The Fortune Quilt (9 page)

“I am a whole new strain of stupid,” I mutter to myself.

“Carly?”

I push myself up and see Cheryl from Human Resources standing in the doorway. She glances meaningfully at her watch. Poor thing. It’s been a busy day of showing her co-workers the door.

“I was supposed to be out of here at five-thirty,” she says, apparently not the least bit grateful that she still has a job. “Are you ready?”

Just about ready to slash the tires on the Live Van,
I think, but I follow her down the hall to her office just the same.

Four

“Daddy?” I say as I open the door. I am better now, stronger, not as close to total emotional breakdown as I was after kissing Christopher, although my hands are still a little shaky. I need to have a scotch with my Dad. I need a good night’s sleep. I need to talk about something that is not
Tucson Today
and is not Christopher. I need to think about something else. Maybe play Backgammon.

I find Dad in the dining room. Ella and Five are sitting across the table from him. They look up at me, their eyes red, their faces wet with fresh tears. Sitting next to Dad is my mother and
fuck
if I can’t knock her on timing.

She turns and sees me, then stands up. Her eyes are red. She has a crumpled tissue in one hand. The other hand reaches blindly for Dad, and Dad takes it.

Dad. Takes. It.

“Oh, holy Christ,” I mutter. Ella sniffs and grabs from the Kleenex box on the table. Five looks more stunned than anything. Which makes sense. After all, she has no active memories of the desertion, just the cold dead ache of it. This has to be even more of a shock for her than for the rest of us. At least we have a point of reference.

“Mary,” I say. It feels strange to call her Mary, but she hasn’t really earned
Mom
. I turn my attention to Dad. “She’s coming back?”

He stands up, still holding her hand. His eyes are red, too. Jesus. What’s wrong with this family? Does no one have any self-control?

“She’s my wife,” he says. “And if you’d listen to her—”

“Um, no. I don’t think so.” I sound like a petulant teenager, and I really don’t give a crap. “No. I have had possibly one of the worst days of my young life and this? Is not what I need right now.” I lock my eyes on Dad’s. “Answer the question. Is she coming back?”

Dad looks at Mary, then back at me. “We’re going to try, yes. We’re going to go to therapy—”

“Fuck therapy,” I spit at him. “There isn’t enough therapy in the world to make up for what she did.”

Dad looks like he’s been slapped, and he reddens.

“Carly Simon McKay—” he begins, but I turn my attention to Mary.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I say. “Where do you get the right?”

“Don’t you talk to your mother like that,” my father starts, but Mary puts her hand on his arm and says, “Declan.”

“I’ll talk to her how I want.” I look at Mary and point at Five. “Did you know she hated the name you gave her? Van Morrison McKay? What kind of name is that for a baby girl, anyway? Carly Simon and Ella Fitzgerald were bad enough, but Jesus, lady!”

“Carly!” Dad sounds really pissed off. I’ve never spoken this way in front of him before. It probably doesn’t help that I look and sound like I’m a kid, and that fact fills me with additional fury, which I promptly unleash on my mother.

“She watched too much
Sesame Street
as a baby, because she didn’t have a mother, and decided her name was Five.” The muscles in my legs start to tremble and I know I should leave, but instead I move a step closer to Mary. “Because you weren’t here, my sister is named after a fucking number!”

“Go to your room!” Dad says.

I turn to him, and I’m sure I must look as shocked, hurt and offended as I feel.

“Just to be clear, there’s a difference between looking fifteen and being fifteen,” I say, his betrayal blowing around me like a mini-cyclone.

“And there’s a difference between being twenty-nine and acting it,” he shoots back.

“Go to hell!” I yell at him. I’ve never said this to my father.
Never
. My legs are full-on shaking now and I feel like I’m going to fall over. Ella starts to weep actively in the background. I am at sea, I have no anchor, I don’t know if I’m out of line or not, and I don’t really care.

After the moment of shock passes, Dad opens his mouth to speak, but Mary puts her hand on his arm. Again.

“Declan.”

Dad’s eyes go to her, and he instantly calms. Because she told him to.

Jesus. She’s his wife. Seventeen years, and suddenly, she’s his wife again. My legs start to shake even more violently.

What the hell is wrong with this family, anyway?

Mary looks at me. “I thought I was doing what was best for you.” Her voice is thick, but she’s fighting the tears. Good for her. “You remember how I was. I was a mess. The doctor I found in New Mexico said it was postpartum, but by the time I got better…” She shakes her head, blinks hard, gathers herself. “It took me seventeen years to get over the guilt, to get the courage to come back, to tell you how much I’ve regretted not being here with you.”

“Should have taken forever,” I say.

“Shut up!”

I shift my focus to see Five pushing herself up from the table. She walks toward us and slowly situates herself at Mary’s side.

“At least you got a chance to know her,” Five says. She seems so mature, suddenly. Much more mature than me. And she’s taller than me. And she sounds older than me. I am overwhelmed with sudden bitterness that my baby sister looks more grown-up than I ever will. “I just want to know her. Think about someone besides yourself, Carly. Don’t ruin this for me.” A fresh tear skips over her cheek. “Don’t make her go away again.”

Mary strokes Five’s hair and places a shaky kiss on the top of her head. “I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart
. Huh. I turn to Dad. “So what now?”

His eyes are such a mixture of anger and sadness that I can’t look at them.

“Your mother is moving back,” he says.

“No,” I say.

He has the nerve to look offended. “Excuse me?”

I cross my arms over my stomach. “I said no. If she comes back, then I’m gone.”

I instantly regret the ultimatum, because I am against them. I think they’re horrible and manipulative and I can’t believe I’ve just laid one down. I’m about to take it back when Ella stands up.

“Carly,” she says, “you can’t do that.”

Yet, I can’t go back. Because as much as I despise ultimatums and the people who issue them, I mean it. “It’s done.”

Dad, Mary, Five and Ella exchange looks. Then I see Five entwine her fingers with Mary’s. Ella sniffles and takes a step toward me. “You can stay with me and Greg.”

She puts her hand on my arm and I wrench it out of her grip, my eyes on Mary.

“I was twelve.” I point to Ella. “I couldn’t go out for field hockey because I had to be here every afternoon when she got home from school.” I nod toward Five. “When she was eight months old, she had chicken pox and almost died. I snuck into her room and slept in the chair by her bed every night for two months because I was so terrified she’d stop breathing in the middle of the night. While you were in New Mexico having a good long conference with your inner child, Dad was wandering around this place like a ghost, and I was the one who made sure we had food. And what? You’re sorry, so it’s suddenly okay?”

Mary looks down at her feet and begins to weep. Five puts one arm around Mary’s shoulder and gives me the most blatantly mutinous glare I’ve ever gotten. I feel Dad-, Ella-, and Five-shaped holes burrowing their ways through me. And that is when everything breaks for me. The emotion is suddenly gone, as though some determined housewife simply swept it away. I am no longer angry. I am no longer hurt. I am cold inside. I am hollowed out. I am relieved.

“I’m gonna go pack,” I say.

Dad gives a tired sigh. “Carly—”

“No worries.” I allow a tight smile. “I’m fine.”

I turn my back on all of them. My legs take over, carrying me out of the kitchen, up to my room. On autopilot, I pack random bits of my stuff and bring it down to my car. I toss my hairbrush in my suitcase, but I forget underwear. The four of them stay in the dining room; I can hear them talking in hushed tones as I pass by with boxes and luggage. I need something to wrap my little thirteen inch television in and grab the quilt from under my bed. It is my last trip. I shut the door behind me and get in the car, without the slightest fucking clue where I’m going.

I’m halfway to Phoenix when I glance in my rearview mirror, and a swatch of light from a streetlight washes over the quilt-covered television. A sudden realization and a crazy calm comes over me.

It’s the quilt’s fault.

It’s the
quilt’s
fault.

Before the quilt, everything was fine. Then Brandywine McCrazy gives me this quilt, talking about books with amber spines and women named Mary and—

“And—oh!” I say, smacking the palm of my hand down on the steering wheel and accidentally hitting the horn. “South America!”

Reginald Davies took off for Buenos Aires. That was the rumor. I heard it.

My life was fine, it was
fine
, before Brandywine Seaver and her stupid fucking quilt. A part of me—the sane part, I’m thinking—sits back helplessly and watches as I take the next exit and trade I-10 West for I-10 East. This part of me knows I’m completely off my nut, that I don’t believe in quilts or curses, that spending my time racing to Bilby to confront a quilt maker when I’m homeless and unemployed is just plain nuts, and yet, this part doesn’t stop me.

Probably because it couldn’t if it tried.

***

It is past ten o’clock by the time I pull up in front of Brandywine Seaver’s artsy little cottage. The green lawn rocks, the “Rentals Available” sign, the picket fence… all of it is pissing me off. I’m annoyed by the
air
in Bilby. I’m annoyed by the very
existence
of Bilby. It’s a stupid artsy stupid town with a stupid name and stupid left-wing nut cases running around being all Bohemian with their sandals and their recycled toilet paper, and I despise them all.

The sane part of me realizes, of course, that the only nutcase in the vicinity at the moment is me, but doesn’t make a big deal out of it.

I step out of my car and open the back door, yanking the stupid quilt off the television and bundling it in my arms. I slam the door to my car with my hip and march up the path to Brandywine Seaver’s house. This time, I wrap my finger in the quilt to protect it from the zapping doorbell of death.

I hope it catches on fire,
I think
. I hope this entire town goes down in flames.

Brandywine Seaver opens the door. She has two pieces of fabric draped over her shoulder and her hair is half in a ponytail, half out. She looks like she’s had a long day, but I don’t care, because she and her stupid quilt ruined my life.

She stares at me blankly for a second, then her eyes flash surprise and recognition. “Carly?”

“Take it!” I say, shoving the quilt toward her. She makes no move to take it from me, nor does she look at me like I’m insane. Which I clearly am. What the hell is wrong with her, anyway?

She cocks her head slightly to one side and looks at me with kindness and understanding. “Do you want to come inside? I can make us some tea.”

“What are you?” I say. “A witch?”

“Well…” Her lips twitch in a smile. “Yes, actually. Wiccan, anyway. But what does that have to do with—”

“I knew it!” I say, pointing my finger at her, only it’s still wrapped under the quilt from hitting the doorbell, and I look like an insane Martha Stewart wannabe trying to hold up an insane Martha Stewart wannabe. “You did something to me! You gave me this quilt, and you ruined my life. My life? Is ruined. I am homeless, I am jobless, and my best friend is in love with me. What… what… what…?” I stammer. I am insane. The part of me that is sane enough to recognize this sighs and gives up. I narrow my eyes at Brandywine Seaver. “What did you do to me?”

Brandy watches me for a moment, her face showing no sign of irritation. She is sympathetic, and yet not pitying. I get the feeling that somehow she knows what’s going on without my having to tell her, which I guess would make sense, seeing as how she put the damn curse on me in the first place.

Brandy steps out of her home and puts her hand gently on my shoulder.

“I think you might benefit from a cup of chamomile tea,” she says gently. “It’s very calming.”

I am about to refuse, but then, it starts to rain. The thing about storms in the southwest is that on the rare occasions that the skies allow them, they really mean it. Within seconds there are big fat droplets attacking me from all sides.

I am homeless. I am unemployed. And a witch who has cursed my life is offering me sanctuary.