How to Make an American Quilt (23 page)

C
orrina Amurri and Hy Dodd go back many years. Their boys, Laury and Will, were born only a few months apart. The women gave each other baby showers, had coffee together in the calm midmorning hours of the weekdays, alternated lunch times at each other’s homes, traded baby-sitting services. Quilted together at Glady Joe’s.

Laury and Will were not initially fond of each other, but their parents’ friendship drew them closer, sometimes jokingly referring to each other as brothers. Both boys had siblings, younger, but they shared the brotherhood of the firstborn, which can be both blessing and curse; the overwhelming adult attention to the details of their lives and development; the expectations that run too high; being the bridge between adults (parents) and children (siblings); one foot in either place and the accompanying hollow, lonely feeling of belonging nowhere. Sometimes the oldest child is the lost child. Both parents and children recognize this, and it serves to make the oldest child’s tragedies a little sweeter and more poignant than the younger children’s similar experiences.

The oldest child is unsure, always. It is uncertainty that comes from charting out new territory, dragging his parents along, clearing the way for siblings.

When one makes a pancake, one always makes a tester first: the one that is poured on the hot griddle, then discarded as imperfect. Someone once said that oldest children are like tester pancakes and should be tossed out. It was Hy who said that.

They are buried children, locking up their rebellious or unruly nature, sometimes taking it out on brothers and sisters, hiding it from the adults. They bury the insecurity, the need; they overachieve or they disappear; they often harbor just the smallest fear. So fragile, really, said Corrina, the way they swagger and act as though they are responsible only for themselves in the world.

Will and Laury were fundamentally different, but they shared the understanding of the oldest child.

Will Dodd wanted to be an artist like Em’s husband, Dean, who taught him to paint in school. He loved his family (fell prey to the oldest child’s conflict of obligation and rebellion), but was anxious to be done with Grasse, a place he saw as intolerant of eccentricity or personal differences. He saw it as an essentially petty, cruel, nosy community, quick to ostracize and judge.

Laury loved his small town and his family. He loved the heavy winter tule fog, the occasional light powdering of snow, and the summers hot as blazes. He seldom felt so much himself as he did in Grasse. To him, the community was protective and understanding, watching out for one another, helping if there was trouble. All the children belonged to the adults; each mishap shared by all families.

The citizens of Grasse amused Laury: people who could not make a scheme succeed or rich kids who never had to work and grew into adults who spent their lives cataloging butterflies (postcards, stamps, train sounds) or writing the town’s history or building silly, vain monuments simply because they could afford to do so. Laury thought this funny, while Will scowled and said, “The waste it represents is obscene.”

“Lighten up,” said Laury.

Laury also loved the public swimming pool in the summer, liked to complain with other kids about the boredom of Grasse, liked working his summer job, where he ran into just about everyone he knew.

When Will and Laury turned eighteen, Will received a college deferment while Laury enlisted. Ever since the Civil War, the largest group of enlistees had hailed from the American South, lower- and working-class backgrounds and various minority groups. So the surprise was not Laury’s enlistment, but Will’s deferment.

Will said to Laury, I can’t believe you buy into all that patriotic crap.

Laury said to Will, I’m not afraid to fight for my country.

Will said, Afraid? Did I say I was
afraid
?

Laury asked, Don’t you think this is just the greatest place on earth to live? Didn’t our fathers fight in World War Two?

This ain’t no Good War, friend, said Will.

But Laury said, I don’t mind protecting something I love. Even you.

Which silenced Will, caused him to think,
But who is going to protect
you,
Laury?

C
ORRINA AND HER HUSBAND
, Jack, are proud of their Laury, although Jack has feelings about the war that he has never confided to Corrina. He is not altogether sure that this conflict requires the attendance of his boy. Of anyone’s boys. Corrina squeezes her husband’s hand and says, “Jack, Laury’s got to do what he thinks is right. I don’t have to tell you.” But Jack begins taking long, lonesome walks during which he can think about his oldest child in private. Alone in his fields, his fears are diffused, as if he were scattering them like seed across the grasslands.

When Jack is inside, enclosed in the warmth and intimacy of his home, his fear seems to gain in density and strength. During the hot weather, Jack takes to sleeping outdoors.

C
ORRINA TAKES TO
painting their house. It is not unusual for people passing to see Corrina standing atop a short ladder in one of Jack’s old shirts and paint-spattered overalls. When Hy comes over, she sits on the grass (sometimes bringing a blanket, lying in her bathing-suit top and skirt) and chats happily with Corrina. Mostly, they talk about Laury and Will.

Hy saying, You must be so proud of that boy.

Corrina saying, Yes, of course. But I think we’d be proud of him whatever he decided to do.

Then Hy replies, If that is a reference to Will, you don’t need to mind my feelings. Away at that college, we just don’t know what the hell he is up to. We hardly ever hear from him.

And Corrina says something like, Joe is participating in a debate next Thursday, would you like to go with us?

Hy says yes, she’d love to, and does he miss his older brother very much?

Very much, says Corrina. She only brought up Joe to change the subject because she does not want to tell Hy that Will occasionally calls her during the day. And once, late at night, when he sounded drunk and it was lucky Corrina answered the phone and not Jack, who, she is sure, would have lectured him, then told the Dodds about it. Corrina is reasonably certain that Will does not want his parents to know he calls Corrina and Corrina feels no compulsion to tell them either. She thinks Will must know that about her.

When Corrina finishes painting the exterior of the house, she begins making plans to lay new linoleum in the kitchen. “But this is perfectly fine,” insists Jack.

Corrina only pats his cheek in passing, as she measures out the dimensions by placing one foot over the other. Jack catches her hand, midair, as she pulls it away, and he puts it back to his face. He holds it across his mouth, and for a split second Corrina thinks he may start to cry. Only he doesn’t. He shuts his eyes tightly.

E
VERY NIGHT
Corrina, Jack, and Joe watch the evening news with a kind of fixated horror. It is always during suppertime and they each find it personally amazing that they have learned to eat and watch at the same time. Each night they convince themselves that Laury is not a statistic in the casualty run-down. That he remains their living, faraway child. Their baby.