The Wishing Thread

by Van Allen, Lisa

  Once, a long time ago, she and Craig and their teething daughter had gone to visit his parents at their house on the hill in Tarrytown. The Fullens’ house was a lot like the Stitchery: a little old and crabby, a little imposing on its lot. But unlike the Stitchery, the floorboards in the Fullens’ house did not creak, not even in hallways. The walls were not mottled with leaf-brown stains. The Fullen house was what the Stitchery might have been, if the Stitchery had not been in Tappan Square.

  Sitting in her in-laws’ living room, she’d hated to think of the terrible and falling-down old house she’d grown up in, how her family had so willingly accepted their own poverty and their suffering in the name of a thing that did not exist. And yet, every time they’d gone to visit Craig’s parents—which was not often—Bitty sat straight-spined on the Fullens’ tasteful armchair in their pristine old manse, and she longed for Mariah and Aubrey and Meggie.

  Do you want to stop by and see them? Craig used to ask, back when he’d done such things. And Bitty had told him no. She couldn’t bear it.

  All these years, she’d believed she was alone. Her sisters had seemed to be as irrecoverable as time. But last night, they had helped her even when she hadn’t wanted to be helped. They had held her like splints latched to a weakened bone. With a suddenness that inflated her whole heart, she knew: She could do anything. Or at least, she could do what needed to be done—because she was not, and had never been, alone.

  She heard her husband’s voice carrying over the speakers of her cell phone, squeezing like smoke through the seams around the bedroom door. And she pushed herself off of the wall and walked to the kitchen, where she opened herself a bottle of wine.

  There was something about the darkness, Aubrey thought, that changed sounds, made them sharper, harder, more crystalline. The old radiators of the Stitchery hissed and gurgled; the glass in the window shook with the passing of trucks or breeze. She grasped her pillow, tucked it up under her rib cage, and curled around it. She’d told herself that losing Vic wouldn’t hurt that bad. She’d told herself she was prepared. But she was standing in a storm with nothing to protect her but an umbrella. Vic—as it turned out—was not her unconditional defender. He would not stand at her side through thick and thin.

  It was entirely unfair. For years she’d kept her hopes under lock and key, locked them away in the back of a closet and never let them see the light of day. Then, with a curious sleight of hand, Vic popped the lid—and now Aubrey could see no way of forcing them back into docile imprisonment ever again.

  The night wore at her, wore on. Every time she told herself not to think of Vic, she thought of him. Every time she promised herself that she would not waste another second pining over what could not be, she pined over it anyway. There were moments in the darkness when she wished she might have taken it all back—taken the whole night and done it again. In her revised second date, she would put her foot down and say, No, I won’t go sit on the bleachers. She would lure him with the promise of a different kind of entertainment, slowly sipping her latte, looking at him over the lid, licking her lips and inviting him to watch it happen. She would take him back to—Where? The Stitchery? Would they go to his house?—and push his jacket from his shoulders and pull his arms from his shirt, and she would take him into her, and surround him, and have him, bind him, as if sex could be a spell that might entrap him into loving her blindly and forever.

  But reality was not fantasy: She did not want Vic to love her if he did not love all of her, if he could not love her for what she really was. Before tonight, Vic had seemed to be the only man in Tarrytown who might be able to handle being with a guardian of the Stitchery. He was open-minded, and yet he knew where he stood. He loved books the way that Aubrey loved them, and he was content to listen to her babble on and on about whatever she was reading and what she planned to read. He was not—Aubrey had realized with relief—afraid of the Van Ripper magic, not afraid of knitting, not afraid of being with a woman who was powerful, and as if all of that were not enough to make Aubrey fall ass-over-teakettle for him, he was the only person in Tarrytown with enough self-control to keep himself from frowning when he looked into her fright-blue eyes. Vic had seemed, in almost every way, to be Aubrey’s match, her destiny, even. But it would have been wrong of her to have let him go on thinking that a life with her in Tarrytown would be easy and without great risk. She would not have been able to live with herself if—sometime down the line—it dawned on Vic that a good portion of Tarrytown had turned against him because of his choices, that he had given up his particular idea of happiness in order to be with her, and that a sacrifice, once made, could not be undone.

  When he’d driven away from the Stitchery, he might as well have tied a chain to the bumper of his truck and dragged her heart behind.

  She willed herself to sleep, worked at her despair with crowbar and rolling pin, attempting to forge it into a better shape. At first, she did not recognize the noise that was coming through the window as her name. She heard only the vowels, the tail end of an eee. But gradually, the sound became a searchlight reaching into her dark thoughts, a beam in the haze, and she followed it out, followed it, until she understood that the sound was someone calling to her from outside. She drew back the curtains and opened the blinds. She knew he was there even before her eyes adjusted to the uneven light outside, even before she saw the faint outline of him in the front yard, half washed in streetlight gold.

  “Vic?”

  He gestured toward her, wild movements she couldn’t decipher. She held up her index finger to him: One sec.

  She dropped the venetian blinds and rushed around. She wrapped a wool shawl around her shoulders over her long nightdress, grabbed socks, and shoved her feet into boots. Excitement made her chest tight, made her dizzy with anticipation. Had he come to explain to her why he did not see a future for them, to make her feel better that he was letting her down? Or—she hardly dared hope—for something else?

  She went down the stairs as quickly as she could, out into the night. She met him on the lawn. The air was icy and smelled like river. All around her, there was motion she couldn’t quite make sense of—and she realized it was snow, the first snow of the year, nearly invisible, flurrying down.

  She gathered her wrap around her throat. “What are you doing here?”

  “I needed to see you. In person.” His eyes gleamed in the streetlight. He was so beautiful it broke her heart. And it occurred to her that perhaps she should have looked in the mirror before going outside. Her hair was probably a rat’s nest of frizzy blond. Her eyes were probably swollen red. But if Vic noticed, he didn’t seem to care. “I’m sorry I didn’t call first. I thought you’d tell me not to come.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “You’re freezing.”

  She didn’t deny it.

  “And you’re … crying?”

  She wrapped her arms around herself and looked away.

  “Oh, God—Aub.” He lifted his hands to touch her but cut the movement short. “I’m such an ass.”

  She pulled herself up straighter. She realized, with some surprise, that as badly as her heart ached for him, she was not prepared to throw herself at his feet in gratitude or brush the hard realities aside. Her heart could not take another letdown.

  “I want you to know,” he said, “I’m not afraid of Ruth Ten Eckye. And if anyone in Tarrytown has something bad to say about you or your family, I don’t care.”

  “You say that now.” She glanced at him. “But what about in the winter, and you need to heat the house and buy groceries, and there aren’t enough clients to let you do those things.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does. Trust me. I know what it’s like not to have enough, to have to decide between buying vegetables or fuel oil. And I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

  “Listen to me, Aubrey,” he said. He took her hands. He was not wearing gloves, and his skin was icy. “I want to see where this goes with you. If
I let you get away now, I might regret it for the rest of my life. I don’t know if I’d be able to live with that.”

  “The rest of your life … What about the Madness?”

  “What about it?”

  She shifted in her boots. They looked ridiculous under the hem of her nightgown. “It seems to run in the family. At least, it shows up now and again. Let’s say, hypothetically speaking, let’s say, we—we get old together. Then what? What will you do if I go Mad?”

  His gaze was strong. “And what will you do if I ever get cancer? Or heart disease? Or anything else like that?”

  “I guess when you put it that way—” Aubrey saw a light come on in the house across the street; her eyes flicked toward it. She thought to suggest they might go inside. But Vic reached up to touch her cheek and asked without words for her to focus on him once again.

  “I should have done things differently,” he said. “I’ll admit it: Ruth scares me. Okay? I wanted to get on her good side for lots of reasons. And yes—it didn’t occur to me until tonight just how … complicated … it is to be associated with the Stitchery.”

  “You mean, to be associated with me,” Aubrey said.

  “No.” His thumb traced the corner of her jawbone. “Not with you.”

  “No?”

  His smile fluttered and was gone. “It’s not complicated with you. How I feel about you—it might be the simplest thing I’ve ever known.”

  “Vic …”

  “When you started talking that way tonight, telling me about how I could lose clients, and even friends, I should have just—stopped you. I should have kissed you and not let you get another word out. Hell, I should have made love to you on the damn seat of the truck if that’s what it took to—”

  “Hey! Aubrey? You okay?”

  Aubrey’s face flamed—the visual of getting naked in Vic’s truck instantly obliterated. Bitty had opened a window on the second floor of the Stitchery; Meggie was just behind her. They were looking down into the yard.

  “I’m fine!” Aubrey called with too much vigor. She could see movement now in the homes around them, the stirring of her neighbors at three AM. She turned to Vic and whispered, “We’re waking up the neighborhood.”

  He stepped back from her and spoke loudly. “What was that? We’re waking up the neighborhood?”

  She tried to shush him.

  “GOOD!” he said. “I WANT to wake up the neighborhood. That way, everybody in Tappan Square will know HOW I FEEL ABOUT AUBREY VAN RIPPER.” He spun away from her, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted into the dark. “Hear that? I’M COMPLETELY INFATUATED AND CRAZY ABOUT AUBREY VAN RIPPER.”

  “So get a room and shut up!” a neighbor called from some hidden place.

  “Woo-hoo!” Meggie shouted from above. “You tell ’em, Vic!”

  Despite herself, Aubrey began to laugh. The snow fell softly, disappearing into the dark. In the streetlight, Vic’s skin had a gold-brown glow. “You’re crazy!” she told him.

  “Oh yes,” he said. He came back to her, breathing hard, and looked into her eyes without blinking. When he spoke again, his voice was intimate, private, hers. “Did you think you were the only one who could cause trouble in Tarrytown?”

  She smiled. The night was cold but she felt superheated, deeply warm in a way she’d never felt before. Vic was so close, so very close. She searched his face, dizzy with the need to touch him. He glanced up to the window, where Bitty and Meggie were making no effort to hide their interest or eavesdropping.

  “Don’t mind us,” Meggie said.

  “Sorry, ladies. Show’s over.” Vic put his arm around Aubrey’s shoulders and whispered to her; she felt his breath, warm against her skin. “Come on.”

  She let him lead her up the Stitchery’s crooked stairs and into the deep shadows of the porch. When she turned to him, he smoothed his hands along her hair.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said.

  “I have no idea what I’m doing,” he said. “I only know that I’m not ready to stop seeing you. You’re unlike anyone I’ve ever met. God, that sounds like a line. But it’s true. You’re fascinating. Unpredictable. You’re interesting to talk to. You’ve got a heart the size of the Tappan Zee. It’s like the world you live in is a different one than the rest of us live in, and God help me I want to get in there with you.” He settled his hands on her hips, and the only thing between his palms and her body was the thin white cotton of her nightgown. “I want you to know that I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid of Ruth Ten Eckye, and I’m not afraid to see where this goes. If you still want to. If I haven’t blown everything.”

  Aubrey hardly trusted herself to speak. “I was worried.”

  “About what?”

  “I was worried I might never get to kiss you.”

  If he had moved toward her, she hadn’t seen the movement. But suddenly he was closer, the cool wall of the Stitchery at her back, and the heat of him, shadowing over her, his thumb grazing her lip. “Don’t worry about that,” he said.

  She lifted her face, and when his mouth came down, the sensation was nothing like what she’d felt during the few fleeting kisses she’d experienced in the past, when desire had played delicately as chimes in some distant corner of her mind. No—this was a carillon booming down the valley on a clear day, a bolt of lightning snapping to incinerate a tree on the ground. He tipped his head and hers, asking for something hotter, deeper, and she parted her lips and felt the crush and scald and knotted-up frustration of his body as he pushed for more. She could no longer feel the cold. Her shawl fell to the ground. His hands were careless, were everywhere, seeking every point of contact, every inch of skin, and if he’d asked to shuck her nightgown from her body even in the night chill she would have helped him do it, because there was nothing in the world she wanted more at that moment than the collision of cold air with the heat of his body, moving against hers. But, finally, with a painstaking withdrawal, he pulled away.

  His breathing was hard; her hands made tight fists in his jacket. She fit herself into the curve of his chest, and the noise he made was somewhere between pain and relief.

  “I won’t do this to you again,” he said. “From here out, whatever happens between us, happens between only us. I promise.”

  Aubrey smiled against his coat and held him tighter. It did not occur to her until later, much later, that she might have promised him the same.

  Carson had fallen under the spell of Tarrytown. He had—Meggie realized—become obsessed with Internet videos of ghost hunters, spiritual pioneers who arrived with their microphones and heat guns and Geiger counters to prove the existence to Tarrytown’s living-impaired. The ghosts of Tarrytown were as merry and popular a party as one could expect of dead people: the insane monk who killed the five virgins; Major John André, the gentleman soldier whose execution stirred the sympathies of even the most dogged revolutionaries; sweet Matilda Hoffman, just seventeen when she died on the brink of her wedding, and the fiancé who never married after he lost her, Washington Irving; Hulda the Witch, the Bohemian pariah who was a deadeye for a redcoat until her mortal wound; and occasionally, the Hudson River’s own Flying Dutchman, the Half Moon, with its mutinous crew watching the dangerous shores and biding their time.

  The armies of Halloween had arrived in full strength to take up their posts all over Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow; long-nosed witches grinned in shop windows, faceless ghosts hung on fishing line, dismembered hands crawled up from dying lawns. And that, coupled with Carson’s ghostlore infatuation, meant Meggie was not surprised when her nephew announced what he wanted to be for Halloween. Meggie had borrowed Aubrey’s car and spent the morning gathering the necessary things: the three-cornered hat, the dusty old black jacket, the rickety wooden cane, the gray wig, the scuffed black boots. And now Carson stood admiring himself in the mirror of Meggie’s room, hunching his shoulders and pointing his feet to the sides. Meggie smiled to see that he was happy; she could not leave Tarryt
own until her obligation to him was fulfilled.

  “Think anybody’s gonna know who I am?” he asked.

  “Around here? You bet.” She stood up from her bed and handed him a book. “Plus, you’ll be carrying this. This is the kicker.”

  He posed with The History of New York tucked with scholarly jauntiness against his ribs. Then he turned to Meggie and tipped his hat. “Why … hello there. Diedrich Knickerbocker, at your service.”

  “How do you do,” she said, laughing a little.

  He turned to the mirror and took off his hat and gray hair. “The wig itches me.”

  “You can always take it off and just wear that hat.”

  He considered it, then put the wig back on. She did not tell him how adorable he looked; she struggled to keep from launching herself from the bed and pinching his cheeks. He asked her: “Why didn’t Washington Irving just put his own name on the book? Why did he have to write it as Diedrich Knickerbocker?”

  Meggie thought. “It was like a different persona. Like acting and trying on a new voice. I guess, anyway.”

  “Or maybe he was shy,” Carson said.

  “Maybe,” Meggie said.

  “Hey, guess what.”

  “What?”

  “I decided what you’re going to be when we go trick-or-treating.”

  Meggie said nothing.

  “Don’t you wanna know? It’s really good.”

  “Carson.” Meggie pinched the crocheted afghan on her bed. “Come sit down.”

  He did not move immediately. She saw his face slam shut, and she knew the look—that he was already steeling himself for disappointment. She did the same. He walked toward her, his boots clomping until he climbed onto the bed beside her. She put her arm loosely around his slight shoulders. Already, she missed him.

  “I’m not staying for Halloween,” she said.

  “But I thought you said I could pick out your costume?”

  Meggie faltered. She’d broken many hearts before, but never a child’s. It was more painful than she could stand. She thought for a moment about agreeing to stay after Halloween—but that would only prolong the misery. “I’m sorry,” she told him.