“Call me?” she said and gave him one last kiss.
“If it’s not too late,” he said. “Michelle tends to drag our discussions out. She likes to bring up sentimental stories from when we were young to try to soften me up.”
“Do they work?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” he said. “No one knows your life like the people who’ve lived it with you. Plus, there’s a part of me that really doesn’t care if she has all the stuff. I know it’s not what my mother wanted, and I know it only encourages her when I give in, but still-it’s just stuff.”
“Okay, go.” She pushed him toward the door.
She watched out the window until his car disappeared into the rainy gloom then turned back to her cutting table. She had cut four different colors of flannel before Aiden’s arrival and stacked them in piles; her gray cat Fred was batting at the stacks, trying out a new design.
“I don’t think this is what Mavis has in mind,” she scolded him as she organized the squares by color again.
“What didn’t Mavis have in mind?” the woman herself asked as she swept into the studio, her coat flapping in the breeze.
“I was just talking to Fred-he decided to rearrange our fabric. I’ve got one more color to cut if you have time to wait. Aiden came by for a few minutes, so I’m a little behind schedule.”
“I’ve got a few minutes,” Mavis said as she shrugged out of her coat. “I’m not due at Connie’s for another hour, so take your time. Did your aunt call you? And I could use a cup of tea.
“No, was she going to?”
“Well, after I give Connie her pieces, we’ll have three quilts left to go. Beth was thinking we could meet here, if it was okay with you.”
“Of course it’s okay-it’s her studio.”
“
“It’s not like she gave it to me and I turned it into a beauty parlor or moved to Mars or something. I am part of the Loose Threads. At least, I was last time I checked.”
“Like I say, she’s trying to respect your autonomy.”
“Okay, whatever. The studio is free, and so am I. Aiden’s having dinner with his sister.”
“That sounds like a recipe for disaster.”
“Everyone’s told him that, but he can’t say no to her. He says I’d understand if I wasn’t an only child.”
“Well, sister or not, that girl’s poison, if you ask me.”
“You’re preaching to the choir,” Harriet said as she folded a piece of brown plaid flannel and spread it carefully on her cutting mat.
Mavis unplugged the electric kettle and carried it toward the kitchen.
“I’m going to get some fresh water, if you don’t mind,” she said as she went through the connecting door to Harriet’s kitchen. She returned a few minutes later and plugged in the now-full kettle. “Connie has another idea for us.” She pulled a stool to the opposite side of the cutting table and eased herself carefully onto it.
“You seem to be moving a little slow,” Harriet observed as she ran her rotary cutter along the long edge of her Plexiglas quilting ruler, slicing the edge off the piece of fabric.
“It’s nothing. I banged my hip on the square edge at the top of my bedpost yesterday. Curly was running around while I was making my bed, and I was afraid I was going to step on him. I was looking at my feet instead of where I was going, and now I’m sporting a big purple bruise.”
“You need to be careful. That little dog isn’t worth you breaking your hip.”
“Easy for you to say,” Mavis said with a laugh. “You don’t look at his sweet little face staring up at you every morning when you wake up. If he could talk, I know he’d be saying how happy he is that Aiden rescued him and brought him to live at my house.”
“Cute or not, he’s not worth breaking your hip, or worse, over.”
Mavis sighed and rolled her eyes skyward.
“You just wait until you get Scooter home,” she said, referring to the small, mostly hairless dog who was still living at the Main Street Veterinary Clinic, recovering from a series of skin grafts he’d needed after spending his short life living in squalor in the bottom cage of a tall stack in a dog-hoarding home.
The Loose Threads had all participated in a socialization program, holding the neglected dogs and getting them used to human contact so they could become eligible for adoption. So far, as each dog had graduated from the program, it had been adopted by the Loose Thread who had socialized it. They were now working on a second group of animals, hoping to release them to the public when they were ready.
“Who’s saying Scooter’s coming to live here?”
“Don’t even go there. We all see how you look at that little fellow.”
“Well, he’s still weeks away from being released medically. That urine burn on his back was so deep it has to heal more before they can get a permanent skin graft to take.”
“So, back to the quilts,” Mavis said. “Connie came up with an idea to solve our problem.”
“Our problem?” Harriet asked, looking up at her friend as she did.
“It’s not
“And the solution is?”
“Connie saw an article in the Seattle paper about a young University of Oregon college student who did a workshop project that involved making portable shelters from discarded materials. She won the competition with her tarp made from plastic grocery bags, which she then sent to Haiti after the earthquake there.
“They call them quilts because they look like patchwork when they’re finished. A group of quilters added some of that thin plastic drop cloth material, ironing it over the whole thing so they could layer in flowers or letters or other decorations cut from dark-colored plastic bags.
“In both cases, you lay a piece of tracing paper or parchment over the layers and iron the whole thing. According to the people who’ve made them, it sticks together. The college students even slept outside using theirs to field test them, and they say they were quite comfortable.”
“That’s amazing.”
“Well, let’s not be too amazed until we try it. Connie’s been collecting grocery bags from everyone she knows since she read the article, so she’s got enough for a couple of tarps, and if it works, we can probably get more. She said it takes about four hundred bags after you cut off the handles and bottoms to make a ten-by-twelve tarp.”
“Why don’t you see if she wants to come here tonight? We can try the tarp idea, give her the flannel squares, and some of us can work on sewing quilt squares at the same time.”
“I’ll call,” Mavis started to get up, but was interrupted when the door blew open and a cluster of wet brown leaves sailed in on a cold blast of wind, landing in a soggy mess on the reception area rug. She went to the door and shut it, locking it this time.
An hour and a half later, Connie Escorcia, Mavis Willis, Harriet and Beth, Harriet’s aunt, were assembled in the quilt studio looking down at an array of plastic bags spread out on the large table and covered with thin clear plastic. Connie had cut three large daisy shapes from a green-and-yellow bag and now arranged them artfully between the bags and the plastic. She laid a large sheet of white tracing paper over the corner of the plastic sandwich and pressed a hot iron to the surface. The smell of melting plastic filled the air.
Harriet found a box fan and set it up on a stool so it was at table level, facing away from the project.
“I hate to open a window the way it’s storming out there, but I’m afraid it can’t be helped.” She went to one of the small windows to one side of the bow window and opened it about an inch. The wind whistled, and cold air shot into the room.
Aunt Beth pulled her sweater closed across her ample midriff.
“I hope this is as bad as this storm is going to get,” she said and turned her back to the window.
“The weatherman says this is nothing compared to what it will be,” Connie said and, after receiving a nod from Harriet, pressed the iron down on the next section.
