“Also, there’s just something about this place. It’s so quiet and quaint. From a purely practical standpoint, it is a terrible location,” Tessa admitted, “but for some reason, this turns out to be the perfect spot for a quilt shop. Whenever I come down this alley and walk into the courtyard, I feel like I’ve entered a simpler and less cynical age.”
She was right about that. As we got to the end of the alley and entered a wide cobblestone courtyard, tucked away from the noise and bustle of Commerce Street, I, too, had a sense of going back in time. With its red-painted door, bowfront window where a fat tabby cat snoozed among a display of blue and yellow floral fabrics, and flower boxes newly planted with cheerful-faced pansies to match the window display, Cobbled Court Quilts was the definition of quaint. Quaint but impractical.
Probably the rent was cheaper here than in the Commerce Street storefronts, but even so, I couldn’t imagine how they stayed in business. Maybe Tessa was right—maybe finding this quaint little quilt shop was worth the effort, but how many people would be willing to undergo that effort? And seriously, how many quilters could there be in a town the size of New Bern?
When Tessa opened the red door, we were greeted by the sound of raucous laughter. Actually, it was more like cackling than laughing, coming from a knot of five women who were clustered around another woman, who seemed to be showing the others something that they all found utterly hilarious. But when the bunch of little bells that were tied to the door jingled to announce our arrival, their laughter subsided. Six beaming faces turned in our direction and cried out, “Tessa!”
Tessa introduced me to Evelyn Dixon, the owner; Margot Matthews, who worked in the shop; and Virginia, Evelyn’s mother, who taught quilting and was the owner of the cat I’d seen curled in the window. She also introduced me to Ivy Peterman, another shop employee, whose eyes darted immediately in my direction when Tessa said my name but who wouldn’t make eye contact when she shook my hand. Strange girl.
Next I met Abigail Spaulding, who I soon came to realize owned a lot of the rest of New Bern, and Madelyn Beecher, who had grown up in New Bern with Tessa, moved to New York, and returned a few years before to . . .
“Open the Beecher Cottage Inn,” I said, finishing Tessa’s sentence for her. I turned to Madelyn. “You probably don’t remember, but my husband and I stayed with you on our very first trip to New Bern.”
“I remember you. Your husband is British, has a very posh accent. You came in the fall. Two years ago? No,” she corrected herself. “It was three. You bought the cottage next to Dan Kelleher.”
“You’ve got an amazing memory.”
“It’s a small town,” she said, dismissing the compliment. “There aren’t many people who come for a weekend and end up buying a house the same day. I wondered what happened to you. Once you bought the cottage I supposed I might run into you again but never did.”
“Well,” I said apologetically, “we had good intentions of coming up every weekend, but it didn’t work out that way. Never enough time; you know how it is.”
Tessa placed her hand on my shoulder. “Gayla is spending the summer in New Bern, undertaking a very interesting project. Go ahead,” she prompted. “Tell them about it.”
“Oh . . . ,” I said, feeling awkward and put on the spot. “I’m taking a sabbatical.”
“So you’re a professor? How fortunate for you,” Abigail said without giving me time to correct her. “How I wish I could take a sabbatical. It must be such a pleasure to just take some time for yourself now and then.”
Ivy, the youngest of the group, who looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties, rolled her eyes. “Abigail, you just got back from two months in Bermuda. What exactly do you need a sabbatical from?”
“From all this travel,” she replied without a trace of irony, as though the answer should be obvious to anyone. “The packing, the unpacking, the itineraries, the lines at airport security, those horrible X-ray machines. I don’t care what the government says; I’m sure they’re just exuding radiation. Travel used to be such an elegant adventure. Now . . .” She lifted her hands in a hopeless gesture. “Simply exhausting.”
Evelyn and her mother, Virginia, smiled and exchanged knowing glances. They clearly had Abigail’s number. So did I—sort of.
Manhattan is crawling with Abigails: eccentric, grande dame types, opinionated, very used to getting their way, and very rich. Old money. I could tell by the diamonds in her ears—modestly sized, but perfectly matched and flawless. New money likes bigger stones, more bling. But there was something about her that didn’t quite fit the stereotype. For one thing, what was she doing in a quilt shop? Society matron types don’t usually go in for that kind of thing. She was definitely a character, an intriguing one.
“And of course,” Abigail continued, “there are all the things I have to crowd into my schedule when Franklin and I are in New Bern. Do you know that we have a dinner scheduled every night this week? And trying to coordinate our calendars has become a Herculean task. Everyone is so overscheduled these days. It used to be that when you asked how someone was, they said, ‘Fine.’ Now the answer is ‘Busy.’ Everyone I know lives in a state of incessant busyness.” She sighed dramatically. “How I long for a simple evening at home in front of the fire and a home-cooked meal. . . .”
Evelyn shot another glance at her mother. “But, Abbie,” she said, “you don’t cook.”
“No, but Hilda does. After a fashion.” Abigail turned to fill me in. “Hilda is my housekeeper. She’s really not much at cooking, or ironing either, come to think of it. But her tuna noodle casserole is divine.”
Ivy’s eyes went wide. “You like tuna noodle casserole?”
Abigail drew her shoulders back and raised her chin to an offended angle. “Is that so surprising? Now and again, we all crave the comforts of childhood and a simpler existence, don’t we? A break from our harried existence? You know,” she said, giving them a look that was simultaneously haughty and hurt, “I may not work for a salary the way all of you do, but that doesn’t mean I don’t work. I have responsibilities, you know. . . .”
The tall blonde with the pretty blue eyes, Margot, tsked her tongue and put an arm over the older woman’s shoulders.
“Of course you do. All the boards you sit on, the charities you support. New Bern wouldn’t be the same without you, Abigail. Everyone in town knows that.”
Abigail smiled benevolently. “I do what I can.”
“Yes, we know. You’re very generous,” Tessa said quickly, bringing the conversational tangent to an abrupt end.
Abigail set her lips into a disapproving line and lifted one perfectly tweezed eyebrow, annoyed that Tessa had interrupted her interruption.
“Gayla didn’t get a chance to tell you what she’s going to do with her sabbatical,” Tessa said. “She’s going to spend it trying new experiences. Isn’t that great?”
Though the others looked vaguely interested in the idea, they didn’t seem to find it quite as intriguing as Tessa did. But they laughed when she told them about my disastrous attempt at Zumba. Virginia, who looked to be in her mid-eighties, told me that she went to the gym three times a week and said I’d be most welcome to join the “Ageless Wonders” class.
“It’s not as tame as it sounds. Look at this!” she exclaimed, then rolled up her sleeve and flexed her arm, summoning a distinct knot of muscle from beneath the freckled flesh of her biceps.
“Pretty impressive,” I said.
Virginia rolled down her sleeve. “You are looking at the Cobbled Court Arm Wrestling Champion.”
“Don’t challenge her to a match,” Margot said soberly. “Or if you do, don’t play for money.”
Tessa told them more about my exploits, making them sound far nobler than they were. She didn’t know that the idea of a sabbatical was born, not from nobility but from a desperate attempt to salvage my sanity. But she didn’t need to know that, did she?
“Anyway,” Tessa said after she finis
hed telling them about my other adventures, “I was thinking that maybe this is something we could try, all of us together. Kind of a summer project.”
Evelyn, who had moved behind the counter during the discussion and was folding a pile of fabric into tidy little squares, gave her a doubtful glance.
“It’s a nice idea, Tessa, but I don’t see how I’d find the time. I’m teaching three classes this summer and so is Mom. Margot just told me she wants to offer a quilting camp for children. . . .”
“I don’t know how popular it will be,” Margot said. “But it will be fun, even if we only have a couple of students. Olivia wants to come, so that’s one at least.”
Tessa leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Olivia is her niece. Margot’s sister was killed in a car accident, so Margot adopted her.”
“You can count Bethany in too,” Ivy said. “That’ll solve at least part of my summer child care problem.”
“Ivy, you know the children are always welcome at our house,” Abigail said. “Franklin is already planning to take Bobby on some fishing trips this summer, and I promised to teach Bethany to play tennis.”
“Really?” Ivy smiled with relief. “That’d be such a help, Abigail! Drew is a great sitter; the kids love him. But his dad needs him to help with the landscaping business in the summer, so he’s not always available. I’ve enrolled them in some day camps, too, but I’ve still got gaps to cover.”
“Drew Kelleher?” I asked. “I know him; he keeps an eye on our place for us. Really a nice kid.”
Ivy gave me the strangest look—guilty, like I’d just caught her in a lie.
“Oh, yes . . . uh . . .”
Ivy cleared her throat and, once again, refused to maintain eye contact with me. She seemed terribly shy around strangers. Maybe that’s why they had her working upstairs, cutting fabric on her own. She wouldn’t have been very good around customers.
“Drew babysits for me all the time. So I heard all about . . . I mean, I heard that the neighbor from New York was around for the summer. I guess that’s you, huh?” Her eyes darted to my face and then away just as quickly. “I heard you’re putting in a garden?”
“Yes. Something else that’s new to me. I have no clue what I’m doing, but Drew’s father, Dan, gave me some advice and lent me a rototiller. He seems like a nice guy.”
Ivy chewed on her lower lip and dropped her gaze to the floor. “He is. I mean, I guess he is. I don’t really know him. I just, you know . . . I just see him now and then when I pick Drew up for babysitting.”
“Summer is a crazy time around here,” Evelyn said, returning to the previous subject. “We bring in sixty percent of our annual income during those four months. A sabbatical sounds like a nice idea, but I just don’t see how we can manage it.”
“I know,” Tessa said. “I’ve got to grow and harvest my herbs for the year, and Lee needs help with the farm too. I wasn’t thinking of us taking an actual sabbatical, not the kind where you go off someplace. But what if we all did at least one new thing this summer? Wouldn’t that be fun?” she asked, looking at the assembled faces. “Abigail, weren’t you just saying that we’re all overscheduled? Too busy to enjoy life?”
“Yes, but it seems to me that what you’re proposing would simply add one more item to our already overcrowded to-do lists.”
“It wouldn’t be like that,” Tessa insisted, shaking her head. “This wouldn’t be something we have to do but something we want to do. We’d be carving out time for ourselves. Isn’t there something you’ve always wanted to try but haven’t had time for?”
Abigail considered this momentarily. “No,” she said. “Everything I’ve ever wanted to do, I have.”
Evelyn laughed as she placed the last of the folded fabric squares in a basket. “Oh, come on, Abbie! I know you’ve lived life a little larger than the rest of us, but nobody gets to live out all their fantasies. Not even you. I can think of a dozen new things I’d like to try. Surely you can come up with one.”
“Perhaps one.” Abigail gave a grudging shrug. “But I’m already certain I have no talent for it, and when I’m proven right and fail miserably, I’m not anxious to be the butt of everyone’s jokes.”
Evelyn came out from behind the counter and leaned against it, crossing one arm over her waist, propping her elbow on that arm, and resting her chin in her hand.
“You know,” she said philosophically, “just the other day I was talking to a very busy woman and giving her a big speech about how she had to make time for herself. But it suddenly occurs to me that I’m guilty of the same thing. Maybe I need to take some of my own advice. Lack of time isn’t the only reason we don’t follow through with some of the things we dream of doing. Sometimes fear gets in the way too.”
“Well, I can understand how Abigail feels,” Madelyn said. “There’s something I’ve been thinking about doing for the longest time, but it is a little daunting. But on the other hand, if I don’t do it now, when will I? I’m not getting any younger.”
“You can say that again,” Virginia puffed. “I’ve had all kinds of things on my bucket list, things I always told myself I’d find time for one of these days. But time is running out, and before I kick it, I’d like to check a couple of things off my list. And you know something?” she said with finality. “I’m going to!”
“So am I!” Margot exclaimed. “I’ve got two things on my list. Well . . . maybe three,” she stammered and blushed a deep crimson and turned to Tessa. “Do we have to tell everybody what we want to do?”
“Not if you don’t want to,” Tessa said. “But I do think we should all make a commitment to try at least one new thing this summer. We don’t have to go into specifics, but we should all commit that no matter how it turns out, we’ll tell the others about our experiences. We can share our experiences at quilt circle.”
Tessa obviously had a gift for organization and implementation—also for cheerleading. I could almost hear the shaking of pom-poms as she grinned at her friends and said, “What do you think, ladies? Should we do it? Who’s with me?”
Virginia put her hand up first, quickly followed by Margot, Evelyn, Madelyn, and, of course, Tessa. Hands still in the air, the five of them stared at Abigail, who lifted hers as well but without enthusiasm.
“Ivy?” Evelyn said, turning to the younger woman, who was standing a little way from the others, with one arm wrapped protectively across her torso and her hand held near her mouth, chewing on the nail of her little finger.
“I’m thinking,” Ivy said. “Give me a minute.”
They did. When it had passed, Ivy raised her hand. Slowly.
“Great!” Tessa enthused, then turned toward me. “Gayla, the circle meets on Fridays. Is that good for you?”
“Yes. I mean . . . I’m sorry, but . . . what?”
Surely she didn’t intend for me to be part of all this. We’d only just met.
“You’re already doing the sabbatical anyway, so why not join in the fun?”
“Oh, you’re nice to invite me, but,” I said, making my face an apology, “I’m not really a joiner.”
It was true. The only thing I’d ever joined willingly—more or less willingly—was the PTA. Over the years, I had reluctantly been a part of a couple of women’s networking groups, and for a couple of years when I was working in the school, I had a weekly lunch with two of the other guidance counselors, but I didn’t enjoy it. Women, I have found, can often be their own worst enemies—gossiping and snarking behind one another’s backs. Who needs it? Lanie was my only real friend. Of course, she could be snarky, too, but never toward me. But I had to admit these women seemed different.
“Come on,” Margot urged. “It’ll be fun!”
“Maybe she doesn’t want to,” Abigail said. “She said she’s not a joiner. Neither am I. Or at least I wasn’t until I met you and Evelyn. But you shouldn’t press her, Margot. She’s only just met us. She may not even like us.”
“Oh, it’s not that,” I rushed to a
ssure them. “It’s just . . . I don’t want to horn in on your club.”
“It’s not a club,” Evelyn said. “It’s a circle; it can expand or contract as the occasion calls for it. It started with me, Margot, Abigail, and Liza, Abigail’s niece. She lives in Chicago now. Then we added Ivy to the circle, then Tessa and Madelyn, and then Philippa—she’s one of the pastors at the community church. It’s not open to the whole world, but it’s not a membership thing either. When we find somebody interesting, we make room for them in the circle. Simple as that.”
“But I don’t know how to quilt,” I protested. “I never even learned to sew.”
“Not at all?”
“Not even a button. I wanted to take home ec in high school, but my mother made me take calculus instead. But it’s a funny thing,” I said slowly, realizing what a strange coincidence it was. “A couple of weeks ago, I was walking along Twenty-fifth and passed this quilt shop . . .”
“The City Quilter?” Evelyn asked. “I love that shop.”
“Me too. I saw this gorgeous red fabric through the window and ended up going in and buying two yards. I don’t know what possessed me,” I said with an incredulous laugh. “I saw that fabric and just had to have it.”
Evelyn’s smile widened as I spoke. She looked to Virginia, who gave her a wink and then looked at the others, who all started to laugh.
“What?” I asked. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” Evelyn replied with a knowing shake of her head. “But whether you know it or not, deep down inside, you’re a quilter. It’s only a matter of time.”
“Just because I bought a couple of yards of fabric?”
“I’ve seen it before,” she said sagely.
“But I told you, I don’t know how to quilt. I don’t even own a sewing machine.”
“Then it’ll qualify as a new experience, won’t it? And your timing is perfect: We’re going to start a group project next week.”
Madelyn, who had been standing to one side, fingering a bolt of orange fabric with blue and white stars, looked up. “We are?”
Apart at the Seams Page 11
