A Thread So Thin

by Marie Bostwick

  “Why, just last night, I walked into the bathroom and caught her with her face right up to the mirror, examining her wrinkles with a very displeased expression. When I asked her if she wanted to discuss her feelings about aging, she just glared at me and told me to mind my own damned business.”

  Franklin laughed again, showing all his teeth. It was nice to see him smile again.

  “Trust me, Liza, Abigail will be back to her old self before you know it.”

  I hope he’s right.

  “Abigail, you’ve got to quit this,” I said. “It’s really getting on my nerves. I’m fine. I’m not mad at you. I don’t resent you. I am not harboring any deep-seated emotional angst toward you or anyone else that I’m unwilling to discuss. I just want to go for a walk. When I get back, I’ll eat something. I promise.”

  She smiled, finally satisfied that I’d make good on my promise.

  “Liza, dear, when you get back, after you eat, I’m wondering if you’d like to take a look at the seating arrangements? That is, if you want to, if you’re not too tired. I don’t want to put any pressure on you. I just thought you’d be interested.”

  “Sure. No problem.”

  “Good! I’m just about finished with it, but if you don’t like something, if there’s anyone you’d like moved, then they will be moved. After all, this is your wedding, Liza. I want everything to be exactly how you want it.”

  She looked at me, expectantly. For a moment, I just stood there, forgetting what my line was. Then I remembered.

  “It is, Abigail. Everything is exactly as I want it now. It will be a beautiful wedding.”

  Abigail beamed and then gave me a big, grateful hug. This is something else she’s learned in therapy—hugging. Frequent, sincere, extended hugging.

  Dear God, let Franklin be right. Let the old Abigail come back soon.

  “Do you think so, really?” she asked and then answered herself. “Me too. So close to the big day now! Isn’t it exciting!”

  I told her it was and started to head out the door, but she laid her hand on my arm, delaying my exit.

  “Liza, just one question. I was considering putting Judge and Mrs. Gulden at the same table with Margot and Arnie. Margot’s been seeing such a lot of Arnie these days. Who knows?” she said with a meaningful lift of her eyebrows. “The next wedding might be theirs. If it were, then it certainly wouldn’t hurt a young, up-and-coming attorney with a family to develop a good relationship with the most prominent judge in town. There’s a rumor that Harry’s being considered for a seat on the appellate court.

  “On the other hand, I don’t want it to look as if Arnie were trying to curry favor. But I don’t think Harry would think that, do you? After all, I’m the one doing the seating arrangements, not Arnie. So what do you think, dear? Shall I seat Arnie and Margot with the Guldens?”

  My eyes and mind glazed over about ten words into her soliloquy, but I refocused in time to say what I always say, “That’s a great idea, Abigail. Let’s go with that.”

  I submitted to one more hug before I finally walked through the door and down the sidewalk toward the village on this mid-May morning, six days before my college graduation and thirteen before my wedding.

  After my little trip to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, which Abigail continues to refer to as my “collapse,” I woke to find a half dozen people at my bedside: a doctor, a nurse, Garrett, Evelyn, Franklin, and, of course, Abigail, who kept weeping and begging my forgiveness. Finally, the doctor gave Franklin a look and Franklin suggested that Abigail, and everyone else, go into the waiting room for a little while.

  “That’s better,” the doctor said after they left, rubbing his chin while he perused my chart. “More oxygen in here now.”

  He finished reading and then looked up at me.

  “Well, Miss Burgess, as far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing seriously wrong with you. Your fiancé tells me you’ve lost a lot of weight recently, which isn’t all that unusual for brides-to-be, but you’ve got to knock it off, all right? No more dieting.”

  I nodded compliantly. I hadn’t been dieting, but why did he need to know that? It really wasn’t any of his business, and if agreeing with him would get me out of there, then I was determined to be the most agreeable patient he’d ever met.

  I picked up the can of liquid dietary whatever it was, the stuff that tastes like a chocolate chalk milkshake, and took a big drink. It almost gagged me but I got it down. The doctor smiled.

  “Lack of food was what made you faint, but you also had a racing heart, sweating, overwhelming feelings of fear, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “All of which points to an anxiety attack, another ailment not so uncommon among brides-to-be. You’re the third one I’ve seen this week. April is a big month for anxious brides, though the peak comes in May, right before all the June weddings. You’re a little ahead of the curve.”

  He pulled a pad of paper out of his pocket and started scribbling on it.

  “This is a prescription for an anti-anxiety medication. Take it until after the wedding. I don’t think you’ll need it after that. You seem like a pretty smart, together person,” he said.

  This was a big assumption, given that he’d only just met me and we’d only exchanged a dozen words, but I wasn’t about to disagree.

  “I think this will do the trick, but if you’d like, I can get somebody from the psych department to come down here and talk to you. Or I could give you a referral to an outpatient therapist?”

  “No, that’s okay. I think I’ve been a little too keyed up about the wedding.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He tore the prescription off the pad and clipped it to my chart. “If your aunt wasn’t quite so…”

  “Influential?” I offered.

  Knowing Abigail and the size of the donations her foundation made to just about every hospital on the eastern seaboard, I was pretty sure this doctor had already received a call from his hospital administrator informing him who I was and giving him instructions to make sure my influential aunt was very, very satisfied with my care.

  “Yeah. Influential. If she wasn’t, I’d let you go right now. But she’s pretty insistent that I keep you here for a day. It’s not such a bad place to spend a day. Rest, watch a little TV, and tomorrow, you’ll be on your way. Just one word of warning: Stay away from the meat loaf. It makes the stuff they served in your high school cafeteria look like filet mignon.” He winked.

  “Will do, Doc.”

  He scratched his ear and hung the chart back on the end of my bed. “If you really want my advice, the best prescription I could give you would be an elopement, but somehow”—he glanced over his shoulder to the door Abigail had just exited through—“I get the feeling that isn’t an option.”

  I shook my head. “Too late. If we eloped now, Abigail would be the one who’d need anti-anxiety drugs.”

  “Actually,” the doctor said, tipping his head to one side, “that might not be such a bad idea. Just don’t tell her I said so.”

  “Your secret is safe with me.” I picked up the can of chocolate chalk and took another drink. The doctor winked again and waved as he walked out the door.

  “See you, Liza.”

  “See you, Doc.”

  But I never did.

  33

  Liza Burgess

  When I left the house that morning, I didn’t precisely lie to Abigail, I just didn’t tell her everything. I was going for a walk, but I didn’t tell her my intended destination or that I wanted to talk to Reverend Robert Tucker, the man who’d be performing our wedding ceremony.

  I’d already seen Reverend Tucker twice that weekend, once when Garrett and I went to his office for the second of our three premarital counseling sessions, and again this morning, when Abigail, Franklin, and I went to the early church service.

  Garrett didn’t go to church with us. After our counseling session yesterday, he left for New York and his bachelor party. He felt bad abou
t leaving while I was still in New Bern, but I told him not to worry about it. We can talk tonight, after he’s had some sleep. I bet he didn’t get to bed until I was getting up. Besides, I’m kind of happy to be on my own this morning. For the last month, everybody has been hovering over me. I’m starting to feel claustrophobic.

  Abigail calls at least three times a day, generally at mealtime, to make sure I’m eating. I’ve been seeing Garrett every weekend, either here or in New York, and on weekdays we talk at least twice a day. Franklin, and Evelyn, and Margot, and Ivy call too, not daily, but a couple of times a week. Everyone starts the conversation the same way, with hello, and a pregnant pause, followed by a concerned, “So how are you?”

  I’m fine, already! Believe me! I’m feeling way better than I did back in April, so let’s everybody just drop the subject, okay?

  I don’t like taking drugs; I don’t even like to take aspirin, but the anti-anxiety medicine has helped. I don’t feel as overwrought as before and I’m sleeping a little better. I’ve gained back about six pounds, which pleased Abigail and Byron but irritated Olga, who had to let the wedding gown out right after she’d taken it in. But the dress does look a lot better now and I like how I look in it, especially with my silver necklace, which Abigail insists I wear during the ceremony. No mention of diamonds has been made since the “collapse.”

  There have been other changes too. The weekend after I got out of the hospital, Byron came up to New Bern and we—as in me, Garrett, Abigail, Franklin, and Evelyn—sat around the dining room table and discussed how we could make the wedding, as Abigail put it, “Perfect! But,” she said, raising her forefinger to underscore her point, “perfect for Liza and Garrett. This isn’t about me, after all. This planning session is to be inclusive.”

  “Inclusion” is a big word with Abigail these days.

  So, after some discussion, the Boston Symphony was told their services would no longer be required. Abigail sent a large donation to ward off any inconvenience or feelings of rejection. Now there will be a chamber orchestra for the ceremony and a dance band for the reception—the Tito Puente Orchestra—which will be fun, I guess. I’d never heard of them, but Abigail had and Byron thought they were good and Garrett likes Latin music, so when they asked me, I said, “Sure. Why not?”

  Evelyn wondered if a seven-course dinner might be a little much. Garrett and Franklin backed her up on that and, once I saw which way the wind was blowing, I agreed. So, now there will be four courses instead of seven, with an “intermezzo,” a little dish of sorbet, rhubarb flavor, to cleanse the palate between the fish and meat courses, which Abigail insists doesn’t count as a course.

  Fine with me.

  See, that’s the thing that really hasn’t changed, the thing that nobody has picked up on. I’m eating better. And, thanks to the pharmaceutical industry, I’m less anxious and sleeping better. But even though I am now conscientiously consulted on all wedding decisions, I’m still doing what I did all along, agreeing with whatever anybody else wants. It’s just that now I’m less obvious about it.

  I listen, or appear to listen, to the options, but have you noticed that when people are showing you the options, they almost always, either directly or indirectly, make their preferences known? Well, trust me, they do.

  Take the honeymoon.

  While we were sitting around the table, Byron pulled a bunch of travel brochures out of his briefcase and handed them to me and Garrett. One was for Bermuda, of course; Abigail made sure of that. But I already knew how Garrett felt about that, so I put it aside right away. Then I just took a couple of minutes and leafed through them, watching Garrett out of the corner of my eye. He spent a long time looking at the Hawaii brochure. While he was flipping through the pages, he said, “Everyone says Hawaii is beautiful. Not as humid as the Caribbean.”

  So I knew what he wanted, and that was fine with me. Why not? How bad could an oceanfront suite in Hawaii be? But I didn’t just say, “That’s great. Let’s go with that,” the way I would with Abigail. Garrett would have known what was up. Instead, I looked through a few more brochures, came back to the Hawaii one, and said, “I’ve always wanted to go to Hawaii.” Garrett grinned, agreed, and that was that. Simple.

  Well, pretty simple. It made me nervous to watch Abigail sitting there with her lips pinched tight, forcing herself to keep silent about the wonders of Bermuda, but Franklin quickly suggested we move on and talk about the guest list, so we got past it.

  The timing of my collapse turned out to be fortunate—just days before the invitations were to be sent out. At Franklin’s suggestion, the guest list was cut in half, which was fine with me, too. Garrett and I have never met the governor, or the attorney general, or our senators, so why would they want to come to our wedding?

  Franklin told Abigail that he thought meeting all those people would be too overwhelming. Instead, he suggested we only invite people Garrett or I have actually met at least once, which seems like a pretty reasonable standard. Abigail did mention that this would mean Garrett and I would get half as many wedding gifts, but Garrett pointed out that since we’ll be moving into his one-bedroom apartment, he felt confident that we could live with only eight place settings of Juane de Chrome Big Bang Bronze china instead of sixteen, at least until we bought a house with a dining room.

  A house with a dining room.

  I don’t know why, but ever since Garrett said it, I can’t get that phrase out of my mind. Somebody who has a house with a dining room and a set of china that costs $170 just for the dinner plate sounds like somebody who ought to be a lot older than me, don’t you think?

  I mean, are we going to give dinner parties? The only things I know how to cook are French toast and ramen noodles. I know Garrett isn’t going to suddenly expect me to turn into Betty Crocker, but I get the feeling he expects me to be something more than the girl who lives on ramen and loses the keys to her apartment at least a couple of times a week.

  Our first meeting with Reverend Tucker went all right. He’s really nice—glasses, big smile, good sense of humor. Everyone in town likes him. Even the atheists like him. After sitting us down in his study and chatting over coffee and cookies, Reverend Tucker had us fill out a compatibility questionnaire. Apparently we passed, even though it took me about three times as long to fill it out as it did Garrett. Looking over our answers, Reverend Tucker did say that it looked like I was someone who didn’t always find it easy to talk about my feelings and that this was something we’d want to be aware of, that communication is so important in families….

  At that point, I kind of tuned out. I wasn’t rude about it, but I’ve heard this same speech from Abigail about fifteen times, and she heard it from Reverend Tucker in the first place. If he’d asked me, I bet I could have repeated it word for word.

  Our second meeting, yesterday morning, was a little different. This time, after the coffee and cookie ritual, Reverend Tucker launched into a speech that he’s probably given eight zillion times but that he managed to make sound totally off the cuff. He leaned in as he spoke and used his hands a lot, like he really wanted us to get this stuff because he genuinely wants to see our marriage work, which I believe he does.

  He talked about the “Seven Fs” that can make or break a marriage: Friendship, Family, Faith, Finances, Fighting, Forgiving, and Fertilization.

  “And when I say ‘fertilization,’ I’m not talking about sex,” he said with an easy, unembarrassed smile. “I trust you two will be able to figure that out on your own. Though we will be discussing sex more specifically during our final appointment.

  “What I’m talking about is fertilizing your relationship, making sure that you make time for each other. Today you’re both fancy-free, relatively unimpeded by responsibilities and commitments, but before too long, especially if you have a family, you’ll be just like everybody else, wearing too many hats, trying to keep too many balls in the air. It’ll be harder and harder to make time for each other.

  “When
you do find a spare moment together, there can often be so many day-to-day issues to discuss, from budgets to bills and everything in between. If you’re not careful, what little couple time you carve out for yourselves will deteriorate into something with no more intimacy than a meeting with your accountant, just one more thing on a to-do list that gets longer every day.”

  Reverend Tucker leaned in even closer than he had before, which was pretty close. I was thinking he’d slip off the edge of his chair and end up on the floor any second. “That’s why it’s so important to fertilize your relationship,” he said. “Make time for each other every week and, if at all possible, try to get away for some kind of long weekend or retreat at least three or four times every year so you can…”

  I lost him after that. I was too busy looking at Garrett. He was hanging on Reverend Tucker’s every word and nodding, as if this all made complete sense.

  Well. Maybe it does. Maybe this is what is supposed to happen after people get married. They go on their honeymoon, unpack their clothes and their sixteen place settings of china, buy a house with a dining room, and start making weekly appointments with each other. Reverend Tucker seems to think that’s the deal, and he’s been in the marrying business, and been married himself, for a long time. Judging from Garrett’s expression, he seems to think this is all pretty normal. Maybe it is. How would I know? The only married couple I’ve ever seen up close is Abigail and Franklin. Their marriage seems about like Reverend Tucker described it: a lot of responsibilities, obligations, and schedules with a little bit of romance thrown in to make it more or less stick together. As near as I can tell, they seem happy. But they’re both sixtysomething. When you’re that old, you’re ready for china patterns and dinner parties and having to coordinate calendars.

  But is that what it will be like for us? Right away, I mean?

  Other than getting to be with Garrett for the rest of my life—one of the few things in life I’m sure I want—I’m not certain what I really expected marriage to be like, except that…No. I can’t even say that. I don’t even know what I don’t know.