Old Maid's Puzzle

by Terri Thayer

  There were at least twenty bolts of fabric sitting next to the cutting table, and the fat quarters were in complete disarray.

  "Can you handle putting away the fabric?" I asked.

  "I would, but I'm already late. The kids'll be home."

  "Did you try Kym's cell?" I said. She was probably having lunch with Kevin. I didn't want to think what they might be up to. What Buster and I weren't up to.

  Then I remembered. "Oh, I forgot. No cell phone." Kym was our resident Luddite.

  "I know," Jenn said. "Even my eight-year-old has a cell."

  I struggled to keep from expressing my opinion about third graders with cell phones. "I could try Kevin's," I said.

  The bell on the front door chimed, and Kym entered from the street.

  "You two just standing around gabbing?" she said. "Good thing the store's not busy."

  Jenn and I looked at one another and burst out laughing.

  "You just missed a major rush, Kymster," Jenn said. I laughed harder because I knew Kym hated it when Jenn called her `Kymster.'

  Kym frowned. Jenn waved goodbye and headed off for her purse.

  Kym followed her into the kitchen to stow her own purse, and called back to me. "I've got to use the rest room, Dewey. Can you stay up front until I get back?"

  What choice did I have? I didn't like to leave the floor unattended. Shoplifting quilters were rare, but I couldn't afford any missing inventory right now.

  When I heard the bathroom door open, I yelled down the hall to Kym, "Check out the whiteboard in the classroom before you come back. I want you to pick some jobs to do."

  I was putting away the last bolt of fabric when Gussie came out of the classroom, in a big hurry. Her hair was standing straight up, the way it did when she had been nervously running her fingers through it. She was carrying her tote bag full of scraps and recyclables. She didn't seem to see me, intent on something outside. I saw a yellow car waiting at the curb.

  Gussie didn't see Celeste either, trailing her. She started when Celeste put a hand on her. Gussie looked out the door as though that was where she wanted to be.

  I took a hand applique book off the shelf that was in the machine quilting section. I found others out of place, and stopped to straighten them. I took my time. I needed to make sure I didn't end up with a catfight in my store. With my luck, we'd have another rush, just as these two were heating up.

  Celeste's eyes flicked to the car outside, and her mouth thinned. "Aren't you going to help us finish mounting the quilt?" Celeste asked. It seemed like quilting was the last thing on her mind.

  "You don't want me around," Gussie said. Her voice was so sad, I was embarrassed to be a witness.

  Celeste crossed her arms across her chest. Her tone of voice was harsh, as though Gussie were a recalcitrant child. "I'm trying to help you. You don't know Larry like I do."

  Gussie found her voice. "You're selfish, Celeste. You've never wanted me to do well. As long as I could be the poor neighbor, the one who always needs help, you like me. But the minute I stand on my own two feet, you're threatened"

  Celeste was unbowed by Gussie's accusations. "Larry is not the man to help you stand on your own, Gussie."

  I felt tears well up in my eyes. These two had been friends for longer than I was alive. What was it like to have a friendship for that long and then have it fall apart over a man?

  Gussie sighed heavily, her whole body shaking. She pushed past Celeste and, moving faster than I'd ever seen her, got into the passenger side of the yellow car at the curb.

  Celeste stood on the street watching them leave, her mouth wide open in surprise.

  I went to the door and opened it for Celeste.

  "May they both rot in hell," she said. She walked past me, head held high. Her back was so tight, I could practically see her shoulder blades touching under her jacket. She ignored Kym as they passed each other in the hall.

  "What's her deal?" Kym asked.

  "Man trouble. Have you ever met Celeste's boyfriend?" I asked.

  Kym shook her head. "I don't think Celeste has ever come in with anyone besides the Stitch 'n' Bitch group."

  "I think he just picked up Gussie. Celeste was not happy," I said.

  Kym shrugged. "I hope he's worth it."

  When I got back to the desk, Vangie had returned from lunch with a burrito for me. I took it into the kitchen to get a Diet Coke and eat my lunch at the kitchen table. My desk was too cluttered.

  Kevin came in while I was finishing.

  "Hey, sis."

  Kevin was a good-looking guy, blessed with thick hair and expressive brown eyes. Unlike Dad, who went to work every day in matching Dickies, Kevin dressed nothing like the construction worker he was, favoring suspenders and blue button-downs. If it weren't for the yellow carpenter's rule on his belt, an affectation he'd started when he was ten, he could easily have been mistaken for a money manager or corporate banker.

  He dressed for the job his wife wanted him to have: CEO of Pellicano Construction.

  Mom's death had affected both of our professional lives. For me, it gave me a new career that I was beginning to like. For him, it meant only delays. Dad had been on schedule to leave the construction business to Kevin in two years, but now Dad was so entrenched, it looked like he would never retire. Downtime held no allure for my father any more.

  Kevin struck a casual pose, leaning against the refrigerator, but we both knew he didn't show up at my office casually. Not lately.

  I said, "Kym didn't tell me you were here."

  "She doesn't know. I dropped her off, but decided to come back after stopping at the hardware store. I wanted to make sure you weren't mad at her for being late."

  I didn't want to let him, or her, off the hook. "It left me in a bit of a bind. This is a busy week, you know."

  Kevin's eyes flicked to my face and away. "She's trying to do the right thing, Punk."

  I lost patience with him. "What the heck does that mean?"

  He shook his head. "Just let me say, whatever she does, she's always got the best interests of the shop at heart."

  I didn't like the sound of this. I searched my brother's face, looking for the guy who would tell me anything.

  It hurt to know we were so far apart.

  When he'd met Kym, he'd confided in me in the first flush of love and laid out his plans for a life with Kym. I'd been happy for him. It took a few years of life with Kym before I realized that there wasn't much room for me in this marriage.

  Kevin wasn't interested in doing the New York Times crossword, or playing Boggle, or catching the latest Harry Potter movie at the opening midnight show anymore. The only books he read had titles like How to Manage the Unmanageable and The Millionaire Inside. Kym's only hobby was quilting and Kevin indulged her, driving hundreds of miles each weekend to check out guild shows and quilt shops.

  Maybe my first clue should have been when Kym nixed his suggestion that I be his best man.

  Things got more complicated when I started dating Buster, who'd been his best man. The Kym-approved best man.

  "You seen Buster lately?" I asked. Buster had mentioned they kept missing connections.

  "He doesn't talk to me about you, if that's what you were worried about."

  Where was that coming from?

  I ignored his jibe. "Maybe you two just need to have a basketball night together," I said. "You and Buster, the hoop outside my place. What do you say?"

  "I can't this week, I'm pretty busy."

  Okay. At least I'd tried. We were talking around what he'd come to say. I couldn't wait for him to begin. "So why are you here?"

  "Kym wanted me to talk to you about some of her ideas here at the store. You've been ignoring her."

  I rubbed my eyes. I didn't want Kevin to see how angry I was. I pushed back out of my chair. Sitting down and having this conversation wasn't working. I stood and leaned my butt against the table. That helped to put me on a more equal footing.

  I crossed my
arms across my chest. "Kym should not involve you in the store."

  "It's the family business, Dewey."

  "I don't tell you how to run the construction business. Mom left the quilt shop to me." Were we going to fight about that again? "I'm sorry if that doesn't sit right with you..."

  "I'm perfectly fine with that. It's just Kym." He didn't look fine. He looked miserable. He mopped his face with his hand.

  I pushed forward, ignoring the pain just behind my breastbone. "You and I know she's not happy here."

  "She used to be," he said quietly.

  "Quitter Paradiso is not being run the way it used to be, Kev," I said, spitting out the words. He winced. I tried to dial back the sarcasm. "I can't be competitive if I keep doing things the way Mom did. I've got a dozen quilt shops breathing down my neck."

  My business practices were not his concern. He finally got to his reason for being there. "Why are you refusing to publish her pattern when you're doing everyone else's? Even people who are not employees?"

  "Is that what she told you?" My face flushed with anger. "Kevin, she missed the deadline. By a mile. She never gave us her notes. It takes time to write the directions, edit them, and try them out."

  He was silent.

  I continued, "The others had their work in a month ago."

  I let what I'd said sink in. In his work, he had to meet deadlines. He had people counting on him to be efficient and do what he said he was going to do. On time.

  This wasn't really about the pattern. "Maybe she'd be better off somewhere else," I said.

  He didn't look in my direction, keeping his eyes focused on the state workman's comp poster. The air between us was electric. I'd said the unsayable.

  Finally he said, "You know she thought she'd be running this place someday."

  That was the heart of the matter. Kym, queen of Quilter Paradiso.

  I said, "Things change. You'd be doing her a favor if you let her know that."

  FIVE

  THE AFTERNOON WAS RUINED. I had a hard time concentrating on my work after my argument with Kevin. Vangie went to the quilt guild meeting around five-thirty to leave some flyers about the sale. The Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association met in a church several blocks away, once a month on Tuesdays.

  I called Buster after she left.

  "Hey, don't forget I'll be at the store until nine," I said. "It's your turn to make dinner."

  Buster's voice boomed. "Only if you're counting yesterday's pizza as your contribution."

  "Absolutely. I paid."

  "I'm beginning to notice a pattern here," Buster said.

  "If it has to do with my cooking nights always involving takeout, I'd say that's why you're the detective."

  "More like the stooge," he laughed.

  I wanted to tell him about Kevin but decided to do it in person. I didn't want him to feel like he had to take sides. I could tell a lot from his body language. "What are you going to do before I get home?"

  "Laundry. If I can use your machine."

  Most men who wore a dress shirt every day, like Buster did, would have their shirts professionally done, but not my man.

  I said, "Didn't you just wash everything? I swear you get off on the smell of detergent."

  "Some people wash their clothes every week. Hard to believe, I know, when your method of saving it all up for a month is so enticing."

  I ignored his teasing. "So it'll be just you and your laundry."

  "And then the iron and the Giants game."

  "Wild man."

  "You could come home and distract me," he said, his voice getting softer and deeper. "Only you can save me from a night of washing and ironing."

  "I promise to be there at a quarter after nine," I said, hanging up and laughing.

  I glanced at the clock. I was almost late for Ina's class. I rushed across the hall.

  Within the first few minutes, I was in trouble. Ina'd started out by giving us an overview of the class, telling us we would learn to rotary cut accurately, and piece complex blocks. She'd asked for questions, and I'd obliged. One too many times.

  Ina stood in the front of the room, behind the wooden podium that nearly dwarfed her. She'd changed into a flowing jacket she'd made herself from the rayon batiks Mom had brought back from Indonesia. The violet hues brightened her steel-gray hair. Ina packed a lot of authority in her compact figure. She had been a high school math teacher before taking up quilting.

  "There are no stupid questions, Dewey," Ina said. Her expression said something else: How about shutting up and getting to work, Dewey.

  I'd asked her a series of questions about quilting. But I wasn't finished. "Why don't we just use templates?"

  "Rotary cutting is quicker and more accurate," Ina said with a finality meant to put an end to my stalling. "You can learn to cut any shape. Tonight we will be doing diamonds for our eightpointed star."

  Every table was filled except for one right in front of Ina. Eleven students, twelve if all showed up. I recognized some of them from the Beginning class. Mom had contended that the beginning class was the most important one, gaining the store new customers, but more importantly, to her, teaching a skill that could change lives. To her, quilting was more than a hobby. It was an art, and had the same healing powers that painting or sculpting did. Her mission had been to teach people to quilt.

  I was trying to keep that mission going. In order to do that, I had to learn to quilt myself.

  I was sitting at a table in the back of the room under the windows, farthest away from the door. My tablemate was shuffling her fabrics around, hands fluttering. Our instructions had been to bring two fabrics that coordinated. She'd paired a bright green polka dot on pink with a multicolored stripe. My eyes went out of focus looking at them. She'd confessed earlier that she was pretty sure she would never make anything as beautiful as the class samples hanging over Ina's head. I tried to reassure her, but I knew how she felt.

  Ina asked the students to introduce themselves. The final introduction was interrupted when the door flew open. A man with a shock of red hair burst in. He looked myopically around the room, and then headed for the empty table. He was carrying a QP bag, a backpack, and a metal toolbox. We all watched in silence as he took out a folding carpenter's rule and a Swiss army knife. He squared the edge of a metal T-ruler on his table.

  I perked up. This was my kind of quilter. He had tools I knew. A sewing machine had a cord and a motor but I didn't have the same affinity for it that I had for my router or band saw.

  Women's work. The phrase passed through my brain as I looked at the female heads in front of me. Gray curls directly in front of me, middle-of-the-back, thin chestnut hair to the right, an expensively streaked-blonde bob to my left.

  A man in the class changed the atmosphere. Some of the women sat up straighter. A few smoothed their outfits, and one grandmother took out a jewel-encrusted mirror and re-applied her lipstick.

  Ina was not daunted. She looked expectantly at Kym, who'd escorted the man in.

  "This is Tim Shore," Kym said. "He's just decided to take the class tonight." She smiled at him, totally enamored. "I'm off now," she said, unnecessarily. The class bade her goodbye as a group. I wondered how much Kevin would say to her about our talk.

  "Welcome," Ina said. She let him introduce himself.

  "I got the quilting bug from my grandmother," he said. "God rest her soul. I sleep under the quilt she made me every night."

  He looked around the room. All eyes were on him now, his charms on display. The entire room sighed when he finished by saying he wanted to make a quilt in her memory. I saw one women wipe away a tear.

  Ina started her lecture, flipping over her standing chart to show us the next step. "This week," she announced, "we are strip piecing.

  "What time does the stripper arrive?" I shouted, getting a girly giggle from some of my classmates.

  "Eight o'clock," Ina said without missing a beat.

  She talked quickly, to forestall mo
re wisecracking. "We will sew together long strips of fabric, and re-cut them to use in our blocks. That is the essence of strip piecing."

  She held up the yellow-handled rotary cutter. "This is our friend."

  She was talking to me. After finding a quilter dead from a cut inflicted by a blade like this six months ago, I'd avoided using the rotary cutter. But I needed to get comfortable with it in order to wait on my customers.

  Ina rapped the podium for attention. "Now," she said, in her best Dr. Ruth imitation, "we are going to practice our stripping."

  "Pick up your rotary cutter, and hold it like so." She was ignoring my silent pleas to stop channeling the German sex therapist. It was all part of her shtick. Poor Tim. Women's humor.

  "You will notice the curve of the cutter," she said, moving her hand salaciously down the cutter. Everyone else laughed. I actually blushed. Tim's ears were turning red at the tips.

  "Feel how nicely your hand fits. Now push the red button. You're ready for action."

  The entire class picked up their cutters. After a nasty glance from Ina, I did, too. The plastic handle was cool, not at all sinister. I took a deep breath.

  "Now lay your fabric out on the mat like this," Ina said, demonstrating.

  I straightened my fabric, first creasing the fold and aligning the selvage edges. I smoothed and tugged, so the ends would meet. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ina stopping at each table, giving hints and reassurance. I picked up the ruler and laid it perpendicular to my fabric, lining up the edges with a line on the ruler.

  Through the closed windows, I could hear voices in the alley. Must be Mrs. Unites' workers taking out the trash at the burrito shop.

  "Are we supposed to cut a three-inch piece or two-and-one half?"

  My tablemate was crowding my elbow, asking her question to me. Ina'd told us earlier that she wanted the students to address her with questions, not each other. According to her, that's how bad information got disseminated. But she was across the room showing Tim Shore the difference between his metal ruler and her plastic one. I checked the handout Ina had given us. I pointed at the line of text that called for two-and-one-half-inch strips.