A Thread of Truth (25 page)

“As my old granny used to say, ‘There's some men on God's good earth that were just born to be shot.' Sounds like old Hodge is one of them.” Mary Dell clucked her tongue sympathetically. “Well, you tell Ivy I said hello. I sure feel bad about all this. None of this would have happened if we hadn't aired that video with her in it.”

“Oh, Mary Dell, don't say that. This isn't your fault. It had to happen sooner or later. Ivy couldn't go on hiding forever; she knows that. Just the other day she told me what a relief it is to get up in the morning and know she's not going to have to lie about anything. One way or another, she'll get through this. She's tougher than she looks. Did I tell you? I gave her a promotion.”

“Did you? That was sweet of you.”

“Sweet, nothing. She deserved it. She keeps that order department running like clockwork. I don't know what I'd do without her, and that's the truth.”

“She sounds like a great little gal. I hope everything works out for her. Tell her I'm praying for her, will you?”

“I will.”

W
hile I was in the kitchen getting her a glass of water, the social worker dragged her finger across the table looking for dust. She didn't find any; I've always been a good housekeeper, but it would take more than a tidy family room to win her over.

Because Hodge and I are both suing for custody of the kids, we each have to undergo a court-ordered home study by a social worker. They look at each parent's living situation—housing, employment, schools—and make recommendations as to which home would be better for the children. I could tell she wasn't too impressed with our apartment, especially when she found out I'd soon have to find another place to live.

She smiled woodenly as I handed her the glass and sat down across from her. “Thank you. Now, tell me about your job. You work in retail?” The look on her face said that this was not a strike in my favor, that, in her mind, working in retail meant a dead end and minimum wage.

I didn't answer her directly, opting instead to hand her one of my brand-new business cards, the ones Evelyn had surprised me with when she told me I'd been promoted.

 

I
VY
P
ETERMAN

C
OBBLED
C
OURT
Q
UILT
S
HOP

M
ANAGER

O
RDER
F
ULFILLMENT
D
EPARTMENT

 

For the first time since coming into my home, the social worker smiled—genuinely. “Cobbled Court Quilts? Really? I've heard of them. That's the shop they keep talking about on television, isn't it?”

“Yes,” I said. “When I started there we only had four full-time employees for the whole shop. Now there's more than that just in my department.”

I could feel heat rising to my cheeks. It felt uncomfortable blowing my own horn, but I knew Hodge would have no similar qualms so I added, “And we're adding new employees all the time. By this time next year we could double in size.”

It wasn't exactly a lie. That qualifying “could” made all the difference. By next year Cobbled Court Quilts could double in size. Or Hodge could suddenly decide he was wrong and had been for a long time, give up his custody fight, and write me a check for one hundred thousand dollars by way of apology. Or George Clooney could wander in the shop one day and propose marriage. Anything could happen.

“Really?” she said and scribbled down a note on her clipboard. “So would you say you have good opportunities for advancement?”

“Oh, yes. Absolutely,” I said and nodded gravely, then threw in a phrase I'd heard Hodge use one day when he was talking to a potential investor. “This company has tremendous upside growth potential.”

I felt like an idiot saying that, like a little girl walking around in her mother's high heels playing at being grown-up. But I guess she bought it because she smiled when I said it and wrote down a bunch more notes on her clipboard. No matter how foolish I felt, seeing the social worker's approving nod made it worth it. That nod could be the difference between keeping or losing my children.

Three weeks from today, whether I'm ready or not, I'll be in a courtroom, sitting at a table next to my attorney, trying to keep custody of my kids. Hodge will be sitting at another table with his attorney trying to take them from me. Three weeks from today. Ready or not. Right now, we're not.

Arnie keeps telling me not to worry, that he's still going to find that elusive loose thread, but it hasn't happened yet. As the court date gets closer, I can tell he's wondering if he ever will. Even Margot's optimism is beginning to flag. She doesn't say so, of course, but I can see it in her eyes.

I'm scared.

Some days it's everything I can do to keep myself from grabbing my kids and running, but it's too late for that. Before, I was able to melt into the background without anyone taking much notice. In fact, I've learned that Hodge never even reported my disappearance to the police. Isn't that something? There I was, shuffling my kids from one town to the next, sleeping in cars, always afraid that the law was after me, and Hodge never even so much as filed a missing persons report. Here he is, fighting me tooth and nail for custody, but he doesn't care about the kids. He never did. He's only doing this as a way to try to punish and control me. Even so, it's hard to understand why he didn't report me to the police. Did he just figure he had me so well-trained that I'd come crawling back to him eventually? That sounds like Hodge. Smug.

Once he did find me, he tried to have me charged with kidnapping, but since he'd never filed a report, he couldn't make it stick. Lucky for me. But I wouldn't be that lucky if I disappeared a second time.

And then there's Bethany. After Margot talked me out of running, Bethany wouldn't get out of bed the next day. I mean, she absolutely refused to leave her room! I didn't know what to think. When I told her to get up and get ready for school, she screamed at me! She said she wasn't getting in that car no matter what I did. I was really mad, not to mention late for work, so I went in there and tried to make her get dressed, but she fought like a tiger. Poor Bobby stood in the corner with his thumb in his mouth, clutching his blankie and watching me trying to wrestle his sister out of bed.

Finally, I gave up. I told Bobby that if Bethany wouldn't get out of bed, then I guessed none of us should. I said, “Move over, peanut. Come on, Bobby, you, too.” And we huddled under the covers together, crowded like sardines into Bethany's little bed.

Bethany thought it was funny that I was in bed with all my clothes on. We had a tickle fight under the quilts, all three of us. Once things calmed down, we started talking. Bethany told me that she didn't want to get in the car because she was afraid if she did, I'd take her away from New Bern and she'd never see her friends, or her school, or Abigail, Margot, or Evelyn again.

I promised her, then and there, that I wouldn't do that. I told her that New Bern was our home and she never had to leave. I promised.

Dear God, I hope I wasn't lying.

I won't run away. I can't because I promised Bethany, but that's just me. I don't have any control over Hodge and what he's going to do. And, as the days tick down to the divorce hearing, I feel less and less in control. I don't care about the money. Whatever there is or isn't, Hodge can have. The only thing that matters to me is my kids, which is why Hodge is so determined to keep me from getting them.

Evelyn, and Margot, and Abigail, and Arnie, and all these wonderful, good-hearted people in this picture perfect town have assured me that, in the end, good will triumph over evil, lies will be found out, and the truth will set me free. And maybe, if you grow up in a place like this, it does. But I was born a million miles from here. I'm from the places that Norman Rockwell never wanted to paint. And I know that sometimes the bad guys win.

I've started praying. I can't say that I have much faith that my prayers are being heard, let alone answered. But Margot is always talking about what can happen if you have faith the size of a mustard seed—in other words, little, puny, pinpoint tiny faith. Well, that's a pretty good description of mine, so I pray. Why not? It's all I've got left.

 

Work is a great distraction for me. When I'm at the shop I'm too busy to think about anything except cutting fabric, assembling orders, and getting them packaged and mailed. I like being busy.

And the closer we get to the big Quilt Pink broadcast, the busier we get. There are now five people working in order fulfillment: me, two of my friends from the Stanton Center, Karen and Jeni, plus two local teachers, Roseanne and Bryan. They were looking for work over the summer, so Evelyn hired them. She thinks that, after the broadcast, business might slow down, so hiring teachers makes sense. If it does, she won't have to lay anybody off after the show, because Roseanne and Bryan will go back to their old jobs. If we're still busy, she won't have any trouble finding replacements. Evelyn is a great boss.

When Evelyn told me that I was being promoted to department manager, I had to excuse myself to go to the bathroom. I didn't want her to see me cry. I know it's not that big a deal, but this is the first time in my life that I've ever really succeeded at anything. I felt the way I used to feel when I was in grade school and the teacher would put a gold star sticker on the top of my spelling test if I scored one hundred—like I wanted to take that star and pin it to my chest where everyone would see it and know that I was good at something.

Evelyn didn't give me a gold star, but I did get a four-hundred-dollar-a-month raise. I sure can use it. Arnie keeps saying that, after the divorce, I'll have plenty of money, maybe even enough to buy a little house, because the judge will order Hodge to pay child support, to sell our assets and give me half.

Yeah. Like that's going to happen. Arnie doesn't know Hodge like I do. There is no way I'm ever going to get a dime from Hodge. He'd die before he'd let that happen. Even when we were together, he made me account for every single penny I spent. I used to tell myself that was because he had such a good head for business and liked to keep control over his accounts, but now I see what he really wanted to control was me. I'm starting to see all the ways Hodge tried to control me. And all the ways I let him.

Anyway, like I said, over Hodge Edelman's dead body will I ever get one red cent of the money. Arnie keeps scratching his head over Hodge's financial disclosures. According to the records, Hodge doesn't have anything; the nursing home is losing money, the entire business is mortgaged up to the eyeballs, and it turns out our house is in foreclosure because Hodge has missed payments. Funny how the first missed payment came in the month he found me. That's Hodge. He's that vindictive. He'd rather lose the house than risk having to give me half the proceeds from it.

I'm not stupid. Neither is Arnie. We know Hodge is lying. He's figured some way to hide the money and cook the books so the losses look legitimate, but we can't prove anything. It's driving Arnie nuts. He told me yesterday that he's hired some kind of special investigator, Annie Fielding, a forensic accountant. That's someone who specializes in figuring out how and where dishonest businesses hide their ill-gotten gains. Arnie was really excited about her, but I don't think she'll find anything. Wherever that money is, I guarantee Hodge has made sure it can't be traced. He's thorough.

So, wherever we live after we leave the Stanton Center, it's going to have to be somewhere we can afford on my salary alone. I haven't actually gone looking for new apartments yet, but I have been reading the “for rent” section of the classifieds. Even with a raise, it's going to be tough to find a two-bedroom place within my budget. Of course, if Hodge gets his way, I won't need two bedrooms. If Hodge gets his way, I'll be living alone.

I
keep having this dream.

I'm at home doing something—ironing, or cooking, or watching television; once I was quilting—and the doorbell rings.

The thing that's weird is, I know it's my house but I've never been there before, except in my dreams. There's a big stone fireplace in the living room, and built-in bookshelves under the windows, and a low-beamed ceiling that makes everything seem snug and safe, like a cottage in a Beatrix Potter book, a cozy den for a family of bunnies. The kitchen has blue and yellow tile, distressed white cabinets with glass fronts, and fresh, crisp curtains at the windows.

A pretty kitchen, but I've never seen it before. I guess that's the way things happen in dreams.

It's dark outside, late. I'm surprised to hear the bell because I'm not expecting anyone, but I'm not afraid to open the door, so I leave what I'm doing to answer it. And when I do, it's my dad! He's just standing there and he looks great. I'm so happy to see him. I say, “Dad, what are you doing here?” But he just smiles and doesn't say anything. So I wait.

After a while he gets this look on his face. He's sad. Disappointed. I can tell he wants something but I don't know what. He's looking at me and there are tears in his eyes and then I feel sad, too. Finally, he turns and walks away. It's so dark that he just disappears.

I wish I knew what he wanted.

 

Could my life be any stranger?

On the one hand, things are better than they've ever been. I love my job. I love the people I work with and the feeling that, for the first time in my life, I'm actually good at something. I love my friends and this town. We're safe here.

The kids are happy. We live in a nice apartment with quilts on the bed and crayoned drawings hanging from magnets on the refrigerator door. Other people might think it's boring, but I love the routine and rhythm of our days.

After work, I pick the kids up from day care and they jabber the whole way home. They are allowed to watch one video while I cook dinner. We eat sitting together at the table. After the dishes are done we make popcorn and eat it at the kitchen table while we play Candy Land. Bethany and I let Bobby win. At bedtime I tuck them in with a story and a kiss. Then I go into the living room and pull up a chair next to the round wooden quilting frame Evelyn let me borrow.

The quilt top is finished. The quilt circle will sew on the binding together, but I wanted to do the quilting myself and by hand. The house block I made, the white clapboard cottage with its blue wide-eyed windows and garden of cheerful flowers, marks the center of the quilt. The other four blocks, made by Abigail, Margot, Evelyn, and Liza, stand at each corner like mismatched sentries on a guard, points on a compass, fixed and immovable. I sit in silence, rocking my sewing needle up and down, up and down, up and down in a smooth, even rhythm as steady and comforting as the sound of a beating heart, pausing only occasionally to check my stitches and see how I have progressed, or to rethread the needle and begin again. When it is time for bed, I turn out the lights and stop to linger by the door of my children's bedroom, opening it quietly and peering in at their peaceful, sleeping faces and thinking, “It doesn't get better than this.”

And on the other hand, in three weeks all of that, everything I hold dear today, could be taken from me; this life I love could collapse like a column of ash.

Bobby does this thing that cracks me up. Whenever something is going to happen that he doesn't like, say I tell him that it's time to turn off the television and take his bath, he covers his eyes with his hands and yells, “You can't see me! You can't see me!”

He's so cute! He actually believes that if I'm invisible to him, then he's invisible to me. Of course, it doesn't work. No matter how tightly he shuts his eyes or how loudly he yells, “You can't see me!” the TV still gets turned off, the bathtub still gets filled, the clock still strikes eight, and the day ends.

Hiding from your fears doesn't make them disappear.

Bobby doesn't know that yet, but he will. You don't have to be a lot older than four to realize this. Still, sometimes we regress. Like Bethany did on that day she refused to get out of bed. Or like me, clinging to the topmost branches of the tree, hoping the shadow of leaves would conceal me from the world. Or my mother, losing herself in books, booze, and the arms of another man.

I've been thinking about my mother a lot lately—more than I ever did when she was alive. Dreams of my father permeate my nights, but the days belong to my mother. During the final, hushed hour of the day as I sit before the quilting frame, putting my needle steadily through its paces, physically engaged but mentally free to float on the wind of memory, I cannot help but think of her. I never wanted to be like her, swore I never would be, but it hasn't worked out that way.

My mother never volunteered much about her past, but in her own way, in fragments of sentences that trailed off into nothingness, italicized with sighs, and shrugs, and the set of her shoulders, she sketched a smudged outline of her early life for me, hints of her history, clues to a puzzle I didn't care enough to solve, not then. I feel bad about that. Now I wonder if, in her own way, she was trying to connect with me, or perhaps to warn me? I don't know. But I was too wrapped up in myself to notice. In my close little world there was room for me and for Daddy; no others need apply. Yes, I was a child and sometimes that is the way children are, but I wish…I wish I had heard her. I wish I had been better.

If I had, things might have been different for all of us.

It's too late to change what has been. But is it too late to change what will be? To change myself? Maybe. Maybe not. I'm trying.

Using imagination, experience, and what maturity I have, I try to color in the lines of that smudged outline. I conjure my mother's face, her eyes hollow and longing, her long, thin body, curved in on itself, tucked tight into the sharp right angle of the sofa corner, protected on two sides and with her knees drawn in and up. Or sometimes I see her standing, arms hugging her shoulders, staring out the window with the stagnant, gray streetscape before her and all her dreams behind, wondering how she ended up there, trapped in a life that was, for her, worse than the one she'd thought she was escaping.

She didn't understand, but I do. I think I do.

My mother was born poor and bright. She once told me that she knew how to read by the time she was four and that no one taught her how. She said it plain, a fact with no pride attached, just laid it out like bait, waiting to see if I'd take it and ask the next question. I didn't.

If I had, I imagine she'd have told me the story of the house she grew up in, far and away up a hollow, off a dirt road, miles away from the small cluster of buildings they called “town,” where her family carried on what little trade they did, miles more from a library. But she loved to read and when she exhausted the tiny collection of worn volumes at her school, she found a box of used paperback books for sale at the general store in town. She saved her nickels and dimes and quarters to buy them one by one until the woman behind the counter took pity and told her to go ahead and take the whole box. She carried the heavy box up the road to a shortcut through the woods, over rocks and under brush, sweating and flushed because it was summer and hot and the best day of her life.

Maybe that's how it happened and maybe not. There is no one left to tell me, but this is how I've pieced it together in my mind. Some things I know for sure. My mother was poor and brighter than those around her, bright enough to be dissatisfied, bright enough to know there was a world beyond the boundaries set by birth. She was certain that somewhere down the road there was a better life. There had to be. After all, she'd read about it in books, so it must be true.

And maybe, if she'd liked books about girls who have adventures and make their own way, maybe if she'd read about Jo March, or Scarlett O'Hara, or even Stephanie Plum, things might have worked out differently for her. You can find plucky, independent heroines in every genre. Why didn't she? Instead, she gravitated toward the heroine whose every dream and desire was fulfilled by attaching herself to a man who gave her life the storybook ending she didn't know how to write for herself, and so that's what she set her mind on—finding the man who would give her the life she wanted.

She left school at fifteen, took a job in the general store, and saved enough money to buy a new dress and a bus ticket to White Sulphur Springs, where she'd heard there was a fancy resort that rich people went to on vacation. She got a job serving bread and rolls in the dining room and smiled sweetly at every eligible-looking man she served, and even some of the ineligible-looking ones, hoping they'd notice her, but they never did, not unless they wanted another roll.

But one day, one of them did smile back: my father. If she'd have been there longer maybe she'd have realized that he didn't belong in that place, or noticed that the suit he wore was secondhand and his best shoes were worn down at the heel, and realized he couldn't have been paying that bill on his own steam. But she was too inexperienced and too giddy with success to realize. So when he came again the next night, she smiled with her eyes open wide to let him know she was interested, available, and open to anything that was on his mind, anything at all.

That's enough. I have to stop here.

It's hard to think about my own parents like this. There was no love lost between my mother and me, but I wish there had been. It's hard to think of her as being so cheaply had, so conniving. It's even harder to think of the daddy I thought hung the moon for me alone as taking advantage of a young woman, even one who was so willing to be taken advantage of. And it is hard to understand that what I considered the best years of my life, living with the daddy I adored in the house that was no better or worse than those of the other families with a man in the mill, was my mother's own private hell.

Why did it have to be like that? If she had only read different books. If she had only had other dreams. If he had only eaten his roll and listened to the voice in his head that told him the girl was too young. If he had only kept his room key in his pocket instead of slipping it into hers. If only she had learned to appreciate what he was instead of resenting what he wasn't. If only he had pulled me off that pedestal he'd placed me on as a means of punishing her. If only they could have talked it out. If only he had made me stand on my own two feet. If she could only have loved me.

Then I might have seen where she made her wrong turn, instead of repeating her mistakes. Maybe I'd have learned to rely on myself and had a little faith in my own abilities. Maybe I'd have understood that I even had some abilities to put faith in, instead of waiting for twenty-six years and the gift of a woman named Evelyn to let me in on the secret. Maybe I'd have listened to my instincts, looked harder at Hodge, asked more questions, seen the evidence that was right in front of my face. Then maybe I'd have asked myself that most important question, “Do I love him?” Because I see now that the answer was no.

I didn't want to be like my mother, so cheaply had, so I made him wait a while for what he wanted, telling myself his patience proved he cared about me. And when I ceded to him those things he most desired, the things he'd known would be his eventually—my body, my will, my utter dependence upon him—I told myself it was love. But it wasn't. It never was. I didn't love him; I
needed
him. I believed that then.

I don't anymore.

If only one of two hundred different lies had been rejected or recognized, I might have figured that out a long time ago. But there is no end to “if only,” unless you decide to end it yourself. I have.

It's hard to think about my parents the way I have, to delve deeper than the childish, stereotypical roles I'd cast them in—saint and sinner, hero and harlot, villain and victim—and try to look at them with the eyes of a woman instead of a child and to see them for what they were: two flawed, imperfect beings who could have done a million things differently and didn't. Yes, there were reasons and history and circumstances, but in the end they lived the lives they chose for themselves.

It is harder still to look at myself and see that I have done exactly the same stupid, stupid, stupid thing. Hardest of all is to forgive. I do. I have. I think I have.

But, some mornings I wake up and there it is again, like those mushrooms that grow in the damp, dark spots of your lawn. You pull on the stems and throw them away but when you go out the next day, there they are again, resentments like fungus, just as ugly and persistent as that word sounds. I guess this takes a while, but I'm not giving up.

I want to see things—my parents, my past, myself—for what they really are, the truth of it, not the almost version.

People act like little kids sometimes, hiding their eyes and refusing to see. Maybe, if you only do it once in a while, it's okay. But I've made a career of it. Not anymore. I'm ready to grow up. From here on out, whatever happens, good or bad, I'm facing it with my eyes open.