Threading the Needle

by Marie Bostwick

  Madelyn went to the Kovers’ nearly every day after school and quickly learned that if she passed through the Kover kitchen around 5:45 P.M. and commented about how good everything smelled, she would be invited to stay and eat. However, in recent months, Madelyn began to notice that her dangled hints for dinner invitations often went unheeded. When she rang the Kovers’ door as usual on a Saturday morning in late January she was met not by Tessa but by Mrs. Kover.

  “You’re up bright and early, Madelyn. But I’m afraid Tessa isn’t home. She went to Jillian Eversoll’s for a sleepover last night.”

  Jillian Eversoll? Why would Tessa want to stay overnight with her? Jillian had small, piggy eyes, and just the week before, she’d tattled on Madelyn for passing notes to Tessa during English class.

  “Oh. Will you tell Tessa that I dropped by?” She turned from the door to face the snow-drifted street and the prospect of a whole day with no one but Grandma Edna for company.

  “Why don’t you come inside for a minute, Madelyn? I just took a loaf of banana bread out of the oven. Would you like some?”

  Mrs. Kover made hot chocolate and set a cup in front of Madelyn along with a plate of warm banana bread spread with melting butter that dripped onto the girl’s fingers, then sat across from her at the table with her own cup of cocoa.

  Sarah Kover was blond and had a warm, motherly smile. Madelyn thought she looked a little like the actress who played Samantha Stephens on Bewitched.

  “So, Madelyn, how is school?” Mrs. Kover blew on her cocoa to cool it.

  Madelyn shrugged. “Okay.”

  “Do you like Mrs. Bridges? You know, she was my teacher when I went to Edison. She’s been teaching math for about as long as I can remember.”

  “I don’t think she likes me very much.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “She called Grandma in for a conference last month to talk about my grades. They aren’t very good. Grandma was mad. She said that Mrs. Bridges said that I’m not living up to my potential and that that’s just another way of saying I’m lazy.”

  Mrs. Kover pressed her lips together, as if keeping them closed required some effort. “I’m sure Mrs. Bridges didn’t mean it like that. I think that was just her way of saying that, with a little more effort, your grades will improve. You’re a smart girl, Madelyn. I’m sure Mrs. Bridges was just trying to encourage you.”

  “That’s not the way Grandma saw it.”

  Mrs. Kover wrapped her hands around her cup and frowned, resting both elbows on the table, which was something Grandma Edna had told Madelyn that ladies didn’t do. Madelyn mentally chalked up one more thing on her growing list of things Edna was wrong about and propped her own elbows up on the kitchen table.

  “No. Well . . . sometimes older people don’t always . . .”

  Mrs. Kover faltered, sighed, and changed the subject. In the entire time Madelyn had known her, she never heard Mrs. Kover say anything bad about anyone else.

  “Give yourself a little time, Madelyn. Things will get easier.”

  Madelyn licked some butter from her fingertips and nodded, not because she thought Mrs. Kover was right but because she liked her.

  “What about friends? Have you made any new friends this year?”

  “Tessa’s my friend.”

  Mrs. Kover smiled, keeping her teeth hidden under the tight bow of her lips. “I know. But there are a lot of other nice little girls in your class, you know. Besides Jillian, there’s Allison Treash, Lisa Sweeney”—she ticked the list off on her fingers—“Mary Louise Newton. Oh, a lot of girls.”

  Madelyn shook her head stubbornly. “Tessa is my friend,” she repeated.

  “Madelyn, have you ever heard the phrase ‘putting all your eggs in one basket’?”

  Madelyn had, but didn’t say so. She didn’t like the direction the conversation was heading.

  “I’m worried that’s what you’re doing with Tessa,” Mrs. Kover said gently. “Tessa has always had a lot of friends. And that’s best, I think. When you concentrate all your attention and affection on just one person, you run the risk of . . .”

  Madelyn kept her expression blank, her eyes fixed on Mrs. Kover.

  “I just think it would be a good idea if you spent at least some of your time with someone other than Tessa. Do you see what I mean?”

  Madelyn didn’t, not because she couldn’t but because she didn’t care to. She liked her eggs where they were, thank you.

  Tessa is my friend, she thought. Anybody who doesn’t like it . . .

  Madelyn was annoyed with Tessa and wondered why she hadn’t waited for her. Maybe she had a lot of homework and wanted to get started on it early. Madelyn knew how Tessa was about things like that. She’d rather eat a bug than miss turning in a homework assignment. Yes, that probably explained it. She decided to forgive Tessa. Madelyn could never stay mad at her for long.

  It started to snow. Madelyn hoped it would snow hard enough so school would be canceled the next day. Then she and Tessa could go sledding or, better yet, stay inside and play with the dollhouse.

  By this time, the once-empty dollhouse, in true Victorian style, was fairly bursting with furnishings. But every few weeks, Madelyn would add something new to the décor. When she did, she always showed Tessa first.

  Today it was a new mirror for the parlor she’d made from an old gold compact. Madelyn had unscrewed the bottom half of the compact, removed the hinges, reglued the loose rhinestones around the edge, and polished them with rubbing alcohol to make them shine. Though a bit gaudy, the refurbished mirror was the perfect size to hang on the wall behind the miniature sofa she’d found and recovered in red velvet the previous fall. Madelyn couldn’t wait to show it to Tessa.

  She turned the corner onto Oak Leaf Lane, running the last three blocks to Tessa’s house, holding the paper bag with the mirror inside in her left hand and her book bag in her right, the sound of her footsteps muffled by the snow.

  Coming closer, she saw a boy in a blue snow parka—or rather, the back of him—leaning up against the white clapboard wall of Tessa’s house with his head bent down, his feet spread shoulder-width apart. Between those feet, Madelyn saw another pair of feet, clad in red snow boots.

  Ben Nickles had Tessa pinned to the wall!

  She ran faster, her heart racing and her breath coming in short gasps. Leaving the sidewalk and running across the yard, she saw that Ben had his lips pressed against Tessa’s. Tessa turned her head to the left, but Ben moved with her, pushing his face up close to hers. Madelyn saw the pink tip of his tongue snaking into Tessa’s mouth before he shifted his weight and moved his hand down to the front of Tessa’s coat and clawed at the front of her jacket.

  Madelyn let out a yowl as she closed in on them, swinging her book bag over her head like a lariat. Ben lifted his head and turned around just in time to get hit square in the jaw with the full force of Madelyn’s bag. The blow knocked him off his feet and backward into the snow.

  “What the heck!” Ben yelled as he grabbed his jaw and glared at Madelyn. “What did you do that for?”

  Tessa gasped and knelt next to Ben in the snow. “Are you all right? Let me see.”

  Ben grimaced and then wiggled his jaw back and forth. “I’m okay. I wasn’t expecting it. That’s all.”

  Still kneeling, Tessa looked up at Madelyn with blazing eyes. “What was that about? Are you crazy or something?”

  Ben, rubbing his jaw, let out a short, mirthless laugh, as if indicating that the answer to her question should be obvious.

  “I was trying to save you,” Madelyn said. “He was attacking you!”

  Tessa rolled her eyes. “He was kissing me!”

  Ben looked up at Madelyn and smirked. “What’s the matter, Maddie? Jealous? Of me kissing Tessa? Or of Tessa kissing me?”

  Tessa’s cheeks turned red. Ben laughed. Madelyn didn’t understand his joke, only that she was the butt of it. She hated for people to call her Maddie. She waited for Tessa to come t
o her defense by saying something cutting to Ben, but she didn’t. Instead Tessa helped him get to his feet.

  “Madelyn, you’ve got to quit following me around like this, okay?”

  “I wasn’t following you around,” she said. “I was waiting for you. So we could walk home from school together. We always walk home together.”

  Tessa let out a heavy sigh. “Yeah, I know. Look. That was all right when we were little, but we’re going to be thirteen next month. We’re too old for that now.”

  Madelyn frowned, puckering her forehead as she held up the brown paper bag. “But I brought something to show you. Something new. For the dollhouse. Do you want to come over and see it?”

  “The dollhouse!” Ben guffawed. Tessa looked at him. Her cheeks flamed an even brighter shade of red.

  “I told you,” Tessa said in a voice that was nearly a hiss. “We’re too old for that stuff now. I can’t spend all my time hanging out with just you. You’ve got to quit waiting around for me after school every day and you’ve got to quit coming over to my house every afternoon. People will think we’re weird or something.”

  Madelyn squared her shoulders. “Well, I don’t care what people think. You’re my friend.” She hefted her book bag onto her shoulder and glowered at Ben. “Nobody had better say anything bad about you in front of me!”

  Tessa threw back her head, squeezed her eyes shut, and let out an exasperated growl.

  “Not me, Madelyn! You! You’re the one everybody is calling weird, and they’re right. You are! You follow me around like a stray puppy. You eat dinner at my house practically every night of the week. My father says we ought to start charging you room and board! My family can’t do anything without you butting into it. You still play with dolls. And you steal clothes from the charity bags people leave on their porches! It’s practically the same as digging through their trash.

  “You’re weird, Madelyn! You are. You always have been. Don’t you get it? You’re embarrassing me!”

  Madelyn blinked her big brown eyes. “But . . . you’re my friend.”

  Tessa glanced at Ben, who raised his eyebrows into a question, before turning back to Madelyn. She swallowed hard and then, without looking Madelyn in the face, shook her head firmly.

  “When you moved in with your grandmother, my mother said I had to ask you over to play. She said I had to be nice to you because you were an orphan and nobody wanted you. She made me be friends with you, so I was. But,” she said softly, looking up at Madelyn with a pained expression, “I don’t want to be your friend. Not anymore.”

  The tears that had pooled in Madelyn’s eyes spilled over and ran silently down her cheeks. Tessa bit her lower lip and blinked, trying to keep herself from crying too.

  “I’m sorry, Madelyn. You’re not . . . it’s not that I don’t like you, but . . . you’re just too much. You try too hard. I don’t want to hurt you. . . .”

  Madelyn’s nose was running. She swiped at it with the back of her hand. “Shut up,” she said in a raspy voice. “Just shut up. I don’t have to listen to you anymore. I want my bracelet back.”

  Tessa looked confused.

  “The friendship bracelet I made for you. I want it back.”

  Tessa pulled up the sleeve of her coat to expose her wrist and hesitated a moment before pulling off the bracelet and handing it to Madelyn.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Eyes still swimming with tears, Madelyn glared at Tessa, shoved the bracelet inside the pocket of her jacket, and ran away without saying another word.

  Ben laughed, made a megaphone of his hands, and called after her. “What’s the matter, Maddie? Breaking up too hard to do?”

  Tessa stood silently with her fists clenched at her sides, watching Madelyn’s retreat.

  When Madelyn was out of sight, Tessa spun around and, making a windmill of her arm, slapped Ben as hard as she could across the jaw in the exact spot Madelyn’s book bag had hit him a few minutes before.

  “Ow!” Ben covered his jaw with his hand. “What was that for?”

  “For being mean to her! And for making me be mean to her!”

  Tessa made a fist and punched him as hard as she could in the shoulder three times. “And that’s for trying to stick your tongue in my mouth! And that’s for grabbing my boob! And that’s for being such a pervert!”

  Ben backed away from her, but she followed him, kicking him in the shin with her red snow boot. Keeping one eye on the furious girl, he bent down to pick up the schoolbooks he’d abandoned in the snow. “You’re crazy! You know that?”

  He retreated across the yard at a pace that wasn’t quite a run. Looking over his shoulder he yelled, “And weird! You’re just as weird as your girlfriend!”

  “Well, I’d rather be weird than a perverted creep!” Tessa yelled back. “Hey, Ben. Let me give you a tip. Next time you try to kiss a girl, think about brushing your teeth first. My dog has better breath than you!”

  When he was gone, Tessa wiped her tears on the back of her sleeve, picked up her books, and went inside. She ran upstairs to her bedroom and didn’t come out of her room for the rest of the night. Mrs. Kover left a cheese sandwich and glass of milk on a tray outside her door. It went untouched until Rex found it, wolfed down the sandwich, and lapped up the milk as far as his tongue could reach, then knocked over the glass with his paw to get at the rest, and lay down next to the empty tray and took a nap.

  Chest heaving from the exertion of running across the snowy yards, Madelyn slid open the heavy wooden garage door, tugged on a piece of grimy string to turn on the overhead lightbulb, and walked past Edna’s DeSoto to the wooden worktable under the side window.

  She pulled Tessa’s bracelet out of her pocket, then took off her own, laid both on the worktable, and smashed the beads over and over and over again with a hammer until there was nothing left of them but a tangle of twisted fishing line and a pile of pale blue dust. She swept the glittery remains into a rusting dustpan, dumped them into the trash, and dried her eyes before going inside.

  After closing her bedroom door, she dumped her coat and books on the floor, then flopped backward onto the blue and white patchwork quilt that covered her bed. She lay there, dry-eyed, and stared at the ceiling some minutes before reaching her decision.

  Rising from her bed, she crossed the room and picked up the dollhouse. The miniature furniture was scattered by the abrupt movement and the ever-smiling members of the doll family toppled onto the floor in a heap.

  Edna, who was walking to the bathroom to take the afternoon dose of her liver pills, frowned as she met her granddaughter in the hallway.

  “What are you doing with that thing?”

  “Putting it in the attic. I’m too old to play with dolls anymore. It’s all just make-believe anyway.”

  Edna snorted. “I was wondering when you’d finally figure that out.”

  The next day, Tessa failed to turn in her homework and Mrs. Bridges had no choice but to give her detention. Concerned about this uncharacteristic lapse on the part of her favorite student, the teacher called Tessa’s mother and asked if everything was all right at home.

  When Mrs. Kover explained about the situation with Madelyn, Mrs. Bridges said, “Well, I’m sorry she’s so upset, but between you and me, it’s for the best. Madelyn isn’t the sort of girl Tessa should be spending time with.

  “Forgive me if I sound harsh, but I’ve been a teacher for thirty-six years. I’ve seen girls like Madelyn before. Once they hit high school, they turn wild. Get themselves into all kinds of trouble and bring other girls, good girls from good homes, girls like Tessa, along for the ride. You’re lucky this friendship ended when it did.

  “Mark my words, Sarah, Madelyn Beecher will come to a bad end.”

  1

  Madelyn

  August 2009

  Itry to resist the urge, but as I sit in the offices of Blackman, Janders, and Whipple, located on the forty-eighth floor of the Mancuso Tower, a cathedral of excess located on Fifth A
venue at Fifty-sixth Street, I can’t stop myself from adding it all up in my head and marveling at the true price tag of what Sterling used to call “a lifestyle.” How did I fail to see it before? And how am I going to live without it?

  How am I going to live at all?

  The Oriental rug that sits under the antique mahogany partners desk of my attorney, Eugene Darius Janders, is hand-knotted silk and worth thirty thousand dollars at least—enough to buy a new car. It’s very fine, though not as fine as the one in the library in our house in the Hamptons. I mean, the house that used to be ours. And if I added up the rest of the furnishings in Gene’s office, it would probably be enough to buy a nice little cottage in the country for cash. Not a cottage in the Hamptons, mind you, but someplace quiet and removed from the city. Connecticut, maybe.

  Then there’s his wardrobe. Gene’s suit is summer-weight wool, tan, two button, side-vented, custom made, probably in London, priced somewhere between five and seven thousand, which, even in New York, is enough to pay a month’s rent for a two-bedroom apartment in a very decent part of town. His blue paisley tie, designed by Brioni, retails for one hundred and ninety-five dollars—enough to buy a week’s groceries. I think. It’s been a while since I did my own grocery shopping.

  And the shoes. Oh, the shoes! Hand-tooled calfskin, individually and exquisitely custom made by John Lobb for a very small, exclusive clientele—the trust-fund set, celebrities, the upper echelon of Manhattan’s successful lawyers, men like Eugene, a few brokers and money managers, including my husband, Sterling Baron, once one of New York’s most successful fund managers, now one of its most notorious—men who don’t balk at spending five thousand dollars for shoes. Only the very well-heeled can afford to stride down the sidewalks of New York in a pair of made-to-measure Lobb loafers.

  Forgive me. That was a terrible pun, I know. But these days I have to take my humor where I can find it. At the moment, nothing about my life is especially funny.