When Virginia, Evelyn’s mother, who is well into her eighties but still as sharp as a tack and continues to teach quilting and work in the shop several afternoons a week, arrived to take over for me at around eleven, I told her what had happened. By then I was starting to worry about whether or not I’d done the right thing.
“Tosh!” she said, dismissing my concerns as she picked up Petunia, the enormous tomcat who goes everywhere with her, and deposited him in his accustomed spot in the front window. “I bet they don’t even belong to a guild. And if they do, I bet everyone in the guild has their number. Most quilters are kind as can be, but every barrel is bound to have a few crab apples.”
I went to the workroom to cut and package Internet orders, happy to leave Virginia downstairs to deal with the crab apples. We were way behind on fulfillment. Judith, our intern, was supposed to come in at noon and help me, but she didn’t show. When I called the Stanton Center, they told me she’d gone back to her boyfriend, the man responsible for her broken nose and dislocated shoulder.
I called the elementary school and asked them to let Bethany know that I wouldn’t be able to make it to the spelling bee. I was disappointed, but not one-tenth as disappointed as I was about Judith. I really thought she was going to make it.
Being financially independent and having job skills makes it a lot easier for victims of domestic violence to escape that cycle. That’s why we started the community internship program, a program I coordinate. Our interns are much less likely to return to their abusers than those who don’t get job training, but still, it happens.
People who’ve never been in that situation find this hard to fathom, but I get it. Time after time, Hodge would beat me and then beg my forgiveness, promise me it would never happen again. Time after time, I believed him. Until the next time.
The day he hit Bethany was the day I knew I had to get out. If not for my kids, I’d probably never have found the courage to run or to keep from going back. It just breaks my heart that Judith is gone. I feel like I’ve failed her.
Working at Cobbled Court Quilts is fun. I love the people I work with. Margot is the kindest person I’ve ever met. Virginia is like the grandma I never had. And Evelyn . . . well, Evelyn is just amazing. How many small business owners would let me spend 25 percent of my time coordinating the internship program, a program that involves eight different businesses in New Bern, not just her quilt shop, and still pay my full salary? Nobody I can think of. But what I really love about working here is working with the interns. I can never repay those who helped me escape the cycle, but I can help others who are still trapped, cheer them on, let them stand on my shoulders, give them a boost over the wall to freedom and safety.
That’s why I decided to get my GED and start taking classes at the community college, because someday I want to help run a women’s shelter, maybe even be the director. Not for the money, though more money would be nice, but because that’s where my heart is—with the women.
Even though I skipped lunch, I spent the rest of the day playing catch-up—and losing. I was late leaving work and late picking up the kids from after-school care. Bethany never got my message about why I couldn’t make it to the spelling bee. I felt terrible. Even after I explained what happened, said we were going out for pizza to celebrate her victory (also because I hadn’t had time to get to the market), and solemnly promised I’d be there for the regional competition, she was still sulky and refused to talk to me. Bobby filled the silence, jabbering about school and some group called Boys’ Brigade that his friends had joined, and begging me to let him join too. Though I was only half listening, I said he could as long as it didn’t cost anything. It sounded like it’d be good for him, a way to spend more time with other boys. When it comes to raising Bobby, I sometimes feel like I’m flying blind. Bethany is easier; I know what to do with a girl. Well, some of the time. As she sat there, barely eating, refusing to look at me or speak to me while Bobby babbled happily about camping trips and bowling tournaments, I couldn’t help but wonder how I was ever going to survive the teen years.
After feeding the kids and picking up the sitter, I drove to the community college as fast as I could. I took a seat in the back of the room, hoping my tardiness would go unnoticed. No such luck. Dr. Verstandig stopped the lecture to tell me that Dr. Streeter wanted me to drop by his office after class.
He did? Why would the head of the humanities department want to see me?
As soon as class was over, I went to Dr. Streeter’s office and knocked on the door, clutching my textbook to my chest as if that might stop my heart from pounding.
When I’m in the presence of a male authority figure—a policeman, a judge, or even Reverend Tucker, who has to be the nicest man on the face of the earth—I feel anxious, like I’ve been caught doing something wrong and am about to be punished for it.
The psychology class that I took last term helped me understand why. It’s all mixed up with how I was raised, the guilt I still feel over my father’s death when I was little, and, of course, the years of abuse I endured from my husband, who used to fly into a rage over even the tiniest infraction of rules that I sometimes wasn’t even aware of. I could write a ten-page, footnoted, A-plus paper on the causes and effects of my particular brand of anxiety. But being able to explain it isn’t the same as being able to control it.
I knocked again, a little louder. Dr. Streeter’s deep voice came from the other side of the door. “It’s unlocked!”
Dr. Streeter, dressed in the shapeless brown sweater-vest he wears no matter the season, sat bent over his desk with the end of a pencil wedged between his teeth, chewing on the eraser and reading an essay. He held his hand up when I entered, so I stood still and silent, waiting for him to finish. He shook his white head and scribbled a note in the margin of the paper before looking up, first with a frown and then with a delighted smile, which made me feel much better.
“Ivy!” he boomed, throwing out his arms as if he expected me to run into them.
Dr. Streeter acts in plays at the local theater. He talks as if he’s trying to make sure they hear him in the cheap seats and uses a lot of sweeping hand gestures.
“Sit! Sit! Sit! Just clear those papers off the chair—move them anywhere. That’s right. What can I do for you?”
“Dr. Verstandig said you wanted to see me?”
“I did? Oh, yes!” he exclaimed, his face brightening. “I did! I wanted to talk to you about something.”
Dr. Streeter is probably pushing seventy-five, but I don’t think his forgetfulness has anything to do with age. I’m sure he was as much the absentminded academic at thirty as he is now, his office littered with papers, probably wearing that same ugly sweater-vest, and perfectly content with his life.
He turned to face me, and his ancient leather and wood swivel chair squeaked in protest. “How are your classes going?”
“Class,” I corrected. “I can only take one per semester, remember? So far, I’ve got a ninety-two average in Dr. Verstandig’s class.”
“Good. Very good. Not that I’m surprised,” he said, snatching a piece of paper from under a glass paperweight and holding it at arm’s length so he could read it without his glasses. “I was looking over your transcript. Algebra was a bit of a bumpy road, but you’ve earned high marks in every other course. Well done, Ivy. Very well done.”
He was such a nice man. Why had I been so worried about meeting with him? One of these days I simply had to grow up and get over it.
“Thanks. As of next semester, I’ll be a sophomore. Only took three years. I’ll probably be a grandmother before I’m a graduate, but I’ll get there eventually.”
He made his hands into a chapel and rested his chin on the steeple of his fingers. “What if you were able to graduate in two years? Or even a little sooner?”
“How could I do that?”
He began patting his pockets, then burrowing through the papers on his desk until he located a bright blue brochure with a pict
ure on the front of a man and a woman dressed in business suits and carrying textbooks under their arms.
“This appeared in my in-box last week. Carrillon College is starting a new accelerated degree program in nonprofit management and leadership. It’s designed for people like you, adults who have spent some time in the workforce but have not yet finished their undergraduate work. The head of the program happens to be an old friend; she assured me that all your credits would transfer. They would also award you credit for your work experience, an entire semester’s worth.”
A whole semester of college credit for work I’d already done? No books, no tests, no tuition? And best of all, no time? At my current rate, it would take me a year and a half to complete one semester’s worth of classes. There had to be a catch.
I took the brochure from the professor’s outstretched hand. “How does that work? Do they award more credits per class than other colleges? Is it an online program?”
Dr. Streeter shook his head. “No, no. They will give credit for work experience, but you’ll have to take the rest of the classes on campus, three credits a class, and accumulate one hundred and twenty credits to graduate.
“Look,” he said, grabbing an old envelope and scribbling his calculations on the back. “You’ve already got thirty credits from us. Carrillon will grant you fifteen more for work experience, which means you only need seventy-five more. If you take six classes for three semesters and seven classes for one, you graduate in two years—sooner if you do the summer term. Carrillon assumes that adult students will be utterly focused on work and capable of taking more than five classes a term. Which is true. Unlike my younger students, you’re not spending your time watching videos of cats running into screen doors on YouTube or posting pictures of food to your Facebook page.”
“No. I’m too busy working full-time and taking care of my two small children for that. Or anything else! Do you know how long it’s been since I was on a date, Professor? Neither do I.”
This unexpected mention of my personal life made the old man blush, and my snappish tone brought a wounded expression to his face, making me regret my outburst. Why had I jumped on him like that? He meant no harm.
And why embarrass both of us by bringing up the vast wasteland that was my dating life? Or lack thereof? Actually, I’ve never been on a date, not once. After I ran away from home, I ended up living on the street, then working in a strip club—sort of. I thought I was being hired as a coat-check girl in a restaurant, only later finding out what kind of place it was and that they expected me to do a lot more than hang up coats. Sounds crazy, I know, but I fell for it. Stupid of me. Anyway, Hodge scooped me up from the gutter and took me home with him. I was as grateful as a rescued puppy and just as willing to please. Before long I was pregnant, married, and trapped, entirely dependent upon him for everything. And he never even had to buy me dinner. How stupid can you get?
So, no. I’ve never been on a date. But it isn’t like I spend my Saturday nights downing quarts of ice cream, sighing over movies on Lifetime, and moaning for a man. I’m too busy for that. Too busy for everything aside from working, studying, and caring for my kids. The only thing I do for me is go to the weekly meeting of my quilt circle. Some weeks I’m too swamped even for that, let alone a boyfriend.
Okay, I do have occasional fantasies about Ryan Reynolds showing up on my doorstep with roses and a swooningly sultry expression on his gorgeous face. I’m human, after all. But it’s never going to happen. And that’s probably a good thing, because even though Ryan Reynolds seems like the most perfectly perfect man possible, if I actually were able to have a relationship with him, I’m sure he’d turn out to be a jerk or worse. I have some sort of invisible magnetic pull that draws jerks to me. So sure, yes. It might be nice to have a man in my life, but I don’t see it happening.
Dr. Streeter was a lifelong bachelor with no obligations to anything but his work and studies. He had no clue how hard it was for me to find the time, money, and child care to take even one night class per week. But he meant well; I could see that.
“I’m sorry, Professor. I appreciate your confidence in me, but I’m a single mother. I just can’t put my life on hold for the next two years. Even if I could, where would I find the tuition money? How much does this cost anyway?”
His face lit up again. “That’s what is so wonderful. A donor is underwriting a portion of the costs, so Carrillon is able to charge a reduced, flat-rate tuition—eight thousand dollars a semester no matter how many courses you take. So if you were to—”
“Eight thousand dollars a semester!” I gasped, and then laughed, wondering what kind of heiress he thought he was talking to. Seriously, Dr. Streeter needed to climb down from the ivory tower and spend some time in my world, where a blown-out tire or trip to the dentist meant the difference between being able to scrape together money for tuition or having to sit out the semester.
“Thirty-two thousand total? That’s more than I make in a year! Even if I had that kind of money, what do you expect my family to live on while I’m going to school?”
Dr. Streeter, who had been nodding the whole time I talked, said, “It would be a difficult undertaking, Ivy. I realize that. But you’re going to end up spending that much on your education anyway—probably more. You’re just going to do it slower. Tuition costs rise every year. What will a class cost you nine years from now when you finally graduate? How much earning power will you give up in those extra seven years when you won’t have a degree? Time is an irreplaceable commodity, Ivy. You’ve got to look at this long term.”
“I understand what you’re saying, Dr. Streeter, but . . .” I sighed, suddenly very tired. I looked at my watch. “I’ve got to go. My babysitter has to be home by nine.”
I walked toward the door. “Thank you, Professor. I really appreciate your encouragement, but there’s just no way I can make this work. Not now.”
Dr. Streeter’s swivel chair squeaked as he got to his feet. “Here,” he said, taking the blue brochure I’d left on his desk and placing it on top of my book. “Hold on to this for a while. Maybe something will happen to make you change your mind—a miracle or something. Who knows? Maybe you’ll win the lottery.”
“Professor,” I said wearily, “I’ve never even bought a ticket.”
“Then maybe it’s time you did. Act of faith, eh?”
He smiled and rested a big hand on my shoulder. “At least think about it. Promise me you will.”
I did think about it. For about as long as it took to walk from Dr. Streeter’s office to my car. Then I slid off the rainbow and back into reality, driving home with the windshield wipers going full blast, thinking about the stuff that mattered.
What was I going to do about my broken computer? The tech guys at the office-supply store would charge me seventy-five bucks just to run a diagnostic and who knew how much more for repairs? It might be cheaper just to buy a new one, but I didn’t have that kind of money right now. Speaking of money, the bill for the car taxes was still sitting on my desk. How was I going to scrape up $168.52 to pay it? Had I remembered to send in an order for more interfacing before I’d left work? Or to call the pediatrician and schedule the kids’ school physicals, so I wouldn’t be scrambling to get them an appointment in August? Would that spot of drywall near the bathroom floor, the part that got soaked in this morning’s Bobby-induced flood, dry out or would I have to patch it? Could I squeeze in a trip to the market during my lunch break tomorrow?
Fifty balls to keep in the air and only two hands to juggle with. I opened my mouth wide, unclenching and stretching my jaw, trying to relieve the building tension.
What was Dr. Streeter thinking? No way could I go to college full-time, especially a college in Delaware. Delaware! He neglected to mention Carrillon’s location, but it was listed right there on the brochure. I’m sure Delaware is lovely, but no way was I moving.
New Bern is my home now and, more important, my kids’ home. Bobby doesn’t remember livin
g anywhere else. He loves New Bern—we all do. Our friends, Evelyn and Charlie, Abigail and Franklin, Margot, Virginia, Tessa, Madelyn, and Philippa are all here. They’re my support system; I depend on them. Not the way I did at first, of course. After all, they’ve got their own lives to live. Evelyn and Charlie are busy running their two businesses, the quilt shop and the Grill on the Green restaurant. Abigail and Franklin spend half their time traveling. Margot is married now and busy with her family. Philippa is occupied by her duties at the church and taking care of her baby, Tim. Madelyn has her hands full running the inn, and Tessa is busy filling the deluge of orders for her herbal soaps and lotions. Even Garrett, who for years was my regular babysitter on quilt circle nights, isn’t available now. He’d been working and living above the quilt shop, waiting to see if Liza, his former girlfriend, was ever going to move back from Chicago. I guess he must have gotten tired of waiting, because about two months ago, he moved to the city. Who can blame him? New Bern isn’t exactly a haven for the young and single.
But I love it here. In New Bern I feel happy, accepted, and most important, safe. I can’t imagine living anywhere else, not for all the diplomas in Delaware.
The house was quiet. Drew was sitting at the kitchen table studying but started to pack up his books as soon as he saw me.
“Everybody asleep?”
He nodded. “Bethany gave me a little grief about bedtime but not much, and Bobby was in there singing to himself for a while.”
I smiled. “Yeah, he does that.”
I drove Drew back home. I hated to leave the kids alone, even for ten minutes, but what else could I do?
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