A Slender Thread (34 page)

“What happened?”

“Some miracle. She made it home without killing herself or anyone else. Eventually, I got a ride home. Our car was parked halfway off the driveway. I found her keys and backed it up and pulled it in straight. Lacey had shown me how to do that. We were used to covering for Mom.”

Margot took a last sip of wine. For years she'd worried that alcohol would be a problem for her. Now and again she wouldn't drink—just testing, she'd think, wanting to be sure she wasn't like her mother. “The really horrible part was that my mother had no memory of any of it in the morning. Thank God. If Dad had found out, he would have killed me.”

“You were acting like a normal teenager,” Alex said.

Margot shook her head. She had never told anyone this before. “I abandoned my mother. It was a terrible risk.”

“You've got it all wrong. Don't you see? Your mother was the one putting you in danger. She was the one drinking and driving. She was the adult.”

“But I was the one forcing her to take me. I never should have done that.”

“You were a kid. Margot, you're too hard on yourself,” he repeated.

“I won't abandon Lacey,” she said. Tears welled in her eyes.

“I know that,” he said. They sat together for a few minutes more.

“I'd better go inside,” she finally said, getting to her feet. “Thanks for listening,” she added.

“It helps to talk. I'm the one who should thank you.” His gaze seemed to linger on her face.

Margot turned away from him and walked toward the house. She looked again at the trellis, and from the window above it she saw Lacey looking down, her eyes fixed on the garden bench where Alex now sat alone.

 

During their childhood, Alex had thought of Lacey and Margot almost interchangeably. His memories of long-ago summers were a mixture of the two sisters. Was it Lacey who ordered coffee ice cream every time, or Margot? Had Margot called for help when bailing out Pigtail, the old rowboat riddled with cracks during its final summer before Granny Winkler declared it beyond repair? Was it Lacey who found the fossil when they were skipping stones on the beach at Junior?

Later, when Lacey entered puberty, the confusion ended. The sight of her long legs, her breasts, her nipples pointed and showing clearly through her bathing suit after a swim were riveting. Margot remained the kid sister then, tagging along, following them everywhere. He had always liked Margot. She was quiet, and game for most anything, willing to carry oars, fetch life jackets, bring lemonade down to the dock. She never whined like some little kids, though more and more, he found himself wishing she wasn't always with them.

Alex had been so focused on Lacey by the end of his teens that he had failed to notice that Margot had grown up too. Her face was like Lacey's, but her skin was paler, her hair darker, and she had those light blue eyes that seemed to soak in the world around her. Though the curves came eventually, Margot never grew as tall as Lacey and there was a vulnerability, a tentativeness in her demeanor that belied her abilities in the water or on the tennis court.

Now, sitting in the garden at dusk, Alex tried to sort out what had happened between him and Margot. Okay, he'd been only twenty-two. Had it just been college boy lust? It still troubled him that he had slept with Margot when he had been attracted to Lacey first.

At the beginning of that summer, he had visited Lacey for a night when he was in Boston looking for an apartment. She seemed years older, having already taught for a year, and despite the summers of flirting, he had felt a bit awkward around her far from their familiar surroundings of Bow Lake. He had known things might begin to happen between them. He felt she sensed it too.

Then after an entire summer thinking about Lacey, he had gone to Bow Lake for that final week. And there was Margot and that inexplicable pull. Once he returned to Boston, he managed to persuade himself that their time together hadn't really mattered, was more like something he might have dreamed. He hardly knew the grown-up Margot and yet there seemed to be something between them—more than the chemistry, more than the sex.

When he'd called her a few weeks later from Boston, she had sounded distant, shy. The conversation between them had been strained. His workload the first semester was overwhelming. Their second conversation had been shorter. Maybe he should have invited her for a weekend, but he was pressed for time, and even if she had traveled all that way, they might have had nothing to say to each other. Weeks went by, and when Margot left a message later in the fall, Alex, swept up in midterms, never called her back. Also, by then he had started seeing Lacey. How could he have explained that?

He hadn't planned on falling in love with Lacey. They had a few dates, took long walks by the Charles River, talked for hours over dinner at a tiny Lebanese restaurant that ended up becoming their favorite. She made him feel confident that not only could he finish business school but success would certainly follow. In no time at all, he couldn't imagine a day without her—if not seeing her, then at least hearing her voice.

When Lacey had asked him if he had seen Margot at the end of the summer he told her that they had overlapped a few days at Bow Lake, and despite his guilt-laden feelings, he had said nothing else. He had felt bad as he uttered those words—they were not exactly a lie, but they weren't the truth either. He should have told Margot something too, found some way to put the interlude behind them. As the months went by, he convinced himself that it couldn't have mattered to Margot either. She didn't call him again. She, too, was probably busy with schoolwork and maybe involved with someone else by now.

Alex rose from the bench. The tall hedges around him, along with the house, made an intimate enclosure. A lone seagull called out in the darkening sky. He walked toward the house, trying to quiet his mind. What if he had made an effort to see Margot that fall? What if she had been more outgoing? Would he ever have been able to love Margot the way he loved Lacey? He thought of the old expression “Still waters run deep.” Had his mother said that about Margot? Or was it Lacey?

 

Margot climbed the stairs to the guest room at the top of the house. The door to Lacey's studio was closed. Hesitant to disturb her, she went across the hall to her room. Her suitcase was open at the foot of the bed and she began layering in her clothes. She hadn't brought much and in no time she had packed her things. She closed the lid and stretched out on the bed. Downstairs, the table was set and she had arranged the leftovers on platters. Across the hall, Lacey's loom rumbled and clanked in a relentless rhythm.

Margot closed her eyes. If only Oliver could see how Lacey had weakened he might understand. More than ever Margot wanted one more summer with her sister—one more summer to hear things that only Lacey could tell her.

When they were girls, just before going to sleep on summer nights Margot would ask Lacey to tell her stories about their mother before she got sick. Lacey was maybe ten or eleven by then, Margot four years younger.

Margot knew their mother had been pretty. There were photographs around their house in Concord. In one, she wore a white wedding dress, her dark hair pulled back under a band of real daisies, her eyes a pale blue like Margot's. She clutched their father's arm. Their father looked sunny and confident, one foot extended as he strode out of the church with his delicate Southern bride.

“Did Mom play the piano every day when you were my age?” Margot asked.

Lacey's voice carried across their room in the dark. “She never missed a day. She used to give lessons. Daddy said she stopped after you were born. Her students were grown-ups. Granny said Mom could have been a concert pianist. If it was your birthday she would play whatever you wanted,” Lacey continued. “She played ‘Farmer in the Dell' for me when I was really little.”

“Did she make you a cake?”

“Strawberry shortcake. She said she loved having summer babies because strawberries were in season. She claimed that nothing was better than strawberry shortcake.”

Margot regretted that she had no memory of those early happy days. As hard as she tried she couldn't recall her mother reaching into the oven, removing the biscuitlike cakes, and spooning on the sweet red berries and large dollops of cream. Her mother still managed to fix dinner for them, but it was always a hasty event. She fried pork chops in a black skillet until they smoked, or broiled chicken in the oven, sometimes not cooking it long enough, so the inside was still raw. She would forget the canned vegetables until they boiled over, but the frozen potatoes that came in a bag—Tater Tots or shoestring—usually turned out okay. If there was dessert, it might be the cherry gelatin that Lacey had made herself. Her mother made a few other things, but her repertoire was slim.

“Tell me about the songs,” Margot said.

“It's getting late,” Lacey would say. “Granny will scold us if she hears.”

“Oh, please,” Margot would beg.

Lacey would resume her story in a whisper. “Mom loved old songs. One guy was Stephen Foster. She loved his music. He wrote songs in the olden days. She'd sing, sitting on the edge of my bed. My favorite was ‘Beautiful Dreamer.' She loved ‘Oh! Susanna.'”

“I know that one.” And Margot would sing the refrain.

“There was this really sad one,” Lacey continued, “called ‘The Voices That Are Gone.' When she sang that, tears would roll down her cheeks.”

“Mom really cried?”

Lacey nodded. “Mom used to lie down right next to me and hum that one just before I went to sleep. She used to say the world would be a better place if people just hummed more often. She said that humming made your heart feel better if it hurt.”

“Can you do it for me?”

Lacey would sigh heavily, and then in a clear melodic hum one of their mother's old favorites would drift across their small room. Margot thought there was no better way to fall asleep. She would close her eyes and pretend that Lacey's voice was her mom's voice, there in the dark room.

Lacey's loom was quiet. Margot knew she should go down for dinner. Tomorrow she would return to New York. She dreaded the silent apartment awaiting her. It would be a long summer without Oliver. Swinging her legs to the floor, she promised herself she would stay busy. When she wasn't working she would get back to painting. And in August she would have her time with Lacey at the lake.

“L
ei e una bella regazza,”
Alex said, “or maybe it's
belle regazzae
?” He glanced up at the blue Italian sky as if searching for an answer. “I think that's the plural, at least in Latin.” He and his family were finally taking the long-planned-for trip.

“Dad, quit trying to talk Italian. You sound totally weird.” Toni rolled her eyes.

Alex flipped through the small dictionary and phrase book. Lacey sipped San Pellegrino water and leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes, allowing the sun to warm her face. They were gathered around a table at an outdoor café in Orvieto across the square from the cathedral. After they'd wound through the narrow, cobbled streets, seemingly a ghost town at midafternoon with closed shutters and no signs of life, it had been like a mirage to emerge in this open piazza dominated by the immense black-and-white marble church. The city was still closed for the siesta, with only a few cafés and shops remaining open for the tourists.

Wink plopped a cube of sugar into her coffee, a tiny cup of dark liquid, a fraction of the size of an American coffee.

“
Babbo
is
pazzo
.
Pazzo
is crazy,” he said, lifting his eyebrows up and down, a further attempt to amuse his daughters.

“Dad.” Wink joined her sister in protest.

Alex shrugged and smiled, knowing they tolerated his occasional silliness. He was glad they had stopped to rest. He sipped his beer, yeasty and cool, the right choice for a hot afternoon. They had driven to Orvieto from Todi, an Umbrian hill town where they had spent the night. He was still getting used to driving the rented Fiat on the curvy Italian roads. In spite of his careful planning and numerous maps, they had already gotten lost several times, once having to return to the auto route and exit in the opposite direction.

He stretched his arms back and yawned. The warmth of Italy felt great. After the hot spell during the girls' graduation, the weather in New Hampshire had remained cold and drizzly all month. The Italian sun felt amazing. He imagined the bodies of his entire family filling up with this Italian light like a magic cure, one of those alternative healing therapies that people sought when regular medicine failed. And why not? They were breathing different air, eating Italian food, drinking wine—all infusing them with the possibility for change.

“I think the waiter likes you,” Wink said to Toni.

“Come on.”

“Seriously, he keeps looking this way.”

Toni gave Wink a sarcastic grin. Besides a Diet Coke, which had come with a piece of lime but no ice, she had ordered an ice cream, a block of chocolate and strawberry, and was passing the dish around the table so they could all take bites.

“Dad, can we go back to that shoe store we saw on the way?” Toni asked. The girls and Lacey had paused in front of several shops as they meandered up the street. “Everything should open again soon. It's nearly four.”

“
I scarpi
, shoes,” he said.

“Dad, most of the shop people speak English,” Wink said. She took another bite of Toni's ice cream and gave her sister a conspiratorial glance.