A Thread So Thin

by Marie Bostwick

  I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at Abigail, who, oblivious to my ire, was going around to each individual place setting and moving the napkin rings up one inch from where I had placed them, then standing back to make sure each ring was precisely even to the one next to it.

  The room was silent. I turned to look at Charlie.

  He spread out his hands. “What?”

  23

  Evelyn Dixon

  For Liza’s sake, I followed Mom’s advice and didn’t confront Abigail about her high-handed hijacking of the bridal shower.

  I would have as soon as the party was over but for the fact that after the musicians, masseuses, nail technicians, and all the guests with the exception of Liza’s three roommates had departed, Abigail turned to Liza and said, “Well, darling. I suppose we’d better be off too.”

  “Off to where?” Liza asked.

  “To the city, of course,” Abigail said with a little laugh. “We’ve got to work on the wedding plans. I’ve booked us a suite at the Algonquin for the week.”

  “But,” Liza sputtered, “I just got here. I was looking forward to spending my spring break at home. You said you’d taken care of all the wedding stuff. You said that after that marathon planning session at the restaurant, it was all done.”

  “Well, the plans, yes,” Abigail replied impatiently. “That’s all in place, but there’s still a lot to do. You’ve got final fittings for the gown and your going-away outfit. And we haven’t even talked about your trousseau or lingerie. The florist has made up test bouquets for approval and we need to visit the printer to see the proofs of the invitations. Plus I’ve scheduled appointments with Emiliano Vargas’s assistant to do a test run for your makeup and hair. We certainly can’t leave that until the last minute. And tonight, the wine importer has scheduled a special tasting, just for the two of us, so we can make certain that the vintages we ordered are all they should be.

  “In fact,” Abigail said, glancing at her watch, “we’re due there in three hours, Liza. So we’d really better get moving. I’ve got a car waiting outside. Don’t worry about luggage. I had Hilda repack your things and give them to the driver.”

  Liza closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head, as if she couldn’t quite understand what her aunt was saying.

  “But…now? Right now? Shouldn’t we stay to help clean up? And what about Zoe, Janelle, and Kerry? They’re supposed to be staying overnight, then I’m driving them to the airport in Hartford tomorrow so they can catch their flight to Acapulco.”

  “I know. Very regrettable that you can’t stay to entertain your friends, but you understand, don’t you, girls?” Abigail glanced quickly at Liza’s three roommates but didn’t pause long enough to give them the opportunity to answer.

  The short one, Zoe, had an irritated look on her face, as if she wanted to say something, but she didn’t. Probably, like me, she didn’t want to make a fuss in front of everyone and risk upsetting Liza.

  “And it isn’t like you don’t see each other every day.” Abigail chuckled. “After all, you do all live in the same apartment. Don’t worry about your friends, Liza. I’ve arranged everything. I made a seven o’clock dinner reservation for them at the Grill. My treat.”

  She tossed a beneficent smile in their direction.

  “And I’ve booked a car to take you to the airport in the morning. The driver will be there promptly at seven, so don’t stay up too late, girls.” Abigail picked up her purse and looped it over her arm, preparing to leave.

  “Thank you so much for coming so far out of your way to attend Liza’s shower. I hope you enjoyed yourselves. Have a wonderful vacation. I’m sure you will.”

  “Wait a minute! What about my vacation?” Liza asked.

  There was an edge to her voice and she put her hands on her hips. The old Liza—the stubborn, pigheaded girl who could go fifteen rounds with her equally stubborn and pigheaded aunt without even breaking a sweat—was back, and that Liza can be a serious pain in the behind. In the past I’ve often wished she would grow up and learn to be a little more accommodating. But recently, Liza has become too accommodating, letting herself be steamrolled by Abigail at every turn. Mom was right: I couldn’t confront Abigail during Liza’s party. But Liza could. And it seemed, at last, she was ready to do so. It was everything I could do to keep from standing up and leading a cheer.

  “I’ve been working like a dog for months! Between classes, and the art show, and helping research that article for Professor Williams, and the wedding, I’m exhausted! And I’ve really been looking forward to having some time, just one week, where I didn’t have to be someplace or do something for somebody else.”

  That’s it! You tell her, Liza!

  Abigail lifted her chin, took her purse off her arm, set it back on the table, and stared at Liza, unblinking.

  “I see,” she said in a voice as cold and even as an ice floe. “I can certainly understand that. I’m pretty exhausted myself. For the last three months I have devoted myself to nothing but this wedding, working myself to a frazzle, not to mention spending a small fortune, because I want your special day to be perfect in every detail. It’s been an enormous task, but I haven’t minded. You’re my niece, after all. And I want to give you the wedding your mother would have, if she’d been able.” Abigail sighed.

  “But if that’s not what you want…” She shrugged. “If, after all the trouble everyone has gone to on your behalf, you’re not willing to make a few sacrifices to make sure that everything goes smoothly, I certainly can’t force you. But I’m disappointed, terribly disappointed. On many levels.

  “After so many months of us passing like ships in the night and you hardly ever coming home for weekends, I was looking forward to spending this week with you, just the two of us. Besides our appointments, I’d planned all sorts of little treats for you: an afternoon at a wonderful new spa, theater tickets, opera tickets, dinner at Jean Georges and Le Bernardin, and a private tour at the Museum of Modern Art…”

  Abigail raised a fluttering hand, indicating that there were other delights on her list, delights that had taken her a great deal of time and effort to arrange, but if Liza wasn’t interested, then there was no point in going on.

  Liza was standing next to me. I waited for her to say something sharp and cutting, but she was silent. Her shoulders drooped. I could feel her deflate under the weight of guilt Abigail was so obviously trying to heap upon her.

  What was going on?

  Six months ago, Liza would have seen right through Abigail’s manipulative machinations and wouldn’t have had the least compunction about saying so. What had happened? The sassy, hard-edged, smart-mouthed Liza I knew suddenly had no more spine than a limp dishrag.

  “No matter how important this trip is,” Abigail said, “I can’t make you go to New York with me, Liza. If you want, I’ll cancel everything. We’ll stay here all week, and I’ll just have to keep shouldering all the responsibilities of the wedding myself and hope that after all the time and money I’ve invested, everything turns out all right.”

  Abigail paused, her hand suspended in the air. She looked Liza in the eye.

  “Is that what you want?”

  Liza bit her lip. Her eyes darted around the room, avoiding Abigail’s piercing gaze. After a long pause she mumbled, “I don’t know.”

  “Well, it’s your wedding, Liza, your day. You’re in charge. I’m just here to do your bidding. So? What is your bidding? What shall we do? Go to New York, put the finishing touches on your wedding while we enjoy a wonderful week of treats and adventures? Or stay here, while away the days doing nothing, and hope against hope that the invitations are free of mistakes, the wines haven’t corked, and the gown fits? Which will it be?”

  Abigail waited. We all did.

  “I don’t know,” Liza whispered. “I can’t decide.”

  “No?” Abigail said.

  “No.”

  Abigail smiled sweetly. “Well, in that case, why don’t yo
u just trust me on this? Come to New York with me. It’s the right decision. Later you’ll thank me for it.”

  Liza nodded but said nothing, her silence denoting her consent.

  Abigail smiled. “Good girl. Very wise.”

  Abigail breezed out of the shop with Liza in tow, barely waiting long enough for Liza to give good-bye hugs all around and to thank everyone for everything (whispering in my ear that she liked daisies better than orchids any day) including the quilt, which she said was absolutely the most wonderful gift she’d ever received.

  Liza’s roommates offered to stay and help clean up, but I said we had it covered, so they left with Abigail and Liza.

  I kept my game face on until the last moment, standing at the door, waving good-bye until Liza, who kept turning around to call out her thanks, crossed the courtyard and disappeared into the alleyway. Then I closed the front door of the shop and screamed at the top of my lungs, letting out all the pent-up fury and frustration I’d been swallowing back for the previous four hours.

  “Better now?” my mother asked.

  “No!”

  “Evelyn, calm down,” Mom clucked as she started stacking empty punch cups onto a tray.

  “Did you see the way she just barged in here and took over like she owned the place?”

  Margot, in a feeble attempt to defuse the situation, said, “Well, technically, she does. I mean, Abigail does own this building.”

  “Yeah,” Ivy said sarcastically, “along with every other building in town.”

  “That may be, but she doesn’t own this business. Or me. And she doesn’t own Liza! Did you see how she bulldozed her into going back to New York?”

  Ivy, who had begun helping Mom clean up the refreshment table, frowned and shook her head. “Or the way Liza caved in and went with her? What was that about?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged, my ire tempering a bit as I thought about Liza’s baffling behavior. “She’s been under so much stress lately. Maybe she was just too exhausted to put up a fight.”

  “Weddings have gotten to be such a hullabaloo,” Mom muttered. “In my day, you either eloped and went off for a quickie honeymoon to Door County or, if you had a little money, you had a nice church wedding with fifty or sixty guests, just family and very close friends, and afterward everybody trooped down to the church basement for cake and punch. Weddings today are too stressful. Poor Liza.”

  Bells jingled as the shop door opened and Garrett walked in, flanked by Charlie, Franklin, Arnie, and, much to my surprise, Gibb Rainey, wearing his Huskies cap and grinning at Mom. Even more surprising, Mom was grinning back.

  “Cleanup crew is here,” Garrett said. “I heard you needed a few big, muscular guys to help cart away these tables and chairs. Unfortunately, the temp agency was fresh out of big, muscular guys, so they sent us instead.”

  Margot giggled. “Thanks for coming, fellas.” She walked over to Arnie and planted a kiss on his lips. “It was nice of you to give up your Saturday to help.”

  “Wouldn’t have dreamed of missing it,” Arnie said, kissing her back. “You want us to start taking down those tables?”

  Margot nodded and returned to work while the guys started breaking down tables and stacking chairs in a corner.

  Gibb looked pretty fit for his age, whatever age that was. Even so, I wasn’t sure I wanted him hefting heavy tables and chairs in my shop, and I was pretty sure my insurance agent would feel the same way.

  “Um, Gibb, could you do me a favor?”

  “Sure!” he said affably while I racked my brain to think of some mission to send him on.

  “Could you…Could you run upstairs to the workroom and get me a few empty boxes? I need some to store things in—the punch bowl, leftover cups, and…things.”

  He beamed, happy to be singled out for an important task. “Sure! Shouldn’t take me a minute. Be back in a jiffy,” he said and winked at Mom, which kind of threw me.

  “Um. Actually, it might take you a little longer. The boxes are all broken down, flattened, and ready for recycling. I’ll need you to put them back together. There’s a big stapler on the worktable upstairs.”

  Gibb’s smile faded a little. Clearly he didn’t relish the idea of going off into another room, away from Mom, for more than a few moments.

  “Oh,” Gibb said hesitantly. “Well, if you really need me to…”

  “I do,” I said earnestly. “You’re a lifesaver.”

  Gibb smiled weakly, tipped his Huskies hat, and headed for the stairs. Mom glared at me, but I pretended not to notice.

  “Thanks, Gibb!”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “So, how was the shower?” Garrett said, clapping his hands together. “Did the guests bring useful gifts? Lingerie, perhaps?” He raised and lowered his eyebrows before walking toward the break room. “Liza! Come out here and model some of your presents for me!”

  “She’s not here,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. “Abigail took her back to New York.”

  Garrett frowned as he placed another chair on the pile. “She did? Why? When will they be back?”

  “Wedding planning. They’ll be there all week.” I should have stopped right there but, angry as I still was, I couldn’t resist adding one more detail. “Liza didn’t want to go, but Abigail insisted.”

  Even with my eyes fixed on my son, I could feel my mother’s disapproving gaze beaming into me from the other side of the room. Don’t ask me how, but I could. Some childhood memories are indelibly branded into our psyches, such as the heat that can be generated from eyes of a miffed mother giving her offspring “the look.”

  “What?” Garrett said, his face beginning to flush. “Where does Abigail get off dragging Liza back to New York for the week?”

  Garrett was ticked. And I was happy he was. If there’s one emotion that loves company more than misery, it’s anger. I was still angry and glad to have Garrett as a member of my club. And it wasn’t just Garrett. It turned out there were any number of people who were irritated with Abigail—a fact that, at that moment, pleased me more than I now care to admit.

  “We’re supposed to spend the whole week together! I’ve got plans! Concert tickets! Dinner reservations! How much planning can one wedding take, anyway? We’re supposed to be planning for our future, not just the ceremony. Liza’s my fiancée, but for the last three months, I’ve barely had a chance to see her!”

  “And I’ve barely had a chance to see my wife,” Franklin added, no more pleased than Garrett about this turn of events. “When I do, the conversation breaks down into some sort of argument about this wedding. It seems like we argue all the time now. I don’t understand what’s gotten into her. Abigail enjoys a little friendly banter, the occasional intellectual sparring session, but she’s never liked arguing for the sake of it.”

  Ivy smirked as she swept crumbs off the table. “Could be worse, Franklin. Poor Liza’s been seeing—and hearing—too much of Abigail. Way too much.”

  The closest in age, Ivy and Liza share a special bond. I’d seen them sitting in a corner during the shower, heads together, their whispers punctuated by occasional laughter and furtive glances thrown in Abigail’s direction.

  “Abigail has been calling her twenty times a day, bothering her about some detail or other. Liza wants a nice wedding, but this is way more than she bargained for.”

  “Did she tell you that?” Arnie asked. The consummate lawyer, Arnie is always looking for proof. Assumptions will not do.

  “Not in so many words. I don’t think she wants to seem ungrateful, but come on! We know Liza. White truffles and caviar and music by the Boston Symphony?”

  “Those are very good truffles,” Charlie groused.

  “I’m sure they are, Charlie. The caviar was good too,” Ivy said. “I didn’t think I’d like it, but I tried some. If you close your eyes and don’t think about what you’re eating, it’s really pretty tasty.”

  Charlie rolled his eyes, impatient with Ivy’s lack
of culinary sophistication, but was somewhat mollified. At least she’d tried it and had the good sense to enjoy it.

  “But,” Ivy continued, “my point is, it isn’t really Liza, is it? I mean, if Abigail had gone out and hired Nirvana to play at the reception, at least that would have made some sense. But a symphony orchestra?” Ivy made a face and shook her head.

  “The bottom line is, Abigail is orchestrating the wedding she wanted but didn’t get. It’s all about her. Liza’s been left totally out of the picture. Abigail’s not letting her have her own way on anything. And this business of dragging her back to New York…Liza’s exhausted. She told me that the thought of this vacation is the only thing that’s gotten her through the last three weeks. Now Abigail has taken that away from her too,” Ivy huffed. “I’ve always known Abigail was pushy, but I never thought of her as manipulative. Well, not this manipulative.”

  Even Margot, who always has something nice to say about absolutely everybody, was mad at Abigail. “I couldn’t believe the way she barged in here, criticizing our decorations. Calling our daisy theme ordinary. Do you have any idea how much time we put into those decorations?”

  No one ventured a guess, but the answer was hours upon hours. Margot and I got here at dawn to start filling the balloons. And filling them was just the beginning. If Ivy, Mom, and Garrett hadn’t helped us before we all turned our attention to finishing the binding on Liza’s quilt, we’d never have been ready in time.

  “I thought they were really cute,” Margot said in a wounded tone. “And very original. More original than a bunch of orchids would have been. Anybody can have orchids. All you have to do is buy them.”

  Arnie put an arm around Margot’s shoulders. “They’re fabulous,” he said. “Next time I need a balloon sculpture, I’m calling on you. No one else.”