Lizbeth expressed her feelings to Callie the week before in an email. Callie was pleased to read a small remembrance of Jack woven into Lizbeth’s opening sentence: I ruminated for several days before composing this message. Ruminated, Callie thought, Jack would have said that.
The message continued:
I feel a closeness for you, that until recently, I could not adequately explain. At first, I thought I pumped you up in my mind when Arnett tended to be Arnett, but the epiphany arrived with your last email. When I read that Beebe’s quilt was ready, the news lured me to Chad’s room.
I had to smile at my sleeping son, curled in a tight ball and covered by a uniquely crafted quilt. It was then I understood the source of the bond. Every night when I put Chad to bed, I pulled you closer and closer. Every night when I brushed curls from his forehead, I silently thanked God for the quilt maker and the quilt maker’s gift. That quilt symbolizes a father’s love: It cushions, and warms, and protects.
Thank you, Callie. In your grief, you not only touched Chad and me, but you touched others who grieve. I pray it lessens the burden on both sides.
The sentiment moved Callie deeply.
From the rear of the SUV, she lifted out a large, sturdy gift box. Lizbeth closed the cargo door, then hurried to open the wide mahogany door with black iron accents that gave them entrance into the caretaker’s house.
It was late afternoon, and the sun swept in through the west window and across the living room, making dramatic contrasts of bright light and deep shadow. The walls looked freshly painted, but other than the butter yellow, all the furnishings came from another age.
Callie set the box on the coffee table. She was still taking in the room when Beebe and Arnett appeared under the dining room’s archway, carrying trays of cookies and fruit. Beebe’s face lit. Lizbeth went to take Beebe’s tray.
When Callie and Beebe separated, Beebe was transfixed on the box. Lizbeth and Arnett left the trays on the dining room table and returned. Callie and Arnett nodded silent hellos while Beebe went to sit on the couch. The remaining three gathered around the low table. A quiet no one wanted to disturb filled the room. Just to let Callie know the world was still out there and operating, she felt refracted sun warm the backs of her legs and superimpose her image on the wall.
Finally, after excruciatingly long seconds, Beebe reached out with both hands and lifted the lid. As soon as it was free, Arnett stepped in to hold it. The box was lined with white tissue paper. Through it, like a dissolving morning mist, squares of color took shape. Beebe folded the tissue back with trembling hands. Very delicately, she lifted an exposed corner of the quilt, then her movements froze.
A sad, almost tragic smile lengthened her face. Tears were close, memories closer. Callie felt the heat of tears herself. Her stomach clenched. There was a contagiousness to Beebe’s hesitancy that fed her fear. What if Beebe wasn’t emotionally ready to face her mother? What if the quilt was less of a cure-all and more of a setback? Callie thought back to recent telephone conversations with Beebe. She spoke of her father’s eagerness to see the quilt, his readiness, never her own. Callie was nearly ready to grab the lid out of Arnett’s hand and slam it down on the box when Beebe’s chin rose. She looked into the faces around her. Her lips parted.
“Help me.”
Lizbeth and Callie each took a corner of the quilt. It tumbled open. Hands were placed at four points across the top edge to prevent sagging. The quilt was draped at an angle over the coffee table. Beebe pulled it into her lap and straightened the lower half. Arnett sat on the edge of the couch and held up a corner.
Callie watched three speechless women study the quilt, their attention skipping from patch to patch. For Beebe, though, each square must port her back in time, and the burden Lizbeth mentioned in her email stepped forward in Callie’s mind. Beebe seemed to gaze right through the cloth, reliving scenes with her mother. Snippets of life would overlap, like flipping through pages in a photograph album. Callie desperately wanted her to view them with an open, forgiving heart.
Nursing uniforms in white, pastels, and prints, cut to size, were scattered throughout the quilt, alongside squares clipped from dresses, blouses, and skirts.
Callie devoted time to several unique patches. One patch included the two-inch waistband from a black-and-white hound’s-tooth pleated skirt and four inches of perfectly aligned pleats. Beebe ran her finger under a clipping of an eyelet lapel and collar folded back at their proper angle. The eyelet was used as decorative trim on mint green summer pajamas. Then, her hand went to a square sewn in high and right of the quilt’s center. The patch was taken from a heavy cream-colored tablecloth with a tapestry look. Stitched to the square was a knotted bow made from downsized apron strings. The apron fabric was a rose organdy. Beebe peeked at the quilt’s underside. The rest of the tablecloth doubled as backing.
Callie carried her pocket theme into this quilt as well. She tacked three fingers of a black glove so they jutted from a slanted pocket cut from a dove-gray, lightweight jacket. Several squares over, the corner of a white lace hanky hung listlessly over a welted pocket in navy. Callie found the glove and hanky in the pockets. By exposing them, Callie hoped to convey a sense that Abigail Walker never planned to abandon her daughter. When it came, the desire to flee was quick and intense, exactly the way addiction preys upon need.
From deep in the house, a door opened and closed. Clifford Walker called out. “We’re back.”
Her father’s voice interrupted Beebe’s concentration on the quilt. Her head jerked toward the sound. “Oh, Daddy, hurry,” she said. “She’s here.”
. . .
It was dark when Callie unlocked Heatherwood’s door and let herself inside. She enjoyed her time in Michigan, but the drive back was a long and tiring one. She set her suitcase next to the entryway table and looked around. During the past seven months, she adapted well to life in the cabin. Heatherwood, more than the house back in Cassel, felt like her true home because, from the first, it belonged to her and Jack.
Callie turned on a few lamps. Her thoughts drifted back to Beebe and her father with the new quilt. In all honesty, Callie felt like she intruded on the emotional reunion. The seamstress in her, though, was heartened to see her labors bloom and bear fruit. The quilt was, indeed, a presence in the room. The presence was Abigail Walker.
Jack’s quilt, tugged off the back of the couch, fell into Callie’s lap. Her finger traced the chain-stitch embroidery along the bottom edge. The curling vines of her traditional raspberry logo formed a heart. Without much inducement, faraway memories of Tennessee settled in beside her.
Back then, she hadn’t wanted to retain any portion of that chapter in her life. She hoped she would never again come within miles of Eastern Tennessee and be reminded of that awful scene with Jack. Of course, even now, the memory remained clearly preserved in her mind.
Jack arrived at her door in Cassel at nine the next morning, disheveled, with two bushes in the back of a pickup.
“What brought that on?” he asked after she shyly let him into the house.
Callie couldn’t explain her behavior in Tennessee, but she promised the raspberry bushes made everything all right.
“Okay then. I still don’t know specifically what this was about, but I know it was about us,” Jack said, lifting her chin so her eyes met his. “Now, it has to be about whatever I can do to insure that the raspberry bushes have truly saved us.”
Zack, Tennessee, the raspberry bushes, they represented the first real hurdle Callie faced in her lifelong relationship with Jack. She stumbled badly; Jack helped her up. He took it on faith that she loved him still. Her commitment was real. He figured that much out.
That day, Callie combined Jack’s two longtime fears: poverty and l
osing her. Those two challengers were steeped in battle against each other.
Long after midnight, when he was gone, the bushes planted, and she lay in bed, too tired to sleep, questions popped up in her head. Some things didn’t make sense, timing-wise. Why hadn’t he showered and dressed in clean clothes before leaving the Tennessee motel? She assumed that with Roland Abbott’s permission, he called a local nurseryman for advice and assistance in digging out the bushes. But he arrived at her door at nine? If it was a six-hour trip from Tennessee to Maryland, then…
“Oh my God,” she breathed, “he stole the bushes in the middle of the night.”
Callie smiled down at the memory as she pulled Jack’s quilt up to cover chilly arms.
Love, larceny, and wild raspberries, they made a heady, heady brew.
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Wild Raspberries Page 32