How to Make an American Quilt

by Whitney Otto

  He explained that he was going into sales and that “in the beginning I’ll probably be on the road a lot—around Nevada, California, that sort of territory” and “do you think that you could live like that?”

  Of course she could; Constance, who never minded solitude, and who was curious about California. Besides, it would eliminate all that roommate business.

  HER PARENTS WERE CONFUSED, pleased, and marginally upset. This was what they wanted for her, wasn’t it? “Constance,” they said, sitting on either side of her on the porch in late September, their sweaters buttoned up to their throats, “we are delighted that you are getting married…and yet…he’s not…we hoped…frankly, we are wondering if maybe you aren’t marrying beneath yourself.”

  Constance slouched back in her chair, swallowing a shot of brandy from a coffee mug. “I thought you’d be happy for me.”

  “We are,” said her mother. “Naturally.”

  “I know,” Constance said. “He’s in sales.” Constance got up and walked to the end of the porch before turning around and facing her aging parents. “I’ve been to college. I’ve been to Europe. I’ve spent weekends with the girls at Virginia Beach and out to the Island and up to the Cape and back to the shore. I’m not really fit for the workplace—surely you’ve noticed my lack of, ah, ambition—and I am almost thirty-three years old, and it occurs to me that if I don’t marry Howell Saunders, I might be able to add old maid to that list of things that are me.”

  “Honey,” said her mother in her Soothing Voice.

  Constance shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not unhappy. Maybe being unhappy takes ambition, too.” She rested her head against her hand on the pillar of the porch. “Mother, Dad, I think this is a good idea. I think it is what I need. Howell doesn’t expect me to be something I so clearly am not.”

  “We certainly can’t stop you.” Her mother crossed her arms.

  “No,” said Constance, “you can’t.”

  WHAT CONSTANCE COULD NOT SAY to anyone was that she was beginning to feel like a freak of nature: She liked being alone; she was not excited about formal education, yet she loved to read and learn; nor was she desirous of being a traditional wife nor drawn to being a career woman. She was intrigued by the idea of romantic love. She wanted to feel safe. Constance wished she was exceptional in some way, but she was not. People are confused by women who are neither exceptional nor married; they seem to feel you should be one or the other.

  The truly terrible thing in this life, she had long ago decided, was not knowing what you want, but only able to recognize what you do not want. You have to spend so much time and energy trying to figure it out, time that other people spend in pursuit of their desires.

  The other freakish side of her nature was her impatience with other women. And to remain unmarried certainly seemed to sentence her to a life spent in the company of girlfriends, balanced by the occasional date. Oh, she was tired of explaining her unmarried state to family and friends, especially since she was not extraordinary or philosophically opposed to marriage.

  It all boiled down to the same inescapable fact: that to live outside the mainstream one needed to be a rebel, and that she was not.

  She was thirty-three, three short years from middle age, and a wealth of new aspects presented themselves: her parents’ old age; the fact that her youth was really and truly gone from her and would not come again. Never again would she awaken in the morning, fresh and perfect by just tumbling out of bed; nor would young men regard her with promise. And she felt more mature inside as well. She felt less frantic, calmer, yet terrified of other women and their talk of husbands and housework and help and hearth. (Terrified she might be making the wrong decisions.) And the subtle thickening of their thirtyish figures and their quiet, shrugging acceptance of all manner of things.

  Of course, there were their counterparts: women of the same age who did not marry or married briefly at eighteen, only soon to divorce, and their cool mistrust of men; or their stale innocence, which invited disreputable men to use them over and over, each transgression forgiven as if it were an isolated incident.

  Even the women who choose to remain unmarried and throw themselves entirely into their work seem to falter in the face of love.

  CONSTANCE COULD NOT MARRY without affection. And there was Howell Saunders that day in the city, when she literally turned the corner and walked into him. They fell in love. Just like that. As Constance was gardening and planting freesia bulbs in the early winter, thinking how sort of wonderful he was; recall how he would spend time with her, listen to her and understand. She confessed her lack of ambition and direction and he nodded and listened. “He means it, too,” she said aloud to herself, her bent knees crushing the lobelia that spilled out of its bed and onto the walkway. If she had to answer her parents’ questions about why she loved Howell Saunders she would have to say: Because he lets me be.

  Surely, she thinks, this must be the secret of marriage that no one seems inclined to recognize or practice. It was not an accident that Constance found herself drawn to Howell; it was an act of her nature.

  He had not said a word about trying to change her. Not a word. They did not barter their future with words like “I’ll do this if you’ll do that” or “If you put up with this one thing for a while, I promise you things will be different in a few years.” Howell told her: “Constance, I am moving to California. My job will take me on the road much of the time. As my wife you will be alone. I’d like to have children—but if we don’t, I can live with that, too. If we do have children I can’t promise that I’ll be around more often. I hope one day it won’t be that way, but I don’t know. I promise I’ll be faithful on the road but I can’t promise that you won’t be lonely.”

  She liked that. The forthrightness of it, as if he respected her too much to con her. He offered no guarantees except what he could guarantee—none of those silly promises about a future no one can foresee. He would do the best he could.

  When she asks him questions about anything, he considers the answer and delivers it truthfully, not simply telling her what he thinks she wants to hear. Of all the things a man can do, she hates that falseness most of all: someone who tries to edit or predict her response before she makes it. To be second-guessed or “protected” from the truth is to be treated like a child.

  The best men tell you the truth because they think you can take it; the worst men either try to preserve you in some innocent state with their false protection or are “brutally honest.” When someone tells you the truth, lets you think for yourself, experience your own emotions, he is treating you as a true equal. As a friend.

  And the best men cook for you.

  CONSTANCE AND HOWELL lived in a number of places for brief periods of time. Near Barstow, down to San Bernardino, Glendale, Visalia, a little past Lompoc, Buttonwillow, Los Banos—as far north as Crescent City, even into Medford, Oregon, for one dull two-month period. But never Nevada. And through it all Constance packed their few and functional belongings, since she could not tolerate the weight of so many material things, which only serve to slow your progress; sometimes she left things behind in some small bungalow or house or apartment in which they lived. Sometimes Howell traveled on ahead of her, searching for a new bungalow or small house or apartment. They saw the inside of so many homes, lived in so many different places, that their hunt occasionally recalled their courtship travels.

  Since they did not live anyplace long enough to form deep friendships or attach themselves to any house or location, Constance felt no regret at moving on. Nor did she experience a profound searching inside herself, as if the next place would yield something better than the last; she simply packed up and moved, and was often glad to do so.

  During these years Constance forgot how to say good-bye or bid farewell since she rarely left anyone or anything of any significance. This suited her: all that temporary living combined with periods of solitude. Her parents wanted to know if she was happy. (“Yes, I am happy.�
��) Did she need money? Want a permanent home of her own? And her reply was always “I have what I need. I lack for nothing.”

  And Howell and Constance grew closer during his time spent home between trips, being each other’s only friend. Funny, thinks Constance, that I should so like being married. I never expected to like it this much.

  HOWELL RETURNED FROM a business trip and said, “Constance, I miss you.” Then told her how he found a small house in Atwater with French doors and roses outside the window. (Years later Constance will say to the women in the quilting circle, “The garden was a mess—overgrown, dried-out, unpruned, in places overwatered by someone who did not understand the lives of roses—but it was a real rose garden. And we had a dog, a peach-colored poodle mix named Chickie. Our Chickie was the best dog—not one of those spoiled yappers that can drive a person crazy.”)

  And so began a life where Howell left and returned each day like a regular husband, kissing Constance at the door, dropping on all fours to play with Chickie. Children were not a consideration for them—now, of course, it was simply too late—but even in the beginning they each thought that, at thirty-three, Constance was truly past her childbearing years. Or perhaps it was something else; an excuse. Regardless, she did not conceive.

  The children of the neighborhood adopted Constance and Howell, often bringing treats to Chickie. Constance greeted the children by saying, “Well, hello, and how are you? Have you grown since you were last here? No? Maybe you only seem bigger because you act so grown up.” The children would clamor for Chickie, who raced out to see them. Sometimes they brought Chickie bones; if they brought the “wrong” kind of bones (the sort that splinter), Constance put them in her pocket, promising to give them to Chickie later, after dinner, “for dessert.”

  When Chickie died—an early dog death, actually—Howell and Constance buried her in the rose garden beneath an antique yellow rosebush. After that, yellow roses were always referred to as “Chickie’s flowers.”

  (Constance will tell Marianna, years later, as they are gardening in Glady Joe’s yard, “After Chickie’s death it was so hard to leave that little house. Every place changes when you bury someone you love there. That is how it was for me, after Chickie.”)

  HOWELL QUIT his stationary Atwater job and hit the road again. They moved and resided in a succession of apartments, trailers, and two-bedroom homes that sat behind larger, nicer homes. Constance missed her prize roses, left in Atwater with her most beautiful bush sheltering Chickie’s grave. Sometimes they lived someplace long enough for her to plant and care for a garden, but that was rare. Then, one day, Howell said, “No more, Constance—life’s too short and I’ve had enough. Baby, I’m home for good.” Constance was sitting at the kitchen table in the late-morning sun when Howell came to the door, stood within its frame, and said, Baby, I’m home for good.

  At first, she looked up from her book but said nothing, did nothing; after all, she had already kissed him good-bye this morning when he had gone to work, and seeing him standing there, unexpectedly, made her wonder if she was only imagining his ghost, that if she so desired she could stand and walk right through his outline.

  Then she laid the book down (carelessly closing it without marking her place) and pushed her chair from the table, and with slow, deliberate steps, walked in his direction, sliding her arms around his waist, resting her cheek against his coat.

  He held her so tightly it was hard to fill her lungs with air, and thinking back on that moment, she could’ve sworn she felt his chest heave in a small sob.

  CONSTANCE AND HOWELL got on each other’s nerves. His being retired and always around caused Constance to blurt out, “Don’t you have somewhere to go?” And he looked at her, saying, “Don’t you?” There were days when she felt hemmed in, crowded in her own house, as if Howell were not one person but a small group that made continuous, inconsequential demands of her time and patience, which, taken together, resulted in an enormous demand that she could never satisfy. She tried to explain this to him, but he only looked at her and said, “What exactly are you saying?”

  “I don’t know what I’m saying,” she answered in an irritated tone of voice. “I mean, I feel like…”

  Howell looked at her patiently, as if trying to divine her true desires. “Do you want me to leave?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “No. I want you to, well, go out sometimes. Without me. More often than you do.” How could she say, You’ve made me grow accustomed to a life without you around all the time. Seeing you occasionally seemed less like a marriage and more like an extended courtship or love affair, with the time spent together so rich and brief that we could not spend it arguing or in silent discord. Instead we chose to use the time with our best courtship personas: lying in the garden in the dirt and grass, staining and muddying our clothes but not caring; watching the clouds or talking about your travels or my books or what so-and-so is up to or rehashing the time we met and fell in love; or cooking and taking our meals to bed, feeding each other and laughing about the way some couples Simply Despise It when the other spouse eats off their plate, as you licked spilt cake crumbs from my body.

  A next-door neighbor once said to Constance after she said good-bye to Howell before one of his road trips, “How long have you two been married?”

  When Constance said, “Fifteen years,” the neighbor replied, “You’d never know it from the way you two act.”

  “How’s that?” asked Constance.

  “You act as if you like each other.”

  Constance started to say, That’s awfully cynical, don’t you think? but the neighbor headed her off, as she turned to walk back to her house, by saying, “I meant exactly what I said.”

  But now that Howell was retired, Constance yearned for the vast, empty hours that had stretched before her when he was away on business, the sheer pleasure of anticipating his return. Even in Atwater, he worked eight hours a day, which was enough solitude for her. But this constant state of togetherness was wearing on her. What did this say about the nature of their marriage? About her nature? That she was not cut out to be a wife, only to be a girlfriend? After all, Howell did not seem to be experiencing the deep irritation at her daily company that she felt for his.

  Then, just as suddenly, the feeling fled. Inexplicably, strangely, quickly—it just left her, and for the first time in her life she thought, How truly happy I am! She marveled at the feeling, luxuriated in it, wondered how she could have thought she was happy all those previous years, then decided that she had not been profoundly happy, only content. It was as if something inside herself gave way, softened, relaxed its hold. She gave in to the luxury of having him around always and basked in his company. Now she felt just the smallest bit of sadness when he ran errands or took drives without her.

  THE ONE NIGHT A WEEK she spent quilting at Glady Joe Cleary’s house became a chore. She had become friendly with Marianna Neale, as they shared an affection for roses; was grateful to have her in the quilting circle with her. (She still had not grown used to groups of women and felt an undefined restlessness around them, making her appreciative of Marianna, with whom she felt a comfortable kinship.) This was in Grasse, where Howell said to her, Baby, I’m home for good.

  She did not especially enjoy quilting or sewing, brought little imagination to the work, but the repetition functioned as therapy, giving focus to her disjointed and unpeopled life. When she discovered the impulsive, unplanned Crazy Quilt, she became more interested and adept at the work. As far as patterns went, her favorite was called My Grandmother’s Flowers, which she modified, using only yellow roses, and renamed Chickie’s Garden.

  Now she had this new feeling regarding her marriage. Perhaps I had to keep a locked restraint on my affection for Howell, knowing he would always come and go and never stay for good. Is this how I would’ve felt had we always been together? She thought about their life in Atwater, realizing for the first time that, yes, those were the happiest years before these and that she ref
used to see it at the time (refused to surrender to her own happiness), knowing he could again change jobs. But then, if they had spent all those years together in a conventional marriage, maybe they would’ve become like her cynical neighbor—a couple who loved each other but did not like each other—as if love is some sort of virus and marriage the agent that makes one immune to the illness by overexposure. Imagine being immune to married love.

  BUT ONE DAY, as Howell was getting his hair cut, he quietly slumped in the barber’s chair, and Constance did not cry or have a memorial service. Em Reed and Anna Neale thought she showed disrespect to Howell’s memory, but Constance rarely explained herself to anyone and certainly not to this group of women she quilted with, women who rushed sympathetically to her side, while Constance only wished to be left alone.

  Constance ordered a plain pine box, allowed a rabbi to say a prayer as she rent a small piece of her clothing, this nod to her husband’s long-neglected religious beliefs, beliefs she did not share. Then she had Howell quietly buried.

  (When someone dies, the funeral is the measure of his life. How many mourners will there be? Will they arrive on time? Will they come to the house later? Bring food? Or, will there be any mourners at all? Howell, with all his traveling, worked alone; all the moving around did not lend itself to long-term friendship. She would not hold a funeral for this wonderful man who had been her husband, with only a few people in attendance. She did not care for herself, but she did not want him to know how lonely an empty chapel can be.)