The Fortune Quilt

by Lani Diane Rich

  Janesse closes the shop at seven, and we say goodnight and head our separate ways. Instead of heading straight back to my cabin, I wander through the winding streets of town. I’m charmed by it, really. In Tucson, everything is laid out on a grid, which makes it easy to find your way around, but that’s it. In Bilby, the roads go in the direction they damn well want to, and that’s it. Like it or lump it.

  I pass by Miner’s Inn, a tremendous red brick structure that was originally built as a boarding house for miners during the heyday of the copper and silver boom, before the town got mined out. I continue down the road, winding ever slowly upwards toward the foot hills, and realize that everything in Bilby used to be something else. The library used to be a mercantile store. The restaurant used to be a post office. It was like the whole town had been towered, rebuilding itself into an artsy retirement community after the mines dried up. I wonder if it was an accident that I ended up here, or if I was drawn here by the energy of a place that wouldn’t say die.

  I turn down the other end of the street and start back toward Art’s Desire, where my car is parked. I stop at the town’s sole stoplight and look around. Gladys and Mack, the retired couple who own the independent bookshop, The Town Bookie, are standing outside, putting up Christmas lights. Gladys has the lights strung all over her arms and they twinkle as she gestures at Mack, who stands on the ladder and ignores her. I smile as I watch them, then the light turns green and I continue on my way.

  Seven

  Will leaves for Ottawa the next day. He doesn’t drop in to say goodbye to me before he leaves, which disappoints me but which I decide is a good thing. Maybe I misread the whole hike-out-to-the-flat-rock thing. Maybe he was just being friendly. Although, there was this moment when he walked me home where I thought he might be thinking about kissing me, but that could have been my imagination.

  It’s definitely a good thing he didn’t stop by to say goodbye, I decide. The last thing I need now is another complication. And, if anything did happen with Will, how can I say I wouldn’t end up doing exactly the same thing as I did with Christopher? And Seth?

  “Do you think people can be… broken?” I ask Allegra as I dice shallots on the tiny kitchen island in the apartment over the café which she shares with her two daddies. Allegra invited me over so I could provide moral support when she tells James and Sebastian she wants to move to New York City and become a stockbroker; I’m beginning to think that was just a ruse to get me to do the dinner prep work.

  “You’re not broken,” Allegra says, biting into a baby carrot as she watches me from her perch on the kitchen counter.

  “I didn’t ask if I was broken. I asked if you thought people could be broken.” I swipe the diced shallots into a small glass dish as instructed by Sebastian before he and James went into the living room to argue over the evening’s music selection.

  “You’re not broken,” Allegra repeats. Mozart plays from the other room; Sebastian won the music war. “You’re just a little dented.” She quirks a brow at me. “Nothing a little hammering won’t cure.”

  I roll my eyes and reach for the garlic. “Do you ever stop thinking about sex?”

  She throws up her hands and reaches for another carrot. “Hey, I’m not the one who had the fire dream.”

  “What fire dream?” James says as he scoots into the room. He’s tall with dark hair and a patrician nose. If Allegra would let the pink grow out of her hair and lighten up on the eyeliner, she’d look just like him.

  “Nothing,” I say, focusing my energy on the garlic. “Just a dream.”

  “Who had a dream?” Sebastian says, following James into the crowded kitchen. He looks pointedly at Allegra. “And why is our guest doing all the work?”

  Allegra hops off the counter and pivots around me to get plates for the table. “Carly had a dream that her bed was on fire.”

  Two sets of male eyebrows lift in unison. I chop the garlic.

  “It wasn’t a big deal.” I can feel my face reddening. I reach for my wine and take a big gulp.

  “And while her bed was on fire, she was in her living room with a strange man who kept telling her it’s going to be just fine,” Allegra calls over her shoulder as she sets the table. I take another drink of wine.

  It wasn’t a strange man. It was Will. And at this moment I am thrilled beyond the telling of it that I didn’t share that bit with Allegra.

  “Ohhhh,” James says knowingly, and he and Sebastian share a look.

  “It was totally a sex dream,” Allegra says, then turns to James. “Carly thinks she’s broken.”

  “I didn’t say me,” I start, but James cuts in.

  “No, definitely not broken,” he says, quirking his head to the side as he watches me. “Just stalled. How long have you been celibate?”

  I turn a look on Allegra.

  “Don’t blame me,” she says, holding up her hands. “I’m just a product of my environment.”

  James laughs. “Oh, you don’t have to tell us. But a bed on fire? That’s a been-too-long dream. If you’re celibate by choice, maybe you should reconsider. And if you’re not, there’s a great straight bar in Douglas—”

  “You know, I think we should talk about the stock market,” I say, and Allegra stops setting the table.

  “Okay,” she says, straightening her posture. “We can do that.”

  James gives a little laugh. “What? Talk about the stock market? All those greedy little bastards cutting each other’s throats trying to make more money for someone who already has too much?”

  Sebastian rolls his eyes and snorts, but they both slowly grow silent as Allegra stays strong and tall.

  “I’ve been accepted to NYU,” she says finally. “I start in their business program in the fall, and I want to be a stockbroker.”

  Both James and Sebastian freeze. I’d crawl under something if there was something to crawl under in their tiny kitchen, but the best I can do is just stay very still. To be honest, I’m not sure they remember I’m there, anyway. Allegra’s chin rises a notch, and she looks about as determined as I’ve ever seen anyone.

  “As two gay men who had to move two thousand miles away from home in order to gain some acceptance, I don’t think I need to tell you how important it is to be understanding of alternative life choices.”

  Allegra is so strong and confident that I can’t believe she even needed me here. Until, that is, I see that the hand clutching the forks is shaking a little. When I look up, I catch her eye and smile. She smiles back.

  Finally, after what feels like a really long pause, James walks over to her and puts a hand on her shoulder. “Do you think doing this will make you happy?”

  Allegra’s smile widens, and she nods. Sebastian joins them and sniffles as he pulls Allegra into a hug.

  “They’ll make you lose the pink hair,” he says mournfully.

  “They won’t if she’s good enough,” I say. I don’t know what I’m talking about. I don’t know anything about Wall Street. But as all three of them look at me, I realize that for possibly the first time in my life, I’ve said the exact right thing at the exact right time. They share a smile, and then each of them gets back to work. After a long, companionable silence, James is the first to speak.

  “So, back to Carly’s celibacy…” he begins, and we all laugh. As I approach the table to take my seat, Allegra reaches out and squeezes my hand, a perma-smile bright in her eyes. For the moment, I think maybe she’s right. Maybe I’m not entirely broken.

  Just dented is okay. Just dented is workable.

  I can be just dented.

  ***

  Thanksgiving comes quickly, and up until the day, I’ve managed to not think too much about the fact that my dad hasn’t called and invited me home for the holiday. I don’t know if I would have accepted, but the fact that he hasn’t called is like a splinter burrowed under my skin that I can’t get out. It bothers me with every movement I make. I spend the morning being cranky with everything, including b
oth my coffeemaker and toaster, telling each to bite me within the span of ten minutes. Art’s Desire is closed, which means there’s no Mr. Trimble to abuse and distract me, no Janesse to compare myself to and fall short of. I decide to hike out to the Big, Flat Rock of Perspective, but getting blisters and swallowing bugs just isn’t as much fun without Will, and I only get about a third of the way there before heading back. I am restless. I am irritable.

  It’s only ten in the morning.

  On my way back to my little cabin, I stop by Brandy’s. I hold my finger over the doorbell, determined to try it and see if it doesn’t zap me again. But before I get the chance, Brandy opens the door. She is wearing a white apron over a long-sleeved red dress. Her hair is pulled back from her face, and she’s wearing makeup. She smiles when she sees me.

  “Hey, Carly,” she says. “What’s up?”

  “I was just, uh, stopping by to let you know that, uh…” I am distracted by the look of the cabin behind her.

  It’s clean. Nary a quilt anywhere. Wow. I look back at Brandy.

  “I don’t think I can come tonight,” I say. “I think I’m coming down with something.”

  Her smile doesn’t so much as flicker. “No, you’re not.”

  I am surprised. I mean, obviously, I’m lying, but you don’t call people on their excuses in polite society. It simply isn’t done.

  Then again, it’d probably help if I didn’t try to lie to a psychic.

  Brandy smiles at me with warmth and compassion. “It’s going to be hard for you today, I know. This is your first Thanksgiving without your family, right?”

  A rush of heat flows into my face, behind my eyes, and suddenly I really want to cry. I can’t believe she’s trying to make me cry. That’s so mean.

  “That’s not it,” I say, and sniffle. “I think it’s really just a cold. I might be running a fever and I don’t want to get everyone else sick, so I’m just gonna—”

  I am stopped by Brandy reaching out and pulling me to her. She kisses my forehead, and pulls back.

  “98.6. You’re fine.”

  “Brandy.” I swipe at the lipstick that’s surely on my forehead. “I do not feel well. I’m going to go home and rest. Thank you for your invitation, but I just wanted you to know there will be one less guest for you to worry about.”

  Brandy holds up her finger. “Wait here.” She disappears into the house, the screen door banging shut decisively as I stand there, feeling like a child. I tell myself I should just walk away, get up and leave, it’d serve her right, bossy little psychic, but then she returns and stuffs an apron into my hand.

  “If you think I’m going to let you go back to that little cabin by yourself and wallow all day when there’s a perfectly good party happening here, well darling, you’ve got another think coming.” She gives me a look of annoyance as I stand there dumbly with the apron in my hand, and finally she grabs it and hooks the neck loop over my head. “What you need is something to do, and as it turns out, I need help. Now go in, get yourself a glass of wine, and let’s get to work.”

  She steps out, holding the screen door open and pointing into the house. For a reason I’ll never fully understand, I enter as ordered.

  “Wine?” I say over my shoulder to her as I head back toward her kitchen area, which is covered with canvas grocery bags filled to spilling. “It’s not even noon.”

  She eyes me with confusion. “Aren’t you Catholic?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Well… your people drink at Church, right?” She gives a small shrug. “I just didn’t think you’d be so provincial about this sort of thing.”

  “I’m not being provincial—” I begin, but she ignores me, whipping a wineglass from a cabinet with one hand and swooping a bottle of red wine off the counter with the other.

  “Sweetheart,” Brandy says. “It’s Thanksgiving. You’ll never get through it unless you start drinking early. But you have to do it right - no more than one glass of wine per hour, and you must have at least 8 ounces of water for every glass of wine, no exception. But once dinner’s served,”—she hands me my glass with a grin—“all bets are off.”

  ***

  We work through the morning, and as much as I don’t want to admit it, Brandy is right. Peeling potatoes and drinking wine before noon seems to be just the thing to draw me out of my funk. We put some Aretha Franklin on and make a very sad spectacle of ourselves, singing and dancing and drinking and cooking. It is two-thirty when we’re done with the prep work, and Brandy leads me outside to her shed to get the extra leaf for her dining table.

  “Thank you,” I say as I follow behind her on the little stone path that leads to her shed, which is painted red with black dots, and looks quite a bit like an oversized, cubic ladybug.

  “For what?” she asks, pulling open the door.

  “For not letting me go back and wallow,” I say. “This has been fun.”

  She turns to look at me, her hand over her eyes to shade them from the bright Arizona sun.

  “You’ve got a red blotch over your shoulder,” she says. I angle my head and pull at my sweatshirt, looking for the stain, and Brandy laughs.

  “No, I mean, in your aura.”

  I drop the sweatshirt. “Oh.”

  “I know you don’t believe in any of that,” she says, “but will you humor me by answering a question?”

  “Can I avoid it?”

  She grins. “What ever happened with your best friend? Christopher, right?”

  I feel a pain in my ribs and I twist my torso a bit to relieve it. “Nothing. I mean, I talked to him when I first got here, but… not since then.”

  She nods, crosses her arms over her chest. “Weren’t you two best friends?”

  “We were. Yeah.” She continues to just stare at me. I take a deep breath. “I’m not sure what you want me to say, Brandy.”

  She motions to the allegedly red spot in my alleged aura. “If you don’t acknowledge the problem, you’ll continue to be blocked.”

  “I’m not blocked.”

  And again, with the staring. I shift on both feet and stare back defiantly. Then, I give in with a martyr’s sigh.

  “Fine. I called him, I ripped off the Band-Aid and I haven’t heard from him since so I assume he hates me and that pretty much brings us up to date.”

  Brandy nods. “And how do you feel about that?”

  I can tell by the look in her eye that resistance is futile. I close my eyes for a moment and… share.

  “I miss him.” I can feel my eyes heat up a bit under the lids, but keep them closed. “But I don’t want to hurt him any more than I already have, so I think it’s best just to forget about it.” I open my eyes, blink hard once, and motion toward the shed. “Can we get the stuff now?”

  Brandy doesn’t move. “It’s okay to grieve, you know.”

  “If someone were dead, I would.”

  “There’s a theory that when two people form a relationship, they form a third spiritual entity. When the relationship dies, that entity dies. Grief is a completely natural response, and it’s almost impossible to move on if you don’t allow yourself to experience it.” Her focus goes out to the horizon. “Trust me on this.”

  “So, what?” I can hear the defensiveness in my voice, but I can’t seem to squelch it. “I’m supposed to just sit home and cry and grieve?”

  “No. But I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to do something.”

  Her smile falters a bit, and it’s then that I finally realize we’re not talking about me. We stand in silence for a while, and I wonder what it must have felt like for Brandy the night Jamal told her he wanted to be Janesse. As heart-breaking as the whole thing with Christopher was, I don’t imagine it holds a candle to what Brandy went through.

  I am still trying to form something worth saying when Brandy turns and heads into the shed. I follow her, and we silently move cardboard boxes, uncover the additional table leaf, and start back towar
d the house. We are halfway there when Brandy stops and turns to face me.

  “I can take this the rest of the way by myself,” she says, her typical bright smile back on full duty as she shifts the leaf out of my grip. “You go get changed.”

  I glance down at myself. Jeans and a sweatshirt - the height of style for my wardrobe. “Something wrong with this?”

  “It’s Thanksgiving. It’s a holiday. You have to dress. That’s part of the fun.”

  I shake my head. “This is as good as it gets, babe.”

  Brandy looks me up and down, then jerks her head in the direction of the house. There’s a delighted twinkle in her eye that scares me a bit. “Come on.”

  I follow her. We set the leaf in the hallway and she takes my hand and drags me upstairs to the loft, and I discover where all the quilts, fabric and supplies went. They are in piles three feet deep around her bed, on her bed, on her dresser with narrow paths between to allow passage from one area to another. Brandy winds her way to her closet, opens it, and pulls out a flowy orange crepe dress. She holds it up, crinkles her nose, and tosses it on the bed, then dives back into the closet.

  “Um, Brandy?” I say. “You’re at least six inches taller than me. Nothing you have is going to—”

  “Shhhh!”

  “Okay.” I watch as she tosses out dress after dress, most of them full-length and in which I’d look like a little girl playing dress-up. I stand there, staring at the piles of quilts around me, wishing I had my glass of wine with me.

  “You know, it’s really okay,” I try again after a few minutes. “I’m sure I’ve got a sweater or something. It’s just, I worked in television production and I wasn’t on-air much so my wardrobe is kind of late-80s-teenage-boy anti-chic.”

  “Oh, my god. It’s perfect!” Her voice travels back at me, muffled from the closet. Then she steps back and holds out a little chocolate-colored number, chiffon over silk, with a halter top that dips down to the ruched empire waist and…