“Eva? Eva, hello.” I was startled out of my daydream by Ruby waving her hand in front of my eyes. “Even though I forgive you for leaving me hanging for so long, you aren’t getting off that easy. As punishment,” she tittered excitedly, “you have to tell me everything .”
She cracked off questions like bullets from a gun, and mostly I answered them, even the ones that made me blush. Why should that be, I wondered. Why should I be embarrassed to talk about something that had seemed so natural to do? Words stripped and shrunk all my feelings, reduced them to a list of actions, like trying to learn ride a horse by reading a book. The instructions never took into account the power and gentleness of hundreds of pounds of silken muscles, or how it felt to gallop across the field, or how you and the horse became one animal instead of two, or how soft and sweet it was to bury your head in his mane and drink in the feel and smell of sweat and newly cut wheat and damp earth. There was no describing it; it was too fast and fluid, like trying to catch quicksilver in your fingers.
But to please Ruby I tried. I owed her that at least. Ruby sat spellbound, her mouth slightly open as she hung on my every word, trying to imagine each detail and not quite being able to put together the pictures in her head. Every once in a while she’d shiver and say, “Yewww. That’s disgusting!” and put her hands over her ears as though she couldn’t bear to hear more. Then, a moment later, her eyes would spark, and she’d ask another six questions, each more personal than the last.
She also wanted to know about the father. I didn’t want anyone to know about that, ever. I couldn’t bear to think of people imagining Slim and me together. It would have made it all so sticky and cheap. Instead I invented a boy I’d met when we went to visit Mama’s cousins in Kansas. I said he couldn’t marry me because he’d been engaged and gotten married before I knew about the baby.
“He was engaged?” Ruby piped, scandalized and intrigued. “Eva, how could you!”
“Well, I didn’t know it at the time or I’d have never gone out riding with him.”
Ruby clucked her tongue and sighed a sigh of sympathy and delicious shock. At least if I had to tell her a lie I was glad it was one she could enjoy.
“Gosh, that’s so awful—how he took advantage of you.” Ruby sighed again and shook her head as curiosity overcame concern. “Was he handsome, though? What color were his eyes?”
I made up more stories. I marveled at how easily she believed my lies, much more easily than she’d have believed the truth. For once I was thankful that I’d been made so imperfect and twisted that it would never occur to people that someone as straight and beautiful as Slim could want me.
“I can’t believe it. I still just can’t believe it,” Ruby mused. “You don’t even look fat or anything.”
“I had to put a safety pin in the waistbands of my skirts last week. Guess I’ll be big as a house soon.” I pulled up my blouse to show her how my secret child was pushing, taut and swelling, under the coarse fabric of my skirt.
Ruby smiled and instinctively, without thinking to ask permission, reached out her hand to lay it on the tiny bulge. Reverently, as though not to wake the baby, she whispered, “What is it, do you think? A boy or girl?”
“I don’t know. I guess there’s no way to tell for sure.”
“My mama says there’s a way,” Ruby reported solemnly. “You take your wedding ring, put it on a chain, hold it over your stomach, and if it swings in a circle it’s a girl, but it swings in a line it’s a boy. ’Course,” she faltered, “you don’t have a wedding ring, so I guess we’ll just have to wait.”
“I guess so.”
But, I did know. I was sure of it. I knew I was carrying a son. The same way I’d known Slim when he walked into our house, though we’d never spoken a word, I knew our son. He was inside me, part of me, and when I closed my eyes I could see him, tiny and translucent, curled inside the watery protection I’d instinctively made for him, cushioned and cradled so completely that the blows of the world would seem only a buoyant swell to him. How was it that other women didn’t know who it was they carried inside?
Lying in bed that night I felt him move for the first time. A ripple, not a push. A silky spool of bubbles unwound inside me, rising and skating along the skin of my stomach. I lay my hand over the bulge of my abdomen and felt him swim, knotting himself under the heat of my hand, the way a cat searches out a sunbeam on a cold winter morning.
The life in him was pulsing and unmistakable. My strong, beautiful boy—as restless as his father, as faithful as his mother, as helpless as a kitten and too unwise yet to realize it. Our destinies were connected in a way that was entirely new to me, but strong and right. At that moment I realized protecting him and raising him would be the focus of my life. The cold winter would never touch him, capricious life never scar him. Everything I’d ever wanted for myself dimmed to a vague memory, a dream barely remembered upon waking from a dark night.
I smiled to myself and moved my hand to another spot on my stomach just to feel him flutter and glide as he swam and balled himself under a new fountain of my warmth. I whispered to Slim in the darkness: “Feel our boy, he’s floating already; nothing will weigh him down. He’s the best of us both.”
But the words bounced back to me, empty in the cold, slicing darkness. Slim was too far off to hear me. As weeks stretched to months he moved just a bit farther off every time I reached for him. Now, when I wanted him more than ever, he was just a stretched fingertip beyond my grasp. It wasn’t forgetting or distance of time that set him back; it was fear. The pull of memory was more compelling than he could bear, and so he had wiped it away in a full, absolute sweep that sometimes haunted him, an amazed observer of his own self-absorption. I could see him, though, in that strange new compartment of my mind that hadn’t seemed to exist before I knew Slim. I saw him there like a reflection in a glass, clear and sharp in one untouchable dimension. He crouched, shivering in the cold night under the wing of a plane, staring at the stars, too thickly engulfed and tortured by ungratified ambition to remember the sound of my voice because that’s how he had decided it had to be. The choice to burn brightly was a straight, seldom used path that left no room for regret or divergent routes.
Looking back on it, I wonder that I didn’t feel angry, deserted, betrayed. I suppose I’d have hated him if I’d been able to convince myself he had deceived me. As it was, I remember only a deep sense of regret, more for him than for me. He was going to have so much and miss so much. The things we want have to be paid for. The price he’d paid was peace. Mine? My price was to stand on the dark side of the one-way mirror, seeing, anticipating, suffering, and knowing, but invisible and ineffectual—like a witness to a car accident shouting warnings that can’t be heard over the roar of the motor and the sound of wheels skidding on gravel. It was too painful a scene to return to daily.
Mama had said, “You go on, and you live your life,” so I did. I dropped a gauzy curtain over the glass to obscure the view, though I knew that nothing in my lifetime would make the reflection go black. Forgetting was not to be one of my gifts. That would have been too easy and too hard.
“We’re all together, baby,” I whispered to my unborn son. “You won’t see him, but he’ll be there, a part of you, the part that longs for and believes in something golden beyond the horizon. That’s the thing we share. It makes us a family, connected, you see? You and me and him, now and for always.” I pulled the quilt high over my nose and mouth and pulled in gulps of cold, silent air and gave it back again, my breath an incubating warmth in the cocoon of blankets covering us.
“There now,” Mama crooned, “he’s all clean and dry and ready to meet his mother.” Gently, as though the slightest tap would shatter him, she handed me a soft nest of flannel that protected my son.
I pulled back the blanket to see his face. Two dark blue jewel eyes stared solemnly up at mine, searching, as though he were as curious about me as I was about him. Looking at him warmed me straight through. Suddenly, a
place in my heart I’d never known existed opened, filled, and spilled over, soothing all the sharp points of my life and answering, for that moment at least, all the questions I’d never even known to ask.
“Oh!” I whispered in wonder, “Look at you! You’re perfect!”
“He is that.” Dr. Townsend snapped his black bag shut with a flourish that spoke of a job well done. “He’s big and strong and about as alert as any newborn I’ve ever seen. You won’t need to make up any tonics for this boy, Miss Eva. If every child in town were as healthy as this, I’d probably be out of business.” He leaned down to take another look at the baby before turning to me with a wink. “Not bad for homemade, young lady. Not bad at all. Almost as pretty a baby as you were when I delivered you.”
Mama stood at the end of the bed and beamed. “You did fine, Eva, just fine. Never saw such a beautiful baby, and you were so brave. You’ll see, he’ll be a good baby because of it.”
“He’s good already,” I breathed. “Look at those beautiful eyes. He’s the one I’ve been waiting for all my life, but I didn’t know it until just now.”
We all stood for a minute more admiring my son until a tentative knock broke the silence and Papa spoke in a stage whisper from the other side of the door, “Is everything all right? Can’t I come in yet?”
“Of course you can, Seamus. I was just leaving,” said Dr. Townsend, picking up his bag and opening the door to reveal Papa’s anxious face. “Sorry to keep you waiting so long, Seamus. Another hour and I swear you’d have worn a hole in the floor pacing, but, I think you’ll find it was worth the wait.” He shook Papa’s hand. “You have a beautiful grandson.”
Mama showed Dr. Townsend to the door, and Papa sat next to me on the bed. I handed him the tiny bundle, and Papa held his grandson tight in his arms. His eyes shone bright and wet as he examined the angelic face and hands and arms, murmuring wonderment over the baby’s perfect, tiny form. Beaming with delighted wonder, he crooned, more to the baby than to me, “Oh, he’s lucky, is this one. You can see that just by looking at him. He’s like a magic charm that will rub off good luck to everyone he touches.” Papa looked up at me and nodded profoundly. “You see if I’m not right, Evangeline. I know these things, just like I knew about you the day you were born, how you were meant for something special, and now look what you’ve gone and done. Here he is, my darling girl: our lucky star.”
Chapter 4
May 1927
“Are you sure you’ll be all right, Papa?” I asked uncertainly. “I’m not all that set on going. You and Mama could go instead and I could stay with Morgan.” I stood in front of the mirror fiddling with a hat pin, accidentally stabbing myself in the finger while studying Papa’s reflection instead of my own.
“Go on, go on,” he said, waving me off impatiently. “We’ll be fine. Won’t we, Morgan?”
Morgan nodded, shaking his blond curls over his forehead and pulling his finger out of his mouth to give me a wide grin. “We’ll be fine, Mama. Papaw’s goin’ to show me how to play mumbley-peg, ain’t you, Papaw?” Papa gave Morgan a little nudge with his knee to remind him that this had been a secret.
“Papa!” I scolded. “He’s too young to be throwing mumbley-peg. He’ll cut off his fingers.”
Papa made an exasperated face. “Bah! He’ll be four in just a few more days.”
“May nineteenth,” Morgan piped in.
“That’s right,” Papa affirmed. “So, don’t get your dander up, Mother Hen. Besides, I wasn’t going to let him throw it. I was just going to show him how.” He turned to Morgan with his eyes gleaming and his brogue thickening like it did whenever he was telling a story. “Sure now, me boy, when I was your age, I already had a knife of me own, and me brothers and I, we’d use them to hunt snakes in the old country. Huge, slithering serpents they were, as long as my arm.”
“Papa,” I said reprovingly, “you know there aren’t any snakes in Ireland.”
“Not now there aren’t,” he said solemnly and nodded to the knife held in his hand. I grinned at the joke I’d heard a million times before, then we broke into loud laughter, and Morgan joined in, more from fellowship than understanding.
Mama came out of the bedroom wearing her good Sunday dress and coat. “Goodness! What a racket. Eva, you ready to go?”
“Ready,” I knelt down and planted a kiss on Morgan’s smooth forehead. “Be good, now. And”—I shot a warning glance at Papa—“remember, absolutely no mumbley-peg. No knives. No shotguns. Nothing dangerous. I mean it.”
“Fine, have it your way, then. No knives,” he huffed, his eyebrows drawing into a single, bushy line before a new idea brightened his expression. “Say, Morgan! You ever chew tobacco?”
“Seamus, that’s not funny,” Mama accused good-naturedly as she opened the door. I laughed at Morgan’s bemused expression and turned back to give him still another good-bye kiss.
Mama drove our Ford like an expert, with superb control and a little faster than you might have supposed if you judged her by the fussy bunch of false cherries she’d pinned to her coat collar.
Our new used car was a great source of pride to us all and a measure of how well things had gone on the farm the last few years. Crops had been so good we’d been able to make improvements on the farm and buy some modern conveniences for ourselves, though I suspect some of our newfound riches came from the savings Papa had earmarked for my education; there was no need to hoard pennies anymore. We could finally afford to get hooked up to the power lines that ran down the county road, and, first thing, Papa bought Mama an electric mangle. It ironed everything so quick and neat, we got the laundry done in half the time. But the car was the most exciting purchase we’d ever made. I’ll never forget the day Papa chugged up to the house, shouting and honking the news that he’d bought Mr. McCurdle’s Ford at a bargain price. He couldn’t have been any happier if his name had been Rockefeller. It seemed like the twenties were indeed roaring, even in Dillon.
Though Papa bought the car, Mama was the better driver. He was always too busy looking out the window and exclaiming over the beautiful day or the freshly plowed fields to bother much with keeping his eyes on the road. I was more like him. The passenger seat suited me fine.
I leaned my head out the window and took in the endless mural of clear, black sky, pricked with stars, felt the spring wind on my face, and smelled the loamy freshness of the newly turned earth and sprouting wheat. I breathed the perfect night deep into my lungs and sighed contentedly.
“What are you thinking, Eva?”
“About how lucky we are. The night Morgan was born, Papa said he’d bring us luck, and he was right.”
“Well, I think we might give the good Lord some credit, too,” Mama said piously, “but, yes, I think you’re right. We have everything we need and then some.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “just about everything.” To myself I thought, There is no point in asking for more. If I sometimes stood outside on a summer afternoon and searched the hot, empty sky for a glint of sun on a sapphire wingspan, or if I woke from a dream crying, my hands clutching the air for something that had seemed so solid the moment before, if the sight of young couples walking hand in hand through town made me cross to the other side of the street where I wouldn’t have to watch, then the sound of Morgan’s chortling laughter as he roughhoused with Papa, or the feel of his soft, cunning hand wrapped in mine pulled my heart back from the heavens and filled the empty places. Most of them.
Slim had said he’d come back, and he meant it at the time, but I’d always known he wouldn’t. From the first day, I’d prepared myself to be alone forever. Most of the time I succeeded, but the reality of loneliness was a harder road to walk than it had seemed when I’d released Slim to his future. At unpredictable times he would still appear in my mind, waking or sleeping. I could see him, hear him, but that was all. In a way, that was sadder than not seeing him at all. Sometimes, at the oddest moments, moments when I should have been happy, I was suddenly pierced
through with loneliness, because, at those times, being happy didn’t seem to make much sense if I couldn’t share it with Slim.
I berated myself for wanting too much, especially on such a beautiful night, when things were going so well. Times were good. The crop was in, and my son was healthy, happy and smarter than any four-year-old I knew. Slim had popped into my life for an instant and disappeared, but at least I’d had an instant. Some people never even got that. I had my beautiful boy, loving parents, and a good home for us all. And as if that wasn’t enough, now it seemed that my quilting hobby was about to become a real little business.
One day, while I was studying some photographs of Monet’s paintings in one of Papa’s books, I got the idea you might make a quilt the same way, blending small splashes of color into a larger, richer scene. I dug though dozens of scraps of blue, aqua, turquoise, sapphire, cobalt, and teal until I had enough cloth to design and piece together a watercolor lily pond of my own. Morgan and I gave it to Ruby for Christmas.
When Ruby’s rich Aunt Cora came visiting from Dallas, she made the biggest fuss over the quilt and wanted to buy it. Ruby explained it was a gift and not for sale, but she introduced us, and Aunt Cora ordered another one “just like it.” The fussy old lady said she’d pay me fifty dollars! I accepted her offer but explained I couldn’t make it exactly the same as Ruby’s.
“Quilts are like names, Miss Cora. It’s important they match the personality of the person they belong to. Otherwise, they’ll never quite fit, no matter how pretty they are. You let me think on it a bit. I’ll make a quilt just with you in mind, and if you don’t like it, you don’t have to take it.” She agreed, and I worked hard and finished the quilt in two months.
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