Threads of Hope: Quilts of Love Series

by Christa Allan

  “I won’t even mention the traffic,” said Nina as she set the case of special diet dog food on the counter. She dropped her purse on the floor, opened the refrigerator and slid food around looking for a bottle of water. “Do we have any—”

  “In the door. Always in the door,” Aretha said. “So, what happened? You look like you tangled with somebody.”

  Nina found two aspirins at the bottom of her purse and washed them down. “And how’s that?” She moved to the bookshelf and poured some of her water in the exhausted-looking ivy plant.

  “I won’t even mention the aspirins,” Aretha noted in an almost-perfect mimic of Nina. She nudged Manny off her lap and settled him next to her. He thanked her with a hand lick. “You know I hate when you do that,” she said and wiped the back of her hand on her jeans. “Back to you.” She pointed at Nina. “I know by now when you’re in a snit. Your whole face is wound tighter than Lady GaGa’s clothes, your eyebrows bear down on your eyes, and your mouth does this funny fish thing.” She demonstrated a pucker that made her look like a wild-haired guppy.

  For a moment, Nina attempted to maintain her indignant demeanor. But the expression on Aretha’s face broke her resolve, and she laughed so loudly that Manny barked at her. “If only I’d taken a picture of that, I’d have leverage for life,” Nina said. “But, thanks, I needed to laugh.” She cut the plastic wrap off the dog food and as she put the cans away, started telling Aretha the story of meeting Greg Hernandez, omitting what most infuriated her: the fact that the lanky high school teenager with the toothpaste-commercial smile had grown into an even more attractive version of himself.

  “What a fool . . . how can someone so mean be taking care of . . . what is the matter with him?” A flustered Aretha was an incoherent Aretha. Nina learned to fill-in-the-blanks as she spoke.

  “Good questions. I didn’t know him in high school. I just knew of him. I mean everyone did. Everyone knows the kids with money, and everyone wants to go after the ones who are eye-candy. He was both, and he played sports. A triple play or threat depending.” Nina moved to the chair in the den. “Next to losing Thomas, that day in high school was one of the worst days of my life. I wished I could have stayed on that cafeteria floor until the bell ended lunch and everyone left for class.” Her mind rewound to that teenaged Nina, moving in slow motion as she stood, scraps of food clinging to her jeans. She’d bent down to pick up the tray, and her glasses slid off her face into the mess on the floor in front of her. “Getting out of there was like trying to get out of a net. The more I struggled, the deeper I sank.”

  “Didn’t anyone try to help you?”

  Aretha’s outrage only magnified for Nina now how pathetic a figure she must have been then.

  “No. Well, I don’t know for sure because I didn’t turn around. I walked straight out through the delivery entrance.”

  “I bet your mother wanted to beat every one of them,” said Aretha.

  “I’m not sure. I never told her what really happened.” Nina slipped her feet back into her ballet flats. “You’re the first person I’ve ever shared this story with.”

  “You could come with me. Manny would be fine in his crate for a few hours.” Nina looked down at her dog, and she didn’t like what she thought she heard. “Like you know the difference between Sunday and Monday,” she said to him.

  He pranced off and jumped on the chair opposite where Aretha sat, using a pillow as a laptop desk, her legs crossed underneath. “I have to finish this paper, plus I have that meeting tonight.”

  Nina tied her neck scarf. “Meeting? On Sunday?” She looked in the mirror, muttered, and re-tied it.

  “I told you about it, but you don’t listen to anything that involves the word ‘church.’ Our women’s group is deciding on our community outreach. We’re just yakking over dinner.” She winked at Manny, then said to Nina, “You could come with me.”

  “Not any more likely than you doing the same.” She loosened the scarf. “Do I look like I’m wearing a neck brace? Tell me now because if you don’t, she will.”

  “I like it. It softens you.”

  “So, are you saying my face looks hard?” Nina looked in the hall tree mirror, turning her head side-to-side. “Is my eyeliner too severe?”

  “Sister, you are exhausting. That’s not what I’m sayin’ and you need to get over yourself. Just because you’ve revved up your career engine doesn’t mean you start rolling over your friends.”

  “Sorry. Sorry. I have Sunday-dinner anxiety.”

  Aretha eyed Manny as she opened her laptop. “Well, now that’s your own fault for saying ‘yes’ when you mean ‘no.’ ”

  To avoid thinking about the torture that awaited her, Nina shut off her usual driving music and started planning the stories that would land her in New York. The one she was putting together now had potential. If a local county official was sabotaging how contracts were being awarded, that had legs. And, with some digging, maybe even arms. When it came to graft in government, she had to follow the roots and figure out who was on the other end. And if the ambulance service contract truly did turn out to be a political favor, that meant the mayor was willing to risk the lives of everyone in the county to stay in the good old boy network.

  She’d have to be careful with documenting, verifying sources, and corroborating evidence. If the hard-hitting story came back and hit the magazine hard because of sloppy work, Elise would not be happy, and Nina could stop worrying about New York because her career would be in the dumpster. No kids, no husband, not even a hint of one. Now’s the time to make the push.

  Still no word from Daisy, which continued to concern her. That and knowing if she didn’t return, Nina would be stuck going to that benefit. She had Daisy’s number. It’s not like she couldn’t call her. But if she wasn’t contacting Nina because that “it” was serious, then Daisy didn’t need to be fielding calls either.

  Nina exited the freeway that led to her parents’ neighborhood. At least they moved to a town outside of Houston that didn’t have a weapons buy-back program every other month like where they used to live. They bought a garden home, about which her mother complained to the point of calling the real estate company and threatening to sue for false advertising. “Six bushes and a tree aren’t a garden. I have a throw rug bigger than the back yard,” and on and on and on. When the real estate agent offered to send over boxes, movers, a for sale sign, and promised they could have them out in under twenty-four hours, she stopped the phone calls. After that, she blamed her husband and her daughter for moving her someplace she couldn’t plant a decent-sized shrub.

  By the time she parked in the driveway, there were enough knots in her stomach for a hammock, which, clearly, would not fit in the backyard. As always, she rang the doorbell. It sounded more like a cattle prodder on steroids. Nina fiddled with her scarf, dusted off the threat of something she might not have seen on the front of her emerald green silk dress, and checked the toes of her platform shoes for scuffs. She swiped her front teeth with her finger in case of lipstick bleed and hoped she’d brushed her teeth without leaving anything behind.

  She heard her mother’s, “I’ll get it,” as if battling her father to open the door was ever an issue. Sheila O’Malley peered out like she might be expecting a deep cover agent for an exchange.

  “Oh, it’s you. Well, come on in. But you’re early. Dinner isn’t ready yet. Just make yourself at home.”

  Right. It’s what she’d been trying to do her entire life.

  9

  Nina wondered if all grown children, when they looked at their parents through adult eyes, tried to find what first attracted them to one another. She’d seen all the old photos paraded around the house that captured smiles meant for the camera. But it was what happened before and after the picture that intrigued Nina. If she could travel back in time to show the young Patrick O’Malley, the one with the dimples and broad smile, whose eyes signaled mischief and zest, a photo of what he would become in forty years, m
ight something in his life have changed? Maybe so much so that the Patrick O’Malley, who now waved his remote like a king’s scepter from the throne of his recliner, the one whose downturned eyes matched his downturned mouth, whose hair was gray and disheveled, might have been someone else? Or perhaps Nina might not have been at all?

  “When did you get here?” He made motions as if he was going to disengage himself from the comfort of his chair.

  Oh, almost thirty years ago. “Don’t get up,” she said and walked over to kiss him on his forehead. He smelled just like the closed-up insides of an unhappy house. “How are you?”

  “Good. Good.” He spoke to the cast of Gilligan’s Island on the television screen. “You?”

  Awful. My career is off-the-tracks, my social life consists of taking my dog to the veterinarian, only to meet the one jerk I’ve tried to forget for the past ten years. “I’m great. Everything’s great.”

  “Glad to hear that, honey.” His eyes flickered in her direction for a moment. “Your mom need some help in the kitchen?”

  Sheila didn’t need help in the kitchen, the house, the country, the universe. Had he forgotten Nina trailing behind him during those years when he spent more time vertical? She’d hand him tools when he fixed the leaky something or other under the car, tape when he bundled the outside pipes against the cold. He didn’t need help either, but he at least let her think he did. And Nina loved him for that.

  “Doubt it, but I’ll check.” She wasn’t sure he knew she left.

  Nina walked through the hall to the kitchen where she would be of no help whatsoever. For someone whose idea of an emotional moment was sneezing, Sheila created lovely meals. Given the choice, Nina would have preferred peanut butter and jelly sandwiches if that meant her mother could invest more time in her.

  Sheila hated hovering, so Nina leaned against the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. Aretha would be in designer heaven if given the chance to makeover the industrial look of the kitchen with its stainless steel appliances, gray tiled floors, and white cabinets. But her mother puttering around a French country kitchen wearing a cornflower blue apron edged in lace was as likely as Madonna showing up an award ceremony wearing a cotton housedress and slippers. “Smells great in here. Anything I can do?”

  Her mother sprinkled sliced almonds on top of a salad. “No. Not now. Everything’s almost finished.” She sighed. “I’ve been in here all morning making lasagna while your dad’s been in there,” she nodded her head toward the den, “wearing out the batteries in the remote.”

  “I would have been glad to be here sooner to help you,” Nina said and hated that she felt like a child uninvited to a party.

  “All you had to do was offer.” Sheila lifted that one eyebrow that signaled “so there,” as she added olive oil and vinegar to the salad.

  Nina shoved her indignation away before it jumped right out of her mouth and splat itself on her mother’s forehead. Instead, it coursed through her body and, if someone had struck a match, Nina would have exploded on the spot.

  After Thomas died, the fourth chair at the dining table screamed his absence. It screamed so loudly that for months and months and months, Nina and her parents took refuge in the den where they balanced their plates on television tables and finished their meals in communal silence. Nina looked across the table now at Thomas’s empty chair and between the clicks of forks against the thick white plates, wondered what he would have been like at almost forty. Would they have expanded their table for Thomas, his wife, their children? She almost hoped he couldn’t see them all now. See how they all went on living, but died inside.

  “So, how’s that writing job of yours?”

  Even with one eye on the television, at least her father pretended an interest in her career. However, when her mother figured out that her daughter wasn’t going to be Houston’s version of Entertainment Tonight, Sheila thought Nina had just wasted her college education. After Janie’s promotion, it frightened Nina that, once again, her mother might be right.

  Nina started to explain the story about the mayor and his cronies when her mother interrupted to ask if she had a life outside of that job.

  “Yes, of course.” She didn’t add that it mostly centered around Manny. “In fact, Elise, my editor gave me tickets to the We Care benefit. The one that’s held at the St. Regis Hotel.”

  “That fancy one the Houston society people go to? Isn’t it an AIDS thing? And who are you going with?”

  Her mother hadn’t asked her that many questions in the past four dinners they shared. “Since the tickets cost $400 each, I imagine it’s going to be an upscale crowd. As for the ‘AIDS thing,’ the money raised at the benefit goes to local hospices. There’s also a silent auction of quilts made by different support groups in Houston. I read online there’s going to be a display of a section of The AIDS Memorial Quilt.”

  “Seems like if everyone’s paying that much money to attend, you’d be able to see the whole quilt,” her father observed and served himself another slab of lasagna.

  “Well, I’ve done some research. The quilt is not very portable anymore. It weighs fifty-four tons. The article said if you spend just a minute on one panel, it would take over thirty-three days to see the entire thing. I don’t think anyone can stay that long,” said Nina.

  Neither of her parents laughed. Her mother’s lips twisted to the side, which Nina learned in her teens was a prelude to a lecture on being sassy. Her father’s head bobbed and a thin thread of cheese hung from his lips. He looked like an aging redfish that had just swallowed a hook. And just think, Thomas, you missed all this.

  Sheila handed her husband a napkin. “You need to take care of that,” she said and pointed to her chin to demonstrate. She looked at Nina. “What are you going to do with that extra ticket? Have someone in mind? Because if you don’t, Lola across the street told me she has a son who isn’t married yet. He owns three fast food restaurants, and he makes a good income.” She stretched the word “good” to two syllables.

  “Then why is he still single?” Lola must be the new neighbor her mother mentioned last month. The one whose furniture didn’t arrive via a moving van, but through a convoy of local furniture store delivery trucks.

  Her mother patted her mouth with her napkin as if her lips would shatter if she pressed them too hard, cleared her throat, and smiled too deliberately for Nina’s comfort. “Well, funny you should ask that because Lola asked the same about you.”

  Not staying for the key lime pie her mother had made shaved about thirty minutes off Nina’s torture time. She rarely ate dessert there anyway because it was usually something she didn’t like. Since her mother’s eyes seemed to focus on Nina’s hips each time she offered her something sweet, she guessed her refusing it was her mother’s plan all along. Either that or her mother purposely provided her an easy escape.

  The sound of Nina’s key in the deadbolt flipped an internal barking switch in Manny that didn’t shut off until he spotted her walking through the door.

  “I need to remind your human grandmother there’s at least one man in my life who can’t contain his excitement when I walk through the door.” Manny’s tail wagged like a windshield wiper as he wiggled out of his crate and into Nina’s arms. “Though you really do need to chew a few breath mints before you tell me hello.”

  Manny trotted up the stairs after Nina. He gnawed on a rawhide bone he found under her bed, while she changed into her sweats. She rifled through her closet hoping to find something she already knew wouldn’t be there: a dress to wear to the benefit. Nothing even close to benefit-worthy. That dress she hoped Aretha could modify would set off the fashion police alarm.

  “Aretha doesn’t know it yet, but there’s a shopping trip in her future,” Nina told Manny as she grabbed her laptop from her dresser. He paid no attention to her until she mentioned going downstairs for food. He pushed the bone under her bed and led the way to the kitchen.

  After Manny had been fed, water
ed, and escorted outside for his nightly routine of fertilizing the flower bed, Nina settled in her chair to read the online news and compose questions for the council member she’d soon be interviewing. She opened her email to find a message from Daisy.

  “Just wanted you to know I’m fine, and I should be back in time for Janie’s party. Not much to talk about right now. I’ll call you. Hugs, D.”

  That was all the online news Nina could handle for the night.

  10

  The day after Greg’s unexpected reunion with Nina O’Malley, he left Dr. Alvarez’s clinic and drove straight to the support group meeting he first attended four months ago. Elise, of course, found Threads of Hope even before he moved back to Houston. What she neglected to tell him was not only was this HIV/AIDS support group primarily women, they spent almost every meeting sewing quilt panels. The group, of course, knew everything about him, including the little known fact that he dabbled in photography, pencil sketches, and watercolors. All talents the group welcomed with enthusiasm, especially as they prepared their quilts for the We Care benefit.

  He told his sister later that he might not have ever returned to the group had a little girl named Tabitha and The AIDS Memorial Quilt not led him and Lily to their daughter.

  “Well, that worked out nicely then, didn’t it?” Elise purred, and Greg saw the look of triumph blaze in her eyes.

  Tonight, thinking of that exchange between himself and his sister, Greg smiled at her ability to transform what some might see as manipulative into something serendipitous. Lily would have been delighted by the group considering her gratitude to the NAMES Project Foundation for all it did to preserve and care for the quilt that they’d viewed in Syracuse, New York.