“This takes me back,” Madelyn said. “Remember your mother’s banana bread?”
“Best in the world,” I said. “She always served it with about an inch of butter.”
“And big cups of cocoa. Your mom was always so nice to me.”
“She liked you.”
“She felt sorry for me.”
“Well, yeah. But she liked you too. Mom always said you had spunk.”
Madelyn made a face. “I wasn’t spunky, I was a pain. I never knew when enough was enough and I never knew when to go home.” She took a quick slurp of cocoa and shook her head.
“Actually, that’s not quite true. I knew I was overstaying my welcome, but I couldn’t help myself. The best times I ever had were with you and your family. Did you know that, in my head, I used to call you ‘the regular family’?”
I laughed. “Why?”
“Because you were! You were all so regular! Your mom wore an apron and made banana bread and meat loaf, and helped you with your homework, and belonged to the PTA. Your folks never missed a parent-teacher conference. Your brother was an Eagle Scout and you took ballet. Your dad left for work every day at seven and came home every night at five. On Saturday morning he mowed the lawn and sprayed down your driveway with a hose. And you all lived in that nice house with carpets on the floor and those plastic covers on the sofas. . . .”
“In the living room!” I gasped. “That’s right. I’d almost forgotten about that. Mom didn’t want the upholstery getting ruined. Do you remember how, in the summertime, we’d sit on the furniture with our shorts on and the plastic would sweat and stick to our legs?” I squashed my mouth into what Madelyn and I used to call “fish lips” and made a sucking sound. Madelyn cracked up.
“See what I mean?” Madelyn said. “When I was a kid, I thought everybody, except me, was living on the set of The Dick Van Dyke Show. Whenever I was at your house, I was sure of it. You were all so normal! And happy. You all seemed so happy.”
I couldn’t argue with her. We were a happy family, by and large. Certainly I’d had a happy childhood. And we were normal, or at least we fit the image of what somebody somewhere, Frank Capra or some other purveyor of American mythology, had decided a normal family should be.
“We had our issues too,” I countered. “I often wonder if my parents didn’t want more out of life. Mom made a great loaf of banana bread, but they don’t hand out a lot of trophies for that, do they? And Dad . . .” I shook my head. “He was so smart. Do you know he rebuilt the engine of our Buick all by himself?”
Madelyn smiled as she dunked a piece of scone into her cup. “There were car parts laid out all over your front yard for days, and he spilled oil on the driveway.”
“That’s right,” I said, tipping my head back and grinning as I remembered how many Saturdays he’d spent standing on the driveway, frowning and grumbling while he sprayed the oil stain with his hose. “He never was able to get it clean again.”
“You had the nicest yard in town.”
I picked up a black-and-white photo from the pile on the table, a picture taken on Easter Sunday, 1964. My family stood in front of the house, dressed in our best, posed in front of flower beds filled with daffodils.
“Dad made sure of that. He was a good man, a good father. I’m not sure he was happy, though. He could have done anything. Instead, he spent his life working at the plant, doing the same job day after day and year after year to pay the bills. All Mom and Dad had was that house, this town, the day in and day out of our so-called normal lives. They never flew to Paris, or rode in a hot air balloon, or entered the Iditarod.”
“The Iditarod. With the sled dogs? Up in Alaska?” Madelyn drew her brows together and gave me a doubtful look.
“I’m just saying that they never took a risk, that’s all. They never did anything out of character. They never took a chance, bet the farm on one crazy roll of the dice. And they taught me to be just the same.”
“But you’re not the same,” Madelyn said. “You’re a risk taker. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be here, betting the farm on buying a farm, dumping a perfectly good corporate job so you could come back here and make hand lotion and lip balm and potpourri. . . .”
“That no one seems to want to buy.” I sighed. “Maybe my dad was right after all. Maybe this was a mistake. Lee thinks so.”
“Did he say that?”
I shrugged. “We’ve had a hard year. We’ve both been frustrated and discouraged, but Lee seems to express his frustration through anger and withdrawal. For a while we weren’t even—” I stopped myself. Madelyn probably didn’t need or want to hear all the intimate details of my life.
“Anyway, things are hard right now. We don’t talk about it much, but I know what he’s thinking. He thinks we should have stayed in Massachusetts, let well enough alone.”
“Is that what you think?”
I reached for a third scone and slowly spread it with butter as I considered the question.
“No,” I said finally. “Unless something changes, drastically and soon, I’m going to have to close the shop, I realize that. Maybe my timing was off or maybe it was just never a good idea to begin with. But I’m not sorry I tried. I’m happy I took the chance.”
“Well, there you have it. You’re a risk taker. And you’re happy. See? Your parents weren’t such bad role models after all.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I didn’t learn that from my parents. I learned it from you.”
“Sure you did,” she scoffed.
I picked up another photograph from the pile, the picture of Madelyn and me sitting on the porch, the day after our midnight adventure with the pigs.
“Remember this?”
Madelyn put her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand. “Sure. How could I forget?”
“Remember the article they ran about it in the paper? How the trooper they interviewed speculated that the crime might have been perpetrated by a ring of professional livestock rustlers?”
“Oh, if only he’d known!” Madelyn guffawed.
“If only he’d known,” I echoed. “But why would he? He could never have imagined such a thing. Until I met you, neither could I. Before I met you, I was pretty short on imagination.
“Everybody I grew up with was just like me, such good little girls, so prudent and obedient and dull, keeping our hands folded in our laps—except you. I’d never met anybody like you!
“You didn’t play by anybody else’s rules and you didn’t give a damn what anybody else thought. You didn’t wait an hour to go swimming after you ate. You saw the possibilities! You took trash and turned it into treasures. You ran your own show, refused to walk in lockstep with anybody else. You smoked cigarettes and stole sex books from the library. . . .”
“I didn’t steal them,” Madelyn countered. “I just didn’t check them out because I knew the librarians wouldn’t let me. I snuck them back onto the shelves after I found out what I wanted to know.”
“And shared that information with me,” I said. “If not for you, I might still be laboring under the misconception that French kissing can make you pregnant. And that’s my point. You taught me a lot of things, gave me a kind of . . . courage, I guess.
“But for a long time I forgot how good it felt to take a chance on myself. Do you know when I remembered? When I opened up an old box and found this.”
I laid the picture down on the table and pushed it toward Madelyn.
“You’re not the only one who’s grateful, old friend. You’ve changed my life—a couple of times now. And all for the good.”
It was after ten when Madelyn and I packed it in for the night and close to eleven before Lee came in from the barn.
“I didn’t think you’d still be awake,” he said as he pulled his sweater off over his head.
I yawned and closed the book I was reading. “In another five minutes I wouldn’t have been. What were you up to out there?”
He slipped out of his jeans, tossed t
hem over the back of a chair, and climbed into bed, scooting all the way over to my side. Lee likes to sleep close. So do I.
“I told Madelyn about how Charlie had offered me a good price for any microgreens I could grow for him in the winter, and she gave me a great idea: Take those old storm windows and use them to build cold frames. I built six big frames, enough to grow lettuces for the Grill on the Green plus a couple of other restaurants. Chefs will pay a good price for organic, out-of-season greens. And the frames didn’t cost me a dime, just my labor and the materials I had on hand.”
“Sounds like you had a good day.”
“I did. You?”
I just looked at him. He frowned sympathetically and lifted his arm so I could lay my head on his shoulder.
“It’ll get better,” he said.
“Maybe. But maybe not.”
“Well, we’ll just cross that bridge when we come to it. Won’t we? In the meantime, here’s something that’ll cheer you up: I was wrong. You were right.”
I smiled. “Is this a blanket admission or do you have something specific in mind?”
“You were right about having Madelyn here—it was the right thing to do. Rich or poor, I guess everybody has their struggles. She’s nicer than I thought she’d be and pretty handy to boot.”
“She is,” I agreed with a yawn, thinking of my beautiful new quilt and how I planned to hang it on the wall of the shop, right behind the register.
Lee stretched out his arm to turn off the light. We lay there in the darkness.
Just when I was on the edge of sleep, he said, “George called me today.”
I stirred sleepily. “Oh? Did he have another job lead for you?”
Lee shook his head. “No, he wanted to know if I had one for him. They’re closing the company, letting everybody go.”
My eyes flew open. “What? Everybody? Why? Are they moving the headquarters? Was there a buyout?”
“Bankruptcy,” he murmured. “Nobody saw it coming, nobody in middle management anyway. The big guys knew. They were trying to find a buyer right up until the last minute, which is why they were keeping it all under wraps, at least that’s their story. George showed up to work yesterday and they told everybody they could pack up their stuff and go back home. No severance, no nothing.”
“You’re kidding!” I gasped. “What’s George going to do?”
“Collect unemployment, I guess. And try to find another job.”
“Poor George,” I murmured. “That’s awful.”
“He sounded pretty depressed. But it got me thinking. If I’d stayed at the company, I’d be in the same boat. I know things are still touch-and-go for us, but at least we have the farm. We can feed ourselves, which is a lot more than most people can say. And we’re doing what we want, controlling our own destiny. I feel pretty good about that. Coming here was a good idea.”
He rolled toward me in the darkness and kissed me. “No matter what happens, I’m glad we took the chance.”
35
Madelyn
It was day six of my exile. I sat in Tessa’s easy chair, stitching closed the openings of some little sachets.
Remembering how much she’d liked making tiny quilts for the dollhouse when we were little, I’d suggested she sew some miniature quilt blocks and fill them with lavender to make drawer sachets. It’s a good way to use up the scraps from her quilts and her extra lavender.
Tessa loves quilting, as much for the people it has brought into her life as the actual quilts—maybe more. She told me all about her friends from the quilt shop. Once the media scrum breaks up and I can come out of hiding, Tessa wants me to meet them, maybe take a quilting class with her. It’s a nice idea, but I told her I’d have to take a pass.
“This is me we’re talking about. The Widow of Wall Street—remember? I don’t think your friends would be all that excited to include me in their sewing circle. And even if they were, I’ve never been a joiner. Besides, I’m too busy to take up quilting.”
And I am. Or I will be once those stupid reporters pack up their cameras and leave. How long can this go on? Isn’t there some war or government scandal they could cover?
When Sterling was arrested and brought to trial, the media attention made some sense. I didn’t like it, but I understood it. His arrest was part of the larger story of the whole economic collapse and what had led to it. But this hounding! The macabre fascination with every detail about his suicide and our broken marriage—that wasn’t news. It was a sideshow attraction.
I’d meant what I’d said to Tessa. I’m glad we’ve had this time together, but enough already. I want to go home!
Well. I never thought I’d hear myself say, “I want to go home,” home meaning Beecher Cottage. I don’t know how, but sometime between throwing Abigail off my front porch and sanding all those endless miles of wood floors, Beecher Cottage became my home. And I want to go back there, now! I’ve got so much to do.
I wish I’d thought to bring along that bolt of drapery fabric I bought to make curtains for the rooms. Tessa’s sewing machine is old, but compared to the old foot treadle model I’d found in the attic, it sews at lightning speed. I could have finished the whole job by now. What a waste of time.
The telephone rang and startled me so that I nearly jammed the sewing needle into my finger. I couldn’t find the scissors, so I quickly bit off the thread, laid aside the finished sachet, and ran into the kitchen to answer the phone.
“Woodruff residence.”
“Madelyn? It’s Tessa. Turn on the television!”
“Why?”
“Just do it!”
Cradling the phone between my shoulder and ear, I turned on the little television Tessa kept on the shelf with her cookbooks. It only gets two fuzzy channels, but I found the local midday news was on one of them.
The screen showed a tall, scruffy man wearing a baseball cap pulled down low to obscure his face, pushing through a sea of reporters who were all shouting questions at once. A trail of text ran along the bottom of the screen saying, BREAKING NEWS! NY BASKETBALL STAR MIKE RADNOVICH SCANDAL! BREAKING NEWS!
Mike Radnovich? Sterling’s old golfing buddy?
“Madelyn? Are you watching? Mike Radnovich was caught in some sort of love quadrangle. He has four girlfriends. One is pregnant. So is his wife.”
“Angela? Oh, no.”
“Do you know her?”
“Oh, yes. Yes, I do.”
Angela Radnovich, the only person who’d expressed any real sympathy for Sterling’s death and the only one who seriously wanted to attend his funeral. I’d met her at a charity event two years before. She was standing alone next to a potted plant and looked a little lost, so I crossed the room to talk to her.
Angela was nice but young; I’m sure she couldn’t have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three. She was blond, pretty, large breasted, and seemed a little out of her depth. And why wouldn’t she be? Until recently, she’d worked at a car rental counter in Tacoma, Washington—that’s how she’d met Radnovich, renting him a Cadillac Escalade. Now she was the celebrity wife of the wealthiest, most famous basketball player in the country. It was the fairy-tale story that millions of would-be Cinderellas dreamed about. But from the way her eyes darted around the room, nervously watching her husband talking and laughing with any number of women just as pretty as she, I guessed Angela hadn’t gotten the happy ending she’d counted on. I understood, only too well.
“Poor Angela. I didn’t know she was pregnant.”
“Three months,” Tessa said. “That’s what the news reports said. I didn’t realize you were friends.”
“Not friends. More like acquaintances. She’s a sweet girl. Very young. This must be so awful for her.”
“I know but . . . well . . . you know what this means, don’t you?”
I did. The sideshow had moved on, just as I’d wished. But I wouldn’t have wished it on Angela Radnovich. I wouldn’t have wished it on anyone. Still, that’s the way things are. The s
ideshow pitches its tent anywhere crowds gather—last week on my doorstep, this week on Angela Radnovich’s.
“Are the reporters gone?”
“Nearly,” Tessa said. “Jake says they’re packing up right now.”
“Jake? What’s he doing over there?”
“Um . . . I’m not sure. Maybe he just decided to drive by when he heard the news. You can go home whenever you want.”
“How about now?”
Lee had gone to Great Barrington to drum up customers for his microgreen business. I needed a ride. “Let me call the quilt shop. Maybe I can talk somebody into covering for me so I can come and pick you up.”
Tessa arrived ninety minutes later. It felt like an eternity, but I used the time to clean the guest bathroom, strip the sheets off my bed and put on a clean set, then write a thank-you note to Tessa and Lee. I left it on the kitchen counter next to a plate of cookies I’d baked earlier that morning. After that, I took my suitcase into the front hallway and paced.
I wanted to go straight home, but Tessa insisted we stop by the quilt shop first. She promised it would only take five minutes.
The Cobbled Court Quilt Shop sits in the most charming but worst located commercial space in New Bern, possibly in all of Connecticut. As the name implies, it faces an actual cobblestone courtyard, built back in the horse-and-buggy days, at the end of an alley too narrow for cars to pass through. Thus, the shop has no parking. Anyone who wants to visit the Cobbled Court Quilt Shop must do so on foot.
When I was a girl, the shop was home to the old Fielding Drugstore. Back then, Fielding’s was the only drugstore for miles around and so, inconvenient location or no, they did a good business. People had to buy their aspirin somewhere.
That was all well and good if you were selling drugs, something that people had to have, but quilting fabric is definitely not on the list of life’s necessities. At least not for most people; the way Tessa had been talking about the quilt shop and all the fabric she was just longing to add to her “stash,” I was starting to think she might be an exception to that rule.
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