The Wishing Thread

by Van Allen, Lisa

  “Technically it doesn’t say that,” Nessa said. “It doesn’t say that Brom is the Horseman.”

  “It doesn’t have to say it; it’s implied,” Bitty said. Then she kissed her children, told them to go to sleep, and managed to keep a smile on her face until she left the room.

  What she did not tell them, as she closed the door behind her, was that people in the Hudson Valley had been whispering stories of a Headless Horseman long before Irving wrote down the tale. Nor did she tell them about the grave supposedly in the Old Dutch churchyard, where a nameless German soldier was buried—his head taken clear off by a cannonball.

  She didn’t want her children to know that even the smallest kernel of truth existed down beneath the fictional puffery of the story. Because if they knew there was a hint of legitimacy, like a drop of food coloring in a tall glass of water, they would fixate on it. And eventually that one little dollop of fact would dissolve and expand and discolor everything, making all the ridiculous fiction seem like it could be real. Like what happened with the “magic” of the Stitchery.

  She leaned against the door of her children’s temporary bedroom. There was something to be afraid of in Tarrytown. But Bitty had no way of explaining what it was. Nor would she want to—because it scared her far more than any made-up story.

  She went down the hall to her bedroom, ignoring the goose bumps on her arms.

  * * *

  While Bitty had been settling in to read to her children, and Aubrey had been trying not to think of the way Vic’s elbow touched her arm where they sat in the fire hall, Meggie had been splashing along in a half-empty bus to Yonkers, where her old roller derby team, the Flying Dutchesses, was having a bout. Whenever she got to a new city, the first thing she did was look up the local rollergirls. She couldn’t always skate on their team, but she could take tickets at the door, set up and break down seating, or even referee in a pinch. She knew that where there were rollergirls, there were new friends.

  She paid her twelve dollars at the door and ignored the butterflies in her belly as she shouldered her way inside. The great dark ribs of the barrel ceiling arched overhead, and beneath them, the rollergirls were warming up. The crowd was electric; Meggie’s blood heated with its noise and its verve. People laughed and talked, their voices hollowed out by the massive enclosure. Hugs were exchanged. Children played tag, or some game like it, and squealed at the top of their lungs. And yet for all the happy clamor, Meggie moved through the arena in perfect and unnoticed silence, finding a place on the bleachers, adjusting her leggings, sitting down just far enough away from her neighbor to be acceptable, feeling invisible and small.

  She strained to see her old team, where they were stretching their calves and cinching the laces of their skates tight. She knew a few of them, those who were still around. She knew that “Simone Says” had a bum knee, that “Whip in Time” hated being the pivot, that “Hard Block Life” had an autistic daughter who adored elephants. But her primary reason for paying a visit to her old stomping grounds was not only to see her former teammates in general, but to see one specific person on the team. One specific person who might or might not be interested in seeing her.

  Before Meggie had left Tarrytown, Tori Westmore—“Winged VicTori” on the rink—had been Meggie’s closest friend outside of the Stitchery. Tori was tough to get a handle on. She’d never been against coercing the guys outside the liquor store to buy her beer, but she also went to church on Sunday mornings, where she sat in the back pew and prayed. She loved pulpy noir detective fiction—the more backward and sexist, the more she liked to talk about it and laugh; but she also liked to spend her weekend afternoons wandering through art galleries in Lower Manhattan. She believed in the Stitchery’s magic—even more than Meggie did at times. She’d even tried on occasion to knit her own (failed) spells. But she didn’t believe in people at all: She was cynical and distrusting and she made the people she loved jump through hoops to stay close to her. She often needed to be forgiven, but she was also the friend who was quickest to forgive.

  Meggie had loved her to pieces. But after her high school diploma had arrived at the Stitchery, Meggie had left Tori the way she’d left everyone in Tarrytown—without so much as a hint of her plans.

  She shifted where she sat. She could not see through the crowd if Tori was among the players. Maybe she had given up roller derby. Perhaps Meggie might never see her again. And maybe it was better that way. Tori’s willingness to forgive a derelict friend might have a statute of limitations—one that Meggie had years ago surpassed. Tori had every right to be mad.

  The bout started and the teams were announced. Meggie felt a shift in the air—the expectation of speed and violence. The visiting team, the Hotlanta Howlers, lived up to their name and then some—so ridiculously sexy and gyrating on their wheels that it was more hilarious than erotic. But beneath all of their good humor lurked formidable opponents with ripped arms, muscled legs, and challenge in their eyes. The Dutchesses skated out in black and neon green, some with Tinker Toys farthingales assembled around their hips, others with formidable neon pompadours. Meggie used to have a fichu and a little green fan. They curtsied to the crowd and pursed their lips and stuck out their rear ends with their pinkie fingers poking the air—a farce of Knickerbocker gentility. In a matter of moments, they would give their opponents a smack-down with whips and hip checks and the occasional “accidental” foul.

  Meggie sat, watching while the rollergirls made their laps around the rink. It was a terrible moment when she realized that while she’d been keeping an eye out for Tori, she’d actually been looking at her the whole time—without recognition. Tori’s hair was in multicolored dreads now, and she was a little thinner than she had been when Meggie last saw her—but still, Meggie felt terrible not to have recognized her immediately. Her feet felt as heavy as if she were wearing lead skates.

  After the bout was over—Hotlanta lost—Meggie stayed put. She was glad the other team had flopped; Hotlanta was a vicious rival. Once, ages ago in high school, Meggie had asked Aubrey to knit sweatbands for her entire team because Meggie had despised Hotlanta so much that she’d wanted their upcoming bout against the team to be a shutout. She’d traded in her three favorite sundresses, her poster of James Dean from Rebel, and—just to be certain—her pillow, the irreplaceable old pillow that was the only pillow that could give her a good night’s sleep. Aubrey had protested that it wasn’t fair, that Meggie was asking her to cheat. But as usual, Aubrey eventually caved. The Flying Dutchesses not only beat Hotlanta that year, they murdered them. Hotlanta girls went home with sprained wrists, broken fingers, and knees that would never again let a rainy day pass without aching. Meggie had actually felt a little bad.

  Now she watched with jealousy as her old teammates congratulated one another, smacking helmets and rear ends. They’d beat Hotlanta with no magic, with no help from Meggie at all. And they still didn’t know she was there. She supposed she wasn’t surprised that no one recognized her; her appearance changed with the seasons. It was the most constant thing about her, how much and often she changed.

  The bleachers cleared out. The crowd drifted through the open double doors. The man selling popcorn and soda packed up. Meggie told herself: I’ll give it a minute, then I’ll walk over and say hi.

  But before Meggie raised herself off of the bleachers, Tori turned her head. She looked at Meggie for a long moment, her eyes dancing away, then looking back for a double take. Meggie got to her feet and gave a limp wave. Her friend, or at least, the girl who used to be her friend, skated toward her in long, smooth strides. She was not precisely smiling.

  “Well, well, well.” Tori towered over Meggie in her skates. Her ashy brown hair fell in clumpy dreadlocks to her shoulders, streaked in pink and aqua. Her nose ring glinted. She wore a Girl-Scout-green vest and frothy black puff of skirt.

  Meggie gave a shy smile. “Hello there, Tori.”

  “If it isn’t our missing blocker.” She put her han
ds on her hips. “It’s about time you came back.”

  “Yep. The Prodigal Daughter returns.”

  Tori considered her for a long moment, bouncing her helmet in her hand. Meggie felt shy, shy like she had not felt in a very long time, shy with this person whom she’d once known almost as well as she knew herself. She resisted the urge to fidget—to adjust the hem of her tunic or push back her hair—while Tori weighed her decision about whether to forgive Meggie or tell her to go to hell.

  A little smile lifted Tori’s right cheek. “I knew you couldn’t stay away forever,” she said. Then she pulled Meggie into a fast hug. She was a jumble of softness and clunky plastic pads. When she pulled away, her eyes were bright with pleasure. She hit Meggie, hard, on the arm. “Why didn’t you let us know you were coming back? We could have used you tonight.”

  “I didn’t know I would be here. Mariah died.”

  “Oh. Wow. Hey—I’m really sorry.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Are you okay?”

  Meggie nodded.

  “So—where you been?” Tori shifted her weight onto one skate. “It was like you just fell off the edge of the map.”

  “I wanted to see if the world was round.”

  “Is it?”

  “I’m standing here again, aren’t I? I started walking in one direction and next thing I knew, I was back where I started again.”

  “You’re such an ass.” Tori smiled.

  “You totally missed me,” Meggie said.

  “Yes,” Tori said. “I totally did.”

  Meggie reached for her friend’s hand. In the years since she’d been gone, she hadn’t once felt homesick—not so much as a twinge. She never looked backward. She just moved forward and on. But when Tori squeezed her fingers, she felt like crying. Strange to feel homesick now, she thought, now that she was home.

  They went to a bar—a favorite old place with dark wood and loud music and cheap beer. A band was playing top twenty covers in the next room. The roller derby team had arrived a few minutes after them with gusto and flair; they laughed loud, drank fast, and gestured wildly. Meggie had greeted her old teammates, saw interest and envy spark in their eyes when she said Oh—just traveling. Seeing the world. She heard their friendly invitations to come skate again, to strap on her wheels for the next practice. And she’d accepted their offers to buy her drinks.

  But now, Meggie was alone—as alone as one could be in a crowded bar—with Tori. They sat in a dark and greasy wooden booth, the backrests towering straight over their heads, their drinks sweating between them. They leaned forward and had to yell over the music to be heard. The skin around Tori’s right eye was slowly turning purple from an elbow that had flown a little too high during the bout. She’d pulled back her clumped hair into a high, messy snarl.

  “So you’re a vagrant,” Tori said.

  “I prefer to think I’m nomadic,” Meggie said.

  “How long are you staying in Tarrytown?”

  “Dunno. Until I feel the urge to get on the move again.”

  “Where will you go?”

  Meggie laughed. “What is this? Twenty questions?”

  “I’ve been worried about you. What the heck made you leave like that? And without even saying good-bye. That was kind of a dick move.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “You could have warned us. And by us, I mean at least me.”

  “I sent postcards.”

  “After the fact.”

  “I didn’t want anybody to try and stop me,” Meggie said.

  “I know.” Tori took a pull of cheap beer. “I definitely would have tried.”

  Meggie smiled. The band in the other room announced a fifteen-minute break, and the music quieted as the bartender switched on the radio.

  “So tell me everything,” Tori said. “Tell me where you’ve been.”

  Meggie turned her beer in a circle, and she began to tell Tori about bits and pieces of her travels—the good parts, anyway. She’d made it a point to find something to like in each new city. In Denver, she’d liked the jagged and blue-peaked mountains, so much more raucous than the stooped old hills of the Hudson Valley. In Texas she’d liked that men wore honest-to-God cowboy hats and huge belt buckles. In Tampa, she’d liked how everyone was transient—that people never needed to show up at a party because they brought the party with them wherever they went.

  She did not mention to Tori that in Savannah, where she’d been playing house with Phil before the Stitchery had so rudely interrupted, she’d had trouble finding much to like. Yes, there was the Spanish moss, which had always looked to Meggie the way music might look if it were a tangible thing and could get caught in the branches of trees. And yes, there was the lovely old architecture, and the mini golf places for the tourists, and the hospitality. But all of the things she might have liked about Savannah, including Phil, were soured by the one giant annoying thing that she did not like about it: Her lead in Georgia had dried up more quickly than usual. She’d gotten a tip about an “Emerald Van Ripper” at a basement nightclub on Broughton Avenue, and she’d thought that perhaps her mother had decided to be a bit playful about taking on an alias. But when Meggie had tracked down Emerald, it wasn’t her mother she found but a beautiful young man who did an uncanny impression of Judy Garland.

  “But how do you decide where you’re going?” Tori asked. “Do you just wing it?”

  “I pretty much just follow my nose,” Meggie said. “Sometimes I go to a particular place for a particular reason. But other times, I’m just following a hunch.”

  “A hunch? Are you some kind of secret vigilante crime fighter? One of those people who puts their underwear on the outside and gives hamburgers to homeless people?”

  “No, I’m not a superhero,” Meggie said. “I meant, I go somewhere new when I have a hunch that I’ll like the place. For example, I had a hunch that I would like Portland.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes. Except for the vegetarians. And the rain.”

  Meggie took a swallow of her beer. She hoped her face wasn’t reddening. She would need to be more careful about her choice of words around Tori. Tori was the kind of person who heard everything—everything that a person didn’t actually say. And she’d never let insinuations, deliberate or not, pass by unexamined. Instead, Tori would grip the thin and slippery thread of a hint and haul it fist-over-fist to the surface of a conversation like bringing a thrashing sturgeon up from opaque depths.

  The truth, what Meggie could not say to her friend, was that much of Meggie’s sleuthing was based on hunches these days. In the beginning, there had been leads—clues to where her mother might have gone that seemed to Meggie’s eye to be authentic and viable. She’d kept a journal, jotting down all traces of her mother: the collected memories of old boyfriends, reminiscences from temporary friends. But eventually the leads began to require more and more leaps of the imagination, suspensions of disbelief. When Meggie had no viable leads in a new city, she carried her mother’s picture around and showed it to people when she bought a sandwich at a deli or climbed on a bus. She showed it to old ladies in churches and middle-aged men in bars. She showed it to cops and homeless people. She explained that the picture was from seventeen years ago and her mother probably didn’t look like this anymore. Sometimes the strangers swore they recognized her. A few had actually told her stories about Lila—old stories that must have happened in the days before she’d gone totally missing. Mostly, they just said no.

  For all her endless searching, Meggie saw her mother’s face all the time. She saw it in women shopping for perfume. In women walking their dogs. She saw her mother in grocery stores, and bars, and in the privacy of her dreams. Sometimes, her mother was in a crate in the hull of a cargo ship. Sometimes she was in a misty woods tied to a tree. Sometimes she was in a jail cell or the trunk of a car. Sometimes she wasn’t trapped in any external place at all, but instead appeared to be trapped within her own skull, her eyes looking out in
terror, pleading for rescue. That was the worst dream of all.

  It was never too long after the dream resurfaced that Meggie hit the road, pursuing leads, hunches, and whims. Every city had brought the same thing: the rising hope, the letdown, and then, the moving on.

  “What are you thinking about?” Tori asked. “Are you off on a mental walkabout again already? Where are you? Mexico? The Everglades? Yosemite?”

  Meggie shook her head. “I’m not anywhere. I’m right here with you.”

  Tori tipped her head, not quite believing.

  Meggie knocked back the last of her beer and put it on the table with a thud. “Come on. Let’s go dance,” she said.

  From the Great Book in the Hall: Knitting is not always blissful abandon. Sometimes, it’s painful and fraught. At some point, you will find yourself knitting a garment with fifteen stitches per row—perhaps it’s some lacy thing with complicated holes and increases and decreases—and quite suddenly you’ll find that you only have fourteen stitches.

  Where did the missing stitch go? And what’s the right course of action? Make a new stitch and not worry about finding the old one—in which case, you run the risk of seeing your work come apart down the road? Or go back and find where the stitch disappeared from, in which case you will spend valuable time unknitting, undoing all your hard work, with no idea how long you’ve been missing the missing stitch?

  Knitting is an exercise in learning. And like physical exercise, learning can be uncomfortable. It’s the end result that makes the fretting worthwhile.

  The sky was dark, but the birds that had not yet flown south for the season were just beginning to sing. Aubrey lay in bed, her thoughts winging her in a thousand directions, none of them expected. When she’d looked out into the distance of her life the day before Mariah died, down the long, telescoping tunnel of her imagination, she was certain to see her destiny square and true as a boat on the far horizon. She had not factored romance into the story of her life; in fact, after her early, failed attempts at courtship rituals, she had very staunchly and vigorously factored love out of her forecast. But then, last night, in the sticky warmth of Vic’s truck, the projected story line of her life that she’d been regularly attending to as if it were an overindulged houseplant began to sprout unexpected fruit. And Aubrey could not have been more breathless if Vic had pulled a ring box from his pocket and proposed.