Between Heaven and Texas

by Marie Bostwick

  It would be the first of many such letters she would receive. Mary Dell refused to give up.

  Her Wednesday class was her favorite because it was composed of her three original students, women who had signed up for her very first class and become friends. Pearl and Pauline Dingus were the eldest and youngest of the six daughters of Marvel Anne Dingus and the Reverend Charles Dingus, retired former minister of the First Baptist Church. Susan Satterfield, known as Sweetums, was their cousin.

  After so many years together, the Wednesday classes were more like open sewing sessions than formal quilting lessons. She felt funny about taking money from the Wednesday group, but the ladies insisted on continuing to pay the five-dollar-a-week class fee, so Mary Dell worked hard to make sure they got their money’s worth, continually searching out new techniques and projects to challenge them.

  This week, because Valentine’s Day would soon be upon them, the ladies were working on wall hangings with a hearts-and-flowers motif. The design was Mary Dell’s own, but her students had realized long ago that Mary Dell’s success in fabric selection was limited to crazy quilts. Pearl, Pauline, and Sweetums always picked out their own fabric. While the three women worked on their wall hangings, Mary Dell hand-stitched the binding on a crib quilt for Lydia Dale’s baby.

  “I thought you already made a baby quilt for Lydia Dale,” Pearl commented when Mary Dell explained what she was working on.

  “Lydia Dale didn’t like it. She didn’t come right out and say so, but she said that she wasn’t sure that orange, pomegranate, and lime would go in a nursery with yellow-striped wallpaper. Momma said it looked more like a fruit salad than a baby quilt.”

  Pearl chuckled. “Orange, pomegranate, and lime? That sounds like how one of my migraines looks.”

  Mary Dell tied off a stitch and shrugged. She was used to their teasing and tried not to take it personally. She liked what she liked and didn’t care, not much anyway, that the rest of the world preferred to wear a different shade of rose-colored glasses.

  “Well, I thought it was nice, so I kept it for Howard and made another quilt for Lydia Dale’s baby. Good thing she’s overdue, or I never would have finished in time. The doctor says if the baby doesn’t come on its own by tomorrow, they’re going to have to induce.”

  She snipped off the tail of the thread, flipped the now-finished quilt to the front, and asked, “What do you think?”

  The women gasped.

  “Gosh-all hemlock! Will you look at that?”

  “Isn’t it just the sweetest thing you ever saw?”

  “Well, I never did! It’s beautiful!”

  The baby quilt, composed of six-inch Grandmother’s Fan blocks, was intricately and precisely stitched with a skill few quilters could hope to match. Knowing Mary Dell, the perfection of the stitching didn’t surprise the women, but the color composition did.

  The “slats” of the fan, radiating like pointy-edged flower petals surrounding a center circle of deep yellow the color of egg yolks laid in winter, were made up of small-scale prints of jade, emerald, sapphire, cobalt, azure, and amethyst, rich colors, exotic colors, radiant colors, like gemstones lying at the bottom of a tropical lagoon or orchids growing wild behind crumbling walls of a secret garden, colors that none of the women would have thought to put into a baby quilt but, especially when set against a background of egg yolk yellow that matched the block centers, which looked exactly right together, surprising but not jarring, harmonious but not dull. It was a stunning quilt.

  Pauline, who was a little bit nearsighted, which probably explained why the points of her quilts never quite matched, put her hand against her cheek and leaned down to get a closer look at the quilt.

  “Mary Dell, you’ve made some awful nice quilts in your time, but this is the best ever. So pretty! Honey, if I didn’t know you were the only woman in three counties who could stitch six-inch Grandmother’s Fan blocks and have every one of them come out perfect, I’d have said somebody else made this quilt. Or at least chose the colors.”

  Mary Dell’s skin was thick but not impermeable, and she frowned, annoyed by the backhanded nature of Pauline’s compliment.

  “Lydia Dale picked out the fabric,” she admitted.

  The women exchanged knowing glances. It all made sense now. Lydia Dale didn’t quilt but she had beautiful taste. When Sweetums decided to redecorate her family room, she’d asked Lydia Dale to help her pick out wallpaper and paint.

  Pauline didn’t want to hurt Mary Dell’s feelings, but felt compelled to point out what she was sure everybody else was thinking. “Mary Dell, honey, have you ever thought about asking your sister to help pick out your quilt fabric? Because I’ll tell you . . .” She sighed and clasped her hands to her breast, seemingly enraptured as she gazed at the beautiful baby quilt. “If she did, I think the fair judges would have awarded your quilts a pile of blue ribbons by now, instead of all those honorable mentions.”

  “They weren’t all honorable mentions,” Mary Dell mumbled as she heaved her pregnant body out of the chair she’d been sitting in. “I got a third place once.”

  “I know,” Pauline replied. “I’m just saying you deserve better. If your sister were helping you, maybe you’d finally get the credit you deserve. Who knows? You might even get a design accepted by that quilting magazine you’re always writing to.”

  Two months previously, Mary Dell had received yet another “thanks but no thanks” form letter from C. J. Evard. Disappointed again but still undaunted, she had submitted still another design and sent it to Dallas via registered mail earlier that week.

  She was certain that this quilt, utilizing an original block she called Tricky Tumblers, would be the one that would finally get C. J. Evard’s attention. The “trick” of Mary Dell’s design was that the central block, which was based on the classic Tumbling Block pattern, required none of the Y-seams that even accomplished quilters dreaded. All modesty aside, it was a clever, even ingenious design, and she was certain Miss Evard would agree. However, Mary Dell didn’t mention this to her students. They’d see soon enough that her quilt designs could stand on their own without anyone’s help—even her sister’s.

  Mary Dell turned her back to the women and started folding up the baby quilt.

  Sweetums, who came by her nickname honestly, said in a gentle but hesitant voice, “Nobody is trying to hurt your feelings, Mary Dell. Everybody in this room knows you’re the best quilter in this whole part of the state, maybe in all of Texas. But . . .”

  Pearl, the oldest and bossiest of the Dingus sisters, a preacher’s child and a big proponent of “speaking the truth in love,” became impatient with all this pussyfooting.

  “Mary Dell, it’s time you faced facts. When it comes to quilting, you’ve got all the talent in the world but no more taste than a hothouse tomato. However, Providence has paired you with a loving sister who can’t sew a stitch but is amply supplied with the color sense you so sorely lack.

  “Don’t you see? You and Lydia Dale are like biscuits and gravy; one is too dry and the other too wet, but put them together and you’ve got yourself a meal! And if you’d just put aside your stubborn, sinful pride and admit that, you might finally be able to make use of the gifts and talents the good Lord has granted you!”

  Mary Dell was still standing with her back to the others, trying to toss their comments into the trash can of her mind, the same way she tossed all those cheap rayon honorable mention ribbons into the actual trash every August after fair week. But when she heard Pearl accuse her of pride, she winced.

  Mary Dell could never be jealous of her sister personally, but Pearl’s blunt assessment forced her to admit that she was still jealous of her sister’s accomplishments—specifically of the glass display case filled with pageant sashes and tiaras that still held center stage in her parents’ living room. Actually, not that the pageant memorabilia itself made her jealous, but the fact that, after all this time, Taffy still insisted on showing these relics off to every p
erson who visited the house, from the minister’s wife to the man who delivered their propane.

  How silly.

  Silly of Taffy to still try to bask in her daughter’s glow and silly of Mary Dell to still be trying so hard to secure a spot in Taffy’s display cabinet, believing that winning a blue ribbon would also win her mother’s approval. What an idea.

  It wasn’t wrong for a child to desire her mother’s admiration, but Mary Dell wasn’t a child anymore. Nor was it wrong for her now, as a woman, to have dreams and ambition, or to desire a little recognition for her talents. That was natural enough, wasn’t it? Where would the world be if people hadn’t been created with the longing to lean into life, to push the boundaries inch by inch, to do things that were hard simply because they were hard?

  As a girl, in Sunday school, Mary Dell had been taught that work, the absolute necessity to scratch out a living, was part of the curse of original sin, and she believed it. But wasn’t it also a kind of salvation? No one had told her so, but Mary Dell thought it must be true.

  As a true daughter of Texas and a Tudmore to boot, Mary Dell knew in her bones that her town, her state, her world, the harsh, hot, dry, and vast land she sprang from, stark and starkly beautiful, could never have been peopled or planted without the stubborn ambition of her ancestors, those women of strong conviction from whom she had inherited her desire to leave an imprint on the world, some mark, however small, even if she had to patch it together from imagination and scraps of cloth.

  To dream was not wrong. And ambition was no sin.

  But to be so desperate to gain a toehold in the trophy case of a mother’s heart, to be hobbled by childish envies, desiring prizes awarded only for solo performance, so unwilling to share the spotlight and credit that it thwarted the ambitions you were born, equipped, and uniquely placed to fulfill, was wrong. And proud. And pride, they’d told her in Sunday school, wasn’t just wrong; it was a sin. She believed that too.

  Mary Dell turned around. Pearl stared at her with arched eyebrows and an expression that dared Mary Dell to refute the facts as she’d laid them out.

  “I heard you,” Mary Dell said.

  “And?”

  “And,” Mary Dell said in an exasperated voice, “although Lydia Dale is due to deliver any second, and I’m about five weeks behind her, and neither of us will be doing anything besides breast-feeding and changing diapers anytime soon, the next time I start a new quilt, I’ll ask her to help me pick out the fabric.”

  Pearl smiled and sat back down at her sewing machine.

  “How is Lydia Dale anyway?” Sweetums asked. “I haven’t seen her in an age.”

  “Better now that the divorce is final.”

  Mary Dell squatted down to pick up some stray pins off the carpet and a pair of scissors she’d accidentally knocked off the counter, no easy feat in her swollen condition.

  “Sometimes I wish Jack Benny would just leave town and never come back,” she said, grunting as she got to the floor. “That man is so low you can’t put a rug under him.”

  “His momma is just as bad,” Pauline said, squinting as she tried to poke a piece of thread through the needle of her machine. “Marlena’s been going around town dropping hints that your sister’s baby isn’t a Benton, that Lydia Dale had been stepping out on Jack Benny and that’s the reason for the divorce.”

  “What!” Mary Dell’s face flushed red. “Who’s she been saying that to? That’s a lie! Jack Benny was the one who was cheating, and Marlena knows it! How could she say something so terrible about her own grandchild?”

  Looking furious enough to disembowel Marlena with the scissors she held clenched in her fist, Mary Dell tried to push herself up from the carpet, but was impeded by her big belly. Pearl jumped up from her sewing machine to help.

  “Pauline,” she scolded, “stop your gossiping. Nobody in town is going to believe that story. Everybody knows what Jack Benny is. Marlena is just mean and bitter. Everybody knows that too. Best thing to do is ignore her.”

  “But that’s the problem!” Mary Dell exclaimed. “Everybody does ignore Marlena. It’s about time somebody stood up to her!”

  Pearl reached out her hand. Mary Dell grabbed it and tried to get to her feet, unsuccessfully.

  “She’s not worth it. You know what they say, ‘Lie down with a dog, and you’ll get up with a flea.’ And Marlena Benton is definitely a dog. Of the female variety. If you take my meaning.”

  Pearl smiled momentarily, pleased with her little joke, and then frowned again as she looked down at Mary Dell, who was still struggling to get up.

  “Here, honey. Let’s try this.”

  Pearl grabbed both of Mary Dell’s hands, braced her feet against the floor, counted off one-two-three, and pulled as hard as she could.

  Mary Dell got to her feet with a grunt but immediately doubled over, groaning in pain. Sweetums and Pauline leapt up and scurried to her side.

  “Oh, honey! Oh, my!”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Is it time? Is it the baby?”

  “No!” Mary Dell protested, gripping her stomach. “It can’t be. It’s too soon!”

  But another groan, another wave of pain, and a flush of fluid proved her wrong.

  Pearl, herself a mother of five, stroked Mary Dell’s back, spoke in a calm and even voice, assured her that it wasn’t so very early, asked her if she’d packed a hospital bag, then looked up and started issuing orders.

  “Here, honey. Come sit down in this chair for a minute while I go pack your toothbrush and robe. Sweetums, take my keys out of my purse and pull my car up to the door. Pauline, get on the phone. Call the doctor, Miss Silky and Miss Velvet, Taffy and Dutch, and go find Donny. Tell him the baby is coming.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Pauline phoned Dr. Brownback but was unable to reach Silky, Velvet, Taffy, or Dutch because only a few minutes before, Lydia Dale had come into the TV room and announced that her own labor pains were ten minutes apart. They were already on their way to the hospital, so flustered they hadn’t thought to call Mary Dell, not knowing she was following close behind.

  Pauline hadn’t been able to find Donny either. She drove to the barn to look for him. His truck was parked outside, but when she called his name, he didn’t answer. Just that morning he’d decided to saddle up Georgeann and ride the fences, making note of any sections that needed repair. In another couple of weeks, he figured he’d have to start sticking closer to home, in case the baby came during the day.

  Lydia Dale’s baby came quickly. Four hours after she’d arrived at the hospital, a nurse entered the maternity waiting room and told the assembled relatives that Rob Lee Benton, a healthy, eight-pound, twelve-ounce boy with long eyelashes and a perfectly formed head as round and bald as a cue ball, had been born and would be available for viewing through the window of the newborn nursery in about half an hour.

  When asked, the nurse told them that Mary Dell was doing just fine, that there was nothing to worry about, that first children always took longer to be born.

  “But isn’t it too soon?” Dutch asked, his weathered face creased with anxiety.

  “We’re taking good care of your daughter, Mr. Templeton. And your grandchild. The neonatologist has been called. As soon as the baby is born, it will be taken to the NICU. They have all the right equipment and staff to care for preemies,” she said, then patted him on the arm and left the room with rubber-soled efficiency.

  Dutch dug three quarters out from the pocket of his jeans and dropped them into the vending machines. He bought two candy bars for Jeb and Cady and a cup of bad coffee for himself.

  The nurse had spoken with authority, using words that Dutch didn’t understand—“neonatologist” and “NICU”—but she hadn’t answered his question.

  Was it too soon?

  After all the years of waiting, the pain of watching his daughter’s hopes of motherhood be raised and dashed over and over again, was this baby, too, coming too soon? Was another of his grandch
ildren going to die before it had even lived?

  Dutch went to church every week of his life and served as an usher every third Sunday of the month. Even so, he’d never been much of a praying man, but he prayed now, as hard as he could. Staring into the black lake of a cardboard coffee cup, he prayed to the God he’d always believed in but had spent precious little time talking with.

  CHAPTER 14

  Donny got home later than he’d planned. Georgeann had picked up a stone in her shoe. Donny was able to dig it out, but the horse kept favoring one leg and so he decided to come home on foot, leading her by the reins.

  He removed Georgeann’s saddle and bridle, washed her down, curried her, fed her, and checked her leg again to make sure it wasn’t swelling. Then he hopped into his pickup and drove home, where he found Pauline’s note taped to the front door.

  He didn’t even go into the house, didn’t take time to change his dirty boots or shower off the smell of human and horse sweat, just jumped back into the truck and drove to the hospital in Waco as fast as he could, which was pretty fast. The drive normally took forty-five minutes. Donny made it in thirty-four.

  He spent the whole of the trip worrying about what was happening to his wife and son right at that moment, cursing himself for deciding to check the fences today, cursing Georgeann for picking up a stone, cursing. It was only the twelfth of February. The baby wasn’t due until the twentieth of March. Five weeks too soon. But was it too soon? Too soon to survive?

  In the months since he had learned of Mary Dell’s pregnancy, he had spent endless hours imagining all the fine things his son would be and do.

  Dr. Bebee. Astronaut Bebee. H. H. Bebee, Attorney for the Defense. Professor Bebee. Howard “Hard Hands” Bebee, the best wide receiver in the history of the Dallas Cowboys. Senator Bebee. President Bebee.

  No title would be out of his reach, no honor beyond his grasp. His son would be able to do anything he dreamed of doing—go to college, travel the world, reach for the stars. That was what Donny had wanted for his boy—everything. A world without limits.