worked something out. Besides, I knew you’d be home. It’s Quilt Circle night. You wouldn’t miss out on that unless you’d gotten a better offer, like dinner at the White House.”
The look on Abigail’s face told me she was ready to launch into a full-scale argument with her niece but, thankfully, Wendy interrupted. “Evelyn, I’ve got to get back to the office and I can’t find that silly card anywhere. It must be in my other pocketbook.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “Save the receipt and when you find the card, bring it in and I’ll punch it for you.”
Wendy scurried out the front door just as Garrett came out of the back office. “I was on the phone with a customer, but did I hear somebody say something about passionate necking? Count me in.” He winked at Abigail before crossing the room to give Liza a kiss. “I didn’t think you’d be here until next weekend. Why the surprise? Did you miss me? So much you decided to come up here to buy me dinner?”
Smiling, Liza reached up, grabbed a piece of Garrett’s hair, and yanked it playfully. “You wish. Actually, I came up here to come to my quilt-circle meeting. I may live in Manhattan, but I’m still an affiliate member, you know. However, if you play your cards right, I’ll let you buy me dinner on Saturday night.”
“Hmmm. What about the passionate necking part? Do we still get to do that?”
“Maybe,” Liza said casually. “If you play your cards right.”
“All right, you two,” I said. “Enough flirting. Go tell Margot it’s quitting time. If she hasn’t been able to get the accounts to balance by now, it’ll just have to wait until Monday.” I walked to the front, turned the closed sign face out, and opened the door. “Franklin, Garrett, nothing personal, but—clear out. This meeting is for members only.”
Franklin kissed Abigail on the cheek and then turned to Garrett. “They want us to leave.”
“Do you think?” Garrett looked at me as I stood holding the knob of the open door.
“Well, fine,” he harrumphed. “I can take a hint. I’ve been thrown out of better places than this. Come on, Franklin. Let’s go to the Grill and have a beer. I’ll buy.”
Franklin shook his head. “Sorry, but I can’t. I’m headed over to Ivy’s to babysit. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s about to be inducted as a full member of the Cobbled Court Quilt Circle, with all the rights and privileges herein.”
“Rights and privileges? Such as?”
“Such as having Uncle Franklin babysit Bethany and Bobby on Friday nights so she can have an evening out with the girls and do some quilting. At least, that’s what they say they do up there. I’m not convinced there’s as much quilting as gabbing going on.”
“Abigail talked you into babysitting Ivy’s kids every Friday night? Wow. You’re either the nicest guy or the biggest sucker in the world, you know that?”
Franklin’s eyes twinkled as he gave Abigail a glance. “My boy, you don’t know the half of it. Why don’t you come to Ivy’s with me? We can make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, play Candy Land, and I can tell you about the price of loving a beautiful woman.”
Franklin put his arm across Garrett’s shoulders and, like Rick and Louis in the final scene in Casablanca, the two men walked out into the shadowy evening and into the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
I closed the door. Liza laughed. “What do you want to bet that Ivy comes home tonight to find those two passed out on the sofa asleep, with their fingernails painted red, and the kids still awake, watching TV and eating chocolate ice cream out of the container?”
“I wouldn’t want to give you odds on it,” I said, “but that’s all right, chocolate washes out.” I locked the door of the shop.
“Ladies, let’s call this meeting to order. It’s time to welcome a new quilter into our ranks.”
The word “meeting” projects a much more formal, organized gathering than the reality of the weekly gathering of the Cobbled Court Quilt Circle. That’s not to say that those kinds of groups don’t exist; there are quilt circles and guilds that have roll calls and rosters, agendas and officers, guest books and guest speakers. Over the years and in various locations, I’ve belonged to such groups and enjoyed them.
But our little circle is as much about companionship as it is about learning the oldest, or latest, or fastest quilting techniques, probably more so.
The Cobbled Court Quilt Circle has just four members: Margot, Abigail, Liza, and me. I started it as a means of thanking the others for supporting me through my breast cancer treatment, but in the end I think I’ve gotten as much out of it as they have.
These Friday evenings are a welcome break at the end of a long week, something we all look forward to; a safe, private space where we can talk, or laugh, or cry with friends or, if quiet is what we are most craving, just sit and focus our attention on the quilting, working in companionable silence with people who know our stories and understand our stillness. Sometimes our meetings are peaceful and calm, marked by low voices, the metallic snip of scissors, and the soft whir of sewing machines. Other nights they are punctuated by raucous, uncontrollable laughter, and the giddy sound of female voices interrupting one another, jockeying to take over the role of narrator for a story they can’t wait to tell.
I love Friday nights.
When I was going through my cancer battle, those few hours on Friday were the only times I really felt like myself. For that thin slice of the week, I forgot about the disease that had invaded my body, or if I couldn’t forget about it, at least lived with it, embraced by the warmth of good women whose kindness and determination to see me through my darkest hours gave me hope that, one way or another, everything would be all right. And, in the end, it was. Not that I don’t still need them, or they me. The scars of my surgery have faded considerably but not completely, and the others all carry their own kinds of scars, healing at their own, individual rates. That’s the point of Friday nights. The scars don’t appear as terrible, or take as long to heal, when you’re safe inside the circle of friends. For a while there, Friday nights were the only times I felt lucky.
That’s why I wanted Ivy to join our circle. I thought that she needed us.
Ivy has a quick wit but, more often than not, the laughs come at her own expense, poking fun at her own weaknesses with a regularity and fierceness that makes me wonder if she’s really joking at all.
I really don’t know much about Ivy, but there’s something about her, a sadness that lurks behind her ready smile and goes down to the bone. She tries to mask it, but it’s there, sadness and something else harder to name. Determination, perhaps.
I saw it clearly one night during the log cabin class at the Stanton Center as she sat at her sewing machine, holding her quilt block in her two hands as silent tears tracked slowly down her cheeks. Seeing her crying, I started to go over and comfort her, but she saw me looking at her and nodded to let me know she was all right, or would be. Ivy is quiet and careful, but she’s also strong. Given what she’s been through, I guess she’d have to be.
Since she lives at the Stanton Center, we know she was married to an abusive man, a man who Abigail told me was killed in some sort of construction accident and left Ivy and the children without a dime to live on, but she never speaks of him or of how she ended up in New Bern. I think she’s from somewhere in Pennsylvania originally, but I don’t know for certain.
Not that she has to share any of that with us, not at all. Our quilt circle isn’t a place for gossip, it’s a place for honesty. It might take some time, but I think that’s what Ivy needs: a safe place where she can be herself, and with a group of friends who will love and accept her for exactly who she is.
8
Evelyn Dixon
Abigail was indignant.
“No? We’re