Apart at the Seams (22 page)

I sighed and leaned sideways, resting my head on Dan's shoulder.

“Maybe I should enroll at Carrillon.”

“The college your professor told you about? The one in Delaware?”

I nodded. “That would be the fastest way to finish my degree. Probably the cheapest, too. But where would I get the money?”

Dan twisted to the side, and I had to lift my head from his shoulder.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “You'd leave New Bern and move to Delaware? I thought we . . . I mean . . . I thought you liked it here. All your friends are here.”

“They are. But Susan's right. If I'm ever going to make something of myself, be able to do what I really want to do, and have control over my own life, I need to get my diploma. If I went to Carrillon, I'd be finished in two years, maybe less. Then I could move back to New Bern.”

I paused, taking a moment to think.

“Well, maybe I could. If there were any openings in my field. I guess I'd have to go where the work is,” I mused, and then laughed, realizing how crazy I was. “What am I talking about? I'll never be able to find that kind of money, not in a million years.”

Suddenly, I realized that Dan was being very quiet. I looked at him. “Hey, are you okay?”

“Sure. I'm fine.”

“Yeah? Because you had kind of a funny look on your face just now.”

“No. I'm fine. It's just that I thought that you . . . that we . . .” He waved his hand dismissively.

“Never mind. Doesn't matter. I'd better get back over there,” he said, tipping his head toward the bowling lane, where Drew, who had just thrown a seven-ten split, was groaning and smacking himself on the head. “I'm up next.”

“Hang on a second,” I said slowly, giving my attention to a new idea that was forming in my mind. “Maybe I could—”

Dan was already on his feet, but I grabbed his sleeve to keep him from leaving. “Gayla has been tutoring Drew for his SAT test, right? How's that going?”

“Good. He picked up ninety-five points on his last practice test.” Dan frowned. “Why do you ask?”

“I was just thinking . . . Gayla knows everything about getting kids into college. Maybe she knows about scholarships too. Not for teenagers but for people like me—adults, women who're trying to go back to school. Do you think I should ask her to help me?”

Dan was quiet. His face was serious and the look in his eyes was . . . I don't know how to describe it exactly. Only that I've never had a man look at me that way before, like he understood every part of me. It pulled me up short to see him look at me like that. For a second, it was like he'd crawled inside me.

“If that's what makes you happy, Ivy, then I think you should. I think you should have everything you want from life.”

My breath caught in my throat. I started to say something but couldn't. The sound of Bobby's voice, calling for Dan to hurry up, intersected my half-formed thoughts before I could find words to explain them, either to Dan or to myself.

He smiled, bent down, and planted a kiss on the top of my head.

“Gotta go,” he said. “It's my turn.”

I
've never been much of a churchgoer.

Oh, sure, when I was growing up my parents had made me go to church on Christmas and Easter, just for form's sake. Also, I think, to hedge their bets, in case there turned out to be something to the whole God thing after all.

Personally, and especially as I reached my teen years, I thought that was pretty ridiculous. I mean, if God is really
God
with a capital “G,” would he be fooled by such transparent motivations? I didn't think so. That, coupled with the fact that my parents almost never failed to have an argument in the car during these biannual pilgrimages to the local house of worship, put me off religion entirely.

But I've been waking up early recently. The summer sun starts shining in my window by five o'clock, and Sunday was no exception. So after making coffee and going out to water the garden, I decided to treat myself to breakfast at the Blue Bean.

As I was sitting at my table, finishing up a plate of blueberry waffles and a side of bacon, I looked out the window, saw people starting to arrive for the early service at the church, and thought,
What the heck?
I had to meet the others there soon anyway; why not join them for church instead of driving home only to turn around and drive back? I wanted to see the inside of the building anyway. People say it's beautiful.

And while I was there, maybe I'd say a quick prayer, a sort of thank-you note to God. Even though I'm not a big fan of organized religion, I do believe in God, at least in the broadest sense. And lately, it feels like he's been watching out for me.

A month ago, my life was a complete train wreck, and while there's still a long, long road ahead, I feel like things are back on track for Brian and me.

We've seen each other five times in the last two weeks, and each time is better than the last. Yesterday, we spent nearly the whole day together. We started off with a late-morning hike at Steep Rock Preserve—it was even more beautiful than I'd remembered—followed by iced chai lattes at Marty's Café and a trip to the Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington Depot, where I picked up a new cookbook. On the drive back to New Bern, just as I was telling Brian about my stop-and-start efforts to teach myself guitar, we spotted a music store. Brian pulled in, saying that regular lessons might help. He was probably right, but after meeting the manager of the store, who was also the guitar teacher, a man with hooded eyes who wore a Grateful Dead T-shirt and talked more slowly than anyone I've ever met in my life, Brian decided he should probably teach me himself. I bought some new guitar strings, and we went on our way.

Later, we took in the early show at the Red Rooster Cinema, a charming sixties-throwback movie house that holds only about eighty people and has seats that date back to the Nixon administration, then went out for Chinese food.

The movie was great; so was the organic popcorn with actual butter, sold to me by a skinny girl with braids who also recommended the fair-trade green tea, but the Chinese food was
terrible
. They just don't seem to have decent Chinese in Connecticut.

I didn't let Brian stay the night—I'm just not ready for that—but I invited him inside for coffee after our dinner. He taught me two new chords on the guitar, and then he played by himself for a while. I haven't heard him play in so long. I'd almost forgotten how good he was.

Anyway, things have been going well. So well, in fact, that I decided to pull out my red fabric and make a birthday quilt for Brian. I don't care what Lanie says; I think he'll really like it. Evelyn fixed me up with a used sewing machine that she said was a good buy and would last for years, as well as a pattern, additional fabric, and a couple of private lessons. The base block for the quilt is a pinwheel surrounded by four half-square triangles, as Evelyn called them. Once you sew those, either you add four borders of fabric along the edges, with cornerstones—really just squares of fabric—in the corners or you make four flying-geese blocks and add those to the base block.

When I first saw the pattern, I thought it would be too hard, but Evelyn assured me I was up to it. The thing to do, she said, was take it step-by-step, deal with one block at a time and not try to look too far down the road. That seems like pretty good advice on a lot of levels. And it turns out to be true, certainly as far as quilt making is concerned. When I broke it down into steps, the block wasn't nearly as difficult as I'd thought at first. Well, except for the flying geese. Those took a little practice to master.

So I'm having fun quilting, meeting new people, and trying new things. The summer that started out as one of the worst in my life is showing potential to become one of the best. I'm really starting to believe that Brian and I are going to be okay. Considering where we began, that's a medium-sized miracle, so a word of appreciation to the Almighty seems warranted.

I paid for my breakfast, gathered my things, and walked down the Green to the New Bern Community Church.

It's a pretty building—one of the most photographed in New England, so they say. The exterior is white clapboard, with a high steeple, a bell tower, and a row of big white columns lining the front.

The organ was already playing to signal the start of the service when I arrived. I stood in the vestibule, looking for one of my friends so I could sit with them, but didn't see anyone. I accepted a photocopied weekly bulletin from a white-haired man wearing a tweed suit that seemed a little heavy for summer and went inside. I saw Evelyn, her husband, Charlie, and Virginia up toward the front. Margot and her family were there, too, but there was no room near them, so I took a seat closer to the back.

The interior is simple, the walls painted pale yellow, the window casings all in white, the wooden pews stained a warm cherry color, worn shiny and smooth from hundreds of years of contact with the hands, arms, knees, and bottoms of praying parishioners and the regular application of lemon oil, the scent of which hung faintly in the air, mixing with the aroma of melting wax from the altar candles. It was a pleasant smell, a peaceful surrounding, an atmosphere that spoke of constancy and the passage of time and made you think that, somehow, things would be all right in the end. Maybe that's why people go to church—because they want to believe that, somehow, it all turns out.

My mind wandered during the sermon. I was too busy taking in my surroundings and the faces of the people near me to give the minister my complete attention, but I enjoyed the music. The choir, dressed in their red robes, numbered only about twenty, but they had a bigger sound than I'd expected. The acoustics were very good. I also liked the congregational reading, from Psalm 121, I think it was.

Speaking those words out loud and in unison with other people was kind of encouraging. My concept of God is a little blurry, but maybe standing in the presence of those who have such firm hope and are willing to declare so aloud brings a hope of its own. I guess that's another reason people go to church.

When the last hymn was finished and the congregation was dismissed to go in peace, the organist played the postlude, and I filed out with the rest, murmuring “good morning” to the people who greeted me first. I stopped to shake the hand of the minister, Reverend Tucker, who said it was nice to meet me and seemed sincere. I echoed his words, relieved that he hadn't asked how I liked the sermon, because I hadn't heard that much of it.

The summer sunshine was blinding after I left the cool confines of the church. I was standing outside the door, blinking, when I heard someone calling my name and turned to see Philippa, Tessa, Evelyn, and Virginia standing in a cluster on the far side of the steps.

“Gayla!” Philippa exclaimed, and gave me a big hug. It was funny to see her dressed in her black clerical robes and collar. I've only ever seen her at quilt circle, and she always wears her street clothes to our meetings.

“So glad you came to the services,” she said.

“Well, I'm glad I was able to come,” I replied, meaning it. “Where is everybody?”

“Abigail is getting a cup of coffee for the road,” Tessa said. “Margot and Ivy are picking up their broods from Sunday school class. Madelyn doesn't go to church, but she should be here any minute.”

I turned to Virginia. “Happy birthday! How does it feel to be eighty-five?”

“About the same as it did to be eighty-four. You know something? Aside from the pain in my knees and fuzzy eyesight, I really don't feel a lot different than I did when I was forty. My thoughts are just as disorganized as they were when I was twenty. Where is this wisdom that's supposed to come with age? That's what I'd like to know.”

“Oh, don't give us that, old woman. Nobody's buying it.” Charlie, Evelyn's husband, approached carrying three cardboard cups of coffee in his big hands.

“You're just as wise as an owl and everybody knows it,” Charlie said in his burred Irish brogue as he gave one of the cups to his mother-in-law. “Cream and two sugars for you, Virginia. Black with one sugar for my bride,” he said, giving Evelyn a peck as he handed over her cup. “And black with no sugar for me. Though I don't know how I'll manage to choke it down. Philippa, the coffee in this church is as tasteless as day-old dishwater. How many scoops are they putting into the pot when they brew it?”

“Charlie, I don't know,” she said wearily. “But if you'd like to join the hospitality committee, I'm sure they'd welcome your input on the proper preparation.”

“You know,” he said, “I might just do that.”

“Yes?” Philippa said, looking surprised. “Well, we'd be glad for the help. Call me on Monday, and I'll give you the particulars. And you,” she said, embracing Virginia, who was so tiny she nearly disappeared in the folds of Philippa's black robe, “have a very happy birthday. I'm so sorry I won't be able to join the festivities.”

“You're not coming?” I asked.

Philippa shook her head. “Sunday is a workday for me. I'm leading children's church at the second service, and after that, I've got a counseling session. But I want to hear all the details,” she said. “Take a lot of pictures.”

“I'll be in charge of that.” Madelyn, who had just mounted the steps and joined us, took a shiny black camera bag from her shoulder and held it up. “Look! A Nikon D80! They cost over eight hundred new, but I found it at a tag sale for about a quarter of that. Never been used. It's my sabbatical project. I've always wanted to take up photography.”

Our group expanded as the others arrived. Abigail approached, coffee cup in hand, with her husband, Franklin, trailing behind. Since she'd been absent from the quilt circle for so many weeks, her arrival was marked by many exclamations, hugs, and questions about when she would tell everyone what she'd been doing with her Friday nights. “Soon enough,” she said, giving an enigmatic smile, but that was all she was willing to say.

Margot and her husband, Paul, were next, but he didn't stay for long. She kissed him good-bye and reminded him that she'd left a casserole in the refrigerator. Ivy was last to arrive. She handed her children off to Franklin, who had volunteered to watch them for the afternoon, telling her kids to be good.

“So are we all here?” Virginia asked, looking around expectantly. “Let's get this show on the road! We've got to be in Ellington by ten-thirty.”

“So we're going to Ellington?” Evelyn asked. “What's in Ellington?”

“You'll see soon enough,” Virginia said, lifting her chin.

She marched down the steps toward the parking lot with Evelyn and all the rest of us following in her wake, wondering what she was up to.

“Who's driving?” Virginia asked.

“No one,” Abigail replied. “I've arranged for transportation, so we can all ride together.”

“Oh, my goodness! Will you look at that,” Virginia exclaimed as we rounded the corner of the building.

A sleek, black, stretch limousine was waiting for us. The driver, a burly man who introduced himself as Daryl, was polishing the hood with a chamois cloth.

“I have
always
wanted to ride in one of these things,” Virginia said excitedly, her eyes wide as she walked around the shining vehicle. “Cross another item off my bucket list! Thank you, Abigail.”

“It's my birthday present to you. Personally, I think the stretch versions are a little vulgar, but it'll be roomy enough to hold all of us comfortably. And you'll find a supply of chilled sparkling cider inside.”

Madelyn raised her eyebrows. “Nothing stronger?”

“It's not even lunchtime yet,” Abigail reminded her. “Shall we be on our way?”

“Hang on a minute,” Madelyn said, and opened her camera bag. “Let's get a picture first.”

Everyone lined up in front of the black behemoth while Madelyn fiddled with her camera, muttering to herself. She took six shots, rearranging us into different groupings for each one before asking Daryl to stand in for her so she could be in the last picture.

When we were finished, Daryl gave the camera back to Madelyn. “By the way, where am I driving?” he asked.

Virginia pushed up on her tiptoes and whispered something in his ear. Daryl laughed.

“Seriously?”

Virginia bobbed her head, and Daryl laughed again.

“All right. It's your day. I guess you can do whatever you want.” Giving a little bow, he opened the door. “Ladies, your chariot awaits.”