Ties That Bind

by Marie Bostwick

  I’m used to men talking to me about their woes with women. Sometimes I think I must have some sort of sign reading THE DOCTOR IS IN printed on my forehead in magical ink that only men with girlfriend troubles can see. I listen, offer advice and, more often than not, it works. I’ve gotten invited to a lot of weddings that way. I don’t mind really. If you can’t straighten out your own love life, the next best thing is helping other people straighten out theirs, right?

  But this is different. Geoff is married. I don’t think he should be talking to me about his wife, especially not in such a negative way. I mentioned it to Arnie, but he didn’t seem concerned.

  “He’s a talker, likes to hear the sound of his own voice. So what?”

  Well, Arnie is probably right. I’m sure that there’s nothing more to it than that. But …

  One time when Geoff was walking me to my car after a meeting with Dr. Bledsoe, he insisted my coat was too thin, took his off, and put it, and his arm, over my shoulders and left it there. It was windy. Probably he was just trying to keep the coat from blowing away. And another time when he was pointing to a line on some papers I had to sign, his elbow brushed against my breast, but I’m sure that was an accident. He apologized after, though he continued to look straight at me, with that gaze that makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

  I didn’t mention any of this to Arnie, of course, because I thought it would sound silly. Arnie is all about evidence and facts. Hair standing up on the back of my neck doesn’t qualify as either.

  “But I wish he wouldn’t talk to me about his wife,” I said. “It doesn’t seem very professional.”

  “It isn’t,” Arnie said. “But maybe she really is as bad as he says. Maybe he just needs to vent.”

  “I wish he’d vent to somebody else. I don’t like it, Arnie. And I don’t like him.”

  I felt a little bad, almost guilty, admitting this. I’ve always liked everybody—almost everybody. My mother always said that if you search for the best in people you’re bound to find it. Maybe that’s what I needed to do. Just try a little harder to like Geoff Bench, focus on his good qualities instead of letting myself be bothered by little things. I’m sure it was all perfectly innocent. After all, who’d make a pass at me?

  Almost as if reading my thoughts, Arnie said, “I know. But try a little harder, okay? It’s only for a few more weeks. And it’s a good sign that he likes to talk to you. Once this is over and the judge gives you custody of Olivia, it’ll all have been worth it. You’ll see.”

  To have Olivia safe and secure in my home, to see her heal and grow in a loving, caring environment, to fulfill my sister’s dying request, I would put up with anything. It would be worth it fifty times over.

  By the time I reached the restaurant, I felt better. When I saw Geoff through one of the restaurant windows, already seated, smiling and waving at me, I smiled and waved back.

  “No dessert?” Geoff asked when I pushed the menu back to his side of the table. “That apple pie sounds pretty good.”

  “I’m trying to lose a few pounds.”

  “Why?” Geoff made a face that was meant to convey his surprise. “You look great. Wish Laura kept herself up like you have. She spent two weeks at a spa last summer and it didn’t do a bit of good. Cost me five thousand dollars. We have a whole gym set up in the basement. Weights, treadmill, elliptical trainer, the works. She never uses it. She’s going off to the spa again next week and taking my credit card with her.”

  He sighed and then looked up at me, eyes trained on mine. “Come on,” he urged. “Have a piece of pie. If it’ll make you feel better, we can split it.”

  I looked at my watch, grateful for an excuse to break his gaze. “I can’t. Evelyn’s alone in the shop. I need to get back.”

  “All right,” he said. “Next week.”

  He smiled and I forced myself to smile back, wondering how many next weeks I would have to endure before I could bring Olivia home for good.

  26

  Philippa

  As I walked him out of my office, Ted Carney stopped and turned to shake my hand. “I hope you weren’t offended, Philippa, but I’m a man who believes in speaking his mind.”

  “Of course not, Ted. Honesty is the best policy.”

  Ted buttoned his overcoat. “Always a pleasure to see you, Reverend.”

  I forced a smile and opened the door. Honesty is the best policy; I believe that. And when you can’t afford to be honest, silence is golden.

  “See you on Sunday.”

  Ted left. I turned around, leaned back against the door, and closed my eyes.

  Sherry, the church secretary, closed a drawer on the filing cabinet. She’s in her mid-fifties, stands a hair over five feet two inches in heels, is as efficient as a high-speed calculator and as loyal as a spaniel. I don’t know what I’d do without her.

  “How’d it go?”

  I shot her a look.

  “Well, I think you’re getting much better,” Sherry said, reaching for a tissue and blowing into it. Sherry and I have been trading the same cold for three weeks. The fact that the furnace keeps breaking down doesn’t help. At the moment, the thermometer in the office reads fifty-six. “Anyway, there’s more to being a good pastor than sermonizing.”

  Sherry means well, but I really don’t feel like talking about it right now. I don’t feel like talking about anything right now. Meetings with Ted have that effect on me.

  “What do I have for the rest of the afternoon?”

  Sherry glanced at her desk calendar, but before she could answer my question, her eyes screwed shut and her mouth gaped open as she took in three big gulps of air and then expelled them all in a tremendous sneeze. “Ah-ah-ah-choo!” She grabbed another tissue and wiped the wet away from her nose. “Sorry.”

  “Bless you. Did the furnace company say when they were coming?”

  “They were supposed to be here at eleven. I’ll call and see what’s keeping them,” she said, jotting a note before reading off the day’s agenda.

  “You’re meeting Paul Collier for lunch at the Blue Bean at one-thirty. Jennifer, Brenda, and Paula are coming in at three to talk about Vacation Bible School—apparently they’re in some disagreement about which curriculum to choose. You’ve got a premarital counseling session at four ….”

  “Alex Dane and Tracey Sampras, right?”

  “Right,” Sherry said and then frowned. “I don’t know about those two.”

  Neither did I. During our first meeting, they got into a huge argument about how much Tracey was spending on her wedding dress and then launched into another about whether or not they should have a flower girl and ring bearer. My standard agenda for a second session of premarital counseling would be to go over the results of a compatibility assessment they’d taken during the first session, but Alex and Tracey had been too busy arguing to take the test. It didn’t matter. I already knew what I needed to know about this couple. My job today would be to get them to reconsider their engagement. Hopefully, they would be more willing to listen to me than they were to each other.

  “And after that?”

  “Stewardship committee meeting at five-thirty and choir at seven. Oh! And John Wozniak called. He’d like to come in and talk to you, as soon as possible, he said. He wouldn’t tell me what it was about.” Sherry flipped a page on the desk calendar. “You could squeeze him in tomorrow at two forty-five.”

  I shook my head. John Wozniak is a steady sort of guy, reserved and quiet, doesn’t like to talk about himself. If he called saying he needed to see me as soon as possible, there was a good reason. “Let’s see if he can come in at five.”

  Sherry clucked her tongue. “And when are you supposed to have dinner?”

  “After choir. I’m having a late lunch.”

  “And who is going to feed Clementine?” She crossed her arms over her chest and I fought to suppress a smile. Sometimes Sherry is more mother hen than secretary. She has a good heart, though.

  “W
ell … I was sort of hoping you might drop by the parsonage on your way home. Would you mind?”

  The telephone rang. Sherry swiveled in her chair and reached for the receiver. “You know I don’t, but you can’t keep saying yes to everyone. You’ll wear yourself out!” Her scolding expression melted as she picked up the phone and said sweetly, “New Bern Community Church. May I help you?”

  “Thank you,” I mouthed and started to head back toward my study.

  I had a little under an hour before I was supposed to meet Paul for lunch. I should spend that time in my office, pounding out yet another sermon that would fail to meet with Ted Carney’s approval. Instead, I made a sharp about-face, walked to the coat rack, and took my blue snow parka from one of the hooks.

  “Excuse me just a moment, Jennifer.” Sherry pressed the telephone receiver flat against her chest. “Shouldn’t you be writing your sermon? This is the only block of time you’ll get today.”

  “I’m going for a walk.” I slipped my arms into my parka.

  Sherry’s eyebrows arched. “It’s twenty-five degrees outside.”

  “I know,” I said as I zipped up my coat. “But the sun is out. I want to soak it in before the next storm. I’ll be back at two forty-five.”

  It felt good to be outside. I’ve always been active, even in the winter. When Tim and I got engaged, instead of a diamond, he gave me a kayak and a set of his-and-hers cross-country skis. I couldn’t have been happier; diamonds were never my style. But I haven’t been skiing once this year, partly because I’ve been so busy, but mostly because I didn’t want to risk anything happening to the baby. Dr. Mandel said that I should be fine through the fourth month, but why take chances? It’s still hard to believe that I’m really pregnant.

  At night, I lie very still, trying to feel something, a movement or ripple or bubble, a sensation of blood flowing swifter and stronger through my veins (my new hobby is voraciously reading everything I can about pregnancy and childbirth. That’s how I learned that my blood volume will increase by 25 percent before the baby is delivered. Miraculous!) or any sort of concrete physical evidence that would confirm Dr. Mandel’s diagnosis.

  My nausea is all but gone, though fatigue is still a problem. The other day, I sat down to work on my sermon and ended up falling asleep with my head on my desk, drooling on the pages I was supposed to be editing. Good thing the office door was closed. What if someone had come in? But I bet Bob Tucker had fallen asleep on his desk plenty of times. Being pastor of New Bern Community Church is a job that comes with too many hats and not enough help. However, if my meeting with Paul Collier went like I hoped, I’d have one less job to do.

  Given the hours I was working, my exhaustion wasn’t necessarily because of the pregnancy. Of course, my breasts are sore, but it’s the same sort of soreness I feel just before my period. And that brings up another kind of worry.

  Every morning I wake up and walk slowly to the bathroom, scared that a show of blood will dash the hopes I still barely dare to have. Faith is the hope in things not seen and I’ve based my life on that hope but just now, I wish I had some hard evidence. I wish I was fat and bloated. I wish my pants wouldn’t button and my shoes were too tight.

  And I wish I could share the secret. I wish I could infiltrate the circle of strollers and mothers who congregate over tall skim lattes in one corner of the Blue Bean Bakery and quiz them about what they felt in their first, second, third month of pregnancy, and confirm that it is normal for your body to feel so normal when it is doing something so monumental, to ask if they felt so excited, and so afraid, and afraid to be so excited, when they were in my shoes.

  There are no children’s boutiques in New Bern, but Kaplan’s carries a selection of expensive infant wear, all-cotton jumpsuits and sleepers in bright bold stripes and polka dots, imported from Sweden, designed to catch the eye and open the wallets of indulgent grandmothers. I’m dying to go in and buy the striped royal blue and bottle green sleeper worn by a headless white mannequin in the display window. It’s the exact same color as Tim’s favorite rugby shirt, the one he wore almost every Saturday of our married lives. But I resisted the urge. It’s too soon to buy a layette, and I don’t want to face Mrs. Kaplan’s questions about who is having a baby. I bought my mother a Kaplan’s cashmere scarf for her birthday, and by the time I walked out the door, Mrs. Kaplan had extracted the full history of the Clarkson family and my adoption into it.

  I took a right turn into the alley, thinking I’d cut through Cobbled Court. Evelyn was standing in the bowfront window of the quilt shop, hanging strings of shiny red hearts from the ceiling to complement a display of red, white, and pink fabrics, an homage to Valentine’s Day. She smiled and motioned for me to come in.

  It was warm inside. Virginia, Evelyn’s mother, was sitting in a straight-backed chair at a large quilting hoop near the window, stitching a red and white star-patterned quilt. Evelyn turned as I came through the door and hopped lightly down from the display, clutching two extra strings of hearts in her hand.

  “Don’t let me interrupt you.”

  “I was just finishing up,” Evelyn replied and turned around to face the window. “What do you think?”

  “Looks good.”

  Virginia glanced up. “Hearts for Valentine’s Day? Not exactly a surprise. Liza would have come up with something more original—folded fat quarters into rosebuds, or hung the whole thing with papier-mâché Cupids.”

  Liza, I had been told previously, was Abigail Spaulding’s niece. Before leaving New Bern to take a job at an assistant curator at an art museum in Chicago, she worked at the quilt shop and created window displays and fabric arrangements.

  “Well, I’m not Liza. My creative juices flow in different patterns. Speaking of patterns,” Evelyn said, looking at the quilt her mother was working on, “that is coming along nicely.”

  I moved next to Evelyn and looked over Virginia’s shoulder. Using incredibly small and even stitches, the older woman was creating an intricate pattern around each block that looked like a series of fat, intersecting plumes.

  “How do you do that?” I didn’t see any outline or tracing on the quilt. “Do you just make it up as you go?”

  Virginia answered, but didn’t look up, still focused on her work. “No, but this is one of my favorite patterns. I’ve done it so many times that my fingers have pretty much memorized it.”

  I leaned down closer to the quilt, fascinated, trying to see if there were any differences between the stitching on the various blocks—not that I could see. I looked up at Evelyn. “Is that usual?”

  Evelyn shook her head silently, her expression indicating that I ought to be impressed by what I was seeing. I was.

  “It’s really not that big a deal,” Virginia protested. “It’s just a matter of practice. Old as I am, I’ve had plenty of time for it.”

  “Well, I’m just amazed, Virginia. I could never do anything like that.”

  “Sure you could. I could teach you. Come to think of it,” she said, finally turning her sharp gaze toward me and frowning a bit, “why haven’t you signed up for quilting class? Evelyn said you were thinking about it.”

  “Oh,” I replied feebly, “I’ve been so busy ….”

  Evelyn began to murmur something understanding, but was interrupted by her mother. “Nonsense. Everyone needs to take a break now and then.”

  Before I could say anything in response, Virginia deftly tucked her needle into the quilt, hopped out of her chair, walked to the counter, and pulled a yellow brochure from a clear plastic holder that sat next to the cash register.

  “Here,” she said, thrusting a brochure into my hand, “take a look at these.”

  Margot had given me this same brochure before, but I’d stuffed it in my purse without ever reading it. There were at least a dozen classes listed, some of which had already started, but one in particular caught my eye—the Ladies in Waiting baby quilt class, taught by Virginia, on Thursday mornings.

  “This
seems interesting,” I said, pointing to the listing.

  Virginia leaned closer to the yellow paper and squinted through her glasses, then looked up at me. “You don’t want that one. It’s for expectant mothers. Margot offers babysitting for the big brothers and sisters up in the workroom—very noisy. Never fails, but one of the toddlers has a meltdown and the whole class gets interrupted while the mother calms the child. That’s why the class runs eight weeks instead of the usual six; we go at a snail’s pace.”

  Eight weeks. According to Dr. Mandel, that was about the same time I should be able to feel the baby begin to kick. For reasons that I couldn’t quite explain, this seemed like some sort of omen to me.

  “Eight weeks is perfect. I’m a slow learner.”

  “The class meets during the workday,” Virginia said doubtfully.

  “Weekday mornings are a better fit for my schedule. I’m booked with meetings and church activities nearly every night, and weekends are even worse. Besides, I’d love a chance to connect with some young mothers. The church is trying to reach out to more young families; this might be a perfect opportunity.” This was all true.

  “But,” Virginia protested, “what would you do with a baby quilt?”

  I pressed my lips together to keep myself from blurting out the secret I so wanted to share and racked my brain for an answer that wouldn’t be a lie.

  “Would a baby quilt class use the same principles as a regular quilt class?” For all I knew, baby quilt construction and standard quilt construction might be a case of apples and oranges.

  Virginia nodded in response. “The technique is the same no matter the size of the quilt.”

  “Well, if the point is for me to learn quilting, it really doesn’t matter what class I take, does it? When I’m done, I can always donate it to the hospital.”

  It was true, I could. That wasn’t my intention, but honesty didn’t require me to share that with Virginia.

  As God was knitting my child together in secret, cell by cell, organ by organ, feature by feature, I, also in secret, would make my baby’s quilt, choosing each fabric, stitching each seam myself, threading them with hopes and prayers and dreams for the tiny stranger I already loved with my whole heart.