Apart at the Seams (11 page)

I smiled. “Definitely.” I gave her a hug and then rushed out the door, hurrying home to my son.

T
he fitness instructor was named Tiffany. What a surprise.

She was five foot six and blond and had a waist measurement that matched her age, both of which I judged to be about twenty-three. Except for the ample amount concentrated in her chest, she had not an ounce of fat on her body. She wore a headset with a black microphone that extended from a wire and hovered in front of her mouth like a fat, lazy housefly.

“Woo-hoo! Yeah!” she whooped, bouncing to the beat of the bongos. “Let's pick up the pace, ladies! Bikini season is almost here! C'mon, Gayla! Right knee, left knee, double jump! That's it! You can do it!”

I raised my right knee and then my left but skipped the double jump, taking a moment to catch my breath and loathe Tiffany.

How did she presume to know what I could and couldn't do? At her age, how did she presume to know
anything?
But I hoped she knew a few things, like CPR. Or how to dial 911. Another two minutes of this and I was going to have a heart attack. Dear God! Who had decided to put this skinny little girl with the big mouth and the big boobs in charge? She was a chit. An embryo. I had sweaters older than her!

I wished she would swallow her microphone. I wished she would fall and break her leg. Not really. But I wished I could find the idiot who invented Zumba and sue him for my pain and suffering. Or at least for my public humiliation, which was even greater.

The first thing I decided to do with my summer sabbatical was join the gym. Strictly speaking, this didn't qualify as a new experience for me. I had joined gyms before—often—but joining was usually about as far as I got. Especially in the years since I'd put out my shingle, my commitment to personal fitness has wavered somewhere between shallow and nonexistent. I know it's important, but so are a lot of things, and since my weight has remained pretty consistent over the years, I hadn't thought too much about working out. Not until yesterday, when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror while I was changing my sweater. Somehow, while I was busy being so busy, my muffin top had spilled over the waistband of my jeans and become a cake. It wasn't pretty.

So back to the gym I went, as I had so often before. But this time would be different. This time I'd actually work out, not just fill in the paperwork and write the check. And this time, in keeping with the theme of my sabbatical, instead of listlessly walking on the treadmill, I would take classes, try something new and different. There were plenty to choose from: yoga, Pilates, and group cycling, as well as classes with more intriguing names like Tabata, Muscle Max (which sounded both intriguing and painful), and, of course, Zumba!

The brochure said that it utilized “hypnotic” Latin rhythms and dance movements that would zap the calories and further promised that Zumba would make me think I was “at a party . . . not at the gym!”

The idea of going to a party instead of the gym sounded good to me, and since I had once bought a Jane Fonda video back in the day, I decided that Zumba was the way to go. And it might have been, if not for the trampolines.

Yes, you heard me right—trampolines.

Every person in Tiffany's class had his or her own individual trampoline, about eighteen inches in diameter, upon which we were expected to dance and bounce to these “hypnotic Latin rhythms” and, somehow, not fall off. I'm sure that's somebody's idea of a party, but not mine. My ancestors came from Scotland, Belgium, and Norway. I'm certainly proud of my heritage, but traditionally, we are not people known for busting a move. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the phrase “frog in a blender” was invented as a specific reference to my people.

While I jerked, stumbled, bumbled, and gasped for breath, Tiffany and the others bounced, whooped, and swiveled their hips in a way that, when I was in school, would have gotten you expelled from the junior high dance.

It was awful and made more so by the fact that, since it was my first time, Tiffany had insisted on moving me to the front of the class where she could “keep an eye on me.” Right. She and everyone else. There were mirrors everywhere, and when I looked into them—it was impossible not to—not only did I see myself sweating, red faced, and flailing two and a half beats behind the music; I saw the faces of the other students, trying to pretend they weren't looking at me and weren't about to burst out laughing. On top of everything else, my heart was having its own little dance party, a rumba.

I was gasping. I was sweating.

When the music transitioned to a song that was even louder and faster and Tiffany shouted, “Good job! Great warm-up, gang! Now let's pick up the pace and really go for it!” I thought I would die, or maybe I just wished I would.

While Tiffany scolded me for having “gringa hips,” I tried to give myself a pep talk.

I could do this. All I had to do was get through the rest of the class; that was all. After that, I'd never have to take Zumba or touch another trampoline for as long as I lived, but right now, I just had to keep up and keep going. This had been a mistake, but I couldn't quit, not now. I'd never quit anything in my life. Never. No matter how much I despised it. Not once in my entire life.

Which meant that quitting would be a new experience. . . .

My face split into a grin as the implications of this realization became apparent to me, that just because I hadn't quit before didn't mean I couldn't now and that, contrary to the mantras I had memorized in childhood, quitting doesn't necessarily make you a “quitter”—especially if the thing you are quitting is something you absolutely do not and never will enjoy and that just might end up putting you in the hospital. In that instance, quitting wasn't a character flaw. If anything, it was a sign of intelligence and maturity.

Yes! That was it! I wasn't a quitter; I was a grown-up.

Tiffany let out a “woo-hoo!” so everybody would know how much fun they were having. Everyone waggled their Latin hips and “woo-hooed” back—the suck-ups. Everyone except me.

I dropped my arms to my sides and stopped what I was doing, right between “cha” and “cha.” I stepped off the trampoline, grabbed my towel, and limped to the door. When I glanced in the mirror, I saw a look of confusion cross Tiffany's face.

“Gayla? Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“Getting a drink of water?”

“Yes.”

“Then coming right back?”

I threw the towel over my shoulder.

“No.”

 

My elation over quitting was short-lived, lasting just as long as it took me to down two of those little paper cones of water and collapse onto the bench in the ladies' locker room.

“Ohhhhh,” I moaned, bending down and letting my arms dangle to the floor, too exhausted to move. “Kill me now.”

The metallic clang of a locker door and the sound of laughter startled me into a sitting position. A woman with wet hair and a smile on her face poked her head around a bank of lockers.

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn't realize anyone else was in here.”

“You all right?”

I nodded and mopped the sweat off my forehead and neck with a towel. “I'm fine. It's just that I haven't darkened the door of a gym since the Reagan administration, and for reasons beyond comprehension, I decided to give Zumba a try.”

“How was it?” she asked, doing up the buttons on her blouse.

“The longest eight minutes of my life.”

She laughed again and sat down on the bench next to me. “I'm Tessa Woodruff.”

“Gayla Oliver,” I responded. “Nice to meet you.”

She retrieved a pair of tennis shoes from under the bench and started putting them on. “So what possessed you to try Zumba your first time out?”

“I think it was a mixture of audacity and stupidity,” I said, bending down to untie my own shoes. “Also, it was just something new. I'm trying a little experiment.”

“What kind of experiment?”

She looked genuinely interested, and so—leaving out the parts about Brian's memo, his affair, and my emotional meltdown—I told her about the weekend cottage I so rarely found the time to enjoy, my plans for the summer, the sabbatical, my quest for new experiences, and how it was coming so far. She listened intently, chuckling when I told her about getting carried away with the rototiller.

“That's a terrific idea,” she said, giving every appearance of sincerity. “Seriously, I think more people ought to take a sabbatical. We all get so wrapped up in our routines and activities that sometimes I think we mistake activity for accomplishment. We forget that life is meant to be
lived,
not just endured.”

She told me about how she and her husband, a former accountant, spent years living in Boston and doing work they hated, not realizing until after their son went to college that what they both wanted was a simpler existence, to live in a small town where he could farm and she could open a little shop to sell soaps and lotions made from herbs she grew herself. Their idea was good, but their timing couldn't have been worse. Like me, they had gone into business just before the economic tsunami. Her shop hadn't made it, and they'd nearly lost the farm, too, but things were better now. She was still growing herbs and producing soaps, lotions, and shampoos, but now in miniature sizes, selling them to boutique hotel chains that wanted unique bath amenities for their guests.

“Let me tell you,” she said as she put her arms through the sleeves of her blue cardigan, “it was scary for a while there, but it all worked out in the end. You know, even if it hadn't, I think I still would have been glad that we tried. Anyway, I think your sabbatical idea is brilliant. I really do.” She stood up and started stuffing her workout gear into a bag.

“We'll see. I've only been at it for a day and a half. I'm kind of wondering how many new experiences there are to be had around here.”

She lifted her head and stared at me. “In New Bern? Are you kidding?”

I blushed, concerned that I'd offended her.

“I didn't mean it that way. It's just that, there's so much to do in New York . . . the theater, the museums. And then there are all the restaurants, the shopping.”

Tessa settled the straps of her workout bag onto her shoulder and then paused, giving me an appraising look.

“Do you want to go to the Blue Bean and grab a cup of coffee?”

Coffee? After talking to me for five minutes she was inviting me to go for coffee? I hardly knew her.

But she did seem nice, really genuine, and after so many days on my own, it might be nice to talk to somebody. And the Blue Bean served great lattes. If I ordered something other than my usual medium, skim-milk, double-shot, extra-foam latte, it would count as a new experience, right? On the other hand, just showing up would count as a new experience, too—I'd never had coffee with a stranger. It might be fun. And if it turned out that Tessa Woodruff wasn't as nice as she appeared to be, then no big deal. It was only coffee. So why not take the chance?

“It'll take me about ten minutes to shower and change.”

“Perfect! That's exactly how much time I'll need to dry my hair.”

F
or the first time since my hasty flight to New Bern, the sun was out. So were the people.

The benches near the courthouse were occupied by men and women in suits with jackets removed, attorneys or clerks or perhaps jurors, taking advantage of the lunch hour to get some fresh air. The doors to several of the retail establishments were ajar, and shopkeepers stood on the thresholds, their faces turned toward the sun, soaking in the rays like flowers long deprived of light.

As we walked up Commerce Street toward the Blue Bean, Tessa informed me that the fine weather was supposed to be with us at least through the weekend. “At least that's what the weather report said. You picked the right week to put in a garden.”

The Blue Bean Coffee Shop and Bakery stands on the corner of Commerce and Maple. As we got closer, I caught an irresistible whiff of cinnamon and baking butter and realized that my appetite had returned with a vengeance. If I ever hoped to banish the bulge from my waistline, giving in to the siren song of a freshly baked cinnamon roll was the last thing I should be doing, but the smell was too tempting to resist. One wouldn't kill me, would it? I could start dieting tomorrow. And I
had
gone to the gym that morning. After eight minutes of Zumba agony, surely I deserved a treat.

I had nearly justified my fall from nutritional grace in my mind when, only yards from the door of the Blue Bean, Tessa took a right turn into a cobblestone-paved alley.

“Where are you going?”

“I just want to pop into the quilt shop for a minute. I'm out of gray thread.”

“New Bern has a quilt shop?”

Tessa turned to me with a bemused expression. “Cobbled Court Quilts. You've never heard of it? How long did you say you've lived here?”

“Three years. But we've never really lived here. We just come up on weekends, and not all that often,” I said, trying to explain my ignorance to Tessa, who continued to look at me as if she was wondering if I walked through life with my eyes closed. “I've walked by this alley, of course, but never walked down it. I figured it was all just offices. I mean, who'd be crazy enough to open a retail business down here?”

“Evelyn Dixon would,” Tessa said with a laugh. “Everybody thought she was crazy when she started out. The alley is too narrow for cars, so there's no place to park, and there's almost zero walk-by traffic. A lot of people never realize there is anything interesting down here, just like you did. But once people find Cobbled Court Quilts, they become customers for life. Evelyn has a lot to do with that. She probably is a little crazy, but in all the right ways. People love her.

“Also, there's just something about this place. It's so quiet and quaint. From a purely practical standpoint, it
is
a terrible location,” Tessa admitted, “but for some reason, this turns out to be the perfect spot for a quilt shop. Whenever I come down this alley and walk into the courtyard, I feel like I've entered a simpler and less cynical age.”

She was right about that. As we got to the end of the alley and entered a wide cobblestone courtyard, tucked away from the noise and bustle of Commerce Street, I, too, had a sense of going back in time. With its red-painted door, bowfront window where a fat tabby cat snoozed among a display of blue and yellow floral fabrics, and flower boxes newly planted with cheerful-faced pansies to match the window display, Cobbled Court Quilts was the definition of quaint. Quaint but impractical.

Probably the rent was cheaper here than in the Commerce Street storefronts, but even so, I couldn't imagine how they stayed in business. Maybe Tessa was right—maybe finding this quaint little quilt shop was worth the effort, but how many people would be willing to undergo that effort? And seriously, how many quilters could there be in a town the size of New Bern?

When Tessa opened the red door, we were greeted by the sound of raucous laughter. Actually, it was more like cackling than laughing, coming from a knot of five women who were clustered around another woman, who seemed to be showing the others something that they all found utterly hilarious. But when the bunch of little bells that were tied to the door jingled to announce our arrival, their laughter subsided. Six beaming faces turned in our direction and cried out, “Tessa!”

Tessa introduced me to Evelyn Dixon, the owner; Margot Matthews, who worked in the shop; and Virginia, Evelyn's mother, who taught quilting and was the owner of the cat I'd seen curled in the window. She also introduced me to Ivy Peterman, another shop employee, whose eyes darted immediately in my direction when Tessa said my name but who wouldn't make eye contact when she shook my hand. Strange girl.

Next I met Abigail Spaulding, who I soon came to realize owned a lot of the rest of New Bern, and Madelyn Beecher, who had grown up in New Bern with Tessa, moved to New York, and returned a few years before to . . .

“Open the Beecher Cottage Inn,” I said, finishing Tessa's sentence for her. I turned to Madelyn. “You probably don't remember, but my husband and I stayed with you on our very first trip to New Bern.”

“I remember you. Your husband is British, has a very posh accent. You came in the fall. Two years ago? No,” she corrected herself. “It was three. You bought the cottage next to Dan Kelleher.”

“You've got an amazing memory.”

“It's a small town,” she said, dismissing the compliment. “There aren't many people who come for a weekend and end up buying a house the same day. I wondered what happened to you. Once you bought the cottage I supposed I might run into you again but never did.”

“Well,” I said apologetically, “we had good intentions of coming up every weekend, but it didn't work out that way. Never enough time; you know how it is.”

Tessa placed her hand on my shoulder. “Gayla is spending the summer in New Bern, undertaking a very interesting project. Go ahead,” she prompted. “Tell them about it.”

“Oh . . . ,” I said, feeling awkward and put on the spot. “I'm taking a sabbatical.”

“So you're a professor? How fortunate for you,” Abigail said without giving me time to correct her. “How I wish
I
could take a sabbatical. It must be such a pleasure to just take some time for yourself now and then.”

Ivy, the youngest of the group, who looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties, rolled her eyes. “Abigail, you just got back from two months in Bermuda. What exactly do you need a sabbatical
from?
”

“From all this travel,” she replied without a trace of irony, as though the answer should be obvious to anyone. “The packing, the unpacking, the itineraries, the lines at airport security, those horrible X-ray machines. I don't care what the government says; I'm sure they're just exuding radiation. Travel used to be such an elegant adventure. Now . . .” She lifted her hands in a hopeless gesture. “Simply exhausting.”

Evelyn and her mother, Virginia, smiled and exchanged knowing glances. They clearly had Abigail's number. So did I—sort of.

Manhattan is crawling with Abigails: eccentric, grande dame types, opinionated, very used to getting their way, and very rich. Old money. I could tell by the diamonds in her ears—modestly sized, but perfectly matched and flawless. New money likes bigger stones, more bling. But there was something about her that didn't quite fit the stereotype. For one thing, what was she doing in a quilt shop? Society matron types don't usually go in for that kind of thing. She was definitely a character, an intriguing one.

“And of course,” Abigail continued, “there are all the things I have to crowd into my schedule when Franklin and I
are
in New Bern. Do you know that we have a dinner scheduled every night this week? And trying to coordinate our calendars has become a Herculean task. Everyone is so overscheduled these days. It used to be that when you asked how someone was, they said, ‘Fine.' Now the answer is ‘Busy.' Everyone I know lives in a state of incessant busyness.” She sighed dramatically. “How I long for a simple evening at home in front of the fire and a home-cooked meal. . . .”

Evelyn shot another glance at her mother. “But, Abbie,” she said, “you don't cook.”

“No, but Hilda does. After a fashion.” Abigail turned to fill me in. “Hilda is my housekeeper. She's really not much at cooking, or ironing either, come to think of it. But her tuna noodle casserole is divine.”

Ivy's eyes went wide. “
You
like tuna noodle casserole?”

Abigail drew her shoulders back and raised her chin to an offended angle. “Is that so surprising? Now and again, we all crave the comforts of childhood and a simpler existence, don't we? A break from our harried existence? You know,” she said, giving them a look that was simultaneously haughty and hurt, “I may not work for a salary the way all of you do, but that doesn't mean I don't
work
. I have responsibilities, you know. . . .”

The tall blonde with the pretty blue eyes, Margot, tsked her tongue and put an arm over the older woman's shoulders.

“Of course you do. All the boards you sit on, the charities you support. New Bern wouldn't be the same without you, Abigail. Everyone in town knows that.”

Abigail smiled benevolently. “I do what I can.”

“Yes, we know. You're very generous,” Tessa said quickly, bringing the conversational tangent to an abrupt end.

Abigail set her lips into a disapproving line and lifted one perfectly tweezed eyebrow, annoyed that Tessa had interrupted her interruption.

“Gayla didn't get a chance to tell you what she's going to
do
with her sabbatical,” Tessa said. “She's going to spend it trying new experiences. Isn't that great?”

Though the others looked vaguely interested in the idea, they didn't seem to find it quite as intriguing as Tessa did. But they laughed when she told them about my disastrous attempt at Zumba. Virginia, who looked to be in her mid-eighties, told me that she went to the gym three times a week and said I'd be most welcome to join the “Ageless Wonders” class.

“It's not as tame as it sounds. Look at this!” she exclaimed, then rolled up her sleeve and flexed her arm, summoning a distinct knot of muscle from beneath the freckled flesh of her biceps.

“Pretty impressive,” I said.

Virginia rolled down her sleeve. “You are looking at the Cobbled Court Arm Wrestling Champion.”

“Don't challenge her to a match,” Margot said soberly. “Or if you do, don't play for money.”

Tessa told them more about my exploits, making them sound far nobler than they were. She didn't know that the idea of a sabbatical was born, not from nobility but from a desperate attempt to salvage my sanity. But she didn't need to know that, did she?

“Anyway,” Tessa said after she finished telling them about my other adventures, “I was thinking that maybe this is something
we
could try, all of us together. Kind of a summer project.”

Evelyn, who had moved behind the counter during the discussion and was folding a pile of fabric into tidy little squares, gave her a doubtful glance.

“It's a nice idea, Tessa, but I don't see how I'd find the time. I'm teaching three classes this summer and so is Mom. Margot just told me she wants to offer a quilting camp for children. . . .”

“I don't know how popular it will be,” Margot said. “But it will be fun, even if we only have a couple of students. Olivia wants to come, so that's one at least.”

Tessa leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Olivia is her niece. Margot's sister was killed in a car accident, so Margot adopted her.”

“You can count Bethany in too,” Ivy said. “That'll solve at least part of my summer child care problem.”

“Ivy, you know the children are always welcome at our house,” Abigail said. “Franklin is already planning to take Bobby on some fishing trips this summer, and I promised to teach Bethany to play tennis.”

“Really?” Ivy smiled with relief. “That'd be such a help, Abigail! Drew is a great sitter; the kids love him. But his dad needs him to help with the landscaping business in the summer, so he's not always available. I've enrolled them in some day camps, too, but I've still got gaps to cover.”

“Drew Kelleher?” I asked. “I know him; he keeps an eye on our place for us. Really a nice kid.”

Ivy gave me the strangest look—guilty, like I'd just caught her in a lie.

“Oh, yes . . . uh . . .”

Ivy cleared her throat and, once again, refused to maintain eye contact with me. She seemed terribly shy around strangers. Maybe that's why they had her working upstairs, cutting fabric on her own. She wouldn't have been very good around customers.

“Drew babysits for me all the time. So I heard all about . . . I mean, I heard that the neighbor from New York was around for the summer. I guess that's you, huh?” Her eyes darted to my face and then away just as quickly. “I heard you're putting in a garden?”

“Yes. Something else that's new to me. I have no clue what I'm doing, but Drew's father, Dan, gave me some advice and lent me a rototiller. He seems like a nice guy.”

Ivy chewed on her lower lip and dropped her gaze to the floor. “He is. I mean, I guess he is. I don't really know him. I just, you know . . . I just see him now and then when I pick Drew up for babysitting.”

“Summer is a crazy time around here,” Evelyn said, returning to the previous subject. “We bring in sixty percent of our annual income during those four months. A sabbatical sounds like a nice idea, but I just don't see how we can manage it.”

“I know,” Tessa said. “I've got to grow and harvest my herbs for the year, and Lee needs help with the farm too. I wasn't thinking of us taking an
actual
sabbatical, not the kind where you go off someplace. But what if we all did at least one new thing this summer? Wouldn't that be fun?” she asked, looking at the assembled faces. “Abigail, weren't you just saying that we're all overscheduled? Too busy to enjoy life?”