How to Make an American Quilt

by Whitney Otto

  A tint on the Plexiglas will afford more protection from the light that enters the room, visits itself upon the quilt. Protects it from fading. You could find yourself overwhelmed by all the precautions necessary to protect your quilt, all the machinations to keep it in good condition. The women of your circle agree that it is worth it; anything worth having is worth guarding against losing. Your marriage is worth guarding; you are told passion fades. But, again, the trade-off is that it gives your quilt a textureless, lifeless appearance. You may not want to surrender it to this fate.

  You may be willing to risk it. You did not marry to police another human being. You misguidedly thought that love would sustain you both; that it would be enough. That the threads comprising the fabric of your marriage would not break for any reason; that they would be stronger for their closeness and proximity to one another. You make the sad discovery that, though you and he are joined as one, you are not the same person; that marriage can require more than love. It shocks your sensibilities, this idea that love is not the greatest force in life. Or perhaps it does not mean the same thing to everyone.

  About the light in the room: It can and will fade your quilt. Perhaps you like the way it looks when the early-morning sun lies across it, lazylike, taking its sweet morning time, warms the room, brings out the colors; but be warned that this will ultimately damage the quilt.

  Your choices are clear: Place a shade in the window or move the quilt. There really is no gray area; one or the other. Anything else places the quilt at risk. Fading is to be avoided because it leaves the quilt in a tainted condition, allowing you only the memory of what it once was. Trust yourself. There is no in-between.

  umbrellas will not help at all

  Such a corrosive rain as on Venus would be one of the most potent and destructive fluids in the solar system. It would burn away human flesh in a matter of minutes. Umbrellas would not help at all.

  Em Reed is not looking forward to stitching the next project, a Crazy Quilt. She knows the responsibility of the quilter is different in this sort of quilt. She knows, too, that while her contribution will appear to be random, it will, in fact, be freighted with personal meaning. (She has heard talk that they may assemble a bridal quilt for Finn Bennett-Dodd and Em does not know if she has the patience to put herself into a work that holds marriage as its center.) The other quilters will ask privately or speculate about her patches, and Em is not imaginative enough to lie. So she is miserable.

  Not like Dean can lie, she thinks. For the past eight months he has been making regular, open visits to Constance Saunders, ever since Howell passed on. Em thinks widows should accept their solitude with grace and not attempt to replace the man they lost with another woman’s husband.

  The worst of it, of course, is having to sit in the same room, quilting with Constance, Howell’s reading glasses large on her small face, sliding down her nose as she bends over the work. Watching her clumsy hands push the needle through the fabric, making Em wonder if her own hands look as graceless. Thinking Dean may even find Constance’s hands elegant; he used to find Em’s hands elegant, and Em knows what love can do to Dean. Everything is filtered through his painter’s eye and faithless heart. Sometimes Constance whispers to Marianna, and though Em cannot make out what she is saying, she is pierced through the heart by the softness of her voice.

  Anna Neale told her that it doesn’t matter, that as long as Dean keeps coming home at night that’s all Em needs to know. Em wants to say, Anna, you don’t know what you are talking about, since Anna never married, but refrains. She even stops herself from kicking Constance’s chair when she passes behind her or jabbing her with a sharp needle or screaming at her to find her own man. She may need the sympathy of the other quilters, if it comes down to it; but there is another reason, and it is that it would not change a thing in Em’s life.

  What Em cannot bring herself to tell the other quilters is that this is not Dean’s first affair; the first one occurred in the early years of their marriage. It isn’t even his second affair. Dean wanted to be a painter (he was actually quite gifted) but his dream somehow failed him, leaving him to teach art to students with less skill and vision. He was frustrated, as creative people denied their outlet often are. He grew moody, restless, cruel within his own home, blaming everyone for his failure; blaming himself, too. Other days he would be buoyed by a sense of hope, happy and affectionate.

  Still, three years into their marriage, Em considered divorcing Dean over that first affair. Dean was not what the circle would call a “decent man,” because of his changeable moods and thwarted talent; his unpredictable, cynical nature excluded him from the company of decent men. But no one knew that he was unfaithful to Em.

  Em can still hear herself saying to Sophia Richards, “Don’t be ridiculous—she is his student and nothing more. Surely he is allowed to take on private students?” Or, again to Sophia, “Christ, I can’t believe how people in this town talk and talk and know absolutely nothing about anything.”

  Sophia said, “Em, I’m your friend.” Her elbow was propped on the table, her chin set on the back of her hand. Sophia seemed to look past Em with a gentle, unfocused gaze. “I know husbands,” she added. “I know Dean.”

  This caught Em by surprise, caused her to wonder what Sophia meant by ‘I know Dean,’ then shook her head. Sophia understood nothing about her marriage. “No, not this time,” said Em.

  Sophia shrugged her shoulders as Em resisted the temptation to confide in her best friend. She could not tolerate being placed in the position of confessing Dean’s betrayal and defending him at the same time.

  Because Em hated the idea of marriages based on suspicion and mistrust, she virtually refused to believe Dean’s betrayal at first. She knew he was unlike the farmers, ranchers, and small businessmen who comprised the region; she married him for his lack of convention. Now she wanted him to behave like a “normal” husband. Em used to say to herself, It is not within me to be “different,” though I long for it. So, as with poor or socially unconnected women who marry for money or prestige, Em married a man who rough-handed convention because she was not brave enough to do it for herself.

  Clearly, she saw marriage as a joining of complements to create a whole.

  EM WANTED to stick with Dean (after that first girl), not consider divorce, because she understood his anger and his unused gift; she eventually forgave him, because she understood him, but she was no longer sure that she liked or respected him. Oh, she still loved him, but he did not feel like a friend to her any longer. She can recall sitting in a bath when the water had turned lukewarm, the bubbles deflated and all but dirty little edges of foam clinging to the tub corners. She remembers being half turned toward Dean, who crouched beside her on the bathroom rug (his large feet leaving indentations in the pile), her wrinkled, waterlogged fingers gripping the edge of the tub as she tried to puzzle out his affection for the other girl. “But,” she asked, confused, “is it something I am not doing? Is it me?” And then, as if she were commenting on someone else’s life instead of her own, “To think we love each other.”

  It occurred to her that perhaps she did not respect herself. Is it possible to cleave to a man before the eyes of God, become one with him, be unable to respect him, yet retain self-respect? Particularly if you view marriage as combined halves that make a whole? She did not know; they were already too much a part of each other to know.

  And, later, when she stood in their bedroom in her robe, Em broached the idea of divorce, prompting Dean to weep freely in her arms, telling her to do what she had to do, begged her not to go, admitted that he was hard to live with but loved her just the same.

  In her heart, Em mistakenly thought that this man was meant to be her burden, the experience to strengthen her, make her so powerful nothing could touch her.

  A YEAR LATER she discovered that Dean had a new woman. All Em knew was that she was two years older than Dean and had something to do with the college that employed him. Em sob
bed and asked, “How could you do this to me again? Why do you keep doing this?” Deep inside she wondered with a sort of detached curiosity if perhaps she was unlovable or if there were strict time limits to the length of loving her and maybe three or four years was its duration. “Why are you doing this?”

  Dean was quiet, his voice low and defeated. “I do love you,” he told her.

  Em’s tears washed the heels of her hands, the backs of her slim fingers.

  “Em,” he said, “I am a man out of control. I can’t be a painter; I can’t improve my lot and I can’t live with it. I’m cynical and hard and cursed to see the world in romantic terms.”

  Em looked at him with furious, wet eyes. She thought him a remarkably selfish sonofabitch. She said, “You bastard.”

  And she thought of something else: When only a year before he had ended the first affair, the girl called the house, once or twice, crying for Dean. “If I could just talk to him for a minute,” she said, “I could get some sleep tonight and never bother you again. I promise.” But Em would have none of her promises and only turned the phone over to Dean, whose face took on a harsh, irritated expression when he said, taking a deep breath, “What do you want from me? I have already said all there is to say.” Then his voice yielded just slightly (with an imperceptibility only a wife could detect) and he said, “I know. I know. Didn’t I tell you this was not good. Couldn’t you tell?”

  Em had crossed her arms and pulled her mouth into a tense line, causing Dean to turn his back on her and cut the conversation short. But Em could’ve sworn she heard him whisper baby into the phone just before he said he was sorry, he really was, but it was over and she would have to accept it. Down the receiver came into the cradle and Dean wandered from the room, but not before he stopped and gently touched Em’s bare arm. She heard him in his studio, stapling stretched canvas to a wooden frame, and then silence; a brush stroke is like a whisper in a cave and cannot be heard unless you are in close proximity.

  At that time, Em would bang up to their bedroom or take long, angry walks, her steps violent, often mumbling to herself; reminding herself that he showed remorse and good faith, that he promised not to do it again, and that everyone makes a mistake and where would we all be if we didn’t express a little forgiveness now and then? And at other moments, even worse, for no reason, Em would feel herself in a fury—sometimes in the middle of a perfectly good dinner or day outing or dance—where she would be inexplicably happy in Dean’s presence, loving him, and like a sudden fever her anger would well to the surface, blacken her mood, and cause him to pull away, contrite. She would turn to him, regardless of where they were or what they were doing and say, “I want to go home. Now.”

  There was the day when they drove down to Los Angeles to see an exhibit at the Museum of Art and she hauled off and clipped him, closed-fisted, in the jaw, when only a moment before she had snuggled beneath his arm.

  “What the hell is it with you?” he demanded, holding down her arm, his grip tight, looking, Em thought, as if he wanted to strike her in return.

  “I never should have allowed you to be forgiven. I should have forced you to leave.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “What I want,” she said in measured tones, “is for you and that girl to never have happened. What I want is to punish you. I don’t feel as if you have suffered.”

  “Very nice, Em.”

  “I want to hurt you.”

  And then it would all pass and she would apologize and he would apologize and they would renew their promise to love and take care of each other, Em convinced that one recovers from these things as one does an illness.

  Now it was happening all over again and he was telling her, “The only thing I can change or control—the only adventure I can find,” he said, “is love.”

  Em flew at his face, beating him about the head with a vicious fury. Pantings and yelps escaped her throat as she attacked him. He had taken advantage of her understanding nature. Dean did not fight her off but shielded himself. Em had tried to give him what he needed—understanding, forgiveness. Having satisfied those needs, he created more needs and turned to someone new for satisfaction. His personal needs were greater than her understanding, greater than the sum of their marriage.

  Em walked out. She went to her mother’s house. She was thankful that they did not have any children.

  At her mother’s house she discovered that she was pregnant.

  And still she did not go back.

  DEAN CALLED HER at Christmas. He said, “Merry Christmas, Em,” and she hung up on him without a word because she knew that he had nothing but contempt for the holidays, for the “poor fools” who thought these things mattered and don’t get him started on the absence of true religion in the month of December. She was eight weeks pregnant and laid low by morning sickness and a sort of general malaise. Her mother said, “When I was first pregnant with you all I ever did was eat and sleep and wish for it to be over.”

  “Did it get better?” asked Em from the sofa, where she lay with closed eyes, in a half-dream state that included a curiously welcome hallucination of Dean.

  Her mother held out an unwrapped chocolate kiss to her daughter, who parted her lips, allowing her mother to place it in her mouth.

  “Well,” her mother said, smiling, “yes and no. That is, the second trimester was the best, but the other times, honey, you’ll have to decide for yourself.”

  “Thanks for the encouragement.”

  “Sweetie, if you want a fairy story, ask your doctor about pregnancy. I’m sure he’ll tell you whatever you want to hear.”

  “Will I ever stop being so tired?” Em felt as if her voice were floating, circling around her there on the couch. She wished her mother would catch it, nail it down.

  “Sure, sweetie.” She patted her daughter’s leg, as Em drifted off into a nap.

  HAPPY NEW YEAR said the telegram, signed LOVESTOPDEAN, which Em tore up and dropped in the garbage. There was a delivery of irises and King Alfred daffodils with a hand-painted box of chocolates for St. Valentine’s Day. Birthday greetings came in April, followed by a big basket of lilies, marshmallow chicks, and an alabaster egg for Easter. All of which ended up in the trash. All of which arrived by messenger and not delivered by Dean. “At least he knows not to show up himself,” said Em.

  Sophia Richards stopped by occasionally, pregnant by this time with her second child, often with serious little Duff in tow. She had begun quilting over at Glady Joe Cleary’s house and insisted that Em join them. At first, Em said no, she rather liked being at her parents’ house and not having to travel through Grasse, where she might catch a glimpse of Dean, with god knows who on his arm. She liked being here, away from Grasse, with no thought of anything. Only her mother’s soothing company or watching her father in his workshop.

  ONE EVENING, at dusk, during that very hot spring, Em, seven months pregnant, sat on the porch of her parents’ house. She had just emerged from the small wading pool her father built when she was a child. Her belly was straining against the fabric of an old slip of her mother’s. As she sat on the porch, wringing water from the hem of the wet slip, running her fingers through her short hair, and shaking herself free of the water, Dean drove up. She froze and gripped the arms of the metal chair she was sitting in; her body pulled slightly forward, as though involuntarily drawn to him. Em did not rise as he approached (she was a very clumsy woman in her seventh month and could no longer trust her sense of balance).

  “Hey, Em,” said Dean, standing before her.

  “Hi,” said Em, smiling.

  Dean leaned toward her, fingering her wet hair. Then he fell to his knees, placed his body between her parted legs, running his hands around her wide hips. His cheek resting on her tight belly.

  Em’s hands did not move from the arms of the chair. She thought, If you cry now, I swear I will never come back; she had not forgotten the way he had seduced her with his tears in the past.

  Bu
t Dean did not cry; on the contrary, he seemed quite content. And seeing him happy (though she suspected that he could not sustain it in the long run; his romantic nature canceled out long-term happiness; it is romance and cynicism that are hand in glove, not romance and happiness) won her back.

  IN THE GATHERING DARKNESS Em tries to tell herself that Dean has been detained at school, but she knows he is somewhere with Constance. She marches upstairs and begins to throw her things into a valise. She cannot quite believe that at age sixty-three she is finally going to leave him. The humiliation of having to see Constance in the quilting circle and Dean insisting that there is nothing more than friendship between them has become too much to take. She tries calling their daughter, Inez, to tell her that she is coming up to stay with her. Inez, who now lives in a small, expensive house in Mill Valley. She’ll say, I only need a place to get my bearings.

  No answer. Em looks at her watch, sits on the bed, impatiently jerking her foot up and down. She had not told Inez that she and Dean were separated during much of her pregnancy. Or that Dean refused to have any more children once they had Inez. He said, “No. Out of the question. I can’t imagine loving another child as much as I love Inez. I want to keep this pure.” Pure? What the hell was that about, wonders Em for the millionth time, except more evidence of his selfishness: what Dean wants, not what she wants.

  She wonders how Inez will take the news; her daughter, who seems to love both Em and Dean equally, adores them both. Dean proved to be a good father with an instinct for how much to give their child and what to withhold, so that she didn’t go tearing out of their home like a bat out of hell as soon as she was old enough, like so many of the Grasse children.