The Goodbye Quilt
Susan Wiggs
Linda Davis's local fabric shop is a place where women gather to share their creations: quilts commemorating important events in their lives. Wedding quilts, baby quilts, memorial quilts—each is bound tight with dreams, hopes and yearnings.Now, as her only child readies for college, Linda is torn between excitement for Molly and heartache for herself. Who will she be when she is no longer needed in her role as mom? What will become of her days? Of her marriage? Mother and daughter decide to share one last adventure together—a cross-country road trip to move Molly into her dorm. As they wend their way through the heart of the country, Linda stitches together the scraps that make up Molly's young life. And in the quilting of each bit of fabric—the hem of a christening gown, a snippet from a Halloween costume—Linda discovers that the memories of a shared journey can come together in a way that will keep them both warm in the years to come….
Also by SUSAN WIGGS
Contemporary HOME BEFORE DARK THE OCEAN BETWEEN US SUMMER BY THE SEA TABLE FOR FIVE LAKESIDE COTTAGE JUST BREATHE
The Lakeshore Chronicles SUMMER AT WILLOW LAKE THE WINTER LODGE DOCKSIDE SNOWFALL AT WILLOW LAKE FIRESIDE LAKESHORE CHRISTMAS THE SUMMER HIDEAWAY MARRYING DAISY BELLAMY
Historical THE LIGHTKEEPER THE DRIFTER
The Tudor Rose Trilogy AT THE KING’S COMMAND THE MAIDEN’S HAND AT THE QUEEN’S SUMMONS
Chicago Fire Trilogy THE HOSTAGE THE MISTRESS THE FIREBRAND
Calhoun Chronicles THE CHARM SCHOOL THE HORSEMASTER’S DAUGHTER HALFWAY TO HEAVEN ENCHANTED AFTERNOON A SUMMER AFFAIR
The
Goodbye
Quilt
SUSAN WIGGS
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
To my curly-headed daughter, Elizabeth—
you are my sunshine.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’m very fortunate to have a publisher that allows me to put my heart on paper. Many thanks to my editor and great friend, Margaret O’Neill Marbury, and to everyone at MIRA Books. As always, I’m indebted to Meg Ruley, Annelise Robey and their associates at the Jane Rotrosen Agency—your wisdom, patience and friendship mean the world to me.
To my fellow writers—Anjali Banerjee, Kate Breslin, Carol Cassella, Sheila Roberts and Suzanne Selfors—thank you so much for reading multiple drafts and helping me pull this patchwork of emotion together.
I’m grateful to master quilter Marybeth O’Halloran for the insights and expertise into her colorful world—any liberties and errors in the text are my own. A very special thank-you to my dear friend, Joan Vassiliadis, for creating the original Goodbye Quilt and for sharing her talent in the pages of this book.
DAY ONE
Odometer Reading 121,047
Wanted: a needle swift enough
to sew this poem into a blanket.
—Charles Simic,
Serbian-American poet
Chapter One
How do you say goodbye to a piece of your heart? If you’re a quilter, you have a time-honored way to express yourself.
A quilt is an object of peculiar intimacy. By virtue of the way it is created, every inch of the fabric is touched. Each scrap absorbs the quilter’s scent and the invisible oils of her skin, the smell of her household and, thanks to the constant pinning and stitching, her blood in the tiniest of quantities. And tears, though she might be loath to admit it.
My adult life has been a patchwork of projects, most of which were fleeting fancies of overreaching vision. I tend to seize on things, only to abandon them due to a lack of time, talent or inclination. There are a few things I’m truly good at—Jeopardy!, riding a bike, balancing a checkbook, orienteering, making balloon animals … and quilting.
I’m good at pulling together little bits and pieces of disparate objects. The process suits me. Each square captures my attention like a new landscape. Everything about quilting suits me, an occupation for hands and heart and imagination.
Other things didn’t work out so well—Szechuan cooking, topiary gardening, video games and philately come to mind.
My main project, my ultimate work-in-progress, is Molly, of course. And today she’s going away to college, clear across the country. Correction—I’m taking her away, delivering her like an insured parcel to a new life.
Hence the quilt. What better memento to give my daughter than a handmade quilt to keep in her dorm room, a comforter stitched with all the memories of her childhood? It’ll be a tangible reminder of who she is, where she comes from … and maybe, if I’m lucky, it will offer a glimpse of her dreams.
All my quilting supplies come from a shop in town called Pins & Needles. The place occupies a vintage building on the main street. It’s been in continuous operation for more than five decades. As a child, I passed its redbrick and figured concrete storefront on my way to school each day, and I still remember the kaleidoscope of fabrics in the window, flyers announcing classes and raffles, the rainbow array of rich-colored thread, the treasure trove of glittering notions. My first job as a teenager was at the shop, cutting fabric and ringing up purchases.
When Molly started school, I worked there part time, as much for the extra money as for the company of women who frequented Pins & Needles. Fall is wonderful at the fabric shop, a nesting time, when people are making Halloween costumes, Thanksgiving centerpieces and Christmas decorations. People are never in a hurry in a fabric shop. They browse. They talk about their projects, giving you a glimpse of their lives.
The shop is a natural gathering place for women. The people I’ve met there through the years have become my friends. Customers and staff members stand around the cutting tables to discuss projects, give demonstrations and workshops, offer advice on everything from quilting techniques to child rearing to marriage. The ladies there all know about my idea to make a quilt as a going-away gift for Molly. Some of them even created pieces for me to add, embroidered with messages of “Good Luck” and “Congratulations.”
You can always tell what’s going on in a woman’s life based on the quilt she’s working on. The new-baby quilts are always light and soft, the wedding quilts pure and clean, filled with tradition, as though a beautiful design might be an inoculation against future strife. Housewarming quilts tend to be artistic, suitable for hanging on an undecorated wall. The most lovingly created quilts of all are the memory quilts, often created as a group project to commemorate a significant event, help with healing or to celebrate a life.
I’ve always thought a quilt held together with a woman’s tears to be the strongest of all.
Nonquilters have a hard time getting their heads around the time and trouble of a project like this. My friend Cherisse, who has three kids, said, “Linda, honey, I’m just glad to get them out of the house—up and running, with no criminal record.” Another friend confessed, “My daughter would only ruin it. She’s so careless with her things.” My neighbor Erin, who started law school when her son entered first grade, now works long hours and makes a ton of money. “I wish I had the time,” she said wistfully when I showed her my project.
What I’ve found is that you make time for the things that matter to you. Everyone has the time. It’s just a question of deciding what to do with that time. For some people, it’s providing for their family. For others, it’s finding that precarious balance between taking care of business and the soul-work of being there for husband, children, friends and neighbors.
I’m supposed to be making the last-minute preparations before our departure on the epic road trip, but instead I find myself dithering over the quilt, contemplating sashing and borders and whether my color palette is strong and balanced. Although the top is pieced, the backing and batting in place, there is still much work to be done. Embellishments to add. It might not be proper quilting technique, but quilting is an art, not a science. My crafter’s bag is filled with snippets of fabric culled from old, familiar clothes, fabric toys and textiles that have been outgrown, but were too dear or too damaged to take to the Goodwill bin. I’m a big believer in charity bins. Just because a garment is no longer suitable doesn’t mean it couldn’t be right for someone else. On the other hand, some things are not meant to be parted with.
I sift through the myriad moments of Molly’s childhood, which I keep close to my heart, like flowers from a prized bouquet, carefully pressed between sheets of blotter paper. I fold the quilt and put it in the bag with all the bright bits and mementos—a tiny swatch of a babydoll’s nightie, an official-looking Girl Scout badge, a precious button that is the only survivor of her first Christmas dress… . So many memories lie mute within this long-handled bag, waiting for me to use them as the final embellishments on this work of art.
I’ll never finish in time.
You can do this. I try to give myself a pep talk, but the words fall through my mind and trickle away. This is unexpected, this inability to focus. A panic I haven’t been expecting rises up in me, grabbing invisibly at my chest. Breathe, I tell myself. Breathe.
The house already feels different; a heaviness hangs in the drapes over the old chintz sofa. Sounds echo on the wooden floors—a suitcase being rolled to the front porch, a set of keys dropped on the hall table. An air of change hovers over everything.
Dan has driven to the Chevron station to fill the Suburban’s tank. He’s not coming; this long drive without him will be a first for our family. Until now, every road trip has involved all three of us—Yellowstone, Bryce Canyon, Big Sur, speeding along endless highways with the music turned up loud. We did everything as a family. I can’t even remember what Dan and I used to do before Molly. Those days seem like a life that happened to someone else. We were a couple, but Molly made us a family.
This time, Dan will stay home with Hoover, who is getting on in years and doesn’t do well at the kennel anymore.
It’s better this way. Dan was never fond of saying goodbye. Not that anybody enjoys it, but in our family, I’m always the stoic, the one who makes the emotional work look easy—on the outside, anyway. My solo drive back home will be another first for me. I hope I’ll use the time well, getting to know myself again, maybe. Scary thought—what if I get to know myself and I’m someone I don’t want to be?
Now, as the heaviness of the impending departure presses down on me, I wonder if we should have planned things differently. Perhaps the three of us should have made this journey together, treating it as a family vacation, like a trip to Disney World or the Grand Canyon.
On the other hand, that’s a bad idea. There can be no fooling ourselves into thinking this is something other than what it is—the willful ejection of Molly from our nest. It’s too late for second thoughts, anyway. She has to be moved into her dorm in time for freshman orientation. It’s been marked on the kitchen calendar for weeks—the expiration date on her childhood.
At the other end of the downstairs, a chord sounds on the piano. Molly tends to sit down and play when she has a lot on her mind. Maybe it’s her way of sorting things out.
I’m grateful for the years of lessons she took, even when we could barely afford them. I wanted my daughter to have things I never had, and music lessons are one of them. She’s turned into an expressive musician, transforming standard pieces into something heartfelt and mystical. Showy trills and glissandos sluice through the air, filling every empty space in the house. The piano will sit fallow and silent when she’s away; neither Dan nor I play. He never had the time to learn; I never had the wherewithal or—I admit it—the patience. Ah, but Molly. She was fascinated with the instrument from the time she stretched up on toddler legs to reach the keys of the secondhand piano we bought at auction. She started lessons when she was only six.
All the hours of practice made up the sound track of her growing years. “Bill Grogan’s Goat” was an early favorite, leading to more challenging works, from “The Rainbow Connection” to “Für Elise,” Bartok and beyond. Almost every evening for the past twelve years, Molly practiced while Dan and I cleaned up after dinner. This was her way of avoiding dishwashing duty, and we considered it a fair division of labor—I rinse, he loads, she serenades. She managed to make it to age eighteen without learning to properly load a dishwasher, yet she can play Rachmaninoff.
In the middle of a dramatic pause between chords, a car horn sounds.
The bag with the quilt falls, momentarily forgotten, to the floor. That innocent yip of the horn signals that summer has ended.
Molly stops playing, leaving a profound hollow of silence in the house. Seconds later, I can still feel the throb of the notes in the stillness. I go to the landing at the turn of the stairs in time to see her jump up, leaving the piano bench askew.
She runs outside, the screen door snapping shut behind her like a mousetrap. Watching through the window on the landing, I brace myself for another storm of emotion. She has been saying goodbye to Travis all summer long. Today, the farewell will be final.
Here is a picture of Molly: Curly hair wadded into a messy ponytail. Athletic shorts balanced on her hip bones, a T-shirt with a dead rock star on it. A body toned by youth, volleyball and weekend swims at the lake. A face that shows every emotion, even when she doesn’t want it to.
Now she flings herself into her boyfriend’s arms as a sob breaks from her, mingling with the sound of morning birdsong. Oh, that yearning, the piercing kind only love-dazed teenagers can feel. Hands holding for the last time. Grief written in their posture as their bodies melt together. Travis’s arms encircle her with their ropy strength, and his long form bows protectively, walling her off from me.
This kid is both the best and worst kind of boyfriend a mother wants for her daughter. The best, because he’s a safe driver and he respects her. The worst, because he incites a passion and loyalty in Molly that impairs her vision of the future.
Last spring, he won her heart like a carnival prize in a ring toss, and they’ve been inseparable ever since. He is impossibly, irresistibly good-looking, and there’s no denying that he’s been good to her. He makes no secret of the fact that he doesn’t want her to go away. He wants her to feel as if he is her next step, not college.
All summer I’ve been trying to tell her that the right guy wouldn’t stand in the way of her dreams. The right guy is going to look at her the way Dan once looked at me, as if he could see the whole world in my face. When Travis regards Molly, he’s seeing … not the whole world. His next weekend, maybe.
Hoover lifts his leg and pees on the tire of Travis’s Camaro, the guy’s pride and joy. Travis and Molly don’t notice.
I can’t hear their conversation, but I can see his mouth shape the words: Don’t go.
My heart echoes the sentiment. I want her to stay close, too. The difference is, I know she needs to leave.
Molly speaks; I hope she’s telling him she has to go away, that this opportunity is too big to miss. She has won a scholarship to a world-class private university. She’s getting a chance at a life most people in our small western Wyoming town never dream of. Here in a part of the state that appears roadless and sparse on travel maps, life moves slowly. Our town is filled with good people, harsh weather and a sense that big dreams seem to come true only when you leave. The main industry here is a plant that makes prefab log homes.
I turn away from the window, giving Molly her private farewell. She is far more upset about leaving Travis than about leaving Dan and me, a fact that is hard to swallow.
Dan comes back from the service station. He visits with Travis briefly. I compare the two of them as they stand together talking. Dan is solidly built, his shoulders and arms sculpted by his years at the plant before he made supervisor. He looks as grounded and dependable as the pickup truck he drives. By contrast, Travis is tall and lithe with youth, his slender body curving into a question mark as he gestures with pride at his cherry-red car.
The two of them shake hands; then Dan heads inside. Our eyes meet and skate away; we’re not ready to talk yet. In the kitchen, the two of us make a few final preparations—bundling road maps together, adding ice to the cooler of drinks.
Summer glares against the screen door, its hot scent a reminder that the day is already a few hours old. I think of a thousand other summer days, whiled away without a care for the slow passing of time. We built a tree house, went on bike rides, hung a rope swing over a swimming hole, made sno-cones, watched ants on the march. We lay faceup in the grass and stared at clouds until our eyes watered. We fought about curfews, shopped for back-to-school supplies, sang along with songs on the radio. We laughed at nothing until our sides ached, and cried at movies with sad endings.
I sneak a glance at Dan. I can’t picture him crying at the movies with me. That was always Molly’s role, the exclusive domain of females. Without really planning to, she and I created rituals and traditions, and these things formed a powerful bond.
There is a vehemence to the thoughts tearing through my head, a sense of rebellion—How can I just let her go? I didn’t sign up for this—for creating my greatest work only to have to shove her away from me.
When I pushed her out into the world, she was handed immediately into my arms. I never thought of letting her go, only of holding her next to my heart, under which she’d grown, already adored by the time she made her appearance. The idea of her leaving was an abstraction, a nonspecified Someday. Now it’s all happening, exactly as we planned. Except I didn’t plan for it to throttle me.
Dan seems easy about the process. He’s always accepted—even welcomed—life’s movements from one phase to the next, like birthdays or promotions at work. He is the sort of person who makes life look effortless, a trait I admire and sometimes envy in him.
As for me, I find myself unable to move. I’m not ready. This wrenching grief has blindsided me. I didn’t expect it to be this intense. All kids leave home. That’s the way it works. If you do your job of parenting correctly, this is the end result. They leave. When it doesn’t work that way, that’s when a mother should worry. If the kid sticks around, takes up permanent residence in her childhood bedroom, you’re considered a failure.
Ah, but the price of succeeding is a piece of your soul. I bite my lip to keep from trying to explain this to Dan. He would tell me I’m being overly dramatic. Maybe so, but everything about this process feels dramatic. This child has been the focus of every day of my life for the past eighteen years. After being a parent for so long, I am forced to surrender the role. Now, all of a sudden, a void has opened up.
Snap out of it, I tell myself. I have so much to be thankful for—this rich, full life. Health, husband and home. And lots to look forward to. It’s wrong to mope and wallow in the tragedy of it all. What’s the matter with me?
The matter is this—I’m facing a huge loss. The biggest part of my daughter’s life is about to start, and it doesn’t include me and Dan. Granted, we’ve had plenty of time to prepare, but now that the moment has arrived, it’s as unexpectedly painful as a sudden accident.
Although greeting card companies have created themes around every possible life event, there’s no ritual for this particular transition.
This is surprising, because when a child leaves for college, it is the end of something. Other than birth or death, leaving home for any reason is the most extreme of life transitions. One moment we’re a family of three. The next, we’ve lost a vital member. It’s a true loss, only people don’t understand your grief. They don’t send you sympathy cards or invite you to join a support group. They don’t flock to comfort you. They don’t come to your door bearing tuna casseroles and bottles of Cold Duck and platters of cookies on their good chintz china.
Instead, the journey to college is a rite of passage we mark as a joyous occasion, one we celebrate by buying luggage and books on how to build a fulfilling life. But really, if you ask any mother, she’ll tell you that deep down, we want to mark it as a loss, a funeral of sorts. We never show our sorrow, though. Our sadness stays in the shadows like something slightly shameful.
Travis leaves, peeling himself away like a Band-aid that’s been stuck on too long. His union job at the plant keeps him on a strict schedule; he cannot linger. Molly stands on the front sidewalk and watches his Camaro growing smaller and smaller down the tree-lined street, flanked by timber frame houses from the 1920s, remnants of the days when this was a company town. Molly’s face is stiff and pale, as if she’s been shocked and disoriented by unexpected pain. Her arms are folded across her middle.
I hurry outside, wanting to comfort her. “I know it’s hard,” I say, giving her a hug.
She is stiff and unyielding, regarding me like an intruder. “You have no idea how this feels,” she says. “You never had to leave Dad.”
She’s right. Dan and I met at a bar twenty-some years ago, and after our first dance together, we already knew we’d be a couple. If somebody had told me I had to leave him and head off to a world of strangers, would I have been willing to do that? Yes, shouts a seldom-heard voice inside me—oh, yes.
Molly waits for an answer.
“Aw, Moll. Your dad and I were in a much different place—”
“Nobody forced you two apart,” she says, her voice rising.
“And nobody’s forcing you and Travis apart.”
“Then why am I leaving? Why am I going thousands of miles away?”
“Because it’s what you’ve always wanted, Molly.”
“Maybe I’ve changed my mind. Maybe I should stay and go to college in state.”
“We need to finish loading the car,” I tell her.
We argue. Loudly, in the driveway. About what won’t fit in the car. About what is necessary, what Molly will not be able to do without. She flounces into the house and returns a few minutes later with a duffel bag and a green-shaded lamp.
“Sweetie, I don’t think you need the lamp,” I point out.
“I want to bring it. I’ve always liked this lamp.” She crams the duffel bag in the back, using it to cushion the lamp.
It has shone over her desk while she worked diligently at connect-the-dots, a report on Edward Lear, a tear-stained journal, a labored-over college essay, a love letter to Travis Spellman. The lamp has been a silent sentinel through the years. Remembering this, I quickly surrender. I don’t want to argue anymore, especially not today.
Like making the quilt, driving her to college seemed like a good idea at the time. She could have flown, and shipped her things separately, but I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her at the curb at the airport like a houseguest who’s overstayed her welcome.
A road trip just seemed so appealing, a final adventure for the two of us to share. A farewell tour. All through the summer I’ve been picturing us in the old Suburban, stuffed to the top with things Molly will need in the freshman dorm, singing along with the radio and reminiscing about old times. Now as I face the sullen rebellion in Molly’s face, the idyllic picture dissipates.
The trip is still a good idea, though. A long drive with no one but each other for company will give us a chance to talk about matters we’ve been avoiding all summer long, possibly her entire adolescence. When she was little, we discussed the great matters of her life at bedtime, lying together in the dark, watching the play of moon shadows on the ceiling. In high school, she stayed up later than I did, and our conversations shrank to sleepy utterances. Nighttime was punctuated by the creak of a floorboard under a furtive foot, the rasp of a toothbrush washing away the smell of a sneaked beer. Some days, we barely spoke a half-dozen words.
I want these long, empty hours with her on the road. I need them with an intensity that I hide from Molly, because I don’t want her to worry that I’m getting desperate. She’s a worrier, my Molly. A pleaser. She wants everyone to be happy, and if she had some inkling of how I’m feeling right now, she’d try to do something about it. I don’t want her to feel as if she’s responsible for my happiness. Good lord, who would wish that on a child?
We finish packing. Everything is in order, every checklist completed, our iPods organized with music and podcasts, every contact duly entered in our mobile phones. Finally, the moment has arrived.
“Well,” says Dan. “I guess that’s it.”
What’s it? I wonder. What? But I smile and say, “Yep. Ready, kiddo?”
“In a minute,” she says, stooping and patting her leg to call the dog.
I am unprepared for the wrench as she says goodbye to Hoover. We adopted the sweet-faced Lab mix as a pup when Molly was four. They grew up together—littermates, we used to call them, laughing at their rough-and-tumble antics. Since then, she has shared every important moment with the dog—holidays, neighborhood walks and summer campouts, fights with friends, Saturday morning cartoons, endless tosses of slimy tennis balls.
Through the years, Hoover has endured wearing doll clothes and sunglasses, being pushed in a stroller, taken to school for show-and-tell, and sneaked under the covers on cold winter nights. These days, he has slowed down, and is now as benign and endearing as a well-loved velveteen toy. None of us dares to acknowledge what we all know—that he will be gone by the time Molly finishes college.
She hunkers down in front of him, cradling his muzzle between her hands in the way I’ve seen her do ten thousand times before. She burrows her face into his neck and whispers something. Hoover gives a soft groan of contentment, loving the attention. When she draws away, he tries to reel her back in with a lifted front paw—Shake, boy. Molly rises slowly, grasps the paw for a moment, then gently sets it down.
Next, she turns to Dan. I notice the stiff set of his shoulders and the way he checks and rechecks everything—tires, cell phone batteries, wiper fluid. I can see him checking Molly, too, but she doesn’t recognize the pain in his probing looks. He hides behind a mask of bravado, reassuring to his daughter but transparent to me.
Their goodbye mirrors their history together through the years—loving, a little awkward. He’s never been one to show his emotions, but he was the one who taught her to swim, to laugh, to belch on command, to throw a baseball overhand, to pump up a bicycle tire, to eat smoked oysters straight out of the can, to flatten pennies on railroad tracks.
Their farewell is perfunctory, almost casual. They both seem to possess a quiet understanding that their lives are meant to intersect and diverge. “Call me tonight,” he says. “Call me whenever you want.”
“Sure, Dad. Love you.”
They hug. He kisses her on the crown of her head. His hand lingers on her arm; she doesn’t meet his eyes. Sunlight glances off the car window as she gets in.
Dan comes around to the other side and kisses me, his lips warm and familiar. “Take care, Linda,” he says in a husky voice, the same thing he always says to me, but today the words carry extra weight.
“Of course,” I say, holding him for an extra beat. Then I whisper in his ear, “How will I get through this?”
He pulls back, giving me a quizzical look. “Because you will,” he says simply. “You can do anything, Lindy.”
I smile to acknowledge the kind words, but I’m not certain I trust them.
The rearview mirror frames a view of our boxy, painted house, where we’ve lived since before Molly was born. Not for the first time, it hits me that I’ll come home to an empty nest. People say this stage of life is a golden time, filled with possibility. Someone—probably a woman with too many kids and pets—once said the true definition of freedom is when the last child leaves home and the dog dies. At last, you get your life back. Your time is your own. The trouble is—and I can’t bear to admit this, even to Dan—I never said I wanted it back.
As we pull out onto the street, he stands and watches us go, the dog leaning against his leg. My husband braces an arm on the front gate and lowers his head. When I get back from this journey, he and I will be alone again, the way we were eighteen years ago, before the explosion of love that was Molly, before late-night feedings and bouts of the croup, before scary movies and argued-over curfews, before pranks and laughter, tempests and tears.
With Molly gone, we’ll have all this extra space in our lives. I’ll have to look him in the eye and ask, “Are you still the same person I married?” Or maybe the real question is, Am I?
I picture us seated across the dinner table from each other, night after night. What will we talk about? Do we know everything about each other, or is there still more to discover? I can’t recall the last time I asked him about his dreams and desires, or the last time he asked me something more than “Did you feed the dog this morning?”
I invested so much more time in Molly over the years. When there’s a daughter keeping us preoccupied, it’s easy to slip away from each other.
With all my heart, I hope it’s equally easy to reach across the divide. I suppose I’ll find out soon enough.
Chapter Two
I don’t even bother offering to drive. Molly insists on driving everywhere, and has done so ever since she turned sixteen. At the moment this is a convenient arrangement. I can use the time to work on the quilt. I’m picturing the completed piece at the other end of the journey—warm and soft, a tangible reminder of Molly’s past. Each bit of fabric is a puzzle piece of her childhood, tessellating with the others around it. All that remains is to finish quilting the layers together, adding more embellishments along the way.
Working by hand rather than machine is soothing, and the pattern is free-form within the wooden hoop. On the solid pieces of fabric, words and messages can be embedded like secrets in code: Courage. You’re beautiful. Walk it off. Freud was wrong. I should declare the thing finished by now but, like a nesting magpie, I keep adding bright trinkets—a button from a favorite sweater, a blue ribbon from a piano recital, a vintage handkerchief and a paste earring that belonged to her grandmother. There’s some old, faded fabric from Molly’s kindergarten apron, green with little laughing monkey heads. And a bow from her prom corsage, worn with shining pride just a few months ago.
Though it’s impossible to be objective, I know this thing I have created is beautiful, even with all its flaws. Even though it’s not finished. This is a record of her days with me, from the moment I realized I was pregnant—I was working in the garden, wearing a yellow dotted halter top, which is now part of the quilt—to today. Yes, even today I grabbed Hoover’s favorite bandanna to incorporate.
Like so many projects I’ve tackled over the years—like parenting itself—the quilt is ambitious and unwieldy. But maybe the hours of enforced idleness in the car will be just what I need to add the final flourishes.
As we drive along the main street of our town, Molly looks out at the flower baskets on the streetlamp poles, the little coffee stands and cafés, the bank and bike shop and bookstore, the fashion boutiques and galleries advertising fall sales, the congregational church with its painted white spire. There’s the stationery shop, advertising back-to-school specials, and of course, Pins & Needles, my favorite place in town. The charming old building stands shoulder-to-shoulder between a bakery and a boutique, sharing a concrete keystone that marks the year it was built—1902. Arched windows in the upper stories, which house an optometrist and a chiropractor, are decked with wrought-iron window boxes filled with asters and mums. On the street level is the abundant display window, replete with fabrics in the delicious colors of autumn—pumpkin and amber, flame red, magenta, shadowy purple.
A small, almost apologetic-looking sign in the window says, “Business For Sale.” Minerva, the shop owner, is retiring and she’s been looking for a buyer since the previous Christmas. She’s told all her customers that if it’s not sold by the new year, she’ll simply close its doors. This option is looking more and more likely. It’s hard to imagine someone with the kind of passion and energy it takes—not to mention the capital—to run a small shop. Once the store is cleared to the bare walls, it will look like a blight on our town’s main street, a missing tooth in the middle of a smile. On top of Molly going away, it’s another blow.
Across the street is a trendy clothing boutique where Molly has spent many an hour—and many a dollar—agonizing over just the right look. As she was trying on jeans the other day, a debate ensued. Do girls on the East Coast wear skinny jeans or boot cut? Do they even wear hoodies? As if I would know these things. When she began worrying about what to wear, I realized that everything was getting very real for Molly. For a girl who has never lived anywhere else, this is a huge step. Now that we’re on the road, she is facing the reality that college is an actual place, not just a display of glossy pictures in a catalog. I want to tell her not to be afraid, but I suspect the advice wouldn’t be welcome.
Navigating the ungainly Suburban up the ramp to the interstate, Molly fiddles with the radio, but it’s all talk so she switches it off. We’ve got our iPods if we’re desperate for music.
From the grim look on Molly’s face as she cranes her neck to check the rearview mirror, it’s clear that she knows I was right about the lamp taking up too much space. I can’t help thinking what I won’t allow myself to say: I told you so.
Agitated, I put on my discount-store reading glasses—the ones that perch on my nose and make me look like a schoolmarm. Another visible rite of passage. For me, the moment occurred a few years back, when I turned thirty-nine-and-a-half. I was in a gift shop, trying to read a sale tag, and suddenly my arm wasn’t quite long enough to make out the price.
A sales clerk offered me a pair of reading glasses, and the fine print came into focus. The fact that the glasses had cute faux-Burberry frames offered scant comfort. At first, I was a bit embarrassed to put them on around Dan and Molly, but when you love needlework and crossword puzzles as much as I do, you swallow your pride.
I open the canvas quilt bag and the project spills across my lap. The oval hoop frames a section made of a calico maternity blouse I wore while carrying Molly. I stab the needle in, telling myself it’ll be finished soon enough, one stitch after another. The needle flashes in and out like a little silver dart.
“Bad intersection up here,” I say, glancing up when we reach the crossroads leading to the interstate. “Be sure you signal.”
“Hello. I’ve only been through this intersection a zillion times. And did you know that at eighteen, a person’s vision is performing at its peak?”
I adjust my glasses. “So is her smart mouth.” My needle starts writing the words “be sweet,” adding a curlicue at the end.
“I’m just saying, don’t worry about my driving. I learned from the best.”
This is true. Dan’s an excellent driver, alert and confident, traits he passed along to our daughter. Most of her friends learned through Driver’s Ed, but money was tight that year due to a layoff, and Dan did the honors. I used to wonder what they talked about during all those hours of practice, but when I asked, they both offered blank looks. “We didn’t talk about anything.”
What she means is, Dan has a way of communicating without talk. He can speak volumes with a glance, a chuckle or a shrug. The two of them are comfortable in their silence in the way Molly and I are comfortable nattering away at each other.
Sure enough, there’s a small tangle of traffic at the intersection, but I bite my tongue. Literally, I press my teeth into my tongue. I will not speak up. The time is past for correcting my daughter, giving directives. These final days together should be special, sacred almost, the last slender thread of a bond that has endured for eighteen years and is about to be willfully severed.
Molly expertly accelerates up the on-ramp and merges smoothly with the flow of traffic. She keeps her eyes on the road, her profile delicate and clean-lined, startlingly adult.
It’s a bright September morning, and the lingering heat of late summer shimmers, turning the asphalt into a river of mercury. With a flick of her little finger, Molly signals and moves into the swift current of the middle lane. She is a competent driver, skilled, even. She’s competent and skilled at many things—water polo, trigonometry, getting rid of phone solicitors, being a good friend.
Her spirit, her self-assurance and independence, are the sort of wonderful qualities a mother wants in her daughter. My goal was always to raise a child capable of making judgments on her own. Teaching her has been a joyous process, while actually seeing her go off in her own direction is intensely bittersweet. Adulthood, I suppose, is the final exam to see which lessons she absorbed.
“What do you suppose your father’s doing?” I ask, picturing Dan alone in the house. For the next several days, his diet will consist only of things that can be made from tortilla chips, cheese and cold cuts.
Molly shrugs. Her shiny dark curls spring with the motion. “He’s probably breaking out the cigars.”
I think of him standing on the driveway this morning, giving his daughter an awkward hug before stepping back, stiff-faced, his eyes shining. I wonder if she looked in the rearview mirror as we pulled away, if she saw her father bow his head, then lean down to pet the dog.
“Oh, come on,” I chide her. “Is that what you really think?”
“I don’t know. I figure he’s been looking forward to this day for a long time. Dad’s good with change.”
Meaning I’m not. And although he might be good with this particular change, there’s a part of him that has come unmoored. Dan loves Molly with both a consuming flame and a heart-pounding fear. Their complicated relationship has always been full of contradictions. Dan was in the delivery room when Molly was born on a cold February morning eighteen years ago, and the moment the baby appeared in all her pulsing, slippery, newborn glory, he wept, the tears soaking into the paper surgical mask they’d made him wear. The first time Molly was placed in his arms, he held the tiny bundle with the shocked immobility of abject terror. He hadn’t smiled down into the red, wrinkled face, not the way I did, instantly a mother, with a mother’s serene confidence and a sense of accomplishment so intense I was floating. He hadn’t cooed and swayed to that universal internal lullaby all mothers begin to hear the moment the baby is laid in their arms. He had simply stood and looked as though someone had handed him a vial of nitroglycerin.
Yet last night, I awakened to find him crying. He was absolutely silent, but the bed quivered with his fight to keep from making a sound. I said nothing, but lay perfectly still, helplessly drifting. Have I lost the ability to comfort him? Maybe I just didn’t want to intrude. We are each dealing with the departure of our only child in our own way. When you’re married, you don’t get to be let in, not to everything.
“Trust me,” I assure Molly. “He’s going to miss you like crazy.”
“He never said so.”
“He wouldn’t. But that doesn’t mean he won’t be missing you every single second.”
“I guess.”
Too often, there’s a disconnect between Dan and Molly, despite the undeniable fact that they love each other. I pause, frowning at a knot that has formed in my thread. “That’s just the way he is,” I tell Molly. This is my role—the go-between, translating for the two of them.
I tease the knot loose and go back to my stitching. The border abuts a trapezoid-shaped swatch of neutral-colored lawn, snipped from the dress she wore to the eighth-grade banquet, the first grown-up dance of her life. At age thirteen she was impossible, taking drama to new heights and sullenness to new depths. I used to try to turn our dirgelike family dinners into something a little more upbeat. “What’s the highlight of your day?” I used to ask my husband and daughter. “What’s the one thing that makes it worth getting up in the morning?”
Dan had been grinding pepper on his salad in that deliberate way of his. Barely looking up, he said, “When Molly smiles at me.”
He startled both Molly and me with that remark. And our sullen, teenage daughter had smiled at him.
Now Molly’s phone rings with a familiar tone—an Eddie Vedder song called “The Face of Love.” It’s Travis’s ringtone.
A heartbreaking softness suffuses her face as she picks up. “Hi,” she says, her voice as intimate as a lover’s. “I’m driving.” She listens for a moment, then ends with a “Yeah, me, too,” and closes the phone.
More silence. The needle darts. The day slides by the car windows. Prairie towns between endless grasslands. We make a pit stop, eat some junk food, talk about nothing. Same as we always do.
DAY TWO
Odometer Reading 121,633
… it may have been some unconsciously
craved compensation for the drab
monotony of their days that caused the
women … to evolve quilt patterns
so intricate. Only a soul in desperate
need of nervous outlet could have
conceived and executed, for instance,
the “Full Blown Tulip” …
—Ruth E. Finley,
Old Patchwork Quilts and the Women Who Made Them
Chapter Three
“Remember this one?” I ask, angling part of the quilt into Molly’s line of vision.
“I guess.”
“I bet you don’t remember it.”
“Then why did you ask? You always do that, Mom.”
“Do I? I never noticed.”
“You’re always quizzing me about stuff you think should be important to me.”
“Really? Yikes.” I brush my hand over the piece of purple cotton, covered by lace.
“So what about that one?” She is instantly suspicious. All summer long, little “do-you-remembers” and “last times” have sneaked in—the last time we drove to the lake at the county line to set off fireworks, the last time Dan and I attended one of her piano recitals, the last time she went for a haircut at the Twirl & Curl.
“It’s from a dress your father bought you,” I say, needle pushing in and out, running a line of stitches to spell out Daddy’s girl.
“Dad bought me a dress? No way.”
“He did, at the Mexican Marketplace. I can’t believe you forgot.”
“Mom. What was I, three or four years old?”
“Four, I think.”
“I rest my case.”
In my mind’s eye, I can still see her turning in front of the hall mirror, showing off the absurd confection of purple cotton and cheap lace. “It swirls,” Molly had shouted, spinning madly. “It swirls!” I was less charmed when she insisted on wearing it to church for the next nine weeks. The dress fell apart years ago, but there was enough fabric left to work into the quilt.
Memories flow past in a swift smear of color, like the warehouses and billboards lining the interstate. When I shut my eyes, I can picture so many moments, frozen in time. So many details, sharp as a captured image—the wisp of my newborn baby’s hair, the sweet curve of her cheek as she nurses. I can still imagine the drape of her christening gown, which is wrapped in tissue now, stored in the bottom of the painted cedar chest in the guestroom. I can clearly see myself poking a spoonful of white cereal into a round little birdlike mouth. I see Molly spring forward on chubby legs off the side of the pool, into my outstretched arms.
All those firsts. The first day of kindergarten: Molly wore her hair in two tight pigtails, her plaid jumper ironed in crisp pleats, her backpack filled with waxy-smelling new crayons, sharpened pencils, lined paper, a lunch I’d spent forty-five minutes preparing.
“Do you remember your first day of school?” I ask her now, flourishing the part of the quilt made of the uniform blouse.
“Sure. My teacher was Miss Robinson, and I carried a Mulan lunch box.” Molly changes lanes and eases past a poky hybrid car. “You put a note in my lunch. I always liked it when you did that.”
I don’t recall the teacher or the lunch box, but I definitely remember the note, the first of many I would tuck into Molly’s lunch over the years. I always tried to write a few words on a paper napkin with a little smiling cartoon mommy, with squiggles to represent my hair, and the message “I LOVE.png U. Love, Mommy.”
I tried to upgrade my wardrobe for the occasion, wearing slacks, Weejuns and coral lip gloss from a department store counter. I felt important, compelled by mission and duty, as Molly chattered gleefully in the back of my station wagon.
Stopping at the tree-shaded curb of the school, I pretended to be calm and cheerful as I kissed Molly’s cheek, stroked her head and then smilingly waved goodbye. She met up with her friends Amber and Rani. The girls went inside together, giggling and skipping the whole way, into the redbrick institution that suddenly looked huge and forbidding to me.
There was a New Mothers’ coffee in the library. At the meeting, we moms worked out party plans and carpool arrangements with the sober attention of battle commanders. I felt secretly intimidated—not by the working moms in their power suits and high heels. On some level I understood they were as scared and uncertain as I was, even with their advanced degrees and job titles.
No, I was overawed by the stay-at-home moms. They were the gold standard we all aspired to. They seemed so organized and poised, in khakis with earth-tone sweaters looped negligently over their shoulders, datebooks open in front of them, monogrammed pens poised to make notes. Independent yet obviously supported by the unseen infrastructure of husbands and homeowners’ associations, they were eminently comfortable in their own skin.
To this day, I don’t remember driving home after handing my child over to a new phase of life. All I remember is bursting into the house, sitting down at the breakfast counter with the view of the jungle gym Dan had built in the backyard, and shaking with a sense of emptiness I hadn’t expected to feel. Even Hoover, huddled in confusion at my feet, couldn’t cheer me up. But back then, hope had glimmered at the end of the day. Molly would come home, she’d eat pecan sandies and drink a glass of milk while chattering on about kindergarten, and all would be well.
Although years have passed since that bright August morning, I never quite mastered the put-together look or the air of confidence I observed in my peers. I didn’t really fit in with the stay-at-homes, but I wasn’t a career woman, either. A scattershot woman, you might call me, aiming myself in different directions, my only true calling that of loving my family.
I kept meaning to find something—a vocation, a passion, a marketable way to spend my time. But after Molly was born, the quest simply didn’t seem to matter so much. Unconcerned with a career trajectory, I bounced around to a few different jobs, never quite finding the right fit. This didn’t bother me, because without really planning it, I had lucked into a life I loved so much I never wanted it to change. The quilt shop became my second home. I loved the creative energy of the shop, the dry smell of the fabric, the crisp metallic bite of my super-sharp scissors on the cutting table. Working at Minerva’s shop became more than a part-time job during the school year. It was a place of refuge from the empty hours of the school day.
Molly glances over; I see her watching my busy hands.
“What?” I ask.
“Did you know Athena is the goddess of quilting?”
“She’s the Warrior Woman,” I correct her. “It’s one of the few things I remember from mythology.”
“Most people don’t know she’s also the goddess of arts and crafts,” Molly says, full of authority, the way she gets sometimes. “Domestic crafts require planning and strategy, too. That’s how the logic goes, anyway.”
“Athena was superwoman, then. Waging war and weaving baskets.” I settle back with the quilt draped over my lap and try to focus on feeling like a goddess. My stitches meander into overlapping spirals. These will be a reminder of the cyclical nature of families, the comings and goings of generations. They say a child leaves home in phases. She is weaned: Molly weaned herself as soon as she learned to walk, preferring a binky she could carry around in her pocket. Then she starts school. Goes on her first sleepover. To sleep-away camp. A field trip to the state capitol. She learns to drive, and each time she heads out the door, it takes her out of reach, on her own. This is simply the next step in the process. She’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.
I swear.
“I spotted an A,” Molly says abruptly, bringing me back to the present. “The Aladdin Motel. And there’s a B—Uncle Porky’s Burger Barn….”
The hunt is on—an old alphabet game we used to play on long car trips. We quickly find our way through to the letter J, calling out names of towns and cafés, cribbed from highway signs, billboards and truck stops. The town of Jasper keeps the game moving. The Q is found on a hand-lettered roadside “Bar-B-Q,” and we are grateful for colloquial spelling habits. We never get stuck on X, thanks to the freeway exit signs, and Z is found on a radio station billboard, KIZZ: Downhome Country for Uptown Folks.
In a Big Boy restaurant in Franklin, a young mother is trying to work the newspaper Sudoku puzzle while her toddler, strapped into a little wooden high chair, makes monkeyshines to get her attention. He leans as far sideways as the high chair permits, makes a sound like a cat, bangs his fork on the table, crams dry Cheerios into his mouth and uses a chicken nugget to smear ketchup on his tray like a baby Jackson Pollock. The young mother tucks her hair behind her ear and fills in another blank space on the puzzle.
I want to rush across the dining room and shake the woman. Can’t you see he needs you to look at him? Play with him, will you, already? It’ll be over before you know it.
It’s easy to recognize a little of myself in the weary, distracted young mother. I used to be like her—preoccupied with matters of no importance, never seeing the secretive, invisible passage of time slip by until it was gone. Yet if someone had deigned to point this out, I would have been baffled, maybe even indignant. Disregard my child? What do you take me for?
However, when you’re with a toddler who takes forty-five minutes to eat a chicken nugget, the moments drag. Or when your baby has the croup at 3:00 a.m. and you’re sitting in the bathroom with the steam on full blast, crying right along with her because you’re both so tired and miserable—those nights seem to have no end.
From my perspective at the other end of childhood, I want to tell the young mother what I know now—that when a child is little, the days roll by at a leaden pace, blurring together. You’re like a cartoon character, blithely oblivious while crossing a precarious wooden bridge, never knowing it’s on fire behind you, burning away as you go. Sure, everybody says to enjoy your kids while they’re little, because they’ll be grown before you know it, but nobody ever really believes it. The woman at the next table simply wouldn’t see the bridge, see time eating up the moments like a fire-breathing dragon.
Fortunately for everyone involved, even I’m not crazy enough to intrude. For all I know, she’s got a load of worries on her mind, or maybe she just needs ten minutes to dream her own dreams. Maybe she craves the neat, precise order of a Sudoku puzzle as a reminder that everything has a solution. By the time she finishes her puzzle, the kid has given up on her and finished his Cheerios and nugget. She wipes his face and hands, scoops him up and plants a perfunctory kiss on his head as she goes to the register.
Molly has missed the exchange entirely. She is absorbed in paging through the college’s glossy catalog. The booklet depicts an idyllic world where the grass is preternaturally green and weedless, buildings stand the test of time and students are eternally young, sitting around in earnest groups or laughing together over lattes. Professors look appropriately smart, many of them cultivating a kind of bohemian quirkiness that, in our hometown, would probably cause them to fall under suspicion.
“See anything you like?” I ask as she pauses on a page of course descriptions.
“Everything,” she states, her eyes dancing. “There’s a whole course called ‘Special Topics in Women’s Suffrage Music.’ And ‘Transgender Native American Art.’ ‘The Progressive Pottery Experience: Ideas in Transition.”’“ She struggles to keep a straight face. “I want it all.”
We have a laugh, and I can feel her excitement. The catalog is a treasure trove of possibilities, new things for her to learn, ways to think, ideas about life, maybe even a way to change the world.
Though I’m thrilled for her, I feel a silly twinge of envy. There are matters Dan and I can’t begin to teach her, I remind myself. That’s what college is for.
“I have no clue how I’m going to pick,” she says, her hand smoothing the pages.
“I wouldn’t know where to begin.” The admission masks an old ambivalence. I had always meant to finish college and even had a plan. For many people, this didn’t seem particularly bold, but in my family, it was a big step. Neither of my parents had gone to college; their own parents were immigrants and higher education was simply out of reach for them. My folks regarded college as an unnecessary frill, an expensive four-year procrastination before you get to the real part of life.
My dad worked as a shift supervisor at the tile plant. My mom stayed home with us and ironed. Really, she did. She took in ironing. We saw nothing unusual about this. There was never any shame, no judgment. It was who we were, and we were perfectly happy together. The house often smelled of the dry warmth of a heated iron and spray starch. There was a little rate sheet posted behind the kitchen door. People would leave their stuff in a basket by the milk box on the back stoop in the morning; Mom would iron it and the next day, my big brother Jonas would deliver the items—crisply pressed dress shirts and knife-pleated slacks for the plant executives, party dresses and St. Cecilia’s uniform blouses for their wives and kids.
I never really thought about what went through my mom’s mind as she stood at the ironing board, perfecting the details of other people’s clothing while Dire Straits played on the radio. Now I wonder if she was hot. Uncomfortable. Resigned. Or maybe she liked ironing and the work made her happy.
I wish I’d asked her. I wish she was still around, so I could ask her now.
Instead, eager for my independence, I planned my future. My dreams were nurtured by hours and hours in the library, reading books about women who created amazing lives for themselves, studying music and painting, science and business. I swore one day when I was a mother, I would instill these dreams in my children. I would be the mother I wanted my mother to be. And so I made a plan.
After high school, I would spend the summer working to save up money for tuition. Both my parents shook their heads, unable to fathom the idea of putting off work and life and independence for another four years, at the end of which there would be a massive debt and no guarantee of success. Besides, the closest university was nearly two hours away.
It was a powerful dream—maybe too powerful, because to someone raised the way I was, it seemed more like a fantasy. Particularly when I tallied up the cost of living without income for four years. Particularly when reality came crashing down on me, first semester. For monetary reasons, I had to live at home and quickly found the commute in my second-hand Gremlin to be almost unbearable. Later, I shared an apartment near campus with some friends, returning home each weekend with a sack of laundry. Worse, my classes were boring, keeping my grades decent was a struggle and dealing with a couple of bad professors nearly broke me.
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