by Joel Arnold
He wrapped the tanned hide of the deer around him and sat outside on his front step. He’d been ready to die out there in the woods. When he stared into that dying deer’s eyes, he’d wanted to take its place. He pulled the hide tight around his body, held it close to his face and breathed in its musty odor.
A shadow spilled over him. He looked up, embarrassed in his intimacy with the deer hide. A woman hovered over him holding a black plastic bag.
She pointed back at the house across the street. Her mouth was an awkward line, her cheeks puffy and flush. Even before she pointed to the Bolt house, Pearce knew she was related. The same face, the same posture, the same lack of style. A daughter, perhaps?
She mumbled something, her mouth barely moving.
Pearce leaned forward. “Pardon?”
“Ankoo. Ma say ankoo.”
Thank you.
Again, she pointed back to the Bolt house. She reached in the bag and pulled out a blanket. Shook it open. Panels of colorful fabric exploded on Pearce’s lap. A quilt.
No. It was more than a quilt.
Pearce’s pupils dilated at the ménage of threads and fabrics. He’d never seen anything like it. Entire dioramas had been needle-pointed and stitched, so many different materials snipped and shaped and sewn onto it. The detail was amazing. Pearce easily recognized himself in some of the scenes.
Silks, satins, cottons, denim. Pearce became lost in it. Feathers. Dried flowers. Seeds. Bits of bark. What other materials had been used? He saw himself with his rifle, stalking a deer, and goddamn, if it didn’t look like the very deer he now wore — there was even a spot of red on the deer’s upper shoulder where it had been shot, a trail of blood sewn into the goose-down snow.
The woman hovered over him expectantly.
“Oh,” Pearce said. Looking up from the thing felt like being pulled from quicksand. “Thanks. I — this is too much.”
She shook her head. “Ankoo,” she said, pointing at him.
“Okay.”
She held out her hand. Pearce shook it, her grip light and clumsy. He watched her leave. When he turned back to the quilt, his heart froze.
Mary.
Mary sitting at an easel, painting.
Her favorite hobby. Her passion. And here, on a panel in the middle of the quilt, in stunning detail, was Mary. Painting.
Wearing the clothes she wore the day she died.
The day a drunk driver drove into her head-on.
Pearce held the quilt up to his nose and breathed in. Jesus, her smell. The smell that had faded slowly, agonizingly, from her pillow until Pearce thought he would never smell her again, never remember the fragrance of her, but here, now, on this quilt, it was her, her smell, and Jesus, oh Jesus, what is happening to me?
He spent that night wrapped inside of it. Although its surface was decorated with a multitude of textures, the underbelly was a smooth salmon-colored silk. He took in deep breaths of Mary, afraid that the scent would wear off and he’d be left with only the memory once again. He wanted that memory to be strong.
She filled his mind—
—painting in overalls — Osh Kosh B’Gosh — and nothing else. Concentrating on the canvas, the paint, the brush. He’d slide his hand over her shoulder, over her breast, roll her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, and she’d giggle, sweet and girlish, but she wouldn’t stop moving that brush, spreading the paint on the canvas, her eyes as focused as laser beams.
And—
—casting a fly-rod on the Firehole River on that trip to Yellowstone, the grace of her casts something uncatchable on film, because it included everything around her, the air, the current, the sparkle of sun at the point where her fly kissed the river’s surface.
And—
—six months pregnant, making lists of girl names, rubbing her hands lovingly over the swell of her belly, her eyes lighting up like stadium lights when she felt those first kicks — ‘Here, feel.’ She made Pearce listen, put his head on her abdomen, rubbed his hair until he felt it, felt that tiny foot or hand knock him a good one in the cheek. That was all Pearce knew of the daughter that was never born. That was the last time he talked to his wife of eight years, unless you counted later that evening when he identified her body at the morgue. “Yes, that’s Mary,” he whispered to the coroner as he held her lifeless hand.
And this was Mary; being there when he needed her, wanted her, just her presence enough to make him happy.
Morning. Pearce rolled out of bed and looked across the street, the quilt still wrapped around him. Black patches of windows on the dark red siding of the Bolt house stared blankly back at him.
He dressed. Folded the quilt, slid it in a garbage bag, donned a parka and boots, and walked over a starched blanket of snow to the old woman’s house. He knocked on her door.
Ms. Bolt opened. Struggled with a smile.
Pearce held out the bag. “I can’t accept this.”
Ms. Bolt looked at the bag, but made no move to take it. “Come in,” she said. Her mouth hardly moved, her lips a straight line, her left eye shut, her right eye open partway. She was small and frail, her knit pink sweater worn thin in spots.
Pearce hesitated.
“Please,” Ms. Bolt said.
Pearce stepped into her house. He momentarily forgot about the bag he held.
Color dripped everywhere, splashed in patches on the walls, on the furniture. It disoriented him for a moment, and he hesitated in the foyer and gaped at the quilts spread over the living room — over the walls, the furniture, the floor. Everywhere.
Ms. Bolt cleared off a wooden chair. “It keeps me busy,” she said. “Please, have a seat. And please — call me Eugenia.”
“You’ve done all these yourself?”
She tilted her chin toward the ceiling and regarded him down the bridge of her nose. “Angela and I. You met her?”
The ankoo girl.
“Yes. Your daughter?”
She nodded.
Pearce’s eyes roved.
Colorful, intricate needlepoint. Dyed pieces of cloth arranged in wild geometries. Fields of flowers. Orgies of fabrics. Self-contained worlds of cotton and thread and silk and batting, all of them different, all of them intense.
“What is it you want?” Eugenia asked.
Pearce realized he still held the bag in his hand. He came here to give it back, but now — “I don’t want anything.”
He noticed the image of a bird, made of tiny black and white squares and triangles hidden in the quilts, its head turned to the side, its visible eye a shiny fleck of obsidian. It was everywhere, like a trademark.
His days of boredom, of loneliness suddenly weighed heavily on him, and even as he sat there, he felt it crushing him. He sighed. Maybe there was something he wanted. “Can you teach me? Teach me how you do this?”
She scrutinized him with her right eye. “Why?”
He remembered Dr. Leroy—
No hunting. No shoveling. No…
He shrugged. “Because I can’t do anything else.”
She gave him a list of materials. Simple things. Needles. Threads. Fabrics. Batting.
“Must all be done by hand. No sewing machine. Only by hand.”
She started him out with a simple quilt. An easy two-foot by two-foot square divided into sixteen six-inch squares. She guided him through the process. “You must listen. Pay attention. Remember.”
Sometimes Angela worked with him instead of Eugenia. Angela, who rarely talked, rarely smiled, rarely looked at him. But if he got stuck on something, she silently took his hand in hers and guided it through the correct motions. Sometimes, her soft, silken hands lingered on his and massaged his stiff knuckles.
He was slow. Clumsy. Yet he was consistent. Each project grew progressively harder. He worked with different fabrics, different textures, ones he’d never imagined used in quilts.
Weeks passed. Months. His house became cluttered with scraps of material, thread, works-in-progress. It wasn’t just the fee
l of the needle piercing the fabric that made him continue, or the way the quilt glacially spread a comforting warmth over his lap. There was something more. A quilt had a front, a back, an inside. Three dimensions. Something tangible. Something you could see, feel, hold.
The winter turned frigid. A crystalline silence spread over Pearce’s street. Calls from friends grew infrequent, almost non-existent. But he hardly noticed. His rough, callused fingers grew deft, manipulating the needle and thread smoothly, precisely. He’d never been more focused. The walls of his house, the entire world, melted away as he worked, his fingers moving in a ceaseless, meditative rhythm.
One night, there came a soft knock at his door. Pearce ignored it at first, his fingers coaxing a needle a thread through a circle of thick leather. The knock came again, as softly as the first time, but now Pearce put down his needle and thread, his patch of leather, and threw on a shirt and sweat pants. He opened the door, the cold air sending shivers through his body.
Angela stood there, a forlorn smile streaked with thick lipstick spread across her face. She stepped inside, stepped past Pearce, turned and stared at him, that pitiful smile stuck there.
Maybe it was a way to pretend, to go back in time, blot out the present and pretend. Maybe it was the pent-up loneliness, the longing that allowed him to accept Angela’s outstretched hand, soft and dry, let himself be pulled to his bedroom, let her hand slide inside the waistband of his sweats and grab hold of him.
Maybe it was a hundred maybes, but he let her wrap her body over his, fall back onto the bed and pull him onto her.
A dry rasp escaped her throat. Her limbs frantically tugged at him, wound around him.
She was smooth, but dry. She bucked at him, and he thrust into her, the friction almost painful, turning his skin raw until he lost himself, becoming a wet oasis in her dryness. She left him on the bed staring at the ceiling, wondering if he’d dreamt the whole thing, the tears in his eyes glistening like shiny needles.
No. This wasn’t right. He got up. Pulled on a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, his hunting boots.
He crossed the street, the cold penetrating his clothing, his skin, turning his blood to slush. He stood at the Bolt’s front door, his breath spilling from him, fickle and ghost-like. He didn’t knock. Instead, he circled through the dry snow to the back of the house. Everything was dark, save for a single shaded window that glowed with a soft, amber light. There was a narrow space between the shade and the frame that was wide enough for Pearce to see inside, wide enough for him to see—
Angela’s skin fall off.
Her back to him, her shoulders slumped, her head folded forward, one hand tugged at her face, and—
—her skin fell off.
Sloughed off in one piece like a loose dress, catching a moment on her hips, then continuing on to the floor.
What was left was a framework of yellowish bones, speckled with black mold. Inside the ribcage, something moved. Not a heart. Something alive, smacking back and forth against the bones like a trapped animal. She bent down. Pulled something else up around the rotting frame-work. A new skin, only it went up and over the bones like fabric, like a blanket, a quilt.
And when she turned around, it was no longer Angela.
It was Eugenia.
She tucked the edges of the fabric-skin under her brunette wig and stepped out of view.
Pearce threw up in the snow and ran.
He sat on the edge of his bed rocking back and forth, rubbing at his forehead with the heel of his palm. It felt like something had crawled up his esophagus, some fidgety creature clawing at his tonsils.
What had he seen? What had he just seen?
Eugenia’s words from all those months ago when he first went to her house came back to him.
“What do you want?”
Now it took on a whole new meaning. What was she? What else could she do?
What do I want?
His head filled with a patchwork of thoughts, a sewing machine buzz in his ears, and he rubbed his forehead again. Rocked back and forth, thinking.
Thinking…
He wanted — he wanted—
What do I want?
He wanted…
He banged the side of his fist hard against the old woman’s door. (Old woman? Could he think of her as a woman any more?) He waited, tried to listen over the sound of his own heavy breathing, over his heart pounding hollowly in his chest, for the sound of her footsteps padding toward the door.
“I know what I want,” he called out to the solid, stubborn door. “Let me in. I know what I want.” Three more hard, stinging raps with his fist. It was a sting he wanted to feel.
The door opened. Eugenia looked so small, so inconsequential, and the blood raced through Pearce with such force, that all he could do was let out a guttural laugh.
Her body ragged, her clothes off-kilter, her painted eyebrows too pointed, one of them higher than the other.
He pulled a picture from his pocket. “Her,” he said. “I want her.”
Understanding worked its way across Eugenia’s features. She studied the photo with her obsidian eyes. “Your wife.”
“I’ve seen what you are. I know what you can do,” Pearce said.
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
He felt the rest of his heart dying, the fibrous tissue crumpling in on itself.
She bowed her head and Pearce heard the bobbin-rattle of her breath. “Throw away everything. All your thread. All your needles. All your fabric. We use the real stuff now.”
And this time, instead of writing out a list for him, she whispered into his ear.
He paced distractedly through his house, glancing at the pile he’d gathered on the dining room table. The blinds were shut, the curtains pulled. He broke the seal on a bottle of rum that had sat in the cupboard for the past year, stared at it, then took a quick swig. He grimaced and screwed the cap back on.
He lit two dirt-brown candles the old woman had given him and turned off the lights. Thick green smoke belched off the burning wicks, carrying the musky odor of decaying leaves. He coughed. Picked up the strange needle Eugenia had given him — a feather, the black and white bristles slick along the quill with an oily substance she’d spit from her mouth.
He wrapped it with the thread she’d given him, a thread glistening with drops of his own blood. He inserted the needle into one of the dresses that Mary used to wear. Even over the scent of the candles, he smelled a trace of her perfume. He began to sew.
The needle was thick. It took some time getting used to the way it punctured the material, took some getting used to the slickness of the thread, of remembering to dip it in the dish full of blood that continued to drip from a small slit under his right nipple.
He didn’t sleep, didn’t eat, only got up reluctantly — joints groaning, muscles stiff — to use the bathroom. Days went by. He found himself shaking, sweating, his skin itching. He forced himself to eat. The floor around him piled up with garbage, scraps of fabric and thread. He ignored the growing stink of rotting food that filled the air.
Finally, he had to rest. Shaking, trembling, tears brimming in his eyes, he lay on the couch in the living room, not caring about getting its surface coated with the filth that covered him. He stared open-mouthed at the flat white ceiling until he fell asleep.
He dreamed of Mary, of her quilted form rising up from his worktable, bits of untrimmed thread and fabric poking out from her ragged seams. She came to him. Straddled him. Unblinking. Un-emotive. A dumb thing constructed of rags, poorly stitched, bits of batting peaking out through jagged holes in her body. But then her mouth opened, her eyes blinked, and she looked at him, really looked at him, into his eyes, and whispered, as if waking from a long, deep sleep, “Pearce? Honey? Is that you?”
The materials he used; moss, grass, dirt, tree bark, mud, feathers, cotton, wool, satin, silk…
A week passed. His fingers moved nimbly, as if they were separate entities. His work spread like a
fever over his lap.
Leaves, fingernails, hair, blood, sweat, Mary’s old clothes, her perfume…
It slowly took shape.
Her shape.
He began to recognize her in it, in the form, the design. This recognition propelled him, his fingers moving faster, while the rest of his body seemed to melt into the heavy, hot atmosphere around him.
Large black circles formed under around his eyes. He was constantly thirsty, constantly hungry. But he mistook this for longing, for the anticipation of that which was nearly complete.
He put down the needle Eugenia had coughed up from her very own lungs, that feather, now worn to a nub. He took a deep breath. His skin burned with sweat and patches of rash.
There was one more step.
He gathered up all of the pictures of Mary he could find. Wedding pictures. Vacation pictures. The annual Christmas pictures they mailed to their relatives and friends. He tossed them all in a metal trash can. Doused them with lighter fluid. This was hard — the last vestiges of Mary, the last images, but Eugenia had said this was the most important step.
He flicked a wooden match against his thumbnail and felt it pop into flame. He hesitated, standing in the garage bare-chested, in underwear that hadn’t been changed for a week, the light of the match spreading deep pools of shadow throughout the garage’s interior. The photographs in the can winked back the yellow light. Mary’s smile was the last thing he saw before letting the match drop. The burst of fire was brief and hot. The pictures caught, burned, the stink of melting Polaroids making Pearce’s eyes water. Soon, the contents of the trash can merely smoldered. It was the ash he needed. The ash of her image.
His work was done. He sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the thing (no, not a thing — it’s Mary, damn it, it’s Mary!) he’d created. She lay on the bed as if sleeping, a rag-doll cadaver with obsidian eyes aimed blankly at the ceiling. Even though she was made of cloth and moss and ash and so many other bits and pieces, she looked life-like. He waited. Waited for her to sit up and take him in her arms. He had to believe she could. Without that belief, she was nothing but an it, nothing but a human-size doll, limp and cool with rough needle holes visible in her skin.
