A Slender Thread

Alex passed through the automatic sliding doors into the lobby of the Rollinsford Retirement Community. An artificial white Christmas tree covered in pink and purple dangling balls stood on the center table, where a huge bouquet of silk flowers was usually placed. His mother would have hated the fake tree with its false sense of cheer. Edith George loved real things, and as long as she had lived in their family home in Newfields, she had decorated an enormous fir tree each Christmas.

The Rollinsford Retirement Community, nestled in the valley at the foot of Fulham Hill, was once the site of a local ski resort, with a T-bar and a rope tow, but the enterprise had folded in the early seventies. Alex and his older brother, Daniel, had skied there when they were boys. With the aging population and a string of warm winters, ski areas in New England had been suffering. Only the larger resorts with snow-making equipment managed to survive. Alex had been asked to take on one of those struggling businesses a few years ago to help it reorganize, but the family that owned the company lost heart and declared bankruptcy before he could begin the project.

Built twenty or so years ago, Rollinsford was thriving, and the owners were adding another string of cottages for independent living. Alex’s mother, now eighty-one, lived in the Maple Tree wing, which was set aside for patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Edith had moved to one of the regular apartments at Rollinsford after her husband died, but once she reached her late seventies she declined quickly. In the beginning she forgot appointments, and either went to dinner at the wrong time or missed it entirely. Once, she left a pot of soup on the stove and wandered outside to the community garden plot looking for some fresh herbs to add. Two hours later black smoke poured into the hallway while she dozed on a bench near the garden in the September sun.

“Mr. George, good to see you,” Donna Peters said. She had worked at Rollinsford for as long as Edith had been there. While she was not a nurse, she wore a white hospital-style jacket over what appeared to be a pink jogging suit. Alex doubted that Donna, with her reading glasses on a jeweled string around her neck, ever did much jogging, but her kindness as she greeted all the regular visitors by name made him feel grateful to her and the others who worked here, for their steadfast goodwill. It had to be depressing to be among people all day long who were in the last stages of their lives, and most of them in a pretty miserable state.

He nodded, not bothering to explain that Lacey had made her usual recipe with sweetened cranberries for the holidays. Lacey came to see his mother whenever Alex traveled, and she often brought banana bread or her celebrated cookies, feeling that it was important to keep up the morale of the staff. Alex hoped these periodic gifts of baked goods made them all especially attentive to his mother.

A small bulletin board with photographs was placed outside each resident’s room as a reminder that the person who lived here had once had a regular life, had been able to recognize friends and family, and had functioned fully in the world beyond the Maple Tree wing.

The largest photograph on Edith’s bulletin board was of her and her husband, Spencer, on their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Lacey had hosted a dinner in their honor at the house in New Castle. Alex’s dad, trim and erect in a dark suit, his gray hair still thick, had a determined expression, as if some part of his mind was at work fighting the cancer that would kill him the following year. Edith wore a navy wool dress and pearls.

Beside that picture was one of Alex’s older brother, Daniel, and his Japanese wife, Noriko. They had not come to the party. Alex frowned, unable to shake a lingering annoyance. Daniel had been in the midst of completing his doctoral degree in bioengineering at the University of Washington when their dad was having trouble with the family company. If Alex hadn’t gone to business school and stepped in to pick up the pieces, the company would have gone to ruin, leaving their mother with nothing. Yet his parents had always bragged about Daniel, the brilliant scientist who had the impressive degree and wrote books in his field. Daniel and Noriko rarely came east anymore. It amazed Alex how Daniel had slowly slipped out of his life, almost the way his mother had slipped away, her mind gone from her physical body. Now, in light of Lacey’s problems, Alex hardly cared, and rarely thought of his brother.

There was also a photo of Toni and Wink on the dock at Bow Lake, when they were still little enough not to mind wearing matching red tank suits, and a picture of Lacey standing in her garden. Alex bent to look closer and swallowed. The photograph of Lacey must have been taken recently, as the newly planted peach tree in the picture looked much as it did now. Lacey had promised to bring Edith peaches once the tree had matured. Was something eating away at Lacey’s brain even when she made the promise?

Alex tapped on the door. “Hey, Mom,” he said, pushing it open. His mother sat in her wheelchair next to the window overlooking the woods. At this time of year it was a depressing view. Alex squatted on the floor in front of her. “It’s me, Mom, Alex.” Edith stared out the window as if he weren’t there. “How about a little ride? I’ll take you to the sunroom. Maybe we’ll see that woodpecker again.”

He stood and went behind her chair, releasing the brake and pushing her toward the hallway while keeping up his pointless banter. The woman seated in the wheelchair was his mother and yet she was not his mother. His mother had always worn her hair up on her head in what she had called a French twist. The staff had explained to him that it was easier for them to keep his mother’s hair short. Lacey had suggested the permanents to give her some curls. His mother’s clothes had changed, too. She now wore elastic-waist pants and loose polyester tops that required no ironing. Ease of care seemed to dictate everything that went on at Rollinsford. The staff didn’t have time to wash woolen sweaters by hand or take tweed skirts to the dry cleaner.

More than anything, this woman he wheeled down the carpeted hall was not his mother because this face remained smooth and expressionless, unsmiling and vacant. Unlike his mother, who loved a good conversation and was adept at putting people at ease, this Edith George, the one who was now closed off from the world, never said a word.

“Oh, my, she’s so easy,” Donna Peters and others often said. “Our Mrs. George is no trouble at all.” The staff constantly reminded him that the disease was hardest on the family, that his mother was not suffering. And today, as usual, she appeared content.

Alex steered the chair to the large picture window that overlooked a terrace surrounded by fir trees. The outdoor furniture had been brought inside, but two bird feeders on tall poles were kept filled, and the husks of scattered seed indicated the popularity of this destination for the hungry birds that stayed north in the winter. Did birds ever lose their ability to sing? Were there birds that remained silent? Could birds live with other birds if they lost their normal call? Alex pulled himself away from the bleak, empty patio.

Alex continued his reminiscence. “Do you remember that Christmas? You accused us of not having an artistic bone in our bodies. We came home with this lopsided specimen that you insisted would be impossible to decorate. That’s when Daniel said we should ‘trim’ the tree, meaning prune it to make a good shape. Dad thought that was really funny. You refused that kind of trimming and made Dad put it outside the kitchen window. A tree for the birds, you said. We covered it with chains of popcorn. Lacey loves that story and she does that every year. One tree for the house, one for the birds. That’s thanks to you, Mom.”

A faint gong sounded in the hall. Lacey would be starting dinner and sipping tea while she chopped, stirred, and talked with the girls. Here, the residents ate at five. The nurses sounded the gong at four thirty to alert everyone to the coming meal, a pointless exercise in Alex’s mind, as there was no one in this part of Rollinsford who had even the remotest idea what the gong meant. Yet how did he know that? Just because they didn’t say anything didn’t mean they had no thoughts at all in their minds.

“I think the birds have already eaten, Mom. That bell means it’s time for you, too.” Edith opened her eyes and for just a second she looked around as if mystified as to where she was. She raised a hand, bony and white, her wedding ring loose below the knuckle, and waved once, as if to tell him where he should go. Her lips pursed in displeasure, then slackened. Her face resumed its blank expression.

Tonight when he left the building tears stung his eyes. He reached his car, fumbled with his keys and swiped at the moisture. For the next few minutes he sat behind the wheel, incapable of moving, thankful for the darkness as tears he could not stop coursed down his face. As sad as his mother’s condition was, she was an old woman. Lacey was too young to suffer. His body rocked with sobs. He moaned aloud and leaned back in his seat. There was no business plan for a tragedy. He had done his research—Lacey’s illness was a venture that could not be saved. For the first time the loss felt devastating, as if his heart was being torn from his chest.

At fifty, Lacey was all the more beautiful to him. The few wrinkles around her eyes gave proof of the years of laughter they had shared. And talk. The best part of his day was lying close to her in the dark, just before sleep. They might have made love, or not, but they always exchanged a few final words. Sometimes they talked about the girls, his work, hers, something she had read, family. Lacey’s voice made him feel like he was warming his hands near a fire or moving into a band of sunlight. He gravitated toward her, toward the soft curves of her body, toward the proximity of her voice. Once at Bow Lake, lying in bed in the early morning listening to the mourning doves, he was reminded of the sound of her words, a mellifluous tune softly entering the whorl of his ear.

Alex jerked his head against the headrest and thrust the key into the ignition. He turned it too far and the engine emitted a high-pitched squeal. Goddamn, he thought. Goddamn. So goddamn unfair. He turned the key more carefully the second time and put the car into gear.

Every December Margot went to the Metropolitan Museum to buy Lacey the annual spiral-bound desk calendar for Christmas. Each week of the year had two pages devoted to it, one page showing a reproduction of a painting from the museum’s collections and the facing page divided into seven blocked spaces, one for each day of the week. Lacey saved these museum diaries from year to year. She marked down all the events that made up her family life—the usual ordinary dates: dentist appointments, car services, school activities for her daughters, dinner parties, family trips, visits from friends, birthdays. She would often add sticky notes to the pages when she needed more space to record the abundance of events. Sometimes she included the weather as if keeping a log: first frost, first snow of the year, rain again. Or other happenings in nature: huge storm, the Thomases’ tree down, lilacs blooming, leaves need raking.

Margot was glad to give this book to her sister each year. In her early years in New York it was the only present she could afford. This morning, while making the purchase, she was haunted by the thought that Lacey’s ordinary jottings would not go on forever. How many more years would she be able to live her normal life? It had been three weeks since Thanksgiving. She and Lacey had exchanged phone calls, but fewer than usual. Lacey had sounded almost normal, but she never spoke in long sentences. Then again, most conversations were like that.

One time when Margot had telephoned, Alex had picked up. He had sounded impatient, distant, almost rude, saying that he would have Lacey call her back. This behavior was unlike him, yet Margot knew that he must worry about Lacey even more than she did. He was probably coping as best he could. Margot decided that she, like Alex, would have to go along day by day for now. Sometimes the knowledge of Lacey’s illness made her incredibly sad, and she found it difficult to concentrate on her work. Other days, she would be swept into the busyness of her life and forget about her sister completely.

On this annual trip to the museum Margot always went to see the Angel Tree. After leaving the gift shop she wound back behind the medieval collections with the darkly woven tapestries, the jeweled swords, the polished armor standing poised as if the men were still inside ready to fight, and the supine bodies of knights on their cold stone sarcophagi. Eventually, she came upon the large fir tree decorated with hundreds and hundreds of crèche scenes. Carved in Italy, the exquisitely made figures were a powerful reminder of what the Christmas story was all about.

Margot’s father had taken her and Lacey to see this tree once when they were little girls. Their mother was away that year—at a special hospital, their dad explained, where Mommy could rest until she was feeling better. No one said the word “alcoholic” back then, at least not to young girls. Margot was six years old, Lacey ten. Surely Lacey must have known what was going on. The trip to New York was a special treat and probably planned so they would not have to endure a Christmas at home without their mother. They went to see the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall and visited the Guggenheim Museum. Margot had started to run down the circular ramp and had to be reminded to be a big girl like Lacey. Their father had seemed lively, almost happy, during those few days, so unlike the silent man he was at home in Concord.

Margot stepped closer and studied the face of an angel hanging from a branch. It was a pleasure to have the tree all to herself for a few moments. The museum was quiet. Her father used to tell Margot and Lacey to keep quiet when their mother was having a “hard day.” A hard day meant a day when she stayed in her room, the shades drawn, a cool compress on her head.

Margot’s father took the train from Concord into Boston each day to his job at an insurance company. They lived in a modest clapboard house near the center of town. Grandmother Winkler, her father’s mother, lived in a big old Colonial house five miles away on what had once been a farm. Granny Winkler was a tall, freckled woman who dressed in wraparound skirts and cardigan sweaters, and “ruled the roost,” Margot and Lacey’s mother used to say. Because of their mother’s health, the girls often spent afternoons with their grandmother after school.

Helen Lacey, their mother, for whom Lacey was named, came from Charleston, South Carolina. Their father had met her in Virginia when they were both in college. While the other mothers in Concord volunteered in the historic museums, ran bake sales, carved pumpkins with their children, made costumes for school plays, and carpooled to sporting events, Margot and Lacey’s mother rarely did anything, especially not on her bad days. When she was feeling well, she played the grand piano that took up most of the living room. Even now, the sound of piano music carried Margot back to the hours she spent lying on the floor by the piano listening to her mother play. Sadly, those memories of her mother before her “illness” became worse were few. Her other favorite memory was of her mother on the small glassed-in porch in the back of their house watering the geraniums that she tried to keep going through the winter. Margot could still picture her mother in the faded blue bathrobe that she called her wrapper, her lovely honey-colored hair hanging in a braid down her back. “You’re my dearest one, Miss Maggie Mouse,” she’d say, and her soft hand would sweep across Margot’s forehead. Her mother always spoke slowly, her words like clouds floating across the sky on a summer afternoon.

When Lacey was in high school, their grandmother no longer picked the girls up from school. They were old enough now to manage at home, and Lacey wanted to be closer to activities in town: her volunteer job at the hospital, the school yearbook committee, painting sets for the school plays. While Lacey went to friends’ houses or remained after school for her special clubs, Margot would stay in her room, knowing that above all she must keep quiet. There were fewer and fewer afternoons for her near the piano.

Gradually, more people found their way to this part of the museum. When Margot went back outside, it seemed as if all of New York and most of the people from the suburbs had spilled out onto the city streets. The sidewalks were teeming. She headed east and then north to Eighty-ninth Street. Since she had moved in with Oliver five years earlier, she rarely came over to the East Side and she decided to take the opportunity to check on her old apartment. She didn’t have to be at work yet. Mario, her assistant, was covering at the gallery this morning and Carl had told Margot she could have the morning off.

A few minutes later she stepped into the vestibule of her old building and rummaged for her keys. She took the elevator upstairs and entered the apartment. A thick layer of dust covered everything. The day was overcast, but the light in the living room was good. Margot remembered Teddy telling her this space would be a great place for her to paint. Why was she thinking of him again now?

Margot tossed her coat on a chair and went to the far end of the living room, where French doors led to the tiny terrace. She looked out at the empty flowerpots and beyond at the rooftops punctuated with the ubiquitous water towers that marked the city skyline. Besides the living room there was one tiny bedroom, just big enough for a double bed and a chest of drawers, and next to it, a bathroom with a claw-footed tub. The kitchen was an alcove off the living room.

Oliver had urged Margot to sell this place, saying it didn’t make sense to keep an apartment she didn’t live in. She could afford the monthly maintenance fees by renting it out now and again. Oliver told her that the stock market would make a better investment, and yet she had put off selling it, partly to honor her grandmother’s wishes and partly to have a refuge. She would never have been able to buy this apartment in the current market. More than just an investment, it reassured her to have her own place.

Margot turned her back to the terrace. Teddy had accused her of being messy. Once he was gone, she took great pleasure in surrounding herself with the objects she loved. She began going to the flea markets in the Village and picking up colorful bits and pieces that made her happy: the sage green pottery vase with the crack that faced the wall, the marble bust of a young girl, tortoiseshell boxes, a collection of walking sticks, hatboxes from department stores long out of business. And books—art books, books on botany because of their illustrations, and antique children’s books. Some of these had come from Grandmother Winkler’s library. Her shelves here were filled to overflowing.

That first year on her own after Teddy had been a struggle. She gave up her job at the advertising agency where she had worked and took a job as a receptionist in a gallery in Chelsea, glad to be in a different part of town from Teddy. That job paid poorly, and after another nonchallenging position, she met Carl Van Engen at a party given by her former painting teacher. Carl needed an assistant in his art gallery. He quickly saw that Margot was capable and eager to learn. To her delight, Carl became a mentor as well as a boss. She slowly became more confident, and she enjoyed getting involved in the art world, though she had never gone back to her own painting.

Margot remembered her failure to draw the bittersweet on the dresser at Lacey’s house. She pulled one of her old sketchbooks off the shelf and leafed through until she reached a blank page. Sitting in the club chair by the window with the light at her back, she began to draw the other side of the room: the Victorian love seat, the maple end table, the lamp, its flowered shade, the footstool piled high with books that didn’t fit on the shelves. She pretended that the apartment belonged to somebody else and tried to see this interior as an unknown landscape. Her hand was steadier today.

Later, when Margot looked up from her drawing, she found that the morning had slipped away. The zone. She had reached that magic state when the minutes and hours blurred. She looked down at the paper. Not bad, but not interesting either. Certainly nothing she could show Oliver. To him this would be like the scratching of a kindergartener. And yet he was always encouraging her to paint.

Teddy had liked the idea of Margot being an artist. He used to introduce her by saying, “My wife’s an artist,” never “Margot’s an assistant to a nameless vice president in marketing.” Yet he was never supportive of her work at home. Once she had been painting on a Sunday afternoon and she had left her tubes of paint out on the table. He had just gotten home from a movie and had lashed out at her: “Do you have to leave your crap out everywhere?”

Margot stood abruptly and tossed her pad on the floor. Why was she thinking again about Teddy? In the bright noon light the dusty apartment looked worse. She really needed to clean it and think about finding another renter. Maybe she should sell it, like Oliver suggested. He was right about so many things. No time to think about that now. She needed to get to work. She leaned over to retrieve the pad, and carried it to the table near the window. On second glance her drawing wasn’t that bad. The perspective was accurate, the details convincing. Lacey’s recent urging to resume painting sounded in her ears. Maybe she should come back and try again.

Hugh had asked Alex another question about Lacey’s diagnosis. They were having lunch together at the Port City Brew Pub the Friday before Christmas. Hugh was on winter break and he had come over to Portsmouth to shop for a present for Kate. When he arrived at the restaurant he told Alex about his triumphant find: a blue pottery vase from the same gallery where Lacey had sometimes shown her work. Once they were seated and Alex had told Hugh about Lacey, Hugh’s body almost visibly deflated.

“No. It surprised me when she didn’t want to run in the Turkey Trot, but Kate told me Lacey was just busy, with the holidays coming up and trying to make weavings for the auction. She did say she thought Lacey seemed awfully stressed about college. Kind of crazy when your kids are great candidates for any school.”

Alex wasn’t inclined to drink another beer. He planned to spend the rest of the afternoon in his office, catching up. He’d gone to Chicago for a few days to meet with a possible new client and had returned yesterday to a backlog of e-mails and phone messages. Still, with these crowds, lunch might be a while. He ordered a second beer.

It was a relief to talk to Hugh. He had to unload to someone. Lacey had always been the one he turned to, the person he could tell anything to. For the first time he couldn’t automatically tell her what was on his mind. What if he upset her more? Could he share his fear without making hers worse? Would talking about her illness exacerbate her symptoms? He felt on tenterhooks every waking moment. Still, how could Hugh truly understand the circumstances they were in?

“It’s a fertilizer business. Called Wingate. The usual problems with a family company—the patriarch who’s too old, trying to micromanage, and in this case the idiot cousins they can’t fire. Some environmental issues, too. I’m going to do a proposal. It’s similar to a situation I dealt with in Louisville.”

Selfishly, Alex wanted the job in Chicago. He longed to put his mind and all his energy into a new project. Work, the pull of it, could distance him from this emotional quagmire. He thought guiltily of a hotel room, where at least some of the time he could escape, like he did on his bike. He hated himself for even thinking that way.

The waiter appeared with their lunch. Hugh’s Reuben steamed on the chunky white china plate, cheese oozing out the sides. Alex squeezed a hearty dollop of ketchup onto his hamburger. The cheese on top remained congealed in an orange blob, not having been under the broiler long enough. When he bit into the burger, he felt the juices dripping down his chin. He grabbed his napkin. “So much for well done,” he said.

A memory of Margot early that morning in the kitchen at Thanksgiving shot into Alex’s mind. For one quick moment she had been so eerily like Lacey; she had caught him off guard. Yet Margot wasn’t anything like Lacey. He thought of the many times they had spent together at Bow Lake. He’d thought he knew everything about her then. And then there had been that one summer. He shook his head. That was ancient history. What did he know now? He shifted in his chair. The crowded restaurant had become too warm, steaming over the windows facing the street. The man behind him got up, knocking into Alex’s chair.