How to Make an American Quilt (10 page)

T
HE EARTH
, as Preston would say, occasionally resembles an extraterrestrial location or two. Just look at the Sahara or, if you wish to remain closer to home, Death Valley. The sand beneath his feet in the high California desert of Joshua Tree feels like lunar dust. And only someone lacking all imagination could fail to see how easily the red moonscape of the painted Sonoran Desert could be taken for Mars. And since the earth contains many of these odd plains, one only has to perform a quick leap of the mind to see that to travel the world studying rocks is to stroll the galaxy.

Perhaps it is in this spirit that Preston whispers to Sophia, as he holds her in the chilled water, about an odd-shaped asteroid called Eros that orbits the sun by falling over itself, end to end, being only fifteen miles long and five miles wide. Since it is relatively thin—four and a half miles thick—one could walk to the edge and look into the night sky at the stars and the heavens above and below. It would be a good idea, he says, to grip the edge when looking over the side.

He presses her flush against the stone wall with his heavy, clothed body. Now he is running his hand along the inside of her thighs, splitting her legs apart, nestling his body between them. Sophia thinks she will lose her breath forever, will drown and not care, will always have this sensation of inner heat and outer cold. He cradles her against the quarry rock. She trembles in his arms. She knows what she will say and without hesitation. Yes.

And all this is permitted because the quarry belongs to her.

Suddenly, she imagines walking with Preston along Eros, the star-filled sky glittering all around them as she tries to defy the mysterious drawing power of looking over the edge. She knows her father would take a chance, take in the view as her mother lingered behind.

P
RESTON IS WRINGING OUT
his shirt and pants. Sophia cannot look at him, though his boxer shorts are not that different from the swimsuit he was wearing yesterday as they sat at the pool. Her dress is back on, the water from her bra and panties bleeding through it, leaving large wet spots across her chest, hips, and stomach.

“If we sit here the air will dry us,” says Preston.

“I just don’t see how I can explain this to my mother.”

“Look, if we are dry when we go back she won’t know.”

Sophia stares at him. “Are you kidding? Look at your clothes. Look at my face.” He catches her eye, and for a moment neither one looks away.

“It’ll be all right,” he says. “Look.” He picks up a cloudy piece of quartz, palms it in his hand. “This is all right angles and planes. If I were to break this quartz it would crack along a proscribed plane. It’s called cleavage.” He passes the quartz over to Sophia. Leaning back on his elbows, he continues, “That would be different from a fracture because a fracture is a random break. And parting is more like splitting twins apart.”

As he lays out his clothes, he is reliving in his mind the moment of holding Sophia, her singular flavor when he kissed her. The fishy smell of her lake-drenched skin. He watches her in the gathering shadows with her dirt-caked feet and water-mottled dress, overwhelmed with a desire to keep her with him always.
We hardly know each other
, he marvels. “Sophia Darling,” he says as he leans down to touch her shoulder, “I won’t forsake you.”

She looks up, weighing his words, testing their strength as if they are a bridge to cross, and shakes her head. “You know nothing about me.”

“You’d be so nice,”
he sings.
“You’d be paradise, to come home to and love.”

It was unexpected that Preston would sing to comfort her. She wonders if perhaps he is meant for her, that he came for her across
the years of their lives, to compensate for the loss of her father, and be the man who will stay.

P
RESTON SAYS THIS
to Sophia: The sun was formed from broken stars. Our earth, its plants, and even us, are the product of the same clouds of gas and dust. You could say that we are born from stardust. He stops, then: One more thing about partings; no two are alike.

T
HEIR CLOTHES DRY
, Preston hoists her in his arms (her dress falling back to expose her legs) and carries her back up the trail.

“Put me down,” she laughs, “you’ll hurt yourself.” But he ignores her warnings, keeps her aloft. “Come on,” she insists, but he continues carrying her, singing “Stardust,” “As Time Goes By,” and “My Man,” which he prefaces by saying, “I’ll pretend I am you singing to me,” and lifts his voice to a high girlish falsetto.

Sophia crosses her arms and grows silent. “You’ll put your back out.”

“Light as a feather, baby, you are.”

“Then why are you puffing and sweating?”

“Because I’m a man.” The word
man
comes out deep and resonant.

She laughs.

“Now,”
he sings,
“I am only going to sing my conversation to you for the rest of the evening.”

So for the remainder of their trip back to the car, Preston sings all his questions and answers to Sophia, who responds by taking his face in her hands and kissing his mouth.
“Feel free to join me,”
he sings at one point.

Sophia steps into the unlit house just ahead of Preston. Her mother sits waiting in the dark living room. As Sophia turns on the
light, Mrs. Darling’s glance misses nothing, from the absence of makeup on her daughter’s face to the rumpled condition of Preston’s clothes. The brush of his hand across Sophia’s. All she says is “Do you love my daughter?”

“No,” Sophia answers quickly, while Preston’s voice smothers hers with his own reply. “Actually, Mrs. Darling, I do,” causing Sophia to state again, emphatically, No!

Mrs. Darling sighs, slouches in her chair, and muses—to herself exclusively, it seems—“Then what is to be done?” It is not really so much a question as a meditation. “You aren’t from around here, are you?” asks Mrs. Darling.

“No,” replies Preston. “I’m still in college in Arizona. But I can take her with me.”

Mrs. Darling turns from the couple and gazes out the darkened window into the Grasse night, then looks back in anger. “Is that supposed to comfort me? That you’ll take my only child?” There is an odd sort of amazement in her voice. “I shall be left.” Her fist goes to her mouth. “I shall be alone.”

“I love her,” is all Preston can say. Then, “I think I may even need her.”