by Karen White
Embarrassed, Caroline released her grip on the door handle and concentrated on her breathing, trying to ignore the sound of the wheels against wet pavement. She was fine when she was the one behind the wheel, but once she became a passenger without control, the fear consumed her. A warm hand crept into hers and squeezed. Surprised, Caroline turned to see Jewel looking up at her.
“It’s okay. Dad’s a good driver.” Jewel blinked her eyes a couple of times. “Dad, could you take me to Rainy’s? I feel a bad headache coming on.”
“Will do,” he said, patting her on the leg as he pulled into a side road to turn around. “Caroline and I can run our errands another time.”
“Thank you,” Caroline whispered, then closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on the warm hand in hers and the soft hum of the engine so she wouldn’t have to listen to the rain.
CHAPTER 11
CAROLINE TIPTOED PAST HER MOTHER’S OPEN BEDROOM DOOR, hoping to sneak by unnoticed. She might be almost thirty years old now, but she still remembered from childhood the floorboards to avoid and had almost made it to her own room when she heard her mother call out. Her mom had always claimed to have six ears and eyes in the back of her head, and Caroline was inclined to believe it. She paused for a moment before answering, surprised to remember that her mother didn’t say that anymore. Her mother had stopped claiming extrasensory powers when Jude died, as if her sixth sense had somehow failed her forever on that rainy night in November.
“Yes?” Caroline lingered in the doorway.
Her mother lay in bed propped against a large pillow with a magazine on her lap. She patted the mattress next to her. “Come sit.”
Caroline sat on the edge of the mattress, smelling the aroma of Youth Dew body cream, another childhood memory. A thick cloth headband held her mother’s hair back from her face so that it wouldn’t stick to the gooey white mask spread over her forehead, nose, and cheeks. “You look great, Mom. Going out?”
“No, I’m saving all this splendor just for you.” She reached for the jar of cream on her bedside table and unscrewed the lid.
Caroline shrank back. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Humor me this once, all right? I think you’ll enjoy it. Not only does it tighten the pores and lift your skin, but it’s also scented with vanilla and chamomile to help you relax.” She gave Caroline a pointed look. “I know you haven’t been sleeping well—I hear you up all hours of the night. This might help.”
Their eyes met, but all Caroline could see was her mother crying on the back porch while the loon called from the lake. Her mother waited, as if expecting her to argue. Instead Caroline moved forward and tilted her face, as if giving in to this one small thing might somehow bridge the distance between them that words always seemed to mangle.
The cream felt cold as Margaret’s gentle fingers spread it over her skin, and she smiled at her mother’s facial gyrations as she motioned for Caroline to flatten a cheek or lift her jaw.
“So, what was the best thing that happened to you today?” her mother asked.
The words brought back memories of the nightly ritual when she and Jude would sit on their mother’s bed and talk about their day. She had once looked forward to it, but now she pulled back, the rawness around her heart still fresh after all these years. “I took a nap.”
Margaret didn’t say anything for a few minutes as she wiped her hands on a tissue and screwed the lid back on the jar. “And what was the worst thing that happened to you today?”
“I woke up.”
“I see.” She leaned back on her pillow and regarded Caroline for a long moment. “You don’t have to meet at Rainy’s before you go hiking with Drew, you know. I think it’s a good idea.”
Caroline threw her hands up. “How do you know these things? I didn’t tell anybody.”
Her mom shrugged. “It’s something a mother gains when her first child is born. There’s not a lot that goes on around you that I miss.” She smiled, making the face mask crack over her laugh lines. “Plus, I’m nosy. When I saw you sneaking out of here this morning, I made a few phone calls. It’s a small town—nobody misses much around here.”
“Well, I’m an adult now. You don’t have to follow my every move, you know. I can take care of myself.”
“I know.” She put her hand on Caroline’s. “But I’ll always be your mother—that will never change.”
Caroline pulled her hand away and stood, remembering the swim meets when her mother hadn’t been there, and the Halloween they had stayed inside because Jude had been too scared to go out. But she felt her heart beginning to beat faster, so she pushed back the memories and took deep breaths filled with chamomile and vanilla.
“I’m tired. I think I’ll go to bed now.”
“Let the mask sit for fifteen minutes before you wash it off.”
Caroline nodded, wanting to explain, to say more. There was so much unsaid between them, but thinking of it exhausted her. It was too much, and all in the past. No good could ever come from dredging up old hurts. Instead, all she said was, “Good night.” She paused at the doorway. “Can I use your phone to call Dad? I haven’t spoken to him in a couple of weeks.”
“You don’t need my permission to call your dad, you know. But he’s in Hawaii this week with his new girlfriend. He won’t be back until Sunday.”
The disappointment settled on Caroline like a dense fog, and she felt an odd compulsion to talk to her mother about it. But the old resentments pushed at her, propelling her out of the room. “Good night,” she said again.
“Sweet dreams.” It was what her mother had always said when she’d tucked Caroline and Jude into bed when they were children.
Caroline didn’t answer. She’d long since forgotten what a sweet dream was. She moved down the silent hallway, then quietly responded, “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.” She let herself into her darkened bedroom, and listened for the loon out on the lake.
August 8, 1987
Jude and Caroline go back to Atlanta tomorrow. They’ve been at the lake house for a month but it hardly seems long at all. Especially because I’ve been in bed with one of my horrible headaches for the last two days. Nothing seems to be helping. At least I was able to have my fifteenth birthday before the headache came. It started as my mom and me were driving back after getting my driver’s permit in Truro. Jude came with us and was begging for my mom to let him drive when the headache started. Everything went black all of a sudden and Mom had to grab the wheel and steer us to the side of the road. I don’t know what it means, because I can’t see anything except this horrible blackness. Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s good.
Caroline came over yesterday to keep me company. She brought a quilt she’s working on for an end-of-year team present for her swim coach. Her quilts are more than just patches and different stitches—they’re works of art. She has this amazing eye for color and placement, and for story, too. Her quilts tell stories so that even if you don’t know the person it belongs to, you can read the story of their life. She sat quietly by my bed and hand-stitched until I fell asleep. And when I woke up, she was still there. That’s the great thing about Caroline that I’m not sure if anybody else notices. She’s always there for you. She doesn’t talk much but she takes everything in and doesn’t miss a thing. And she has the greatest laugh—it could make a whole room of grumpy people smile. Jude says she’s shy, but I think she’s just busy taking everything in. In psychology class we talk about people who internalize other people’s feelings—and I think that’s what Caroline does. She takes in everybody’s happiness or sadness and makes it her own. It’s strange, but sometimes I think I’m the only one who notices this about her. I think that’s how she wants it, though. She’s the big swimming star, in a place where she can hide behind medals and ribbons and statistics. It’s how she protects herself, I think. I wonder how long it will take before her family sees it, too.
Jewel sat on the bench at the round craft table in Mrs. Collier’s li
ving room. She picked a seat that faced the television just in case she was allowed to relieve the boredom. Glancing at the clock, she saw that she had exactly two hours and twenty-three minutes before she could make her escape. Making sure she wasn’t being observed by Grandma Rainy or Mrs. Collier, she set the alarm on her watch. She had to be home in time for Lauren’s phone call. If she wasn’t there, her dad would answer and might mention Jewel was quilting. Her best friend would never let her hear the end of it.
Grandma Rainy approached the table with a wadded quilt in her hands. Lifting it high, she opened it in a quick move, creating a halo of color above them before it settled on the table’s surface.
Jewel crossed her legs and shook her ankle impatiently. “How long is it going to take to do all this?”
Rainy put her forefinger to her mouth. “Shh. Don’t let Caroline hear. You’re doing this because you want to, remember?”
“Whatever.” Jewel examined the quilt in front of her with a critical eye, unconsciously comparing it to the quilt in her mother’s trunk. This one, too, was unfinished, but there was something else not quite right about it—something Jewel couldn’t identify. There was no border yet, and only the first row and a half of fabric squares had been attached, leaving the rest a blank canvas. It reminded her of a piece of furniture that her father had sanded only once. He called it his rough draft, saying it was no better than a tree in the forest. You could see the beauty of the wood already, but it wouldn’t be until the third or fourth sanding that you could finally understand what her father meant.
It struck her then that this was her mother’s life in front of her, and that the women around the quilting table would be filling in her mother’s life square by square until each important event had been recorded with thread and needle by the loving hands of people who had known her. It seemed to her that she should be a part of it, that maybe somehow her mother would want this and approve. She remembered what she had read in her mother’s diary and realized that Caroline should be involved, too, to put the final sandings on the quilt.
Not that she’d enjoy any of it, of course, but if she had to do it, she might as well do it right.
As if reading her mind, Rainy asked, “Where’s Caroline?”
Mrs. Collier placed a large pincushion on the edge of the table and spoke in a loud whisper. “She’s in the kitchen getting snacks together and brewing sweet tea. I thought if I kept her around here we could somehow get her interested enough to join us.”
Grandma Rainy nodded her head while her gaze strayed to the curved wooden benches. “Is this where we’re going to sit?”
“Well, yes, Rainy. You could go sit on the dock but it would be a far jog to change thread.”
“That’s not what I meant. I was just hoping that maybe there would be cushions or something. Recovering cancer patients can be delicate.”
Mrs. Collier pursed her lips like Jewel had seen her mother do after telling her she was too sick to go to school when she felt perfectly fine. Mrs. Collier gave a delicate snort, if there could be such a thing, and said, “Maybe it’s that your rear end has gotten so big that it needs a large cushion to support it.” Without skipping a beat, she turned to Jewel. “Honey, could you go out to the back porch and grab the cushions off the patio furniture? We don’t want your grandma to have a sore fanny, do we?”
Jewel jumped up as Rainy said, “My rear end isn’t nearly as big as your ears. Did you know that your ears and nose continue to grow even after your dead?”
“Thanks for sharing that, Rainy. I’ll make sure that you’ve got an extra-deep coffin to accommodate your nose.”
“Fine. And I’ll make sure you have one wide enough for those skin flaps on the side of your head that you call ears.”
Jewel had reached the kitchen, where she nearly ran into Caroline taking an iced-tea pitcher from the refrigerator. Their eyes met and they started laughing.
Caroline placed the pitcher on the counter. “I can’t believe they’re best friends—it defies logic.”
“I’ve said that for years.” Jewel leaned back on the counter and crossed her arms, forgetting her errand for a moment. “Were you like that with my mom?”
Caroline turned her back and began taking glasses from the cabinet. “Not really—it was more that way between her and my brother, Jude. They could talk about anything together. And sometimes they didn’t even need to talk—it was like they could guess what the other was thinking.”
Jewel watched Caroline put ice cubes into each glass, an equal number put precisely one by one in stacks of three. Maybe that was how accountants did it, but it seemed like a waste of time to her. Or maybe Caroline did things like that to keep her mind busy so she wouldn’t have to think about the hard stuff.
“Do you still think about him every day?”
Caroline dropped the ice bucket on the counter, making the glasses bounce. “Yes. I do.”
“I think about my mom every day, too. Except you think about your brother in a different way.”
Slowly Caroline turned to face her. “What do you mean?”
Instead of answering right away, Jewel pushed off from the counter. “Come help me with these cushions. Hold the door and I’ll hand some to you.” She waited until Caroline came to the back door before she answered. “Well, when I think about Mom, I feel good inside. It’s not that I don’t miss her—I do—but I know she loved me and that she had a great life and that she’s in a good place now. I don’t think she’d want me to have a bad attitude about life just because she’s not here.”
“I don’t have a bad atti—”
Jewel handed her three large cushions, covering Caroline’s face and making her stagger against the door.
She continued. “But when you think about your brother, you wish he were here with you, and when you realize that’s never going to happen, you get angry and everything else doesn’t matter because you don’t have that one thing.” Jewel grabbed more cushions and moved toward the back door. “My mom would say that crying for the moon is a lot like sitting in a rocking chair: It keeps you busy but it won’t get you anywhere.”
Caroline turned her face sideways so she could speak. “Has anyone ever told you that you talk way too much?”
“Yep. My dad tells me every day.” She motioned for Caroline to move ahead, then followed her into the kitchen. “Come on, let’s give the old ladies their butt pads.”
“Wait. You can’t just say something like that and then walk away.”
“Sure I can. My mom always told me it was the best way to get people to open up and talk about things they don’t want to but probably need to. If you’re annoying enough about it, it will make the person you’re talking to argue with you.”
She plopped the cushions down on the floor at the feet of Mrs. Collier, who’d just sat down at a card table near the benches. On top of the table she’d piled about ten shoe boxes full of photographs still in their white sleeves from the developer’s.
Caroline dropped her cushions, too, and stared at her mother. “What are those for?”
Mrs. Collier smiled innocently. “Well, I know you’re not interested in helping us with the quilt, but I thought you might want to go through these old pictures and pull out ones with Shelby in them that might silk-screen well onto a quilting square.”
Jewel smiled to herself. Mrs. Collier might look like a sweet old lady who used linen napkins and knew where to hang a picture, but she could probably run a company, solve the world’s problems, and hire a hit man all at the same time. She was a lot like Grandma Rainy. Maybe that was why they were such good friends.
Mrs. Collier got up from the chair. “You can sit here. I’ll go get the iced tea while Jewel and Rainy start discussing color schemes for the quilt. You can listen with half an ear and give them advice while you’re looking through those pictures.”
Without waiting for Caroline’s response, Mrs. Collier turned toward the kitchen, and Jewel didn’t miss the triumphant smile on her face.
It was almost as good as the look Caroline wore—of a person who’d just been hit by an unexpected wave. Her shoulders slumped in a defeated gesture as if she were realizing that it was probably as useless to argue with her mother as it was to fight the incoming tide. Jewel stared at Mrs. Collier’s retreating back and once again wondered how such a thin old woman could be so relentlessly strong.
CHAPTER 12
CAROLINE WAS UP EARLY, EAGER TO BE OUT OF THE HOUSE BEFORE her mother awoke and fussed over her or, worse, decided to come with her. There wasn’t enough caffeine in the world to help her navigate a long conversation with her mom over the jagged rocks of the past.
She stood on the back porch and stretched, feeling the resistance of muscles that hadn’t been used to capacity in years. Sometime in the middle of the night the idea had come to her. Maybe it had come from staring at Shelby’s empty quilt the day before. There were boxes and boxes of potential scraps and mementos from a short life well lived. It would be a challenge to decide what would go on it and what wouldn’t fit in the confines of a quilt. She imagined it would be a lot like being asked to evacuate your home and be allowed to take only one small bag.
And then she thought of the possibility of her own quilt. She had never started one for herself, and in her mind’s eye it was yard after yard of empty fabric. When she tried to think of what would go on it she realized there might be one box of mementos, and all of them would be from her first eighteen years of life. The rest would be empty, like Shelby’s, but not because she hadn’t been there to live them.
