Hanging by a Thread. Karen Templeton

never know,” Ginger says with a shrug. “And when you’re just starting out on your own, believe me, you give business cards to everybody.”

      I glance at the spiffy logo on the card as we all thread through the door and down the steps. GPW Designs, it says, with an address in Brooklyn.

      “What’s the W for?” We hang a right and head toward Sixth Avenue; Ginger laughs.

      “Wojowodski. My husband’s name.” Hanging on to one kid with each hand, she tosses me a grin. “What can I say, I’ve got bad name karma.”

      “Is he worth it?”

      “Most days, yeah.”

      I get that funny feeling in the pit of my stomach again, decide to change the subject. “So—you’re in business for yourself?…Oh, here, let me do that,” I offer when I realize Ginger’s going to try to hail a taxi while hanging on to her briefcase and two wiggly little girls.

      “Thanks.” She moves them all back nearer the curb as I step out into the street. “I just hung out my shingle a few months ago.”

      “How do you like it?” I say over my shoulder as cab after cab whizzes by. “Being on your own?”

      Her silence makes me turn. She seems to be considering how to answer my question, as a sudden breeze whips her curls into a froth around her face.

      “It’s scary as all get-out,” she says at last. “Knowing I could lose my shirt. That I now have to pay for my own health insurance. It’s a real shock after working for big firms. Taking the safe road. Oh, God…bless you,” she says as a taxi pulls up in front of me and she herds her charges toward it. After she gets them in, she turns to me, our gazes level since I’m now standing on the curb. Her brown eyes are huge and unnervingly imploring, as if she’s been sent to warn me of something. And I can tell she’s as perplexed about why she’s answering my question as I am about why I asked it to begin with.

      “But you know what?” she says. “I’ve never been happier. And I knew the longer I waited, the harder it would be to take the plunge.”

      “Mom-mee!” the blonde calls out. “I’m cold!”

      With a smile and a “Thanks again,” she gets in, slams shut the door, and they go shooting off up Sixth Avenue.

      Huh.

      I turn south to walk the few blocks to Washington Square and the subway, yanking my cell from my purse. I call home, tell Leo I’ll be there in about forty-five minutes, then punch in Tina’s number. Of course, I get her machine, since she works until six, at a lumber supplier in Long Island City. I toss the phone back into my purse and find my mind wandering, back to that dress. The one with the dropped waist, in the showroom. How to change it to make it work for, I don’t know, somebody like me.

      With the exception of my sister, the women in my family, on both sides, tend to be short and bosomy. My hunch is that Starr will follow in this genetic tradition, even though she’s got spaghetti strand appendages now. So did I at her age. Imagine my shock when I awoke one morning to find these bizarre protuberances jutting out from my chest.

      At twelve, I was already a D-cup. They should make it a rule, when you get breasts that early, that you have to put them away for later. Like the pearl necklace my great-grandmother gave me for my sixth birthday that I wasn’t allowed to wear until I was deemed mature enough to handle the responsibility.

      I’m okay with them now, though. My breasts, I mean. The necklace, sad to say, vanished in the back seat crevice of Donny Volcek’s father’s Taurus on prom night. The good news, though, is that a Taurus’s interior is definitely roomier than it appears from the outside.

      As I was saying. I came to terms with my short, bosomy self some time ago. That’s not to say I don’t have body issues from time to time. Like whenever I go bra shopping. Or try to find a pair of jeans that even remotely go where my curves do. You know what I’m talking about, right?

      Men don’t have these problems. All a guy has to do is yank on a T-shirt or a sweatshirt or something and he’s done. No wires to pinch, no straps to slip, no overflow ooching over the sides or between the zipper that refuses to close unless you lie flat on your back and give up breathing. Okay, so men have the tie thing to deal with, but please. How many men wear ties these days? At least on a full-time basis. When you’re a D-cup, you damn sight wear a bra every single day or by the time you’re sixty you have to kick your ta-tas out of your way when you walk. This is not something a man has to face.

      Not too often, anyway.

      I fall in with the herd resolutely filing down the stairs to the subway entrance, wishing I had something to anesthetize me for the long subway ride.

      Wishing that adorable little apartment were mine.

      What is it with me tonight? First my reaction to Ginger’s wedding ring, now the apartment. I am not—normally—a covetous person, wanting things that belong to someone else. Especially things I couldn’t afford in my wildest dreams.

      I swipe my Metrocard and meld into the pack on the platform, while way, way back in my brain, something blips, very faintly, very quickly. Hardly enough to register, really. But it was there, I can’t deny it, like not being able to deny that, yes, that was a rat skittering across your path:

      Resentment. That if I hadn’t had Starr, maybe things would be different.

      As I said, the feeling is fleeting, like the shudder from seeing that rat. But that it surfaces at all gnaws at me. Just like that rat.

      And now that I’ve beaten that metaphor to death…

      A gush of heavy, stale air and an increasingly loud series of mechanical groans and whines heralds the train’s arrival. Doors open, bodies get off, bodies get on, doors close. I find a seat, amazingly enough, settling in and forcing myself to think about all the things I have to be grateful for. One of my mother’s tricks, whenever either one of us was tempted to feel sorry for ourselves.

      We used it a lot, there at the end.

      But there were days when thoughts of losing her crowded my brain to the point where trying to find something positive about my life seemed as insurmountable as my being able to come up with a cure in time to save her.

      “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, depending 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