A Slender Thread (24 page)

She nodded. “Most every morning. On Mondays I'm here all day. Right now I'm glad it's not rented.”

“It's a great place,” he said.

She gestured around her. “Oliver says he can hardly fit in here.”

Alex thought of Oliver, tall and bulky, the kind of guy who would be a large presence in any room. Margot's apartment looked girlish, not the kind of place where a man would feel comfortable, yet her ex-husband, Teddy, had once lived here.

“Please sit down,” she said.

He lowered himself onto the sofa, pushing aside a ruffled pillow. “I can't stay long,” he said, suddenly uncomfortable in what seemed such a personal setting. He had a strange sensation, as if he were seeing the inside of Margot's handbag or peering into her closet.

“You mustn't rush off,” she said. She glanced at her watch. “Why don't we have a glass of wine? I have a bottle of white in the fridge from when Lacey was here.” Margot's hands fluttered above him, as if now that she wasn't painting she didn't know quite what to do with them. She wore as a sort of smock, a large man's shirt—Oliver's, he presumed—over jeans. Her hair was clipped up on her head, reminding him of the way his daughters sometimes looked. It made her seem young.

He shifted on the sofa. It was low. He had a hard time fitting his knees behind the coffee table. “Sure. That'd be great.”

She disappeared through the doorway into what he imagined was the kitchen. “The wine's nothing fancy,” she called to him. “I don't have a thing to offer you. I don't keep food here.”

He assured her he wasn't hungry.

She reappeared with the wine and two glasses on a bamboo tray. The tray teetered briefly as Margot balanced it on the stack of magazines in the middle of the coffee table. She poured the wine and smiled, handing him the first glass.

“Lacey had a wonderful time at that exhibit. I should have thanked you sooner.”

“No need to thank me. There's so little I seem to be able to do.” She poured herself a glass of the wine.

“Just knowing I can talk to you makes a difference.” He lifted his glass.

Margot lifted hers and reached over to click his. “Cheers.” Color rose to her cheeks.

“It's nice to be in New York. Away for a bit.” He felt guilty saying this.

“Getting away is good for all of us sometimes.” She sipped her wine. Then, setting her glass down, she fiddled with the hem of her shirt. “Sorry. I must look awful.” She stood and took off the big shirt and placed it on the chair next to the easel. She wore a pale blue sweater underneath, the color of her eyes. “Painting is a messy sport.” She smiled again.

“Lacey is happy you've gone back to it.” Saying this made it sound like they'd discussed it at length, when in fact they spoke so little.

“It was her idea.”

He cleared his throat. “Does it come back to you easily?”

“Hardly. I feel like a beginner again. Mostly I'm working on small studies. I like painting objects close up and then far away.”

“Is Oliver helping you?”

“God, no. He'd find this laughable. He's the real artist. I'm the wannabe.”

Alex remembered Lacey explaining how Margot's marriage to Teddy had in some way ruined her sister's desire to paint. Alex wondered if Oliver's larger-than-life creativity might put a damper on her, too. He looked around him. “This is a great little place.”

“Little is right, but I'm glad I've kept it all these years.”

“I remember thinking it seemed like a lot of money. I gather it's been a good investment.”

“I guess it's worth a lot more than I paid for it. Oliver thinks I should sell it. But I like having my own place to work.”

Alex shifted, hitting his knee on the coffee table. The last time he had been alone with Margot was during her visit to New Castle in January. She seemed different in New York. “Did you notice any change in Lacey's speech when she was here?” he asked.

“Not really.” She paused. “Well, maybe a little.” She looked away from him.

“I'm sorry to bring it up. Some days I just want to forget. I know that sounds selfish.”

“None of us can forget.”

“I want things to get back to normal, if that's even possible. I know it's my fault. Every time I go home I think we'll be okay again. I feel like I'm walking on a frozen lake, only the ice isn't solid and I'm just waiting to fall through.”

“Maybe take Lacey away for a weekend. I'd come stay with the twins.”

He shook his head. “I've got too much work now.” That was true, but would Lacey even want to be away with him?

“You need to keep trying, Alex. Lacey needs you.”

“You're right. I will,” he said, suddenly weary. His gaze fell on a pile of photographs next to the magazines. The top one was a picture of a lake.

“Some old photos of Bow Lake,” Margot said, noticing his interest. She put down her glass, picked up the stack, and came to sit beside him. “I wanted to try some landscapes. I found these in a box of mementos. Here's the cottage.” She handed him a picture and continued to sort through the others.

“The old place never changes.” He caught a whiff of her perfume, a flowery scent.

“Here's a sunset.” She handed him another picture. “Remember the path to the beach?”

Alex held the images in his hands. He was aware of Margot close beside him—her leg not an inch from his. He focused on the picture. He could imagine the smell of the woods just from looking at the lush green leaves, the mossy forest floor, the gentle bend of the ferns. A photo of the sun glinting on the lake brought back all the old memories of summer. He remembered their grandmother. What an incredible gift she had left to Lacey and Margot. It was more than a fine piece of real estate. It was a piece of history that made them who they were. Summer after summer they returned to Bow Lake, and now Wink and Toni were contributing to their own bank of memories.

“Here's one of Lacey.” Her arm grazed his. “It could be Toni. See?”

He took the picture. Lacey stood holding a paddle next to the green Old Town canoe. Her tanned legs and arms were lean and strong. They used to race the canoes out to the island. She wore a winner's smile.

Margot was staring at another photograph and about to shuffle it to the bottom of the pile. “Come on,” he said. “Is that one of you?” He took it from her.

“It makes me feel so old to look at these,” she said.

In the picture Margot looked just the way she had the summer before he went to business school. He stared at her shy smile, her secretive gaze. “You were beautiful,” he said. “I mean, you still are.” Alex felt color rising to his face, remembering the one summer he had pushed to the far reaches of his brain.

“Don't be silly,” she said, getting up, nearly toppling the bottle of wine. She sat again in the chair across from him and forced the pictures back into a neat pile. “We were all much younger then.”

Alex stared at his hands, opening and closing his fists. What had come over him? “I need to go,” he said. He rose, trying to avoid hitting the table with his knees.

“Already?” she asked.

“It's getting late,” he said. He stood and picked up his jacket, thinking he shouldn't have come. A small painting rested on the easel. It was a picture of the tiny island they called Junior, a short swim from her grandmother's dock. “This is really good,” he said. Maybe he shouldn't have looked. Artists could be funny about showing their work.

“You recognize it?” Her brows lifted.

“Junior. I'd know it anywhere.”

“I'm working on other things, but I keep going back to Bow Lake.”

He nodded, suddenly overwhelmed. Bow Lake. A generation ago. A jumble of memories rose up in his throat as if they might choke him. His life might have taken a completely different path. Abruptly, he put one hand into his jacket and reached around for the other sleeve. Margot guided the jacket up and around him. “Thanks,” he said, and turned to face her. He hugged her briefly. It was only for a moment, but the warmth of her, the softness of her hair against his cheek, caught him off guard.

“I'll call you.” He went to the door and let himself out.

A
fter Alex left, Margot quickly washed out their glasses and put the wine bottle back in the fridge. She reached for the photographs on the coffee table, but rather than tuck them back in the box, she sat down again and shuffled through the stack. She placed the best one of Lacey on top. In the photo she stood with her back to the dark woods, smiling out at the world, young, strong, and seemingly perfect. Margot closed her eyes and leaned back into the cushions.

She remembered the first time she was jealous of Lacey. It was at the end of one summer at Bow Lake. Lacey, twenty, was halfway through college, and Alex had finished his freshman year. Margot, still in high school, had been only sixteen. The unexpected emotion had made her feel physically sick, as if she were coming down with the flu. The clichéd expression “green with envy” was accurate, though not the soft green like the leaves that fluttered in the trees, or the green of the ferns waving on the woodland floor, but the nasty green of overcooked asparagus, or the canned peas her mother slopped onto her dinner plate, too careless to drain them properly.

Both Alex and Lacey had lives away from Bow Lake, lives she could not yet imagine. Margot had been living that summer with Granny Winkler until this final week in August. She had a job at the Girl Scout camp down the lake, assisting the arts and crafts counselor. Her fingers were blistered from hours spent helping cranky little girls make lanyards, bracelets, and key chains that would end up at the back of a kitchen junk drawer by October.

Lacey was tanned and looked gorgeous, having taught sailing at a sleepaway camp in Maine. Alex had spent the summer working in the shipping department of his father's manufacturing company. He didn't see Lacey at all during the school year, since he went to a small college in western Massachusetts and Lacey went to school in Vermont. The only time they spent together was at Bow Lake. Granny Winkler joked that Alex was making up for lost time, following Lacey everywhere. “Here comes the cocker spaniel,” she would whisper to Margot, referring to Alex's worshipful eyes.

Lacey had always treated Alex like a buddy, one of the gang who came to the lake year after year, but that year Margot had noticed a difference. She was with them almost the entire final week, and they did everything together the way they always had—racing canoes out to Junior, or rowing to the island in Pigtail, the wooden skiff that had been in the water every summer since 1935, according to their grandmother. Sometimes they took a picnic lunch and stayed for most of the afternoon, swimming off the tiny beach. Alex's family had a motorboat, and now and again he took Lacey and Margot to Cedar Point, where a marina snack bar sold sodas and ice cream.

Sometimes they biked over to the public tennis courts, a three-mile trip to the end of the lake, and played Canadian doubles. Lacey was the strongest player, so Alex usually paired up with Margot. Alex had a long stride and ran everything down. Margot would yell “yours” from the net, knowing he was there at the back ready to bail her out of trouble. No longer awkward, Alex was more talkative now, and he and Lacey spoke of things Margot had no part of: courses at college, professors, foreign films, concerts they had attended during the school year. Margot had not crossed over into that independent world. They wouldn't be interested in her long hours spent reading art books in the public library, trying to put off the moment when she would have to go home and listen to her mother knocking around in the kitchen, if she came down at all.

Alex and Lacey had seemed to include Margot gladly in all that they did, yet it was as if there was some invisible thread that had begun to connect them that year. They listened to each other with real attention. There was no casual or flip repartee. Even at sixteen Margot could see the way they communicated with their eyes, a lingering glance, or with their hands as they pulled a boat out of the water, fingers touching longer than necessary.

One afternoon the three of them swam out to the raft in front of Granny Winkler's camp. It was a hot day. Stacks of clouds were building in the west. Earlier, Lacey had brought the laundry in from the clothesline, as their grandmother warned of a storm. Margot had helped her fold the cotton sheets bleached white from the sun and the towels that would feel scratchy and rough on their skin when they dried off later after a swim.

Lacey reached the raft first, followed by Alex. When Margot pulled herself up the ladder, they were already lying beside each other, on their stomachs in the sun. Margot shook herself and squeezed the water out of her ponytail before lying next to Lacey. Her arms were covered with goose bumps. The breeze was picking up and the waves rocked the raft in a gentle motion. The lake water evaporated quickly on her skin, causing her to shiver momentarily. Gradually, the heat of the sun warmed her back. She already dreaded the day next week when she and her father would drive Lacey back to school. She pushed that thought away and dozed beside them.

The night before, Alex had driven them to the movies two towns away. They had returned late. Margot had tiptoed upstairs so as not to wake her grandmother, eager to have first turn in the bathroom. Lacey and Alex had remained on the porch. Margot wondered how late Lacey had stayed up, though today Lacey had been at breakfast earlier than usual. Margot wondered if they had made out there in the dark. Were they now boyfriend and girlfriend? She didn't want to ask Lacey, for fear that if they were a couple it would mean she would have to leave them alone.