The phone rang.
“See, I told you.” Kit headed back to the kitchen and picked up the receiver. “Hello.” Just in time she kept herself from saying, “Teza.”
“Hi, Kit, this is Sue. I'm running a bit behind schedule, but I'll be there as soon as I can. Anything more I can bring?”
“Any marking pencils?”
“Sure. And I baked a peach upside-down cake for dessert.”
“Sounds wonderful. See you when you get here.”
Kit hung up in time to hear a knock on the front door and then the soft glide of it opening. “Come on in.”
“We are,” Beth answered.
“I brought sliced cucumber salad.” Teza walked into the kitchen.
“Well, it's a good thing we didn't bet.” Kit glanced down to see Missy dancing around the guests, tail whipping enough to cause bruises on shins and calves.
“Who bet?” Teza opened the refrigerator door and set her salad on a shelf. “Aren't you eating at all? Look at this empty fridge.”
“Of course I'm eating.” Kit wasn't about to say that popcorn had become a staple. “I just cleaned it out last night.” She tried to assess Teza's state without looking too obvious. She knew there were dark circles under her own eyes that even cover stick couldn't hide. Not sleeping did that to you. “I made apricot nectar for today.”
“How did you do that?” Beth handed her a covered dish. “Chicken salad for sandwiches.”
“Put the apricots through the blender.”
“Skin and all?”
“Yup. Added lemon juice to keep it from turning brown. I've canned it like this in the past, but this time I put the extra in the freezer in ice-cube trays. Then I can bag those and use them in whatever size batch I need.”
“How clever.” Beth set a grocery sack on the counter. At Kit's questioning look, she smiled. “Bread. I was hoping you had lettuce. Ours bolted.”
“I do, all washed even. This is working out wonderfully well. You want to help me move those tables in from the garage? Three eight-foot ones should be adequate.”
The doorbell rang as the two went out the door to the garage.
“I'll get that,” Teza called.
“How was the trip to Seattle?” Beth took the side at one end of the folding table, Kit at the other.
“Bad. There's a spot on her lung and most likely in the lymph nodes.” They wrestled the table up the two steps and through the kitchen door, half dragging it into the living room. “Hi, Elsie Mae. Make yourself at home, please.” They propped the table on its side against the coffee table.
“We'll put this up.” Teza took one end and nodded to Elsie Mae to help her. Kit and Beth headed back to the garage.
“Oh, Kit, I've been praying it wasn't so.”
Yeah, goes to show how much good prayer does. But she kept the mutter to herself. No sense hurting Beth's feelings.
“So what are they going to do?” The two of them hoisted the next table.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Beth dropped her end of the table, then picked it up again, bony.
“Teza has asked for a week to research alternative methods of treatment to see if she wants to do anything at all.” Kit choked on the last words.
“Oh, Kit. I'll put her on our prayer chain at church. Garth could come see her.”
“Don't say anything, please.”
“But have the elders from your church anointed her with oil and prayed for her healing?”
What kind of kooks do we have here? “Ah no. Our church has a prayer chain, but she asked me not to post it yet.” 1 see.
Nothing more was said as they set up the third and final table, but Kit could tell there was plenty going on behind Beth's lovely eyes.
“Hi, Elaine, welcome,” Kit said over her shoulder on her way to the kitchen. “Sue said she was coming but she'd be a bit late.” Kit returned from the kitchen with a damp cloth to wipe down the tables.
“All the quilt things are there in those plastic tubs. We need to mark all the quilting lines first.”
Elsie Mae lifted the quilt top from the bin. “We need to press this again.”
“Of course. Beth, would you please show her the way to the sewing room? The ironing board is all set up.”
“Sure.” The two went up the stairs while the others moved the tables together and laid out rulers, templates, and marking pencils.
“So, Teza, what did they say at the hospital?” Elaine pushed one of the bins under the tables.
“The cancer has returned.”
“How bad?”
“In my lung, the breast, and lymph.” Teza gestured to the right side of her body.
“So they'll do a mastectomy?”
“I havent decided.”
Elaine looked to Kit, who did the classic shrug with raised hands. “Let me get this straight. The cancer has metastasized, they wanted to do an immediate mastectomy, a radical I assume, and you haven't decided yet?”
“No need to yell.”
“I'm not yelling.” Elaine toned her voice down and looked to Kit, who shrugged again, head tipped slightly to the side. Elaine sucked in a deep breath and started again. “What is there to decide?”
Kit looked up to see Beth paused on the stairs, one hand on the rail, the other fingering the locket at her throat.
“Sorry I'm late.” Sue came through the doorway as she spoke. “Uh oh?” She looked to each woman in the room, now frozen as if in a tableau. “Did I interrupt something?”
Kit forced a smile to welcome her friend. No, we re just discussing Teza's options here.”
Options?” Sue crossed her arms over her chest. “Okay, Teza, dear, what's going on?”
“I really don't think this is the proper place and time to…”
“Teza, this is Sue you're talking to. You might as well be my aunt as Kits, since I've known you from when Kit and I were in kindergarten.” She glanced at Kit. “Or was it nursery in church?”
“Either, both, call it forever.” Kit tucked her smile back inside. Leave it to Sue to get right to the point.
“Right. So you just tell me whats going on. This is the right time and the right place.”
“Yay, Sue.” Beth pumped a closed fist. “You tell her.”
Teza raised both hands, palm out. “I've asked for a week, that's all. I want to explore the options and pray about this. After all, it is my body.” She snapped out the last words. “Remember, I've been through this before.”
“But you haven't had all of us before.” Beth's gentle voice cut through the friction like oil through water and settled the chop.
“To gang up on me, you mean?”
“If that is what it takes.” Sue headed for the kitchen to set her cake on the counter. “Surely the coffee must be ready.”
“Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot.” Kit hurried into the other room. “Thank you, dear friend.”
“You are most welcome.” Sue wrapped her arms around Kit and hugged her close. “We won't let her go.”
“I know, but sometimes we have no control, no matter how much we care.” Kit blinked. There would be no crying today.
“I know how well we know.” Sue brushed her eyes with the back of her hand. “Times like this I sure am grateful God knows what he is doing. Just wish he'd clue me in.”
Kit kept her doubts to herself. She and Sue had had many such discussions in the two years since Amber died, and they'd finally agreed to disagree. Or rather, Sue ignored Kit's doubts and went on as if they were nonexistent. More than once she'd just shrugged and said, “You'll come around. God isn't going to let you go.” And kept on praying.
Kit measured the coffee into the basket and poured the water into the coffee maker. “There, that'll be ready in a couple of minutes. I have iced tea in the fridge, and I can make hot tea if anyone wants.”
“Some days like today, you wonder where the summer went. I'll ask if anyone wants hot tea.” Sue left: and Kit got down the coffee mugs, a couple oftall glasses,
and the sugar bowl with sweetener packets on the side. She retrieved her tin full of various kinds of tea bags and set that by the mugs. The coffee maker beeped.
Elsie Mae came down the stairs as Kit stepped to the door to announce the coffee was ready. “I love your sewing room. What a peaceful place.”
“Thank you. Other than the backyard, that's my favorite room. Coffee's ready, ladies. Come help yourself.”
Elsie Mae spread the quilt top over the tables. “Now, isn't that just lovely?”
“No one drinks or eats near our baby,” Elaine announced as they returned to the living room. “I think we should put our names on our cups so we remember which is which.”
“That's why I set out the bunny mugs. Just remember which is yours. Mine's easy.” Kit held up a white mug with a ceramic bunny climbing over the lip.
“Wherever did you get such a delightful collection?” Beth asked.
“Every one who knows Kit gave her bunny mugs until she cried uncle.” Sue pointed to hers. “I brought this one back from California one year.”
“Okay, I figured since we are all old hands at this, we would mark only a few dots on each side of the diamonds, using quarter inch from the seam. That should save us some time. Then I have a number of templates for the borders, and we need to decide which we want.”
“I'd think we should stay with geometries like interlocking diamonds or squares or such.” Beth set her mug down on a coaster on the coffee table. She withdrew a pencil and notebook from her bag. “Like this.” She drew several examples.
“Or angled lines.” Kit drew lines in the air so Beth could see what she meant.
“Or squares within squares, going from large down to small.”
“So many choices,” Elaine said. “If you do that, you could use diamonds or triangles, too.”
“Okay, we need to vote. Beth, can you show us your designs there?”
Beth held up her paper and pointed to a running zigzag. “I think this one in lines half an inch apart.”
“How about that one for the upper and mirror it with a lower, then stitch a small cancer ribbon in the center.” Teza drew with her fingertip on the page, and Beth finished the design.
“I like that.” Elaine leaned over Beth's shoulder. “You want to come and draw designs for me sometime? You're good.”
“Thanks.” Beth held up the pattern. “I'll draw the cancer ribbon and we can cut a template for that. As for the others, if we mark the high point and low point and then keep the lines half or quarter…”
“Half.” Elsie Mae held up her twelve-inch square. “I think we need to draw a line between high and low points so the zigs and zags will all match.” Like the others, she used her finger for an air drawing.
“Someone has to figure out how many zigs and zags.” Beth left her drawing.
“Not me.” Elaine shook her head. “I hate math of any kind.”
“Nor me.” Sue picked up a marking pencil and a short see-through ruler. “I'll start marking the diamonds in the star.”
“Teza, you're it.” Kit handed her aunt a pad and pencil. “I'll measure to be exact.”
“Make sure you leave room for the nine-patch blocks in the corners.”
They marked up until lunch, ate, and went back to marking. Sue had to leave about two. By three, they were ready to layer the quilt. They spread the lining on the table, right side down, and laid the batting over that carefully to make sure there were no wrinkles. When that met everyone's approval, they laid the quilt top in place, checking so that it was perfectly centered. Then, after pinning it in strategic places, they began basting from the center out, lines running diagonally to the corners and in a cross right at the center.
“I'm sorry,” Elaine said about four. “I need to get going. Can we just leave this here?”
“That's the plan.” Kit straightened her creaking back. “I can work on it some more tonight, perhaps finish the basting.
“And then we can get it on the frame.” Teza nodded to the canvas-clad lengths of wood bundled along the back of the sofa.
“I can't come back until Friday.” Elaine pulled the thread through her needle and let the tail hang. “But I've never put a quilt up on a frame before. I just used a hoop.”
“I have.” Elsie Mae took another basting stitch. “And I can come tomorrow for a while in the morning.”
I have a feeling, Kit thought later after she'd shown the rest of them out and returned to her living room, a feeling that I'm going to be living with this for what will seem like a long time. A very long time.
TWENTY-SEVEN
“Please, Teza, for Gods sake…” At the frown on her aunts face, Kit rephrased her plea. “Maybe for my sake then, if you won't do it for yours.”
Teza sat in a beam of sunlight, but even the gold outline did nothing to soften the steel in her jaw.
“Kit, you are not listening to me. I didn't say I absolutely wouldn't accept treatment. I said I want to explore all the options.”
“But the longer you wait.
“Remember, the doctor agreed that a week would not make much difference one way or the other.”
“When he said it needs to be treated aggressively, he didn't mean by eating tofu or something. He meant surgery, radiation, and chemo— now!Teza, you are all the family I have left.
“Now, Kit dear, that just isn't true. You have Mark, Jennifer, and Ryan.”
“Right!” Kit stomped halfway across the room and swung around to face her aunt. “Mark is God knows where, and only God knows when, or even if, he will ever come home. Jennifer is building her own life in Dallas, Texas, which is nowhere near Jefferson City the last time I looked at a map. Ryan is clear across the state and will only be home off and on for visits because he is building his own life too. So what do you mean, I—”
“What do you mean,” Teza interrupted gently, “that only God knows when or if Mark will come home?”
“I wasn't going to tell you that.”
“Tell me now.”
“I don't know where he is.”
“You have no way of getting ahold of him?”
“E-mail. Or in an emergency I could call his office and they would contact him. I refuse to do that.”
“What about his cell phone?”
“He lets it go to voice mail and calls me back.” But I never go that route.
“He never answers?”
The shock on her face made Kit shrug. “He said he needed a break, couldn't deal with all that had gone on, couldn't stand the memories at home or here in Jefferson City—so, he ran.”
“When did this come about?”
“Six, seven months ago.” Kit mentally counted off the months. “Actually eight. He left right after the first of the year.”
“And you never told me.”
“I never told anyone. I figured give him a couple of months and he'd be okay, come home again, and we could work on getting back to normal. Whatever in the world normal is.”
“I see.” Teza looked up from twisting her wedding ring on her finger. “But if you had told me, I would have been praying with you.”
“Yeah, that's something else you don't quite understand. I gave up in the praying department. If God didn't heal Amber, why would he care about this? After all, it's only a marriage.”
“If he numbers the sparrows, is not your marriage of more concern?”
“Wasn't Amber of even more concern?” Rage exploded like a geyser as hot as Old Faithful's steam. “If he cared so much, where was he when I needed him?”
“Right beside you and under you, all around and in your heart. He did as you asked. He healed Amber, just not in the way you wanted.”
Like the geyser that shoots and retreats, Kit drew back within herself, mopped her eyes, and swallowed more tears. “Whatever.”
“Oh, my dear, I pray you will finally let it all go and let the healing come in. He wants to help you, but you won't let him.”
Here I am trying to comfort or rather enc
ourage you, and you are doing the opposite. Not that this is much comfort, but then what is? “I want Amber back.”
“The way she was?”
“No, of course not. Who in their right mind would wish that on anyone, let alone one they love.”
“She's waiting there for us all. What a rejoicing that will be. And I believe she is watching out for you here and now. I don't believe heaven is some far distant place, or the Bible wouldn't have talked about that man who looked down and saw his brothers making the same mistakes he did—the one who asked God to send them someone from the dead to warn them.”
“I want to believe that she is close by, but oh, what I would give for that phone to ring and hear her ‘hi, Mom,’ one more time.”
“One more time would still never be enough.”
Kits shoulders sagged. Too much, all too much. “So what do you want me to do?”
“I want you to help me research alternative treatments. We can contact the Cancer Society and see what they suggest. I plan on going to a bookstore to check out the titles.”
“I can do that with Amazon.com or Barnes and Nobles Web site. Online can be faster.”
“Okay, let's make a list so we don't overlap. It's not that I don't plan on following the doctor's orders, you know. It's just that I want to do what's best. I mean losing another breast is no big deal, just that after that I won't have any more to give away.”
Including lungs and innards and bones and… Oh, Lord, please. Kit swallowed her plea. Haverit I lost enough?
Come unto me, you who are heavy hden, and I will give you rest.
Youre notphyingfair again.
Whatever it takes, my dear Kit, whatever it takes.
Now, that was no Bible verse she'd ever heard.
“What it is, dear?”
Kit shook her head. Surely she was just going bonkers with it all. Voices in her head, on her shoulder, or wherever.
They sat and wrote two lists, one for each of them, and finished up just as the doorbell rang.
The Healing Quilt Page 22