by Sara Lewis
“It’s incredible,” I said.
“Well, good,” she said and she turned to go to the door.
“Wait!” I said. I picked up the quilt. “You forgot your quilt.”
She shook her head. “No, I—What? It’s yours,” she said.
I was so shocked, I think I actually took a step backward.
“Didn’t I say that when I first came in? I thought I did. I made it for you. To have. You wrote that beautiful song, and it inspired me.
I stood there with my mouth open. “But it—you worked so hard, and it took so long, and it’s so nice— I—”
She laughed. “Not that nice. My next one is going to be better. I’m hoping—”
I had choked up again.
“Good?” she said. “Are you UK?”
I nodded.
“Should I—what should I do?”
I shook my head and motioned that she could go. She went.
I sat down on the bed and sobbed into the quilt. Then I worried that I would ruin it, so I got a tissue. I hurried back to it; I didn’t want to be away from it too long.
I slept with the quilt that night, like a kid with a special blanket. I had it all wrapped around me tight. And I didn’t wake up in a sweat, not even once.
• • •
The next day there was another knock on the door. I didn’t even consider that it could be Robin two days in a row. But it was, and she had soup. She had made it. Herself. She stayed and waited for me to taste the soup. I swallowed. “Mmm,” I said. “Wow.”
“You like it?” she said. “Really?”
“Really,” I said.
“See, I wasn’t sure about the hot sauce. Some people don’t like it. I tried not to put in a lot, but if I didn’t put any in, it would be, like, kind of blah. So I just put in a little, about half what I normally do,”
“It’s great. I love hot sauce. Hot sauce is outstanding.”
“Oh! Does it need more? I can go get it. It’s right by my—”
“No,” I said. “It’s perfect.” To prove it, I kept eating.
“So, do you feel better today?”
“I do, yeah.” I said this quietly. “I love the soup… the soup is really… tasty. It’s great. Thank you. Did I forget to say thank you? Sometimes I am so rude. I’m sorry. I really am. God. Sometimes I’m an idiot. And thank you for the quilt. Did I say thank you for the quilt?”
“Yeah,” she said. “And you’re welcome.”
We both looked over at my bed, where the quilt was folded at the end. I don’t think I had ever folded a homemade quilt before.
She smiled at me, and my eyes filled with tears, which immediately spilled over. I looked around for a napkin or something. When was it going to stop?
“Oh, Good!” she said. “I’m sorry! I’m making you cry again! Am I depressing you? Sorry. I’ll go.” She took a step toward the door
“No!” I said a little too urgently. I took a step after her and managed to grab her hand. I hadn’t touched her since that night I lost my head over the laundry. I fully expected her to jerk away and maybe even give me a hard shove. But she didn’t. She stopped walking and squeezed my hand. Then she turned around and leaned forward. She kind of pressed her face into my shirt. There was a lot I would have liked to do at that moment, but unfortunately in the hand that she wasn’t holding, I was holding a bowl of hot soup.
“See you tomorrow,” she said. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed my cheek.
• • •
Robin came over a couple more times. Once she brought me some cookies and once she asked if I wanted anything from the store. Then, after I said no, she stood there for a really long time, not moving and not saying anything.
I said, “Robin? Are you OK?”
“Uh, yeah,” she said. “I just—oh…”
The kids had started yelling, “Mom, come on!” from the car.
“Oh,” she said. “I have to go.” And she left.
• • •
Later that night she knocked on my door.
I said, “What’s the matter? Is everyone OK?”
“Yes,” she said. “Everyone is fine. They’re all asleep.”
“Oh,” I said. “That’s good. I thought—because it’s so late that maybe—”
“No,” she said, “Nothing like that. They’re fine. Everything is fine. We’re all… fine.”
“OK,” I said.
“Can I come in?” she said.
“Uh, sure.”
“I think I can hear them from here if anyone—”
“You can,” I said. “Absolutely.”
“Really?” she said. “Have we been—”
“Not at all!” I said quickly. “Not a bit!”
“Good. Because I wouldn’t want to—”
“Of course not. You haven’t. Ever!”
“So,” she said.
“Do you want to sit down?”
“Sure, thank you,” she said. She sat on one of my chairs. There was this long silence. Then she said, “Don’t you get it, Good?”
“Get what?”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “The quilt? The soup? The cookies?”
I looked at her and blinked.
“I like you.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I like you too. I know I haven’t always been the best—”
“Good! I mean I like you, like you. You know, as in like you, as in let’s go out on a date, as in without the kids, as in kissing, et cetera, et cetera, that kind of like you.”
“Oh!” I said. “Sorry, is that what all the visits were about? God. How stupid can I be?”
“Well, pretty stupid, I guess,” she said.
“But what about all those times you told me to leave you alone?”
She rolled her eyes again. “I changed my mind,” she said. “It happens, OK? I mean, you started behaving in a whole different way, and then, well, I changed my mind. Geez, its not that complicated.”
“No, its really not,” I said. Then I kissed her.
And from that moment, I wasn’t alone anymore. Ever again, as it happened. From then, there were people around all the time. Kids and grown-ups, even animals. I’m not complaining. It was just a big change is all, a huge improvement, let me assure you. After stagnating for years and years, doing the same thing day in and day out, all by myself for the most part, suddenly everything was different; not one thing was the same as it once was.
forty-six
At first, I really didn’t get the attraction of cutting up and sewing little pieces of fabric together. In the first place, it’s difficult and takes a long time. Plus, it’s expensive, Ellen was sinking a hundred dollars or more into materials for these things. Then she had to make them herself! And I mean, what for? You can go get a blanket for a few bucks any old time. Try Target! They even have quilts there that look homemade! But of course that wasn’t the point. I personally would not sign up to make one, but I guess I do get it. Now. After thinking about it for a long, long time. I mean, I like the results. Sure, I love to look at them, and that’s a good thing, as they are all over the place around here—on the beds, on the couches, on the walls, and even in the car. The shower curtain is a quilt! The kids wear quilted patchwork jackets to school! We live in a colorful, stitched together, padded world.
I’ve written some more songs. I showcase them at The Club every few months. Each song is the accumulation of all my experiences up to now, plus some embellishments, plus some other stuff that I make up completely. I can rearrange the pieces in an infinite number of ways, like the blocks of quilts—log cabin, flying geese, courthouse steps, and delectable mountains—that Ellen and Robin make.
They started a business together. You might think that the business is for selling the quilts they keep cranking out all the time. That would be a perfectly plausible idea. The quilts are beautiful and cozy and well made, and there are lots of them. But its not a quilt-selling business. Their business teaches other people how to make the quilts
. You would be amazed at the number of people who want to make quilts, more every week, it seems to me. Robin explained it to me. When everything is going crazy, either on a personal level or a global level or both, you want to have something that you can control, something that you can be in charge of and make sure will come out right, even if you have to do it over countless times. So that’s what they do; they help people make things that come out right.
For this and many other purposes, Robin and I bought a house in the mountains. We moved there before we even got married. It started out as an ugly, beat-up old cabin on a large piece of property. But we’ve changed it and added to it and built so many studios, bedrooms, extra buildings, and creature comforts that it’s hard to remember anymore what the original place looked like or, for that matter, what we saw in it. Robin and Ellen have a separate work space with tables, a design wall, and equipment for up to twelve quilters at a time. Their business is called Heart Patches. The business logo is a purple and red heart shape that has been cut apart and sewn back together with uneven stitches. They have a business motto that adorns their letterhead, mugs, sweatshirts, not to mention quilts. The motto is “It’s a hard world—let’s quilt it!” They sell franchises, shops that are now located in shopping malls throughout California and seven other states, where you can buy quilt stuff and make Robin and Ellen’s designs.
They say they want to be the McDonald’s of quilts. Don’t try to point out to them that McDonald’s is everything that quilt making is not—fast, cheap, and without individuality. I’ve mentioned that. And I’ve mentioned that McDonald’s emphasizes uniformity where Heart Patches encourages uniqueness. “Oh, you know what we mean!” they say, waving me off. “We mean we want to be everywhere all the time.” Twice a year, they move to a huge space in San Diego for quilting seminars for their franchise owners.
Robin and I and the kids live above the quilt studio. Even our kitchen is upstairs. Jack visits us. Although he doesn’t want anything to do with music, he was pretty pleased when Diana signed up for a quilt class and made a reptile quilt for his room. Ellen has her own little building down a short path from the main house, sort of a one-bedroom cottage. I’ve got my own studio way at the back of the property in what we think used to be a stable. We put in a skylight and enough power for a medium-sized airport for all my gizmos and gadgets.
The kids tend to alternate between these locations and their swings and slides that are sprinkled under the oaks. Mike has his own guitar, specially sized for a kid’s small hands. I designed it for him myself.
ALSO BY SARA LEWIS
Second Draft of My Life
The Answer Is Yes
But I Love You Anyway
Heart Conditions
Trying to Smile and Other Stories
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2003 by Sara Lewis
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ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-7871-0
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First Atria Books hardcover edition December 2003
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