The Beach Quilt (36 page)

Jack and Cordelia had gone to a movie. Adelaide was alone in the house. She had just finished putting away the last of the holiday decorations. In other years, Adelaide had found the process of dismantling the tree and returning ornaments to their boxes a bit depressing. But not this year. The Christmas holiday had been an exhausting time of sorrow and tempered joy for both the Kanes and the Bauers, and Adelaide was not alone in being glad it was gone.

Stevie might have had things worse than anyone. She had broken down at church on Christmas morning. Cindy had taken her home immediately. Joe and the baby had remained for the rest of the service and Jack had driven them home afterward. A week later, Stevie had told her parents that she was gay. It must have been such a burden on the poor girl, coming to know herself for who she was while all attention was focused on Sarah and the pregnancy. And then losing her sister in such a sudden and unexpected way . . .

Thankfully, Stevie's mood seemed a bit lighter now. There was still a long road ahead, but Stevie was strong and she had her parents' full support. The Kanes' support, too. Adelaide
had
to believe that she would be all right. She didn't think any of them could bear the loss of another child.

Cordelia had been miserable through the Christmas season, too, but like Stevie, she seemed to be rallying a bit. She had regained a small amount of her old spark and had once even asked to be taken to the mall. Still, there were days when she could barely manage a smile, and too often Adelaide came across her daughter staring out a window or slumped on the living room couch. When asked what she was thinking about, the answer was invariably the same: Sarah.

Cindy had experienced a bad moment when she received a Christmas card from an old friend of her mother, listing Sarah's name right along with Cindy's, Joe's, and Stevie's. Clearly, word of Sarah's passing hadn't reached everyone. Opening that card had been, Cindy said, like learning of the death all over again, a painfully unnecessary reminder of their loss.

As for Joe and Jack, well, they were each soldiering on, expressing their grief in the way men of their kind did—privately and by being productive. Joe was handling the majority of the paperwork involved in the bid for adoption, and Jack continued his efforts toward setting up the scholarship in Sarah's name.

And Adelaide . . . well, it was what had happened after the holidays, in the second week of January, that had most significantly affected Adelaide.

Her son had contacted her.

She had sat at the computer for close to an hour, rereading the e-mail—an e-mail she had almost deleted, as she often did when she didn't recognize the sender. Extreme feelings of relief and happiness flowed through her, making tears turn to laughter and then turn back again. Only a few lines, but lines with the power to radically change Adelaide's life.

She had told Jack first. He had held her for a long time, saying nothing, stroking her hair. Then she had told Cordelia. For all her earlier interest in her half-brother, Cordelia's excitement was subdued.

“You're not going to run off with him and leave me behind, are you?” she had asked only, Adelaide suspected, half jokingly.

Adelaide had taken Cordelia's feelings of fear and uncertainty quite seriously. So soon after losing Sarah, Cordelia was bound to feel concerned that she might also lose her mother to the half-brother she had never known.

“No,” she had assured her. “I am not. You and your father are my priorities. I made that choice long ago. There's room for Eric in my life, if he wants to be there, but he'll never replace you.”

“Oh, I know,” Cordelia had replied with an elaborate shrug. “I'm just being silly. So does he know about me?”

“Not yet. But I'll tell him.”

“I wonder if he'll want to get to know me.”

“I don't know,” Adelaide had admitted. “Is that something you'd like?”

“Yeah. I think. He'd just better turn out to be cool. I mean, not someone like Justin.”

Adelaide had felt a twinge of anger. How could a son of hers have grown up to be a jerk? Then again, she hadn't raised him. She would have to trust the love and intelligence of his adoptive parents, and hope they had taught him all that she would have done about responsibility and respect.

One thirty. Adelaide had decided to place the call at two o'clock. It was a random time but setting herself a deadline had helped hone her determination.

She knew there was no guarantee that she and Eric—his name was Eric!—would ever develop a close relationship. But maybe a close relationship
would
evolve, one where Adelaide could follow his life on Facebook and send him birthday cards and maybe even visit him once in a while. (The area code he had given told her he lived in Massachusetts.) She couldn't imagine his inviting her to his wedding someday—that might be too hurtful to his adoptive parents—but she would
know
about the wedding and send a gift and then, in time, learn that his wife was pregnant and maybe someday she could meet her grandchild. Or maybe Eric was gay and when he and his husband were ready to adopt a child he would do so with joy, remembering how well things had worked out for him, knowing now what courage it had taken his birth mother, Adelaide, to offer him to another family.

Adelaide felt a bubble of nervous laughter escape her. She knew she shouldn't be thinking in these terms. They might have only one or two brief and awkward conversations before parting again for good. So much time had passed, so many questions must have accumulated. It might prove too much for Eric to handle. She hoped fervently that he wouldn't come to regret their reconnecting.

But, for Adelaide, the risk was worth the potential pain. Finally, she would hear her son's voice, maybe even get to touch his hand, look into his eyes. There were moments when she felt unable to bear the joy and excitement. She thought that before now she had never really understood that phrase “bursting with happiness.”

Adelaide went into the den. She would call her son from there, the most comfortable room in the house. That mattered somehow. She sat in one of the high-backed armchairs, her cell phone in her lap. It was one forty-five.

Jack had asked his wife how Eric had found her. Adelaide had no idea. She would ask him when they spoke—or not. Did it really matter? Jack had also asked if she were going to look up her son on the Internet before contacting him. The answer to that was no, she was not, and for a variety of reasons, one of which was that she wanted to allow Eric to retain a degree of privacy for as long as he needed or wanted it.

Finally, Jack had asked if Eric had mentioned his father. He had not, and Adelaide wondered if her son had searched him out as well. If he hadn't—and there was a very good chance that he had not; Adelaide had given no one at the hospital or adoption agency his name—he might ask her about him. The thought worried her. She wasn't sure if she was under a moral obligation to keep Michael Baker's identity a secret. No, how could she be? Still, she wondered if it would be right to reveal his identity. Would it be right to
refuse
Eric this information? It most certainly would
not
be right to give Eric a false name or to tell him that his father had died long ago.

And her parents . . . she didn't want them to know anything about Eric—not that they would care to know! But again: Did Eric have the right to know who and where they were? One thing was for sure. If he did ask about other family, she would
not
paint Nancy and Tom Morgan as bad or malicious people. She would not burden her son with her own negative opinions, no matter how valid her reasons for having them.

Adelaide looked at her watch. One minute until two o'clock. She lifted her cell phone. Her fingers were trembling so violently she could not hit the right keys and had to begin again twice. Finally, the call went through.

“Hello?” The young man's voice was pleasant and warm.

“Hello, Eric?”

“Yes?”

Adelaide closed her eyes. “This is Adelaide Kane,” she said, with an immense feeling of pride. “Your mother.”

Please turn the page
for a very special Q&A
with Holly Chamberlin!

 

Q.
Did you research the phenomena of teen pregnancy before writing
The Beach Quilt
?

A.
Yes, extensively. In the end, I chose not to include what I had learned in too informational a way. I did try to infuse the characters with some of the habits and thoughts and emotions found to be typical in the situation.
The Beach Quilt
is a novel, not a scientific study.

 

Q.
What was the most surprising thing you learned while doing research about teen pregnancy?

A.
The most surprising and disturbing thing I learned was that a huge number of women in the United States die in childbirth. I was, of course, aware of the dangers so many women around the world face during pregnancy and childbirth—disease, starvation, lack of clean water and proper medical care—but to discover that right here in my own country so many women don't survive the birthing of their child, well, that set me to thinking.

 

Q.
How close to your heart is the experience of teen pregnancy?

A.
To be honest, I've never personally known a teenage girl who found herself pregnant. Well, if I did, I never knew about it. I grew up in a very Catholic environment, and much was never spoken about, especially in those days. But over the course of my life I certainly haven't been unaware of the problem. It can break your heart, thinking of what young parents and their children might have to face. Life is hard enough when you have a full support system in place—a steady partner, a good job, a nice home, a network of family and friends. To—possibly—find yourself largely alone and reliant on social services ...

 

Q.
With that in mind, some readers might take issue with the fact that
The Beach Quilt
tells a very different tale of teen pregnancy, one in which the young mother-to-be is nurtured and cared for—one in which her child's future also looks relatively rosy. In other words, your story isn't quite as gritty as it might be.

A.
To those readers I would say, remember, this is a novel.
The Beach Quilt
tells the story of two particular families in a particular time and place, making a particular set of choices. If the Bauers' ready acceptance of their daughter's pregnancy strikes some as odd, well, so be it. If they had thrown Sarah out of the house, other readers would have protested. Others might argue that life as a single parent anywhere, city or country, and in any circumstances, nurturing or not, can be difficult, and I would never deny that. The suspension of disbelief is essential to the experience of a fiction, be it novel or TV show or film! Besides, at bottom what I really wanted to write was a story of love triumphant—and I hope that I did.

 

Q.
Are you a quilter?

 

A.
I am not. Unfortunately, my dexterity—and eyesight!—is increasingly poor, so I've given up any kind of detailed work I had once enjoyed, like embroidery or beadwork. But I love quilts and the fact that they are an art form pretty much owned by women. I've never forgotten one stunning exhibit of quilts made by African American women at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City way back in the eighties. And my husband's mother, Janet, was gifted at weaving and needlework; we're lucky to have some of her pieces still.

 

Q.
Can you offer a clue as to your next book?

A.
Well, I've got a rudimentary idea in mind. There'll be a family of three quirky, creative sisters, between the ages of thirteen and twenty. Their mother is either long dead or long gone off on some adventure. Their father is very much present and beloved. One summer the sisters, who live in the fictional town of Yorktide, Maine, encounter a girl who appears seemingly from nowhere. The girl turns out to be homeless. I've yet to construct the circumstances of her backstory. The dynamics among the members of the family and this homeless girl will be the focus of the book. And, of course, there will be a cat character!

 

Q.
So is Clarissa, the cat in
The Beach Quilt,
based on a real animal?

A.
Yes! Betty, our fourteen-year-old tortoiseshell, exhibits amazing physical and mental talents. Plus, she's my gallant protector. Which is taking nothing away from Cyrus, fifteen, who although blind and almost entirely deaf, lives life as if he's the king of the house. Which, of course, he is. Plus, he likes to hold my hand, which is heaven.

 

Q.
What was the first book you read after completing
The Beach Quilt
?

A.
In rapid succession I caught up on the latest in the Ian Rutledge and the Bess Crawford series, both by Charles Todd. And then I went on to a Charles Todd stand alone,
The Walnut Tree
. I'm now eyeing Julian Barnes's
The Sense of an Ending
and a rereading of
A Room with a View
.

 

Q.
What do you do to celebrate the completion of a book?

A.
Sleep.

Holly Chamberlin

ABOUT THIS GUIDE

 

The suggested questions are included to enhance
your group's reading of Holly Chamberlin's
The Beach Quilt
!