By Miriam Mandel Levi

The thread dangles from the cuff of Will’s dress shirt, swinging as he speaks, dipping now and again into the hot sauce on the rim of his plate.

Sharon would’ve caught it. She’d have snipped it with a pair of sewing scissors before they left the house. But Sharon is dead: pancreatic cancer, a year now.

If there’d been a child at home old enough to notice, they’d have pointed it out. It was the kind of oversight that would embarrass a teenager, or rouse pity in a young adult. But Will’s daughter is dead too: suicide, three years ago. And his son lives too far away to notice that his father is unravelling.

From time to time, I invite Will to lunch in my home. When I greet him at the door, he’s looking at his feet. He shuffles over to the table where he begins expounding on topics ranging from politics to history to archeology. Today he goes on about some scandal—an Egyptian plan to resurface one of the Giza pyramids with granite cladding. He speaks in a confident voice with emphatic hand motions. All the while, the thread sways.

Whenever I see a loose thread, a frayed pant hem, unzipped trousers, I imagine that the wearers are lonely. There’s no one in their lives to point out the lapse and tend to it. Or, there is someone, but that someone is not paying attention. Love is attention; I read that somewhere.

A stray thread, a belt hole missed, an errant crumb on a cheek, lipstick smeared on front teeth. In so many ways, our frailty betrays us; it’s impossible to stay on top of them all. I wonder if I’d see people unravelling everywhere if I weren’t, myself, coming undone.

I also wonder whether the wearers are trying and coming up short, or whether they’ve given up. I see myself in the trying group, for the time being. I say that because it’s getting harder. The losses multiply with age. Sharon was my writing partner, a rare person to whom I could reveal myself in rough-draft form. 

Will’s feet are turned out, his legs spread in a wide vee, his left arm stretched across the back of the empty chair next to him, as if to say, I’ve got this. The thread, meantime, has coiled into a relaxed pile alongside his right wrist, which rests on the table.

The conversation veers again to archeology. Will says that the graves of Rachel the Matriarch, the biblical Joseph, and King David are not where they’re commonly believed to be. Indeed, it’s a disgrace that people in hordes make pilgrimages to pour out their prayers at these phony sites. 

I listen respectfully and nod. What does it matter where people pour out their prayers? I think. We’re all fake granite and phony sites. After Will’s tirade, the thread is swinging like a helicopter rescue rope over choppy water. But I know he’s saving no one; he’s the guy in the water.

I consider pointing out the thread to Will. There’d be a moment of mutual embarrassment; then, he’d snap it off or tuck it into his sleeve. But I don’t. What if the thread is the only thing holding him together? Instead, I tell myself there’s an honesty to the thread that counts for something. Really, though, I worry that I take some small satisfaction in the edge it gives me.

When we finish lunch, Will drags his feet across the living room floor as if he’s skating. Now that he’s upright, the thread hangs past his knees. It strikes me again as a rescue rope but, this time, as one I didn’t extend. 

After he leaves, I go upstairs and stand in front of a full-length mirror, where I discover a patch of hair flipped out, and something white and partially dissolved between my front teeth. And there I am in the water with Will, without a thread to save me.