Threads

by Patsy Brookshire

  I sat quiet, no words in me, as she explained what she wanted me, us, to do, and why. Punkin Sue Tiger lay curled up behind the door, among my boots and clamming gear, waiting for the stranger to go away. His eyes were fixed on Amy as she talked.

  "For as long as I've known him, David has approached things with a different viewpoint from most people. He proposed to me when he was seven and I was only five. Even then I knew he was different. He watched everything everyone did and knew instinctively which things made people happy and what tormented them. He had a reverence for marriage and love that you probably find confusing, considering the circumstances you find yourself in. But David knows that the only way to hold a love is with open arms. There is the danger your mate will fly away, yes, but what's sadder than an animal caught in a trap? I've seen it in the eyes of too many people wedded for life to their one-and-only."

  She almost made sense. I thought of my sister Mandy and her husband, of my mom and dad. I'd seen the look. But I'd never known what caused it. Maybe Amy and David were right. I never knew a happier married couple.

  "Maybe it makes a little more sense to you now." She saw my hand trying to cover the big belly that seemed to me to fill the room. "That is not the point right now.

  "If you don't move up with us, one of us will have to come down here and be with you." She was stating it as a fact, unquestioned. She wasn't asking if I agreed.

  I could have argued. I could have refused, like I had with David, but what good would it have done? I'd still have had to see them every day--both of them--I was sure Amy wouldn't let me be alone now.

  Before I gave in, I had a question that had been bothering me from David's first mention of me living with them. Her frankness made me bold. Okay, I might live with them, but... "Where-where would I...?"

  Amy raised her eyebrows. "Where would you sleep?"

  I felt my face flush. I looked over her shoulder, at the wall, at the dark window, at Punkin Sue Tiger peeking out from between my beach boots. Everywhere but at her, especially not at the clear gaze of her eyes. If I thought my stomach seemed big before, now it was gigantic, the only thing in the room.

  She knew I was embarrassed, but she just shrugged her shoulders, and laughed, a little shakily. "Frankly that has bothered me, too. But I think that if we face it head on we'll be okay." Quickly, as if to get the pain over as fast as possible, like ripping off a cover over a sore, she told me I'd be sleeping in what had been the storage room. It was all ready for me with my own bed, and had been for weeks.

  As for where David would sleep..."The only way to prevent problems between us, you and me, is to share him."

  "You know." Again that quiet laugh. "This is the first time I've ever had to actually practice what David, and I preach. I hope you'll help me."

  I was anxious to have her keep talking, I nodded.

  She looked really uncomfortable when she rose and stood at the window, looking out into the now-dark night.

  "David will spend one night with you, the next with me, and then with you again." She took a deep breath. "And so on." She turned toward me again. No tears. There was a sadness in her eyes that had not been there before.

  I suppose she'd dealt with her own devils long before tonight. After a quick sigh the look was gone; I only saw it once again.

  Oddly, it was that quick look of sadness that convinced me. Up 'til then I'd feared that Amy, like David, saw no pitfalls in this scheme. She knew as well as I the dangerous thing we were attempting, but she was willing, for David's sake, and the baby's, to give it all she had.

  And I knew at that moment with an intuition rare to me, that she would do whatever she needed to do to save her marriage. That's when I put away the last small hope I had that I could wiggle David away from her.

  I was lighter, my belly felt normal, baby-sized again. It took little effort to go to her, take her hands in mine and say, "Okay. We'll do it." She knew I meant she and I, not David. She squeezed my hands, sealing our bargain. I pulled my hands away, wanting now to get this closeness over with.

  While she waited and played with Punkin Sue Tiger, I gathered up my nightclothes and a few toilet articles. I hesitated a moment, then blew out the lamp and followed her out the door. The path was dark, and slippery. This way was new to me. She reached around, took my hand and led me. The surf pounded below us, the only sound in an otherwise soundless night. The only light in our dark world came from the house she was leading me to.

  My mind was spinning. I realized we'd left Punkin Sue Tiger in the house and started to turn back to get him. She misunderstood my move and tightened her grip. I didn't explain. He'd be all right tonight, I could get him in the morning.

  The morning. The night. Right now, I didn't know which I feared more.

  I concentrated on the sound of the waves landing on the sand to avoid thinking about what she was leading us to. My instinct was to turn and run.

  Amy's hand tightened on mine. The light from the house grew brighter as we got closer.

  Just as we got to the door Amy stopped. Through a fog of near-panic, I heard her say, "Tonight, he's yours."

  She gave me no time to answer, her hand turned the doorknob. With her palm strong on my back, we entered her home, together.

  Threads, Part Two

  16. Names on a Quilt

  Once Aunt Sophie started reliving the days of sixty years ago, it was as if her dammed up memory started flooding. She continued talking as we picked the rest of the berries, took them home, washed and picked them over.

  From the basement I could hear her talking while I packed a few boxes with empty jars. Upstairs she interrupted her story only to direct me in scrubbing the dusty jars and sterilizing them in boiling water to make them ready for the bubbling jam. We put up fourteen jars and had enough leftover to make three small pies for the freezer.

  The kitchen was small and old-fashioned, like the house. It belonged to my Uncle Boyd, Mandy's fifth child, whom Aunt Sophie had declared would probably turn out to be undependable, a roving artist perhaps. He certainly would not be the one to support Granny Mandy in her old age.

  He delighted Aunt Sophie by walking and talking early, and he became her favorite nephew. Because he was her favorite, and perhaps reminded her of her own child, she had given him more attention and was harder on him than any of the others. As he grew, and his talent for drawing and comedy became more and more pronounced, she encouraged and, some say, harassed him to apply himself to his talents and his studies. Through her influence he finished high school two years early. And then to her dismay, he left home, or fled, to wander about the country, picking up work where he could.

  Boyd had a curiosity about people that, coupled with a fascination about how they governed their lives, led him to watching more closely the activities of those who are entrusted with power to govern for all: politicians. He sought jobs with small town newspapers. His knack for discovering who really ran what, and why, and reporting it clearly and humorously in succinct cartoons, led him to Washington, where he drew his cartoons for the most loved, or most hated, paper in the Capital.

  Nationally famous, he turned homeward to the person responsible for developing his close observation of people, his discipline, and his unwavering honesty--Aunt Sophie. On one of his trips he decided to buy a parcel of Oregon, to come home to, he said. He found the small house with a few apple trees, plum and peach trees, and edging the property, blackberries. There was also a Royal Ann cherry tree, and a pear. A small stream ran through the back. Aunt Sophie fell in love with the place, so Uncle Boyd asked if she would do him a favor, live in it and take care of it for him. There's no doubt in me that he planned it all along.

  She lived there for close to twenty-five years. On the rough walls of the outhouse she pasted quotations by Thoreau, pictures cut from magazines--many of the sea--and poems she liked. Robert Service's "The Cremation of Sam Magee" was a favorite.

  "The Cremation" covered much of the door. The relatives said such silline
ss just proved Sophie wasn't all there. But I loved it, even at night when I couldn't read it. It tickled me just to know it was there, to think of the line, "...I didn't like to hear him sizzle so."

  When a picture or poem got too wrinkled and spotty from the dampness, she just pasted over it. The inside of the outhouse became a hodgepodge collage of art that appealed to her. Another thing that pleased me was that the outhouse was a two-holer, with one of the holes being child-sized. I never like those big holes with all the dark below.

  In Aunt Sophie's last years Uncle Boyd added on to the little house, making room for an indoor bathroom. The outhouse collage was lost, but she wrote up a new copy of "The Cremation" and put it on the inside of her bathroom door. She had a sense of fun, Aunt Sophie did.

  The house's two bedrooms were small, one upstairs reached by a narrow stairwell, one off the living room. The kitchen and pantry were miracles of planning. Shelves lined the walls and hooks hung from the ceiling, all in use. Dried herbs hung next to the wood stove she used for cooking and heating. The wood cookstove was there even after Uncle Boyd had the place electrically wired. That was when he had a small refrigerator put in. Sophie admitted the electric lights were better for the close needlework she did, and electric heat in the winter was convenient on cold nights, but she never gave up the morning warmth and comfort of a wood fire in the kitchen stove. There was also a small, stone fireplace in the living room. On wintery nights she would build a fire. She watched the flames or listened to the crackle of the fire while she "...stitched something up." I believe that is the main reason she loved the house so; the fireplace reminded her of the one in David and Amy's house.

  The fireplace, and the little bedroom upstairs. It was Uncle Boyd's room. There was a high, four-poster bed, and mirrored chest of drawers. His fishing gear and hunting and camping clothes hung on nails behind the door. A mounted deer's head stared at us from the wall--I guess it was his. It always kinda spooked us kids. Other than the deerhead, the room looked more like a child's room than a man's.

  A box in the closet held an elaborate electric train that we sometimes set up on the floor. A slingshot hung on a peg on the wall. There were toy trucks and cars on the windowsill. On rainy days we cousins pulled a puzzle box off a shelf and, depending on the intricacy of the design, amused ourselves for hours. Over the years our parents had filled the bookcase under the sloping roof with blocks and books, and sometimes we even took them out, read or played with them. But more often we mixed up the trucks and cars, the toy farms, the blocks and the boy and girl dolls, into stories we made up to amuse ourselves. It was essentially a boy's room, one where you did something, didn't just sit around reading or coloring.

  Whenever us children stayed with Aunt Sophie, and we did as often as possible, the room was ours. There was a familiar warmth about it, not only because I spent so many nights playing and sleeping there, but because it was always the same.

  My favorite thing in the room was the quilt on the four-poster. A simple tied quilt with bright colored squares, the design fascinated me, and the other cousins, for it was embroidered every which way with names. The whole family was there, all the aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. I was up near the top so that my name was raised by the pillow when the bed was made up. We called it the Name Quilt.

  When bored I'd read the names and take comfort in being surrounded by all the people I loved, and even some I didn't but who were nevertheless of my blood. There was a mystery contained in the quilt. The names in the center, below "Sophie Elm" did not belong to us: David Smithers, Amy Smithers, and, in bright blue, J. Sampson Smithers and Lily Smithers. None of the other names were in such a bright color. The first time the oddness of it struck me I was about eight or nine. I puzzled over the names, trying to fit them to some relative seldom heard of or some long dead ancestor. I finally took the mystery to my aunt to solve.

  She was no help. "Oh, those are some people I used to know a long time ago who I was very fond of. They don't mean anything to you." That only made me more curious. After much nagging through the years I got no further than a promise that maybe some day she would tell me about them, but she'd always deflect penetrating questions.

  "Just look at your hands." I curled them tightly into my brown palms. "Aren't you ashamed to have such dirty fingernails?" I was. One of the penalties of staying with Aunt Sophie was having to adhere to her standards of how neat a little girl should be. Clean and neatly rounded fingernails, clean and untangled hair, which meant tight braids, or, if I was lucky, or she had the time, ringlets. And every night without fail, visiting children suffered a maddening tickling, lying flat on our backs in bed while she squeezed a dropper of chilly fluid into our noses.

  "Stop squirming, and be quiet,' she would demand. "It's no skin off my back if you catch cold, but as long as you're with me you can at least try to help yourself." She swore the drops kept us from catching colds. I don't know what her medical information was but we tried not to sneeze or drip when we were with her. The only relief from this maternal torture was reaching the magic age of thirteen.

  "Now you're thirteen, you should be able to take care of yourself," she stated, when, a few days after my birthday I lay, apprehensive, beside my ten-year-old cousin Teri as she suffered the drops. Finished with Teri, she handed me the bottle. "At least as far as drippy noses is concerned." She left the room. I knew I was supposed to put the dang drops in my own nose, but, grinning at Teri I just set the bottle on the bed table.

  "More for you." I said.

  Now I had forgotten the mystery of the names, but upon her first statement of, "David was mine," I remembered.

  Aunt Sophie stopped talking when we were done with the blackberries. The kitchen smelled sweet, the counters were sticky from berry juice and sugar, the room was hot and damp from our work and all the boiling of water and berries. The jars were stored on the pantry shelves.

  "We've earned a rest, my girl," she said, as she wiped her forehead with the edge of her apron before taking it off. She sounded as tired as me, and went to take a nap in her back bedroom. I was relieved to go upstairs and open the window to let the little breeze of the late afternoon into the room. Looking forward to my rest on the four-poster bed I started to pull back the Name Quilt, but stopped and examined it. As always I checked my name first. Annie Elm. It was now quite worn as were most of the cousins' names, from our eternal running of our fingers over them. But David, Amy, J. Sampson and Lily Smithers were scarcely touched. I felt of them now, tracing the letters gently in some wonder, as if meeting new, but old, friends for the first time. The quilt held less mystery, but more warmth than ever.

  As I laid the thin quilt aside to nap on the sheets in the hot room, I didn't think of gray-haired Aunt Sophie downstairs, tired from a hard day's work, but of young, black-haired, perhaps even lusty--the thought was still difficult to admit--Sophie, as young as myself, and obviously not so innocent as I'd always thought.

  After our naps, the evening cooled off enough that I brought in a few pieces of wood and stacked them by the fireplace. We ate tomato sandwiches with pieces of cheese and apple, drinking buttermilk in front of a small fire, 'cause she knew I liked it, not for need of warmth. After dinner she got out an afghan she was knitting, and with very little prodding, she picked up her story again.

  17. Their Room, My Room

  The whole lower floor was one big living room. The large fireplace was the first thing I saw clearly, almost as clearly as I saw David coming toward me. Amy's hand dropped from my back; I was alone.

  David's face at that moment is as clear to me now as if I had taken a photograph. His eyes were especially bright, his face was flushed from the fire, his hair was slightly dark and wet with comb marks. His usual grin was absent, his sweet mouth slightly open like he'd been breathing deeply. I must of looked as frightened as I felt, because his expression changed as he reached for me. His forehead wrinkled and his mouth tightened at the corners.

  As aware as I was
of David, I was even more aware of Amy, she was a blur of movement. While I stood frozen by the door and David moved in slow-motion towards me, Amy was busy to an extreme.

  She'd thrown her coat onto a peg behind the door. I heard pans being banged around and dinner being made. Now faced with David, I wanted to flee to the safety of women's work with Amy, but stood rooted to the spot.

  Almost without me being aware of it, David reached me and gently, hugged me. He would have kissed me right on the mouth, but I squirmed away so he only brushed my cheek. Amy was right in the same room. I tried to cover my embarrassment with movement, like Amy was doing. I struggled to get out of my coat, David helped me, then hung it up beside his and Amy's.

  We stood still for a long time and even the kitchen area was quiet. I saw Amy looking at us, her face without expression. She caught my glance and once again she was full of purpose, her eyes focused on her husband. "David, take Sophie to the fire. She must be cold." It broke the spell.

  "I was just going to. Sophie, you must be cold."

  "Well, I'm just a little chilly," I admitted. In truth, a cold fear shook my very heart.

  David put his arm easily around my shoulders and sat me in his chair by the fireplace, pulling up a stool for himself. He no sooner sat down than he was up again, poking at the fire, adding another small log from a hole in the right side of the fireplace.

  "What a beautiful fireplace. I like this room." I chattered on about the room until David regained his composure.

  He and Amy filled the evening with stories of how they'd found this area, selected the place, built the house, how happy they were with it but there were improvements they wanted to add. Amy made coffee and fried ham sandwiches, which we ate at a table set close to the big window facing the sea. The view was the same as mine but more so, including my cabin.