A Thread So Thin

by Marie Bostwick

  When he opened the door, Franklin looked tired—and relieved.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but I just couldn’t wait until tomorrow. Abigail is beside herself. She won’t unlock the door. I pleaded with her, begged her to let me in, but no matter what I say, she won’t budge.”

  After my mastectomies, I’d fallen into a deep and dark depression, a situation not helped by the fact that I’d basically holed up in the small upstairs bedroom of Margot’s house and refused to come out. Everyone—Margot, Charlie, Liza, and Abigail—had done everything they could to convince me to cheer up and get up, but no amount of tenderness and gentle encouragement could move me.

  It wasn’t until my best friend from Texas, Mary Dell Templeton, the host of the Quintessential Quilting show on cable TV, interrupted a taping to fly to New Bern and literally drag me out of bed that I’d stopped feeling sorry for myself and realized that breasts or no breasts, life not only goes on, it’s well worth living.

  I had needed someone to remind me of that, and while Mary Dell’s tactics, like Mary Dell herself, weren’t what anyone would call subtle, sometimes subtlety is overrated. Sometimes, the most caring thing you can do for a friend is give her a good solid kick in the behind.

  I turned to Margot. “Margot, remember that part in the Bible where they lowered the paralyzed man through the roof so he could be healed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember what Jesus said to him?”

  “Sure. He said, ‘Pick up your bed and walk.’”

  Charlie was right. For some people, a nice quiet talk was a waste of breath. My dad had a word for those folks on whom subtlety and suggestion were wasted. He called them “two-by-four people”—as in, some people don’t get the message unless you hit ’em with a two-by-four. It sounded like the paralyzed man was a two-by-four guy. I knew Abigail was.

  My mind made up, I started up the wide staircase that led to Abigail’s room, glancing over my shoulder at Franklin and Margot. “Well, it sounds to me like Abigail needs to do the same—pick up her bed and walk. Come on, you two. Enough pussyfooting. I think it’s about time we had ourselves an Intervention.”

  Franklin cleared his throat before tapping on the locked door. “Abbie, Evelyn and Margot are here to see you.”

  “Tell them I’m not home,” Abigail called out hoarsely. “I don’t want to see them right now. I don’t want to see anyone.”

  Franklin turned around and shrugged. “See what I mean? I think she’s been in there crying. You know Abigail. She never cries.”

  I patted Franklin on the shoulder. Poor man. In spite of the fact that Abigail had been treating him abominably for the last few weeks, he wasn’t mad at her. No matter how badly she behaved, he was too in love with her to be mad at her.

  Well, that made one of us.

  Don’t get me wrong—I love Abigail, too. She’s my dear, cherished, and forever friend, and no matter how badly she behaves, she always will be. But loving isn’t the same as being in love. As Mary Dell had taught me, sometimes being a loving friend involves exchanging kid gloves for boxing gloves. Given Abigail’s recent antics, it was an exchange I was more than ready to make. Bring it on!

  But I couldn’t confront Abigail through a locked door. How to get her to open it? I looked at Margot, hoping she might have a suggestion, but one glance at the lattice of worry lines tracing her forehead told me she had no more idea than I did.

  Margot is good at any number of things. She can create and execute a marketing plan with one hand behind her back and recite whole passages of the Bible by heart—simultaneously. But conflict and controversy are not her strong suits. Nor mine. What was I going to do?

  In this situation, what would Mary Dell do?

  My eye fell on an antique bowfront hall chest that stood outside Abigail’s bedroom door. It held a collection of very beautiful and, I was sure, very expensive porcelain and crystal collectibles, as well as a florist’s vase filled with a stunning spray of white peonies.

  “Where did these come from?” I asked Franklin.

  “Byron. The wedding planner. They were just delivered.”

  “Very nice,” I said, then pulled the flowers out of the vase and handed the dripping stalks to Margot. “Hold these.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’ve got an idea,” I answered as I poured the leftover water from the flowers into an exquisite crystal vase that was sitting on the table. “Trust me.”

  I pounded on the bedroom door. “Abigail, it’s Evelyn. I want to talk to you. I know you’re in there, so there’s no use pretending. Open up.”

  “No!” came the emphatic answer from the other side of the door. “I already told Franklin, I don’t want to talk to you or to anyone. Go home, Evelyn, and leave me in peace.”

  “Abigail, open this door. I mean it!”

  No answer. All right, then, she’d had her chance. I picked up the crystal vase and lifted it high so I could look at the maker’s mark on the underside.

  “Abigail, I am holding a vase in my hand, a very beautiful one. It’s crystal. Waterford. Looks like an antique, probably some kind of family heirloom.”

  On the other side of the door I heard the sound of chair legs scraping against wooden floorboards and of curious feet walking toward the door. She was taking the bait.

  “Abbie,” I said in a loud, clear voice, “if you don’t open this door and talk to me, I am going to drop this fabulous family heirloom on the floor and watch it shatter into a million pieces.”

  A gasp from the other side of the door, the previously distant voice now very close. “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “Oh, yes, I would,” I said gleefully. “And I will. In about five seconds. And after that, if you still won’t come out, I’m going to start in on the rest of your bric-a-brac.”

  I turned to Franklin, tilted my head toward a porcelain teapot, gold rimmed and painted with delicate sprays of pink and white roses, and whispered, “Franklin? What is this?”

  “Limoges.”

  “After the crystal, I’m going for the Limoges teapot, and then the cups and saucers, one by one, until you open that door.”

  “Great-great-grandmother Wynne’s Limoges tea service!” Abigail cried. “Are you mad? Do you have any idea what that’s worth? You wouldn’t dare. You’re bluffing, Evelyn. I know you are. Now stop this nonsense at once and leave me alone!”

  I looked at Franklin and Margot and grinned. I was enjoying this, probably a little too much.

  “All right, Abigail. I warned you. One, two, three, four…” I put the Waterford vase down on the chest and picked up the plain glass florist’s vase that Byron’s flowers had come in.

  “Five!” I shouted and let the vase go. It fell to the floor with a wonderfully satisfying crash and shattered into a hundred pieces.

  “My Waterford vase!” Abigail screamed from the other side of the door. “Evelyn! Have you lost your mind? Franklin, are you there? Do something! Stop her!”

  Franklin, who was now smiling broadly, said, “I tried to, Abbie, but she’s completely out of control. Nothing I can do. I think you’d better come out.”

  “I will not!” Abigail declared stubbornly. “I just want to be left alone. Go away! All of you go away and leave me be!”

  “All right, Abigail. If that’s the way you’re going to be, you leave me no choice. Grandmother Wynne’s teapot is next.”

  Abigail let out a little cry of disbelief. “Evelyn! Evelyn, you wouldn’t. Please. Not my Limoges.”

  “Fair warning, Abigail. One, two, three, four, five! And liftoff!”

  The door flew open. Abigail lunged for me. “Evelyn! Don’t!”

  Abigail stopped short, looked at me, standing among the shards of glass with my arms crossed over my chest, to the hall chest where her Waterford and Limoges stood entirely intact, and finally to Margot, who was holding the still-dripping bouquet of peonies with a slightly guilty look on her face.

  Abigail’s hair was di
sheveled and her blouse was untucked from the waistband of her wool slacks. Her eyes were wide with an uncharacteristically untidy smear of mascara below her lashes and an expression of panic that turned to anger as she took in the scene and realized she’d been duped.

  “You! You!” she cried and held her breath, her face flushing red and furious as she racked her brain in search of a word bad enough to describe us. Being very intelligent and well read, she didn’t take long to think of several.

  “Traitors! Deceivers! Philistines!”

  She spun to the left and pointed an accusatory finger at Franklin. “And you! You’re the worst of all! My own husband! And you helped them! How could you? Collaborator!”

  Abigail’s temper has a short fuse, and it doesn’t take much to set it off. I’ve seen Abigail angry on any number of occasions. I’m not sure why—maybe it was her tousled hair, or the way the wrinkled shirttail stuck out from under her cashmere sweater, or the fact that she was only wearing one earring, or maybe I was giddy from the emotional stress of this day—but suddenly this whole situation seemed very funny.

  I started to giggle and then to laugh, and pretty soon Margot and Franklin started to laugh, too, which made everything seem even funnier. I began laughing so hard I cried, and pretty soon everyone else was doing the same. Everyone but Abigail, who was definitely not amused.

  Red faced and sputtering, Abigail stomped her foot, smashing a few of the shards of the broken florist’s vase into even smaller bits. “What is the matter with you? Are you all drunk or something?”

  We were all laughing too hard to respond. Abigail belched an infuriated cry of indignation, spun around on her heel, and grabbed the knob of her bedroom door, ready to slam it and lock it behind her.

  But Franklin, still laughing, stopped her. In three big strides he was at Abigail’s side. In a swift and unexpected move, he wrapped his arms tightly around her backside and lifted her off the ground, leaving her feet dangling a good foot above the floor. Abigail wriggled like a fish on a line, but it was no good. She couldn’t get loose.

  “Franklin! Franklin Spaulding, let go of me this instant! This isn’t funny! Seriously, Franklin, put me down. You mustn’t exert yourself like this. Your heart!”

  Franklin beamed up at his wife and squeezed her even tighter. “Don’t worry about me, Abbie. I’m strong as an ox and you’re light as a feather—and beautiful when you’re mad. Have I told you that before?”

  Abigail made a face. “Well, if it’s true, then I must be gorgeous right now, because, Franklin, you’re making me absolutely furious! Put me down!”

  “I don’t think so,” Franklin said. “This is the closest I’ve been to you in weeks. I’m not letting you loose just so you can run back in your room and shut me out again.”

  Abigail, calmer now and somewhat resigned, growled in frustration. “I’m sorry,” she said grudgingly. “I won’t shut you out again.”

  “Really. You’ll talk to me? Tell me what’s troubling you?”

  “I will.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “Hmm.” Franklin narrowed his eyes, feigning deep concentration. “Nope,” he said brightly. “I don’t believe you. You’re just going to have to stay up there.”

  “Oh, Franklin!” Abigail exclaimed in exasperation. “Enough already! Put me down! Please.”

  “Ah, there’s the magic word!”

  31

  Evelyn Dixon

  Twenty minutes later we were all sitting in Franklin’s library.

  There was a fire crackling in the hearth. Tina padded into the room and settled herself onto a big, red tartan dog bed with a contented sigh. Abigail, her hair recoifed, her face washed, her shirttail retucked, and now wearing two earrings instead of one, offered around tiny glasses of sherry and a bowl of salted almonds.

  “Sherry is acceptable anytime after lunch,” Abigail declared.

  Even in moments of distress, Abigail is committed to observing the proprieties. But, our brief flirtation with hilarity notwithstanding, she was still distressed. I could see it in her eyes. So could Franklin.

  He smiled his thanks as he took a glass from the tray. “Now sit down, Abbie. Talk to us.” He patted the sofa and Abigail took a seat next to him. Franklin put his arm around her shoulders.

  “Talk to you about what?”

  I closed my eyes briefly, hoping she wasn’t going to be like…well, like she was. Once, in reply to some question she considered entirely too personal, I’d seen Abigail lift her chin, look down her nose, and declare, “I don’t think about things I don’t think about.”

  Getting Abigail to talk about anything personal or emotional has never been easy, but in the years since she joined our quilt circle, where verbally sharing our lives, likes, dislikes, and loves gets equal time with actual quilting, she has gotten better at it. Not a lot, but some. However, watching her sit next to Franklin on the leather sofa, daintily sipping a glass of sherry, made me think she’d completely regressed. On another day, when I wasn’t carrying around concerns of my own, I might have been more compassionate and understanding, but at that moment I was in no mood to extract information from Abigail like a dentist pulling an impacted molar.

  “Knock it off, Abigail. You know what we’re here to talk about,” I said. “The wedding. And Liza. And why you’ve been acting like a complete…” An apt word came to mind, but I don’t use that word. Also, I felt the reference might be an insult to Tina, whose big brown eyes were moving from speaker to speaker as if she were following the conversation very closely. I’d have to find another word. “A complete mobzilla.”

  Abigail turned to me, her expression offended and confused by turns. Margot asked the question Abigail wanted to.

  “Mobzilla?”

  “I think I just made it up. Kind of a mother-of-the-bride meets Godzilla thing.”

  Margot giggled. Abigail huffed indignantly.

  “With a little touch of Tony Soprano thrown in,” I added, meeting Abigail’s steely gaze. “Seriously, Abigail. You have been impossible recently.”

  “I have not!”

  Margot swallowed hard before saying in a quiet but slightly nervous voice, “She’s right, Abigail. You have been a pain. A big one.”

  Abigail sat up a little straighter, taking a defensive posture, but I could see the doubt in her eyes. Margot would rather cut out her own tongue than say something the least bit critical about someone else, and Abigail knew it.

  Nervous, Margot shifted her gaze toward me, lobbing the ball into my court.

  “Abbie,” I said, “when it comes to throwing a party, you can dance circles around me and I know it. That’s why I decided to keep my mouth shut when Garrett and Liza announced their engagement and let you do your thing. I know how controlling you can be in these situations, and I was prepared for that—”

  “I am not controlling!” Abigail exclaimed. I didn’t respond, just gave her a look, daring her to prove me wrong. She colored a little under the heat of my gaze.

  “But,” I went on, “I wasn’t prepared for the way you’ve gone around, hurting people’s feelings, including Margot’s and mine, bulldozing over everyone who gets in your way, even Liza! You’re a strong woman, Abbie, and used to getting your own way, but I’ve never known you to resort to bullying, manipulation, and outright lying to achieve your ends. It’s a lucky thing we are friends because if we weren’t, I’d have given you a good slap across the face by now.”

  “I did not lie!” Abigail gasped before turning to Franklin for support. “When it comes to implementing my plans, I’m not exactly a shrinking violet, but I wouldn’t lie! And it isn’t like I was doing this for myself, after all. I was doing it for…” She paused for a moment, screwing her eyes shut as if she suddenly had a terrific headache. Franklin’s eyes flashed concern and he leaned toward her, laying a questioning hand on her leg.

  Abigail shook her head and held up her hand. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes, continui
ng in a deliberately steady voice. “I was doing it for Liza.”

  The look on her face told me that even she didn’t believe that.

  “And yet, somehow in this whole process, Liza—her wants and her wishes for this wedding—has gotten tossed aside. Which really isn’t like you, Abigail,” I said. “You’re determined, probably more than anyone I know, but you always use that determination, not to mention your financial resources and personal contacts, to help and encourage others, not to hurt them. Especially not people you care about. You’re an unusual woman, Abigail.”

  She puffed impatiently and dismissed my careful commentary with a wave of her hand.

  “Oh, quit beating about the bush, Evelyn. If there’s one thing I’ve always admired about you, it’s your honesty. It’s a quality in short supply these days, so don’t abandon it now. Let’s call a spade a spade. I am not ‘unusual’ I am odd. I’m an oddball and we both know it.” Abigail folded her hands primly on her lap. “Or, if you insist on being polite, you can call me eccentric. I believe that’s the term usually applied to people considered too rich to offend.”

  “I don’t know about too rich to offend, but you are pretty rich,” I said truthfully. “But, Abbie, you won’t be if you keep going on throwing away money like a drunken sailor on leave! I don’t know what you’ve spent on this wedding so far, and I don’t want to—”

  “Well, I know,” said Franklin. “And I can tell you, it’s too much. You’ve always been generous with your wealth, Abbie, but you’ve never been foolish about it. And that’s what this is—pure foolishness. What’s worse, it’s been getting in the way of you being able to devote your attention, time, and money to some causes that you care about very deeply. The library, the historic society, and even the Stanton Center and the New Beginnings program, more accurately known as the Spaulding Women’s Center for New Beginnings.