The Goodbye Quilt (9 page)

Odometer Reading 123,597

There is a change in Molly’s phone calls with Travis. Pacing back and forth, the tiny silver phone glued to her ear, she talks to him at every rest stop, it seems. The shift in tone and emphasis is subtle but palpable. She is both more animated and more intense.

I don’t say anything, of course. What is there to say? They’re eighteen, and in love.

Give it time, I remind myself. The drifting-apart is not going to happen overnight. I picture the two of them like the huge layers of ice we get on the lake back home. All winter long, the frozen surface is strong and impermeable; the skating goes on for weeks. Yet in spring, the ice cracks apart, and once
that happens, the pieces never fit together properly again. Even if the temperature drops sufficiently at night to re-freeze the ice, it’s not the same; it’s rough and chunky, prone to breaking. The skaters all go home for the season.

Separation is rough on any relationship. On a pair who have barely dipped a toe into adulthood, it’s usually a death knell. They just don’t have the emotional hardware to sustain a love that depends on physical closeness. And I won’t kid myself. Those two were close. They were physical.

I can’t imagine Travis Spellman going dateless for movie nights or football games, not for long. Likewise, I don’t want Molly to be like a war widow at college, holding back from the social scene because of her hometown boyfriend.

That lack of availability, physical and emotional, is undoubtedly what will cause them to go their separate ways, as they must. Molly has a future ahead of her filled with brand-new people, challenging studies, a city she’s never seen before. Settling into college will take all her time and energy. Nurturing a long-distance relationship is simply not feasible.

Except, of course, that she believes it is. And
here’s the thing about my daughter. If she believes in some thing with her whole heart, no one can tell her otherwise.

At a rest stop where we park to stretch our legs and use the facilities, she is pacing back and forth on the sere, dun-colored grass that has gone dormant from drought. The phone is still glued to her ear and her flip-flops kick up dust in her wake.

I wander along the walkway of the rest stop. It’s a pleasant spot, insulated from the noise of the interstate by a stand of thick trees, evergreens and sugar maples that are just getting ready to take on their fall colors.

The local historical society in this area has a craft booth set up at the rest stop, and I buy a bottle of amber maple syrup from a woman in a homespun apron and—I kid you not—a poke bonnet. The clear glass bottle is in the shape of a maple leaf, and when I hold it up to the sun, it sparkles like a jewel.

According to the information flyer that came with the syrup, the maple trees will put on a dazzling display of fall color. These country roads will soon be crowded with RVs and busloads of leaf-lookers, coming to enjoy the scenery so beautiful
that it attracts tourists from the world over to view them each year. After the riot of color, the trees lose all their leaves and appear to die.

Yet it is then, in the dead of winter, that the maples are most productive. If you tap deep enough into the tree, sinking a metal tube into its most hidden heart, you’ll discover a gush of life.

The sap is drained through the tube, collected in covered buckets and boiled in huge vats to make maple syrup.

Who the heck thought of that? I wonder. At some moment in the unremembered past, someone walked up to a leafless maple tree, hammered a tube into its center, harvested the sap and rendered it into sweet syrup. What a random thing to do.

One thing I’d guess—whoever thought it up wasn’t a college graduate. She—I’m quite certain it was a
she
—was probably a mother. An ancient Algonquin desperate housewife. At the end of a long winter, her kids were probably bored and cranky from being cooped up in the longhouse, chasing each other and driving her crazy with their noise. They had no idea supplies had run low, that the men hadn’t done too well on the latest hunt. Pretty soon, the kids’ war whoops and giggles would
turn to whining. Yelling at the older kids to keep the younger ones away from the fire, the woman strapped on snowshoes made of hide, with gut laces, and trudged out into the deadening cold to look for food.

How did she know about the secret inside the maple tree? Maybe the deer clued her in. During the starving season, the hungry animals stripped the bark from the trees as high as they could reach. Maybe the woman, her vision sharpened by desperation, noticed the glistening ooze from the flesh of the trees. Maybe she touched a finger to the sticky dampness, tasted a faint sweetness on her tongue. And the rest was history. An industry was born. The hunting party came home with their limp, skinny rabbit to find the women and children feasting on boiled cornmeal, magically sweetened with an elixir from the sugar maples.

I reach the end of the walkway and wander back. The woman in the poke bonnet is standing behind her booth, furtively smoking a cigarette.

Still on the phone, Molly notices me watching her and wanders over to an information board covered with maps and tourist brochures. She tucks
one hand into the back pocket of her shorts and keeps talking.

Her face is bright with love.

Seeing her like this conjures up mixed emotions. On the one hand, I am proud and gratified that my daughter has a great heart, that she can give it away with joy and sincerity. Yet on the other, I wish she understood the difference between the passionate heat of first love and the deep security of a lasting commitment.

But there is no difference, not in Molly’s mind, and no amount of discussion—lecturing, she would call it—on my part will change her mind about that. Love is love, she’d tell me, and who am I to say she’s wrong? I can’t claim to be an expert. There is a part of me—and it’s not even a small part—that keeps wondering what my marriage will be like when I get home and it’s just Dan and me.

Agitated, I take a seat at an empty picnic table, which faces a lovely marsh fringed by cattails, the reeds clacking in the light breeze. The distant hiss of truck brakes joins the singing of frogs from the marsh.

I pull out the quilt, thinking I’ll add a stitch or two. The feel of the age-softened fabrics is oddly
soothing. Yet at the same time, I am nagged by the sense that I wish I’d never started this thing. What a crazy notion, to think I could actually put the final touches in place in time for the journey’s end.

“That’s a beautiful piece,” someone says, and I look up to see a woman about my age, walking a scruffy little dog on a retractable leash. The dog ranges out to the end of the leash and then comes reeling back toward her, like a yo-yo on a string. The woman is checking out the quilt with a practiced eye.

“Thanks,” I say, recognizing the expertise with which she studies the project. It’s gratifying to realize quilters are everywhere. It’s such a universal art, beloved by so many women. “I’m making this for my daughter’s dorm room.”

She nods appreciatively. “What a great idea. Wow, are you hand quilting?”

“More portable that way. More variety.” This morning I stitched the word
Remember
across a piece made from my mom’s square-dancing dress.

“I’ve always thought crazy quilting was much more challenging than a regular pattern,” the stranger remarks.

“You might be right. At first, I thought it would
make the work to go faster. Instead, I keep trying to force things together and changing my mind.”

“I like going slowly when I quilt,” she comments. “It keeps me in the moment, you know?”

I do know. And here’s what happens when quilting women meet. When one quilter encounters an other, there’s always something to talk about. We go from being strangers to friends in about three seconds. I’ve seen this happen again and again, back home at the shop. It’s like the fabric itself is common ground, the pattern a secret handshake. Quilting women already know so much about each other. We get to skip over the petty details.

Within moments, I am giving her a guided tour of Molly’s quilt—the snippet of fabric from the tooth fairy pillow, upon which she placed her first lost tooth. The blue ribbon she won at the seventh-grade science fair, for her pond water display. A Girl Scout badge she earned delivering Christmas cookies to a nursing home. One square is decorated with pink loops of ribbon in honor of the time she raised a thousand dollars in a Race for the Cure.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m being fair with the milestones and memories I’m stitching into this
quilt. It’s easy to block out a square to celebrate her little victories and happy times. But what about a square to commemorate her detention notes for skipping school, or the time she pierced her own navel and it got infected, or the night the local police brought her home, reeking of peach-flavored wine cooler? Why not remember those times? They’re part of her history, too.

“You’re making a family heirloom,” the woman remarks.

Ha, I think, vindicated. That’s why I don’t need those reminders in the quilt. “It’s not going to be finished in time.”

The woman smiles, leans back against the picnic table. “In time for what?”

“Move-in day at the dorm.”

“I have a rule. If it’s not falling apart, it’s finished.” She is about my age, I surmise, yet she seems wiser, and I’m not sure why. Her posture is relaxed, and she appears to be in no hurry.

I tell her about the shop back home, how I’ll miss it when it’s gone, how it won’t be the same, buying my fabric somewhere else.

“Maybe someone will take over,” the woman suggests.

“I sure hope so. I’m not optimistic, though. Most of the women I know who’d be capable already have other jobs, or they’re retired, or too busy with their families. It’s a huge risk and a huge commitment.”

“I hear you,” the woman says. The dog has finished its business in the reeds, and she calls out to a little girl who is playing on the swing set. “Amanda, we’d better get going.”

The dark-haired child runs over on chubby legs. “Five more minutes,” she begs in a voice every woman within earshot recognizes.

“One more,” my companion says, and we both know it will stretch out to five.

“Your daughter’s adorable,” I tell her.

“Thanks, but she’s not my daughter.” The woman glances over at Molly, her fleeting look filled with insight. “Amanda’s my granddaughter.”

Oh, man. She’s a grandmother. I don’t want to be a grandmother. I’m not finished being a mother.

Yet when she finally reels in her dog and calls to the dark-haired little girl, and Amanda runs into her arms, there is a magical joy in their bond. It’s
sweeter, somehow, than motherhood, probably because it’s simpler.

“Drive safely,” I tell them.

“You do the same,” she says, “and good luck with the quilt.”

On the final leg of our journey, the landscape is a patchwork of forest, field, stream and village, stitched together at the seams by country roads and rock or whitewashed fences.

“God, do people actually live here?” Molly wonders aloud, taking it slow as she navigates the Suburban down a hill to an old-fashioned town, complete with white church spire and village green. “It looks like a movie set.”

She’s right. It’s a strange and beautiful land, innocent and pristine, yet with a faint air of danger that comes with alien territory. As a girl, I dreamed of traveling far, but I never did. In my family, vacations were few and far between, and when we went
somewhere, it was usually a car trip to a state park. For my parents, life at home was enough.

My mother had a favorite escape, and it was as simple as turning on the TV. She was fanatical about the TV soap
Dallas,
about a family like none we’d ever known. In my head, I hear the brassy theme song that heralded the start of the show. It’s one of the most vivid memories of my childhood. The churning melody signaled my dad’s bowling night and my mother’s sacrosanct program. On Sunday nights, the routine never varied. She would shoo him out the door, then fix an Appian Way pizza out of the box, oiling her hands with Wesson and expertly spreading the dough in a thin circle on a round baking sheet. A splash of canned tomato sauce, a sprinkle of questionable-looking cheese, and heaven was only minutes away.

Unlike any other day of the week, we didn’t have a proper, sit-down family dinner on Sundays. No salad or side dishes, no pretense of a token vegetable. Just slices of hot pizza and glasses of cold milk. Maybe a Little Debbie for dessert.

Then, despite my deeply resentful protests and martyrlike sighs, I was sent to bed. Even in the summer, when the light lingered for an extra hour,
Mom made me decamp upstairs to my room, because Tuesday nights were sacred. They were
Dallas
nights.

Mom wanted no interruptions. I suppose she would have taken the phone off the hook, but she didn’t have to, because all her friends were doing the same thing—hastening their children off to bed, urging their husbands out the door—so they could spend an hour in that fabled living-color world of millionaire matrons and the scoundrels who loved them.

I wasn’t allowed to watch and wouldn’t have wanted to, anyway. To a kid, the endless adult conversations, high-stakes oil deals and secret affairs were deadly.

Sequestered in my room, I always knew when the show started. First, there would be the clink of a glass. On Sunday nights, Mom opened the wicker-clad bottle of jug wine we kept in the cupboard and poured her self exactly one round-bellied, stemmed glass, full to the brim. Next, a curl of cigarette smoke would snake its way upstairs, emanating from a Parliament 100 with recessed filter, whatever that meant. It was all part of Mom’s curious ritual of self-indulgence. I wonder if she ever
imagined Southfork Ranch as a real place, tucked into the green folds of the Texas countryside, with skyscrapers in the distance.

The high-octane music would swell, the sound boiling up the stairs to my resentful ears. Mom loved the theme from that show so much that she bought the sheet music. Even though we didn’t have a piano, she learned to hum the notes. A few years ago, Molly found the music in the piano bench and picked it out while I was working in the kitchen. I felt the same curious shiver of resentment and intrigue I’d felt as a child.

Nowadays, women escape by running away to urban spas, yoga retreats or wild-woman weekends of paintball drills and primal screams. Others frequent male strip clubs or dress to the nines for high tea. Back then, women like my mom didn’t have to go any farther than their living rooms.

We stop at a deli for a take-away lunch, and Molly is drawn to the counter girl’s flat New England accent, which skips blithely over the “r” and elongates the vowels.

The sub sandwiches are called “grinders,” and the milkshakes are “frappes.” The word feels awkward
and foreign in my mouth, and when we place our order, Molly and I don’t look at each other because we’ll start giggling.

We take our lunch to a roadside park with a scenic overlook. There is a sign pointing the way to the Norman Rockwell home.

“I can see where he got his inspiration,” I tell Molly, gesturing at the spill of rounded mountains below us.

“Who?”

“Norman Rockwell.” I indicate the signpost.

“Who’s that?”

Not again. This is crazy. Is it possible that she isn’t familiar with the quintessential American artist of the twentieth century?

“You know, the one who did all the illustrations of kids fishing and families praying,” I say. “He did the cover of the
Saturday Evening Post
for years. That was even before my time, but you saw those illustrations everywhere—calendars, greeting cards, posters, dentist’s offices.”

“I guess.”

“Maybe we could drive over there, check out the place where he created his art.”

“Let’s not.” She speaks quickly. Maybe there’s an edge of urgency in her voice.

I let the topic go. “I’ve got one thing to say about grinders and frappes, or frapp-ays, however you say it.”

“What’s that?”

“They rock.”

She nods in agreement. The homemade bread and exotic cold cuts—olive loaf, dry salami, maple-smoked ham—and tart dressing and relish are delicious. I tell myself I can start my diet when I get home.

It’s too nice a day to hurry. Molly decides to take a walk, her euphemism for going somewhere private in order to call Travis. I doubt she’ll get a cell phone signal here, but I don’t say anything. Instead, I pull out the quilt and jab my needle into the fabric, piercing through all the layers. The quick silver flash travels fast, but not fast enough. Bit by bit, I am coming to realize that I have failed. By the time we get to the college, the quilt still won’t be finished.

Feeling unsettled, I watch Molly walking down the road, hands in her back pockets. Suddenly she looks very small and alone to me, and the urge to
protect her—from what? Who knows?—rises up strong in me. Soon I won’t be around to protect her. But she has to go.

And as for me, I have to let her. After that, I have to figure out how to be my own person again.

“What’s that look?” Molly asks, returning from her walk and sitting beside me at the picnic table.

“I don’t have a look.”

“Come on. Spill.”

“Just thinking of this huge change. It feels so sudden.”

“It’s not like we didn’t see it coming.”

“I know. And this is what I wanted. I wanted to raise a child. And I did, I raised a wonderful child. But now you’re leaving.”

“Mom.” She offers a sweet, ironic smile. “That’s the whole point.”

“Well, I just wish someone had told me how hard it is to let go.”

“Did you think it would be easy?”

“Of course not.” The needle darts again, in and out of the quilt.

“A little bird once told me you shouldn’t avoid doing something just because it’s hard.”

My exact words, only I’d probably said them to
her in order to get her to go off the diving board or eat a portobello mushroom.

“If you go away and screw up,” I blurt out, “how will I help you fix it?” I am instantly horrified. What a stupid thing to say. An apology rushes up through me. It came out all wrong. I shouldn’t have said that.

Before I can babble out
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it
, Molly bursts out laughing. “News flash, Mom. It’s not your job to fix it.”

I laugh with her, but I can’t help the next thought that pops into my head: Then what
is
my job?

We spend longer than we intended at the roadside park. It’s so pretty and the air feels so good. When the breeze shifts just so, I can sense the forward march of the season, and I can see it in the crowns of the distant trees in the high elevations, which are starting to turn.

Molly seems preoccupied. I wonder if she’s thinking about what lies ahead—or what she left behind. Her phone calls and text messaging with Travis have decreased in frequency, which I take to be a good sign. She is driving while I keep doggedly working on the quilt, and she is fixated on
the posted distance to the city. “Only forty more miles,” she says. “Hard to believe we’re finally that close.”

My needle slides through the fabric, paying homage to a swatch of old flannel from Dan’s pajamas, something she probably doesn’t even remember. But I do and suddenly I miss the feel of his arms around me, the sound of his breathing, calm and steady. I think about his warmth and his scent as he sleeps beside me. I miss him. If he were here, he’d make me say exactly what’s on my mind. No use bottling it up.

“I suppose we could go all the way right now,” I say, “instead of finding a place to stay way out in the suburbs.” We had planned for a noon arrival on orientation day, so she would have time to organize her dorm room before heading into the maze of new student activities.

“No.” Her reply is surprisingly swift and firm. “That’s not the plan. We don’t want to get to the city after dark. And I bet there won’t be any vacancies near the school, anyway, and even if we found a place to stay, the hotels are massively overpriced and the residence halls don’t open to new students until tomorrow at noon.”

Her barrage of protests is a bit mystifying. She couldn’t wait to get to college but now, the night before her new life is set to begin, she seems to have all the time in the world. I’m gratified that she wants to extend our time together.

“You’re right,” I agree, and I watch out the window for the exit sign to the town we’d picked out as our final stop. “We should stick to the plan.”

She nods and glances at her cell phone, lying on the seat beside her. Travis hasn’t called all day, which I suspect is the cause of the prolonged silences that stretch between us. I, with a terrible and dark sense of satisfaction, find myself hoping this is the beginning of the end for them, that his failure to call is not due to the lack of a signal, but to the lack of commitment.

My own thoughts make me feel horrible. She adores Travis, and he makes her happy. Isn’t that what I want for her, to be happy? Still, I don’t want my daughter’s future to belong to him, a charming local boy who has spent the entire summer trying to convince her that there is no better life than the one our small Western town has to offer.

It was enough for me, I realize with a surge of guilt, and I swiftly glance at her. There in that same
small town she’s been forced to leave, I’ve found all of life’s happiness. Suppose I’m robbing her of the chance to do the same?

And why do I hope her dreams are bigger than mine ever were? What is it that I want for her that I never wanted for myself?

The onslaught of second thoughts assaults me. Molly flips on the turn signal. “This will do.”

We have a club card for Travelers Rest, a chain of midrange hotels, and so I nod in agreement. The room is predictable, clean and bland, a faint whiff of stale air blowing from the register vent. We are plenty early, with a large portion of the afternoon ahead of us. Maybe I’ll finish Molly’s quilt after all.

Instead, I am possessed by restlessness. I take the Suburban to a nearby station and fill it with gas, asking the attendant to check the oil, the tires, the wiper fluid. I use the squeegee to clear the squished bugs from the windshield and grill. It occurs to me that I performed this same routine the day I went into labor with Molly. In childbirth class, we’d been told that a woman on the brink of labor often experiences a burst of energy—the nesting instinct kicking in. I cleaned and scrubbed the house and
car all day and was just settling down for a good night’s sleep when my water broke.

So what is this, the
de
-nesting instinct? Simple common sense, I tell myself. Tomorrow, I don’t want to be distracted by the menial tasks of checking gauges and tires. I want everything to go smoothly, with the Suburban as ready as a criminal’s getaway car.

When I return to the motel, Molly is at the pool, a turquoise oval set in an apron of groomed grass. It’s not exactly swimming weather, but this might be the last swim of the summer. So, despite the hint of a nip in the air, I decide to join her. I duck into the room, don my swimsuit, one of those figure-flattering jobs with hidden panels designed to suck everything in. Of course, it can’t suck in what it doesn’t cover, so I slip on the secret weapon of the forty-year-old woman—the cover-up. My flip-flops slap against the sun-softened asphalt of the parking lot as I approach the pool. Molly is wearing the yellow-and-white bikini we picked out in the end-of-season sale at the mall back home, and her hair is slicked back, her skin dewy from swimming. She sits at the edge of the
shallow end, watching two little kids, a boy and a girl who are maybe four and six.

I take in the sight of her, wondering when we’ll travel together again, when we’ll pick a motel because of its pool, when we’ll eat junk food and watch TV together late into the night. Everything on this journey is more significant and intense because it’s the last time.

The kids are laughing and splashing under the watchful eye of their mother, who turns occasionally to make conversation with Molly. As I watch, Molly wades in to help the little girl adjust her water wing, then holds her hand and turns her in a circle while making a motorboat sound. The little girl giggles and flails while I stand off to the side, watching. And suddenly I am seeing Molly and me, hearing our laughter echo across the water, feeling her tiny hand in mine as I lead the way.

I’m struck by how like me she is right now, angling her arm just so, making certain she’s not going too fast or too deep for the small, trusting child. Where did she learn her gentleness with children, her humor? I don’t remember teaching it, yet here she is, replicating a moment I didn’t recall until just now. Suddenly, the memory is as clear to me as
if it had happened the day before yesterday. One long-ago summer day, we looked exactly like this, a young woman and a little girl, sharing a small moment together.

Except I am not in the picture. This is Molly’s moment, one that has nothing to do with me. And it’s weirdly okay with me. She is her own person and I don’t feel the need to insert myself into any of this.