Ties That Bind. Marie Bostwick
“Just a car driving by. Listen, I don’t think I can finish the rest of my shift ….”
“Something you ate at lunch?”
“Sort of,” I replied. “Will you be all right without me?”
“Sure. I mean … if you’re sick, you’re sick. Do you think you’ll feel better if you just lie down for an hour? Maybe you could come in later.”
Evelyn is not just my boss; she’s also my friend. She doesn’t have a deceitful bone in her body, but something about the tone of her voice made me suspicious.
“Evelyn, you’re not planning a surprise party at the quilt shop, are you?”
I told her, I told all my friends, that I don’t want to celebrate this birthday. Why should I? There is nothing about being forty and still single that’s worth celebrating.
“No. We’re not planning a party at the shop. Take the afternoon. But you’ve got that meeting at church tonight, don’t forget. Abigail called to see if you’d pick her up.”
The meeting. I was so upset that it had completely slipped my mind.
I sighed. “Tell her I’ll pick her up around six fifteen.”
In the background, I could hear the jingle of the door bells as more customers entered the shop. I felt a twinge of guilt. I almost told her that I’d changed my mind and was coming in after all, but before I could, Evelyn said, “I’ve got to run. But feel better, okay? I know you’re not happy about this birthday, but whether you know it or not, you’ve got a lot to celebrate. So, happy birthday, Margot. And many more to come.”
“Thanks, Evelyn.”
2
Margot
I built a fire in the fireplace and stood watching the flames dance before settling myself on the sofa to work on my sister’s Christmas quilt. Quilting, I have found, is great when you want to think something through—or not think at all. Today, I was looking to do the latter. For a while, it worked.
I sat there for a good half an hour, hand-stitching the quilt binding, watching television and telling myself that it could be worse, that my life could be as messed up as the people on the reality show reruns—trapped in a house, or on an island, or in a French château with a bunch of people who you didn’t know that well but who, somehow, knew way too much about your personal weaknesses and weren’t afraid to talk about them.
When I picked up the phone and my parents started to sing “Happy Birthday” into the line, I remembered that being part of a family is pretty much the same thing.
“I’m fine. Really. Everything is fine.”
“Margot,” Dad said in his rumbling bass, “don’t use that tone with your mother.”
I forced myself to smile, hoping this would make me sound more cheerful than I felt. “I wasn’t using a tone, Daddy. I was answering Mom’s question. I’m fine.”
My mother sighed. “You’ve been so secretive lately, Margot.”
Dad let out an impatient snort. “It’s almost as bad as trying to talk to Mari.”
At the mention of my sister’s name, Mom, in a voice that was half-hopeful and half-afraid to hope, asked, “Is she still planning on coming for Christmas?”
“She’s looking forward to it.”
Looking forward to it was probably stretching the truth, but last time I talked to my sister she had asked for suggestions on what to get the folks for Christmas. That indicated a kind of anticipation on her part, didn’t it?
“She’ll probably come up with some last-minute excuse,” Dad grumbled.
In the background, I could hear a jingle of metal. When Dad is agitated, he fiddles with the change in his pockets. I had a mental image of him pacing from one side of the kitchen to the other, the phone cord tethering him to the wall like a dog on a leash. Dad is a man of action; long phone conversations make him antsy.
“Wonder what it’ll be this time? Her car broke down? Her boss won’t let her off work? Her therapist says the tension might upset Olivia? As if spending a day with us would scar our granddaughter for life. Remember when she pulled that one, honey?”
A sniffle and a ragged intake of breath came from the Buffalo end of the line.
“Oh, come on now, Lil. Don’t cry. Did you hear that? Margot, why do you bring these things up? You’re upsetting your mother.”
“I’m sorry.” I was too. I hadn’t brought it up, but I hate it when my mother cries.
“I just don’t know why you’re keeping things from us,” Mom said.
“I’m not keeping anything from you. But at my age, I don’t think I should be bothering you with all my little problems, that’s all.”
I heard a snuffly bleating noise, like a sheep with the croup, and pictured my mother on her big canopy bed with her shoes off, leaning back on two ruffled red paisley pillow shams, the way she does during long phone conversations, pulling a tissue out of the box with the white crocheted cover that sat on her nightstand, and dabbing her eyes.
“Since when have we ever considered you a bother? You’re our little girl.”
“And you always will be,” Dad said. “Don’t you ever forget that, Bunny.”
Bunny is my father’s pet name for me—short for Chubby Bunny. My pre-teen pudge disappeared twenty-five years ago when my body stretched like a piece of gum until I reached the man-repelling height of nearly six feet. I haven’t been a Chubby Bunny for a quarter century, but Dad never seemed to notice.
“It’s Arnie, isn’t it? Is he seeing someone else?”
Mom didn’t wait for me to answer her question, but she didn’t have to. Somehow she already knew. How is that possible? Is that just part of being a mother?
“Don’t you worry, Margot. Arnie Kinsella isn’t the only fish in the sea.”
“Maybe not. But all the ones I haul into my boat seem to be bottom feeders.”
“Stop that. You can’t give up,” Dad said with his usual bull moose optimism and then paused, as if reconsidering. “You still look pretty good … for your age.”
Ouch.
“You know what I think?” he asked in a brighter tone before answering his own question. “I think maybe your husband’s first wife hasn’t died yet.”
“Werner!” My mother gasped, but why? Was she really surprised?
“What?” Dad sounded genuinely perplexed. “At her age, a nice widower is probably her best shot at getting a husband. I’m just saying …”
“Hey, guys, it’s sweet of you to call, but I need to get ready to go.”
“Are you going out with friends? Are they throwing you a party?” Mom asked hopefully and I knew she was wondering if my friends had thought to invite any bachelors to the celebration.
“I’ve got a meeting.” Not for two hours, but they didn’t need to know that.
“On your birthday?” Dad scoffed. “Margot, they don’t pay you enough at that quilt shop to make you go to meetings after hours. I keep telling you to get a real job.”
Yes, he does. Every chance he gets.
I used to have a “real job” according to Dad’s definition. I worked in the marketing department of a big company in Manhattan, made a lot of money, had profit sharing, a 401(k), and health insurance, which I needed because I was forever going to the doctor with anemia, insomnia, heart palpitations—the full menu of stress-related ailments. After I moved