How to Make an American Quilt (31 page)

L
ATER
, as Anna heads down the hall to the bathroom, she hears Mrs. Rubens saying, “Sweetie, leave Anna alone. You two are very different people and you are old enough to understand what I mean by that.”

Glady Joe protests. “Mother.”

But Mrs. Rubens will allow no disharmony in her house. “It
isn’t fair to Anna or to you to start this thing up. These are not
my
rules; this is the way things are.”

Anna pauses in the hallway. Not fair to Anna? Who is she to say what is fair and what is not? Goddamn these white folks anyhow. They think they know goddamn everything about everyone. Who said Anna was willing to be Glady Joe’s friend, in any case? Though, she has to admit, company her own age would, at times, be a welcome thing.

Anna closes the bathroom door, strips off her dress, shoes, and socks. She stares at herself in the mirror, which only reveals her body from the waist up (the waist that is rapidly disappearing), is dismayed by the heavy fullness of her breasts, which have finally lost that irritating tenderness (when the lightest brush of fabric across her nipples made her crazy). Her abdomen pooches, her hips have widened, and suddenly she is glad she has no man to see her naked. She is sad, too. There is no one to hold her, and she wonders if that is what drew her to the boy on the ranch in the first place—the longing to be held. She curses him for making her recall how much she likes being touched (no one had laid a hand on her since she left Pauline’s). Anna believes that people can live without any number of pleasurable sensations, providing they never come into contact with them again. Because once they are reintroduced into a person’s life, the need for that thing becomes consuming and uncontrollable.

She steps into the bath. As she lies on her back, her stomach and breasts peak out of the steaming water, like a small group of South Sea atolls. What had she expected from the boy? Love? Money? Social status? Affection? Revenge? A slap at the parents? At herself? She lifts the washcloth from the water and wrings it dry, the drops of water falling on her many-island body like a tropical rain. She imagines her baby floating in her womb as she floats in the tub and notes that it is asleep.

W
UTHERING
H
EIGHTS
sits unopened on Anna’s dresser, as Anna herself sits in the light of the bed-table lamp, eyes close to the work, stitching patches of Broken Star. She is convinced that she hears someone on the other side of her door, silence, then faint, disappearing footsteps.

Good
, she thinks.

Until the next night, when Glady Joe comes again to the door, asks to be let in. Anna leans back in her chair, legs pushed slightly apart by her girth, her lap containing the unfinished quilt. “Anna,” says Glady Joe, “I thought I’d come by and see if you’d like some ice cream. Mom made it. Tin Roof Sundae.”

“That does sound good,” answers Anna.

In the kitchen, Mr. Rubens is telling some story about a man in his office, someone who works for him, as Mrs. Rubens listens raptly, clucking her tongue in disapproval or surprise at all the appropriate moments. Says things like, “Some people just never appreciate anything” or “They think the world owes them a living.” Maybe she’ll glance in Anna’s direction and smile at her. Anna pretends to be absorbed in her ice cream and wishes that she could politely take it back to her room.

“So I said to him,” says Mr. Rubens, jabbing the air with his spoon, “There’s a depression out there. I don’t need to tell you.”

“Dear,” agrees Mrs. Rubens, “you can only do what is right. You can’t do anything about anyone else; no matter how much you may want to. Nothing goes unseen. We all have to live with ourselves. Finally, I mean. In the end.” She places a tiny bit of ice cream on the tip of her spoon, takes it between her lips.

“Of course, you are right” (Mrs. Rubens nods), he says. “It’s just that it sometimes makes you want to stop helping people—leave them to sink or swim, then let them see how good they had it.”

“Of course,” says Mrs. Rubens.

In comes Hy with two boys and a girl. (“Hello, Lee,” says Mrs. Rubens, smiling. Lee says, “Evening, ma’am. Sir.” Anna can see delight in Mrs. Rubens’s shining eyes as she notes Lee’s wonderful manners and fine demeanor. “The mark of being well bred,” she says later.) The other boy is called James Dodd and the girl, Corrina something—Anna doesn’t catch it.

“Lee brought me home,” says Hy, curls loose after an evening out. Her dress is still nicely pressed—a burnt orange of that new, experimental fabric that is supposed to be so durable—and an elegant alligator belt, really too sophisticated for the young girl who wears it. Hy flings herself into a chair and exclaims, “Ooh, ice cream,” offers some to her friends, who decline (“I promised to have Corrina home by ten-thirty”). Hy merely waves from the table, spooning ice cream into her mouth—a breach of etiquette that does not go unreprimanded by Mrs. Rubens (“Hy, we may live in Grasse but we still have manners”). But Hy just listens, eagerly awaiting the second helping of the ice cream that her mother is scooping into her bowl, never taking her eyes from the spoon to the bowl, with all the intensity of a cat being fed. With one elbow on the table, she slides off her earrings, one, then the other, tosses them toward her mother, thanking her for allowing her to borrow them.

“Well, they looked so pretty on you,” says Mrs. Rubens.

Glady Joe asks, “Who do you like better—Lee or James?” and Hy answers, “Anyone who doesn’t plan to be a farmer.”

Anna is struck by nothing so much as the sense that she truly does not belong here, in this kitchen with Mr. Rubens chatting about the office and Mrs. Rubens’s unconditional sympathy; the loaning of the earrings and the sisterly question about which boy makes the better date/prospect; and how she, Anna, completes the picture of American family perfection by being the charity, the evidence of the goodness of spirit that lives in this house, in this rural
town, in the mid-1930s. She feels as if she is in a darkened theater watching something called The American Family, expecting a deep, resonant, informed voice-over to describe its habits, joys, ambitions, frustrations, and sorrows. Its desirability.

I am no part of this
, thinks Anna.
Not only this house, but this world. This society
. This does not surprise her—what surprises her is the way in which she is both drawn to and repelled by what she sees. She is too late for dating; she would be happy to have a man of her own who kisses her when he comes in at night, calls her honey as he runs his strong, capable hands across her stomach, says good-evening to their baby inside her. They’ll talk about their respective days; as tired as he is from working he’ll gaze at her and say
my pretty girl
. Of course, there is a fantasy in itself—that he would be employed—a dream for half of America. She is lucky to be working, eating this ice cream, which makes it suddenly distasteful to her.

As she takes her bowl to the sink (“More dishes,” she sighs), Glady Joe asks her if she’d like some more; after all, she is eating for two. Anna shakes her head; she wants to return to her room, lose herself in the
Broken Star
, and forget about being seventeen, unwed, unloved, pregnant, and outside the mainstream.

G
LADY
J
OE CONTINUES
to come to Anna’s closed door, usually bearing tea or something to show her or give her, while Anna accepts whatever is offered without much commitment. Each time, Glady Joe marvels over the progress of the quilt—its near completion; its complicated beauty. She asks more technical questions and Anna finds herself warming to the telling of how to make a quilt.

She relents, asks about the book that Glady Joe gave her. As Glady Joe begins to tell her the story of
Wuthering Heights
, she finds herself reading passages aloud; then, beginning at the beginning. In
the room there is only the sound of Glady Joe’s voice reading—as Anna quilts—as Cathy and Heathcliff traverse the wild, desolate English landscape.

Anna likes this tale very much. She likes the remoteness of the setting, the drama of the friendship between the two and the way in which it continues and twists into the next generation. She loves the sense of Heathcliff and Cathy as outlaws; yet Cathy can function within society, while Heathcliff is destroyed and embittered by it. Anna likes his midnight soul; his dark heart.