Anything for Her(21)

Allie turned to Nolan. “It doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to finish lunch right now. I’m sorry.”

“I noticed,” he said. “Your sandwich and cookie will keep. I’ll take the rest with me.”

She liked the fact that she had yet to see him display even a hint of impatience or irritation. Her first impression of him as steady and calm had been so far confirmed. He took her work seriously, too.

She felt another funny little cramp in her chest that this time she identified as fear. Ridiculous, but undeniable. He scared her a little, maybe because he seemed too perfect. Too tempting.

She was glad to be distracted by the sisters, who pounced on several bolts of gorgeous batik fabric that lay on the large table a safe distance from the food and drinks Allie and Nolan had been sharing. She had just begun unpacking a new shipment, which, if their reaction was anything to go by, would sell well.

Edith, who had confessed to being eighty-three, and her younger sister Margaret were longtime quilters who had learned from their mother who had learned from hers. They were a rarity now; interest in the art had languished in America by the 1940s. Most women these days had to turn to classes and books instead of their own female relatives.

After Nolan had left, pecking Allie on the cheek under the curious and pleased stares of half a dozen women, she advised customers, neatly sliced fabric from bolts and rang up purchases while diverting questions about him by handing out newly printed schedules for upcoming classes. As she did all this, she pursued the thought the Brown sisters had stirred.

Most women probably took up quilting because they could make something beautiful they couldn’t otherwise afford. But there was certainly another element to the astonishing revival of quilting in the past twenty years. This was one art that offered a way of reconnecting with the past.

Most patterns had a history. Some had been popular with women who’d traveled the Oregon Trail. Others had their origins in regional folk art—the Pennsylvania Dutch, or the quilts made by slaves that hinted at their African heritage. Women had named their patterns to celebrate personal and familial triumphs and tragedies, but also political events and figures.

Mostly, though, Allie suspected, in the back of her mind, every woman who quilted felt the ghostlike presence of her own ancestresses, who had sought to keep their families warm and make something beautiful, too. These days when families weren’t as close as they’d once been, women felt a need to tie themselves to the past and make something for the future.

Allie could talk glibly on the subject at great length. She often did, in fact, to newly excited quilters or as an introduction to a class for beginners. She didn’t exempt herself from her generalizations. But she had also never asked herself why the draw had been so powerful for her from the moment she stepped into that fabric store and saw the blocks the women in that class were sewing.

So...what about me?

Well, duh, she scoffed at herself. She was the quintessential woman with no past. Of course she wanted one, even if she had to stitch it together herself.

It might have helped if Mom and Dad hadn’t abandoned so much when they fled their former life. Some of that, Allie thought, had been necessity, but not all. Mom would say she wasn’t sentimental. She didn’t like “old” anything. Allie had furnished her apartment from antiques stores; her mother didn’t understand why she didn’t want nice new things.

As for Dad...Allie didn’t know. She thought maybe he had grieved so much for what he was losing, he hadn’t let himself hold on to any reminders.

Could that be true of Mom, too? Allie let herself wonder, and discovered she had no idea. Perturbed by how much she didn’t know about her parents, she was immersed enough in her brooding not to notice how seriously a middle-aged woman was studying the Feathered Star quilt Allie had displayed on the wall until she began to ask questions.

Allie had completed it almost a year ago, and had begun to think it might not sell. The colors were darker than she usually chose—earthy and comforting, she thought, but she’d overheard a woman murmur to a friend that it was gloomy.

“I don’t know how you can put so much work into a quilt and then sell it,” said this woman, who’d introduced herself as Helen Richards. “It must feel like giving up your newborn baby for adoption. But if you’re really willing, I want it.”

The Feathered Star quilt was queen-sized and elaborately hand-quilted. The price paid, with no quibbling, was exceedingly generous.

Once Helen Richards happily left with her purchase, Allie found herself in her customary state after selling one of her quilts—torn between pleasure because her creation had found the right home, delight at the profit and grief at losing another piece of herself. She wondered if Nolan felt the same when he sold a sculpture.