Threading The Needle Part 5

He looked at her blankly for a moment, and then spun around to face me. "Oh yes! The fund-raiser! The church is hosting a fund-raiser in September, a benefit for the Stanton Center and New Beginnings. Their donations have been down this year, and if they can't raise some money, they'll have to begin cutting back programs."

The Stanton Center is our local shelter for women and children who've been victims of domestic violence and New Beginnings is an offshoot of that, a community center offering counseling, career training, and enrichment cla.s.ses for victims of domestic violence or, as s.p.a.ce allows, any woman who needs help making a fresh start. They do wonderful work. In other circ.u.mstances I'd be happy to help, but . . .

"I'm sorry, Reverend, but it hasn't been a very good year for me. I just can't make any donations right now. I wish I could."

"Oh, no. We're not asking for money," Margot a.s.sured me. "The church is sponsoring a country fair on our grounds and on the town Green in September. We'll have a used book sale, a quilt show and raffle, cakewalk, carnival games and pony rides for children, a soup-and-salad luncheon, and a silent auction. It's going to be a lot of fun, and since we'll be having it on the peak fall foliage weekend, we're hoping to attract a lot of tourists. . . ."

"And tourist dollars," the reverend added. "We're hoping to raise six thousand dollars over the weekend. Would you be willing to donate an item for the auction?"

"Absolutely!" I said. "What a wonderful idea." I started looking around the shop, searching for items that might attract high bids.

"How about another Lavender Luxury Basket?" I asked, pulling one off the shelf without waiting for an answer. "And you said there will be children? I've got a cute basket with bubble bath and shampoo, a terry cloth towel, and a rubber duck."

"Oh, that is darling!" Margot exclaimed, her eyes laughing. "Are you sure you can afford to donate two items?"

"Sure. It's all for a good cause. Candles are always popular, especially in the fall. What if I put together a whole basket of those?"

By the time Margot and Reverend Tucker were ready to leave, I'd promised three baskets for the silent auction, as many gallons of peppermint iced tea as they'd need for the luncheon, and a bushel of vegetables for making soup. I was sure Lee wouldn't mind.

"See you on Sunday," Margot said as I walked them to the door. "You know, we really should get together for lunch sometime."

"We should."

"Thank you again," Reverend Tucker said as he shook my hand. "And tell your husband I said thank you to him as well. I hope we'll see him in church sometime."

"Yes," I said, knowing it would never happen. "That would be nice."

6.

Madelyn Iam not a big drinker. Not anymore.

Many years ago I learned my lesson the hard way and haven't overindulged since. I do enjoy a gla.s.s of wine, two at the most, with dinner, but I haven't had a hangover since I lived in New Bern.

Ironic, isn't it? The first hangover I've had in thirty-eight years occurred on my first morning back in New Bern, the scene of my last hangover. There's got to be some sort of deep celestial significance to all that, but as the sun beamed through the bedroom window and directly into my eyes, I was too groggy to figure out what it might be.

I rolled on my side and tried to go back to sleep, but the movement made my head pound. My eyeb.a.l.l.s were a size too large and my tongue felt like it was made from dryer lint. I groaned aloud before rolling onto my back again, my arm flopping against the mattress and raising a flotilla of dust motes into the column of sunlight.

Moving slowly to minimize the jostling of my throbbing head, I got out of bed, went into the bathroom, and scooped water in my mouth with my hands. I took four aspirin tablets from the bottle in my cosmetics bag and washed them down with a few more scoops of water. The aspirin would soon dull the ache in my head, but it wasn't going to do a thing for my queasy stomach.

It seems counterintuitive to put quant.i.ties of greasy food into a nauseous stomach, but the experiences of my misspent youth had taught me that was exactly what I needed to do. But there was no food in the house. That, along with hatred for my husband and an extended wade in the wallow of self-pity, was part of the reason I was in this condition.

After furiously tearing off strip after strip of ugly brown wallpaper from the foyer yesterday and screaming a few more choice words at the absent company who I felt most deserved them-Sterling, the ghost of Edna Beecher, Eugene Janders, the entire federal government, G.o.d-I felt no better. Seeking relief, I pulled a bottle of Delamain Extra cognac out of my luggage and poured myself a drink, a big one.

While I was packing my things under the watchful eyes of the federal agent who was there to make sure I didn't take anything that wasn't "mine," I'd spotted the bottle of Delamain sitting on a counter-top. When the agent's back was turned I slipped it into my voluminous handbag, but only as an act of defiance. I don't even like cognac.

However, desperate times . . .

Halfway through my second gla.s.s, I realized I really should eat something, but the cupboards and refrigerator were bare. By that time, driving to the supermarket on the edge of town was out of the question-the last thing I needed was a ticket for DUI-and the shops within walking distance were already closed for the night. Riffling through my purse, I'd found two tiny bags of peanuts left over from my last airline trip. I sat down in the dark kitchen and ate them one by one, washing each down with a swig of cognac.

Stupid. And now I was paying the price.

I stood over the commode, considered throwing up, decided against it, then pulled on a pair of slacks and a sweater before going downstairs to look through the kitchen cupboards, confirming what I already knew. There wasn't a sc.r.a.p of food in the house. If I wanted breakfast, I was going to have to go out and buy some.

The thought of wheeling a shopping cart through the aisle of the grocery store was more than I could face. So I fished my darkest pair of sungla.s.ses from the bottom of my purse, hid my disheveled hair under a baseball cap, and walked downtown in search of a cafe. I knew I shouldn't be spending money eating out, so I promised myself that starting tomorrow, I'd be frugal. Besides, I reasoned, the fresh air might do me good.

It did.

Summer had a few days left to run, but the morning chill made it clear that fall was fast approaching. Here and there, the trees showed spots of yellow and pale orange. A gust of wind in the branches made a rustling sound, as if the leaves were made from paper. The sun shone bright and clear in a sky of brilliant blue that, even through the shaded lenses of my gla.s.ses, was impossible to ignore.

Pretty. I had forgotten.

New Bern, with its tree-lined streets, neatly trimmed hedges, and rows of quaint white-clapboarded, black-shuttered antique houses-real antiques, not ersatz "reproductions" that never quite look or feel like the real deal-was very pretty indeed. A picture postcard for "the good old days." Charming.

It was easy to see why tourists in search of the quintessential New England village and city dwellers looking for a peaceful weekend retreat put New Bern on their not-to-be-missed list. In their shoes, I'd feel the same. And for a moment, even with my head aching and the light filtered through smoke-colored lenses, I did. For just a minute, the length of the village block where the white clapboard houses with trimmed hedges give way to a row of wide-windowed, no-chains-allowed storefronts, I allowed myself to be charmed by New Bern.

But only for a minute.

I heard her a split second before I saw her, a disembodied voice blown around the street corner. Even all these years later, there was no mistaking it-that upper-crust, eastern-seaboard, non-rhotic accent of hers, all absent "Rs" and extended vowels, delivered with the lower jaw slightly jutted and the eyebrows slightly raised, a voice that could only belong to Abigail Burgess Wynne.

"I know I said I'd be there, darling, and I will be. I just want to stop by the quilt shop and say h.e.l.lo to Evelyn. I haven't seen her since she got back from Ireland."

She rounded the corner, cell phone to her ear, walking briskly, wearing good wool slacks, pearls, and a summer-weight cashmere sweater over a starched snow white blouse, not a hair out of place. That had not changed. I hadn't supposed it would.

She was older but not yet old. There were more lines around her mouth and her hair was pure platinum now, pulled into a low knot at the back of her neck, but there was something about her expression, her eyes.... Strangely, she looked almost younger than she had at our last meeting.

All these years later, I could remember every wounding word she'd uttered, every stabbing inflection of her voice, the utter loathing in each glance of her piercing, icy eyes.

Now she sounded relaxed, happy, and there was a definite spring in her step. She hustled past me without a glance, took a sharp right turn into the old Cobbled Court, and disappeared, the sound of her voice and the echo of her heels on cold gray stones fading behind me.

I walked past the door of the cafe until I was sure she was gone, and then stopped, reaching my palm out to rest against a gritty red-brick wall. My heart was racing and the aspirin-dulled pain in my head was back. The rest of me felt numb. I couldn't keep standing there on the street, but I couldn't force myself to go inside the cafe either. Instead, I made an about-face, fighting off nausea as I retraced my steps back down Oak Leaf Lane. The crisp sunny morning and the chittering birds mocked my retreat.

Three doors from my destination I looked up and saw it-the painted porch of the old Kover house-and the memories . . . all those awful memories came flooding back.

Why was I here? The scene of my most humiliating failures? Of all the cities, towns, and villages in the world, why did I find myself a refugee in the one place that never welcomed me, filled with people and the memories of people who never wanted me? Why? What kind of cosmic joke was G.o.d playing now?

Eyes glued to the sidewalk, I walked the last half block to Edna's garden gate with quickened steps, went inside the house and back to bed, pulling the covers over my head to block out the light and the memories-all the memories.

Impossible.

7.

Madelyn Islept off the cognac and dreamed about my dad. I didn't remember my dream, I never do. But it was something about Dad and a ship. Dad on a ship. Something like that.

The ocean is more than an hour's drive from New Bern. Even so, Dad wanted to be a ship captain when he grew up. It didn't work out. Instead, he became a shipbuilder, actually a submarine builder. He worked for the Electric Boat Company, out of Groton, Connecticut, where I grew up. When I was nine he was knocked unconscious by a piece of swinging steel and never woke up. Grandma Edna came to Groton after Dad's accident. She had to. There was no one else.

I kept vigil in the hospital waiting area, a room with gunmetal gray tile on the floors and stiff plastic sofas, where people dozed or wept or drank cardboard cups of coffee bought from the vending machine while keeping one ear tuned for the sound of nurses in rubber-soled shoes, bringing news. They wouldn't let me in Dad's room, not until the last day, when I was told to come and say good-bye. It didn't matter. Dad was already gone. He had been from the moment that slab of metal cracked his skull. The tubes and screens and beeping monitors had only delayed the inevitable.

It was terrible to see him like that, and frightening. I tried to put my hand into Edna's, but she pulled back and closed her fist on empty air, pulling herself in as tight and hard as a pillar of polished marble. We'd scarcely exchanged a score of words since she arrived in Groton but, somehow, I already knew she could never forgive me. Though I didn't know why. Not yet.

I never met my mother. Until Dad died, I didn't know where she was or who she was. Edna lost no time filling me in on the details of my unplanned arrival in this world. The history she imparted was one-sided and colored by hate, but it's all I have to go on. Hers was the only voice in the room.

My father was bright and a good student, good enough to be accepted into the United States Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York, on Long Island. The compet.i.tion for admission was fierce and with good reason: tuition was free. The family would never have been able to pay for Dad's education otherwise.

The courses were demanding and the discipline was rigorous, but there was still time for Dad and his shipmates to go into Manhattan on weekends. He met my mother in Greenwich Village, at the White Horse Tavern, where beatnik poets, writers, and hangers-on liked to drink. In the same year my parents met, the poet Dylan Thomas would collapse at the White Horse Tavern. He died a few days later.

My mother made fun of Dad's short midshipman's haircut and starched uniform, but he didn't care. He was smitten. Every time he could get leave, Dad made a beeline for the city so he could see her.

Edna heaped the whole blame for all that happened on my mother, but I have my doubts. Dad was a good man, but he was a man, and young, subject to the same tricks and traps of biology as any other healthy, normal, not-quite-twenty-year-old male. I'm sure my mother didn't have to tie him down to get him to sleep with her, but you could never have gotten Edna to believe it.

I'm not saying my mother was an angel. I don't know what she was; I never met her. Neither had Edna, but that didn't stop her from painting my mother as a conniving tramp who had lured my father into her bed-and probably plenty of other men as well. Scores of them. Who knew which of my mother's revolving door of lovers fathered me?

"You don't look like anyone on our side of the family, that's for certain," she'd say. "A girl like that could have put anything over on him. Tommy was always too softhearted for his own good."

I suppose it's possible, but I do have his eyes. As far as my mother being able to put something over on him? That's possible, too.

Within a few months of meeting Dad, my mother was pregnant. Whether Dad was the only one or only one of many, I have no idea. But he insisted on "doing the right thing" and marrying my mother.

I'm a little unclear on what happened next, but I know the wedding never took place. In due course, my mother gave birth, dumped me with Dad, and disappeared, never to be heard from again. Dad dropped out of school to care for me, which made my grandparents furious. It didn't happen until I was three, but Edna insisted that stress over Dad's quitting school caused my grandfather's fatal heart attack.

Dad rented a house in Groton and found a job in maritime construction. Welding hatches onto submarines was as close as he'd ever come to seafaring. His hours could be strange, but the work was steady. The Cold War was good for business.

Dad hired a babysitter, Mrs. O'Dell, to look after me while he was working. Other than that, it was just Dad and I, living in a little house just a few blocks from the Connecticut sh.o.r.eline. Most of the time, I was happy.

When I was in the second grade, my school held a mother-daughter tea. Mrs. O'Dell offered to go with me, but Dad took the day off work and came himself. He was the only father there. I remember how funny he looked sitting in a second-grader-sized chair, drinking pink lemonade and eating a pink-frosted cookie shaped like a tulip. I remember all the women in the room smiling as they looked at him, and feeling so proud of him. Dad was very good-looking.

Amelia Jessup's desk sat next to mine. Her mother looked at my father, smiled, and said, "Amelia, aren't you going to introduce me to your cla.s.smate?"

"This is Madelyn Beecher," Amelia replied dutifully. "And this is her father, Mr. Beecher." Smiles and handshakes were exchanged between the adults.

Then Amelia turned to her mother, and in that hoa.r.s.e stage whisper that seven-year-olds have, she rasped, "Madelyn's father came because she doesn't have a mother. But Teacher said we aren't supposed to talk about it."

The silence that followed was blaring. I remember hearing the clock ticking and nothing else. Amelia's mother's cheeks flamed bright red. After a moment that seemed to hang suspended in time, the teacher announced that there was more lemonade in the pitcher and then made a great show of filling everyone's gla.s.s.

That was the first time in my life that I remembered feeling shame. Funny thing is, I didn't even understand what I was supposed to be ashamed of. That night, when he was tucking me into bed, for the first time, I asked Dad about my mother.

"Why didn't she want me?"

"I want you," he said. "Always did. Always will. Who else do we need? We've got each other, don't we?"

I nodded.

"Well, all right then. That's the deal. Anybody who doesn't like it can just go to h.e.l.l."

Dad wasn't a man of many words, but the fierce flame of love in his eyes was eloquent. I didn't ask about my mother again.

Dad never spoke to or of his parents. Until Mrs. O'Dell called Edna after Dad's accident, I never knew I had a grandmother. Edna wasn't happy about having to take me in, but felt she had no choice in the matter. She couldn't just hand me over to the state to raise, could she? What would people say?

On my second day in New Bern, I was sitting on the branch of one of the apple trees when I overheard her say that to her three-doors-down neighbor, Mrs. Kover.

"Edna, don't say that. She seems a sweet little girl. And don't you think it'll be nice to have some company? Give it a chance. After all, she's your only grandchild."

"So Tommy said."

"She has his eyes."

Edna said nothing.

"Anyway," Mrs. Kover said, "I was just coming over to ask if Madelyn could come to our house for lunch tomorrow. Tessa will be home from camp this afternoon. She'll be thrilled to have a playmate so close to her own age."

That was how I met Tessa Kover. That first summer we were inseparable. But maybe that was because we were so close in age and because summers in New Bern were hot, long, and offered few childhood distractions, at least the organized kind. Back then, mothers didn't spend their lives hauling kids from one activity to the next. They told them to find something to do, to be home for dinner, and shooed them out the door.

Tessa and I had no trouble keeping busy. We built tents in the backyard and staged puppet shows in the Kovers' living room. We made cookies and quarts of vanilla ice cream, sitting in the shade of a spreading maple tree and taking turns cranking the handle of the Kovers' old-fashioned ice-cream maker until the sweat beaded on our foreheads and the soupy custard inside froze into something semisolid. We made daisy chain crowns for our hair and key chains from neon pink and white plastic lanyard, a skill Tessa had acquired at camp.

Was Tessa thrilled to have me for a friend? At the time I didn't care. All I knew was I liked her.

No. I didn't just like Tessa. I loved her. Loved her with that intense, exclusive love that only very young girls are capable of, the slavish devotion of an abandoned pup for its rescuer. Loved her so utterly that if my grandmother commented, as she often did, "I suppose if Tessa Kover jumped off a bridge, you would too," I wouldn't have thought two ticks before answering, "Yes. Absolutely, yes."

When school began and I had a chance to meet other children in New Bern, my attachment to Tessa wasn't diluted in the least. I wanted no other friends. I had Tessa.

Whatever Tessa did, I did. When Tessa cut her hair into a short bob, I nagged Edna until she got out her shears and cut mine too. When Tessa joined the Girl Scouts, so did I. And when Tessa had to get eyegla.s.ses, I faked my school eye test, deliberately mistaking Es for Gs. The teacher sent a note to Edna, who took me to see the optometrist, who was not fooled. Edna was furious. In the parking lot outside his office, she slapped me across the face so hard my ears rang. It was the first slap of many.

Tessa wasn't just my friend; she was my ideal. My idol. I didn't just want her; I wanted to be her. I wanted her life, her family, the love and acceptance I'd been denied. Her family was part of the package. They were so happy, so wonderfully normal. That's what I wanted, just to be happy and normal. Just to be like Tessa.

At ten, at eleven, at twelve, at thirteen, I was too young to understand that love isn't a mirror, reflecting back what you're feeling word for word, gesture for gesture. I didn't know that sometimes, that most of the time, love goes unrequited.

I do now.

8.