The Healing Quilt (7 page)

“Nail it in.” She caught the twinkle in his eyes and donned her most pious expression. “I do hope you located the studs first.” So many times she didn't get things hung just where she wanted because the studs were in the wrong place, and Garth had a flaming battle with molly screws.

“Mashed potatoes, right.”

“On the table by the time youre done.”

They'd just finished eating when the doorbell rang. Garth raised an eyebrow, and Beth flapped her hand at him as she went to the front door.

“Hi, come on in.” Beth stepped back to indicate invitation.

“Why, thank you, dear, sorry. I think I'm a mite early but I stopped by the grocery store and allowed plenty of time, but this time I got right through and so since I didn't have enough time to go home again and really I didn't see any need to do that and I hope I'm not intruding, you know I would never want to that, so if you are ready we could just go on and be one of the first ones there but that's all right because I could help hand out papers or something like and if you'd like you could help with that too.”

Before she could take a deep breath and be off again, Beth placed a hand on the woman's arm. “Perhaps you would like a cup of coffee. Garth and I were just about to bring ours into the living room.”

“Why, how lovely but you're sure I'm not putting you out or anything? I would most hate to do that what with we haven't gotten to know each other at all well yet.

At the briefest of brief pauses, Beth indicated a chair. “I'll be right back. Do you take it black or…”

“Black is fine.” Mrs. Spooner sat where indicated.

Beth kept from grinning at her husband's discomfiture and proceeded to pour three cups of coffee. If only she had baked some cookies or something. She always used to have cookies in both the cookie jar and the freezer. Garth did love his cookies. Another place she'd let him down.

But Beth refused to allow the thoughts to bring on the gray. She nodded to the silver tray holding three hand-thrown mugs she'd received from a friend as a going-away and housewarming present.

“I take it you want me to carry that?” Garth looked from the tray to the door to the living room as if she'd asked him to go shopping with her at Victoria's Secret. She rolled her eyes and nodded toward the door.

He winked at her, and backing through the swinging door, turned with a smile. “Why, Mrs. Spooner, how good to see you.”

“Oh, you must call me Harriet. When I hear Mrs. Spooner, I look around for my mother-in-law, bless her soul.”

“Well, then, Harriet it is.” Garth set the tray down on the milk-painted coffee table that Beth had refinished so professionally at their last house. She'd found the beat-up old table with turned legs put out for the trash in front of a house and had gone up to the door to ask if she could have it. When the owner said, “help yourself,” she'd rushed home and had her neighbor and friend bring their truck to haul it home.

When Beth picked up her coffee and sat down, she trailed a hand over the table, suddenly wishing she had the energy to find another piece to do. To think she hadn't even set her sewing machine up, and here she had a room to call her own. Until they had children, if they had children…
no, don t go there. You sit right here and be pleasant to Mrs. Spooner and go to the meeting, and perhaps you will find a new friend in the process. After all than how you metShawna, at a meeting. Yeah right
,
another person I haven't calkd.
Shawna had been her best friend back in Arizona, where they'd lived before Jefferson City. She sipped her coffee and listened to the decidedly one-sided conversation between Garth and their guest.

“I hate to drink and run here, but.

“Oh, Pastor Garth, you are such a comedian. You remind me of Harold, my late husband, bless his soul, he…”

Garth broke in before she picked up speed again. “I hope you two have a good time.” He turned and dropped a kiss on his wife's forehead. “Have fun,” he whispered, his
eyes
twinkling.

“I shouldn't be late.”

He answered her question before she could ask it.

“Such a fine young man. Our church is certainly blessed to have found him. Why, the things I could tell you about some of our former pastors, we have about run the gamut. I remember the time.

Beth set her coffee cup down on the tray with a bit of a clang to get Mrs. Spooner's attention. Calling her “Harriet” just didn't seem at all possible. “Can I get you anything else?”

“No, no thank you, not at all.” A glance at her watch and the flagpole woman rose, brushing imaginary crumbs off her brown polyester knit pants. Crumbs that might have been there, had there been cookies.

“We must be on our way, the traffic, you know, my car is right out front and I…”

If only I could drive myself.
Beth smiled around the thought and took her purse from the table under the hall mirror. She turned in time to see Mrs. Spooner picking up the tray to carry to the kitchen.

“I'll get that later.”

“No, no, can't be an imposition, not after that lovely coffee. You must have ground the beans yourself—it tasted so fresh and good.” The words trailed behind her, like everything else, unable to keep up.

By the time they reached the meeting hall, Beth knew most of the history of the Jefferson Community Church, who had married whom, the two divorces and who was at fault, a baby or two born a bit premature, the trials of earlier pastors, the wonders of the former pastor and how, due to health, he'd been forced into early retirement.

Beth felt like clapping her hands over her ears, but no matter how she tried to change the subject, doing so was like stopping a roller coaster in free fall—with one hand. They arrived at the meeting just as it was due to start, and Mrs. Spooner hustled her down the aisle to the front row.

“So we can see better,” she insisted.

A four-foot banner hung behind the table, and the speakers podium proclaimed the name of the group, WECARE, in green capital letters.

“What does WECARE stand for?” Beth whispered, but Mrs. Spooner just made a shushing motion as the leader stepped up to the microphone.

“Welcome. Welcome. Glad to see you all here.” His voice matched his shape, round and fully packed. His megawatt smile flashed around the room.

Beth couldn't resist smiling back. Talk about contagious energy.

“Before we introduce our speaker for the evening, let me just get a show of hands. Did your tilth improve with our new methods, which are really ancient methods being brought back?”

Beth glanced over her shoulder to see indeed a raise of hands, including her hostess. Tilth? What is tilth? And what kind of meeting is this?

“Your compost bin, have you aerated it properly?”

Someone from the back announced, “It gets more air than I do,” causing laughter to ripple around the room.

“Good, good. However, Arthur, maybe you should go back to manually turning yours, gives you more wind thataway.”

Another ripple of laughter.

“How many of you took Lesley's barrel-and-crank pattern home and built that model?”

“Yes, even egg shells decompose fast with that method.”

By now Beth was getting whiplash from turning to see who responded.

“Good, good.” Mr. Moderator rubbed his hands together in what looked like glee. “I can see we will make a difference here in Jefferson City and our entire county. Now I'd like to introduce our expert for this evening, and then we will have a Q and A session following, so keep your questions for the end, and if he can't solve your problems, perhaps some of our master gardeners here will have answers for you.”

Gardeners? I thought
. Beth sucked in a deep breath. Her house-plants grew up in a silk flower factory. With her minimal interest in digging in the dirt, she shuddered to think what the evening might contain. Shame she didn't bring that quilt square along that she'd started piecing so long ago. At least then her entire evening wouldn't have been wasted. If she could have found it, of course.

But ifyoudstayed home, you most likely would have assumed the fetal position either in front of the television or in bed, now, wouldn't you?

Admitting to the accusing voice, she made herself sit a bit straighter in the chair.

“Isn't he just the most darling man?” Mrs. Spooner's slight overbite and pink nose made Beth think of a rabbit, a rabbit's head on a lean race-horsy body, that was her hostess all right.

Beth turned her attention back to the front to catch the last of the speaker's credentials.

“And here he is, the foremost advocate of God's original recyclers, red worms, one of the earthworm family, scientifically known as
rnegadrili”

A tall man, weathered of face and hands and with the lanky build one often associated with cowboys, took his place behind a bank of boxes lined up on the table. “Good evening, friends. Thank you for inviting me to speak on my favorite subject.” He clicked a pointer on and turned to a slide that filled the screen off to the side. At the same moment, someone dimmed the house lights.

Beth lasted about the first three minutes of the slide presentation on buying, growing, caring for, and sharing red squiggly worms.

The song from her childhood that meandered and wiggled through Beths mind had something to do with nobody loves me, everybody hates me, think I'll go eat worms and die, including all the various worm descriptions. None matched the can of red wrigglers that was passed around for everyone to look at and touch if so desired.

Beth desired to touch the nest of moving threads in the can about as much as a nest of garden snakes, or perhaps rattlers. She'd never seen either, but the thought alone made her shudder.

When at the end of the interminably long meeting they passed out baggies of red worms, she started to refuse hers, but when Mrs. Spooner announced that surely she didn't want to miss out on such an opportunity, she took the bag with only a slight shiver.

“Here, you may have these.” She passed the bag to Mrs. Spooner as soon as they got outside the door.

“No, no, you keep them.”

“Harriet, how are you?” A tall woman with a smile warm enough to melt snow turned around to greet them.

“Good, good, I saw that you put that composting idea to use.”

“Anything to make things easier, but I have learned to just bury much of the garden and house refuse between the rows and let the earth itself do the work.” She smiled at Beth.

“Teza, meet our new pastor's wife, Beth Donnelly. Teza Dennison has a wonderful little farm outside of town where most of those who don't grow their own can go and get fruit and vegetables.”

Beth shifted her worm sack to her left hand and stuck out her right. “I'm pleased to meet you.”

“Ah, you love gardening too?”

Beth slightly tightened her mouth and sucked in her bottom lip. “I…uh…”

Harriet stepped in. “I invited Beth so she could get to know some new people, and so I'm really glad you came by and I think we better go now, so we will see you later.”

“Good.”

Was that a wink in Teza's eye? Beth smiled too. “I hope we have a chance to meet again.”

“Oh, we will. Jefferson City isn't so large people lose sight of each other like big cities. Come out to the farm. My strawberries are wonderful.”

“And they are,” Harriet added as someone else spoke to Teza.

“My, that was a good meeting, wasn't it? Did you get the handouts as we left?”

“Uh, no.”

“That's all right. I picked up a set for you, too. I thought maybe you weren't feeling too well, the way you looked there at the end.”

“Why, uh, thank you.”
If only you knew.

“And I'll just spread these little fellers among the rosebushes out front of your house along with some alfalfa leaves I brushed up from the barn floor out to my son's farm. Roses do love alfalfa sweepings. Banana peels, too. You just dig them in around the roots.”

“Oh, really?” Beth nearly collapsed against the car seat. She stared at the paper that had appeared in her hand. “What did you say that WECARE stands for?”

“Why, it means ‘Where Everyone Composts And Recycles Enthusiastically’ I thought you knew that.” She glanced toward her passenger. “I get the feeling you aren't much into things of the soil.”

“Oh. Oh no, I enjoyed the meeting tonight and I learned a great deal, but you see, Ga—Pastor Garth is the one with the green thumb. I… I wouldn't want to take away one of his pleasures, so I leave the gardening to him.”

“Oh.”

“But I'm really glad you invited me.”

“What do you like to do then?”

“I sew and quilt, and I've discovered I like refinishing furniture.”

“Inside stuff, eh?”

Beth did not need the accusations.
Someone has to keep the house and make a home for the pastor too, you know.
“I love arranging the flowers Garth grows,” she said instead.
When he can find the time to grow any.

“Well, if he wants any help with his composting, he can come to me.” Harriet reached over to pat her arm. “In the winter I like to sew, too, along with start all my annuals from seed, of course.”