How to Make an American Quilt (24 page)

T
HERE ARE NIGHTS
that Corrina wants to join Jack, sleeping outside, but she does not want to leave her house. She feels as if she can only keep her worrying about Laury under control if she can keep her home intact. But one night she does wander out to where Jack is lying on a chaise lounge. She wraps herself in a blanket and fits her body beside his.

“Come back inside, honey,” says Corrina.

“In a minute,” answers Jack.

“Look, he’s all right.”

“I miss him, Cor. I’m scared,” he tells her.

“Just come inside,” she says, tugging on his sweater as if to physically bring him with her.

C
ORRINA HAS THE PHONE
cradled beneath her chin as she measures the new curtains while talking to Will.

“Tell me again why you aren’t in class right now. For god’s sake, Will, it’s the middle of the day.”

“They’re having a protest. About the curriculum. You know.”

“Oh, what, the administration building under siege?” Her words are garbled because she is holding a chalk pencil between her teeth.

“Yeah,” says Will, “something like that.”

“Why aren’t you there?” asks Corrina.

“I don’t know…it’s not my thing….I mean, they have a point but it’s just not my thing.” Will cups his hand over the receiver and Corrina hears him say, “In a minute, man.”

“Do you have to go?” She wishes they could end this soon. She really wants to get to these drapes.

“No,” says Will, then, “yeah, I do. But I’ll call you soon, okay?”

“Bye, Will.”

“Later.”

Corrina thinks it’s funny that Will calls her. It isn’t as if they ever talk about anything important or exchange secrets or, well,
anything
. And each time she has the sense that he is finally about to get to the point, to reveal his true reason for his phone calls—as if all these small, inconsequential ones are leading up to the Real Call. If only she wasn’t so busy with these drapes, she could sit down and write him a letter.

J
OE IS LYING
on the ground next to Jack, who is in his customary lounge, but without a covering; a good indication he will not be sleeping outside tonight. Jack is thinking that he and Corrina spend so little time with Joe, who, at fifteen, has his own life but is still not entirely grown up. Jack can tell when he sees the excitement in Joe’s face when he says that he and Corrina will be at the debate.

But Corrina is so busy lately. Reupholstering the sofa, retiling and grouting the upstairs bathroom, and he believes that he heard her saying something to Joe about wallpapering his bedroom, to which Joe replied, “Mom, everything is just the way I like it.”

“But nothing stays the same, honey,” said Corrina.

Jack wishes he could be as industrious as his wife; instead he
feels lethargic, soporific, as if he simply doesn’t have the energy that his life requires anymore. He guesses he is getting old.

Poor Joe. Standing between a mother devoted, literally devoted, to her house and a father who suffocates at the thought of it.

A
T THE TIME
it seemed like a mistake not to marry Jack before he went to Europe to fight. Corrina took a job as a switchman for the railroad in Kern County, even though it meant long hours without seeing anyone except the waving hand of an engineer as he maneuvered his train from one track to another. She wore Jack’s old shirts to work, the same ones she put on to clean the house or read the newspaper, with its articles concerning the war effort and what all of us at home could do for our boys. Already two of her girlfriends had moved to Long Beach, doing assembly work. The pay was “pretty good, better than home,” and they urged her to come and join them.

No, she told them—she had to wait for Jack. He left her in Grasse and she wanted him to know that she was exactly where he left her. She could not possibly disrupt her life when his was so chaotic and uncertain. How would he feel getting a letter from her with a Los Angeles return address, a place not her parents’ home? Of course, if she told him that it was for the war effort, he would understand; but she was superstitious and had invented a structure where her life would remain unchanged in his absence so that when the war ended he could simply slip back into it, as if he had never left her at all.

T
HEN
L
AURY
became an MIA. Jack made an ugly confession to Corrina: “Cor, I know I’ll be forgiven for saying this, but I hope our boy is never taken into an enemy prison.”

“You don’t mean it,” said Corrina. How could he say this, knowing Laury was missing? The gentle art of waiting and patience. Jack had no patience; he was new at this. “If he is taken prisoner, we’ll get him back.”

“No, it is better to be killed. No one survives prison, even civilian ones. Physically, yes, but deep inside—I don’t want Laury home and gone at the same time.” Jack had formulated this thought during his wanderings, when his fear was diffuse and manageable.
After all
, reasoned Jack,
I can scarcely tolerate the terror of being inside my own home; how is Laury going to survive a prison camp?