She shivered.
“You okay?” Meggie whispered.
She stopped knitting and glanced around. She felt like she was being watched. But she pulled her denim jacket more tightly around her neck and said, “I’m just chilly.”
“You should have brought a warmer jacket,” Meggie said.
Aubrey did not immediately resume knitting. She was certain that if she looked behind her she would catch someone’s eye. But whose?
One by one, Mariah’s friends climbed up onto the stump of an old oak to say a few words. Although no one spoke the word magic, the fact of it hung in the air like dew settling into the trees. Aubrey recognized most of the speakers as people who had come to the Stitchery at one time or another in their lives.
“Mariah had a big heart,” one woman said. “She helped me reconcile with my father whom I hadn’t seen in twenty years. I’ll never be grateful enough for that.”
“Because of Mariah, I got over my fear of flying—and that allowed me one last trip out to Arizona to see my best friend before she died,” another woman said.
“Mariah taught us all to pass along goodness, to be a good listener, to be generous. Plus, she never turned down an opportunity to help somebody. I know there are people in this town who say unkind things about her, but that’s only because they never got to know her like we did,” another woman said.
Aubrey had known that Mariah had a good number of supporters, a few of whom were even friends, but she hadn’t quite understood until now just how many. The park was full of families, of men or women standing in groups or alone. And although Aubrey knew she shouldn’t, she found she was thinking of herself, of her own place in the community. Where Mariah was boisterous and outgoing, Aubrey was reticent and self-conscious. Where Mariah was larger-than-life, Aubrey willed herself to shrink. Where Mariah had stood up against the Halperns with all the gumption and balls and loudmouthed rabble-rousing that a single woman could muster, Aubrey was withdrawing. Her heart felt heavy. She wished she could be more like Mariah—more like her without losing the fundamental things that made Aubrey herself.
“Mariah was irreplaceable,” a woman said.
Aubrey was wiping the tears from her cheeks when she saw Jeanette Judge crossing the park, jouncing heel over heel as she cut through the crowd. She was tall and beautiful, dark skin offset by a peacock-green scarf that Aubrey had made for her last year—not a spell, just a gift. As Jeanette hurried and tried not to look like she was hurrying, heads turned.
“Hey.” Jeanette sat down on the blanket beside Aubrey. Her breathing was shallow. There was panic in her eyes.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I got stuck at the library. Some old guy fed spiral notebook paper into the printer. It made me late.”
Aubrey relaxed. “Don’t worry. It’s no big deal.”
“Oh, and the Halperns are here.”
“What?”
“They just climbed out of their town car.”
“Where?”
“There.”
Aubrey followed Jeanette’s gaze. The Halperns stood at the north end of the park behind the seated crowd. Steve Halpern was dressed in a black slash of a suit—far too severe for a picnic. Jackie was elegiac in a gray chiffon dress and dark furs. On a good day, the Halperns were disliked in Tappan Square. On a bad day, they were hated. Today—Mariah’s funeral—was a bad day.
Aubrey felt a shift in the air, and she wasn’t surprised when Vic bent down beside her. He’d been sitting with his sister on a blanket about ten feet away, the closest available patch of grass that had been open when he’d arrived. Now his starched shirt whispered and popped as he rested his elbows on his knees where he crouched.
“You saw them, too?” she said.
He nodded. “I’ll ask them to leave for you.”
“Leave?”
“Believe me, nothing would make me happier than to go over there and send them on their way.”
She laughed, though nothing was funny.
“I’m serious. Do you want me to tell them to go?”
“I … I just don’t know.”
She looked out over the park. The sky was darkening. One police officer leaned against a tree, cross-armed and scowling. Another picked her way among the picnic tables, hands behind her back. The police had been sent by the village to “keep the peace” among the uncontrollable heathens of Tappan Square. And now that Aubrey was paying attention, she noticed that the peacefulness of evening was starting to fray. Tribes of young men who had not been there earlier in the evening had coalesced in deepening shadows. They laughed loudly and took long swigs from what looked like bottles of iced tea but could have been anything. They eyed the cops, who eyed them back. Somewhere a firework went off—rude and wailing. The air buzzed like a snapped rubber band.
Vic touched her arm. “Aubrey?”
From across the park, the Halperns were looking at her. No doubt there were some people in Tappan Square who would blame the Halperns for Mariah’s passing. The Halperns stood for everything Mariah did not—the marginalization of the poor, tax breaks for the wealthy, legislation favoring the 1 percent. It had been the Halperns who first put forward the proposal to demolish Tappan Square. And now, everyone was waiting for Aubrey to decide if the Halperns should be allowed to stay among them, all her neighbors, all the volatile young men sitting on the hoods of their cars and loitering near the park’s periphery, all the police who walked heel–toe, heel–toe, and scanned the crowds.
She rubbed her forehead. She looked down at the stitches in her lap. “I guess they can stay. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?”
“Famous last words,” Meggie said.
“You doing okay?” Vic shifted his weight.
Aubrey nodded. She loved the warm concern in Vic’s eyes.
“Can I join you for a minute?”
“Of course,” Aubrey said, and she scooted over to make room. She could not focus on her stitches, could not focus on the speeches being given about Mariah, could not focus on the Halperns. She felt terrible for being so distracted by the nearness of Vic’s person, his hand that was so close she might reach out and cover it with her own. But Mariah’s voice was there in her mind at once to chastise her for her unnecessary guilt complex: Are you kidding me? I want you to be distracted, Mariah said.
They watched as another speaker climbed onto the stump in front of the lighthouse to talk about Mariah. He was a tall, lean young man with a face like an actor—all eyes and mouth—and he introduced himself as Mason Boss. He had neat, espresso-dark hair, brown skin, and leather shoes that were so shiny a person could pick broccoli out of her teeth if she happened to be standing near him and she looked down.
“Does anybody know this guy?” Aubrey whispered.
Jeanette didn’t look away from him. He was standing solidly on the old tree trunk, speaking more softly than the other eulogizers, so that people who wanted to hear him—and everyone did—shushed their children and leaned in.
“No,” Jeanette said. “Not yet.”
“Is it just me, or does he sound … what is that? A little bit British?”
“How could you be a little bit British?”
“He sounds really proper,” Aubrey said.
“He has good diction,” Jeanette said.
His soft, shy words gradually became louder. Aubrey was sure she’d never met him. He said he was new to Tappan Square. But he spoke of Mariah. Her morality. Her guts. He talked about how she saw beauty in Tappan Square’s diversity and its grit—even if lawmakers couldn’t. It wasn’t fair, he said, that any one person or group of persons should have the right to take away the property or properties of any other persons. Wasn’t it John Locke who said that people had a fundamental right to life, liberty, and prop-er-ty? Wasn’t that the point of the Constitution? The people needed to rise up and remind Tarrytown that a government by the people was by the whole people—not by a privileged few.
Aubrey had goose bump
s. She hadn’t realized that she’d stopped knitting.
Out of the murmuring crowds, someone called out: Hey! The Halperns are here! It’s Steve Halpern! Around the park, people began to boo, low and weird, and over the drone of booing, shouts and jeers began to burst like bottle rockets. Aubrey saw Steve Halpern put his hand on his wife’s back and begin to guide her toward the parking lot, away from the increasingly loud crowd.
But the young men at the park’s edge saw an opportunity and were not about to let their lawmakers leave without speaking their minds. All at once, on the heels of Mason Boss’s blood-rousing speech, it was as if Mariah’s death had come not on a hand-knotted rug on Steve Halpern’s floor, but at the end of a rope at Steve Halpern’s hand. The police, who had been at the edges of the park, began to tighten. A crowd—thirty people? Fifty?—surged toward the Halperns, men and women chanting Save Tappan Square! Save Tappan Square! Aubrey felt her guts clench, partly with worry, partly with excitement. She was thrilled to see her neighbors taking such a passionate, political stand.
And then, fast as lightning, it all changed.
Another firework went off, this time in the middle of the crowd. People yelled and pushed and screamed to get away. Aubrey cried out, worried. Was anyone hurt? Near the Halperns, the chanting went on. Save Tappan Square! Save Tappan Square! Shouts of protest turned to shouts of fury and rage. Aubrey got to her feet. Everyone got to their feet. Chairs tipped. Parents snatched up their children. Dogs barked and strained at their leashes. The geese at the park’s edge lifted into the sky. Another firework exploded. A bottle shattered against a tree. Aubrey felt the great swell of danger.
She felt Vic pull her arm. “We should probably get out of here,” he said.
Ten minutes later, it was over. The Tappan Square riot, as it would go down in history among the locals, was, as far as riots went, not much to speak of. Compared with anticommunist violence in nearby Peekskill in 1949, the Tappan Square riot was the work of halfhearted amateurs. There were no rubber bullets, no clouds of tear gas, not even so much as a single car turned upside down. The police had easily cleared out the park; most people went willingly, not interested in being a part of a mob scene. And then there was only the quiet of the dark river, sucking at the thick bulkheads that kept the land from slipping down into the water, and the twinkle of lights like stars on the distant shore.
Only the lighthouse was left standing its ground, as it had since 1883. It had seen the river filled with steamboats so thick it was said a person could walk from one side of the river to the other without getting wet. It had seen the dirigible Hindenburg make its gaseous, big-bellied salute to the people of Tarrytown. It had seen the eastern shoreline, once half a mile away, creep within a few feet of its casings when an automobile factory had dumped so much landfill that it changed the shape of the mighty Tappan Zee—and it felt rather resentful of the change. But it did not have much of an opinion on the riots of Tappan Square. Nor did it have special feelings for the Van Ripper sisters, who had crept from the safety of their old manse back to the park as soon as the coast was clear, and were now sneaking around the bushes with flashlights in hand.
“I think I left it around here,” Aubrey said.
It was well after midnight and the beams of their flashlights lit the grass in bright circles. Colorful leaves, paper plates, napkins, and bendy straws littered the ground.
“I don’t see anything,” Bitty said.
“It’s here,” Aubrey said, trying to sound confident. “Nobody would have taken it.”
Meggie sniggered. “Yeah. They probably think it’s cursed.”
“We’ll find it.” Aubrey squinted into the darkness. The river was glinting black and silver. During the mêlée—the mad rush and enforced evacuation from the park—Aubrey had left Mariah on the picnic blanket. Her knitting was still there, too. At least, she hoped it was.
“There it is!” Meggie shouted.
Bitty shushed her.
Aubrey hurried in the direction of Meggie’s beam. “Oh thank God.” She righted the urn and hugged it close. It was cosmic blue, swirled with purple and flecked with white clusters like musical notes or stars. Mariah had grown portly in her later years. Now she weighed no more than a baby in Aubrey’s arms. “See? It’s fine. I told you it would be fine.”
Bitty started to walk away. “Great. Let’s get out of here.”
Aubrey stood.
Meggie was wandering off.
“Hey.” Bitty shined her flashlight between Meggie’s shoulder blades. She spoke as if she were whispering on stage. “Where you going?”
“It’s a nice night. I want to see the river.”
“Do you want to get arrested? The cops are everywhere,” Bitty said.
Meggie called over her shoulder. “Don’t be a chicken.”
“We have to get back to the kids,” Bitty said.
“They’ll be fine,” Meggie said, turning around to walk backward for a moment. “They’ve got a movie and enough popcorn to feed a small country.”
Bitty glanced at Aubrey.
Aubrey shrugged with Mariah in her arms.
Bitty’s shoulders sank with resignation. “Well, at least let’s turn off our flashlights. I don’t want to explain to my husband why he needs to come spring me out of jail.”
Aubrey laughed.
Together, they followed Meggie to the edge of the water, where the rocks were bunched and jutting. The lighthouse rose up before them, dark where a light should have been. The Tappan Zee Bridge was strung with pearly green lights on their chain.
Meggie kicked off her basketball sneakers.
“Ugh. What now?” Bitty asked.
“What’s it look like?” Meggie rolled up her pants, then sat and plunked her feet into the water. The moonlight brace-leted her calves. “Just for a sec. Nobody’s gonna bother us.”
Aubrey pulled off her socks and shoes—which required a lot of unlacing, hopping, and prying—and then she sat beside her sister.
Reluctantly, Bitty joined them. “It’s cold.”
“Freezing,” Aubrey said.
“You get used to it,” Meggie said.
They sat together, and yet not together, in silence. Aubrey gritted her teeth against the icy water. The bones of her ankles were cold to the core, as if she could feel the marrow turning purple and blue. For two nights her sisters had been with her again, in the Stitchery. And except for that first night, when Meggie had appeared and they’d cried together with Mariah on their minds, Aubrey felt as if they were together in physical proximity only. Bitty busied herself with her children. Meggie holed away. They exchanged only as much information as one might exchange with a friendly stranger on a bus or plane. Now, sitting at the water’s edge on the night-cold rocks, this was the first time that the three of them had been alone without the walls of the Stitchery listening in on their conversation and without Bitty’s children nearby. The nighttime obscured Aubrey from her sisters just enough to give her a sense that she was free from them even as they sat close by.
Meggie must have shared some of Aubrey’s feeling. She broke the silence. “I just keep thinking Mariah would have loved this.”
“Yes, she always loved the lighthouse,” Aubrey said.
“No—I mean the riot. She would have loved it! God! If only she could have seen it. She lived to stir up trouble.”
“No, she didn’t,” Aubrey said, rankled. “She lived to put an end to trouble.”
“Same difference,” Meggie said.
“Hard to believe the Halperns showed up like that,” Bitty said. “I can’t imagine what they were thinking.”
“Maybe they meant well,” Aubrey said. “Maybe they were just trying to say that even if they disagreed with Mariah, they still respected her.”
“Um, that didn’t really transmit,” Meggie said.
“Just because they’re rich doesn’t mean they’re bad,” Bitty said. “I mean—look at it from their angle. They’re making tough decisions for the
greater good.”
“Fine, fine,” Meggie said.
Bitty lifted her legs out of the river by straightening her knees. The water dripped off her feet in silver droplets. “Who was that guy? The one with the face. You know him?”
“Mason Boss,” Aubrey said. “I don’t know him.”
Bitty dropped her feet back in the river. The water softly adjusted to the move. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said. “But—given how crazy it was that Aunt Mari didn’t leave the Stitchery to Aubrey, do you think she was going mad?”
“No way,” Aubrey said.
“Still,” Bitty said. “She was starting to lose it.”
“No she wasn’t,” Aubrey said. “There’s no such thing as the Madness.”
Bitty laughed. “Seriously? Really, Aub?”
“What?”
“You believe that you can change somebody’s future with a fisherman’s rib pattern but you don’t believe that dementia runs in our family?”
The nerves of Aubrey’s spine prickled. “Mariah must have known what she was doing. She wasn’t going mad.”
Bitty leaned forward on her knees. “I’m not saying there was some magical thing that made her go crazy—the curse of Helen Van Ripper. I’m saying that there was something getting funny with her brain.”
“But at least she had you to take care of her.” Meggie squeezed Aubrey’s shoulder. “It would have been much worse if she was alone.”
Aubrey knew what her sister was getting at, and she moved her shoulder just slightly, so that Meggie’s hand fell away. Aubrey tried to picture herself as an old woman—shuffling through the halls of the Stitchery, yarn twisted around her fingers, and the big, empty house around her like a force field, keeping the world out. The thought depressed her. And yet it was an image of herself that she’d grown accustomed to. Her particular future had been going forward before her like a shadow since the day she was born.
“Do you believe in the Madness?” Aubrey asked Meggie.
She shrugged. “I never know what to believe.”
Aubrey traced her fingers along the surface of the cold water. That Mariah was quirky had never been in question. She was known to pick the flowers in other people’s gardens—at midday—and arrange them on the counter in the yarn room (because it’s not stealing if they’ll grow back). At village meetings she never raised her hand or waited for permission to speak—she just launched into whatever new tirade struck her fancy. Sometimes they were logical tirades (We must have a traffic light at the end of the road; it’s impossible to make a left!), but sometimes her tirades verged on nutty (People should be allowed to enter their dogs in the Halloween parade, dammit! If there’s not enough parking at the diner, why not park the cars on the roof?). In the quiet of her mind, Aubrey was beginning to wonder if Mariah wasn’t starting to push the boundaries of quirkiness. And that scared her. Because if the Madness was real, then the sacrifice of being a guardian of the Stitchery was a bigger, scarier thing than any single sacrifice made in the name of a single spell.
The Wishing Thread Page 10