Hanging by a Thread

by Karen Templeton

  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 Franc
es, 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?”

  “Who knows? Maybe.” She licks a chunk of ice cream off her spoon, then shrugs. “Maybe this is Luke’s way of saying he’s gotta work this out on his own.”

  Which is exactly what I’ve been saying all along. So why, now that he’s apparently doing just that, is his silence driving me nuts? After all, who told him to leave me out of it?

  Then Frances says, “Tina didn’t really have a miscarriage, did she?” and I miss my mouth and smear ice cream across my chin. Frances hands me a napkin.

  “W-what makes you say—?”

  One eyebrow lifts; I dissolve like a wet cracker.

  “Oh, God, Frances…if she finds out you know she had an abortion—”

  Frances’s stunned expression stops me cold. “An abortion? I assumed she’d faked the pregnancy, that’s all.”

  The room starts spinning; I drop my head on my arms, muttering, “Shit, shit, shit,” under my breath. Frances’s hand lands between my shoulder blades, gently rubbing my back.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t say a word, I promise. But that explains a lot.”

  After several seconds, I lift my head. Tenuously. “Even so, how did you figure it out? That she hadn’t had a miscarriage, I mean?”

  “Intuition, I suppose. The way she didn’t seem all that excited when they told us they were expecting.” Frances chugs the last of the ice-cream laced root beer from her glass, then locks her gaze with mine. “Then she loses a baby, and suddenly she wants out of the marriage?” Leaning closer, she says, “I love Tina, and I know she’s good at heart. But nothing’s ever motivated that girl except fear and neediness. And who can blame her? What else did she know, growing up? Only problem is, whichever one is stronger at the moment, that’s the one she listens to. And that’s not good.”

  I stare at what’s left of my float. Hell, fear’s probably what motivates most people’s decisions, when you come right down to it.

  “When…when Tina told me she wanted to get Luke back…” I look up into Frances’s eyes again, hating myself for having such a big mouth, relieved I finally have someone to share the burden with. “I told her she really needed to think about telling him.”

  “Really?” I hate that I can’t read Frances’s expression. “It’ll kill him, you know that.”

  “Not any more than the false hope that maybe they’ll have kids someday! I mean, hey, if Tina’s who he really wants, if they can work this out…” My spoon clanks against the glass as I dig for the last bit of ice cream. “Fine and dandy. But I can’t stand the thought of him going back into that relationship, knowing what I know. And knowing that he doesn’t know.”

  Dammit. My hands are shaking.

  And Frances misses nothing. She leans back in her chair, letting out a long breath. “You know, it’s a real bitch, knowing your kid’s miserable and not being able to do a damn thing about it.” Then she gets up, removing my empty dish. “So you’ve been carrying around this secret for all these months. That’s horrible.”

  All I can do is nod. She goes away, returning seconds later with a tissue, which I silently accept. I’m not crying as much as leaking, as if it’s all too much to hold in anymore.

  “So what are you going to wear tomorrow for this big date?” she says, again sitting across from me.

  Frances doesn’t mean to hurt me, I know that. But with her single, seemingly innocuous question, it’s as if she’s taking me by the shoulders and whispering in my ear, “See over there? Why don’t you focus on that, honey?”

  And I can hardly breathe through the pain.

  Starr comes racing in, however, before I can answer, babbling on about what Jimmy’s doing in the basement, I gotta come see, right now. I get up to follow my child, telling myself that no matter what, the instant she’s in bed, I’m going online and ordering that paternity test kit.

  chapter 25

  I know this sounds silly, but I wasn’t all that comfortable with Alan seeing this place. This is someone used to staying at the freaking Plaza, after all. And while I’m not ashamed of my home—and I did manage to put a reasonable dent in the dust bunny/fur ball population—I figured it’s a little more plebeian than Alan’s used to.

  Once again, I was wrong.

  He’s standing in the middle of our living room, graciously ignoring my sister, child and the cat sitting in a row on the couch. By the way, he’s already given me flowers—a mixed bouquet, not roses, good choice, roses would have been pretentious—and complimented me on my outfit, an aqua sixties sheath with silver embroidery around the neck (my mother’s), with silver fishnet stockings and nosebleed-inducing ankle strap sandals that are an exact knockoff of a pair of Manolos I saw in the March Vogue. Exact, I’m telling you. Twenty-four ninety-nine at some hole-in-the-wall shoe store on Eighth Avenue. And my hair…ohmigod. I’d rushed over to Liv’s and promised her my child if she could make me look good, and after falling on my neck and hugging me and calling me “cousin” like a character from a Jane Austen novel (although for some reason she didn’t seem interested in my offer of another child), she sat me down and performed an absolute miracle. I am blown and fluffed and moussed within an inch of my life and dammit, I look good.

  And you know what they say: if you act like you’re having a good time on the outside, you’ll start to feel that way on the inside.

  “It reminds me a lot of where I grew up,” Alan’s saying, “before Mum died and Dad remarried. We lived in a semidetached much like this, all the rooms feeding into each other. Even down to the dark wood molding and cornices and the flowerboxes.”<
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  He turns to me and smiles, all casual Hugh Grant-ness in an unconstructed charcoal silk blazer. We are going to look so hot together, I can’t stand it. “I’ve nothing but good memories of those times, and that house. Now if there’s a local where we can get a pint, we’re in business.”

  “There’s always Pinky’s,” Jen puts in from the couch.

  “What’s Pinky’s?” Alan says as my eyes cut to my sister.

  “Just some neighborhood bar,” I say, “believe me, you wouldn’t be interested—”

  “Not at all! After all, how often do I get a chance to experience the real New York?” At what must be my horrified expression, he laughs. And misinterprets. “Don’t worry, we’ve still got dinner reservations for eight-thirty at this terrific little place I stumbled across on East Seventieth. But I’ve always found the best way to get to know a person is to see them in their real element.”

  This is me, being thrilled.

  Then Starr jumps up from the couch and grabs Alan’s hand, exhorting him to come down to the basement to “see Mama’s stuff.” Since protesting might lead the man to believe I’ve got bodies stored down there, I cringe and follow, muttering something about it’s being a pee-poor workroom, but it was just makeshift and all—

  —and then I remember I’d left out my last batch of sketches.

  And of course Alan gravitates toward them like Frito to carbs.

  “Ellie…” He lifts one up, brows drawn speculatively, then glances over at me. “These are quite remarkable.”

  “You’re very kind.”

  A puzzled frown crosses his features. “Kind is what I am to old ladies who need help getting a can down off the top shelf. But I don’t flatter. And I thought about taking a stab at a fashion career, before the theater bug bit me and I discovered I preferred working on a larger scale. I do have some idea of what I’m talking about. So believe me when I tell you these are good. Very good.”

  “This one’s my favorite,” Starr says, handing him one of a pants set, a mandarin collared duster over slender, too-long pants.