Free Hanging by a Thread by Karen Templeton Page A

of a responsibility I realize I do not want. “I’m not a marriage counselor, a shrink or a priest, and I’m tired of getting caught in the middle.”
    He gives me a hard look and says softly, “Then maybe you shouldn’t’ve put yourself there,” and walks out the door.
    What the hell…?
    My cell rings, faintly. It takes me five rings to locate it, still in my purse on the kitchen counter.
    â€œHi,” Tina says in a voice I haven’t heard her use since she was about six.
    â€œUh…hi?”
    I hear a whoosh of cigarette smoke. “Luke’s there, isn’t he?”
    â€œNot anymore. And no, I didn’t say anything.”
    â€œWhat? Oh…I didn’t think you would.” Surprise peers out from between her words, as though it never crossed her mind that I might. I can’t decide if I’m touched or ticked.
    â€œTeen—you two have got to hash this out. By yourselves.” I give her a second or two to absorb this. “And I think you know that.”
    When she next speaks, I can barely hear her. “God, Ellie…I’m so scared.”
    â€œI know you are, sweetie,” I say, as gently as I know how. “Which is why you have to talk to Luke. Trust him, okay? You know he loves you.”
    I do not like the silence that greets this observation. So I prod her for the answer I want. “Right?”
    â€œYeah,” she says at last. “I guess.”
    â€œTina?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œPromise me you won’t do anything until you’ve talked to him?”
    There’s another long pause, during which I can hear smoke being spewed.
    â€œPromise?” I prompt.
    â€œOkay, okay, fine.”
    â€œI mean, I know it’s your body and all that, but—”
    â€œJesus, I get it, already!” I expect her to hang up, but instead I hear, “Luke’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me, you know? The thought of letting him down…it makes me sick.”
    I don’t know what to say to this. Then she says:
    â€œYou really think I’d make an okay mother?”
    Like I know what kind of mother she’d make. But I inject a bright note into my voice and say, “Hey. If I can do this, anybody can—”
    â€œCrap, I hear Luke’s key in the door, I gotta go. I’ll call you tomorrow, ’kay?”
    I click off my phone and toss it back in my purse, thinking, man, I am so glad I’m not in her shoes right now.
    Especially since I’m not sure I’m doing such a hot job staying balanced in my own.
    Â 
    â€œSo what’s up with Luke and Tina?”
    Frances’s low, furtive voice ploughs into me when I emerge from her downstairs bathroom the following Sunday. Thank God I already peed. But I look Luke’s mother straight in the eye and say with remarkable aplomb, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
    Like that works. Knowing nobody will hear my screams for mercy over the din of Scardinares yakking away in the dining room—half the Italians left in Richmond Hill are in this house right now—Frances drags me into her home office and shuts the door, leaning against it for good measure. Underneath artfully tousled hair, bittersweet chocolate eyes bore into mine. A look I know is responsible for hundreds, if not thousands, of impassioned promises over the years to never do again whatever it was that provoked the look to begin with.
    â€œI know Tina,” she says with the exasperated affection of a woman who loves more than understands her daughter-in-law. And who, like everybody else, wanted nothing more than to see Tina finally get a fair shake, to really be happy. She’s hugging herself over a velour tunic free of any signs of having even been in a kitchen today. That would be because Jimmy Sr., not Frances, does all the major cooking. He says it relaxes him.Frankly, I think it was that or starve to death.