The Alpine Quilt

by Mary Daheim

  Buddy had kept the studio open despite the tragedy, but Roseanna had taken the day off to cope with whatever arrangements might be necessary for Gen’s funeral.

  “Come over to the house at two-thirty when the original appointment was set with Gen,” she said in a flat tone. “I’ll make coffee. Or maybe something stronger. I could use a good jolt about now.”

  The rain had started again when I climbed the winding stone steps that led up to the Bayards’ brick rambler on Pine Street near Icicle Creek. I felt as if I were going to interview a ghost: Same time, same place—but the subject was dead.

  Roseanna met me at the door. Her usual high color was drained, her fair hair drooped, and the sparkle was gone from her blue eyes.

  “Can you believe this?” she said in a tired voice. “The first time Gen comes to visit, she dies. Why do mothers-in-law have to be so contrary?”

  It dawned on me that maybe I wasn’t looking at grief in Roseanna’s eyes, but frustration. I didn’t know what to say. All I could come up with was, “It’s sad for everyone.”

  Roseanna indicated I should sit on the big brown leather sofa, while she flopped into a matching armchair. “Gen wasn’t your average mother or grandmother,” she declared. “Oh, I shouldn’t criticize, but in all the years our three kids were growing up, she never remembered a birthday. Christmas, yes, she could hardly miss that, but otherwise . . .” She waved a hand. “Our kids barely knew her. We hauled them over to Spokane when they were little, but after they got to be teenagers, we gave up coercing them into going with us. It’s a damned shame, really.”

  I seemed to have sunk at least six inches into the soft leather. “Not the maternal type, I guess.”

  She shook her head. “No wonder Buddy is an only child. I honestly don’t think she liked children. Of course, Gen was very young when she had him.” Roseanna gave me a knowing look.

  “Teenagers in love?” I remarked.

  “You got it. Gen barely finished high school. Andy was two years older. They got married that June, and Buddy was born in October. You know how it was in those days—a backstreet abortion, a six-month stay at a home for wayward girls, or a shotgun wedding. One way or the other, unwed mothers didn’t keep their babies.” Roseanna’s color suddenly rose. “Damn. I didn’t mean . . .”

  I waved away her apology. “I was ‘wayward’ several years later. Abortion was legal by then, but I wouldn’t do it. Just think of me as a pioneer.”

  Roseanna smiled weakly. “The Poster Girl for Single Moms,” she said. “Do you want something to drink? A gin and tonic sounds good to me.”

  “Go ahead,” I responded. “I still have work to do this afternoon. I’ll take a Pepsi or a Coke if you’ve got it—as long as it’s not diet.”

  Roseanna went out into the kitchen. I hauled myself off the sofa and walked into the dining room, where one wall was covered with Buddy’s photographs, most of which were of family and friends. I felt guilty as I studied his artistry. Buddy was very good, although we rarely used his photos except in cases of Mother Nature gone wild. The most recent example was a July thunder and lightning storm where he’d captured some spectacular shots of the summer storm. Maybe I could appease him by buying more of his photographs for the paper. Financially, it wouldn’t make up for the loss of the darkroom job, but he’d get more exposure, perhaps even have some of his work picked up by the wire services.

  “The Rogues Gallery,” Roseanna noted as she came out of the kitchen carrying two glasses and a can of Coke. “Did you ever see our wedding picture?” She nodded to her left. “Weren’t we cute? It was our hippie phase.”

  Roseanna’s fair hair hung down to her waist; Buddy’s was almost as long, and his beard sprouted in every direction. Their clothes were conventional, however, though I peered closely at the bridal bouquet.

  “It’s an artichoke,” Roseanna said. “We were into growing our own vegetables.”

  I laughed. “Not artichokes at this elevation, right?”

  “Right. But I couldn’t carry radishes or onions. Anyway, it was February. We convinced Father Fitz that the artichoke was an exotic tropical flower. I guess he’d never eaten one.”

  “I assume he enforced a dress code,” I said as I accepted the glass of ice and the can of Coke from my hostess.

  “You bet,” Roseanna replied. “Of course, my parents were on his side.”

  “And Buddy’s, too?”

  “Gen and Andy had split up long before that,” Roseanna said, no longer amused. “Andy didn’t come to the wedding, just the reception, where he got so drunk he fell in the punch bowl. He died about four years after we were married. His truck went off the road somewhere south of Seattle and hit a tree. He probably passed out at the wheel. Andy had moved from Alpine just a couple of months before he died. Buddy refused to talk about him.”

  I nodded at the wall. “Are there any pictures of his parents here?”

  “Just Gen,” Roseanna replied. “One of the few along with our wedding photo that Buddy didn’t take. Here.” She pointed to what looked like an enlargement of a snapshot. Standing on a beach with the ocean or maybe the sound in the background, Genevieve Bayard was wearing shorts and a halter top. She looked as if she was in her mid-twenties, and pretty enough to be a pinup girl.

  “She was a knockout,” I said. “She certainly must have had her chances to remarry, especially after Andy died and she could have had a church wedding.”

  Roseanna was heading back into the living room. “She probably did. I know she had at least one guy she was living with for a long time, but they never made it official. When we’d visit her in Spokane, she was careful to make sure he wasn’t around. But,” she went on, sitting down again in the easy chair, “Buddy and I knew there was a man stashed somewhere. His belongings were evident around the house.”

  “But not in the spare bedrooms?”

  “No. We figured they were sleeping together.” Roseanna took a big drink from her G&T. “There were only two bedrooms. When the kids went with us, they had to bring sleeping bags and bed down in the living room. I really can’t blame them for not going with us when they got older. It wasn’t as if she made a fuss over them anyway. I’m sure they felt like excess baggage.”

  “That’s sad,” I remarked. Not that I’d ever know what it would be like to be a grandmother.

  “Gen was an odd woman,” Roseanna said with a wave of her hand. “What else do you want to know about her?”

  Obviously, we couldn’t run an obit with a headline that read ODD WOMAN DIES IN ALPINE. “Vida no doubt has the early background filed away in her amazing brain,” I noted. “Why did Gen move away?”

  Roseanna shrugged. “I think she got bored, not to mention sick and tired of getting drunken phone calls in the middle of the night from Andy telling her how much he still loved her. She left town about three years after we were married. She went to Seattle for a while, but didn’t like it. Too big. Gen had friends in Spokane, though we never met them. She liked the sun, too, and of course they have more of that in eastern Washington than on this side of the mountains. I suppose Spokane was a natural choice—not really all that far, but smaller than Seattle.”

  “And more sun,” I murmured. “More snow, too. Was this really the first time she visited here since she left?”

  Roseanna nodded. “Yes. Gen always said she’d had enough of small towns. Her parents—they were the Ferrers, who died long before you came to Alpine—were her only other relatives here. The brother had been a commercial fisherman and drowned in Alaska years ago. Except for Buddy,” Roseanna added on a bitter note, “there was no reason for her to visit. And apparently, he wasn’t enough.”

  “She had friends,” I pointed out, “like Annie Jeanne Dupré and the other women in the Burl Creek Thimble Club.”

  Roseanna gave me an ironic smile. “Gen and Annie Jeanne. The original odd couple. Yes, that’s so, but she wasn’t really close to the rest of them. Actually, I think she and Annie Jeanne wrote to each
other quite often.”

  “Did Annie Jeanne ever go to visit Gen in Spokane?”

  “Not that I ever heard of,” Roseanna said. “You know Annie Jeanne; she’s so timid. I’m not sure if she’s ever been to Seattle.”

  If Annie Jeanne had ever visited the big city, I hadn’t heard of it. That meant Vida hadn’t, either: Vida would not only know, but put the item on her page or in “Scene.” As for Gen, I knew more than I did when I arrived at the Bayards’, but most of it wasn’t fit to print.

  “She was a quilter,” I said after a long pause. “Gen must have been clever with her hands.”

  “Yes,” Roseanna agreed. “She was good. When we visited, she always showed off the latest outfits she’d made for herself. She didn’t just sew, she could do tailoring. Until a couple of years ago, Gen worked in alterations for women’s stores in Spokane. But she never made anything for us, not even baby clothes when the kids were small.”

  “Ah.” Finally we’d hit on something newsworthy. “Do you know what store she worked at?”

  “Several,” Roseanna replied, her hand swirling around what was left of her cocktail. “She never stayed long in one place, except for Frederick & Nelson before they closed. Gen always had complaints, especially with the owners of smaller stores. She was with Nordstrom when she retired. Do you need to know exactly?”

  I shook my head. “That’s good enough. I suppose she belonged to a parish in Spokane.”

  “Yes, the church on the Gonzaga University campus. She had a condo by the river.”

  It crossed my mind that the condo would be worth something. Maybe it had crossed Roseanna’s mind, too. If so, she wasn’t looking very happy about it.

  “So,” I said, “Buddy and your kids are the sole survivors?”

  “Yes.” She wore a dour expression.

  Making notes, I nodded. “Full names in order of age are Kenneth, Anne, and Joseph, right?”

  “Right.” Roseanna finished her drink. “Kenny’s waiting at WSU to hear about the funeral. If it isn’t held here, he might as well stay in Pullman since it’s so close to Spokane.”

  “You don’t know yet where the services will be held?”

  “No. We haven’t tracked down her lawyer yet—if she had a lawyer. For all we know,” Roseanna went on in a grim voice, “she left instructions to be buried in Spokane. We’re waiting for Doc or the ME or whoever to sign off on the death certificate. According to Al Driggers, she didn’t have a plot in Alpine.”

  “Maybe,” I said, putting my notepad in my purse, “we’ll hear something later today.”

  Roseanna stood up. “I hope so. This is a real pain.” She grimaced. “That sounds so callous. It isn’t as if we’d been close to Gen. Buddy’s never known what it’s like to have a doting mother. Oh, she clothed and fed him when he was a kid, but she was never . . . loving. I guess that’s the word. Gen was a very cold person, in my opinion.”

  I’d struggled out of the deep leather sofa and was moving toward the door. I smiled at Roseanna. “I can’t put that in the paper, either.”

  “I know,” she said with a heavy sigh.

  “I can run a photo, though,” I said. “Do you have one that’s fairly recent?”

  Roseanna snorted. “No. The only one we have is that cheesecake shot on the wall. Not appropriate, right?”

  “Right. Didn’t Buddy ever take pictures of her when you visited?”

  “No,” Roseanna said. “She didn’t want him to. She was camera-shy, she told him.”

  I considered my options. “Charlene Vickers brought in some photos from the BCTC party,” I said. “We can crop one of them and run a head shot.”

  “Fine.” Roseanna sounded as if she didn’t care if we ran a picture of Gen’s rear end. “Oh—how’s Annie Jeanne?” she asked suddenly. “I heard she made herself sick over Gen’s death.”

  “I called the hospital this morning,” I replied, my hand on the brass doorknob. “Doc Dewey was in surgery, and Dr. Sung was seeing patients at the clinic. The nurse told me that Annie Jeanne was stable but still very upset. Ben planned to see her this afternoon. I’m going to call again when I get back to the office.”

  “Poor lady,” Roseanna said with a shake of her head. “Annie Jeanne’s so high-strung. If she stays another day at the hospital, I’ll go see her tomorrow.”

  “I should, too,” I said. “In fact, I’ll drop in after work.”

  “It’s funny,” Roseanna remarked as we stood on the porch, “I feel much sorrier for Annie Jeanne being sick than I do for Gen being dead. That’s not right, is it?”

  I couldn’t answer that question. “It sounds as if Gen led a very private life,” I said in a vague voice.

  “Private?” Roseanna narrowed her eyes, though she didn’t look at me but out into the rain that was falling on a slant. “More than private. It’s almost as if she’d led a secret life. Maybe it’s just as well that we don’t know what she did all those years on the other side of the mountains. We might not like it if we knew the truth.”

  SEVEN

  The truth. What every journalist wants to know. Roseanna had certainly piqued my interest in her mother-in-law’s background, so much so that I’d forgotten to apologize for yanking our darkroom business away from Buddy.

  The only problem was that if the Bayards didn’t know what Gen had been up to for the last twenty-odd years, nobody else would either. Not even Vida. My House & Home editor’s grapevine didn’t grow as far as Spokane. I decided that I might as well let Gen rest in peace. If I could.

  Instead of phoning the hospital when I returned to the office, I called Ben. I caught him just as he was about to meet with a parishioner whose troubles apparently came out of a bottle. I knew better than to ask who.

  “Annie Jeanne’s coming along okay,” Ben informed me. “Doc’s keeping her another day to make sure she doesn’t go to pieces again.”

  “Thank goodness Alpine’s hospital isn’t like its big-city counterparts,” I said. “Here they don’t throw you out twenty-four hours after you’ve had brain surgery or broken every bone in your body.”

  “My, my,” Ben said lightly, “do I hear you trumpeting the praises of small-town life?”

  “There are some advantages,” I said, sounding defensive. “Did Doc mention anything about . . . food poisoning?”

  “If he did, it was said in confidence,” Ben replied.

  “He’s not a parishioner,” I pointed out. “You wouldn’t break the seal of the confessional by telling your very own sister.”

  “Hey, Sluggly, a confidence is a confidence. Ask Doc yourself. Gotta go, gotta tell a certain unidentified person that falling down drunk can make for a hard climb on the stairway to heaven. See you at dinner.”

  I took Ben’s advice and called Doc at the clinic. He and his partner, Elvis Sung, were both seeing patients, according to the receptionist, Marje Blatt. The raw November weather was doing its dirty work, especially among the elderly. Bronchitis was rampant, along with colds that came attached with flulike symptoms.

  Vida had just returned from making her rounds. The satin toque looked very wet and very wrinkled. She removed the hat and gave it a good shake. “Whatever was I thinking of this morning?” she muttered. “I should have worn my new sou’wester. I bought it at the Tacoma Mall. Such a busy place! You can hardly move without bumping into someone.”

  I was leaning in the doorway to my office. “You didn’t happen to stop by the clinic today for a visit with your niece, Marje Blatt, did you?”

  “What?” Vida set the battered toque on top of the radiator. “Well, as a matter of fact, I did. It would have been most thoughtless of me not to check in to see who’d been ill in my absence. I do send so many get-well cards, you know.”

  “And?” I coaxed.

  “Marje was a clam,” Vida declared with an expression of disapproval. “My niece knows better than to keep things from me. On the other hand,” she added grudgingly, “Marje may not be aware of exactly what caused Annie
Jeanne’s severe reaction. Receptionists aren’t always as well informed as nurses.”

  “It couldn’t have been allergies,” I pointed out. “Annie Jeanne did the cooking.”

  “True.” Vida looked at the clock before sitting at her desk. “It’s almost four. I assume you haven’t had any word on the autopsy from Milo?”

  Ginny had no messages for me from the sheriff. It was too soon to nag. There still was an hour to go before deadline.

  “I’ll call him before five,” I said. But surely this time, Milo wouldn’t forget our pub date. Or would he? “Are you certain you don’t want to write the obituary part about Gen?” I asked Vida.

  “Positive,” she replied, peering at her own phone messages.

  “Then I need your input on her early background,” I said.

  She looked at me. “Didn’t you get that from Roseanna?”

  “Roseanna wasn’t born yet,” I said dryly. “Furthermore, she wasn’t at all close to Gen.”

  “I shouldn’t think so,” Vida said, and pursed her lips.

  “Parents’ names, schooling, marriage? Come on, Vida, help me out.”

  Vida whipped off her glasses and began pummeling her eyes. “Ooooh . . . very well.” She sighed heavily, put her glasses back on, and stared into space. “Parents, Marie Curtis Ferrer and Paul Ferrer. He worked as a sawyer in the mills. I believe Paul was originally from Wisconsin, and Marie was born in Snohomish. Children, Peter and Genevieve. Peter, the elder of the two, died in his early twenties when his fishing boat capsized off of Ketchikan. Gen became pregnant when she was a senior in high school and married Andre—known as Andy—Bayard right after she graduated.”

  “I know that part,” I put in.

  Vida turned in my direction. “Then that’s it. The rest is Buddy’s birth, Andy’s drunkenness, violent quarrels between husband and wife, and finally divorce. Andy died years ago in a tragic highway accident. He drank.”

  “Is he buried here?” I asked.