were at the bank. Years ago, when she’d married Woolley, the choker had cost tens of thousands of dollars. I couldn’t imagine what it must be worth now.

  “Are they real? Maybe we should hire a security guy to go to dinner with you.”

  “Of course not,” I lied as I held the choker up to my throat. The thought of having something so expensive in our no-doorman, no-luxury apartment made me nervous. There was no point in making Zoe nervous too. The dress and shoes were beautiful, but the diamonds weren’t me. They were too much. Too glamorous. “Who’d be crazy enough to put diamonds that big in the care of some nameless delivery guy if they were real?”

  Who? No one but Abigail.

  “They’re cubic zirconia,” I continued. “Fakes.” I stuffed the choker back into the velvet bag.

  Zoe twisted her lips doubtfully. “Well, they’re the best fakes I ever saw. Aren’t you going to wear them?”

  “Uh-uh. I’ve got something better in mind.”

  After helping me with my hair, Zoe headed off to Times Square to ring in the New Year.

  “This is probably my last New Year’s in New York. I figure you gotta do it once, you know?”

  I nodded in agreement, but I was glad I wasn’t joining her. I don’t like crowds. Standing for hours, squashed between hordes of howling strangers in the freezing cold, waiting for a glowing ball to drop was not my idea of a great way to spend New Year’s.

  Garrett was right on time. I’d never seen him in a suit and tie before, let alone a tuxedo. He looked so handsome. I was glad Abigail sent the dress. And he was carrying not one rose, but an armful—two dozen long-stemmed pink roses tied with a white satin bow.

  “They’re beautiful,” I breathed and buried my nose in the bouquet, the silken petals brushing against my skin.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said. “You look like Keira Knightley. But taller.”

  I lifted my eyes from the flowers. “Don’t tease me.”

  “I’m not. You look amazing. Like a movie star. Better than that. You look like you. Exactly like you. The dress. The shoes. Everything. And the necklace. It’s beautiful.”

  “Do you like it?” I asked, fingering the silver beads. “I made it myself.”

  “I love it. I love everything I see,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  Garrett and I’ve been dating for a long time, but I suddenly felt awkward. I went to find a vase so I could put his flowers in water.

  “You look great,” I called over my shoulder. “Where’d you rent the tuxedo?”

  “I bought it. Had it tailored.” He shrugged. “I figured I was too old to wear a rented tux. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be able to use it again.”

  I laughed. “Planning on joining the country club, are you? Going to the charity galas along with Aunt Abigail and the rest of New Bern society?”

  “There are other places to wear a tuxedo besides charity galas.” He looked at his watch. “Ready? Our reservation is for nine-thirty.”

  “It is?” I plunked the flowers in water and grabbed my black wool coat. Not exactly the thing to
wear with an evening gown, but it was the warmest one I had.

  “You should have told me. It’ll take forever to hail a cab on New Year’s Eve. We’ll never get there on time. Not that I know where we’re going. Where are we going, anyway? Can we walk? If not, maybe we should take the subway.”

  Garrett held out his arm like a courtier asking for the honor of a dance. “Transportation has already been arranged.”

  My apartment is on the third floor of a five-floor walk-up on Eighty-eighth, between Second Avenue and Third. It’s not the kind of place you see a lot of limousines idling in front of, but that was exactly what waited for us as we came out the front door. Actually, it wasn’t quite a limousine, not one of those ridiculous stretch jobs they use for celebrities, weddings, or that groups of twenty kids pile into on prom nights. I’d have hated that. This was just a large and very shiny black sedan. A man in a black suit was sitting behind the wheel. He jumped out to open the door for me.

  I looked at Garrett. “You didn’t have to do this,” I said, though I wasn’t sorry he had. Even if you’re not glamorous, every now and then it’s fun to pretend you are.

  “I know. I wanted to. I want this to be a night we’ll remember. Besides,” he said, looking at my sparkling feet, “I couldn’t risk you wrecking those shoes.”

  It was warm inside the car, so I slipped out of my heavy coat and scooted across the leather seat to be closer to Garrett. He put his arm around me. The chauffeur glanced in the rearview mirror and then pushed a button that raised a tinted glass window between the front and back seats.

  I laughed. “That’s what I like in a chauffeur—subtlety. What does he think we’re going to do back here? Make out like a couple of high school kids?”

  Garrett turned his body toward mine, running his hand under my hair, cradling my head in the hollow of his palm as I tilted my face up to his. The tips of his fingers were cool, but his lips were warm and soft and sweet. I liked the way they felt against mine, the way his bangs fell into his eyes and brushed my cheek as his head bent over mine, and the muscled weight of his body pressing me back into the smooth leather seat as we kissed and clung and glided silently through the streets of the city, past sidewalks full of smiling, laughing crowds, everyone happy and everyone hopeful, believing that maybe, just maybe, the best year of their lives was about to begin.

  It’s just not in my nature to look at things that way; I wish it were. But for a little while that night, my wish came true. With Garrett’s lips on mine as I reached my arms up and draped them over his shoulders like two vines clinging to a strong and steady wall, something relaxed inside me and I believed it, too, that nothing but good was on the horizon. What lightness! I felt like I’d assumed a secret identity, put on a beautiful borrowed dress and shoes supplied by a good fairy, climbed into a pumpkin coach sedan, and suddenly transformed into a sanguine, faith-filled optimist. By the time the driver pulled up in front of the Carlyle Hotel and the maître d’ escorted us to a VIP table near the stage, I was a new person. It felt wonderful. But it didn’t last.

  The fairy godmother gown, borrowed rhinestone slippers, champagne by candlelight, the pumpkin coach car—in the end, none of it made any difference.

  When Garrett dropped to one knee in the middle of the dance floor at the Café Carlyle while the orchestra played the song he’d requested in advance, pulled a small blue box out of his tuxedo pocket, and asked me to marry him, the spell was broken. The optimistic, hopeful Liza vanished and the old Liza—the one who knows that happily ever after is only for books and that real life, the part that comes after the story ends, is hard and uncertain—was back in an instant.

  Garrett wanted me to marry him. I didn’t know what to say.

  2

  Liza Burgess

  Garrett got to his feet, dusting off the knee of his pant leg as he did.

  The ring of couples that surrounded us, peering hopefully at us a moment before, convinced they were at the most romantic New Year’s Eve celebration in New York and ready to witness their approval of our engagement by a round of applause, shifted their eyes and began to dance again, pretending they hadn’t seen Garrett’s proposal or what, to their eyes, appeared to be my shocked and silent refusal.

  “Come on. Let’s go back to the table.” Garrett grabbed my arm and I followed him, keeping my eyes lowered but feeling stares on my back as we left the dance floor, wending our way through the packed press of bodies. The crowd thinned as we neared the table. It was a quarter to twelve and nearly everyone was dancing, wanting to be near their beloved for the first kiss of the year as the clock struck twelve, balloons dropped from above, and the band played “Auld Lang Syne.”

  “You know, maybe it would be better if I took you home now. So we can avoid the traffic.”

  “But it’s not midnight yet.”

  “Yeah. Well. Suddenly I don’t feel like celebrating.” He shoved his hands in his pants pockets and started heading past the circles of empty tables and toward the door, this time not bothering to grab my arm. Instead, I reached out to grab his.

  “Hey! Garrett, wait a minute. Don’t be like that.”

  He turned to face me, shaking off my grasp as he did. Unlike me, Garrett’s got a long fuse, but he was angry.

  “Don’t be like that? How am I supposed to be? You completely embarrassed me out there, Liza. Now you think I should just stick around here so that everyone can stare at me?” His brown eyes flickered black.

  “You were embarrassed? You?” I put my hands on my hips. “You weren’t the only one out there, you know. Everybody was staring at me too. It was humiliating! Did you ever stop to think what a spot you were putting me in? Whatever gave you such a crazy idea?”

  “Well…I…no…I…” Garrett sputtered and turned red. “This isn’t just some crazy idea I cooked up on the spur of the moment, you know! Do you have any idea how long I’ve been planning this? You’ve got to call weeks ahead to get a table like this at the Carlyle, especially on New Year’s Eve. I planned out the whole thing, but I wanted to surprise you! Is that so terrible? You always say you love surprises!”

  “I do!” I shouted. “As long as I’m prepared for them!”

  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I could hear Abigail laughing.

  I closed my eyes, trying to calm down and collect my thoughts.

  I’ve been trying to do a better job about keeping my temper and thinking things through before I react. It takes some effort, but I can do it if I focus. That’s what I was trying to do: calm down, focus, and look at this thing from Garrett’s point of view. But it wasn’t easy.

  I didn’t understand why Garrett had decided to suddenly pop the question. No, that wasn’t right. Clearly, he’d put a lot of planning into this evening. There was nothing sudden about his decision. And his intentions were really very sweet. But that still didn’t make it a good idea. What was he thinking?

  Why would he propose to me—crazy, hot-tempered, impulsive, twenty-two-year-old me, who barely knows what she should do next week, let alone how she should spend the rest of her life and with whom?

  On the other hand, did that necessarily make it a bad idea? I wouldn’t always be like this, would I? I was a whole lot more mature than I’d been even a couple of years ago. The fact that I was holding my tongue and trying to look at this thing rationally instead of just freaking out proved it, right? And I wasn’t so young. After all, I’d graduate in just a few more months, find myself out of the classroom and into the real world, and getting married was part of that, wasn’t it?

  Maybe. But maybe not. I didn’t know. But I did know Garrett well enough to realize he hadn’t meant to put me on the spot deliberately. That was just the way it had turned out.

  I opened my eyes and looked at Garrett. “I just wasn’t prepared, all right? This has been such a beautiful evening. Abigail wouldn’t give me specifics, but she called and told me you were taking me somewhere really nice and advised me to step up my wardrobe. So I was expecting a special
evening, but I could never have imagined this! The roses, the limousine, dinner and dancing at the most elegant restaurant in the city…. Thank you, Garrett. I’ve had such a great time.”

  “Right up until the part where I wrecked it by asking you to marry me, right?”

  I pressed my lips together, annoyed by his petulant response. “That’s not what I meant and you know it. I was prepared to have a lovely time with you. I always do, whether we have dinner at the Café Carlyle or a cup of coffee at the Blue Bean, but I never in a million years expected you were going to propose.”

  Garrett’s eyebrows flattened into a line. He pulled his balled-up fists out of his pockets and opened his hands, jerking his arms in an impatient gesture. “Well, why not? You said it yourself. We always have a great time together. We’re happy together, so why shouldn’t we want to be together? What’s so surprising about that?”

  “Nothing, I guess. But you’re making this seem like a perfectly logical, even obvious next step. I don’t think it’s as simple as that. If two people are going to spend the rest of their lives together, there has to be more to it than just enjoying each other’s company, don’t you think?”

  Garrett’s eyebrows drew apart, smoothing out the creases in his forehead. He relaxed his shoulders as if he suddenly understood everything.

  “Well, sure. Of course there is! I’m sorry, Liza. I’ve never proposed before. Guess I was so focused on creating the perfect atmosphere that I left out the most important part: the actual proposal. Let me try again. I’ll do better this time.”

  He took a step forward, took my hands in his, and locked his eyes onto mine. “Liza, I love you. You are the last thing I think about when I go to bed at night and the first image in my head when I wake up in the morning. You’re the smile on my face when I go to work and the song I whistle as I walk down the street. You’re the person I’ve waited for all my life. And now that I’ve found you, I want to be with you for now and forever. I love you, Liza. Please. Please, marry me.”