Hanging by a Thread (10 page)

The urge to vanish is nearly overwhelming.

Especially when I hear the clunk of the front door deadbolt.

I
f I'd had a drop of sense, I'd be long gone. But something—guilt?—keeps me glued to the edge of Tina's sofa while Luke and she talk in their bedroom. At this point, I'm not so much afraid that he'll be angry—that's a given—as I am that he'll never forgive either one of us.

Except then I remember that I didn't know she was going to do this. Yes, I knew she was thinking about it, but as far as I knew, she'd changed her mind.

And maybe she had. Because Tina's my friend, because I don't want to give in to the insidious doubt gnawing at my stomach lining, I refuse to believe she'd planned it this way all along. That, rather than dealing with my less than supportive reaction to her original plan, she lied to me. And to her husband.

After what seems like hours, I finally hear the bedroom door open, then click softly shut. My heart pounds as I hear
Luke's rubber-soled footfalls on the wooden floor as he comes down the hall. I look up, swallowing nonexistent spit, my insides caving at his wrecked expression.

“Is…is she okay?” I tentatively prod, as you might a snake to see if it's really dead. As opposed to getting the hell out of there.

His gaze drifts out the window, one hand cupping the back of his neck. “I guess. Or she will be, eventually. I told her to try and get some sleep.” Dark, perplexed eyes meet mine, and I think,
okay…here it comes.
“What I don't get is why she called you instead of me.”

Oh, God. This must be one of those low simmer mads, that he's too angry to even let it out. I swallow again. “I guess…it's just one of those woman things, you know? Maybe…she felt better having me be with her first. But I swear,” I quickly added, “I hadn't been here an hour before she started asking for you. In fact, I was about to call you when you walked in.”

“Yeah. She told me.” He sinks into a chair at right angles to the sofa, but there's nothing relaxed about his pose. “Now I understand why she didn't want to tell anyone. In case this happened. I mean, I know it's not unusual, especially with a first baby, but you just don't expect it to happen to you, you know?”

Something's not right here. “Especially with a first baby?”

“Yeah. J.J.'s and Vinnie's wives had miscarriages with their first, too.”

What?

I only hope Luke takes my sudden fit of trembling for being as upset as he obviously is.

Holy crap. I glance back down the hall, barely able to control the impulse to march into Tina's bedroom and smack the daylights out of her. Maybe she hadn't planned on aborting the baby after telling me she'd changed her mind, or maybe she had. I don't know, and frankly, I don't want to. Any more than I want to know whether her lying to Luke was a spur-of-the-moment thing, either. I do know the only thing keeping me
from spitting out the truth right now is that it would only hurt Luke even more than he is already.

As for Tina…right now, I don't give a damn whether she's hurt or not. Whatever sympathy I felt for her—for her fears, for her confusion—has just gone right down the tubes.

She could have lied to me, too, dammit. She could have told me she'd miscarried, and I wouldn't have been the wiser. But no, she had to confess to
somebody,
didn't she? And who better than good old Ellie? Ellie the Trustworthy, Ellie the Reliable…Ellie the Chump. After all, why should I mind sharing her burden of guilt any more than I shared my liverwurst sandwich earlier?

How is it I get to know
all
the secrets, but each of them only gets to know half? How is this a good thing?

“Ellie? You okay?”

When I force myself to look at him, I realize that as heart-broken as he is at the moment, his pain will heal, eventually.

I'm not so sure about mine.

I manage a smile. “Yeah. More or less.” We get up at the same time; he gives me a hug. Or maybe I give him one, I'm not sure. In any case, it's awkward and stiff and we break apart quickly. I grab my coat and purse off the couch and sidle toward his front door. “Okay, well, since you're here now…I might as well get going. I mean, I've got work to do and stuff….”

“Oh, yeah, sure.” In two strides, he's around me and to the door, opening it for me. “Teen will probably call you later, though.”

I nod, not sure what to say, then step out into the hall.

“Hey,” he says softly. “Hold on a sec.”

My nerves twitching with the need to flee, I force myself to turn back; his gaze barely touches mine before he averts it, rubbing his palm against the outside of his thigh like he used to when he got nervous as a little kid. When he looks back up, my throat clenches at the raw vulnerability in his eyes, a look
I've only seen a handful of times before. A look, I now realize, I doubt few other people ever see.

“Okay, this is gonna sound sappy, but…you know, Tina and I really lucked out, having you for a friend. And, well, I just wanted you to know that. How important you are to us. Both of us,” he adds, just to avoid any misunderstandings.

I'm not sure what to say to that. Or even how to react, even though I don't doubt he means it. And on some level, I'm touched. But it's like making that perfect swing at the ball a millisecond after it crosses the plate: What's the point?

“Thanks,” I say. “But…maybe now's a good time for the two of you to wean yourselves from me.” As his eyes widen, I add, “Or maybe I'm the one who needs to do the weaning, I don't know—”

“What the hell are you talking about? You think we shouldn't be friends anymore?”

I can feel my eyes burning, but I've had plenty of practice holding back tears. “Remember what I said the other night, about feeling like I'm always in the middle? You even made some comment about me putting myself there. Remember that? Well, you were right. That's exactly what I've done. And frankly, constantly being squeezed between the two of you's getting just a little uncomfortable.”

Then, partly because I don't know what else to say and partly because the eye-stinging's just gotten a lot worse, I scoot down the hall, trying to shut out Luke yelling, “Ellie! Ellie,
dammit
—what the hell's going on with you?”

Would that I knew.

 

Starr's already been asleep for a good hour or so when Tina calls.

“I'm so sorry,” she whispers in a broken voice. “I'm so fucking sorry.”

My own eyes burn. I'm still angry and confused, but I'm
calmer. Somewhat. I don't get why she's done this. But after all these years, dammit, her pain is, and always will be, mine.

“Where's Luke?”

“He went out, I don't know where. His parents', maybe?”

I check the window. “No, his car's not out front.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

I can hear her sniffling, then blowing her nose.

“Teen? Why didn't you tell Luke the truth?”

“I meant to, I swear to God. Then Luke came in and…oh, El—” She breaks down, her words nearly unintelligible. “If you c-could've seen the look on his face, how broken up he was…it was horrible. A-and I opened my mouth, and…”

“Lied.”

“Oh, God! It was like somebody else had put the words in my mouth!” She blows her nose again. “El? Why aren't you saying anything?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“That you understand?”

“But I don't, Tina.
I'm
sorry. I wish to hell I did. But I just…don't.”

“Don't hate me, El,” Tina says in a tiny voice. “Please. I don't have anybody else I can talk to, nobody understands me the way you do.”

There's that word again.
Understand.
I think, obliquely, that maybe even more than love or food or shelter or sex, what the human animal craves most is for another human being to understand him. To absolve him of that which he doesn't understand himself, someone to sort through the fragments of another person's psyche and say, “See—this is why you act and think the way you do, it's not your fault, you're a good person who's been screwed over.” The old
I'm okay, you're okay
approach to relationships.

And the thing is, Tina
is
a good person. And she
has
been
screwed over. And in many ways, I know I'll never have a better friend.

“I don't hate you,” I say, finally, wearily. “But maybe that's why it hurts so much, why
I
can't understand how somebody can put a friend in the position you just put me in.”

Silence.

“I'm sorry,” she says at last, and hangs up.

 

Weeks pass. Life trudges on. It's late February now, still bitterly cold and damp, that time of year when you've decided Mother Nature is a nasty old witch and spring will never come. Everything is relentlessly gray—buildings, sky, the ever-present slush that only seems to accumulate where I need to cross the street, my mood. Even my clothes. This morning, for instance, I opened my drawer to pull out a sweater, and all the bright colors immediately set my teeth on edge, like those annoyingly upbeat door-to-door salesmen determined to sell me something I don't want, never have wanted, and never will want. I grabbed a putty-colored turtleneck and slammed shut the drawer, muttering to myself.

You know, I think as I snatch a few minutes at Nikky's computer (she's off getting sandblasted or something) to enter the latest batch of orders, it's as if everybody's moving forward except me. At least, it seems that way. All around me, people are getting on with their careers, getting married…getting laid, if nothing else. Yet here I am, with no social life outside of going next door for dinner with the Scardinares once a month, making other people's wedding dresses, wading through other people's traumas. And who am I fooling about this job? Hell, after the Tina debacle (I haven't heard from either Luke or Tina since then, which has been a lot harder than I thought), I couldn't even use my work as an excuse to avoid my life.
What
work? I don't even have my own desk, for God's sake. And what have I learned, really, in the time I've been here? I
mean, please, like I didn't already know how to hang a bias-cut skirt.

For someone with a family history of premature demise, this is not good. Unlike the majority of the population, I can't count on
later.
If I don't get a move on,
later's
gonna turn into
never.

So,
chica—
what're you gonna do about it?

Of course, that's the tricky part to all this. I haven't got a clue.

Sure you do.

No. I don't—

Great. I'm having arguments with myself.

Whatever,
the unidentified voice horns in.
So when you gonna stop and figure out who the hell you are and what you want?

Uh…now?

Now would be good.

This leads to several seconds of intense nail-tapping on the desk while the computer hums complacently in front of me. I shut my eyes and think,
Okay, what's the first thing that comes to mind?
praying the answer doesn't involve either joining some religious group or, worse, a singles club. Oddly—and thankfully—enough, the thought
Call Mari
blips on the old mental radar screen.

Hmm. Of course, it's been more than a month and she hasn't called
me.
Not that I expected her to. One, because she's obviously one of those people who is getting on with her life, and two, because I can't see any reason why she'd really want to resurrect our friendship after all this time. Yeah, we had a great time in school, but that was then, this is now, and I'm a wuss when it comes to making overtures like that.

Which could account for—the light dawns—why I'm here and she's working for The Right Hand of God.

I get up, march myself into the bookkeeper's office (Corey, now—Gretta lasted four days) and retrieve my purse from the
bottom drawer of his desk. The guy's like, ten. I'm talking right off the assembly line—no nicks, no scratches, no dings. And he reeks of Victoria Secret's
Very Sexy.
Which on Corey just comes across as
Very Desperate.

“Hey, Ellie,” he says, grinning up at me as I wait out the brief dizzy spell from standing up too fast. “Wanna do lunch later?”

This makes the third time he's asked this week. And it's only Tuesday.

“Busy, sorry,” I say, my voice trailing in my wake as I hotfoot it out of there. Once in the john, I dig Mari's card out of my purse. I have no idea what, if anything, this will lead to. I have no idea of anything, least of all what I'm doing. But the fact is—pause for heart palpitations—I'm
doing.
Taking action. Moving forward. Putting myself
out there.

She answers on the first ring, sounding truly like a person who has the world at her feet.

“Ellie! Thank God you finally called me! Girl, I have been trying and trying to get you, but you must've given me a wrong number or something, 'cause the dude I finally got didn't have a clue who I was talking about!” She laughs; I'm thinking, I gave her the wrong number? I'm meticulous about numbers, always have been. But when we double-check the number, yep. I'd transposed two digits. So now I can add avoidance dyslexia to my list of sins.

“So when can we get together?” she says.

Oh, God. I'm gonna throw up. But I say, “What's good for you?”

I hear the faint punching of Palm Pilot keys. “Thursday? Meet me here after work, we'll play it by ear from there?”

This means not getting home until after Starr's in bed. Everything inside me whines
You can't do this.

Everything except the single brain cell that says—out loud— “Sounds good.”