to me.” I shook my finger in mock indignation.
“Ten dollars a month!” Mary Dell whistled. “Well, in that case, I take back everything I said about the snooty, old…” Mary Dell stopped mid-sentence when she saw the look on my face. “Sorry! I meant to say, I take back everything I said about dear, darling Abigail. Bless her heart,” Mary Dell said, employing that old phrase that women of the South use when they want to say something catty about someone else…politely.
In spite of myself, I laughed. “Stop that. She may be an acquired taste, but Abigail has helped me and a lot of other people in this town. She can be prickly, I’ll admit, but that is changing. She’s dating her old attorney, Franklin Spaulding, and he seems to be a good influence on her. Plus, she’s very involved with the women’s shelter, not just on the board but spending time getting to know the residents. In fact, she’s the one who recommended I hire Ivy.”
“Ivy?”
“Remember? I told you about her on the phone. She and her kids are in transitional housing at the shelter. Ivy took my beginners’ class there. When I needed to hire someone, Abigail recommended Ivy. I’m glad she did. She’s a hard worker. Quiet, but cheerful and very dependable. We’ve got ourselves quite a team now.”
Putting down his coffee cup, Garrett boosted himself off the counter and walked over to me, laying his long arm over my shoulder. “Of course, she forgets to mention that none of this would work without the very able leadership of the boss here. When I started working here, I didn’t know top stitching from tap shoes, though I’m starting to, which, frankly, scares me a little. But Mom knows every square inch of this place. She knows what the trends are in fabrics and notions, chooses and teaches almost all the classes, and makes it fun for everyone who walks in the door. Half the time, I think customers come in here to talk to Mom as much as to buy quilting supplies.”
“Yeah. Yeah,” I said, brushing off his compliments. “Don’t listen to him, Mary Dell. He’s bucking for a raise. Won’t do you any good, sweetie. We’re doing better, that’s for sure. In fact, we’re on track to break even this year, but it’s way too soon to think any of us will be making more than minimum wage for a good while to come.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it, honey,” Mary Dell said. She looked out the shop window, where I could see a man and woman coming across the courtyard hauling bags, boxes, and metal poles that looked like light stands. Mary Dell walked to the front door and opened it wide.
“Get in here, y’all! Get that gear set up. Not only do we have to make a promo that will get quilters fired up about Quilt Pink, we’ve got to make one that’ll have folks running to their phones, booting up their computers, and driving halfway across the state to buy their fabrics from Miss Evelyn Dixon of Cobbled Court Quilts. Let’s get this show on the road, buckaroos! We’re burnin’ daylight!”
4
Ivy Peterman
“Oh, come on!” I yelled and slammed my fist against the steering wheel. “This is not happening! Not again!”
I turned the key in the ignition once more, but it sounded even worse than it had the first three times I’d tried it, the halfhearted vrum-vrumming of the motor giving way to a low-pitched, lethargic whine. If a car engine could yawn, this was the sound it would make. Clearly, my car wasn’t going to start. Not today.
I smacked my hand impotently against the wheel again, silently cursing all auto mechanics.
Ten days before, I had written the garage a check equivalent to two weeks’ salary from my job at Cobbled Court Quilts. It was money I’d been saving and desperately needed for a rental deposit. When the kids and I moved into our transitional apartment at the Stanton Center, my counselor made it clear that I had to find a job and start saving for a place of my own as soon as possible. You’d think two years would be plenty of time for me to get my act together and be able to house and feed my own family, but when you start out lying flat on the ground without even a bootstrap to pull yourself up by, learning to stand on your own two feet is harder than it looks. But I was better off than a lot of people; I had the good luck to find a decent job not long after we came to New Bern. Twice in one month, quilting changed my life.
On Abigail’s recommendation, Evelyn hired me as the fulfillment coordinator at Cobbled Court Quilts. Basically, I’m the one who cuts and packages up the Internet and phone orders and mails them out to customers. It’s not glamorous, but I enjoy my work.
The upstairs workroom, a large, rectangular space above the shop with exposed brick walls, and tall windows that let in plenty of light, is my personal domain. I spend my days laying out bolts of fabric on the long cutting table, measuring quarter, or half, or full yards of cloth, slicing them off the bolt with a sharp rotary cutter, then packaging up the order and mailing it off to the other side of the state or the other side of the country. Really, it’s amazing to see how many places we send quilting supplies to. I’ve mailed Cobbled Court Quilt Shop orders to every state except Hawaii and Wyoming. Once, we had an order that came all the way from Leicester, England.
As I work, I like thinking about the people who will receive the orders, imagining how excited they will be when their packages arrive and what kinds of quilts they will make from the fabric I’ve sent to them. It’s nice and quiet here in the workroom and I have plenty of time to think. If they get busy downstairs, I’ll help in the shop, but most of my day is spent upstairs and I prefer it that way. Not that I’m unfriendly to my coworkers; I smile and try my best to be helpful, to work hard, and to figure out what needs doing before anyone has to ask me to do it, but it’s better if I keep to myself.
Evelyn is a great boss. When Bobby came down with the flu, she didn’t mind my staying home with him at all. She even made a pot of chicken soup and brought it by the apartment. Garrett is nice, too, very patient when he taught me how to process the computer orders, and Margot is a sweetheart. She’s very religious and at first I thought she was trying to make friends with me just so she could convert me, but now I realize that she is just a genuinely kind person. Though she is single and doesn’t have any of her own, Margot loves kids and has offered to babysit for me anytime. I can’t take her up on that offer, of course, or on her invitations to join her for a movie or dinner. I wish I could. If I ever did have a best friend, I’d want her to be someone like Margot, but I can’t risk letting people get too close.
I have gotten to know Abigail a little bit, because of the kids, but that’s not as risky, partly because Abigail doesn’t work at the shop, she’s just a good customer, and partly because…well…Abigail is Abigail. She likes my kids, but she doesn’t seem that interested in me. Truthfully, I don’t know much more about Abigail than she knows about me. I know she quilts, is dating her attorney, and is very, very rich. The name Wynne is plastered on half the buildings in town.
Maybe it isn’t true of all of them, but I’ve noticed that very rich people don’t seem to be too curious about the not-so-very-rich—adorable children being the exception. Fine by me.
Abigail recommended me for the job at Cobbled Quilts because she was worried about my kids. It had nothing to do with me, but did I care? No. I needed a job and Abigail helped me get one. Not easy in a small town with few openings, especially for someone with no degree and almost no work experience. I’m grateful to Abigail and to Evelyn. They helped me get started and I work hard to show them how much I appreciate this chance.
I’m putting as much money into savings as possible but even though I pay a very cheap rent for our apartment at the Stanton Center, it’s hard to save. After paying for rent, food, gasoline, and clothing for two kids who seem to outgrow a pair of shoes every month, there isn’t
