They sat down at the table. Trina reached automatically for Meg’s left hand. Asher took her right. Meg gave Asher a look, wondering what this was all about.
“I know,” he said, giving her a goofy smile as if he realized that this must look a little ridiculous to her. “But when you were in the hospital and we didn’t know if you would wake up or if . . . I didn’t know what to do, Meg. There wasn’t anything I could do except pray, for the first time in years, since my dad threw me out. And I was pretty rusty, I’ve got to tell you. All I could really come up with was, ‘Please. Please, God. Let her stay.’ And here you are.” His voice hoarse even though he was smiling. “And I am so, so grateful. So grateful for everything.”
He squeezed her hand and lowered his head. Meg did the same as Asher recited:
For food and health and happy days,
Receive our gratitude and praise,
In serving others Lord may we,
Repay our debt of love to thee.
Once again, Meg just knew. This was her home, the place she belonged.
The meal commenced. Trina grabbed the tacos, took two for herself, and passed the platter. Asher handed Meg the guacamole. “Should I have invited your sisters?”
“No, not tonight,” she said. “It’s nice with just the three of us. Just the family.”
Chapter 23
Coming to the end of a curve that had to be precisely sewn so the bodice of the gown would lie smooth, Joanie snipped the emerald green threads that matched the emerald taffeta and examined her work, smiling until she saw the too-tight threads on the back of the seam.
“Idiot! How could you forget to adjust the tension when you went from wool to taffeta?” She grimaced and grabbed a seam ripper, slicing the threads one by one, careful of the delicate material.
When Joanie fell into the rhythm of it, when the machine was humming and the needle flashed a silver streak through the layers of wool, satin, or silk, and the loose pieces of the pattern were coming together seam by seam into the garment she’d pictured in her mind, she found sewing satisfying and almost meditative. But doing it properly required tremendous focus. There was so much to think about.
She had to be aware of her tools and materials—the thickness or delicacy of the fabrics, the ease or difficulty with which they would feed into the machine, and how the different types and weights of thread and even the size of the needle would impact the finished product. She had to be aware of her body as well. Sewing on a machine with the tension set too loose or too tight could ruin the garment. And because she was, in some sense, an extension of the machine, the same was true of her physical tension.
She had to pay attention to her posture, the set of her shoulders, the way the fabric fed through her fingers, not too loose and not too tight, keeping it under her control even as she allowed it to slip from her grasp, becoming all that she’d planned and sometimes more than she’d hoped. She had to be in the moment mentally as well, clearing her mind of distraction and completely giving herself over to the process. And finally, while she was doing all that, she had to let go and let it happen. She had to trust herself.
In the broadest sense, sewing beautiful garments had much in common with playing beautiful music: Both required discipline as well as freedom. And a certain amount of faith.
The difference was that when she was sewing she made her mistakes in private and corrected them the same way. A snip of the scissors, a tug of the thread, a bit of re-sewing, and no one ever had to know she hadn’t done it perfectly the first time. There was no audience looking on or listening in, no teacher to judge, no mother to disappoint. Small wonder Joanie had taken to sewing so naturally and enjoyed it so thoroughly.
But now she did have an audience, Hal Seeger and his crew. And not only were they watching her, judging her, they were recording her words, actions, and answers so that other people, strangers in untold numbers, could do the same, putting every part of her under a microscope. Why, oh why, had she agreed to this?
For Meg. And for Asher. Because they need you. Because you owe it to them. So suck it up and quit being so selfish.
As Joanie ripped out the last of the stitches, she heard Avery’s voice coming from the kitchen, calling her name.
“In here!”
A moment later, Avery was standing in the doorway. “Hey. How’d you like your first day as a movie star? Wasn’t that cool!”
Joanie glanced up and then continued placing silk pins into the bodice pieces, making sure the two curves matched perfectly. “I guess that’s one way of putting it.”
“I gave them my full-on mermaid,” Avery enthused. “You should have seen the looks on their faces. Hal actually cowered behind the camera guy. I think I scared him.”
“See if you can scare him enough so he’ll pack up and go back to LA.”
“Didn’t you have fun? I thought it was cool.”
“I thought it was a waste of time.”
Avery’s eyes scanned Joanie’s usually tidy sewing room, taking in the piles of fabric, pattern pieces, and projects in progress. “Sorry. You want me to come back later?”
“It’s okay. I don’t mind you. I just mind them.”
“Are you sure? I want to make a mermaid tail, a kid-sized one. Lilly’s really started to cheer up since I’ve been visiting and I thought it would be fun to surprise her.”
Joanie smiled. “I’ve never sewn scales, but they can’t be any harder than this bodice. Do you have a pattern?”
Avery bounded into the room. “Sort of. It won’t be a swimming tail, nothing complicated. It’s just so she can play dress up.” Avery unfolded a piece of paper and pointed to a drawing she’d made of a tail with rows of multicolored scales, shaped like Us and layered one upon the other, like shingles on a roof.
“I was thinking I could use scraps from your ball gowns, sew them onto some kind of lining, and then stitch the two halves together.”
Joanie examined the sketch. “Muslin would work for the lining. You can sew the scales right onto it. But make the fin separate from the tail and then sew them together. It’ll lay better. Elastic to the waist will make it easier to get in and out of.”
“So you’ll do it?”
“You’ll do it,” Joanie clarified. “I don’t have time. But I’ll help you. It shouldn’t be that hard. The scraps are under the table.”
“Thanks!”
Avery took a big plastic bin from under the sewing table, sat down cross-legged on the floor, and started sorting through scraps, setting aside bits of taffeta, satin, damask, and brocade, anything that was colorful and silky, humming while she worked.
Avery had always done that, hummed to herself. Joanie remembered how, when Avery was hardly more than a toddler with ginger-colored ringlets lying on her round baby cheeks, she would stand at the door while Joanie was studying, observing her with wide and silent eyes, then take her thumb from her mouth and say, “You lonely. Want me stay with you?” And then, without waiting for an answer, walk into the room and flop down on the rug.
The strange part was that Avery only appeared when Joanie really was feeling lonely. Even then, she had a great sensitivity about what people needed and what it took to make them happy. Unfortunately, she was less insightful about her own needs. Avery always made a big show of living “in the moment,” free from the restrictions of every sort of commitment. But Joanie knew her easygoing ways had as much to do with fear as freedom. It’s hard to be disappointed, or hurt, if you never allowed yourself to care in the first place.
And now, at long last, it seemed like Avery was willing to make a commitment, at least a small one. She went to the hospital twice a week and couldn’t stop talking about Lilly and the rest of the kids. That part seemed like a good idea. Joanie was less convinced about the fact that, after her visits to the hospital, Avery never came home until the next morning.
“I need more blue. Something bright.” Avery frowned and examined her pile of scraps. “Can I have some of that?”
“That’s for Trina’s prom dress. I’m going to need all of it. Try some of this.” She balled up a piece of emerald green satin and tossed it to Avery.
“Pretty. Thanks. Hey, where’s Walt?”
“Upstairs studying. He’s got this sadistic teacher for AP Economics who likes to assign big papers at the last minute.” Joanie laid a towel over the green bodice piece and pressed it carefully, using just a touch of steam. “Ten pages on the aggregate demand curve, with footnotes and graphs, by Thursday morning.”
“Aggregate demand curve? What does that even mean?”
“No clue. But Walt knows.”
“It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? Minerva went to so much trouble to find just the right sperm donors to birth and raise genius children. You and Meg just bed down with the first studmuffins who come through the door and boom! Brilliant babies.”
Joanie shot her a look.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean for that to come out like it sounded. But it is weird, isn’t it? That you both produced genius kids practically by accident?”
“Walt is not a genius.” Joanie got up from the sewing machine and placed the bodice onto a curvaceous dress form that stood in the corner. It fit perfectly.
Avery gave her a “sure he’s not” look.
“Aggregate. Demand. Curve,” she repeated. “Not to mention that he’s acing three AP courses. Then there’s Trina, with her computer mapping of brown dwarves, whatever that means. The way things are going, she’ll be able to skip college and go straight into the astronaut training program.”
“Okay, fine. They’re both smart, very smart. But let’s not slap them with the G-word. It leads nowhere good.”
“I’m just saying—what are the chances? Kind of makes you wonder about the whole nature versus nurture argument, doesn’t it?” Avery grabbed a pair of scissors off a nearby table and started cutting the emerald satin into U-shaped scales. “I mean, maybe none of that matters. Maybe it’s attraction that counts, lust and passion and pure animal instinct. Maybe that’s the way to go.”
Joanie turned around to look at her little sister. She didn’t like the way this conversation was headed or the expression on Avery’s face. She looked . . . practical, as if she was weighing her options. She couldn’t ever recall Avery looking like that before. What was going on between her and Owen?
Avery put down the scissors. “Did you love Walt’s father?”
“I’ve told you before, it was nothing, a hookup. A stupid mistake.”
“You don’t think Walt was a mistake, do you?”
“Walt was a gift. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t stupid. And wrong.”
“You didn’t answer my question—did you love him?”
Joanie turned back toward the dress form, gazing at a spot on the wall beyond the headless torso.
“He wasn’t mine to love.”
“He was married? You never told me that!”
“Not married. But not mine. I didn’t know at the time, but that’s no excuse.”
She pushed a pin through a spot of emerald green, deep into the shoulder of the dress dummy, and turned to face Avery again. “Are you going to the hospital today?”
“Yes. In fact, I need to get going,” she replied, gathering up the fabric and getting to her feet. “Owen is working until seven so I decided to go in later. That way I don’t have to wait so long.”
Joanie pressed her lips together, nodded. “Listen . . . I’m the last person in the world who can sit in judgment or tell you what to do—”
Avery raised her hands, cutting her off. “I know what you’re going to say, but it’s okay. It is. Owen is a great guy.”
“You’ve only known him a few weeks.”
“I know. But you should see the way the kids look up to him, Lilly too. He’s like a hero to them.”
“I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I won’t,” she said, the confidence of her tone making a promise of her words.
Joanie sighed. How could she make her sister understand? Looking at Avery’s face, she realized she couldn’t. Some lessons you have to learn for yourself.
* * *
Joanie finished the bodice, made dinner, and brought a tray up to Walt’s bedroom. He was hunched over his desk, working on his paper.
“Why don’t you take a break and eat something?”
He looked up, blinking, so absorbed in his work that it took a moment for her words and the smell of seasoned beef and melting cheese to penetrate his brain.
“Enchiladas?” His face brightened. “You said we were having salmon.”
“Well. You’re working so hard. I can always start my diet next week.”
She put the plate down on his desk, gratified to see his scowl disappear and the way he fell onto his food. Walt was so easy to please. Was that just a boy thing or did he simply possess a gift for happiness? Either way, making him happy made her happy too.
She ruffled his hair and nodded toward his laptop. “How’s it coming?”
“Meh.” He shrugged. “I’ll be so happy not to have Mr. McKnight next year.”
At that moment, Joanie wasn’t too crazy about Mr. McKnight either. She hated watching TV by herself. But she’d have to get used to it—two more years and he’d be gone.
Walt shoved nearly half an enchilada into his mouth and went back to the computer, tapping the keyboard while he chewed.
“Well,” she said after watching him for a minute. “Guess I’ll leave you to it. NCIS starts in half an hour, you know. Just in case you finish up in time.”
“Uh-huh.” He hit delete several times, staring at the screen. “Sounds good.”
* * *
She did watch TV for a bit, stitching buttons and officer’s insignia on the jackets of blue and gray uniforms while investigators from NCIS tried to clear a sailor wrongly charged with a crime.
Normally, doing handwork helped her focus, but not tonight. She felt so unsettled that she accidentally sewed a Union Army major’s insignia onto the shoulders of a Confederate jacket. Finally, she gave up, switched off the TV, and went to the sewing room, knowing she wouldn’t be able to sleep until she dealt with the thing that was bothering her, that had been bothering her all day.
She switched on the overhead light. There it was, the envelope Hal had given her. She carried it back to the living room, pulled out the CD, and slid the flat silver disc into the slot of her stereo and pushed play. Perched on the armrest of the sofa, leaning in, she listened to her twelve-year-old self play the Liebestraum No. 3.
It began softly, as softly as an echo in a far-off canyon, so faint that it was hard to be certain if you truly heard something or if the notes might be a musical mirage. And then, at the moment when it seemed it must be so, that you’d imagined the sound and there was no music, only the memory of something lost and found and lost again, the soft phrases swelled and burst into something precious and lovely, petals unfurling in pink and purple glory.
Joanie closed her eyes and lifted her hands. Her fingers curved, an almost involuntary reflex, and began traveling up and down an imaginary keyboard, fingertips pressing and lifting and floating as she played spectral arpeggios. Tears seeped out from beneath her closed eyelids.
This was it, the music that had changed all of their lives. And it was so beautiful, so achingly beautiful. In all this lonely and weary world, she had forgotten there was such beauty to be had. She had made herself forget because remembering what she’d had and lost hurt too much.
She felt a presence in the room, someone watching her, and opened her eyes to find Walt standing in the doorway. She hadn’t heard him come downstairs, his elephant feet treading softly for once.
“That was you, wasn’t it? Mom, you were so good. Why did you stop playing?”
There were a dozen reasons she could have given him, none of them quite complete, but each valid
in its own way. She could have rattled off the list easily because she’d been rehearsing them all day, thinking about how she would answer the question when Hal asked it, as he inevitably would.
Prior to the release of The Promise Girls, the publishing house hired a media coach to prep them all for television interviews. Karen, a thin brunette, had eyes that always looked distant, even when she was smiling.
“Unbiased journalists are mythical creatures, like unicorns or the Tooth Fairy. Before their first question, they’ve already decided on their story angle, the more sensational the better. So you’ve got to beat them at their own game. Decide ahead of time how you want to appear to the public and stick to that. No matter what questions they ask, stick to your script. Remember: You can’t trust a guy with a camera. Ever.”
As far as Joanie was concerned, Hal Seeger was just another guy with a camera. But Walt was her son and she owed him the truth.
“I was good. But not great and I never would be.” Joanie tilted her head toward the stereo as the final notes of the piece faded away, a dream of love that ended in silence.
“That’s why I stopped playing, because that was all I had, my peak. It took me years to figure that out. But the truth is, at twelve years old, I was the best I was ever going to be. And that wasn’t good enough.”
Chapter 24
Sunlight crawled over the windowsill and caught the sequins of Avery’s mermaid tail, lying crumpled in the corner on the floor of Owen’s studio apartment in the busiest section of Capitol Hill, a place where counterculture thrived and Seattle’s youngest, hippest inhabitants gathered in bars, pubs, and clubs at night and in coffeehouses, bookstores, and boutiques during the day. A garbage truck drove up the street and stopped under the apartment window. The rumble and crash of the truck and the shouted conversation of the trash collectors, as well as the sound of water rushing from the bathroom faucet and the boom-chick-hiss of Owen beat boxing to himself while he was shaving, made Avery stir in her sleep.
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