Embroidered Truths (2 page)

“Poor fellow,” said Betsy, and meant it. She came to put a hand on his shoulder.

“What am I going to
do
?” he cried, grabbing her hand and wetting it with his tears.

Betsy thought about it. “First of all,” she said, “you are going upstairs to wash your hands and face, then borrow a razor and clean yourself up. Then you are going out to buy a change of clothes. You know you always think more clearly when you look good, and besides, our customers expect it of you. Possibly by the time you get back down here, John will have come to his senses and phoned looking for you. It will be a good lesson to him if you aren’t waiting for that call.”

Godwin stopped sniveling to think about that. “I think you may be right,” he said.

“Of course I’m right.”

Heartened, Godwin stood and hugged her. “You are the
best
friend I’ve ever had! Where do you keep your razor?”

“Take a fresh one out of the linen closet in the bathroom.”

“Thanks.” He took the spare key to her apartment out of the checkout desk drawer, and went out the back door of the shop, which opened into a back hall leading to the entrance hall to the upstairs apartments.

Betsy went back to work rearranging the aim of her track lights, but her mind was only half on her work. Godwin was a good friend as well as a first-class employee, and she was sad to see him this unhappy over a breakup with a person she personally thought not worth one of Godwin’s tears. Every time one of these rifts happened, she would secretly hope Godwin would realize he had outgrown John—and every time they’d end up back together. It was a lot like watching a woman friend unable to dig in and divorce her awful husband.

One reason Godwin stayed with John was that John was lavish with money. He often took Godwin on weekend trips to New York or San Francisco, and, every February or March, on a week’s vacation to Cancun. A senior associate in a prestigious Minneapolis law firm, John earned a generous salary, and these trips were first class all the way. Godwin always came home from Cancun tanned, sated, and sporting a new piece of jewelry.

But this year had been different. Because of a complex case he was working on, John kept putting off his vacation. And when the case was over, March had just turned to April, and John declared it was too late to go, because, he said, Cancun was an oven in April.

Godwin had been sad about that. He had come in to work the next morning out of an early April snowfall, sighing that Cancun in a heat wave was surely better than Minnesota in early April. “Someone famous said, ‘April is the cruelest month,’” he said, turning to look out the window. “Was he from Minnesota?”

Betsy laughed. “Though he was born in America, I don’t think T. S. Eliot ever even visited Minnesota,” she said.

That was the same day Godwin cut out a color ad from the Sunday paper. He’d been clipping coupons—he adored any kind of shopping, even for groceries—but this was not just a twenty-five-cent coupon for salsa. Attached to the coupon was an ad announcing a chance to win a week in Cancun. The entry blank, which featured a rectangle in a bright-colored cubist design, was not to be mailed in, but brought to a local grocery store and put behind a decoding screen where, more than likely, the word
Sorry
would appear.

But not this time. Later that evening Betsy was taken from an interesting article on Elizabethan Blackwork to answer the phone.

“I won, I won, I
won!
” a voice shrieked in her ear.

Godwin.

“Won what?”

“A trip to
Mexico
! I will never in my whole life eat any salsa but Mexicali Rose!”

“You mean that coupon you cut out was the winner? That’s
wonderful!
Congratulations! This is so great! You get to go to Cancun after all!”

“Well . . . no,” he said, turning down the volume a notch or two. “What I won was third prize, a pair of return plane tickets to Mexico City. But you see,” he hastened to add, “that’s actually
better
. Mexico City is up
high,
even higher than
Denver,
so it’s not terribly hot there. And we’ve
done
Cancun about to death, this will be a
whole different place
. Besides,” he added, more pragmatically, “this will be
my
treat, and I couldn’t
afford
Cancun, not the places
John
is used to staying at.”

“Your treat?”

“Yes, I’ve been really good about my credit cards lately, so I can
actually afford
to do this.”

The next day, Betsy had asked, “How does John feel about you taking him instead of him taking you?”

Godwin chuckled. “He
likes
it. He was surprised, of course, but I said, ‘It’s about my turn, isn’t it?’ and he said, ‘Well, why not?’ So I think he’s pleased.”

“Good for you, Goddy,” said Betsy. “It’s especially nice of you to offer to pay for everything.”

“Yes, well, I’ll have to get on-line and see what rates I can get for a hotel. But it
is
past the season, so I should be able to get something decent for not very much money. I mean, I know Mexico City isn’t Cancun, but there should be at least one nice hotel.”

Soon Godwin reported that Mexico City, in fact, offered some spectacular hotels, well up to John’s standards—but, sadly, their rates were outside his budget, even in the off-season. John, by Godwin’s report, was amused and touched by Godwin’s efforts to please him, and said he was willing to come down a step or two, so long as he didn’t have to wrestle with a
cucaracha
for his pillow. So Godwin consulted with Travelocity, and found a terrific price at the three-star Hotel del Prado and booked it for five nights. “I’d go for a week, but if I did, we couldn’t afford to go sightseeing.” By then he had acquired a book on Mexico City and was thrilled to discover there were Aztec ruins nearby—“With actual pyramids! I
adore
pyramids!”—plus the world-famous Museum of Anthropology—“John
adores
museums!” And, of course, lots of night life and plenty of places to shop, which both of them adored.

It took a little while for the tickets to arrive and the flight to be scheduled, so it was not until April 22 that Betsy had driven the two of them to the airport and wished them bon voyage.

Godwin had come back six days later jubilant and showing off a tan acquired on a jaunt to Teotihuacan, the ancient pyramid complex outside Mexico City. “I climbed all the way to the
top
of the
Pyramid of the Sun!
” he proclaimed, then staggered around panting heavily to demonstrate how hard the task had been in the thin air. Customers were amused. One who’d been there was definitely impressed. “Those steps are steep and it’s a hard climb!” she’d said.

Among the gifts he had brought home was a clay statue of a high-nosed standing woman spinning wool by hand, a replica of an Aztec piece in the Museum of Anthropology. “It’s for the shop,” he’d said, and put it on a shelf near the knitting yarns. About the famous Museum of Anthropology, he told everyone, “
That
place is
fantastic,
but it just wore us
out
! It’s bigger than any other museum
I’ve
ever been in.” He told Betsy over a lunchtime sandwich, “I learned a lot about the different kinds of nations they had in ancient times down there. The Maya were all right if you like conquest, the Olmecs had a thing for conjoined twins, but those Aztecs were
nasty!
I didn’t know until we went to the museum what ‘flay’
really
means. Do you know, their priests would actually walk around
wearing
someone else’s
skin
?” He gave a dramatic shudder.

Betsy put her sandwich down. “Oh, ick, Goddy!” she said. “Who told you that? Does John speak Spanish?”

“Oh, no, he makes a point of not learning the language. They had guides in lots of languages, but it didn’t take a guide to tell us about the flaying, they made
statues
of it!”

“Enough, enough!” said Betsy, pushing her sandwich away. “How was the rest of the trip?”

“It was
nice
. In fact, everywhere we went there were usually people who spoke enough English so we got along fine. And when there weren’t we had this taxi driver, he became like a friend, he took us everywhere, and translated for us. Once we got used to his accent, he was great. We sometimes brought him into the hotel, because that was the one place where
no one
spoke any English. On the other hand, their breakfast buffet was
superb!
” He waxed so lyrical on the
huevos aporreados
and
orejas chilaquiles verdes
that her appetite came back.

At a
Sabado Mercado
—Saturday Market—John had bought a semi-abstract iron sculpture of a man on a horse. “We think it’s a man on a horse,” amended Godwin, “but whatever it is, John liked it, and
I
bought it for him.” And after some spirited bargaining, Godwin also bought himself a beautiful bracelet of heavy silver links and, for Betsy, a necklace and earrings of white shell and red coral. He’d even bought a gift for Sophie, the sweet and lazy shop cat. It was a chicken made of slices of colored sponges—the body was a simple cylinder, the head and tail silhouettes. Hidden in its underside was a small disposable plastic cup that had a long string hanging from it. Sophie had sniffed the chicken eagerly, possibly picking up strange smells but more likely hoping it was something good to eat. Godwin lifted it out of her reach, wrapped a small square of sponge around the string, and slid it downward. A loud squawk came from the chicken and Sophie fell off her chair in surprise. Godwin laughed and showed how a more careful tugging of the sponge down the string produced a sound like a rooster’s crow. He continued to play with the toy, not noticing that Sophie had fled to the back storage room of the shop, where she remained hidden until Godwin tired of making it squawk.

That evening, Betsy had taken the foam rubber chicken upstairs to be put into a drawer, and was probably almost as glad as Sophie that Godwin never asked where it had gone.

Remembering that, Betsy sighed. Godwin was sensitive, but not always about others.

She was reaching rather far forward to nudge the last track light into place when she heard the front door to the shop open. But still no
Bing!

She climbed down the little ladder and went into the front to find a tall, very slender woman with bright red hair running long white fingers through the desperate-sale charts on the checkout desk.

“Hello, Ms. Lavery,” said Betsy. Susan Lavery was a relatively new customer.

“Hi, Betsy. Your doorbell’s broken.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I bet half your customers are pleased about that.”

“Me, too, mostly.” Indeed, the raucous note the thing sounded whenever the door was opened was at least as much annoyance as aid. But estimates to replace it were high enough to make her decide to put up with it. Until now, of course.

Susan laughed. “I’ve got a friend at work who just announced she’s pregnant. She’s about six weeks along, and I figure if I start now, maybe I can have a baby sampler done for her in time for the baby’s first birthday.”

Betsy smiled and said, “Well, in that case, you’ll be ahead of the game. Lots of children get their stitched birth announcements about the time they start kindergarten. But if I may offer a suggestion?”

“Certainly,” Susan said in her pleasant, dry drawl.

“Godwin came back from Mexico City with some charts from a new designer he met down there. She does an interesting mix, some are exotic little symbols from the Aztec language and some are cute teddy bears and blocks that would look darling on a birth announcement.”

“Who’s Godwin?”

For a moment Betsy looked as blankly at Susan as Susan was looking at her. Then Betsy said, “That is amazing, but I think it’s true: You’ve never met my store manager, Godwin DuLac.”

Susan frowned. “I think I’ve heard that name before, but I’m sure I’ve never met him. But I’ve only come into your store, what, six or seven times?”

“Well, Godwin works at least as many hours as I do, so it’s odd you haven’t met him. But that’s not the point. Here, let me show you some of her designs.” Betsy led the way to a spinner rack devoted to baby and toddler charts.

“I have some pastel pink or blue aida cloth you can work these on,” said Betsy, handing Susan three charts. One was of a trio of ducklings, one a trio of baby bluebirds, one a laughing Teddy bear. “You can use the alphabet chart I sold you last week. What I suggest you do is work one or two of these on the cloth now, plus a border from that kit you bought the first time you came in—”

“My word, how do you do that?” demanded Susan.

“Do what?”

“Remember what I bought here!”

“I don’t know. I can’t do it all the time, just once in awhile.” Betsy didn’t want to say that Susan, with her height, beauty, and that improbable hair, was a memorable person.

“Anyway,” Betsy continued, “do the border and the figures now. If the mother decides to name the baby ahead of time, you can put that on—and then all you’ll have left to do is fill in the date.”

“Okay, I like that. Say, what’s that?” She reached for another counted chart. “Hey, it’s a tlatolli!”

“A what? What’s a ‘tlatolli’?”

“This is,” said Susan, holding out the chart. It was another of Maru’s designs, a strange device that looked like a J outlined on one side with crenellations.

“Oh, that. Godwin brought it back from Mexico. It’s Aztec.”

“You bet it is! It means ‘talk.’ You see it in Aztec paintings in front of figures who are lecturing or talking.”

“You do? How interesting.” Betsy looked more closely at the chart. “Like a speech balloon in comic strips, I guess.”

“Sort of, except it doesn’t say what they’re talking about. Here, I want this one, too.”

Betsy hoped Godwin would come down while Susan was still here, but she kept her record intact by going out the front door just about one minute before he came in the back.