Hanging by a Thread (31 page)

“What was what all about?”

“Dolly and Leo.”

I look up to see her give me The Hands. Palms up, fingers spread. She has clearly been hanging around the Scardinares too much lately. “You were supposed to be in the living room,” I say.

“You guys talk too loud.”

Shit. I finish picking up the fish, tossing a piece of it into Frito's food dish. “I don't want to talk about it right now.”

“But—”

I whirl around a second time, advancing on my daughter so fast she stumbles backwards. “I
said
I don't want to talk about it right now! For God's sake, Starr—give me a freaking
break!
”

I have never yelled at her. Ever. And when I see the stunned, hurt look in her eyes for that instant before she takes off, I die inside. I run after her, catching her before she hits the stairs.

“Let go of me!”
she screams, sobbing.

“Oh, God, Starr, I'm so sorry, baby, I'm so sorry…” I sink onto the stairs and pull her awkwardly into my lap, wrapping my arms around this kid I didn't have to give up, that I chose to have, and keep.

“You yelled at me!”

“I know, Twink.” She's all jutting limbs and frizzy hair, her skin so soft I can barely feel it. “It's not your fault, I was upset—”

But she's way too upset herself to hear me, I realize. “I want
L-Leo!” she says on a wail, throwing her arms around my neck and plastering herself against me. “I w-want him to come b-back! I hate that he's d-dead and I'll never see h-him again and I hate G-god for taking him away from m-me!”

“Oh, sweetie…” I hug her even more tightly, my shirt getting soaked in the tears she's held in so valiantly until now. Who knows, maybe my yelling at her finally gave her permission not to feel she had to be tough for her basketcase mother. But as I sit there, my own tears running down my cheeks, I realize I feel the same way, angry at God or who/whatever for taking away my grandfather. Not his body, but my idealized notion of who he was.

For the next several minutes, we just sit there, weeping, me saying whatever mothers are supposed to say at times like this. Gibberish, mostly. Lots of apologies. Except when she tries to elicit a promise that I'll never yell at her again, I tell her I can't do that.

What I can do, however, is tell her as much of the truth about her grandfather and Dolly as I think she can handle. Which basically boils down to letting her know that Dolly is actually her great-grandmother, that Liv and the boys are her cousins. And I tell her (because this just occurs to me) that maybe someday Dolly can tell her stories about her grandfather from when he was a young man that might help her not miss him so much.

Because it occurs to me that I
don't
know what was going on in my grandfather's head, that it's quite possible his choices made him miserable, too. And who the hell am I to judge him? You know, all that stuff about casting the first stone. After all, as Alan so succinctly put it, everybody fucks up.

Something I sincerely hope this little girl remembers when she eventually finds out a few things about her mother.

 

As she's done since she was tiny, Starr has opted to be by herself for a while, until, she says, “I feel like me again.” So I'm alone in the living room, feeling appropriately morose and moody, when Alan calls.

Morose and moody go sailing out the window as the dating alarm goes off in my head. You know, the total panic generally accompanied by ripping everything you own from the closet, followed immediately by the realization that you cannot, short of hacking off a limb, lose twenty pounds in less than twenty-four hours.

Yes, I know, how very high school of me. Well, honey, since it's been nearly that long since I've been on a date, deal with it.

Anyway. So here the man is, on the other end of the phone, making plans. And here I am, on this side, feeling conflicted.

So what else is new?

I'll tell you what else is new. That I feel flattered as well as conflicted, that's what. I mean, holy crud—when was the last time a man showed enough interest to actually go after me? 'Tis a strange and wonderful feeling. And yes, I know there was Daniel, but since I'm doing my best to ignore that part of my life, work with me here.

He's insisting on picking me up tomorrow, then whisking me off for a romantic evening in town. Or, if Starr has to come, a Mets game. The man is a keeper, I tell you. Not sure if he's my keeper, but he sure as hell is somebody's. Although at some point I should probably find out why, since he's thirty-eight, nobody's kept him yet.

See? I'm learning.

We talk for a few minutes more, I find out he was the set designer for a hit London musical now coming to Broadway, that he's here supervising the adapted sets for the Winter Garden; he goads me into telling him about my designing and making the dresses for Heather's wedding, my decision to stay
home for Starr, my being a landlord of sorts. Then he gets another call and we say a hurried good-night, leaving me with that delightful what-the-hell-am-I-
doing?
feeling.

Jen comes in the door and drops her keys on the hall table, which is the first time it occurs to me how long she's been gone.

“Everything okay?” I say.

“Yeah. Dolly invited me in for coffee.” She comes over and sinks onto the sofa, crossing her legs and slapping one mule against her bare sole. “She's got pictures of us, do you believe it?”

“You're kidding?”

“Nope. A whole album full. She said Leo gave them to her after Nana died.” Then she leans her elbow on the arm of the sofa, her fingers plowed through her hair, staring at a spot over my left shoulder.

“What are you thinking?”

“I'm not sure.” Her eyes focus on mine, but slowly, as if she didn't expect me to be there. “All that lost opportunity crap, I suppose. I mean, here are two people who couldn't be together, and other people who probably should never have been together…” Her brow puckers. Very delicately, though. “You gotta wonder… If Leo was so dead set against anyone ever discovering the truth, why did he leave those adoption papers where they could be found?”

A question I'd already asked myself. “Guess we'll never know the answer to that one.”

“Guess not.” Then her expression changes, as though she's tired of that subject. “So…I never got a chance to ask, how was your trip into Manhattan?”

This new Jen is like upgrading your computer system. Gonna take some getting used to, I can tell. Granted, it's much more interactive, but do I dare download new data to it without freezing the whole shebang?

“Actually…I kinda met someone there.”

She perks up. “As in, a man?”

“Yep. And he asked me out. For tomorrow night.”

That gets a frown. “And you're
going?
Out? With a total stranger?”

“Actually…he's not a total stranger. We met before. Briefly. A friend's brother. Actually.”

Now, Jen and I have never
actually
had a heart-to-heart about old Danny boy, but she knows nobody left Starr in a basket on my doorstep. And even though I don't think Daniel's actually her father (yet), and since we can't talk about who I think
is
her father, The Man Who Sucked Out Ellie's Brain wins by default. And somehow, I don't think Jen's gonna be exactly wild about my going on with The Man Who Sucked Out Ellie's Brain's brother. I'm not even sure I'm all that wild about it, frankly. So I decide not to
actually
tell her the truth.

Yet.

She narrows her eyes. “I know who this is, don't I?”

Little sigh of relief, here. “No, you don't. His name's Alan.”

“Alan what?”

Damn. “Stein.”

“Jewish?”

“That would be a safe guess, yes.”

“Stein, Stein…” After a moment of careful puckering, she shakes her head. “Nope. You're right. Don't know him.”

“Which reminds me…could you baby-sit?”

“Of course I can baby-sit, don't be silly. I mean, my God, how often does this happen, you going on a date?”

“Okay, that was just you injecting a little levity into the subject of my pathetic love life, right? As opposed to being snide and cruel, like I'm used to?”

She just grins. “So what does this mean?”

“Nothing. Other than I've met a nice man who wants to take me out and I'd be an idiot to turn him down.”

“O-kaaay… As long as you're happy, right?” While I mull
this over—
Happy? Who the hell knows?
—she gets up, stretching out her lower back. “I'm pooped. Think I'll call it a night.” Halfway out of the room, however, she turns back, her hands in the pockets of her pale pink linen shorts. “By the way, I've started job hunting.”

Not sure how many more of these shocks I can take in one evening. “Job hunting? But I thought—?”

“The book?” Her smile slants to one side. “Isn't going to feed me. At least, not for a very long time. If ever. Something about finding those papers, hearing Dolly tonight…” She shakes her head. “I'm long, long overdue for a few lessons in facing facts. And the first lesson is, nobody's gonna support me but me. Whether I ever get married again or not. So I think I'm going to go see what I can dig up in the city with some events planners. Maybe someone could use a very classy assistant, whaddya think?”

Smiling, I tuck my legs up under me. “You're just doing this because you can't stand living here any longer.”

“Boy, can't get a thing past you,” she says, and we laugh. Then her smile fades a little. “Although it's not nearly as bad now as it used to be.”

“Meaning?”

“I'm not sure. But it's as if…” Her gaze takes in the room. “There's more light in here now or something.”

“That's what generally happens when you turn on a lamp.”

That gets an eye roll. “No, I mean, it's not dark and heavy anymore with all these secrets, you know? I actually don't mind being here now, not like when we were kids. But it's just…I need my own home. Someplace I choose to live, not where I have to live. Does that make any sense?”

“Yeah. I think so,” I say, even as I'm wondering if maybe that was partly why I wanted to get away from here, too, even if I wasn't actually conscious of it. All these secrets, threatening to bury me alive…

Jen nods and leaves, high-fiving Starr as they cross paths. High-fiving, for cripes' sake. Wouldn't've believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.

“Are you feeling like ‘you' again?” I ask my little girl.

Tiny shoulders hitch. “Close enough.”

I pull her into my arms. “Still mad at me?”

“No. But you're
much
scarier when you're mad than that stupid old monster.”

Unless I'm mistaken, there's a smidgen of pride behind her words. One of those “my mama can beat the crap out of you” kind of things. Hey. Whatever works.

Suddenly, I want to talk to Frances. I
need
to talk to Frances. “Go find your flip-flops and let's go next door, see what Frances and Jimmy are doing.”

“All
right.
”

Five minutes later, Starr's down in the Scardinares' basement watching Jimmy tinker with something that Frances swears is gonna blow up in his face one day, and I'm in the kitchen with Frances, baring my soul. Or at least as much of it as I'm gonna. I tell her about meeting Alan and him asking me out, about Dolly, about Jen's turning over a new leaf and looking for jobs and stuff. The whole time I'm blathering on, she sits there with her chin in her hand, watching me, listening but not talking much. Her eyebrows go up a few times, but other than that nothing I say seems to surprise her. Not even the stuff about Dolly. But when I'm done, she gets up to get a couple of cans of root beer out of the fridge.

“I've got some vanilla ice cream—wanna float?”

Frances has a serious thing for root beer floats. As do I. But since nobody at my house likes root beer much, I only ever have them here. “You have to ask?”

She gets down a pair of heavy stemmed glasses from the top shelf, the move exposing a sliver of her bare back underneath the hem of her sleeveless cotton top. Her arms are sinewy and
strong and reassuring, the muscles flexing as she scoops ice cream into first one, then the other. An unruly hunk of hair flops into her eyes; she pushes it back with her wrist, then glances over at me.

“So. What's this guy like?”

A reasonable enough question. And one I invited by telling her about Alan to begin with. Yet, even as I answer—English, witty, gainfully employed, attentive (I leave out the Daniel connection)—I get this icky feeling inside.

“And he knows about Starr?”

“Uh-huh. They've even met.”

More eyebrow lifting. “And he's okay with this?”

She should only know. Then again, maybe not. “Oh, yeah.”

Frances pours the root beer over the ice cream—carefully, so the heads get nice and high but don't do the overflowing lava number, the way I usually make them—then carries them to the table, takes her seat and says, very gently, “Now quit the b.s. and tell me why you're really here.”

“I have no idea—”

She jabs her spoon at me. I blow out a breath.

“Okay, fine.” Into my mouth goes a huge glob of float fluff. “It's been two weeks since I've heard anything about Luke and Tina and the suspense is killing me and I thought you might know something.”

Frances sucks on her spoon for a second, then says, “Guess that shoots any hope I had of finding out what
you
knew.”

“You haven't heard either?”

“Not word one. And when I call, all I get is his answering machine.”

“You think he's screening his calls?”