A Drunkard's Path (9 page)

But Oliver apparently didn’t notice. “Great art is great art, regardless of the medium,” he said and turned to face another wall. “Amazing. May I touch?”

“Of course. Quilts are meant to be touched,” Eleanor said.

“That’s the thing I love about quilting. It’s so unpretentious.”

“It can be,” Eleanor laughed. “But, believe me, we have our prima donnas too.”

Oliver smiled at her, and for a moment seemed to stare into her eyes. Eleanor must have noticed it too, because she did something I’d never seen her do before. She blushed.

“This is your work?” he asked, pointing to a large winding ways quilt that hung on the wall. “It’s really magnificent. I love your use of bold colors and this design is so exciting.”

“It’s actually a classic pattern,” Eleanor explained.

“It’s got so much movement. But that’s due to your use of color,” Oliver gushed as he moved close to the quilt. “And the workmanship is really something. I can tell that I’m in the presence of a master.”

I looked at Kennette to see if she shared my nausea at all the blatant kissing up. Of course Kennette was eating it up as much as Eleanor.

“Does anyone want anything? Coffee or anything?” I asked, looking for an excuse to get out of there.

All three of them turned to me, smiling.

“Lovely. Black, if you don’t mind.” Oliver walked toward me. “But my treat.” He reached into his pocket and handed me a hundred-dollar bill without even looking at it.

“Kennette, you want something?” I asked. She was staring at Oliver as if he were George Clooney.

“No,” she said. “I’m fine.”

“Do you want to help me get the coffee?”

“No. I’m fine.”

I looked over at my grandmother in the hopes that she was still a little sane, but Eleanor wasn’t looking at me either. She was smiling at Oliver, who was—and this is where things started to get weird—smiling right back.

“My grandmother has a boyfriend.” I slammed the hundred-dollar bill on the table as soon as I walked into Carrie’s coffee shop, which was still very much in the midst of remodeling.

“Eleanor?” Carrie looked up from cleaning.

I heard something fall in the back room, and Natalie came running out, a mop still in her hand. “What did you say?”

“My art professor followed us to the shop today.”

“Us?” Carrie interrupted.

“Kennette, the girl I take classes with.”

“She’s going to work at the shop.” It was Natalie’s turn to interrupt. “My mom told me about her.”

“How come I don’t know about her?” Carrie asked.

“I forgot to tell you,” Natalie answered. “She takes classes with Nell and she wears funky clothes and she’s very nice. At least that’s what my mom said. She sounds interesting.”

I threw my hands up. “She’s not as interesting as this,” I shouted. “Oliver, the art teacher, he followed us to the shop and is now in there hitting on Eleanor.”

“How do you know?” I could hear the shock in Carrie’s voice. “What exactly did he say?”

“He said he liked the quilts.”

Natalie laughed. “Of course he liked the quilts. They’re great quilts. And since he’s an artist, he’d know.”

I shook my head. “It was the way he said it. He praised every little thing. And it was more than that.” I paused for dramatic purposes. “He smiled at her.”

I expected more laughs, but neither woman moved.

“What did she do?” Carrie finally asked.

“Smiled back,” I said.

We all stood in silence in the middle of Carrie’s shop.

Finally Natalie said, “I want to see this.”

We were almost out the door when I remembered the reason I supposedly came over. Carrie poured coffee into three disposable cups, and we headed across the street to Someday Quilts, trying to look casual, and absolutely failing.

Nothing had changed in the few minutes I was gone. Eleanor and Oliver were standing by the quilts, smiling. Kennette was a few feet away, staring dreamily. I gave Carrie and Natalie my best “I told you so” look.

“Here’s the coffee,” I announced.

“And it came with friends,” Oliver said happily. In seconds he was charming the new arrivals and asking to see their quilts, which were also on display. It gave me a chance to pull Eleanor aside.

“What’s going on?”

Eleanor the unflappable had returned. “Your teacher has a good eye for quilts,” she said, and then went to the counter for her coffee.

“I would love to sit with you sometime and discuss the techniques you use,” Oliver said to Eleanor as he followed her to the counter.

“That would be fine. And I’m sure there’s a lot I could learn from someone in your field that would apply to quilting.”

“No doubt.” He smiled. “Tomorrow perhaps. Dinner?”

“We have quilt club,” I cut in. “Every Friday.”

“Saturday, then?” Oliver’s eyes never left Eleanor.

“I close up the shop about six,” she said.

He nodded. “I’ll pick you up at eight?” He squeezed Eleanor’s hand. “It was lovely to meet you ladies. I’m sure we’ll see each other again.”

“At class,” Kennette jumped in.

“Yes, of course. And perhaps before then.”

We stood at the door and watched him get into his car and drive away. Everyone but Eleanor. She was busy stacking some newly arrived magazines.

“You have a date!” Natalie shouted. “A date with a handsome, successful artist.”

“It’s not a date,” Eleanor scolded her. “He’s interested in talking about quilts, that’s all.” And with that she disappeared into the shop’s office.

“Wow” was all Carrie could say.

“Isn’t he wonderful?” Kennette asked. “He’s so sophisticated and charming. Like an old-fashioned movie star.”

He was. I had to agree. And so did half the women taking his class, including the annoying Sandra. Even in his seventies, he had a sexy, bad-boy quality about him. It seemed clear that he had spent a lifetime playing by his own rules and was celebrated for it.

So why was a man like that hitting on my grandmother?

 

 

 

 

“I
t’s off the table,” I whispered. “No one can bring it up. Trust me.” Though Oliver had been in the shop only twenty-four hours before, every member of the quilt club arrived for our usual Friday meeting knowing word for word what had happened. And everyone was dying to talk about it. Except Eleanor.

Kennette and I had tried to broach the subject when we were sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen having dinner a few hours after Oliver’s visit. The stone silence we got in response made it clear that this was not an open subject.

All day at the shop Kennette and I made pathetic attempts to look busy while Eleanor waited on every customer who came in, unwilling to let us handle even the easy sales. When we were finally closing up for the night, Eleanor suggested that Kennette stay for the meeting. There was nothing unusual in that, the quilt group was extremely welcoming. But I felt that my grandmother wasn’t just fostering Kennette’s interest in quilting. She was hoping that the presence of a new-comer would draw attention away from her.

It didn’t work. Ten minutes into the meeting Bernie teasingly asked about Eleanor’s plans for the weekend. Eleanor remembered something she needed in the office and disappeared.

“She must be terrified,” Bernie said. “It’s been years since she’s gone on a date. When did her husband die?”

“Almost forty-eight years ago,” Maggie said. “Joe died just weeks after Eleanor’s twenty-sixth birthday.”

I’d never done the math before. It took me a second to digest the fact that my grandmother was my age when she was widowed with two small children.

“And she never went on another date again?” Natalie asked quietly, in case Eleanor emerged.

Maggie took a deep breath. “She had . . .” Maggie was choosing her words carefully. “Interest.” She stopped for a moment, and then added firmly, “But she had children to raise.”

“Getting remarried would have made that simpler,” Susanne whispered, sitting forward in her chair.

Bernie shook her head. “I think she was mad at Joe for getting drunk and wrapping his car around a tree.”

“And leaving her broke,” I added. “I know she was really blind-sided when she found out that he had lied to her.”

“About what?” Natalie asked.

“He’d wanted her to think they were doing better financially than they actually were,” Maggie answered. “Nell’s right. I think she was more upset about the lies than about finding out after he died that she had no money.”

Bernie sighed. “I think she was just afraid to get hurt again.”

Carrie sat back in her chair, stunned. “I can’t imagine Eleanor being afraid of anything.”

As if on cue, Eleanor walked back into the meeting and sat in her chair. “We’ve been asked to donate some quilts to the fire department, if anyone’s interested,” she said. “They find it very helpful to have warm quilts waiting for a family watching their house go up in flames.”

We all nodded and murmured our willingness to participate. But Kennette sat up and looked straight at Eleanor. “I think it’s wonderful that you have a date with Oliver White. I think he’s a fascinating man, and he clearly has great taste.” She looked around the room. “We all think it’s wonderful.”

Each member of the quilt club sat silent in her chair, waiting for Eleanor’s reaction. But before she could say anything, Kennette spoke again.

“But that’s not what we’re here to talk about,” she said, “so I was wondering if you ladies could help me choose a pattern for my first quilt?”

Having a new quilter in the group broke the tension. Bernie jumped up and headed to the rack to choose a quilt book. The rest of the women scattered throughout the shop, looking for the simplest patterns. Kennette got up and wandered around, examining the finished quilts that hung around the shop with the same dreamy attention she seemed to give everything.

Eleanor and I stayed in our seats but said nothing. What was there to say? Kennette had gracefully opened the topic and then closed it. I wondered if Eleanor was as relieved as I was.

“That one,” Kennette said, pointing to a blue and white quilt Maggie had made.

“It’s called a drunkard’s path,” my grandmother told her. “It’s simple enough, I suppose, but it’s all curves.”

A drunkard’s path quilt is made by repeating one simple block, a square with a quarter circle of a different color sewn into one corner. By repeating this block and moving the squares the quilt develops a zigzaggy look. Maggie once told me that the pattern went by many names, but during the beginnings of the temperance movement, in the late 1800s, it was renamed drunkard’s path. And it was easy to see why. The undulating effect of the semicircles did sort of remind me of a drunk staggering home.

“I like it. It feels playful,” Kennette declared. The rest of us walked over to the quilt and stared at it.

“It does feel playful,” Bernie agreed. “I never really thought about it. I guess it’s because I hate curves.”

“Nothing to them,” Maggie said. “A little more work maybe, but Kennette’s up to the task, aren’t you?”

Kennette beamed at the praise. “With help,” she said.

“You have said the magic words,” I laughed. “You’re going to get more help than you know what to do with.”

And, just as I predicted, the rest of the meeting was taken up with helping to choose the right fabrics for the quilt. Kennette quickly found a bold purple paisley that she loved. Though the pattern was too large and busy for the small drunkard’s path blocks, it was the perfect backing to the quilt—and the inspiration for the other fabrics. The group spread out to find light yellows, creams, and whites for the square part of the blocks and purples and blues for the quarter circles.

Then, using the acrylic templates my grandmother sold in the shop, Susanne showed Kennette how to cut the two pattern pieces.

Next Natalie showed her how to cut slits in the curve’s seam allowances to create more give and, she explained, “To make the block lay smooth.”

Once dozens of block pieces had been cut, Carrie used one of the shop’s sewing machines to help Kennette sew them together.

We all got so carried away in the excitement that we forgot about anything else. Susanne and I cut out the rest of the blocks, while Maggie, Eleanor, and Kennette sewed them together. Carrie and Bernie carefully pressed each block, and Natalie placed them on the design wall.

By eleven that night we had all Kennette’s blocks sewn and ready to be pieced together to make a quilt top.

“It’s amazing!” Kennette was almost in tears. “I can’t believe you guys did this.”

“You did it too,” Carrie said.

Kennette nodded. “I can’t wait to finish it.”

“Don’t get so caught up in the end result that you miss out on the fun along the way,” Maggie warned. “The real joy of quilting is in the process.”