a sharp rotary cutter, then packaging up the order and mailing it off to the other side of the state or the other side of the country. Really, it’s amazing to see how many places we send quilting supplies to. I’ve mailed Cobbled Court Quilt Shop orders to every state except Hawaii and Wyoming. Once, we had an order that came all the way from Leicester, England.
As I work, I like thinking about the people who will receive the orders, imagining how excited they will be when their packages arrive and what kinds of quilts they will make from the fabric I’ve sent to them. It’s nice and quiet here in the workroom and I have plenty of time to think. If they get busy downstairs, I’ll help in the shop, but most of my day is spent upstairs and I prefer it that way. Not that I’m unfriendly to my coworkers; I smile and try my best to be helpful, to work hard, and to figure out what needs doing before anyone has to ask me to do it, but it’s better if I keep to myself.
Evelyn is a great boss. When Bobby came down with the flu, she didn’t mind my staying home with him at all. She even made a pot of chicken soup and brought it by the apartment. Garrett is nice, too, very patient when he taught me how to process the computer orders, and Margot is a sweetheart. She’s very religious and at first I thought she was trying to make friends with me just so she could convert me, but now I realize that she is just a genuinely kind person. Though she is single and doesn’t have any of her own, Margot loves kids and has offered to babysit for me anytime. I can’t take her up on that offer, of course, or on her invitations to join her for a movie or dinner. I wish I could. If I ever did have a best friend, I’d want her to be someone like Margot, but I can’t risk letting people get too close.
I have gotten to know Abigail a little bit, because of the kids, but that’s not as risky, partly because Abigail doesn’t work at the shop, she’s just a good customer, and partly because…well…Abigail is Abigail. She likes my kids, but she doesn’t seem that interested in me. Truthfully, I don’t know much more about Abigail than she knows about me. I know she quilts, is dating her attorney, and is very, very rich. The name Wynne is plastered on half the buildings in town.
Maybe it isn’t true of all of them, but I’ve noticed that very rich people don’t seem to be too curious about the not-so-very-rich—adorable children being the exception. Fine by me.
Abigail recommended me for the job at Cobbled Quilts because she was worried about my kids. It had nothing to do with me, but did I care? No. I needed a job and Abigail helped me get one. Not easy in a small town with few openings, especially for someone with no degree and almost no work experience. I’m grateful to Abigail and to Evelyn. They helped me get started and I work hard to show them how much I appreciate this chance.
I’m putting as much money into savings as possible but even though I pay a very cheap rent for our apartment at the Stanton Center, it’s hard to save. After paying for rent, food, gasoline, and clothing for two kids who seem to outgrow a pair of shoes every month, there isn’t much left over. In a month when one of the kids has to go to the doctor, there isn’t anything left over. But every time I can make a deposit into savings, I’m thrilled! I’ve promised myself that by this time next year, we’ll be living in a place of our own. Nothing like the house we left in Pennsylvania, I’m sure, but someplace nice. Maybe with a little yard and room to plant flowers.
But when my car broke down, I had no choice but to take money out of savings to have it fixed. It just about killed me to spend that money, but what could I do? I had to get to work. I wrote out the check and hoped that when Larry, the mechanic, promised I wouldn’t have any more problems with it, he was telling the truth.
Now, just a few days after taking a deep breath and writing that enormous check, I sat behind the wheel of my stalled car and yelled, “You’re a big liar! You know that, Larry? A big, ugly, grease monkey of a liar!”
Larry’s garage was miles out of earshot, but I didn’t care. It might not have been dignified, but it made me feel better, at least for the time being.
I climbed out from behind the wheel, slammed the door shut, and, after taking a quick look at my watch, started jogging the mile to the bus stop. If I was lucky, I’d be able to catch the 9:11 bus to downtown New Bern and make it to work on time.
I wasn’t lucky.
Having run up to the bus stop just in time to see the back of the 9:11 expel a black belch of exhaust from its tailpipe and pull away, I got to cool my heels for another twenty minutes before the next bus arrived.
When I got to downtown New Bern, I took a shortcut down the alley to the delivery entrance rather than go through the front door of the shop. I was twenty-six minutes late. No one saw me come in, and I was glad. I could hear Evelyn, Garrett, and some other people talking in the front of the store. They were probably too involved in their own work to hear the back door open and close and wouldn’t realize I was behind schedule.
Not that Evelyn would have given me a hard time for being late if I told her about what happened, but I didn’t like the idea of her cutting me slack because of my situation. Evelyn had taken a chance in hiring me and I wanted to show her that she hadn’t made a mistake.
On my lunch break, I would call Karen, the woman who lives in the apartment next to mine, and ask her if she would mind picking up Bobby and Bethany from day care when she came to get her little boy and taking them back to her apartment until I got home so I could make up the time I’d missed. That’s another thing about living at the Stanton Center—they offer subsidized child care at a very good day care. The program won’t end when I leave the Center but will continue for a full year after. Then the subsidy will gradually decline over a period of two more years. Another good reason to stay in New Bern. Without that subsidy, most of my earnings would have gone for child care. But, even with this kind of help, the life of a working mother isn’t easy. When an unexpected problem arose, like today, it was important to be connected to other moms who could help out. Karen would take care of my kids today. Another time, I’d do the same for her.
And if I was careful, no one would be the wiser. I opened the delivery door quietly, crept into the back room, grabbed the pile of order forms that were sitting in my in-box, and looked them over. It was going to be a busy day.
Besides the usual requests for yardage, patterns, and various notions, there were six orders for the pink and green fabric medleys Liza had put together for our weekly special. Those would be easy to do because they were all just fat quarters and we had plenty of fabric upstairs in the workroom. But there were also four orders for block-of-the-month kits. Those would take more time because they included eleven different fabric cuts, all of varying sizes, and I already had nine other kits on backorder because we’d run out of some fabrics. Fortunately, the delivery came in late the day before and the bolts I needed to finish the kits were sitting on the counter.
I loaded my arms up with several bolts of fabric, and then piled the day’s order forms on top, keeping the papers from falling by anchoring them to the bolts with my chin.
Keeping my head down and being careful to steer clear of the squeaky tread on the stairs, I carried my load to the workroom, hoping I’d be lucky enough to avoid having my tardy ascent upstairs noticed by Evelyn or any of the other employees.
I wasn’t being sneaky exactly. I just figured that since I was going to stay late to make up the time, why draw attention to my tardiness? But, if I could do it all over again, I would have walked in the front door, told Evelyn exactly why I was late, made my apologies, and gone to work. If I had, things would have been so much easier.
5
Evelyn Dixon
Having finished seating and soothing a party of four who were miffed that they couldn’t get a booth in the front even though they’d walked in without a reservation, Charlie returned to the table where I was sitting with Mary Dell, her producer, Sandy, and the cameraman, Ben. Charlie pulled up a chair and poured the last drops of a second bottle of pinot noir into my glass.
“Now, wait a minute. Tell me again so I make sure I’ve got this right. It took you three hours, three hours to film a sixty-second promotional spot?”
“Don’t