Apart at the Seams

by Marie Bostwick

  In a way, I think that’s what I was really crying about.

  If nice people like Margot and Evelyn deserve to have nice things happen to them, and those things do happen, then what does that say about people like me? People who can’t seem to catch a break? Do I deserve the misery that has come my way? Have I brought it on myself? Am I being punished for something?

  I didn’t say that to Evelyn and Margot—not in so many words—because I already knew how they would respond. They would tell me that I’m wrong and that lots of good things have happened to me.

  Look at your kids, they would say. They are happy and healthy and they love you! And look what a wonderful home you have. The cutest little carriage house imaginable, the one you used to walk past when you first came to New Bern but never dreamed you’d be lucky enough to live in. And now you do! Look at your job. You’d never worked a day in your life until you came to Cobbled Court. Now you’re head of a whole department! Not to mention your work with New Beginnings. Dozens of women have found meaningful work and the confidence to leave their abusers and never go back because of the internship program you coordinate! And look at your friends. Seriously, could anyone have more loving and loyal friends? Definitely not! All kinds of good things have happened to you! Millions of people would love to be in your shoes!

  It was all true. I knew that without even having to bring up the subject, which is why I didn’t. But even so . . .

  After a while, I looked around and realized that the wine bottle and the moussaka pan were both empty.

  “What time is it?”

  Margot craned her neck, trying to see the clock on the microwave oven.

  “Ten forty-three.”

  “Is it? Oh, my gosh! I’ve got to go. I told Drew I’d be home by eleven. I’m sorry. I talked away all our quilting time. And I still haven’t seen your new sewing room!”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Margot said dismissively. “You’ll see it another time. It’s not going anywhere. Tonight you needed to talk more than you needed to stitch. We’ll make up for it next week.”

  She got to her feet, picked up the moussaka pan, and carried it to the sink. Evelyn gathered up the empty glasses. I jumped up, too, and quickly started clearing away the plates. I was in a hurry to get home, but I couldn’t very well leave without helping clean up.

  “I’m not sure if I’ll be able to come next week or not. Things are so crazy right now, and I’ve still got one more paper to write for my poetry class. I haven’t even had a chance to turn on my sewing machine in weeks!”

  Evelyn took a stack of plates from my hands and smiled.

  “Here, let me do it. You need to get home to Bobby. I’ll stay and help Margot clean up.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked uncertainly. I hated to eat and run, but I really did need to get going.

  “It’s no problem. Charlie won’t be home from the restaurant for another half hour at least. I’m in no rush. But listen, Ivy,” she said, putting her hand on my shoulder after she set the plates down on the counter. “I’m worried about you. I know you’ve got real, legitimate reasons for feeling the way you do. But I think your biggest problem is that you’re exhausted, overworked, and overwhelmed. You’re the mom. You’re trying to do everything for everybody else.

  “Every single thing you’re dealing with right now is important. You’re not wasting time or misreading your priorities. Believe me, I get it. I remember what it was like when Garrett was little. Every night, I went to bed feeling like I was failing, that I hadn’t been able to give anyone or anything the kind of attention it deserved. There were never enough hours in the day. And I only had one child and a husband to help carry the load. It’s ten times harder for you!

  “But I will tell you something that I learned along the way, something that every young mom needs to know: If you’re not good to yourself, you can’t be any good to anybody else either.”

  Evelyn Dixon is my boss, but she’s also my friend. She doesn’t offer advice lightly or often. But when she does, it’s good. It’s the very best.

  “So,” she said, keeping my gaze, “will we see you at quilt circle next week?”

  I smiled. “Definitely.” I gave her a hug and then rushed out the door, hurrying home to my son.

  11

  Gayla

  The fitness instructor was named Tiffany. What a surprise.

  She was five foot six and blond and had a waist measurement that matched her age, both of which I judged to be about twenty-three. Except for the ample amount concentrated in her chest, she had not an ounce of fat on her body. She wore a headset with a black microphone that extended from a wire and hovered in front of her mouth like a fat, lazy housefly.

  “Woo-hoo! Yeah!” she whooped, bouncing to the beat of the bongos. “Let’s pick up the pace, ladies! Bikini season is almost here! C’mon, Gayla! Right knee, left knee, double jump! That’s it! You can do it!”

  I raised my right knee and then my left but skipped the double jump, taking a moment to catch my breath and loathe Tiffany.

  How did she presume to know what I could and couldn’t do? At her age, how did she presume to know anything? But I hoped she knew a few things, like CPR. Or how to dial 911. Another two minutes of this and I was going to have a heart attack. Dear God! Who had decided to put this skinny little girl with the big mouth and the big boobs in charge? She was a chit. An embryo. I had sweaters older than her!

  I wished she would swallow her microphone. I wished she would fall and break her leg. Not really. But I wished I could find the idiot who invented Zumba and sue him for my pain and suffering. Or at least for my public humiliation, which was even greater.

  The first thing I decided to do with my summer sabbatical was join the gym. Strictly speaking, this didn’t qualify as a new experience for me. I had joined gyms before—often—but joining was usually about as far as I got. Especially in the years since I’d put out my shingle, my commitment to personal fitness has wavered somewhere between shallow and nonexistent. I know it’s important, but so are a lot of things, and since my weight has remained pretty consistent over the years, I hadn’t thought too much about working out. Not until yesterday, when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror while I was changing my sweater. Somehow, while I was busy being so busy, my muffin top had spilled over the waistband of my jeans and become a cake. It wasn’t pretty.

  So back to the gym I went, as I had so often before. But this time would be different. This time I’d actually work out, not just fill in the paperwork and write the check. And this time, in keeping with the theme of my sabbatical, instead of listlessly walking on the treadmill, I would take classes, try something new and different. There were plenty to choose from: yoga, Pilates, and group cycling, as well as classes with more intriguing names like Tabata, Muscle Max (which sounded both intriguing and painful), and, of course, Zumba!

  The brochure said that it utilized “hypnotic” Latin rhythms and dance movements that would zap the calories and further promised that Zumba would make me think I was “at a party . . . not at the gym!”

  The idea of going to a party instead of the gym sounded good to me, and since I had once bought a Jane Fonda video back in the day, I decided that Zumba was the way to go. And it might have been, if not for the trampolines.

  Yes, you heard me right—trampolines.

  Every person in Tiffany’s class had his or her own individual trampoline, about eighteen inches in diameter, upon which we were expected to dance and bounce to these “hypnotic Latin rhythms” and, somehow, not fall off. I’m sure that’s somebody’s idea of a party, but not mine. My ancestors came from Scotland, Belgium, and Norway. I’m certainly proud of my heritage, but traditionally, we are not people known for busting a move. In fact, I’m pretty sure that the phrase “frog in a blender” was invented as a specific reference to my people.

  While I jerked, stumbled, bumbled, and gasped for breath, Tiffany and the others bounced, whooped, and swiveled their hips in a way that,
when I was in school, would have gotten you expelled from the junior high dance.

  It was awful and made more so by the fact that, since it was my first time, Tiffany had insisted on moving me to the front of the class where she could “keep an eye on me.” Right. She and everyone else. There were mirrors everywhere, and when I looked into them—it was impossible not to—not only did I see myself sweating, red faced, and flailing two and a half beats behind the music; I saw the faces of the other students, trying to pretend they weren’t looking at me and weren’t about to burst out laughing. On top of everything else, my heart was having its own little dance party, a rumba.

  I was gasping. I was sweating.

  When the music transitioned to a song that was even louder and faster and Tiffany shouted, “Good job! Great warm-up, gang! Now let’s pick up the pace and really go for it!” I thought I would die, or maybe I just wished I would.

  While Tiffany scolded me for having “gringa hips,” I tried to give myself a pep talk.

  I could do this. All I had to do was get through the rest of the class; that was all. After that, I’d never have to take Zumba or touch another trampoline for as long as I lived, but right now, I just had to keep up and keep going. This had been a mistake, but I couldn’t quit, not now. I’d never quit anything in my life. Never. No matter how much I despised it. Not once in my entire life.

  Which meant that quitting would be a new experience. . . .

  My face split into a grin as the implications of this realization became apparent to me, that just because I hadn’t quit before didn’t mean I couldn’t now and that, contrary to the mantras I had memorized in childhood, quitting doesn’t necessarily make you a “quitter”—especially if the thing you are quitting is something you absolutely do not and never will enjoy and that just might end up putting you in the hospital. In that instance, quitting wasn’t a character flaw. If anything, it was a sign of intelligence and maturity.

  Yes! That was it! I wasn’t a quitter; I was a grown-up.

  Tiffany let out a “woo-hoo!” so everybody would know how much fun they were having. Everyone waggled their Latin hips and “woo-hooed” back—the suck-ups. Everyone except me.

  I dropped my arms to my sides and stopped what I was doing, right between “cha” and “cha.” I stepped off the trampoline, grabbed my towel, and limped to the door. When I glanced in the mirror, I saw a look of confusion cross Tiffany’s face.

  “Gayla? Are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Getting a drink of water?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then coming right back?”

  I threw the towel over my shoulder.

  “No.”

  My elation over quitting was short-lived, lasting just as long as it took me to down two of those little paper cones of water and collapse onto the bench in the ladies’ locker room.

  “Ohhhhh,” I moaned, bending down and letting my arms dangle to the floor, too exhausted to move. “Kill me now.”

  The metallic clang of a locker door and the sound of laughter startled me into a sitting position. A woman with wet hair and a smile on her face poked her head around a bank of lockers.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize anyone else was in here.”

  “You all right?”

  I nodded and mopped the sweat off my forehead and neck with a towel. “I’m fine. It’s just that I haven’t darkened the door of a gym since the Reagan administration, and for reasons beyond comprehension, I decided to give Zumba a try.”

  “How was it?” she asked, doing up the buttons on her blouse.

  “The longest eight minutes of my life.”

  She laughed again and sat down on the bench next to me. “I’m Tessa Woodruff.”

  “Gayla Oliver,” I responded. “Nice to meet you.”

  She retrieved a pair of tennis shoes from under the bench and started putting them on. “So what possessed you to try Zumba your first time out?”

  “I think it was a mixture of audacity and stupidity,” I said, bending down to untie my own shoes. “Also, it was just something new. I’m trying a little experiment.”

  “What kind of experiment?”

  She looked genuinely interested, and so—leaving out the parts about Brian’s memo, his affair, and my emotional meltdown—I told her about the weekend cottage I so rarely found the time to enjoy, my plans for the summer, the sabbatical, my quest for new experiences, and how it was coming so far. She listened intently, chuckling when I told her about getting carried away with the rototiller.

  “That’s a terrific idea,” she said, giving every appearance of sincerity. “Seriously, I think more people ought to take a sabbatical. We all get so wrapped up in our routines and activities that sometimes I think we mistake activity for accomplishment. We forget that life is meant to be lived, not just endured.”

  She told me about how she and her husband, a former accountant, spent years living in Boston and doing work they hated, not realizing until after their son went to college that what they both wanted was a simpler existence, to live in a small town where he could farm and she could open a little shop to sell soaps and lotions made from herbs she grew herself. Their idea was good, but their timing couldn’t have been worse. Like me, they had gone into business just before the economic tsunami. Her shop hadn’t made it, and they’d nearly lost the farm, too, but things were better now. She was still growing herbs and producing soaps, lotions, and shampoos, but now in miniature sizes, selling them to boutique hotel chains that wanted unique bath amenities for their guests.

  “Let me tell you,” she said as she put her arms through the sleeves of her blue cardigan, “it was scary for a while there, but it all worked out in the end. You know, even if it hadn’t, I think I still would have been glad that we tried. Anyway, I think your sabbatical idea is brilliant. I really do.” She stood up and started stuffing her workout gear into a bag.

  “We’ll see. I’ve only been at it for a day and a half. I’m kind of wondering how many new experiences there are to be had around here.”

  She lifted her head and stared at me. “In New Bern? Are you kidding?”

  I blushed, concerned that I’d offended her.

  “I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that, there’s so much to do in New York . . . the theater, the museums. And then there are all the restaurants, the shopping.”

  Tessa settled the straps of her workout bag onto her shoulder and then paused, giving me an appraising look.

  “Do you want to go to the Blue Bean and grab a cup of coffee?”

  Coffee? After talking to me for five minutes she was inviting me to go for coffee? I hardly knew her.

  But she did seem nice, really genuine, and after so many days on my own, it might be nice to talk to somebody. And the Blue Bean served great lattes. If I ordered something other than my usual medium, skim-milk, double-shot, extra-foam latte, it would count as a new experience, right? On the other hand, just showing up would count as a new experience, too—I’d never had coffee with a stranger. It might be fun. And if it turned out that Tessa Woodruff wasn’t as nice as she appeared to be, then no big deal. It was only coffee. So why not take the chance?

  “It’ll take me about ten minutes to shower and change.”

  “Perfect! That’s exactly how much time I’ll need to dry my hair.”

  12

  Gayla

  For the first time since my hasty flight to New Bern, the sun was out. So were the people.

  The benches near the courthouse were occupied by men and women in suits with jackets removed, attorneys or clerks or perhaps jurors, taking advantage of the lunch hour to get some fresh air. The doors to several of the retail establishments were ajar, and shopkeepers stood on the thresholds, their faces turned toward the sun, soaking in the rays like flowers long deprived of light.

  As we walked up Commerce Street toward the Blue Bean, Tessa informed me that the fine weather was supposed to be with us at least through the weekend.
“At least that’s what the weather report said. You picked the right week to put in a garden.”

  The Blue Bean Coffee Shop and Bakery stands on the corner of Commerce and Maple. As we got closer, I caught an irresistible whiff of cinnamon and baking butter and realized that my appetite had returned with a vengeance. If I ever hoped to banish the bulge from my waistline, giving in to the siren song of a freshly baked cinnamon roll was the last thing I should be doing, but the smell was too tempting to resist. One wouldn’t kill me, would it? I could start dieting tomorrow. And I had gone to the gym that morning. After eight minutes of Zumba agony, surely I deserved a treat.

  I had nearly justified my fall from nutritional grace in my mind when, only yards from the door of the Blue Bean, Tessa took a right turn into a cobblestone-paved alley.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I just want to pop into the quilt shop for a minute. I’m out of gray thread.”

  “New Bern has a quilt shop?”

  Tessa turned to me with a bemused expression. “Cobbled Court Quilts. You’ve never heard of it? How long did you say you’ve lived here?”

  “Three years. But we’ve never really lived here. We just come up on weekends, and not all that often,” I said, trying to explain my ignorance to Tessa, who continued to look at me as if she was wondering if I walked through life with my eyes closed. “I’ve walked by this alley, of course, but never walked down it. I figured it was all just offices. I mean, who’d be crazy enough to open a retail business down here?”

  “Evelyn Dixon would,” Tessa said with a laugh. “Everybody thought she was crazy when she started out. The alley is too narrow for cars, so there’s no place to park, and there’s almost zero walk-by traffic. A lot of people never realize there is anything interesting down here, just like you did. But once people find Cobbled Court Quilts, they become customers for life. Evelyn has a lot to do with that. She probably is a little crazy, but in all the right ways. People love her.