How to Make an American Quilt (3 page)

“I’
M A PEOPLE PERSON
,” Hy has been heard to chirp from time to time, “I really get a kick out of them,” to which Glady Joe would lift her eyes over the top of her newspaper to stare at her sister, saying, “Give it a rest, Hy.” And Hy would give her sister a dismissive wave of her hand and say, “Don’t mind Glady Joe. The grump.”

W
HAT SET THEIR HOUSE APART
from the others in the neighborhood were its odd back rooms; they were covered floor to ceiling with bits of glass, tile, shells, and china. Some beads here and there. All affixed to the walls. Even the indifferent observer could not help but recognize the painstaking effort this project required. It covered only the walls of the laundry room, back den, and part of the large kitchen—as if time or materials suddenly ran out. For all the artistry of the undertaking, the effect of these rooms was not pleasant; it was more fascinating and disturbing, as if something raw and private were unwittingly (or, perhaps, accusingly) revealed. Glady
Joe scarcely took notice. (While visiting this summer, Finn quietly examines the walls, runs her hand over their jagged surfaces. She does not need to ask what it means. She is the grandchild who knows.)

To Hy, these walls were like an anathema; she routinely refused to do the laundry or use the den and only reluctantly had anything to do with the kitchen, and that was only because the walls remained unfinished. “Not a moment too soon,” said Hy, shuddering.

When Glady Joe was ill recently, Hy even appealed to Anna to come out of retirement as their housekeeper and do the laundry. Anna took a deep, unhappy breath, muttered something about “some folks,” but did it anyway. “I’m not doing it for you,” Anna told Hy. Her own daughter, Marianna, did not approve and wanted to know why Hy could not do it herself. “She is able-bodied as far as I can see.”

But Anna said to her daughter, “You don’t know everything,” and came and did the laundry until Glady Joe was up and around again. Not before Anna stood nose to nose with Hy and said, “If you hate these rooms, you have only yourself to blame.” Then went about her work.

A
RTHUR
C
LEARY
, Glady Joe’s husband, died a few years after Hy’s beloved James passed on. Glady Joe seemed scarcely to grieve at all, which unnerved many of the quilters. “So life goes on,” was all Glady Joe said, and Anna would defend her, quietly saying, “No one knows how another person feels in private.” Everyone in the circle suspected that Anna knew something the rest of them did not. Hy was protective and nervous around her sister, though they could still be seen walking around Grasse together or sitting on the porch during the long summer afternoons, undone by the heat and drinking iced whiskey drinks.

Glady Joe and Arthur Cleary had more of a truce than a marriage; somewhere in the seasonless landscape of their middle age they finally came to the conclusion that they were never meant to be lovers, despite the warmth of their friendship. For so long they kept a polite, kind distance from one another, trying and failing at physical intimacy, never quite making contact. It was as if they were stranded in a foreign country and not only were ignorant of the local language, but spoke different dialects of their own, native language. Using the same words, but ascribing different meanings.

There was no thought of divorce because, well, they rather liked each other. And there were the children to consider (evidence that they had really, really tried, hadn’t they?). Frankly, their marriage took on a curious permutation following this discovery of their sad incompatibility, and it drew them closer. They simply shifted their expectations, made them more manageable or “realistic,” as Glady Joe liked to say. They were almost always seen together and were socially popular because other married couples found it so inexplicably pleasant to be around them, to bask in the genuine affection and camaraderie of their company.

They would arrive at someone’s house, sit close to each other on the sofa; sometimes share a gin and tonic rather than have drinks of their own. People remarked that if only they could have a marriage like the Clearys’ they would gladly sacrifice some small thing. Just to see what it felt like, being married to someone of whom you were so wonderfully fond.

Late at night, Glady Joe and Arthur laughed at the remarks made by their friends earlier in the evening. “Do you really think they would want to be so like us if they knew the truth about our lives?” asked Arthur.

“ ‘Be careful what you wish for’—that’s the saying, isn’t it?” Glady Joe said with a smile as she removed the small amount of makeup she wore for these evenings together.

“Well, yes,” said Arthur, running his hands through his still-thick hair. Sometimes—it almost felt like unholy vanity—he stared for long periods of time in the mirror, coming away with a sense of his own attractiveness: his figure broader than in his youth and certainly the slack of his jawline a product of his years, his hands not too terribly spotted, but the face still nice-looking, still curiously “boyish.”
I’ve seen women looking at me
, he comments to himself.

Arthur rose, taking his loafers in hand, and padded in his stocking feet toward the door, toward his bedroom. (“It’s because of the snoring,” they explain to anyone rude enough to ask; “I don’t have to tell you,” Glady Joe adds.) “Well, well,” he said, kissed his wife good-night, added, “In case you have a heart attack before we next meet.” Arthur and Glady Joe used to say that jokingly to each other in the early years of their marriage, instead of saying “Hey, where’s my kiss?” or “Didn’t you forget something?” The black humor of it appealed to them, but now that they were older, it often startled Glady Joe—both to hear it and to say it to Arthur.

“Sweetie,” said Glady Joe, looking up at Arthur from her vanity, her hand lingering in his for a long moment. She looked into his face and was unexpectedly saddened by the thought of a life without him.

D
ESPITE THEIR ARRANGEMENT
, Arthur still has flashes of desire for his wife. He thought it would pass entirely with the passing of his youth, that he would cease to want to hold her close or would be content with an affectionate but sexless friendship, that he would no longer want to give her pleasure. Oh, most of the time he was in agreement that theirs was an association of comrades and not lovers, but there were still those times when he would laugh at some funny thing she said to their friends or inadvertently funny thing she said to their
children; or see her in those crappy gardening clothes that carried the subtle scent of cow dung, yanking weeds or tilling the soil; or maybe it would hit him as he watched her dressing for an evening out, anointing the hollow between her breasts with Shalimar before dropping her dress over her head (careful not to muss her hair), turning her back to him, saying, “Sweetie, come zip me up.”

The unfairness of his desire for her was that it would assail him at any random moment. Arthur punched his pillow and tossed in bed; he could not get comfortable or stop remembering the smell of Shalimar, so named for the garden at Taj Mahal—one lovesick husband’s monument to his absent wife.