A Thread So Thin

by Marie Bostwick

  “But I bet that didn’t stop you from taking notice of what those other owners were doing right and wrong, did it?”

  I laughed. Charlie knew me so well.

  “No, it didn’t. I was jotting down some notes when you called. And I took a few pictures of some displays I liked. But mostly I just enjoyed Mom’s company. Charlie, she has such an eye. Her color sense is flawless. She picked out some fabrics for a wall hanging with birds and birdhouses…. Did I tell you how she loves birds?”

  “No.”

  “She must have six feeders in her yard. I bet she’s feeding half the birds in De Pere. They eat better than she does. Anyway, you should see the fabrics she chose—gorgeous combinations. And there was no hemming and hawing about it. She just walked down the aisle of the shop eyeing the bolts, grabbed the ones she wanted, eight fabrics in all, and was right on the money the first time. She didn’t have to fuss and fret and lay out the fabrics to see what worked and what didn’t. She just knew. She’s got such a gift.”

  “Are you surprised? You got it from her and she probably got it from her mother. You don’t just lick it up off the rocks, my girl.”

  “So I’ve heard. I wish she’d come to New Bern. Even for a visit. She’d have a wonderful time hanging out with me at the shop. Everyone would just love her. And she really could be a help to me. She doesn’t believe it; she thinks I’m just saying that to flatter her, but it’s true!”

  Charlie clucked his tongue sympathetically. “Poor darling. You sound exasperated. You should come back home and let old Uncle Charlie feed you a good dinner, pour you a nice glass of wine. Then we could build a fire in the fireplace and I could rub your feet. Or anything else you’d like me to rub.”

  “Listen to you,” I teased. “Turning a woman’s distress to your own nefarious advantage. Cad.”

  “Not so! I was just suggesting a way for you to forget your troubles.”

  “Uh-huh. Sure you were.”

  “Seriously, I miss you. Come home.”

  “I will. I want to. But I can’t until I get things settled with Mom, make her see reason. Speaking of which, I’d better hang up. She’s in the sewing room cutting out her wall hanging. I said I’d help.”

  “Give Virginia my best. I’ll talk to you later. I miss you. I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Charlie. A bunch.”

  When I went into the sewing room, Mom was standing at her cutting table, rotary cutter in hand, humming to herself as she deftly sliced fabric into quarter-square triangles.

  “How is Charlie?”

  “Fine. He said to tell you hello.”

  Mom nodded. “I like that man. At least, I like the way he sounds, that Irish accent of his. Does he look as good in person as he sounds on the telephone?”

  “Better.”

  “Really? Well, that’s nice. And he cooks too. And he’s so funny.” Mom shook her head. “Why don’t you marry him, Evie? If I were you and had a handsome, funny Irishman who can cook chasing me, I wouldn’t be running quite so fast.”

  I unfolded a fat quarter of cardinal red fabric prior to cutting it into two-and-a-half-inch strips. “Thank you, Mother. But you’re not me.”

  “I’m just saying…”

  “Mom,” I said in a warning tone.

  “All right. All right. It’s none of my business.”

  She went back to her cutting, slicing squares on the diagonal, but not for long.

  “It’s just that you’re not getting any younger, Evie. After fifty, most of the best fish in the sea have already been hooked. Charlie sounds like a catch.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be happy to know you think so. And I agree with you. If Charlie were a tuna, he’d be sushi grade.” I smiled to myself, thinking how Charlie would have appreciated the culinary reference. “But, at the moment, I’m perfectly happy with things as they are. For the first time in a long time, my life is going along exactly as I want it to. I’m not anxious to make any big changes.”

  “Well, that’s fine for you, but what about Charlie? How long do you think he’s going to be willing to wait for you, Evie? Charlie seems like a good man, but he’s still a man, and if there’s one thing I know about men—” Her lecture was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone.

  Saved by the bell.

  “Are you going to get that?” I asked.

  “Why?” Mom continued her cutting. “It’s probably for you. Nobody would be calling me after eight o’clock on a Monday night.”

  Thinking it might be Charlie again, I jogged to answer the phone, the same old wall-mounted, dial-up model that had hung in Mom’s kitchen for as long as I could remember.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  It was Garrett. I was surprised. He’d called earlier in the day to let me know that things were going fine at the shop and that he planned on going into the city to see Liza in the evening. I hadn’t expected to hear from him again so soon.

  My heart immediately switched into mother mode, pumping a little faster, worried that he might have been in an accident, or that Liza had broken up with him, or that while he was walking down the street, a team of careless Acme movers had dropped a piano on him. When it comes to her children, a mother’s heart can conjure up an infinite number of calamities to contemplate.

  “Honey, is everything okay? Did something happen?”

  Probably sensing my concern from the other side of the house—after all, she’s a mother, too—Mom padded into the kitchen. “Is that Garrett?” she whispered. “Is everything all right?”

  I shrugged silently.

  Garrett laughed. He knows how my mind works. “No, Mom. Nothing happened. Well, nothing bad. Everything is fine. In fact, everything is just great.”

  I blew out a relieved breath of air, unaware that I’d been holding it in, and relaxed my tensed shoulders, at least for a moment.

  “Liza and I are engaged!”

  What?

  “Mom? Did you hear me? I asked Liza to marry me and she said yes. We’re engaged!”

  Engaged? My son, my baby was engaged? Without thinking, I blurted out the exactly wrong thing.

  “Oh, Garrett…I…Garrett…Are you sure?”

  He was quiet for a moment before speaking very carefully and evenly, making me realize that Liza was standing right next to him.

  “Yeah. It just happened and I wanted you to be the first to know. No, we haven’t set a date yet. Probably in the summer.”

  The tone in his voice told me he was absolutely serious about this. I could be happy for him, or not, but either way, he was getting married.

  I closed my eyes and bit my lip, hoping that Liza had been standing far enough away from the phone that she hadn’t heard my first response.

  “That’s wonderful, Garrett. I’m so happy for you.” I backtracked as best I could.

  “Thanks. Do you want to talk to Liza?” This wasn’t really a question and I knew it.

  “Sure. Put her on.”

  “Hi, Evelyn,” she said cautiously. “Big news, huh?”

  She had heard me, I could tell by the sound of her voice, and she was hurt. That was the last thing I wanted.

  I love Liza, truly love her. But I also know her, perhaps a little better than a prospective mother-in-law should. Liza wasn’t the same angry, embittered nineteen-year-old who had walked into my quilt shop three years before, bent on punishing the world for all the pain she’d known in her young life. She had grown up so much since then. But she was still nursing a whole collection of scars and half-healed hurts.

  Liza is a wonderful young woman and I was sure that, someday, she would be a wonderful wife and life partner to someone. When the time was right and if she still loved him, I had no doubts that Garrett and Liza could be very happy together, but today? Now? I wasn’t so sure.

  Still, the decision had been made. Garrett is a grown man. He wasn’t asking for my opinion, only my support.

  “Very big news. The biggest. Congratulations, Liza. I wish
you every happiness,” I said, which was true. “Have you told Abigail yet?”

  “We’re calling her next. Do you want to say good-bye to Garrett?”

  I said I did, told her congratulations again. Before Garrett could get on the line, Mom interrupted.

  “Wait a minute. Let me talk to her.”

  “Liza? Hold on. Mom wants to talk to you.”

  Mom took the phone and grinned, bowing her mouth into a smile that beamed excitement and approval right through the receiver.

  “Liza? It’s Grandma Virginia. I just wanted to tell you how happy I am for you and Garrett, dear. This is wonderful news! Evelyn has told me so many, many good things about you. I’m sure you and Garrett are going to be very happy together. I can’t wait to meet you. When I get out there, maybe I can throw a bridal shower for you.”

  When she gets out there?

  “That is, if I can get Evelyn to yield her prerogative as mother-in-law elect. I’m sure she won’t want to, but maybe I can arm wrestle her for the privilege.” She laughed. “Well, I just wanted to tell you how thrilled we are, dear.”

  She paused, nodding and listening, before Liza said good night and handed the phone off to Garrett. Mom repeated her enthusiastic congratulations to Garrett, then gave me the phone so I could do the same.

  I hung up the phone and turned around to see Mom standing with her hands on her hips.

  “Evelyn, what in the world was that about? Your only son and his bride-to-be called to share their happiness, and you just burst their bubble. What were you thinking?”

  “I know. I know. I didn’t mean to, but…I’m not sure this is a good idea, for Garrett or for Liza. Liza’s a wonderful girl, but she’s so young. And she’s carrying around a lot of baggage from the past. Dating is one thing, but marriage? I’m not sure she’s ready for that. And I bet I’m not the only one who thinks so,” I said, remembering the supposed “marital research” she’d been conducting at our last quilt circle meeting.

  Suddenly, it was obvious to me that Garrett had proposed before our meeting and that Liza, uncertain in her response, had been trying to ask our advice on the subject without doing so directly. Liza and I were pretty close, and when she was facing a difficult decision she often used me as her sounding board. But since the decision involved Garrett, maybe she hadn’t felt she could come to me directly.

  “I’m sure Liza has doubts. I could hear it in her voice. Couldn’t you?”

  “Well, how would you expect her to sound? She has to know you’re something less than thrilled by the news. You didn’t exactly mask your misgivings, did you?”

  I rubbed my forehead, trying to massage out the headache I felt forming behind my eyes. “I know. I’m sorry. It just caught me by surprise. I can’t help myself. I’m just not sure this marriage is a good idea. If they’d just wait a few years…”

  “That’s not your decision, Evelyn. Garrett and Liza are adults. They have to make their own decisions. And you have to make the best of it,” she said, lowering her chin and peering at me over the tops of her glasses before walking over to the stove to turn on the gas burner.

  “Did I ever tell you about what happened when your father and I got engaged?” she asked as she filled the teakettle with water.

  “No.” I sat down at the old wooden dinette.

  Mom turned on the back burner and set the kettle on the flame. “I met your father at a church picnic. His people were pillars of that church, literally. His grandfather dug and poured the foundation with his own two hands. The Wades were farmers, like everybody else, my family included. But their farm was big, a lot more productive and profitable than our place. Of course, that wasn’t just because they had more land than we did. My father was a drinker, a drunkard actually. That’s what they called it back then. Daddy wasn’t a bad man. He was always good to me and my sisters, but he just had this weakness. He tried to quit the bottle”—she paused and squinted, trying to remember a number—“oh, more than a few times, but he never could.”

  “Is that why you never drink?”

  Mom nodded. “That’s right. I worried that I’d be like Daddy, that if I started I wouldn’t be able to stop, so I never took a drop. Didn’t seem worth the risk.

  “Anyway, Daddy would go on these binges, right when there was the most work to be done around the farm, or so it seemed. So the fields didn’t get planted or harrowed or harvested like they should have. We were always owing money. When Dad would go off on a tear, my mother would try to pick up the slack and work the fields herself, but she had three daughters to raise and a house to run. When we girls got bigger, we helped out with the farm work, but we were in school, so we weren’t able to do as much as was needed.”

  The teapot started whistling. Mom took it off the fire, poured hot water into two mugs, put a tea bag in each, carried them to the table, and sat down across from me.

  “Everybody in town knew about Daddy. People were always polite to our faces but behind our backs, they talked. Nothing malicious, mind you. Just clucking and looking at my mother and sisters with this ‘poor thing’ expression. They didn’t mean any harm, but when people are feeling sorry for you, it gets under your skin, makes you feel ashamed.” Mom blew on her tea to cool it, then took a sip.

  “I never knew about this. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  Mom smiled and shook her head. “When you grew up and started drinking wine, I almost did. But I kept an eye on you. It didn’t seem to be a problem, so I kept my mouth shut. Even though he died before you were born, I didn’t want you thinking badly of your grandfather. Like I said, he was a good man at heart. He just couldn’t seem to help himself.”

  Holding the mug in my hands, I propped my elbows on the table and leaned in. This revelation regarding my family history was fascinating, but I couldn’t quite see what it had to do with my mother and father’s engagement, or with Garrett and Liza’s.

  “Anyway,” she went on, “things being the way they were, I didn’t like going to town much. Never went to church at all. But there was a woman, Hazel Miles, whose farm wasn’t too far from ours. Hazel would come by and have coffee and visit with my mother. No one else ever did. And it wasn’t like she came out of pity or trying to do her good deed for the day. She was just nice to us.

  “One day she dropped by the house on her way to the church picnic and asked if I wanted to go. I was nervous but for some reason I said yes, probably because I didn’t want to disappoint Hazel. Your dad was there, home from college. I’d seen him around town before, of course, but he was a few years ahead of me in school, so we’d never really talked. I was sitting at a picnic table and he walked up with two big slices of watermelon, one for me and one for himself, and started chattering like a magpie.” Mom grinned and shook her head.

  “Dad was always a talker,” I said.

  “Oh, wasn’t he just?” She laughed. “He could charm the birds out of the trees. He sure charmed me. I started showing up at church every Sunday. Hazel would give me a ride into town and your dad would give me a ride home. Next thing I knew, I was in love. And not just with your dad. I fell in love with God too. Every time the minister opened his mouth, it seemed he was talking directly to me, speaking to all the hurt and shame I’d been shoring up for so many years, showing me the better way. I came to faith in that little church. Not too long after, just before he had to go back to college, your dad proposed. I said yes, that quick.” She snapped her fingers.

  “Well, why not?” I said, recalling Liza’s approach toward marriage and mentally juxtaposing it with my mother’s. “You didn’t have to think about it long because you knew it was the right decision. You were sure.”

  Mom lifted her tea mug, nodding as she took a drink. “I was sure, but your grandmother Wade wasn’t.”

  “Grandma Bennie?” My grandmother’s given name was Bernice, but everybody always called her Bennie. “She said she didn’t want you and Dad to get married?”

  Mom tipped her head to one side. “Not
in so many words. But when we told her about the wedding, she wasn’t exactly jumping for joy. She smiled and hugged me, but awkwardly. Then she said, ‘I’ve been praying for Bud’s bride since the day he was born.’”

  Mom sighed heavily. “I should have just let that go, but something in her voice got under my skin. I so wanted her approval. ‘And am I everything you prayed for?’ I asked.”

  Hearing the words, picturing my dear mother, young and vulnerable, wanting so much to be loved and accepted by her new family, I winced inwardly, afraid of what came next but compelled to ask, “What did she say?”

  “Oh, I don’t remember now. Something nice, I’m sure. But she hesitated before she answered and her eyes flickered away from mine, as if she was embarrassed to look at me. That told me everything I needed to know. She was ashamed of me. She didn’t want your dad to marry me, didn’t think I was good enough for him, and I knew it.”

  I didn’t know Grandma Bennie very well. She lived way on the other side of the state, far from us but not that far. Not so far that we couldn’t have seen her more than the two or three times a year that we did. Suddenly, the infrequency of our visits to Grandma Bennie made a lot of sense.

  “It didn’t change our plans,” Mom continued. “But it did affect my relationship with Bennie. Dad’s too. Eventually, I was able to get past it, but by the time I did, so much water had passed under the bridge…. It was too bad.”

  Mom got up from her chair and took our empty mugs to the sink. I grabbed a sponge and began wiping down the table.

  “That’s why I told you this, Evelyn,” she said as she rinsed out the mugs. “I don’t want history to repeat itself. Garrett and Liza have made up their minds, so you’d better get with the program. You can’t take back what you said tonight, but I don’t think it’s too late to make up for it. Not if you start right away. The first thing we should do, when we get to New Bern—”