The Calico Heart

by Patricia Kiyono

  "That may have to wait a bit," Dave interrupted her spiel. "We have all these extra wedding expenses now. We need to take care of them. We agreed we wouldn’t tap into our retirement savings to pay for any of them, right?"

  "Of course," she agreed. "But there aren’t that many bills left to pay. Besides, it doesn’t cost anything to dream."

  He shrugged then reached in his dresser drawer for a pair of pajamas. "I think I’ll grab a quick shower."

  ****

  Dave lingered in the bathroom, postponing the time before he had to face Sylvia again. He’d seen the determined look in her eyes when she started talking about retirement and travel plans. He suspected she wouldn’t let the subject drop and would continue their discussion. He didn’t want to argue, but he wished he could make her understand that traveling was too expensive. Davis Andrews provided generous pension benefits for their employees, but the payout was severely reduced if you retired early. Sylvia had also made good money as a math professor, but early retirement had decreased her pension, too. Still, they’d be able to live comfortably enough until they were old enough to collect their Social Security benefits – if they lived frugally and stayed within their means. For the next few years, they’d need to watch their hard-earned savings and carefully plan any necessary expenditures. Necessary certainly didn’t include throwing money away for something as frivolous as travel.

  He refused to be like his parents. They had been a perfect example of what happened when people didn’t pay attention to their finances until it was too late. He’d been young when they died, but his grandfather had told him how they had lived like there was no tomorrow. They’d bought new cars and airplanes – who on earth owned their own airplane? – thrown big parties and taken expensive vacations. When they died in a plane crash — in a plane his father had been piloting – there’d barely been enough money to bury them.

  Their death had shaken up his life. His sister, Muriel, had been in college; his brother, Bill, was a senior in high school; but Dave had only started fifth grade. His parents had left them with the housekeeper while they flew to Los Angeles for a few days for a conference. Dave had been surprised when his grandfather had come to his school in the middle of the day to pick him up, but he’d been too young to be alarmed. He’d started to worry, however, when they got home and found Muriel and Bill waiting there. His grandfather had marched them into the living room and delivered the news in a stern, disapproving voice: their parents were dead.

  Dave and his siblings had been given until the following day to pack the things they wanted, then they’d moved into his grandfather’s house. His parents’ house had been sold to pay off bills. As young as Dave had been, he’d still understood enough of what had happened to feel humiliated about having to depend on others’ charity. He’d vowed he would never let anything similar happen when he had a family of his own.

  Meeting Sylvia had changed Dave’s life again. His grades had seriously tanked his senior year, so his football coach had enlisted Syl’s help as a tutor. Although she was only a sophomore, Sylvia was the top student in her math class and had a determination to succeed. She was also the most beautiful girl Dave had ever seen. The minute she’d smiled at him, he’d fallen for her. He’d hardly been able to concentrate during their first tutoring session, instead he’d tried to get up the nerve to ask her to go out with him. Unfortunately, she’d rushed off before he could. The next day, when he’d tried to talk to her after their session, she’d said she had to hurry home. After a few more excuses, he’d figured she didn’t want to date a loser like him. That was when he’d buckled down and had managed to bring up all of his grades, not just the one in math. Unfortunately, the only thing the improved grades had done was end his need for tutoring sessions with the cute little brunette.

  However, thanks to her, Dave had discovered an aptitude for numbers and had gone on to study accounting at Grand Valley State. It had been his lucky day, when he’d run into Sylvia there three years later in the college bookstore. Dave had decided it was a second chance for him, and he wasn’t about to blow it. He’d hurried over to say hello then had asked her out for coffee before he lost his nerve, and was floored when she’d accepted.

  They made an unlikely pair. Syl loved to laugh and be around people. Whenever they attended parties, he could always find his outgoing wife in the thick of things. People gravitated to her, enjoying her company. He, on the other hand, was more introverted. He preferred quiet evenings at home. Surprisingly, they complemented each other like salt and pepper. They seldom argued and liked most of the same books and music and had similar priorities. They’d both had good careers, raised three great kids, and built a comfortable life together.

  So why did Sylvia suddenly want to change all that? Retirement. Travel. Spending money frivolously.

  Why couldn’t his wife be content with things just as they were?

  Chapter Three

  "Sorry I’m late," Sylvia apologized as she rushed into The Stitching Post the following Tuesday evening for the weekly group meeting.

  "Don’t worry." Myra gave her a reassuring smile. "You’ve got plenty of time, honey. A new delivery of holiday fabrics came in yesterday, so most of the gals are busy browsing through them. You know how it is with us quilters. We always need more fabric."

  Sylvia grimaced. "I know. Dave says I have enough material in my sewing room to start a shop of my own."

  "What do you think?" Lila asked, entering the shop in time to hear the exchange.

  Sylvia grinned mischievously at her spritely friend. As always, Lila was meticulously dressed and coiffed. Tonight, she wore a plum-colored pantsuit that complimented her coloring beautifully. "I think we should check out Myra’s new shipment."

  "Couldn’t have said it better myself," the older woman agreed. She held up her own bulging scrap bag. "There’s always room for a few new squares. What do you say we stow our stuff first then go take a look at the new fabric?"

  The two women made their way to the back corner of the shop, where a couple dozen chairs had been arranged in a cozy grouping. They greeted some of the other quilters, who were already seated and setting up their projects for the evening. Lila tossed her bag on the seat of an upholstered armchair. Everyone knew Lila preferred to sit there, so they always kept it open for her. Sylvia put her own bag on the seat of the straight-backed, wooden rocker to Lila’s left.

  "What are we going to work on now that Lynne’s Wedding Ring quilt is finished?" Lila asked as they joined their friends by the display of new fabric.

  "How about a Christmas table runner?" Sue suggested. The plump brunette held up length of white fabric sprigged with embroidered holly. "Wouldn’t this be pretty with a formal red or green centerpiece?"

  "Very pretty," Sylvia agreed, although she wasn’t sure it would suit her friend’s happily cluttered farmhouse. Sue and her apple farmer husband, Frank, still had three teenaged boys at home, so visitors were more likely to find a football on her dinner table than a formal centerpiece.

  "Oh, look at this darling snowman fabric!" Lila exclaimed, picking up a bolt of red cotton with whimsical snowmen characters tumbling across it. She unrolled a length of the fabric and smiled with delight. "These happy fellows will make the perfect quilt for the little boy a young couple from my church just adopted. What do you think?"

  "He’ll be crazy about it," Anne Brown, the Post’s energetic sales clerk agreed. "Any child would love those bright colors. Shall I cut it for you?"

  Lila nodded then pulled another bolt from the display. This one featured a white line drawing of a Nativity scene repeated across a royal blue background. "And give me enough of this one to make a table runner for Pastor Steve."

  She turned toward her friends and confided. "Every time I quilt a gift for someone in the church, our pastor complains that I’ve never made a quilt for him."

  "Oh, Lila, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea." Ellen frowned. She and Lila attended the same church, so she was wel
l acquainted with the cleric in question. "Steve seems to get a real kick out of complaining about your quilts. This could ruin his fun."

  "I know." The older woman gave them an impish grin. "In fact, I’m going to make a big production and give it to him at Christmas services when the church will be nice and full. That should put a cork in it for a while."

  "Lila, that’s plain naughty. You’d better hope Santa isn’t listening," Anne teased then went off to cut the fabric.

  Sylvia laughed with the others then wandered away to browse the regular selection of fabric. She had an idea in mind for her next project and was eager to get started. It would be a large wall hanging based on a very old pattern she’d seen at a quilt show when she and Dave were first married – the same quilt show that had ultimately brought her to The Stitching Post. The design, called the Calico Heart, was composed entirely of individual squares and triangles or half-squares. The pieces were assembled in rows then stacked to form heart shapes. Sylvia planned to machine sew the hearts, which would be much faster than doing it all by hand. When all the blocks were completed, she’d add the more time-consuming hand quilting to give it that beautiful, old-fashioned look.

  Each block of the wall hanging would represent a destination she and Dave would visit on their travels. She envisioned the wall hanging done in rich jewel tones to coordinate with the furnishings in their den. She planned to use scraps of her favorite cranberry and red calico prints to make the heart in the central block. When it was assembled, she’d use gold floss to embroider the name of their first destination. It might be fun to add the date of their visit, too. She’d have to ask Dave what he thought of that idea. He had a good eye for design – a talent inherited by all their kids – and she always liked to get his opinion on her various quilt projects.

  They’d both always loved this Calico Heart design. In fact, Dave had even carved a necklace for her with the heart pattern for her their first Valentine’s Day together. She’d worn it almost every day until the hanging bale wore through. After that, she’d made a small pouch for the heart and always tucked it into her purse or pocket. Now, she patted the front pocket of her jeans and smiled at the familiar reminder of Dave’s affection.

  This would be so much fun.

  The calico fabric for the first heart of the quilt was in her bag this evening. It would be the central block of the wall hanging, and Sylvia planned to use one of the shop’s rotary cutters and mats to carefully cut the small squares so they would be nice and even. She knew in her head the order in which she’d lay out the squares. She’d pictured it for years. The travel destination was picked out for the main heart, too. It had been decided on several years ago, and she had been gathering brochures about the place ever since. Every time she opened the drawer in her sewing table, the name would jump out at her.

  Mackinac Island.

  Chapter Four

  "I don’t want to go."

  "What?"

  Puzzled, Sylvia put down the travel section of the Sunday paper she’d been reading at the kitchen table and turned toward the breakfast bar where Dave was assembling sandwiches with studious care. "What do you mean, honey?"

  "Just what I said. I don’t want to go."

  "But we’ve been planning this for ages–"

  "No, Syl. You’ve been planning it."

  "Okay." She nodded. "Granted, I’ve done most of the research, but it’s been based on the things we’ve talked about. Things you’ve always enjoyed: history, archaeology, and—" She laughed and drew air quotes with two fingers of each hand. "Plenty of photo ops."

  "I don’t need to travel hundreds of miles for those things. I can see them on TV and be a lot more comfortable."

  "Come on, honey, you know that’s not the same as being there in person."

  "Close enough," he said, carefully spreading the mayo on a slice of bread so the condiment covered it from crust to crust.

  Sylvia leaned back in the chair and stared at him. "Who are you, and what have you done with my husband?"

  He frowned. The expression changed his pleasant features into a stern mask that suddenly reminded her of his late Grandfather Beaumont.

  "Not funny," he muttered in a tone that sounded eerily like his grandfather’s, too.

  "It wasn’t meant to be," she replied then busied herself gathering up the newspaper and folding it to control her irritation. She took a deep breath then tried again. "Honey, when we young and the kids were small, you told me you’d always wanted to travel. That you’d never had the chance when you were young. We promised we’d see the world together one day. When the kids were grown, we were retired, and we had enough money saved."

  "That was then." He picked up the slice of bread, checking to make sure it was properly coated. Apparently, it passed scrutiny; he set it down and picked up the next slice. "I’ve changed."

  "So have I. It’s evident every time I look in my mirror and see another new wrinkle or another gray hair," she teased, trying to lighten her husband’s mood.

  "That’s not what I mean." He laid down the bread and knife and finally looked at her.

  A chill crept up Sylvia’s spine, warning her she wasn’t going to like what her husband was about to say.

  "I can’t do it, Sylvia," he began. "I just can’t justify wasting all that money on a trip."

  "How can you call traveling a waste?"

  He sighed. "We’ve been over this."

  He picked up the knife again and scooped more mayo from the jar. "There’s no reason we need to go to Mackinac Island. Yes, the beaches are lovely, and yes, the fudge is good. But we have beautiful beaches less than thirty minutes from here, and you make killer fudge. So, we don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars to be cooped up in a bus with a bunch of smelly senior citizens for hours, just so we can sleep in an overpriced hotel and shop for souvenirs we don’t need."

  Sylvia counted to ten. At least, she thought she did. She might have missed a number or two, but she was far too angry to start again. "Smelly senior citizens? That’s a pretty rude bit of stereotyping, Dave. Especially since neither of us is getting any younger, pal."

  Dave had the grace to look embarrassed, but didn’t seem inclined to drop the argument. "That’s not the point," he muttered, shoving the knife into the mayo jar with such force that it clinked loudly against the glass side.

  "So explain it to me." She sat back in the chair and crossed her arms.

  "I can’t justify it, Sylvie," he said, using the pet name he’d given her in their early days together. "It’s way too much money to spend. And for what? Just to sleep for a night in some hotel where Christopher Reeves once made a movie? No thanks, I can see the place on video."

  "Honey, it’s not just that. The whole island is listed as a national historic landmark. You’ve always been such a history buff. I thought you’d enjoy visiting places like Fort Mackinac, Mission Church, and—"

  "Stop!" He leaned across the counter toward her. "Sylvia, listen to me. I don’t want to go to Mackinac Island."

  "Okay, then where do you want to go?"

  He shrugged. "I don’t need to go anywhere."

  "I know you don’t need to go anywhere," she said, trying to hide her exasperation. "But I want to go somewhere. So, where will you agree to go?"

  "I don’t want to go anywhere!" he said, banging his fist on the counter. "Why the blazes can’t you understand that?"

  Sylvia wasn’t sure which shocked her more: his words or his uncharacteristic show of temper. She could count on one hand — and still have fingers left over — the number of times they’d ever argued during their marriage. Neither she nor Dave liked to raise their voices or lose their tempers. Sure, they’d had their disagreements, but they’d always approached things calmly and looked for acceptable compromises. Now, Dave’s angry features made it quite clear that compromise wouldn’t be an option.

  To be honest, she didn’t feel much like compromising either at that moment. She was angry, very angry. This was her future, too;
the retirement she’d worked for just as hard as he had. For most of their marriage, she’d taught college-level math classes and had made a good wage but had lived frugally in order to contribute to their savings. Over the years, when her colleagues had talked about their plans for summer vacations and foreign excursions, Sylvia had comforted herself with the knowledge that her time would come, too, when she and Dave retired. It was why they’d planned to retire early, so they’d still be young enough and healthy enough to visit the places they wanted to see. Now, suddenly, Dave wanted to take all of that away from her.

  "Okay, I understand you’ve decided you suddenly don’t want to go anywhere. But what am I supposed to do? Stay here and watch you vegetate? I’ve been waiting all my life for the chance to travel and see some of this great world of ours. Good grief, I’d be glad just to see more of our state. Do you realize I’ve never been further than forty miles from our front door."

  "Come on, it hasn’t been that bad..."

  "Dave, I’ve been taking care of a household since I was twelve years old."

  "So, you helped out at home and ran a few errands for your parents. That’s not unusual. Most people have done that."

  "No, Dave. I did it all!"

  She sighed. "You never really knew me back then. After all, you were two years ahead of me in high school, and we didn’t start dating until I was in college. By then my mom and dad were both gone, and it seemed disrespectful to them to talk about those years."

  “I know you didn’t like talking about your family. I figured you had painful memories about losing them so suddenly – I could understand that since I lost my folks suddenly, too.”

  “It was more than that,” Sylvia said then paused to take a breath. She hated talking about those days, about her mother’s odd behavior. If people knew the whole truth about her mother, Sylvia worried that they might wonder if she would turn out the same way, too. After all, she shared the same genes. By the time she and Dave started dating several years after her parent’s death, it had been easier to just put it behind her. She knew she should have told him, but it had been easier to bury the past with her parents. Now, she needed to open up about what happened and make her husband understand why she’d always avoided talking about her childhood and had changed the subject whenever anyone brought it up.