For the next dizzying hour I was introduced and reintroduced and then quizzed by each member of the club. It didn't surprise me that Maggie was the leader, even with Eleanor in the room. A former librarian, she had raised eleven children and now had twenty-five grandchildren. Every one of them had at least one quilt, hand sewn by Maggie, who didn't believe any machine, even a sewing machine, could do as good a job as a person.
Natalie was twenty-eight, only one year older than me, and the mother of a ten-month-old. She had a husband everyone in the group described as "tall, dark, and handsome," which made Natalie roll her eyes. Her mother, Susanne, was the one with the makeup counter on her face. She turned out to be the artist of the group. Her quilts had won ribbons at national shows, and one had even been featured in a magazine.
"I got married very young," she said to me. "Too young, I think. Didn't have a chance to figure out who I was, as they say."
"Have you figured it out yet?" came a voice from the other side of the group. Bernadette, known in the group as Bernie, was a hangover from of the sixties, now in her sixties. She was another familiar face among the crowd. I knew I had been introduced and reintroduced to her over the years, but the only thing I'd ever learned about her was that she owned the pharmacy in town and she had a warm, friendly face.
Susanne smiled toward Bernie. "Have I figured myself out yet?" she laughed. "I don't think I want to know anymore. I certainly don't want to know who my husband is."
The others laughed with her. "I was nineteen," said Maggie. "I found out pretty quickly it isn't always roses and I love yous."
"You got roses?" shouted Bernie. "I don't think any of my husbands got me roses."
"Why would you marry men who were so unromantic?" Natalie asked.
"The sex was good," Bernie retorted. All the woman roared with laughter.
"Bernie, we have a newcomer in the room," my grandmother admonished.
Bernie looked at me. "She won't be a newcomer for long." Bernie leaned in. "I have stories that could make even a girl living in New York blush." Then she looked toward Eleanor. "But I won't." She turned to the fifth member of the group. "Carrie here, she has a romantic story to tell, if that's what you're looking for."
Carrie was, it looked to me, in her late forties. She began to tell me about herself but was interrupted by Bernie and Natalie, who felt they could tell Carrie's life story much better. Apparently she had married right out of college, divorced three years later, and spent the next fifteen looking for Mr. Right, while amassing a small fortune as a New York stockbroker. When he didn't appear, she decided to have a child. She quit her job, moved to Archers Rest, and scaled her lifestyle back so she could work as a consultant and stay home with her baby. It was a good plan, but she soon found a better one. Months after she gave birth to her son, she married his pediatrician. Now they also had a daughter.
"It wasn't quite what I expected," she said to me. "But it worked out." All the women voiced their agreements. It was a not very subtle nod to my uncertain future, but it was much appreciated.
Every Friday, these woman cleared out a small amount of floor space amid an overflowing stock of fabric, patterns, rulers, and quilt-related books. Then they sat in a circle to gossip, eat sugar-laden treats and drink (only caffeinated) coffee. They passed around their latest quilting projects and complained about what they called UFOs, or "unfinished objects," as Maggie explained.
"It happens when you start something with a great deal of excitement and then run out of interest about halfway through," Maggie told me.
"Are we talking about marriage again?" Susanne laughed.
"Stop putting marriage down," her daughter Natalie protested. "Some of us are happily married."
Maggie let out an exaggerated sigh and continued. "The trick is not to get stubborn about it. If the project doesn't work, then you have to let it go."
"That must be frustrating," I said.
Bernie's eyes lit up and she leaned toward me. "It's freeing," she said, exaggerating the length of the words to, I'm guessing, make their importance clear. And they must have been important words, because the others all nodded in agreement. "With every quilt you make you have a picture in your mind of what it should be," Bernie continued. "Then you start. You pick fabrics, you cut the fabrics, you sew the pieces together. All along there are compromises, mistakes, inspirations. When it works, then you are truly holding your dreams in your hands. When it doesn't…" She shrugged.
"You just throw it out?" I asked, looking to my grandmother for confirmation. Eleanor saved bags of two-inch pieces of fabric, "just in case." She kept a plastic bag with fabric and a needle to sew whenever she had time to kill. I couldn't believe my grandmother would endorse wasting hours of work for artistic reasons. But she was nodding along with the rest of them.
"We trade sometimes," Carrie admitted. "Or sew them into charity blankets."
"I have a lot, so I usually give mine to Nancy," Natalie admitted. "She finishes them off and sends them to her son's college friends, who I guess don't really care what the quilts look like as long as they're warm."
Maggie patted Natalie's hand, as if to comfort her for having so many UFOs. It was an odd pair. Watching seventy-five-year-old Maggie laughing easily with Natalie, nearly fifty years her junior, made me a little envious. Aside from quilting, the two seemed to have little in common, but quilting was enough to bind them together. I wondered if my friendships were as tight.
But envy was one thing; joining the group was an entirely different matter. Suddenly, all I wanted was to head back to the house and sleep. I yawned.
"Oh, she's tired," Carrie pointed out.
"You should get her home, Eleanor," suggested Bernie.
"The poor thing, she needs her rest," agreed Susanne.
"I am sleepy," I volunteered, and yawned again.
My grandmother nodded and patted Barney's head. "Barney, take her home."
Barney got up, went one more time around the circle to say his good-byes, and led me to the door.
"We'll see you next Friday," the group said in unison.
"Oh," I stammered, "I don't think so. I'm only here for the weekend."
I opened the door and was almost free when I realized that all night I'd forgotten something. I turned back. "Thank you all for the quilt you made me. It's more beautiful than I could have imagined."
They each looked at me as if they were about to cry. As I left the shop, I knew the subject of my breakup had started up again.