Ocean Waves

by Terri Thayer

  “More like allergic to dusting,” I said. Vangie laughed. “The stuff is in mint condition. Ask for a list of appraisers.”

  “Got it,” Vangie said.

  “No wait. Ask them if they accept donations. I particularly want to know about the sewing tools.”

  “What’s going on there, Dewey?”

  “It’s complicated. But here’s some news. Kym’s here.”

  “Get out of town!” Vangie cried. “What do you mean, she’s there?”

  “She’s in charge of Sewing-by-the-Sea. She’d been working for the original director, who died.”

  “Died? When were you going to tell me about that?”

  “I told you. It’s complicated.”

  Vangie was more interested in my family dynamics anyhow. She knew that Kym and I were like oil and water. She’d barely tolerated Kym when she’d worked at QP and was happy to see her fired. “So you and Kym, huh? I’m sorry I’m not there to see that. Is she talking to you?”

  “Barely.”

  “Is your brother there? Where’s Kevin?”

  “AWOL. I don’t have a clue, and Kym’s not telling.”

  “This is juicy stuff. Is that her new job now, running conferences?” Vangie said.

  “I don’t really know. How’s business for real?”

  Vangie gave me the condensed version of the last couple of days. Sales were okay, classes were running about two-thirds full.

  “Awesome. I’m going to want to contact Cinnamon Ramstad, the teacher I’ve got now. She’s great and I’d like her to teach for us.”

  Vangie said, “Noted. Look at the widget I’ve put on the site. It’s a virtual design board. The customer drags fabric on it to plan her quilt.”

  “I’ll check it out later. For now, please make that call, and if you get a list of appraisers, fax it to the Asilomar office and I’ll pick it up after my class.”

  I was seated at the table in the classroom by nine o’clock. This was our fourth day of class. Some people were late, and the teacher seemed to sense our lagging energy. Lucy snuck in just as Cinnamon was beginning. She must have returned the German Cross box to Nan. She looked sad. The death of Mercedes was dragging everyone down.

  Cinnamon was determined to lift our mood. “All right everyone,” she said, clapping her hands. “Give me your cameras.”

  We complied and she said, “I’m going to download your shots on my computer and we’ll all look at them.”

  Cinnamon put the images from our cameras onto her screen and projected them on the wall. A continuous slide show of images flickered by. She dimmed the lights somewhat, without making the place completely dark.

  She called on each person to explain their pictures. Each image was up for several seconds and then gone. There were many shots of the ocean. The obligatory gulls wheeling. Ravens in mid-squawk. Deer feeding. Frothy waves and swirling sands.

  I was the only one who chose to go inside the buildings with my camera. My images of fireplaces, wood beams, and closeups of images flickered by.

  “Bold choice, Dewey,” Cinnamon said, making me swell with pride. “Can you explain?”

  “For me, the architecture is just as important as the seascape,” I said, feeling a little silly. Putting my feelings about architecture into words felt inadequate. “The buildings were designed to complement the natural setting. I like that intersection.”

  “Art is juxtaposition,” Cinnamon said. “I’ll be interested to see where you go with this.”

  I felt panicky. Me, too. I had no faith that I could make something interesting from the shots I had taken.

  Cinnamon turned the lights on.

  “Are you inspired? I hope so. Now get out your background pieces and finish piecing. Let the ideas percolate as you sew.”

  I was behind, having missed most of the class yesterday afternoon. Many of the students had finished work on their background pieces. Lucy pinned her piece on the wall behind us.

  “Wow,” I said. “You got a lot done.”

  “I’ve been here late every night, and early every morning, except for today.”

  “It shows. Good for you.” I vowed to spend the evening here.

  I’d gotten my center piece cut out and pinned that up. I cut out triangles and laid them around the middle. I tried to imagine what images to put in the large space. I was using ocean colors for the backgrounds, blue-grays, greens, and the watery light blue that the sea took on in the late afternoon sun.

  I looked at a picture I’d taken of the trusses in Merrill Hall. Repeated over and over, the pointed shape became a prayer of symmetry and structure. The trusses were essential, holding up the roof of the building, but the beauty of the wood and the symmetry of the repeated design transcended mere function.

  I couldn’t imagine how to incorporate that into my quilt.

  I set up my sewing machine, threading it with blue-gray thread that would blend with the fabrics I’d chosen. I’d heard about the meditative quality of sewing the same block over and over. Ina had told me her best thinking was done at the machine.

  I played with fabrics, cutting small pieces and placing them on the piece of flannel I’d brought along as a design wall. I stood back to get the effect.

  “You can use your camera, Dewey,” Lucy said. “Try looking through the viewfinder. It makes everything small and smushed together. You’ll catch right away any colors that are wrong.”

  Cinnamon approached and moved away a bright green print. The combination immediately looked more appetizing.

  “How’d you do that?” I asked, in awe of her ability to know what was needed.

  “Years of practice.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that. I don’t have years. I’ve got customers who rely on me to help them put together great quilts.”

  Cinnamon smiled, tossing her long braid. She leaned in, whispering conspiratorially, “Here’s one secret. Black. Everything looks a little better on black. Also, remember you want a variety of scales. You want large prints, small prints. What I used to do was find one fabric, with a lot of colors that I really liked and use that as my jumping-off point.”

  “Some of it’s just intuitive, isn’t it?” I was sure I’d been born without the good color gene.

  “I don’t believe that,” Cinnamon said. “I can teach you to have a good eye.”

  She smiled and continued around the room, admiring a fabric choice, exclaiming over a photo.

  She talked as we worked. “Let your mind wander. I’ll be printing out pictures from your camera for you to look at, but don’t hold them too tight in your mind. We’re not going for a literal interpretation here. Ideas will swirl in your mind, if you let them. Sift through them gently. Don’t reject anything, but don’t accept the first thought you have, either. There’s more meat in the marrow. Get to the marrow.”

  I fed triangles under my presser foot, making sure to keep the edges aligned and using the quarter-inch foot to get my seam right. After the first couple, I found the rhythm and felt my mind wander.

  The pictures that I’d taken were playing up on the wall. I’d taken pictures of the Pirates’ Den specifically to show Lucy. I watched as my photos cycled through.

  “Hey Lucy,” I said. “Do you know what room your grandfather lived in?”

  She looked up and stopped her sewing while the den flickered by. “He doesn’t mention a specific room. Seemed like they were housed in barracks. Besides, I think the building had been reconfigured in the fifties when the state took over Asilomar.”

  “Nice shot,” Lucy said, after watching my pictures slide by. She was teasing.

  I looked up to see I’d taken a picture of the floor plan that showed the emergency exits. What a geek. I laughed, glad to have a moment of levity with her.

  I
didn’t stop until the bell sounded the start of lunch.

  Cinnamon dismissed us. “Go eat. After lunch, we’ll get out your blueprints and rinse them.”

  My blueprint fabric? Where was it? I reached into my bag for the plastic bag she’d given us. It wasn’t there. Shoot. I bopped my hand on my forehead. Dumb mistake. My fingers brushed against the welt Ursula had given me and I saw stars.

  Harriet saw my discomfort. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I’ve lost my fabric,” I confessed. The twinkles, and the pain, faded. I had to remember not to make any sudden moves. “I can’t remember what I did with it.”

  We streamed out of the building. Cinnamon locked the door behind us, pulling it shut with a jerk. Lucy and Harriet and I started toward the dining hall.

  “When did you last have it?” Harriet said. “Retrace your steps. Let your mind wander,” she said, imitating Cinnamon’s languid delivery.

  I laughed, but it worked. I remembered, I’d been headed to the Pirates’ Den to retrieve it when I met Ursula.

  I broke off when we crossed the road.

  “I have to make a detour,” I said, without going into detail. “I’ll join you guys at lunch.”

  I hustled across the street and over to the building that housed Mercedes’ office. Yellow crime scene tape stretched across the door of the room on the lower level where she’d died but there was no evidence of police. They must have finished processing the scene.

  Coming up the steps to the den’s living room, I heard sobbing. Loud and uncensored, it sounded like a toddler weeping at the mall, having been kept out past bedtime. I stopped dead, wondering if I should intrude.

  I looked in the doorway. Kym was standing in front of a mirror, wailing, her thin shoulders shaking with effort. I came behind her so I could see her reflection. She’d taken off her scarf and was leaning in, studying her face.

  This was the same mirror I’d caught sight of Ursula in.

  “Kym?”

  She moaned when she saw me. Her fingers twisted in the scarf as though she was trying to keep them from scratching. Her cheeks were riven with tears.

  Her features twisted. A sob escaped and she used her hands to stop herself. Her misery was not alleviated by the sight of me.

  I waded in anyhow. This was my brother’s wife. I couldn’t walk out, pretending I hadn’t seen her. I stood next to her. “Are you okay?”

  That dumb question earned me a withering glance. My sister-in-law was nothing if not consistent in her disdain of me.

  “I thought everyone was at lunch,” she said. “I just needed a moment alone.”

  She sniffed loudly, using her hand to wipe away her tears. She flinched as she brushed one of the open boils.

  “Your face looks better,” I lied.

  She rubbed the skin under her neck. The tiniest of wattles was growing there.

  “It’s worse. Whatever was in that soap, it made it worse.”

  Oops.

  “I’m not crying about my face,” she said, but I didn’t believe her.

  She continued, “It’s this flipping conference. People are complaining left and right. I can’t get a moment’s peace. They walk in here all morning long, just one fucking whiner after another.”

  Kym didn’t use words like that. I felt a giggle escape, and caught it with the back of my hand. Like most difficult people, Kym couldn’t cope when confronted with other’s needs.

  Kym wound her scarf around her head, checking herself one last time in the mirror. She walked over to the desk and sat down. I glanced around the room for my blueprint fabric. I hoped the cleaning crew hadn’t thrown it out. I checked the trash can just in case.

  Nothing. Damn.

  Kym slammed down a folder. The back of her hands looked puffy.

  “My room’s too coooold,” she said in a dead-on imitation of Concordia’s reedy voice. She continued, imitating her tormentors. “Too dark. The projector’s not working, the floor’s too slippery.”

  She continued, “One woman was in here earlier complaining that there was a deer outside her window.” She looked at me plaintively. “What am I supposed to do about that?”

  She was pathetic. I said, “What would Mercedes do?”

  A vision of a rubber bracelet with WWMD? on it flitted across my mind, and I stifled another giggle. Kym’s discomfort notwithstanding, seeing her trying to make order out of chaos felt like payback for all the trouble she’d caused me.

  “I don’t think Mercedes had this kind of upset. Everyone was holding on to their complaints for me.”

  I doubted that. I’d seen Mercedes in action. She could handle the tough cookies and make them feel like they were having the time of their lives.

  Kym was still going on. “The dining hall keeps screwing up the special meals. I’ve got someone in a sugar coma. Or so she says. She looks perfectly fine to me.”

  I almost felt sorry for her. She was so far in over her head. She didn’t have the diplomatic or dictatorial skills that Mercedes had, necessary to rule three hundred middle-aged women.

  I came up short at the sight of Kym opening the lid of a laptop.

  That got my attention. Kym and computers had not been on speaking terms the last I knew.

  “Yours?” I asked. Mercedes’ laptop had been in her room and confiscated as part of the police investigation. I’d given up hope at getting to her files. Now I saw a glimmer of opportunity.

  She nodded. “Mercedes insisted I get one.”

  That was interesting. “Is it a clone of hers?” I asked.

  Kym frowned, not understanding. I clarified. “Is it the same as hers—with the same files?”

  Kym shrugged.

  I heard the familiar noises of the operating system booting. “Do you actually know how to use it?”

  Kym and computers were like oil and water. Like Peets and Starbucks. Like Paris and Nicole.

  “No.”

  “What are you trying to do?” I said, itching to take it away from her. with access to the registration files, I could find out where Ursula had been, and maybe where she was hiding now.

  Kym said, “There’s another Sewing-by-the-Sea session due to start in a little over eight weeks. All the teachers and customers need to know that Mercedes has died, but I have no idea how to do that. If I can find their addresses, I’ll write to each of them.”

  She indicated a pile of envelopes and a large roll of stamps. She had a box of writing paper with a picture of kittens and yarn watermarked on the pink sheets. The envelopes matched, of course.

  “How many?” I said.

  “Same as this one. Three hundred, more or less, including teachers.”

  “Don’t you have e-mail?” I asked.

  Kym looked at me blankly.

  I went on. “Mercedes e-mailed me, so she must have addresses for everyone.”

  She shrugged. “Mercedes has some kind of database thingy, but I need Kevin’s help for that. For now, I’m just going to handwrite all of them.”

  “Yikes, Kym. Are you kidding me? You could send out one blast e-mail and let everyone know in five minutes. Your way will take hours.”

  Her lower lip trembled. She was five seconds away from a major technological meltdown. How my sister-in-law had lived her twenty-six years in Silicon Valley without learning how to use a computer amazed me. She acted as if she was Amish and the computer was verboten. She relied on Kevin for everything.

  “Give me the computer,” I said. Kym pushed it in my direction, but not all the way, making me reach to pull it the last couple of inches.

  I was excited when I looked at the screen. Mercedes’ anal nature spilled into her computer files. She’d copied everything on to Kym’s laptop. There were folders lined up on the desktop, each one neatly labeled.
Each Sewing-by-the-Sea had its own folder. One for each of the latest sessions, and two more in the future, July and October.

  I opened the one marked July 2009. An excel spreadsheet held all the attendees’ information: name, home address, phone numbers, method of payment. And e-mail addresses. The list was long, over three hundred lines. I didn’t want to have to send a message to each one.

  I opened Kym’s e-mail program. From the look of the unopened messages, I was the first one to open this program. It was a Sewing-by-the-Sea account. A half-dozen unopened messages from Mercedes were in the inbox.

  It didn’t need a password. There was no way Kym could remember one.

  Yes. Mercedes had forwarded to Kym the welcome message she’d sent to all the July seminar participants ten days ago. When I opened it and hit reply, all of the names were already in the header. All I had to do was create a new file and send it to out to this group. It would take minutes.

  I looked at Kym, who was rubbing her arms, her legs squeezed tightly together. Her hives seemed to still be spreading. I caught myself scratching my neck. I really hoped my soap hadn’t made things worse. That hadn’t been my intention.

  Kym didn’t have to know how easy this was. For one thing, she wouldn’t appreciate what I’d done unless I made it look a little hard. I’d tell her this was going to take some time and effort and spend my time looking for a trace of Ursula Wiggins.

  “I’m going to be a while,” I said to Kym.

  “Hurry up,” she said, ever gracious.

  “Why don’t you write down what you want to say?” I suggested.

  I knew she was just being knee-jerk upset with me. She had no understanding of computers whatsoever. I was free to take my time in the files.

  I’d see what trace of Ursula I could detect. If her usual room was listed, I might find her today. My heart beat faster at the idea.

  I opened the file marked May 2009. I found my name and personal info. I did a search for Ursula’s name that came up empty. Mercedes had been telling the truth. She wasn’t scheduled for this year. But Paul had said he’d written a check.

  I looked for an accounting program to see if Mercedes had deposited his money, but couldn’t find one. Her books weren’t on here. She didn’t trust Kym with her finances.