The Goodbye Quilt

by Susan Wiggs

  I still remember the drama of our final confrontation—he came in person to tell me it was over. To this day, I can still feel the horror of facing a future without him. I raged, I wept until I was weak and drained, I swore I could not go on. It caused a pain I couldn’t share with anyone. My mother brought me a pint of Cherry Garcia, but I promised her I’d never eat again. She said with utter confidence that I’d get over him. Then she went downstairs and ironed clothes, filling the house with the scent of lavender water. I ate the Cherry Garcia. Watched Seinfeld reruns and learned to laugh again. Somehow, one day dragged into the next…and eventually I realized that I didn’t miss him.

  Hearing a heartbroken sniffle and the murmur of Molly’s voice drifting through the window screen of the motel, I decide not to tell her any of that. She and Travis will grow apart because that’s the way it works. She will have to find this out for herself. The end of love has to be experienced firsthand, not explained by your mother.

  I turn on the radio to give her more privacy. Even so, I can guess what they’re saying. There are whispered promises of love-you-forever and we’ll-stay-together, and no one knows as well as I do that they mean it—every word. Preston and I certainly meant it, all those years ago. We were going to travel the world and live a charmed life together.

  These days, Preston owns the hardware store in town and has a cushy paunch around his middle, a receding hairline and four kids. When I drop in to buy upholstery tacks or a can of paint, I always think about that last summer after high school, the passionate hours in the backseat of his car, the vows we made to each other. I can look past his bifocals and graying temples, and still see a boy who was as handsome and romantic as a fairy-tale prince. As Preston rings up my purchases and we make small talk, I wonder if he thinks about the way we were, too, if he remembers. Does he look at me in my pull-on slacks and gardening clogs and recall the girl I used to be?

  Running into him is, weirdly enough, not awkward in the least. He’s someone who came into my life for a brief time, and then stayed in the past. I feel no wistfulness for him, no regrets. I do envy him those four kids, though. When one goes away, he still has the others to keep him company.

  Or maybe saying goodbye four times is harder than saying it once.

  When Molly comes back into the room, her eyes red and her chin trembling, I offer a smile, but I don’t say anything. This is a volatile issue, and I don’t want to push it. Travis is a boy of good looks and small ambition, one who regards his union job at the plant as a ticket to independence as well as an opportunity to work on his Camaro at his uncle’s garage on the weekends.

  Travis has a peculiar sweetness about him, a quality Molly finds irresistible. She loves him, and her love is as real as her grade point average. She trusts that love to endure, no matter what.

  Molly expects so much of herself and wants so much from the world. At the moment, she is tender and lonely, missing him, her heart sore as it can only be for one’s first love.

  I have to wonder: Did I teach my daughter to love this hard and feel this deeply? Was I wrong to do so? On the other hand, maybe I shielded her too much from pain, and she never learned to deal with it. As more men loom in the future, a whole campus full of them, it makes me wonder if I’ve done enough to equip her to deal with love and heartache. My own mother never seemed comfortable discussing matters of the heart with me. That’s what I used to think, any way. Now I wonder if she simply knew I’d discover it all for myself.

  “Hungry?” I ask Molly, after she’s lain on the bed, staring at the ceiling for a while. “The coffee shop’s still open.”

  “No,” she says softly. “You?”

  “No.” This is a lie. The dinner salad was a disappointment. But I don’t need to eat. I don’t need that big, messy cheeseburger I’ve been fantasizing about since spotting it on the coffee-shop menu. I don’t need the coconut cream pie I noticed in the revolving refrigerated case. Something my mother never told me—when you hit forty, not only does your vision start to go. Your body changes. Nowadays if I eat things like cheeseburgers and cream pie, the calories magically transform themselves into saddlebags on my hips. I don’t feel any different than I did ten years ago, but boy, do my jeans fit differently.

  My mind drifts. Maybe when I get home, I’ll join the local gym, start a regular fitness routine. Running around with Molly has kept me reasonably fit all these years. Thanks to her, I’ve hiked miles with Brownie and Girl Scout troops, led field-trip expeditions to museums or nature preserves, ridden for hours on family bike trips. I suppose I could still hike and bike without Molly around, but why would I? Motivating myself is not going to be as easy as it used to be.

  A quiet sniff brings me back to the present. I look over at Molly to see that she is still staring at the ceiling. Tears track sideways down her temples.

  I don’t say anything, because I know everything will come out sounding like empty platitudes. Instead, I find another quarter, drop it in the slot and start up the Magic Fingers once again.

  DAY THREE

  Odometer Reading 122,271

  It is not wise to be didactic about the nomenclature of quilt patterns.

  —Florence Peto, American Quilts and Coverlets

  …it is unwise to be didactic because the facts are very elusive. I now realize that not every pattern has a name, that there is no correct name for any design.

  —Barbara Brackman, Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns

  Chapter Five

  The roadside is littered with last night’s carnage, a raccoon here, a possum there, occasionally someone’s household pet reduced to an unrecognizable smear. Neither Molly nor I say a word. I hate the idea of creatures suffering while people sleep, oblivious.

  This morning’s breakfast—the Bright Eyes Surprise, which I’d ordered solely because I liked the name—churns in my stomach. From the driver’s seat, Molly reaches over and turns up the radio. She glides into the passing lane to get around a semi with a tweeting cartoon robin on the side.

  I refold the map to encompass the day’s journey. We plan to make tracks today, covering at least four hundred miles. The few towns along the way are no more than pinpricks with quirky names, like Nickel Box and Mulehorn and Futch’s Corner. Mostly, it appears we’ll be crossing uninhabited terrain, much of it protected by the Department of Natural Resources, shaded in green.

  “Do we have plenty of gas?” I ask.

  “Three quarters of a tank. Same amount we had the last time you asked, ten minutes ago.”

  The biggest of the pinpricks, Futch’s Corner, lies at the halfway point. We’ll get gas there.

  “I can’t decide whether to quilt or read,” I tell Molly.

  “Why don’t you listen to music and look at the scenery?”

  “I already did that.”

  She laughs a little, shakes her head. “You always have to be busy doing something.”

  “Nothing wrong with that.”

  “Except you might miss something. Chill, Mom.”

  “All right. I’ll look out the window.” The most interesting thing I spot is a red-winged blackbird in a thicket of cattails.

  If I’m being honest with myself, there’s a reason for staying busy. Being preoccupied with other things means I don’t have to be preoccupied with my own baggage. I’m sick of myself, of my indecisiveness and mental whining. My daughter’s leaving the nest, as all daughters eventually do, and my job is to let her go and move on with my life. It should be a simple matter to set a goal for myself, one that doesn’t involve Molly, even indirectly. Maybe I don’t have a college degree, but I’m not stupid.

  I know I have to figure out who I am again, now that I’m not Molly’s mom. Well-meaning friends tell me to go back to being the person I was before Molly. Am I that twentysomething woman who used to sleep late and smoke Virginia Slims and never felt the need to look at a clock?

  That’s not me anymore. It can never be me again. I don’t want to go back to being that person w
ho lived each day so thoughtlessly, spending the moments like nickels in a slot machine, as though she had an unending supply of time and could squander it any way she pleased.

  Other friends remind me that my marriage moves to the front burner now. Dan and I will have to figure out how to be a childless couple again. What were we before we became Molly’s parents? What did we used to talk about, dream about, laugh and cry about? A better stereo system, a bigger house, an extra week’s vacation from work? How could those things matter now?

  It was Molly who showed us the things that matter most. They’re the moments that sneak up on you unexpectedly, when you’re barely paying attention. You’re going out to see if the mail has come, and you discover that your child has learned to ride a two-wheeler and is as thrilled about it as if she’s learned to fly. Or you uncrate the new refrigerator you scrimped and saved for, and she shows you that the best thing about the new appliance is the empty box.

  Before Molly, what was it that mattered to Dan and me? When we were first married, he’d grab me the second he woke up each morning and say, “You’re here!” as if I were the answer to his dreams. I can’t remember when he stopped doing that. Granted, it would seem tedious and downright weird if he kept it up indefinitely, but there was a clear appeal in knowing exactly where I stood with him.

  Inside the oval hoop is a swatch of my mother’s favorite cotton blouse, the one with tiny umbrellas printed all over it. For some reason, I’m inspired to stitch a message: “Do the thing you fear.”

  Not the thing your mother fears. The thing you fear. I hope Molly will understand the difference.

  Something extraordinary flashes past my line of sight. “Molly, slow down,” I say. “Look over there.”

  It’s a turnoff marked Leaning Tower of Pisa, Iowa.

  “Let’s check it out,” I say.

  Molly looks dubious. Her gaze flicks to the dashboard clock. I feel a twinge of annoyance at her eagerness to reach our ultimate destination. Can’t she slow down, just a little?

  “You’re the one who wanted me to watch the scenery and chill,” I remind her. “We’re making good time,” I point out.

  “All right. Let’s do it.”

  We go take a look at the leaning tower, and it is exactly that. A water tower that has listed to one side. In the next big wind it could topple, explains a placard in the field beside it. We take pictures to email to Dan. We’ve been calling him to check in each day. The conversation is predictable—we’re to keep the tank full and check the oil and tire pressure at least once a day. We’re to take care of ourselves.

  “See?” I try not to act too smug as we return to the car. “You learn something new every day.”

  Molly decides to give me a turn at the wheel. She wants to phone Travis and she’s not allowed to do it while she’s driving.

  “No freakin’ signal,” she says, scowling at the screen of her cell phone. “That’s lame.”

  “You’ll just have to watch the scenery and chill.”

  She rummages in her bag and pulls out the folder of information sent to her by the college. “Kayla Jackson from Philadelphia,” she says, referring to her roommate. “I wonder what she’ll be like.”

  “Lucky,” I say. “She was matched up with you, wasn’t she?”

  “Her mother’s probably saying the same thing. Oh, man, what if we can’t stand each other?”

  “You said she sounded great in her email.”

  “Sex predators sound great in email, Mom.”

  My head whips in her direction. “How do you know that?”

  “Everybody knows that. Geez, don’t get your panties in a twist. I don’t talk to perverts on email. I don’t talk to perverts at all.”

  “Suddenly I feel as if we haven’t discussed this topic enough.”

  “What, perverts? I’ll talk about perverts anytime you want, Mom.”

  “All joking aside, honey—”

  “Mom. We went through this a long time ago, the stuff about respecting myself and using my head. That women’s self-defense class went on for twelve weeks and yes, I read The Gift of Fear. I’m as safe as it’s possible to be.”

  “You have all the answers, don’t you, Missy?”

  “I’ll have even more once I’m in college.”

  We stop for lunch and a fill-up in Futch’s Corner, a town with four stoplights, a defunct train depot and a bus station. A row of storage silos covered in graffiti lines the main road. The lone café has a pictorial menu, which makes it easy to avoid the chopped salad, which in these parts appears to be coleslaw.

  In the booth next to us, an elderly couple sits across from each other, slowly and methodically eating their cups of beef barley soup with soda crackers on the side. They manage to get through the entire meal without uttering a single word. The wife puts cream in both cups of coffee. When they get up after finishing their meal, the husband keeps one hand on the small of the wife’s back.

  “Old people are so cute, aren’t they?” Molly remarks.

  Old people are a nightmare. It’s too easy for me to see myself and Dan in a couple like that, silent and companionable, with nothing to say to each other. I want so much more for us, laughter and interesting conversation, the richness of shared moments. I used to think I knew what my life would look like after Molly, but now I’m not so sure.

  Once she’s away at school, Dan and I are going to have to face each other once again with nothing between us, no sports matches to attend, no carpools to drive, no curfews to enforce, no school calendar to dictate our lives. To me, it looks like a void, a yawning breach. Empty space. It’s supposed to be a good thing, but I’ve never been the sort to tolerate empty space. Maybe that’s why I like quilting. Each piece fits perfectly against the others to fill the grid completely.

  On the highway heading east again, we come upon a breakdown pulled off to the side of the road. I slow down but don’t stop. The hood of the car is raised and there’s a woman standing beside it. She has a baby on her hip and there’s no one else in sight. I go even slower, checking the rearview mirror, hoping to see that she’s on a cell phone, getting help.

  She isn’t. She’s jiggling the baby and taking a diaper bag out of the car.

  Someone else will come along and help her, I figure. But this is a lonely stretch of highway and there’s no one in sight in either direction.

  “What are you doing?” Molly asks when I stop and make a U-turn.

  “Making sure that woman back there is okay. Maybe she needs my cell phone.”

  “Mom. Aren’t you the one with all the rules about not picking up strangers?”

  “I didn’t say anything about picking her up. But I’m not going to leave her stranded.” I pass the breakdown, pull another U-turn and park on the shoulder in front of the woman’s car, a dusty Chevy Vega with Nevada plates.

  “Thanks for stopping,” she says. “I blew a radiator hose.” She doesn’t appear to be much older than Molly. She’s wearing a man’s ribbed tank top under an open shirt, shorts and flip-flops. Her eyes are puffy and the baby is fussing.

  “Have you called for help?”

  “I don’t have a phone and the last town’s forty miles back.”

  “Let’s try my cell phone,” I offer, getting out of the car and handing it to her.

  The baby glowers at me. It’s a boy, maybe fourteen months, and he smells like ripe fruit. His nose is running green sludge, and he has a rattling cough. As his mother dials the phone, he pokes a grubby finger at the buttons.

  “Nothing,” she says after a moment. “No signal. Thanks anyway.” She hands back the phone. I resist the urge to clean it off on my shirttail.

  The baby barks out a cough. The woman looks around. A breeze shimmers through the silver maples and a few dry leaves fall off, scattering. There is a folded umbrella stroller and a car seat in the back of the car.

  The silence stretches out. I take a deep breath, violating my own better judgment as I say, “We’ll give you a ride.”


  “You don’t have to do that.” Despite her words, the woman looks as if she might melt with relief.

  Molly gets out of the car, map in hand. The cranky baby glowers at her.

  “Really, you don’t,” the woman persists.

  “It’s fine,” I assure her. “Where are you headed?”

  “Honeymoon,” she says. “It’s my hometown. I’m moving back there, but this piece of crap car doesn’t want to cooperate.”

  Molly finds the town on the map. It’s about fifty miles to the north on a road marked with a faint gray line, well out of our way. The smart thing to do would be to drive on until I get a cell phone signal and then call in the location of the breakdown.

  Maybe I’m not so smart. I keep thinking if Molly were stranded, I’d want a nice woman to stop.

  “Molly, can you give me a hand with the baby’s car seat?” I ask.

  My daughter’s eyebrows lift, but she instantly complies.

  I introduce myself and learn that the woman’s name is Eileen. Her baby is Josten. “His grandparents have never seen him,” she says. “I sure appreciate this.” Wrinkling her nose, she adds, “He needs a change.” She lays him on the backseat of her car. The creases of the seat are filled with bits of broken cookies and dry cereal. “Last one,” she says, extracting a diaper from the bag.

  The little one yowls as she peels off his romper and diaper. “Cut it out,” she snaps as he kicks at her. “Josten—oh, Josten. What a mess.” She digs in the diaper bag. “Shoot. I’m out of baby wipes.”

  Molly looks on in horror for a moment, then grabs something from the quilt bag. “Here, use this.”

  It’s a piece of an old Christmas tree skirt from Dan’s and my first Christmas together. You can’t really tell it was ever a tree skirt; it just looks like a green tablecloth.

  “Are you sure?” Eileen asks.

  “No problem,” I tell her.