“That is not fair and it’s not true! I was just trying to help you!”
“Oh come on! You don’t actually believe that, do you? You didn’t want to help me. You never want to help anyone unless there’s something for you in it.” She laughed again, longer this time, but there was no mirth in it, a laugh so infused with hatred that it frightened me a little. I took a step backward.
“You are so completely clueless,” she spat and moved toward me. “But you’re right about one thing. I dragged you to the quilt store, blackmailed you into going, because I wanted you to have to acknowledge the fact that my mother, your own sister, died of breast cancer and you never, ever did a single thing to help her! You never visited her, you never called her, you never even sent her a ******* get-well card!”
She was screaming now, and tears started to fall from her eyes, but there was no hoarseness in her voice, no sound of choked-back sobs, just tears seeping slowly from the corners of her eyes and running down her cheeks, crystalline and bright, catching the light from the kitchen window, as if something frozen behind the brown orbits of her eyes were melting.
“I was so happy to see how miserable you were that day! To see you finally forced out of your perfect little world with your perfect friends, and perfect clothes, and perfect house. Actually having to mix with real people with real problems. And then, when we met Evelyn and you started helping her, I thought that maybe, finally, you were starting to face what you’d done. That you were feeling sad about deserting Mom, and me, when we needed you most and were looking for some way to make amends for it. I thought maybe you’d changed.” Finally, her fury seemed to subside, at least a little. When she said this last there was a sad, almost mournful tenor to her voice.
“I have,” I said quietly. “I have changed.”
She kept on talking as if I hadn’t said anything. “And then, that night when Evelyn told us that they hadn’t gotten all the cancer and you were suddenly so solicitous, so anxious to help, I saw that it wasn’t true. You hadn’t changed. You’d just put on another costume, one more layer of veneer to hide what you really are inside—whatever that is.” She barked out a bitter laugh. “I’ve lived in your house for months, and I’m still not sure who you are. But one thing I do know, you’re not sorry about what you did to my mother. Not one bit. You just like the idea of this new part you’re playing—Abigail Burgess Wynne, Compassionate Caregiver to the Ordinary and Downtrodden. Helping poor quilt-shop owners with cancer, taking in ungrateful nieces with criminal records, making quilts for little kids you barely know, serving Christmas dinner to the homeless.”
She lifted her face and looked at me. The angry spark was rekindled. “It’ll all look good in your obituary, won’t it?”
“Liza! That’s awful! What a hateful thing to say!”
“Is it? Good! Because I do hate you! I hate everything about you! Your house, your clothes, the sound of your voice. And I hate, I absolutely despise, the fact that every time I look at you, I see my mother. You look just like her; did you know that? Like she would have looked if she’d gotten to live to be your age. When I see you, I remember that she’s gone and you’re still here. She was good and kind and loved me and she’s dead. You’re cold and self-centered and you only put up with me because you have to, but you’re still alive. Why is that?”
She hates me? How could she? After all I’ve done… My usual refrain, the one I always played in my mind when working myself into indignation over Liza’s behavior and attitude. But then, for an instant, just a breath, everything seemed to freeze. The voice in my head was silenced, and I looked at Liza, truly looked at her, as if I were seeing her for the first time. I looked beyond the angry eyes, the hard-edged clothes and makeup, and the sullen attitude, and saw grief, despair, and wrenching loneliness. And I finally realized the truth—at least some of her anguish had been caused by me.
All this time, I had been congratulating myself on everything I’d done for Liza, moaning like a martyr about all I’d given her. But what had I given her, really? Everything but what she needed. My indignant inner monologue, briefly interrupted, began again, but something had happened, the tirade twisted and turned in my head and became something entirely new, a realization that forbid indignation, pulled me up short, and filled me with shame…. After what I’ve done. And what I’ve never done. She hates me. How could she not?
Tentatively, awkwardly, I took a step toward my niece, my sister’s only child, the only person on earth who shared my name, my history, the only human being whose birth and past were connected to mine. I lifted my hand, thinking I should touch her shoulder, but she shrank back from me and wrapped her arms across her heart like a shield. She looked so young.
“Liza…I…I’m so sorry for…” I didn’t know what to say, how to begin to apologize. It had been so long since I’d made an apology to anyone—for anything. Never complain, never explain. It was the rule I lived my life by. Finally, at a loss, I simply said, “You must miss her terribly.”
Liza’s jaw tightened. She swallowed hard. I could see the muscles twitch under the pale parchment of her long neck. “When I went into the quilt shop that day, I only went for one reason. To see you squirm. I didn’t care about quilting, or even raising money for breast cancer, but then I met Evelyn and Margot, and they were so nice to me, and the quilting part was fun. For a little while, I forgot to think about hating you. Then, when Evelyn fell apart…” Her voice trailed off for a moment, remembering that night.
“For a second, when Evelyn started crying so hard, I was really scared. It was like watching it happen to Mom all over again. But then Margot jumped up and took charge. Next thing I knew, everyone was helping her—even you. And it felt good. You know? It wasn’t like it was with Mom, when I was the only one she could count on. Everyone was pitching in, and Evelyn was getting better, and it felt so good! Like I was saying, ‘Screw you, cancer! You’re not going to win this time!’ And I believed it was true. I really did.
“You know, Evelyn is a lot like Mom was,” she said in a voice hushed with remembering. “Not the way she looks, but the way she talks and acts and everything, encouraging. She likes my artwork. She just let me have that whole window to do whatever I wanted with. Never told me what to do, she just told me to go for it,” she said, shrugging her shoulders ever so slightly, quietly amazed by this vote of confidence in her talent. And she was talented. I could see it. How hard would it have been to tell her that?
“You did a good job,” I said.
Her tears came faster now, streaming down her cheeks, drawing a transparent line from her lashes to the ledge of her jaw and falling, one after another after another, onto her jacket, turning the black fabric even blacker, blooming into an inky, indelible blossom of grief.
“When we went to the quilt circle that night and she told us the cancer was back, that she was going to have more surgery…I just—”
She covered her eyes with her hands. “I can’t…I can’t do this again. I can’t be around her. It hurts too much. I can’t be around her. Or you. I can’t,” she repeated and lowered her hands to look at me. Her tears fell like rain as she finally gave up her hopeless attempts at self-control.
“Who are you?” she sobbed. “All of a sudden, you can’t do enough to help Evelyn, or everyone else for that matter. When Mom needed you, you were nowhere to be seen. You never tried to help her! You never pulled strings to get my mother the best doctors in New England—the doctors that might have known how to save her life! Did you ever stop to think about that? You didn’t lift a finger to help your own flesh and blood, but when it comes to the needs of strangers, you suddenly can’t do enough! How did it happen? This amazing transformation? A magician waves his wand, the old Abigail disappears, and poof! Everyone gasps as the new Abigail, looking exactly the same but dressed in an entirely new ensemble, steps out. The audience is dazzled and bursts into applause.” She was looking at me again, staring right through me as if I were a ghostly presence, composed
of nothing more substantial than vapor and suspect intention.
“You don’t fool me, Auntie. Not me. Not anymore. You haven’t changed anything but your tactics. You’ve just found a new way to impress everyone.” Her voice was thick with loathing.
“You don’t care about Evelyn,” she said. “You just want everyone to like you, preferably to adore you, without ever letting them get close enough to actually touch you. And the sick part is, they do! Your fancy friends around town, the elegant people who go to the right parties and sit on the right boards, are crazy about you because you’ve got what they want most of all—style. And just having you around makes them feel more clever and important than they really are. But when I forced you to step out of the boundaries of your little club, the crowd of sycophantic disciples who worship you, and into a world where people aren’t impressed by cocktail banter, or the number of zeros in your checking account, you didn’t know what to do. How would you make them like you? You must have wracked your brain trying to puzzle out that one, didn’t you, Abigail?”
She was wrong. I did care about Evelyn. Maybe not at first, but I did now.
Liza kept on without giving me a chance to defend myself. “But you’re no dummy,” she said. “Once you figured out what mattered in the new club, things like kindness and generosity, you adapted right away. Overnight you became kind and generous, because that’s what they wanted. You even started going to church. You’re such a hypocrite! You think you’re so special, but you’re nothing! You don’t care about anyone but yourself, not even your dying sister!”
“That’s not true. It’s not!” I insisted. “Things aren’t as simple and clear-cut as you’ve made them out to be. When you’re older you’ll understand.”
A sneer. A voice like ice. “Then I pray to God I never live to be that old.”
Her cutting remarks did just that, cut me to the heart, wounded me. But I realized that she was hurting too, far more than I. If I could only get her to calm down, to see how unreasonable she was being. I took a deep breath and tried again. “Maybe you’re right about some of what you’ve said. I’ve made my share of mistakes, but—”
She shook her head and said hoarsely, “Be quiet. I don’t want to hear it. If I didn’t hate you so much, I might almost feel sorry for you. You can’t even see how pathetic you are. God! How did you get this way?”
“Liza—”
“I ask myself that question all the time now. When I look in the mirror I see my face, I see you, how you must have looked forty years ago. Everyone says we look just alike.”
It was true. I had noticed.
“You were like me once. You couldn’t have been born this way. Something must have happened to you, but I don’t know what. I look at myself and wonder if it’s happening to me too. I’m so afraid….”
She hadn’t said as much to me in the previous seven months as she had in those few minutes. I didn’t know if she truly believed everything she’d said, but the last part was the absolute truth. She was afraid. She had been for a long time.
Liza was only sixteen when she’d found out about Susan’s cancer and eighteen when she’d died, far too young to have to known such loss. She’d had to face it all alone, with no more support or care from me than the cold comfort of a check. The things that had happened before, the events that had opened the terrible gulf between my sister and me, had swallowed up Liza too, the only innocent person in the whole awful scenario. No wonder she was so hard and mistrustful of me—and everyone else. She’d learned the hard way that even the people who should love you sometimes don’t, and even those who do love you will sometimes leave you. The poor child.
And now, just when she’d begun to open up, to trust a little, she was facing it all again. How could I not have realized? How could I not have said anything?
“Liza. Oh, Liza, come here. You don’t understand.” I reached out for her, opened my arms.
“Don’t!” She jumped back as if burned by my touch. “I told you. I can’t do this again. I hate you! I hate you!” she repeated, once for me and once for herself.
“I can’t stay here anymore!” She turned away from me, opened the door, and ran down the steps and across the back yard, leaving a cratered trail of footsteps through the deep drifts of snow.
I followed her to the door. “Liza, wait! Where are you going? Come back and we’ll talk about it. Come back! I need to explain some things to you!”
I was yelling as loud as I could, my words ringing through the thin, cold air, my mouth exhaling a frozen fog, but she didn’t stop. The snow was at least two feet deep, and I was in my stocking feet. I ran upstairs, pulled on the first pair of boots I could find and a warm jacket and gloves, then ran back downstairs and out the back door. But she was gone.
I followed her trail of footsteps around the side of the house, down the driveway, and onto the sidewalk. I’d come as quickly as I could, but she was nowhere to be seen, and the sidewalks had been shoveled, leaving only a thin dusting of new snow. The print of Liza’s boot mixed in with the prints of dozens of others who had walked down the street that day. There was no way to distinguish hers from anyone else’s or to tell which direction she’d taken. I ran to the corner, hoping to catch a glimpse of her, twice slipping and falling on the icy walkway and then scrambling back to my feet to continue the hunt, but it was no use. She’d disappeared.
I ran back to the house, laboriously making my way through the drifted snow. My heart was pounding in my chest as I climbed the back steps, realizing that I’d left the door wide open. I stood at the doorway, panting from exertion, and laid my hand over my pounding heart. Where could she have gone?
A voice in my head told me not to worry, that she was just being dramatic, manipulating the situation, trying once again to blackmail me with emotion. But I knew it wasn’t true. Not this time. I was worried, afraid of what she might do in such a state. What should I do?
Barely pausing to kick the snow off my boots, I walked into the kitchen, trailing snowy, melting footprints across Hilda’s clean floor, picked up the telephone, and dialed.
“Margot? It’s Abigail. No, we’re not coming now. Can you come over here? Right away? Please. It’s about Liza. I need your help.”
25
Evelyn Dixon
Margot’s yellow Volkswagen, parked in Abigail’s driveway, appeared trifling and incongruous next to the patrician grandeur of the enormous colonial mansion with its three stories of white clapboard siding, four chimneys, and symmetrical rows of windows blinking in the winter sunlight like unseeing eyes. Someone had told me that Abigail’s house had once been an academy for young women from rich families. It was certainly big enough. Hard to believe that Abigail and Liza lived here all alone.
I parked my car behind Margot’s and went to the front door. Margot answered.
“Hi,” she said and gave me a welcoming hug. “Thanks for coming. Abigail is in the kitchen. I made her a cup of tea. She’s terribly upset.”
I followed Margot through a series of cavernous rooms filled with expensive antique furniture, rugs, and paintings. But I was so surprised by Margot’s assertion that I barely took note of the elegant surroundings.
Abigail was upset? That was hard for me to imagine. She always seemed so in control of every situation. I’d never even seen her flustered, let alone upset. But Margot was right. The woman sitting at the table sipping tea with the red-rimmed eyes, disheveled hair, and wearing no trace of makeup or lipstick was Abigail. And she was more than upset; she was absolutely distraught.
“Margot?” Abigail called. “Was that Liza? Is she back?” She looked up hopefully when Margot entered the room, but her face fell when she realized I was the only person following behind. “Oh. It’s you, Evelyn. What are you doing here?”
“I called her,” Margot said.
Abigail shook her head. “You shouldn’t have bothered Evelyn. She’s got enough problems without having to deal with the ones I’ve created.”
I pulle
d up a chair and sat down. “Don’t be silly. I’m glad Margot called. Now, what happened? Liza’s missing?”
Abigail dabbed her eyes with an already damp tissue. “We had a terrible argument. I knew she was upset about something, but I just kept trying to ignore it. This had been brewing for a long time, years really—even before she came to live with me.”
Abigail’s face crumpled, and she started weeping softly. I was amazed. In all the time I’d known her, I’d never seen her give way to any emotion stronger than carefully controlled disapproval. Now she was sitting here letting the tears flow freely. I barely recognized her. Whatever had happened between Liza and Abigail, it must have been something big. Otherwise, she would never have allowed herself to be so vulnerable.
Margot, normally so capable, was standing near the table, seeming as much at a loss as I was. I looked a question at her, but she just shrugged.
“Abigail,” I said, “you know that Liza’s an emotional girl. Whatever happened between the two of you is probably just a passing cloud. I’m sure she’ll come back after she blows off a little steam. Don’t worry.”
“No,” Abigail insisted, sniffing. “This wasn’t just some little spat. She was furious. We’ve had our moments, but I’ve never seen her like this. She walked out that door, and I know she’s not planning on coming back.”
Frankly, I didn’t know what to do. Perhaps what Abigail was saying was true and perhaps it wasn’t, but even if she had walked out the door with the intention of never returning, I didn’t see what any of us could do about it. Liza was a grown woman. If she didn’t want to live with her aunt anymore, then that was her decision.
“I can see how hard this is for you,” I said, “but Liza is of age. I’m sure she’ll come back once she cools off and thinks things over, but if she doesn’t, then that really is her choice. It’s difficult to let a child leave the nest, but sometimes that’s what we have to do.”
A Single Thread (Cobbled Court) Page 20