A Single Thread (Cobbled Court) (10 page)

W
hen I was nine years old, my family got our first color television set—a twenty-three-inch Motorola encased in a French Provincial wood cabinet. Never mind that the rest of our furniture was Early American, the French Provincial model was on sale, and we were thrilled to have that giant screen dominating our living room. The first program we watched on it was the Rose Parade, live from Pasadena.

When it was over, I nagged my poor mother until she drove me to Miss Yolanda’s School of Baton and enrolled me as a member of the American Sweethearts Twirling Team. For four years, Mother and Dad plunked down twelve dollars a month for twirling lessons and more for the star-spangled swimsuit and white go-go boots that were our uniforms for parades and competitions. I never won a trophy, and I never marched in the Rose Parade, but I did learn to smile.

Miss Yolanda was a stickler for smiling. No matter what happened, you had to keep smiling. If you dropped your baton—smile. If another girl dropped her baton and it hit you on the head—smile. If the Sweetheart’s parade placement was right behind the Happy Hooves Riding Club and you stepped in horse dung up to the top of your white go-go boots—smile.

“The instant you pick up that baton,” Miss Yolanda would say, addressing rows of Sweethearts with the gravity of a military commander giving a final briefing to troops headed into battle, “I want to see a smile on your face. Just like your fingers and your baton are two ends of a live wire, and the second they meet—zap! Your face lights up! Like flipping a switch. Don’t think. Just smile.”

I hadn’t thought about Miss Yolanda in years, but for some reason, upon waking from the fitful three hours of sleep that was all I’d been able to manage after my appointment at Dr. Thayer’s, her voice was loud and clear in my head.

“Smile!” she commanded. And I did.

As I unlocked the door and greeted the group of quilters already clustered in the courtyard, as I served coffee and Charlie’s cake and handed out goody bags tied with pink ribbons, as I pulled the names for door-prize winners out of a basket, as I moved from table to table to table of novice quilters, showing them how to trace quarter-inch stitching lines with marking pencils and secure a seam without using knots, as I discussed color choice and appliqué placement, as I signed up women for new classes, as I rang up sales of fabric, notions, patterns, and quilting books, bagged each purchase, as I thanked customers for coming and waved good-bye when they left, I smiled. I didn’t think. I just smiled, going through the motions—breathing, walking, talking, but numb.

My emotions and actions didn’t connect with my mind or heart. I’d been that way ever since Dr. Thayer pronounced my sentence—cancer. After that, I’d ceased to hear what he was saying, unable to connect the information to myself. He looked at me sympathetically while speaking of options, treatment plans, disease stages, and next steps. I’d nodded at all the correct intervals and declined his invitation to ask more questions.

By the time I got up from my chair and left the office, I couldn’t remember what any of his words meant, or maybe I just didn’t want to. Work was the perfect distraction, the antidote to all the fears that plagued me, the truths I didn’t want to acknowledge.

By ten o’clock the shop was packed. Thank heaven I’d enlisted the help of a half dozen of my regular customers, including Wendy Perkins, who wore her biggest rhinestone glasses for the occasion. Wendy and the others greeted customers, passed out quilt-block kits, helped refill the refreshment table, and taught novices the basics of hand quilting. Without them, I’d never have survived the day.

At one point, we were so crowded that there were no more available spaces at the sewing tables. I was busy ringing up sales, so Wendy ran around the corner to her real estate office and brought back a couple of folding tables and chairs while some of the others cleared out space in the storeroom and a back corner where I kept refurbished sewing machines for sale.

The day was a blur, but somehow, finally, five o’clock came. I thanked Wendy and the other volunteers for their help, giving them each a tote bag filled with charm packs, a pair of new scissors, and a gift certificate for a free class.

“Evelyn, how sweet!” Gwen Talvert exclaimed. “But you don’t have to give us anything. We all had fun, and it was for such a good cause.”

“Yes, I do. You worked your tails off today.”

Wendy craned her neck to take a peek at her behind, her panty line prominent through her too-tight stretch slacks. “Looks like I still got mine.” She snorted a laugh, and the others joined in.

“Well, thank you all so much. You were just great. Wendy, do you want me to bring those tables and chairs back to your office tonight?”

“No. Let it wait until Monday. I’ll come over with the truck and get them.”

I walked them to the door and said good-bye. Finally, the shop was empty, and, smiling still, my lips frozen, stretched tight across my mouth, I locked the front door, threw away the crumpled napkins and half-empty punch cups from the refreshment table, and walked through the shop, turning out the lights. As I approached the back storage room, the one Wendy had outfitted with one of the folding tables and extra chairs, I heard voices.

Oh no,
I thought, and my smile faded.
I was sure they’d all gone.

I closed my eyes for a moment before taking a deep breath and entering the room, smiling again. There were three women sitting at the table, a teenage girl with bleached blond hair wearing all black clothing and an angry expression, a tall blond with her hair swept back into a ponytail who wore a simple pink button-down blouse under a cream-colored sweater, and an older woman with silver white hair in a French twist who was dressed in a tan cashmere sweater and light woolen skirt, very simple and clearly very expensive. A Dolce & Gabbana handbag, obviously new, lay carelessly at her feet. I recognized her as a customer from the Grill, one of the regulars. Charlie had told me her name, but I couldn’t remember it now. She had a long, elegant neck and a surprisingly taut jawline for a woman of her age, or what I supposed was her age. She might have been fifty or seventy; it was hard to tell. She had been a beauty in her youth, and she still was, but I wondered what she was doing in my shop.

Over the years, I have met all manner of quilters. It is the kind of hobby that attracts all kinds of different people. But in my experience, women who could clearly afford to purchase anything their hearts desired seldom felt the need to make anything themselves, and, if they did, they generally went in for painting or sculpting, things that were considered more art than craft, though I consider quilting both. But that’s a subject for another time.

What was she doing here? I couldn’t quite figure it out. When she looked up from her work, appraising me as I entered the room, I was sure of one thing: she and the teenager were somehow related. They had the same long neck, the same sharp jaw, and the same large brown eyes that held the same expression: a look of loss. They tried to conceal it, the older woman with distance and impeccable manners, the teenager with anger and a mutinous stare, but neither mask was entirely convincing.

“Hi,” I said, trying to keep my voice cheerful as I spied pieces of fabric lying all over the table. They hadn’t even finished cutting out the pieces of their blocks, which meant it would be at least an hour and more like two before they were finished and I could finally lock the doors of the shop and be alone.

“I’m Evelyn Dixon, the owner. Forgive me for not coming back to say hello before. It’s been an awfully busy day. How are you all doing here? Do you need any help?”

“Oh, I think you could say that,” the tall brunette said with a self-deprecating giggle. “At least, I know I do. I haven’t touched a needle since I made an A-line skirt in my eighth-grade Home Ec class. The teacher gave me a C minus.” She smiled as she rose from the table and extended her hand. “I’m Margot Matthews.”

The older woman smiled as well, lowering her reading glasses before reaching out to take my hand. “I’m Abigail Burgess Wynne,” she said in a voice that sounded like good wine and old money, bright and light but with a smooth finish. It was a voice that revealed nothing.

Wynne. That’s who she was. Wynne Memorial Library. Wynne Museum. I remembered now. Charlie said she was one of the wealthiest women in the state.

“And this is Liza Burgess—my niece.” She hesitated just a moment before declaring this last, as if reluctant to acknowledge their shared bloodline.

“Nice to meet you.”

Abigail peered past me. “Has everyone else gone? I’m afraid we arrived late.”

“Yes, sorry about that,” Margot said. “I’m between jobs and had a three o’clock phone interview that was supposed to take fifteen minutes but went on for almost an hour.”

“
I
wasn’t late.” Liza growled to her aunt. “I stood outside the shop for two hours waiting for you to show up.”

Abigail went on, ignoring the girl. “You’re probably exhausted after such a long day. Perhaps we should just leave this for now and come back another time.”

I was about to gratefully agree with her when Liza, whose single utterance up until now had been delivered in a mumble, shouted, “No! We have to finish today! That was the deal we made! If you don’t do this today, then it doesn’t count. The deal will be off! I mean it!” She glowered at her aunt, who glowered right back. Margot, clearly as stunned by the girl’s outburst as I was, just stood there.

“That’s no problem,” I said, trying to get us past the moment. “I don’t have any plans for the evening. So you’re all new to quilting?” They nodded. “Well, I’ll give you your first lesson. It’s easier than it looks. All you’re doing is sewing straight lines. But first, I’ll give you a few tips on cutting your patterns. A nice-looking block begins with an accurately cut pattern.”

I showed them how to use a see-through ruler to measure out precisely sized squares and triangles for the main part of the basket, then how to use a sharp pencil held at a sideways angle to trace carefully around the template for the appliquéd basket handle. It was a lesson I had given a dozen times already that day, and I could have delivered it while sleepwalking, which, in a way, was exactly what I was doing. As in any group of quilters, all of the women had different styles, but thankfully, all three caught onto the basic ideas quickly.

Liza, the younger woman, said very little but seemed to have a real feel for color and a willingness to take risks. She quietly asked if it would be all right to make her block in a color scheme that was the opposite of everyone else’s, using the brown and mocha shades for her basket and doing the background in pink. I said that would be a good idea, thinking it might be interesting to place that one contrasting block in the center of the quilt as an anchor for the rest.

Margot approached her task with a businesslike attitude, making quick, confident decisions about her color choices and not getting flustered by little errors. I suspected that, as time went on, she would be a good all-around quilter, able to master a variety of techniques quickly and always ready to try more challenging pieces, confident in her ability to puzzle out any problems that might arise.

Abigail, in spite of giving the impression that she’d rather be anywhere but where she was, was a stickler for precision. It was a quality I would normally have applauded, but it was definitely causing her to lag behind the other two. I was so tired, and my head was pounding. All I wanted was for them to finish their blocks and leave so I could fall into bed and a dreamless sleep.

Once the patterns were cut, I showed them how to mark a stitching line with a pencil, so they would understand how that was done, but gave them quarter-inch masking tape to mark their seams so they would finish more quickly. Margot was first to finish piecing her block. I asked if I could borrow it to demonstrate how to appliqué on the handle.

By then, it was nearly dark outside, and I had to turn on the overhead lamps so there would be enough light to work by. My eyes were almost as tired as my body, and I rubbed them and blinked a few times before taking my first stitch, trying to regain my focus.

“All right. Are you all watching?” They were.

“The stitch I’m going to teach you is called the blind stitch, because, if you do it properly, you should barely be able to see the stitches. Now, in appliqué, unlike the running stitch we used to piece our block, we’re going to use a knot, but we’ll hide it here in the fold of the fabric.” I held the folded fabric strip out so they could see where to place the first stitch. Then I pierced the fabric with the needle while they watched.

I don’t know how I did it. I’ve shown that stitch to hundreds of beginners without incident, but somehow or other when I pushed the needle through the fabric, I ended up driving it deep into the flesh of my finger.

“Ouch! Dammit!” I dropped the block and instinctively put my finger into my mouth. I tasted blood on my tongue, sharp and metallic, like sucking on an old penny. It hurt, but it was far from agony and it certainly wasn’t the first time I’d pricked my finger while sewing. Still, tears pooled in my eyes. Margot saw them.

“Evelyn, are you all right?” When I didn’t answer, she jumped to her feet. “Here. Give me your hand. Let me see.” She took my hand and unfolded my fingers. A bright, ruby drop of blood pearled on the end of my fingertip.