Hanging by a Thread (8 page)

“So start small,” she'd whisper in the North Carolina accent nearly twenty years in Queens hadn't been able to budge, her smile strained against skin so fragile-looking I was half afraid it would tear.

“I got an A on my math test,” I'd say. Or, “Nancy DiMunzio wasn't at school today.” Or, “My zit's all gone.” Or, de
pending on whether or not this was one of her good days, “Jennifer and I actually got through breakfast without biting each other's heads off.”

If she had the energy, she'd chuckle, then add something of her own to the list. That she'd had me was always part of it, a thought that tightens my throat even fifteen years later. In any case, we'd go back and forth, and before I knew it I'd filled a whole loose-leaf page.

So tonight, I shut my eyes, shutting out the whispers of discontent, and start small.
I've got a seat on the train,
I think.

The man next to me doesn't smell like a distillery.

My daughter makes me laugh.

I'm not having my period.

I open my eyes and fish a tiny sketchbook out of my purse, flipping through a few ideas I had for altering some of my grandmother's dresses. I jot down what I've already listed, then add to it. By the time I get home, I've got more than fifty items. Crazy.

Leo's in the kitchen, basting a chicken. The house smells like Heaven. I mentally add this to my list.

“Where's Starr?”

“Gomezes'. You got a phone call.”

My stomach jumps, which doesn't stop me from trying to pinch off a piece of chicken skin. “Who from?”

“Heather Abruzzo, I wrote it down. Didn't you used to hang out with some girl named Abruzzo?”

“Heather's older sister. Joanne.”

“Joanne, now I remember. Cut that out!” He smacks at my hand, but the prize is already mine. “It's not done yet.”

“What'd she want?” I say around the sizzling hot, succulent piece of garlic-and-pepper seasoned chicken skin.

“Something about her wedding dress. I think maybe she wants you to make it?”

Uh-boy.

A
week later, my living room is wall-to-wall big hair and Queensspeak. It seems that not only does Heather want me to do
her
dress, she wants me to come up with something that will work for twelve—at last count—bridesmaids, ranging in size from a 4 Petite to a Woman's 24.

I tried to talk her out of it, I really did. Not that (now that I'm used to the idea) I'd mind making Heather's dress—with her curvy figure and those deep blue eyes and all that dark hair, she's going to be a knockout in white. But a dozen bridesmaids? I think not. Besides, I pointed out, by the time she buys the fabric and pays me for my time—her sister and I weren't
that
close, for pity's sake—she'd do just as well, if not better, buying from Kleinfeld's.

“Right. Like I'm gonna find dresses that'll work for everybody at Kleinfeld's,” she said over the phone when I called back. “And everybody still talks about that dress you made for
Tina, and that was five years ago. God, that was one fucking
gorgeous
wedding gown.”

Hard to resist a compliment of that magnitude. Of course, she would bring up Tina, who remains amazingly elusive for somebody I used to talk to no less than three times a day.

Anyway, not wanting to appear rude—and needing time for the head-swelling to subside from her praise—I told Heather we'd talk about it. The plan was, since I've yet to meet a newly engaged woman who doesn't go “just looking” for bridal gowns within a week of getting the ring, that she'd find the gown of her dreams before she and I got together, and my involvement would become a nonissue.

Next thing I know, she shows up at my house armed with twenty bridal magazines, her sister Joanne (who's been married for four years and has three kids), her mother Sheila (who looks like an older, drier version of her daughters), her best friend Tiffany (there's one in every bunch) and the worst case of wedding lust I have ever seen. And I've seen some pretty bad cases over the years, believe me.

So. Here we
all
are, in my teensy living room. It's like Fran Drescher night in Vegas. The clashing cheap perfumes alone are enough to knock me over, let alone the noise of—let me count—sixteen women all yakking at once. Unfortunately, Heather's dress hasn't yet “found” her, as she puts it. So she's enlisted the help of the entire wedding party. Which, by the time she included her sister, her sisters-in-law-to-be, three cousins she couldn't get out of including and five of her closest friends, swelled to the monstrous proportions you see here. Except for Tina, who's supposed to be here but isn't.

The crowd is beginning to make hungry noises; grateful for the excuse to escape for a few minutes, I hustle out to the kitchen where Leo and Starr are hiding out, playing checkers.

“Quick. I need mass quantities of food, here.”

“I just bought chips and cookies,” Leo says, not bothering to look up from the board. “In the cupboard.”

I grab bowls and plates, rip open bags and dump out treats, stealing a Chips Ahoy for myself. Also not looking up, Starr says, “What're they gonna drink?”

Good question. I open the fridge to half a bottle of probably flat root beer, a carton of Tropicana, a jug of ice water and a gallon of two-percent milk.

“I could go to the store, pick up a few things,” Leo says.

“Two twelve-packs of Diet Coke,” I say without missing a beat. “From the refrigerator case so they're already cold.”

From the coatrack by the back door, my grandfather grabs his parka, hands Starr her puffy coat. “You know,” he says as he opens the door, letting in a blast of frigid air, “that could be you one day, planning
your
wedding in our living room.”

I find this a highly unlikely possibility, but this is not the time for a reality check. So all I say is, “Believe me, if I ever even
think
of having twelve bridesmaids, you have permission to shoot me.”

I cart bowls of goodies back out, barely having time to set them on the coffee table and jump out of the way before the pack attacks. I do notice, however, that Heather's begun to slip into the Fried Bride stage. Her lipstick's gone, her hair is sagging and she's got that desperate, panicked look in her eyes. “This one's not bad,” she says for at least the hundredth time. And for the hundredth time, she is pelted by a barrage of objections.

“Oh, no, that's way too plain, honey—”

“It'll squash your tits—”

“You can't be serious. Long sleeves in June?”

“All those bows? What? You wanna look like you're six?”

“Don't take this the wrong way, baby, but that's made for somebody with a much smaller ass.”

A word of advice—choosing a wedding dress by committee is a seriously bad idea.

She looks up at me, tears glittering in her eyes.

“Why don't you give it a rest for a moment?” I say.

“Yeah,” Joanne says, brushing cookie crumbs off her front. “Maybe we should talk about the bridesmaids' dresses?”

Panic streaks across Heather's face. “We can't do that! Tina's not here!”

Oh, yeah, like this poor woman needs one more opinion. “Heather?” I sit down beside her, put my arm around her shoulder and hand her a cookie. “You can do this, honey.” She takes the cookie and nibbles on it, but her brow is a mass of wrinkles. “Now, do you—
you,
” I repeat, “have any ideas?”

“Well…not really. Except I know I want something the girls can wear again.”

Naturally, that brings a chorus of “Yeah, that's right,” along with the sporadic fire of bridesmaid-dresses-from-hell stories. However, unless she's planning on putting the girls in halter tops and suede miniskirts, ain't gonna happen. Like “Just relax, this won't hurt a bit,” the concept of recyclable bridesmaids' dresses is a myth.

“That's a great idea,” I say, because, really, who wants to know it's gonna hurt, right? “What colors do you have in mind?”

“Colors?”

Oh, boy.

A sane, solvent person would gently extricate herself right now. Since I am neither—and since Sheila Abruzzo has already given me a hefty check up front—I smile and start tossing out suggestions. By the time Leo gets back with the Diet Cokes—at which point we get a rerun of the swarming locust action—we've narrowed the choices down to yellow, magenta, lavender, dark green, mint-green, pearl-gray, or some shade of blue.

“You know what?” I heft a
Modern Bride
off the teetering stack at her feet and lay it on her lap. “Maybe once you find your dress, the color scheme will come to you….”

My attention is snagged by Leo's
psst
-ing me from the kitchen. I excuse myself, threading my way through the sea of lush Mediterranean womanhood.

“What?” I say when I get there.

“It's Tina.”

“That's weird, I didn't even hear the phone ring—”

“Not on the phone. Here. In the kitchen.”

She's sitting at the table, the green tinge to her skin clashing horribly with her mustard-colored sweater, letting Starr try on her necklace. Tina's always been really sweet to my daughter, but her affection has always seemed…cautious, somehow. As if she's afraid to let loose.

“C'mon, Twinkle,” Leo says, “Time to get jammies on.”

“Aw…”

“Now.”

With a huge sigh, Starr hands Tina back her necklace and troops off after her great-grandfather.

“God, she's getting so big,” Tina says. “Who's she look like?”

“Judith,” I say, referring to my father's mother. “Isn't it obvious?”

“Yeah, you're right, I don't know why I didn't notice it before.”

The conversation comes to a dead halt; I try kicking it back to life by saying, “Uh…Tina? Aren't you supposed to be in
there?
”

“Would you be, if you had a choice?”

Point taken. I sit down beside her. “So how come you didn't return my calls?”

“Sorry. I just wasn't feeling real sociable, that's all.”

I take her hand and say gently, “Luke's so happy about the baby.”

Her lips stretch into a thin smile. “I know. But please, El, not a word to anybody else. In case, you know, something happens.”

“Nothing's going to happen, honey.”

She nods, not looking at me. Then, on a sigh, she glances toward the door. “So is it a total zoo in there?”

“Total. And you've been missed.”

I'm not sure she's heard me, her attention focused on the sporadic explosions of laughter from my living room. Suddenly, her gaze meets mine.

“I'd forgotten, how crazy and fun it all was. How happy I was. How I thought…” Tina shakes her head, removes her hand from mine. “Pete and Heather are so good together, you know?”

“So are you and Luke,” I say through a thick throat. “And you damn well know that—”

The kitchen chair nearly topples over, she gets up so fast. “I'm sorry, I thought maybe, once I got here, I'd feel better, I'd be able to do this. But…I don't know, maybe it's hormones or something.” She's slipped her coat back on, the same faux leopard job she had on the other night. “I'll call you, I promise,” she says, then vanishes out the back door.

The woman is going to drive me nuts.

But then, I think as I rejoin the madness in my living room, I apparently don't have far to go. Elissa, Heather's size 24 cousin, corners me with a plea to steer Heather away from choosing a sleeveless attendant's dress; I say I'll do what I can, only to find myself nose-to-chest with the only redhead in the bunch besides me, some friend of Heather's I only know by sight, making an impassioned case against magenta.

And suddenly, don't ask me why, I'm up for the challenge. Of course, four months from now may be a totally different story, but at the moment, I actually think this might be kind of fun. If nothing else, I'll be too busy to worry about things I can't control.

Dressing these chicks for the biggest day in Heather Abruzzo's life—now
that,
I can control.

Across the room, Heather lets out a shriek, clamping her
hand to her chest like she's just been shot. “Ohmigod! Ohmigod! I found it!”

After I elbow my way back over, kohl-smudged eyes lift to mine, shimmering with a mixture of hope and dread. Hands shaking, she holds out the picture, as if offering up her first-born. Sixteen sets of eyes fasten on my face as I take the open magazine from her. Sixteen sets of bosoms collectively hitch with bated breath.

The girl has chosen well, I must say. We're talking enough tulle to outfit an entire “Swan Lake” corps de ballet, but the beading is minimal, there's no lace, and—with a few adaptations to camouflage the, shall we say, weaker aspects of Heather's figure—the pattern's a piece of cake.

“I can do this,” I say at last, and a roar of joy goes up from the crowd.

Power's a heady thing, you know?

 

I may have to resort to a tranquilizer dart to get my daughter to sleep tonight. Since I put her to bed an hour ago, she's been back up three times. Like one of those trick birthday candles you can't blow out. By this time I'm in bed myself, although I never have been able to go to sleep as long as she's awake. Unfortunately, the little monkey knows this.

Floorboards creak behind me. “Mama?”

I keep my eyes shut, breathing so deeply I nearly hyperventilate.

“Ma-
ma!
” Starr climbs up onto the bed and flings herself over my shoulder, her hair tickling my face. “I
know
you're awake!” I grunt when she scrambles over me, bony little elbows and knees landing where they will as she turns on the bedside lamp. Great. Now I'm bruised
and
blinded.

“Honest to God, Starr!” I shield my eyes, blinking in the glare. “Did you get into the Diet Cokes?”

She vigorously shakes her head. “I just can't sleep. Guess I'm overwrought.”

Her word of the week, ever since she heard somebody say it on some TV show. Last week's was
evocative.
I kid you not. Can you imagine what she'd be like if I'd started shoving flashcards in her face when she was six weeks old?

“C'n I look at this?”

I yelp as a fifty-pound something whaps me in the arm. “What?” I peer at the weapon, which turns out to be an abandoned
Martha Stewart Weddings.
Starr knows she doesn't have carte blanche to look at everything that comes into the house, not since the day she walked in with one of my Nora Roberts books and asked, “Mama, what's
he cupped her
mean?”

That freethinking, I'm not.

“Yes, that's fine,” I say, entertaining a sanguine hope that she'll haul her find back to her room. Instead, I nearly bite my tongue when she yanks my extra pillow out from underneath my head and wads it up against the headboard.

“Uh, Starr? You're doing this in here because…?”

“'Cause there's no monster in here.” Damn. I have
really
got to get rid of that thing. She pushes her glasses farther up onto the bridge of her tiny nose. “Oh, this is a pretty dress.”

This from the kid who screamed bloody murder when I tried to get her to wear a dress to somebody's wedding last year. I squint at the picture, giving in to the inevitable. Never again will I take for granted the luxury of going to sleep when I'm tired. “Yes, it is,” I say on a yawn.

She skootches closer to me, smelling like watermelon shampoo. “It looks like fun, getting married.”

“It can be, I suppose.”

“Will I get married when I grow up?”

“Maybe. That's not something anybody can predict.”

After a minute or so critiquing a spread on wedding cakes
that cost more than my first year of college, she says, “Why's Tina so sad?”