A Slender Thread (5 page)

Alex sat back down. His face had brightened now that they were talking of other things. He had finished the orange and reached for his coffee. He cocked his head and stared at her.

“What?” she said.

“It's funny,” he said. “You're looking more and more like Lacey.”

“You mean now that I'm older?” Margot said. “You know how to make a woman feel good.”

“You know what I mean. You've changed, that's all.” He shifted on the stool.

Margot pushed her hair behind her ears. Her hair was longer now, and like Lacey, she often pulled it into a clip at the base of her neck. But her hair was dark, whereas Lacey's was light brown, flecked with gold. Margot apparently took after her great-grandmother Suzanne, who was born in New Orleans, the odd French strain in the family. She was the smaller, darker, more intense version of her older sibling. Margot thought their resemblance had more to do with their outlook, as if the expressions on their faces reflected the way they both saw the world. Friends said they sounded similar too, particularly on the telephone.

Alex stood and started to move about the kitchen, as if he needed to be busy. He opened a cupboard and pulled out a box of salt. “We're going to take the girls on a trip this summer, a graduation celebration for the whole family. Lacey wants to go to Italy, show the girls some art, eat pasta. She talks about wanting to give them as many memories as possible. I think the change of scene would be good for her.”

“That's a great idea.” Margot noticed the turkey again. “Do you think we should get this in the oven?”

He turned and nodded. “Do we need to put anything on it besides salt and pepper? Lacey said something about rubbing it with olive oil. Or was it butter?” He stared down at the bird.

“Why don't we do both?”

As long as she accepted Alex's optimistic prognosis, he would go back to being her sweet, caring brother-in-law.

Margot went to the refrigerator to look for the butter. Every shelf was packed, but in an orderly fashion. She found the butter in the door next to the sour cream, pints of whipping cream, packets of cream cheese, and other dairy products of a similar size. Margot always marveled at Lacey's organization and thought of the contents of her fridge in New York, a jumbled assortment of takeout containers, aging condiments, and hunks of poorly wrapped cheese that would crack with age. In periodic attempts to avoid wasting food, she would wrap leftovers in foil for the freezer. Oliver called them the UFOs, unidentified frozen objects, and now and then rounded them up for the trash bin.

Margot put a stick of butter in the microwave to soften before spreading some on the turkey. Alex found a short brush for the olive oil and further anointed the bird after Margot's ministrations. They were sprinkling on the salt and pepper when Lacey came into the kitchen.

“You're both up early,” she said.

Margot thought she heard a slur in Lacey's speech. Maybe she was imagining it, or maybe it was the effect of the sleeping pill. Sun streamed through the kitchen windows. Margot hadn't noticed that it had become light.

Lacey smiled at Margot and came up behind Alex, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Happy Thanksgiving,” she said. She pressed her face into Alex's back and held on as if for dear life.

 

The Georges' house smelled more and more like Thanksgiving as the day wore on: the roasting turkey, crushed sage, buttery pastry, and the nutmeg and cinnamon for the pumpkin pie. These reassuring scents reminded Margot of the comfort and ease she experienced each time she came to her sister's home. Being with Lacey, sharing in this particular annual ritual, had always made Margot feel secure, part of a family, safe from the troubles of the rest of the world. Even when they were little girls, Lacey had provided that same sense of security. The sound of Lacey's book bag hitting the kitchen table, her footsteps coming up the stairs, or the light seeping from under her bedroom door onto the hall floor made Margot feel more relaxed, almost as if a worry she hadn't known existed had disappeared.

Now, with the knowledge of Lacey's illness, it was as if someone had left a window open and a cold draft was blowing in. That lovely, safe feeling of home had been spoiled.

Kate and Hugh Martin, Alex and Lacey's friends, were coming at four, and Lacey was planning to serve dinner at five. Hugh was running in a 10K race during the day, so they had decided on an early-evening meal. During the academic year, the Martins lived at Warner Academy, a prestigious boarding school where they both worked. They spent summers and school holidays in New Castle, in a white-shingled house a few blocks away from the Georges' home.

In the course of the morning, nothing more had been said about Lacey's condition. Wink had come into the kitchen around eleven, and she had made the cranberry sauce. Toni appeared an hour later while Wink and Margot sat at the kitchen table sipping tea and enjoying the apple spice muffins that Lacey had made two weeks earlier and frozen to have on hand for the holiday weekend.

“I thought you were never going to get off the phone last night,” Wink said, giving her sister a cool glance.

“If you needed the phone you could have said something.” Toni glared at her twin. Her long hair, wet from the shower, had darkened the back of her shirt. “Couldn't you have used your cell?”

“Yeah, right.” Wink didn't bother to say that cell phone coverage was lousy in their area. They all knew that.

Margot was used to the girls squabbling from time to time. They had the normal adolescent arguments, but now, with the knowledge of Lacey's illness, she was uncomfortable with their behavior. She wanted Lacey's day to be as smooth as possible.

“Why were you on the phone so late?” Lacey asked.

“It wasn't a school night,” Toni said. She took a container of yogurt out of the refrigerator. “Ryan is coming to Portsmouth tonight to see some friends. He wants me to go out.”

“No,” Lacey said. “Kate and Hugh . . . are coming.”

“After they leave, Mom. I won't go out till later.” She pulled herself up straight; she was not as tall as her mother or Wink.

Lacey shook her head and continued to roll out piecrust. “Aunt Margot's here too.”

“I don't mind,” Margot blurted out before she had a chance to think.

“See,” Toni said.

“But I understand how your mom feels,” Margot added, regretting how she'd unwittingly become involved in their discussion.

“I know what this is really about,” Toni said. “You don't like Ryan.”

“I”—again Lacey paused—“never said that.”

“You don't like that he's older.”

“That's not it.”

“Mom, I'm not running off with him. I just want to go out for coffee. Kate and Hugh will be gone by ten. They're like you and Dad. They never stay late.”

Lacey had opened her mouth as if to say something more. Her face was flushed and she shook her head, running her teeth across her lower lip. Margot was saddened to see Lacey upset and wished her daughters knew what their mother was going through.

Toni took a spoon from the silverware drawer and slammed it closed. She walked out of the kitchen, nearly colliding with Alex.

“Hey, what's with you?” he asked.

“Mom is being a jerk,” she muttered.

“Toni, watch it.”

“Sorry,” she said in a perfunctory way, and continued on into the hallway and up the stairs.

“What was that all about, Chief?” Alex asked, calling Lacey by the nickname he had given her soon after the twins were born.

“She wants to go out . . . with Ryan tonight. After dinner.”

“Is that a problem?”

“It's Thanksgiving. It's a family holiday.”

“Yeah, but if they went out later?”

“You always take her side.”

Wink shot Margot a raised-eyebrow glance, as if this argument was nothing new.

Margot knew to keep her thoughts to herself this time. She gathered the dishes on the table and carried them to the sink. Lacey rolled the pastry onto the rolling pin and lowered it into the waiting pie dish. The dough was a perfectly smooth disk, without a tear. After easing it to the center she crimped the edges, her head bent to the task, her mouth resolutely closed. Despite her apparent agitation, her hands moved smoothly and adeptly, capable of creating the perfect crust even though her mind was most likely elsewhere.

Alex took a bottle of water from the refrigerator. “I'm going for a bike ride.” He paused and zipped his jacket.

“Now?” Lacey asked.

“Do you need me here?” He glanced at her quickly, moving toward the door.

“Please put me to work,” Margot said. She grabbed one of Lacey's aprons off the hook. Alex looked over at Margot as if suddenly remembering she was there.

“You're sure?” he asked, his expression already relieved. Before she could answer, he hurried out.

Not long after, Lacey put the pies in the oven and began to peel the potatoes. She looked furious, peeling fast, the blade glinting in the light as if she wanted to kill them. Margot cut them into quarters, and added them to the pot.

“Are you okay, Mom?” Wink carried her juice glass to the sink. She looked over at her mother, whose lips were still pursed in concentration. “I can help Aunt Margot with that.”

“Please, Lacey. Go have a rest,” Margot said. “You've been cooking all morning. Wink and I will finish this.”

Lacey blinked quickly, an odd mannerism that Margot hadn't noticed before, and let out her breath. “Thanks,” she said. “Maybe I am tired.” She wiped her hands on a towel, gave them a quick smile, and left the kitchen. Wink shrugged and shook her head.

Margot reached for another potato and began to draw the peeler across the uneven brown skin. Unlike Lacey, who accomplished this task with a masterful competence even when angry, Margot struggled along, some peels coming away long and thin and others falling into the sink in jagged, thick chunks. She couldn't remember Lacey ever admitting to being tired, but everything was different now.

Wink finished cutting up the potatoes, covered them with water, and set them on the stove to cook. They chatted idly about how long to boil them and Margot told Wink she would take over and keep an eye on the stove. Margot was glad to be with her niece and helping Lacey even though preparing mashed potatoes was such an insignificant contribution, ultimately forgettable, merely a side dish at the Thanksgiving feast. Margot took the dishcloth and wiped the counter to clean up the last bits of potato skins, resolving that from now on she would do more.

 

At the end of the afternoon, when Margot was alone, she reached for the phone in her room, thankful that it was not in use. With everything that had happened she had completely forgotten to call Oliver. First she tried his cell, knowing it was unlikely he had turned it on. Oliver was not a phone person. He claimed he loved a good conversation, but face-to-face, or in the company of good friends. He considered his cell phone a useful tool for small emergencies, such as letting her know if he might be late. At his studio, he checked e-mail but didn't answer the phone, preferring to spend his days in his own silent, uninterrupted world.

Margot tried Jenna's apartment next. The answering machine came on and she left a message wishing them all a happy Thanksgiving and then hurriedly adding that she sent her love to all. There was so much to tell Oliver, but she would wait until they were both home in New York. He needed to have these two days away without such unsettling news.

Margot had looked forward to this visit with her sister and a few days away from the city. Oliver had been in one of his moods. It was as if a shadow had fallen over him, and as much as he wanted to come out from under it at the end of the day, it seemed to follow him home every night from the studio. He had been hoping that the Croft Gallery in San Francisco would give him a one-man show in the spring.

The Van Engen Gallery, where Margot worked, represented Oliver, and he was included in a group show that would remain up throughout the holiday season. Margot and Mario, her assistant, had just hung
Patio at Twilight
, a painting Oliver had finished earlier in the fall. The huge canvas, six by nine feet, depicted a group of people standing around drinking cocktails in a suburban-looking backyard against a yellow sky. A naked man sat slumped in the foreground on the grass. The others in the painting paid him no notice at all.

“You don't like it, do you?” Oliver had said.

He had stopped by the gallery the morning of the opening. Mario was coming in later to help adjust the lighting. Margot needed to unpack the catalogs and oversee the caterers later that afternoon.

“It's a wonderful painting, Oliver.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It raises questions. It's haunting.”

“You think it's shit.” He put his hands on his hips.

“I would never think that.”

“I see it in your face.”

She looked away from him and back at the painting. “Carl says it's the key piece in this show.” Carl Van Engen, the director and owner, always gave Oliver the plum spots.

“He's not showing my triptych.”

“It's too big. He has to have enough room for the other artists' work too.”

Oliver shifted his weight, sighed, and stepped back. “None of it feels right anymore. I spent months on this, but it's not what I'm after.”

“It's a brilliant painting. You know it.”

She looked away from the canvas and back at him. His deeply set eyes focused on his own work as if he were trying to see it for the first time. He smoothed his hair back, revealing the worry lines across his high forehead, then looked nervously down at his feet. His paintings were powerful, provocative, and she could understand their attraction. She moved close to him and laced her arms around him under his jacket. “You'll be fine,” she said.