Mary felt as if she might faint. He was silent, save for the exhale of air that ruffled his moustache.
“I worked very hard on the ruching,” Mary said, her voice filled with tremors.
“Ssshhhhh,” Mr. Edwards said.
How will I ever pay the woman back? How could I have believed I could do this? How could I have ruined her material? Mary worried.
The owner studied the collar and waist, the bow and bag, his face slowly filling with admiration, his moustache twitching in excitement.
“Would you like to work here?” he asked.
Mary jumped at the sound of shouting, and turned to see a crowd at the curtain. “We have only the one machine you used today available.”
Mary began to cry.
For the next few months, Mary worked in the dress shop and saved money, sending as much as she could spare to her parents while saving enough to earn fare west to Grand Rapids. Near the end of summer, Mary approached the owner and asked, “How much for the old sewing machine I have been using?”
“You want to leave?” Mr. Edwards asked. “You can’t!”
“My aunt and uncle are in Michigan, and I must reach them before winter. I have finally saved enough money, and I would like to buy your sewing machine. It is a part of me now, and I will need it to earn money.”
Mary used the last of her savings to purchase the treadle sewing machine, and on her last day at the shop, as Mary was saying her goodbyes to the women, she felt a tap on her shoulder. Rima Jablonski, who had introduced her to the machine, was pointing a bulbous finger toward the back door that led into the alley.
“I have something for you,” she said. “A gift.”
“No!” Mary protested. “I can’t.”
“You must,” Rima said. “Is tradition of my country.”
She began to tell Mary the tale of Jadwiga, who was a female monarch of Poland before queens were recognized. As a result, Jadwiga became king, renowned for her kindness.
“Jadwiga once took a piece of her own jewelry and gave it to a poor stonemason who had begged for her help,” Rima told Mary. “When ze king left, he noticed her footprint in plaster floor of his workplace, even though ze plaster had already hardened before her visit. That footprint can still be seen in one of Krakow’s churches.”
The woman stopped and sighed, a rattle coming from deep within her chest. “My mother always told me, ‘Give a piece of yourself. You will never realize how deep of a footprint you might make on a stranger.’ So, to you, I give a piece of my life. I am old. I have little time left. But you … you have whole life ahead of you.”
The old woman unlatched the bracelet from around her wrist. It sparkled in the alley’s summer sunlight. The bracelet was filled with stones and pieces of amber, and charms of unusual design.
“Yes,” the woman said, finally locating the right item on her bracelet. “Here it is!”
She handed Mary a small, worn silver charm with her aged fingers. Mary held it up in the air, until the sunlight illuminated it: It was a charm of a sewing machine.
“Just like the one you use here,” she said, nodding. “Yes? Just like the one you will take with you.”
“I can’t,” Mary said again. “It’s too important to you.”
“Which is why I must pass it on,” she said. “You are like me: You come here from another place. You have left your family.”
Tears began to form in Mary’s blue eyes, and she lowered her head and cried.
“This simple charm has much meaning, my child,” Rima said. She took Mary’s young hands in her old ones, and held them tightly. “This is to a life bound by family … no matter how far away they may be. As long as you wear this, they will always be near.”
The woman undid the naked slim bracelet around Mary’s wrist, one her parents had given her when she was younger, and added the charm. Mary held up her wrist; the charm looked as if it had always been there.
As Mary traveled by covered wagon with others seeking family in the north and west, her bracelet danced, and Mary’s fingers felt for the charm to calm herself. The charm made Mary feel safe, protected, surrounded by family. On her trek to Michigan, Mary stopped to do seamstress work in towns along the way, where she earned enough money from her sewing machine and her skills to get her to the next town.
When Mary made it to her aunt and uncle’s tiny home in Grand Rapids, Michigan—exhausted from her many months of travel to join her family—it had just begun to snow.
“It’s only November,” Mary said.
“Welcome to Michigan,” her aunt Sarah laughed, inviting her inside, where a tiny bedroom in the back of the house had been readied, keepsakes from Ireland placed around the room, and helped her unpack.
Mary thought of the day she found her ticket to America nestled under an egg, and of how the snow had stuck to her father’s dark hair, making him look angelic. The memories, coupled with excitement and exhaustion, caused tears to flow.
“Are you feeling ill, Mary?” Sarah asked.
“No,” she said, trying to explain her feelings. “I’m feeling … blessed by family.”
Sarah held her close as they sat on her new bed, and Mary told her of her travels to America, her trip here, and her charm.
“It’s ready,” her uncle Sean said, interrupting the two.
“We have something to show you now, too,” her aunt said, taking Mary’s hand and leading her to the living room.
Mary inhaled sharply. Two chairs in front of a large picture window had been cleared, and Mary’s Singer now sat there, framed by a hillside of snow-kissed pines. A fireplace burned nearby.
“This is where you will work,” Sarah said. “You need a spot as inspiring as your work.”
“Until you meet a husband and have a family of your own, that is,” Mary’s uncle laughed.
Mary sewed in that spot—through the dark days of winter that only the lake-effect snow could brighten, the spring bloom of daffodils so thick they made the hillside look as if it had been spun in gold, and the stunning summer when it remained light until nearly midnight—creating wedding dresses and business suits, quilts and coats. She sold them in shops around town, and before long many of the town’s wealthy families hired her to do work just for them. Mary enjoyed the quiet of Michigan, and she saved money, sending it back to her parents, until one summer night she noticed that the dinner table was set for four.
Before Mary could ask why, a man resembling a wolf—an animal which Mary often observed through the window as she sewed—rumbled into the house. Mary screamed, and the man retreated.
“That’s no way to greet our guest, Mary,” her uncle laughed. “This is Web Falloran.”
Wilbur “Web” Falloran owned a broad, burly body, and a face covered with an unkempt beard. When Mary screamed, the man curled his arms into his big chest as if he were going to have to engage in battle.
“I’m so sorry,” Mary apologized. “You startled me.”
“Web gets that a lot.” Sean laughed. “He’s a lumberman, Mary, from Scoops, Michigan, near the Upper Peninsula. He brings wood down to Grand Rapids for the furniture makers. And he’s a fellow Irishman!”
Over a dinner of shepherd’s pie and colcannon, Mary discovered the man she’d thought was a wolf was gentler than a pup. He spoke with a quiet rumble, almost like distant thunder, and he complimented Mary on her sewing and her bravery in coming to America. When dinner was over, he asked Mary’s aunt and uncle if he could take Mary for a walk amongst the pines.
“Tell me about the charm on your bracelet,” he asked as they walked.
Mary smiled, stopped suddenly under the boughs of an ancient pine, and ducked her head, her hair falling toward the green grass of the hillside.
It was a perfect Michigan summer night, warm and filled with the sound of peepers. Mary shut her eyes and inhaled deeply. The smell of nearby Lake Michigan filled the air. For a moment, Mary thought she was back in Ireland.
“You want to know about this
charm?” she asked.
It seemed an odd question for a man to ask, much less a woodsman.
But Web only nodded his head and looked deeply into her eyes. “Yes,” he said. “It must mean a lot to you.”
So Mary told him, and he smiled a big smile underneath that bushy beard, his dark eyes twinkling in the last hints of day. “There is nothing more sacred than sewing,” he said. “It is like the art of a lumberman. Both provide shelter for a family. Both require hard labor and long hours. Both, in the end, are works of art.”
Two weeks later, Web returned for dinner, and they again went for a walk. Under the same pine boughs, Web stopped and pulled a small box out of his pocket.
“Open it!” he said.
Mary lifted the lid, and sitting atop a little velvet throne, was a charm of a four-leaf clover. “Luck of the Irish,” he smiled. “It was my mom’s. She sent it to me years ago, after I came to America. She said this charm is for luck in love and life.”
He hesitated. “I think I have finally found luck in love and life.”
Web softly pulled Mary’s wrist into the summer air and added the charm next to the sewing machine.
And then with only the pines and the peepers as witnesses, Web leaned in and kissed Mary’s lips. For a big man, the kiss was as tender and gentle as a soft rain. Mary collapsed into his arms. When Mary turned to walk home, she saw the curtain in the picture window move. Her aunt and uncle had been secretly watching.
Three months later, Mary was married. They moved into a little log cabin Web had built for his bride on a little lake—Lost Land Lake—in the woods outside of Scoops, Michigan.
Web set Mary’s sewing machine up in the front window of the new log cabin, which was built with pine logs Web had felled and split, cured and carved. White mortar held the logs in place, and it was filled with windows.
“You can work here and always have a view of Lost Land,” Web said.
The autumn vista inspired Mary, and—though the newlyweds had little money—she journeyed to the local feed store and picked out pretty patterned feed sacks, and to fabric shops where she fished out scraps, remains, and leftover material. Mary began to make quilts and curtains for the cabin. She began to make a name for herself in town, sewing for the locals. And when Mary found out she was pregnant a few months later, she ordered layette set patterns from McCall’s and—inspired by the world outside her cabin window—sewed a yellow baby blanket, with intricate designs of floating swans, lake loons, tall pines, and tender tulips.
As winter turned to spring, and magical May breezes melted the winter’s snow, Mary had to inch her stool back from her Singer, to give needed airspace between her belly and the bobbin. She became obsessed with hand-making items for her new baby, from socks and swaddling blankets, booties, beanies, and burp cloths, to onesies and a going-home-from-the-hospital outfit. Web made a tiny bassinette by hand, and Mary stacked it with their baby’s clothes.
“The charms were right,” Web told Mary one evening as they sipped iced tea on the screened porch. “We are blessed in America.”
During the last month of her pregnancy in July, Mary felt something change in her body. One day, after months of internal kicks, she could no longer feel anything, and when she went to visit her doctor, his face went blank as he held a stethoscope to her stomach.
“What’s wrong?” Mary asked. “Is something wrong with my baby?”
Mary was rushed to the operating room.
Her baby—a girl—was stillborn.
Mary could hear Web’s sobs echo down the hospital’s hallways.
“We can try again,” Web said to Mary, as she recovered. “Doctor says you’re fine. Just happens sometimes.”
But Mary didn’t respond, even after she had been released from the hospital a week later. Along with her baby, she had lost hope. She refused to talk, or eat.
The first thing Mary did as soon as she returned from the hospital was take a seat in front of her Singer and begin to sew. In the middle of the night, Web woke to find his young wife was not beside him. He could hear the soft whir of the Singer sing throughout the cabin.
“Mary, what are you doing?” he whispered in the night.
She simply looked up at her husband and continued to sew.
“Mary, what are you doing?” he asked again.
“Making our child’s burial dress.”
Web’s heart shattered, and though he wanted to run away and cry, he said instead, “I’ll keep you company while you sew.”
The funeral dress was long and white, with full arms and pink stitching and little pink bows. The hem featured floating swans, lake loons, tall pines, and tender tulips.
A few days after the funeral, after Web had returned to work and the cabin was maddeningly quiet, Mary gathered every ounce of strength she had and carried her sewing machine to the lake. When she finally reached the shoreline, drenched in sweat, Mary edged into the water, up to her waist. Her clothes were heavy and wet. Step by step, Mary walked into the lake, still holding her Singer.
Suddenly, a swallow dove over her, flitting back and forth as if to draw her attention. Mary noticed the light on its wings. In the near distance, a loon moaned, as if commiserating with her. Mary stopped walking. She could feel the sun on her back. She swore she could hear Web’s laugh echo off the water, as it did when he hooked a fish. Children were swimming, laughing, in the distance.
Slowly, Mary turned and walked out of the lake.
As she did, her bracelet jangled in the breeze even as her arms struggled to hold the sewing machine, which made her charms dance even louder. She looked at the sewing machine and then the charms of the sewing machine and the four-leaf clover, their images reflected back to her from the lake.
This simple charm has much meaning, my child, Mary remembered Rima telling her when she first gave her the charm. This is to a life bound by family … no matter how far away they may be. As long as you wear this, they will always be near.
Suddenly, Mary screamed, a scream so loud the swans took flight and the loons quieted. And slowly, one step at a time, Mary trudged back to the cabin, carrying her sewing machine. She returned it to the window facing the lake, and never told her husband of her intentions.
A year later, Mary gave birth to a daughter. She would have four more children before she died at the age of eighty-seven.
“Bound by family” were the last words Mary uttered.
Nine
“One of her children, of course, was my mother,” said Lolly.
“None of us would be here without that charm,” Lauren said, her own bracelet jangling with excitement.
“That’s quite a story, Mom,” Arden said slightly less enthusiastically than her daughter.
“I’m glad you wear yours,” Lolly whispered to Lauren, touching her granddaughter’s wrist. “You’ll never know how much that means to me. I wish your mother would wear her bracelet.”
Lauren reached out and grabbed her grandmother’s hand, their bracelets resting against one another.
“Can you teach me to sew again, Grandma?” Lauren asked. “I remember trying to learn when I was younger, but I’ve forgotten everything.”
“I’d love to, my dear,” Lolly said, dragging her feet to slow the glider. “I still make all of my own aprons I wear to work … and I used to make all of your mother’s school clothes.”
Arden winced.
“I finally get it,” Lauren said. “That’s why you don’t like color, Mom. That’s why you dress the way you do. You were scarred by Grandma’s wild designs.”
“That’s not true,” Arden said, sitting up suddenly, a group of finches on a nearby bird feeder taking flight at the sudden commotion.
“Oh, it is, too,” Lolly said. “I liked a lot of color.”
“You dressed me like a hooker, Mother,” Arden said. “Little girls aren’t supposed to wear fire engine red dresses and purple bloomers.”
“You were adorable,” Lolly said. “I can’t help that
no one appreciated my fashion sense back then.”
Arden shot her mother a look, so Lolly took her granddaughter’s hands in hers and asked, “You want to help me get ready for work in a few minutes?”
“Really?” Lauren said. “Yeah. Let me clean up some of these dishes, and go take a shower first, okay?”
“Okay,” Lolly said, patting her granddaughter’s knees.
Arden watched her daughter pad away barefoot. When she was out of earshot, Arden said, “How do you know all of that, Mom? About Mary?”
“I asked,” Lolly said simply. “Let me tell you something, my dear. My grandma sat at that sewing machine every single day, mending clothes, making wedding dresses for happy brides, tailoring suits for the town’s businessmen, making all of my clothes. I loved the sound of that Singer. The whir of the machine sounded like a million hummingbirds, and it would lull me to sleep out here on the screened porch. She could take a feed sack and make me the most beautiful dress from a pattern. She could take the scraps of rich people’s clothes and make us a quilt to keep us warm during long Michigan winters. My mom always tried to give her more charms, but my grandma always refused. ‘I have the only two I ever need,’ she’d say. My grandma had terrible arthritis in her later years, and it was hard for her to sew. Her knuckles looked like gumballs, her fingers like bent limbs on a sassafras tree. But she wouldn’t stop sewing. One day, I brought her a cup of hot tea while she worked. She patted her lap, and I jumped in it. ‘Let me show you how to do a running stitch,’ she said, teaching me the magic of her Singer. When we finished, I looked up at her as she sipped the tea from her favorite desert rose teacup. ‘Tell me about your charms, Grandma,’ I said. And she did. Before she died, she gave me that sewing machine charm, and she was buried with her four-leaf clover, right next to her beloved husband. The quilt on our laps was made by your great-grandmother,” Lolly finished, running her hand lovingly over the quilt.
Arden picked at her coffeecake. She stared out onto the lake, embarrassed by the fact she had never known this.
“Well, I need to go get ready for work,” Lolly said, standing up.
The Charm Bracelet Page 7
