The Beach Quilt (3 page)

While her friend Adelaide was drinking tea and chatting with her husband, Cindy Bauer was settling in after a visit with Mr. Downing. Sarah had gone off somewhere with Justin; she had left a note, as she always did, saying she would be sure to be home for dinner. Stevie was in her room. And Joe had gone out to his workshop.

The drive to and from Ben Downing's had been treacherous at times, and Cindy was very happy to be home. She was terrified of an accident ever since she had fallen on a patch of ice a few years before and sprained her right ankle. The injury had kept her on crutches for a month. She had felt bad about having to rely so much on Joe and the kids while she was recovering. She took her duties as a wife and mother very seriously; to shirk them for a lesser reason than a sprained ankle would have been impossible to imagine.

Cindy was thirty-eight years old. At five feet two inches, she was a comfortable-looking woman with curly brown hair, wide blue eyes, and a ready smile. Like her older daughter, Sarah, she cared little for fashion, but she put some care into her wardrobe given the fact that she worked at Adelaide's shop and was expected to project a professional image. For Cindy, that meant chinos worn with button-down blouses; cardigans in bright colors; and skirts that came to mid-calf.

Joe Bauer was tall and wiry; both of his daughters took after him in that. His eyes were large and brown; his hair was just beginning to thin and a few strands of gray had only just appeared by his temples. He had a quiet, diffident manner; some people might think he was antisocial, but really he was just private and a bit shy. While much respected in the community, he could count his close friends on half of one hand. His father had been the same. Everybody had liked him but hardly anybody other than his wife had known him. Also like his father, Joe was deeply devoted to his wife and children.

He was just about to turn forty-two, and while he was as slim and as strong as he had been in high school, years of working as a contractor in often brutal weather conditions had left his face lined and his hands scarred. But that was nothing against the fact that for eighteen years his business had grown and sometimes even flourished. Cindy was terribly proud of the fact that he had taught himself almost everything he knew, and what he had had to learn he had learned from watching those who had come before him—his father, an uncle, older men on the job.

Cindy and Joe had married when she was only eighteen and he twenty-two. Twenty years later, Cindy still loved her husband from the bottom of her heart and felt blessed to have met him. Joe was largely alone in the world, but for Cindy and the girls. His parents had died before Sarah was born. His only sibling, a brother named Jonas, and his sister-in-law Marie lived in Chicago. They had no children. Joe had a distant set of cousins in Brunswick; that was the extent of the Bauer family.

Cindy put the kettle on to boil and took a tea bag from a tin in the small pantry. She was very aware of the fact that she had nothing about which to complain and only a very few things to regret. The fact that she had not gone to college was one. Encouraging their only child to pursue a higher education just hadn't been a priority for Cindy's parents. She was a great reader and so in some sense self-taught, though occasionally she would come across a reference to a book or a historical event or maybe even a phrase in Latin or French or German, something whose meaning escaped her, and she would feel frustrated. Nobody knew everything, of course. Still, every now and again Cindy wished she had taken it upon herself to get a degree. Maybe when the girls had finished their schooling, she would venture back to the classroom.

Well, Cindy thought with some pride, as she poured boiling water into a cup, she might not know Latin, but she
could
stitch a gorgeous quilt. She had learned the art from her mother, who had learned from her mother, who had learned from her mother. Unfortunately, neither Sarah nor Stevie had shown much interest in learning how to quilt, but Stevie
was
an expert with a sewing machine as well as with a needle and clearly had a strong artistic bent. If only Cindy could urge her to add quilting to her repertoire.

Cindy's most cherished possessions were two quilts made by her great-grandmother. The larger quilt was a hexagon quilt. The smaller was in the tradition of the Victorian crazy quilt. Cindy had had them framed behind glass for their preservation. One was mounted in the living room, the other, in Cindy and Joe's bedroom.

It was just too bad that her mother couldn't see them have pride of place. Margie Keller, with whom Cindy had been very close, had passed away when Sarah was only seven. It was cancer, already advanced when discovered, and fast moving. Within five months of her diagnosis, she was gone. Some might call that a blessing. Cindy called it unfair, even cruel, but there would have been no point in complaining.

Her father, Mick, was remarried to a woman in her mid forties, widowed, with two teenage children. They lived up near Augusta. Cindy had not seen him since his wedding three years before. They talked on the phone at Christmas and on his birthday—Cindy was the one who called—and May, his wife, e-mailed an occasional photo of Mick on his riding mower or raking leaves or of the two of them posing in front of a perfectly frosted birthday cake. May had one of those determined-looking faces; to Cindy, her smile seemed bent on proving to all challengers that everything in her world was perfect. But maybe that was all in Cindy's mind. Her feelings about her father having married again were complicated.

Cindy looked toward the ceiling. She thought she had heard a thump. Probably just Stevie's cat, Clarissa, being her acrobatic self. One thing Cindy didn't mind about winter was the amount of time she could spend at home with her family. The Busy Bee was opened only two or three days a week from mid-October through December. Like many local businesses, it closed for the month of January and reopened again with limited hours in February. Once The Busy Bee reopened
full
time in late May, she would be spending an awful lot of hours there. But, truth be told, she loved every inch of the place and her personal mark was everywhere to be seen. Almost from the shop's grand opening, Cindy had helped design and update the layout, refresh the stock to meet new needs among the quilting community, and come up with clever marketing schemes.

In short, The Busy Bee was Cindy's home away from home, from its racks of pattern books to the two quilt frames in constant readiness. Cindy led workshops focusing on the basic craft and various techniques for beginners and advanced quilters. Adelaide delivered lectures about the history of quilts and quilting in the United States, improvements over time (like the availability of patterns in books and magazines), and current trends, like the rise in popularity of the modern quilt. A particularly popular lecture focused on Civil War women using their quilts as a means to deliver antislavery messages. Both workshops and lectures were usually well attended, mostly by locals, but also by women from towns as far away as Portland and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In the summer, the workshops also attracted a few vacationers, women who announced with some pride that they just couldn't stand being away from their own quilting projects and community for an entire week.

The shop sold a variety of fabrics, threads, and needles, as well as books of quilt patterns and magazines devoted to the art of quilting and needlework. Occasionally, they sold an antique quilt Cindy had carefully restored and cleaned; more commonly the shop offered quilts made by contemporary quilters. Customers generally fell into two distinct categories: They were either die-hard quilt collectors and quilting fanatics or summer visitors browsing for pretty, locally made gifts to take home to mothers and sisters and neighbors—little sachets stuffed with fragrant pine and balsam needles, handcrafted soaps, and hand-stitched tea towels. Adelaide was currently working to expand the store's Web site so that they would be able to do more online business during the long and thus far unprofitable winter months.

Cindy heard the back door open and shut. It was Joe, in from his workshop. She smiled when he came into the kitchen.

“I was thinking about making a meatloaf for dinner,” she said.

Joe smiled back at her. “Anything you make will be just fine, Cindy. You're the best cook there is.”

“Don't you just love the mall?” Cordelia asked.

She did not expect an enthusiastic response from Sarah, and she didn't get one. Sarah just shrugged. Stevie proved more of a fan. “I like the people watching,” she said. “You can see some really odd behavior, if you're lucky.”

“And the shopping is good, too, right?”

“Some of it,” Stevie admitted. “A lot of it is just boring mass-produced stuff everyone else has.”

Cordelia couldn't argue with that. Still, very few things made her happier than being at the mall, even if she didn't have a lot of money to spend.

The weather had improved a notch over the past two weeks, but that didn't mean it was going to stay improved. But for now the roads were clear enough for even the most nervous of drivers to venture out on journeys of pleasure. An intrepid driver, Mrs. Kane had dropped the girls—Cordelia, Sarah, and Stevie—at the mall in South Portland while she went to visit a woman who had contacted her about some old quilts she had to sell. She had promised to be back in an hour.

Stevie went off to meet her friends in the food court. Cordelia didn't know Sarah's little sister all that well, but she liked her. She didn't seem like a typical thirteen-year-old. For one, Stevie was really interested in art, and she used her clothing, and jewelry, and makeup and hair dye (in bright colors like acid green and peacock blue) as a form of artistic expression. That was probably why she found a lot of the stuff for sale at the mall boring. Luckily, Stevie shared her mother's skill with a needle and thread and so she was able to make a lot of her funkier clothing, stuff that would have cost a fortune if you could even
find
it in Maine.

Stevie was even skinnier than her sister though she ate enough for three teenage boys. (This drove Cordelia crazy about the Bauer sisters.) Her eyes were blue and her hair—when in its natural state—was much darker brown than Sarah's. Cordelia's mom had described Stevie as “striking.” Cordelia agreed and thought this might partly be due to the intensity of her personality. You got the distinct feeling that an awful lot was going on in Stevie Bauer's head, much more than just a concern with outrageous hair dye.

Oh, and then there was Stevie's cat. Clarissa was one of those uncanny beasts, the kind of cat that made Cordelia (and a lot of other people) nervous. She had a look about her that made you suspect she was going to break into human speech at any moment and predict your future or something. Stevie and Clarissa were mostly inseparable, like a good witch and her familiar. The only reason Clarissa wasn't with her now, at the mall, was that Clarissa didn't care for traveling in cars or on buses.

With Stevie off to meet her friends, Cordelia dragged Sarah (literally, her hand on Sarah's elbow) into one of those determinedly hip stores, complete with dim lighting (Sarah tripped the moment she passed the threshold), wall-sized photos of gorgeous young men and women in little or no clothing (“But doesn't this store want to sell its
clothing
?” Sarah asked), and unbearably loud dance music.

“Um, Earth to Sarah?” Cordelia shouted. “Are you okay?”

Sarah startled and looked at Cordelia almost as if she was surprised to see her. “Oh,” she said. “Yeah. I'm fine.”

“You looked like you were a million miles away.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“So, what I was saying was,” Cordelia said, continuing to shout, “isn't this T-shirt awesome?”

“I guess.”

Cordelia sighed and returned the T-shirt to the pile of similar shirts. “Well, it's my own fault for asking. I don't think you've ever found any piece of clothing awesome.”

Sarah managed a smile. “Guilty as charged. I mean, it's only a T-shirt. It doesn't seem to justify such a serious adjective. The night sky is awesome. The ocean during a storm is awesome. The laws of physics are awesome. God, if you believe in one, is awesome.”

“Well, I think a T-shirt can be awesome.”

“If we're going to have a real conversation, can we please get out of here? I think I'm going deaf.”

Cordelia sighed (she wasn't really annoyed; the music was getting to her, too) and taking Sarah's hand, led her through the maze of clothing racks and highly self-conscious teenage boys and girls, and out into the brightly lit mall.

“Deaf and blind,” Sarah said, blinking.

“They're trying to create a mood,” Cordelia explained. “An atmosphere.”

“Oh, I get that. It's just an atmosphere I could do without.”

“Well, I'm not thrilled with the music, either,” Cordelia admitted. “But I like the clothes.”

“Aren't they way overpriced?”

Cordelia frowned. “Yeah. That's why I never buy anything there.”

“Then why do you even bother to go in?” Sarah asked.

Cordelia sighed. Sarah had absolutely no concept of the joys of shopping. “You're not quite normal, you know that?” she said with a smile.

Sarah shrugged. “Maybe. Let's go to the Hallmark store. My dad's birthday is coming up. I need to get him a card.”

Cordelia agreed. The Hallmark store sometimes had cute, inexpensive jewelry.

It was funny, Cordelia thought, as they walked through the mall, how she and Sarah had so little in common but how they got along so well. Ever since the day they had first met, back when they were little girls, they had been the best of friends. It was probably a case of opposites attracting. Cordelia wasn't at all sure that would work in a romantic relationship (no matter that old cliché, and no matter Sarah and Justin!) but in a friendship, it seemed to work just fine.

Once in the store, Sarah hunted for the birthday cards while Cordelia scanned what she called the “fun stuff.” A few minutes later, Sarah rejoined her, a card and envelope in hand.

“Oh, my God, Sarah,” Cordelia cried. “Look at this pair of earrings! They're awesome!”

Sarah shook her head. “Awesome? They're just little plastic owls.”

Cordelia nodded. “Yeah. And they're totally
awesome
.”

“Okay,” Sarah said. “You win.”