How to Make an American Quilt (16 page)

He explained that he was going into sales and that “in the beginning I’ll probably be on the road a lot—around Nevada, California, that sort of territory” and “do you think that you could live like that?”

Of course she could; Constance, who never minded solitude, and who was curious about California. Besides, it would eliminate all that roommate business.

H
ER PARENTS WERE CONFUSED
, pleased, and marginally upset. This was what they wanted for her, wasn’t it? “Constance,” they said, sitting on either side of her on the porch in late September, their sweaters buttoned up to their throats, “we are delighted that you are getting married…and yet…he’s not…we hoped…frankly, we are wondering if maybe you aren’t marrying beneath yourself.”

Constance slouched back in her chair, swallowing a shot of brandy from a coffee mug. “I thought you’d be happy for me.”

“We are,” said her mother. “Naturally.”

“I know,” Constance said. “He’s in sales.” Constance got up and walked to the end of the porch before turning around and facing her aging parents. “I’ve been to college. I’ve been to Europe. I’ve spent weekends with the girls at Virginia Beach and out to the Island and up to the Cape and back to the shore. I’m not really fit for the workplace—surely you’ve noticed my lack of, ah,
ambition
—and I am almost thirty-three years old, and it occurs to me that if I don’t marry Howell Saunders, I might be able to add old maid to that list of things that are me.”

“Honey,” said her mother in her Soothing Voice.

Constance shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not unhappy. Maybe being unhappy takes ambition, too.” She rested her head against her hand on the pillar of the porch. “Mother, Dad, I think this is a good idea. I think it is what I need. Howell doesn’t expect me to be something I so clearly am not.”

“We certainly can’t stop you.” Her mother crossed her arms.

“No,” said Constance, “you can’t.”

W
HAT
C
ONSTANCE COULD NOT SAY
to anyone was that she was beginning to feel like a freak of nature: She liked being alone; she was not
excited about formal education, yet she loved to read and learn; nor was she desirous of being a traditional wife nor drawn to being a career woman. She was intrigued by the idea of romantic love. She wanted to feel safe. Constance wished she was exceptional in some way, but she was not. People are confused by women who are neither exceptional nor married; they seem to feel you should be one or the other.

The truly terrible thing in this life, she had long ago decided, was not knowing what you want, but only able to recognize what you do not want. You have to spend so much time and energy trying to figure it out, time that other people spend in pursuit of their desires.

The other freakish side of her nature was her impatience with other women. And to remain unmarried certainly seemed to sentence her to a life spent in the company of girlfriends, balanced by the occasional date. Oh, she was tired of explaining her unmarried state to family and friends, especially since she was not extraordinary or philosophically opposed to marriage.

It all boiled down to the same inescapable fact: that to live outside the mainstream one needed to be a rebel, and that she was not.

She was thirty-three, three short years from middle age, and a wealth of new aspects presented themselves: her parents’ old age; the fact that her youth was really and truly gone from her and would not come again. Never again would she awaken in the morning, fresh and perfect by just tumbling out of bed; nor would young men regard her with promise. And she felt more mature inside as well. She felt less frantic, calmer, yet terrified of other women and their talk of husbands and housework and help and hearth. (Terrified she might be making the wrong decisions.) And the subtle thickening of their thirtyish figures and their quiet, shrugging acceptance of all manner of things.

Of course, there were their counterparts: women of the same age who did not marry or married briefly at eighteen, only soon to divorce, and their cool mistrust of men; or their stale innocence, which invited disreputable men to use them over and over, each transgression forgiven as if it were an isolated incident.

Even the women who choose to remain unmarried and throw themselves entirely into their work seem to falter in the face of love.

C
ONSTANCE COULD NOT MARRY
without affection. And there was Howell Saunders that day in the city, when she literally turned the corner and walked into him. They fell in love. Just like that. As Constance was gardening and planting freesia bulbs in the early winter, thinking how sort of wonderful he was; recall how he would spend time with her, listen to her and understand. She confessed her lack of ambition and direction and he nodded and listened. “He means it, too,” she said aloud to herself, her bent knees crushing the lobelia that spilled out of its bed and onto the walkway. If she had to answer her parents’ questions about why she loved Howell Saunders she would have to say: Because he lets me be.

Surely, she thinks, this must be the secret of marriage that no one seems inclined to recognize or practice. It was not an accident that Constance found herself drawn to Howell; it was an act of her nature.

He had not said a word about trying to change her. Not a word. They did not barter their future with words like “I’ll do this if you’ll do that” or “If you put up with this one thing for a while, I promise you things will be different in a few years.” Howell told her: “Constance, I am moving to California. My job will take me on the road much of the time. As my wife you will be alone. I’d like to have children—but if we don’t, I can live with that, too. If we do have
children I can’t promise that I’ll be around more often. I hope one day it won’t be that way, but I don’t know. I promise I’ll be faithful on the road but I can’t promise that you won’t be lonely.”

She liked that. The forthrightness of it, as if he respected her too much to con her. He offered no guarantees except what he could guarantee—none of those silly promises about a future no one can foresee. He would do the best he could.

When she asks him questions about anything, he considers the answer and delivers it truthfully, not simply telling her what he thinks she wants to hear. Of all the things a man can do, she hates that falseness most of all: someone who tries to edit or predict her response before she makes it. To be second-guessed or “protected” from the truth is to be treated like a child.

The best men tell you the truth because they think you can take it; the worst men either try to preserve you in some innocent state with their false protection or are “brutally honest.” When someone tells you the truth, lets you think for yourself, experience your own emotions, he is treating you as a true equal. As a friend.

And the best men cook for you.