Threading The Needle Part 15

On my eighteenth birthday weekend, Jake came up from Fair-field to take me out. Grandma Edna had gone to visit her sister in Albany and wouldn't be back until Tuesday. I hadn't told her about my date with Jake.

The drinking age was eighteen back then. My birthday wasn't until Monday, but Jake and I decided to celebrate a little early. n.o.body checked our I.D. I don't remember how many bars we went to, but I do remember a tree branch coming through the windshield and the flashing lights of a squad car.

We didn't die. We could have, maybe we deserved to, but we didn't. That was the good news. The bad news was that the whole front of the car was smashed in and that Jake got a citation for driving under the influence. The penalties for that were a lot more lenient back then, but it still wasn't good. I remember Jake sitting in the waiting room of the hospital with his head in his hands and mumbling over and over again, "He's gonna kill me. Uncle Sal is gonna fire me and then he's gonna kill me. Then my dad's gonna kill me again."

On Monday, I went into work as usual, black eye and all. Woolley was scheduled for a meeting in Litchfield and lunch with his wife. I didn't expect to see him in the office before two or three. I tried to type up a few letters so they'd be ready for him to sign in the afternoon but couldn't concentrate.

At noon, I locked the office door and walked back to Beecher Cottage for my lunch break, surprised to see Edna's car in the driveway. I was even more surprised to see that my bedroom window was open and that a small mountain of my possessions-clothes, bedding, books, stuffed animals, stockings-was forming on the lawn.

Cursing a blue streak, Edna stuck her head out the window and tossed an armful of my things onto the pile below, including one of my slips. As it fell, the sun shone through the cheap rayon and machine-made lace, making it appear finer than it was. For a moment, it seemed suspended in midair, hovering indecisively overhead, before falling earthward and landing in a puddle of brackish rainwater.

I fished it out of the puddle, muddy and bedraggled, and I looked up at the window at Edna, who was about to throw another armful of my things onto the lawn.

"What are you doing? Have you lost your mind?"

"I'm helping you move out, you little . . ." she shouted, using a word to describe me that she'd never, ever used before, not among years of insults.

She knew.

She'd had a fight with her sister and come back from Albany a day early, arriving just in time to take a call from Jake's father, who was screaming at her about me. She told me all about it, shrieking insults from the window ledge to the lawn. Then she was downstairs, outside, standing on the gra.s.s, looming over me, red-faced and furious, as I bent down to gather up my things.

"I want you out of here, you little tramp! Today!"

She couldn't have wanted that any more than I did, but where was I to go? I had no car, no place to live, no friends, and one hundred and seventeen dollars in the bank.

"You can go to the devil for all I care!" she screamed. "You're headed there anyway! You're just like your mother, just like I always said you'd be. You're a tramp, just like she was. A man-trap. You ruin everything for everyone!"

"It was an accident!"

She grabbed me by the shoulders and shook. "An accident? An accident? You went out and drank until you couldn't see straight. That was no accident!"

She pulled her arm back before swinging it forward to slap me as hard as she could on my bruised cheek and blackened eye. "Idiot! Don't you ever stop to think how this affects me? Everyone in town is talking about this!"

I was used to Edna slapping me, but this was different. She swung her arm back and forth, again and again, like a scythe cutting a swath through tall gra.s.s, accenting each crack of her hand against my face with another curse. With the fifth blow-or perhaps it was the sixth, I'd lost count by then-the edge of her diamond wedding ring hit my face, tearing the flesh at the corner of my lip.

My ears rang. I felt a line of blood drip down my chin, a big hand on my arm, shoving me aside, a big-shouldered man stepping between me and my grandmother-Woolley Wynne.

There was a scene between Woolley and Edna, a lot of shouting and insults. The details of it don't matter now.

I do remember Woolley getting in Edna's face, eyes flashing and furious as he called her a crazy old kook who'd driven away her son and whose husband had died just to get away from her nagging and then ending his tirade with a long string of very descriptive epithets. Edna was speechless. I don't think anyone had ever spoken to her like that before.

I wanted to jump into the air and cheer. It's possible I did; my memory of that scene is a little fuzzy now. But I do know that at the end of it, I rode away in Woolley's white Cadillac with all my worldly goods in the trunk.

Woolley's eyes were dark and angry as we drove away. I thought he was angry with me.

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

Big question. With so many answers. I was sorry for myself, for one thing. Sorry that I'd become exactly what Edna had always said I would-worthless. Something to be tossed out the window and into the mud. Eighteen years old and I'd already managed to screw up my entire life. And Jake's too. I was a completely sorry excuse for a human being and I knew it. But, at the time, that was too much to explain, especially to my boss.

"I've made you late for lunch with your wife."

"I'll call the restaurant and tell her I've been delayed." He took his eyes off the road for a moment, frowned, and pulled a snowy handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket.

"You're bleeding." He glanced back and forth from my face to the road as he dabbed my lip, staining the pristine white square with angry dots of crimson. "That's better."

He stuffed the handkerchief into his pocket, then reached out with his hand and touched my lip, my cheek, the purple swelling under my eye, one after the other, briefly but methodically. Woolley had the softest hands of any man I'd ever met. His nails were trimmed close and buffed to a shine. His fingertips were a velvet caress on my bruised cheek. I lifted my chin toward his touch, closing my eyes as his fingers strayed from my face to slowly stroke the flesh of my throat.

"Poor baby. Shall we take you to a doctor?"

"No. I'm fine. I just had a rough night is all."

"Ah, yes," he said, smiling a little. "It was your birthday weekend, wasn't it? You're eighteen now." His smile widened.

"We should take the day off and celebrate," he said. "Where do you want to go? What do you want to do?"

"I don't know."

"No? Well, in that case, I've got an idea."

He turned the car around and drove north, to a little inn just over the New York state line, where the rooms had low, rough-beamed ceilings, tiny, mullioned windows, fireplaces, and wide white beds with fine-loomed sheets that felt like silk on my bare back, the room where I learned that, unlike boys, men cannot be put off by teases and temptations and promises of everything but.

Woolley had rescued me, plucked me up from the side of the road, defended me, carried me far away to a beautiful place. His voice was sweet in my ear and his hands were soft on my body. There was no hesitancy, no uncertainty in his touch. He knew what he was doing and he knew what he wanted-everything.

By the time he slipped off my skirt, picked me up in his arms, carried me across the room, and laid me down on that wide white bed, that's what I wanted as well.

Everything.

I loved him, the way only a very young girl who has never loved before can. I believe he loved me, too, a little, but not enough. Not enough to give Abigail up for me.

Woolley didn't love anybody the way he loved Abigail. He was obsessed with her-the way only a man who is used to getting everything he wants can be when presented with the one thing he can't have.

I loved Woolley and he loved me, but not enough. Woolley loved Abigail and she loved him not at all. And Sterling? Sterling loved no one, not ever.

Life is so ridiculous. And so very, very lonely.

For four years, until Abigail told him that either I had to go or she would, Woolley took care of me and helped me forget my loneliness. And just like that, it was over. He put me on the train to New York with a check in my wallet, a kiss on my cheek, and a job offer from Sterling Baron that we both knew would involve very little typing.

"You'll be happier with someone nearer your own age. And Sterling is utterly infatuated with you."

"He barely knows me," I argued. "He only saw me that one time in New York."

"And spent the rest of the night staring at you from across the room, like a cat watching a canary. He couldn't take his eyes off you all night. When I called, it didn't take him two seconds to say you could come work for him."

"We haven't exchanged ten words."

Woolley blinked, clearly confounded by my observation. "What difference does that make? Listen to me, Madelyn. In a few years Sterling Baron will be one of the most powerful men on Wall Street. A man like that needs a woman who'll do him credit. Play your cards right and you'll be that woman."

"But I don't love Sterling Baron! I don't even know him. I love you, Woolley. I want you. How can you pa.s.s me off as if I were an outgrown sweater? I love you."

Woolley's laughing eyes became hard. He didn't return my endearment or try to defend himself. That wasn't his style. Woolley never lied to me. Sometimes I wished he would.

"Madelyn, you can get on that train, go to New York, be nice to Sterling, and live in the style you've become accustomed to, or try to make a go of it somewhere else on your own. Accept my help or don't; it's up to you. But what you can't do is stay here. We've had a good time, but I'm not going to lose Abigail over a good time."

"Abigail doesn't love you," I spat.

"We don't get to pick who we love, Madelyn. Nor who loves us. Sterling Baron might not be your idea of Prince Charming, but he's rich and he's going to be even richer. And he wants you. You're a lucky girl," he said with a thin smile. "So, no more tears. Say good-bye and get on the train. In a year or two, you'll be set for life. Well set. And you'll be glad you listened to me. No matter what they taught you in school, money can buy happiness, Madelyn. It can even heal a broken heart."

I was wrong. Woolley lied to me after all.

I lifted my head from the cradle of my arms and wiped away the tears with the back of my hand before going to the sink to splash cold water on my face. That's when I remembered that I'd left the bag with the quilts in the coffee shop. d.a.m.n!

Well, I hoped whoever found them put them to good use, because I wasn't going back to retrieve them, not today. I wasn't going anywhere today. Tomorrow was a different story. Ghosts or no ghosts, come the dawn, I had to get up, go out, and go on.

To paraphrase an old love, I had a choice: I could go to the left or I could go to the right, but what I couldn't do was stand still.

24.

Tessa November Ishouldn't have told him. I just should have lied.

We've always had a joint checking account. Lee used to leave the job of balancing it to me. Now he calls the automated teller line every night to see which checks have cleared. And he questions me on every purchase.

"Madelyn Baron? You spent sixty-seven dollars on fabric to make a quilt for Madelyn Baron?"

"When I knew her, she was Madelyn Beecher. And she was my friend."

He choked out a laugh that was really an accusation. "First of all, no, she wasn't. You stopped speaking to her when you were twelve years old."

"And that was a mistake."

"And second, I don't care if she's your long-lost twin! We're broke, Tessa! Do you get that? I'm going to have to let the health insurance lapse so we can pay the mortgage this month!"

This announcement pulled me up short. I didn't know. He hadn't told me. That made me angrier, but in a different way. Why hadn't he told me?

Leave it. One argument at a time.

"I'm sorry."

"You're sorry? Do you have any appreciation for the kind of trouble we're in here? We're one heart attack away from bankruptcy!"

"Which you're going to give yourself if you don't stop shouting at me!"

I'm not a screamer. I never have been. Neither is Lee. What's happening to us?

"Lee, I'm sorry. What else do you want me to say? It's done."

"I want you to start acting like an adult!"

"How about if you start treating me like one? You're not my father, Lee. Quit treating me like a kid who's overspent her allowance. I'm working my behind off, trying to make a go of the shop-"

"And I'm not, I suppose? I'm just sitting at home playing gentleman farmer?"

"Do you really want to do this? Do you just have to fight?"

I laid my hand flat over my eyes, breathing deeply for a moment, listening to the drum of my own heart, willing it to slow before lowering my hand and looking at my husband.

"That's not what I meant and you know it," I said in a deliberately even tone. "We're both working, doing everything we know how to do to get through this. And we will. It'll get better. We've just had a run of bad luck, that's all."

Lee's face colored red and his eyes turned black, hard and bitter as coal. "Bad luck. Is that what you call this?" he shouted. "Bad luck? Bad luck is something that happens that can't be helped. This could have been helped. It didn't have to be like this, Tessa. And I don't just mean for us!"

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the bubbles and the bankruptcies, the foreclosures and the bank failures, the layoffs and the bailouts, and the fact that every day, just when you think it can't get any worse, you wake up and find out that it is! I'm talking about the Madoffs and the Barons and all the people like them. The ones who started all this, the ones who don't make anything, or do anything, or add anything to this world but somehow think that their fair share of the pie is one hundred percent!

"So you'll have to excuse me if I go a little crazy when I see that you're spending your time and our money to make presents for your old friend Madelyn Baron. But I think she's already taken enough from us, Tessa! And I can't figure out how to pay the insurance!"

He slammed his hand so hard against the table a pen jumped and dropped onto the floor. His anger still unspent, he took aim at it with his big boot and kicked it so hard that it sailed through the air to the other side of the room and bounced off the wall.

"I know it's not fair, Lee. Not to anybody. But you can't take this out on Madelyn. She was just married to him, that's all. You can't hold her responsible for the decisions he made. It's not her fault that we're struggling."

He let out a noise that would have been a laugh except there wasn't a drop of humor in it.

"Oh, I know that. Believe me, I get it. It's my fault. I should have seen this coming. I should have known better! That's what you're thinking. Why not say it?"

"Stop it. n.o.body is blaming you for anything."

He wouldn't look at me. I moved toward him, tried to touch him, but he jerked his shoulder back quickly, as if trying to dodge a blow.

"Why not?" he asked as he strode toward the back door. "I sure as h.e.l.l blame myself."

I don't know what time Lee came to bed. I considered following him out to the barn but then thought better of it, figuring he needed some time alone.

The next day, Sunday, I woke up while it was still dark. I rolled over on my side to see Lee sitting on the side of the bed, getting dressed. His shoulder muscles flexed and rolled under his bare skin and he reached down to pick up his discarded jeans from the floor.

I stretched out my arm and ran my hand down Lee's back, fingers b.u.mping sleepily along the ridge of his spine.

"Hey."

"Hey." He stood up and started to put on the flannel shirt he'd left hanging on the bedpost the night before.