The Strange Quilter (2 page)

Chapter 3: Dreamland

The crazy quilt was the landscape. It formed a vast plain before me, a collage of vibrant primary colors that formed into a quilted chain of mountains on the horizon. The landscape was lit as bright as day, but the sky was dark and filled with stars, as if this world had no atmosphere to disperse the light. Four swirling pinwheel galaxies each filled their own quarter of the sky, with millions of stars filling the gaps between them. Glowing opaque gases of pink and violet, varying in density, hid or revealed various areas of the panoply of stars. The vault of heaven welcomed me to this quilt planet. A planet handmade by a quilter able to work upon the vast platform of space.

Thick as old redwood trees and just as high, sewing needles of every sort sprouted from the fabric terrain. Needles for hand sewing, needles for machine sewing, both reflected starlight from their metallic bodies. Gigantic red tomato pincushions sat in cleared areas where the sewing needle forest didn't grow. Scattered about the pincushions were large thimbles - the perfect size to sit upon and stargaze.

This wonderful quilt world must have inhabitants. It couldn't exist without a purpose. I strolled through the kaleidoscopic array of saturated colors, observing the fine needlework, the nearly infinite detail of design printed on the fabric. Where were the natives? I approached one of the tomato pincushions. I discovered that these pincushions were actually houses - big soft houses. I pressed my hand against its velvety surface and it gave way, bouncing back firmly into place when I removed my hand. There was a round door on one side of the pincushion house. It had a doorknob in the form of a velvet tab closure - a magnet was the lock. This secured the door shut snugly against the body of the pincushion.

I studied the door and found no way to knock on it. There wasn't any doorbell to ring either. Even as I thought these dream-thoughts, a brass door knocker appeared right before me, in the very center of the door. How convenient this dream had become. I grasped the door knocker and clanked away, in the hope someone would answer. The door closure popped open as if it was suddenly demagnetized. The door opened inward. Nell smiled at me from the dark interior of the pincushion. “Hello Barb!” Nell greeted me with a friendly smile.

I was glad to see her familiar face inside this dream, this semi-lucid fantasy. In this odd state of mind, I'm aware of my sense of smell. This world doesn't smell of linen, but of burnt wiring and scorched circuit boards. I made a dream-note of this fact.

There was a sensibility to this place, this dream world. I'm expected to display some intelligence. To blindly accept all this dreamland imagery without question would be thoughtless. It begs to be challenged. With this in mind, I said, “Hello Nell. What's going on?”

“First, I'm not Nell. I'm you. I'm Barbara. You're the dreamer, and everything in your dream is you, all your thoughts jumbled together in your subconscious mind, spewed out in the dark of night. You should know these things. You're not stupid... or at least you think you're not.”

“I don't think I'm stupid. You're right, or I'm right, depending on my viewpoint. I know that dreams are sometimes a stylized recap of the dreamer's day. If this is true, then my day must have been unusual. I don't have lucid dreams, and I don't have dreams about absurd quilt planets. My recent angst continues on in this dream, an angst caused by the smell of burnt electronics.”

The quilt world dissolved into a sunny, pleasantly warm beach. The strip of bright sand was bordered by the ocean in front of me, and behind me there was a line of beach homes - each with large front windows to take in the view, and each with a wooden plank porch reaching out over the sand. The only quilt theme I saw pervading this dreamscape was that quilts had replaced conventional beach blankets. All the beach goers sunbathed on quilts. As I took a closer look at the beach goers, they were all either Nell or me – in reality, all of them were me - dressed in conservative swim suits to hide our aging flesh. This made little sense, since hiding my aging flesh was something I didn't care anything about. I'm not modest.

The air was not the briny ocean sent, but that of burnt electronics. This odor had followed me from the real world into the world of dreams, even from one dream chapter to the next.

And the beach dream fades away and turns into Nell's Threads. The racks of fabric. The sewing notions. The walls, a gallery for customer's quilts. There were the large tables where we all sat around and worked on our group projects or our personal projects. But no one was there but me. The store was empty. It was night. I was alone in this dream, a dream that had a strong sense of being real. It was as if I had been transported to Nell's Threads in my astral form, downloaded from the land of dreams.

There was a faint haze in the air. A white, thin smoke. It smelled of burning wires, along with the sharp smell of ozone. I walked around the entire shop, strolling through the isles of fabrics, which Nell kept a good variety of. She had an eye for good design. Even though it was dark outside, the store was lit up as brightly as it was during commercial hours.

I walked over to the large front display window to look outside at this dream's landscape. It was the actual strip mall that Nell's Threads resided in - at least its dream equivalent. No cars were parked in the parking lot, which made sense, because no stores were open. The strip mall was located on the south-west corner of an intersection. There was very little traffic on the surrounding streets. People were probably going to their early morning jobs or coming home from the night shift. Some were leaving the bars after the last round of drinks were served. These people were all dream people, and therefore, they were all me.

A patrol car drove up to the front of Nell's Threads. I saw the two officers inside the vehicle. They looked nervous - well trained and professional - but nervous nonetheless. Both officers left the vehicle. One stayed by the patrol car and the other approached the store's front entrance. He was looking right at me, pointing a flashlight in my face, despite the stores lights being turned on. I felt fear, even within this lucid dream state that I was locked into. I wanted to run out the back door and hide somewhere - to find a good spot to disappear - until I regained my composure and the cops left. Instead, I stood my ground.

The cop was yelling, “Open the door. Now!” He looked worried and puzzled. How had I entered the store? There was no sign of breaking and entering. I felt a strange and foreign intrusion into my dream. I looked all around and saw nothing. Was it an outside force trying to break in? Was it Ken attempting to wake me up? Perhaps I was snoring? I remained asleep, tightly bound inside this inner world. Such outside forces were of no avail against my fortress of dreams.

“Open up, NOW!” The cop replaced his flashlight with a gun. I didn't notice when he had accomplished this trick. It was done in dreamy stealthfullness. Still I made no effort to open the door. I wanted to see where this would go. It was only a dream. Two more cop cars pulled up and parked in front of the quilt store. Their warning lights where rotating, flashing bright blue and red beams across everything in their path. The interior of Nell's shop, including myself, were alternately painted in red and blue light. The air surrounding me felt thick, as if congealing into viscous liquid. Breathing was becoming difficult – a side effect of fear.

A figure walked towards the cops. A figure that appeared from nowhere. As the mystery person drew nearer, I saw it was Nell. She was dressed in layer after layer of clothing, which made her appear fat. The outer layer was a bathrobe. My guess was she layered three or four bathrobes around herself. It was freezing outside. She approached the cop that was pointing a gun at me and whispered something to him.

This dream seemed so real. I felt the cold. I smelled the burnt wires. I saw every detail. I heard every nuance of sound vibrations that entered into my ears. The only way I knew this was a dream was the absurdity of it - the impossibility of me breaking into Nell's Threads. Why would I do such a thing, even if I could?

The dream I'm inside was my confused streaming of subconscious thoughts, the events of the day displayed in symbolic form. There was still that outside force that kept poking at my shoulder. Now it grabbed my shoulder and shook me rather hard. My surroundings faded in and out of existence. The police cars, the shop – everything - rippled like waves in a pond. Nell walked through the glass window as if it were air, and stood before me. “This Friday, when you attend the friendship group, I have a surprise for you. A surprise for all the ladies. You're going to like it, and the others will like it too.”

Nell's body once again rippled, as did the police cars. She evaporated into the air, just as the cars did. Now, I am alone in the shop. I see nothing outside. No more strip mall. No more streets. Only a foggy, gray, amorphous mass surrounds the shop. The shaking of my shoulder continued. It must be Ken trying to wake me up from an extremely deep level of sleep.

“Barb! Are you okay?” Ken said from out of the fog that now enclosed me. My consciousness was shifting into another state, a higher level of awareness of the objective world around me. I was in bed with Ken. It was Friday morning. My eyes fluttered, sticky with gooey sleep residue.

“I've never slept so heavy in my life. And the dream. So weird and real.” I got out of bed and grabbed my blue bathrobe from the end of the bed where I had tossed it last night. I needed coffee, and I needed it now. Caffeine was a wonderful drug; it acted like a jump-start to a dead battery. I was a dead battery. I walked to the kitchen and microwaved a cup of water and stirred in two teaspoons of instant coffee crystals. I sipped it. Black, bitter, teeth staining coffee.

My brain lit up a little. The fog was slowly clearing from my consciousness. A thought kept nagging at me. There was no reason for this thought, yet I felt so certain about it. I believed that last night's dream was preparing me for something huge; the dream was a classroom, and I was being taught by a teacher that knew more about everything than anyone else on Earth.

Chapter 4: Further Preparation

Ken made breakfast. He liked to cook. We had buckwheat pancakes, bacon and eggs. Some health experts believed this single meal alone could waste us, give us cancer and heart attacks. My common sense rejected such thinking. A more sensible approach was that of self-control. Just don't stuff yourself. It was all about portion size. Americans simply ate too much food.

Ken and I liked to walk in the morning. It was cold outside, so we each wore a sweat shirt under our jackets. We took off down the block. Our plan was to walk the sidewalks until we racked up an hour's worth of exercise.

As we strolled down the first sidewalk, I was already anticipating the friendship group. I enjoyed the company of people that loved quilting and anything else that involved a needle and thread. But today I wanted to go for a bigger reason than just that; I wanted to see Nell. I wanted to know she was okay.

I still felt a little weird about Ken and I playing detectives last night. We were more like stalkers, driving over to Nell's house late at night and spying on her. Today, I would ask Nell about her odd phone call and get that cleared up. I want to know what that fear and anxiety was in her voice. What scared her into calling me in the first place?

The air smelled normal this morning. Gone were the burnt circuit and ozone odors of last night. It was crisp and clean, with a nice chilly bite to the air. Ken said, “I'm curious what you'll find out about Nell today. I keep wondering if she might have a touch of dementia. Maybe she had little episode last night?”

“I'll call her later this morning and see how she's doing. What you said about dementia is a valid concern. No matter how spry and active she is, being a business owner and all that, she did just turn eighty.”

We walked up one block and down the next; it felt invigorating. I needed a good walk to sweep my mind free of last night's strange dream. It stuck inside my head like somnambulant glue, tenaciously refusing to let me go. Just as I would feel free of the dream, it would return. The dream was creepy. I've never experienced a dream like it before.

I nearly tripped on an object lying on the sidewalk, never noticing it until I was nearly sent sprawling to the ground. It looked like a colorful ball of fabric. A string held it together. I bent down and picked it up. I examined it closely and untied it. It was a Rolling Star quilt block. It was all done in shades of blue. The stitching was perfect. Why was this quilt block rolled in a ball and left on the sidewalk? Someone must have dropped it. I would, of course, never be able to find the owner, so the block was now mine. I folded it and put it in my jacket pocket.

“Strange coincidence, isn't it?” Ken said. “You nearly trip over a quilt block lying on the sidewalk - and you're a quilter. Would that be like me tripping on a UFO or pulp mystery magazine lying on the sidewalk?”

Ken's observation was aligned exactly with my thinking. The weirdness that started yesterday has continued into this morning. Either my imagination was working overtime, or our world has turned into an alternate universe.

Another new feeling crept up on me that added to the strangeness. I felt some dread about attending the friendship group today. I've never felt this way before. I've always looked forward to attending and visiting with all the regulars: Maxine, Sharon, and Anne. Those three women attended the meetings regularly. A few others only attended occasionally. But all of us shared our love for quilting, the act of creating an object of beauty. We loved to make and donate quilts to various charities, usually through the Friends Church of Whittier, where most of us attended. So why this feeling of dread, this mysterious cloud that hung over my head?

Ken and I had nearly finished our normal route, when he nearly tripped over a paper bag lying on the sidewalk. The bag's white color matched that of the sidewalk's, making it nearly invisible. He picked it up and opened it, and took out two small newsprint magazines. One was a UFO magazine, the other was a collection of pulp detective stories. Ken looked at me so strangely, his face so perplexed, questioning the very nature of reality. “Did we really wake up this morning, or are we still dreaming?” Ken asked, holding the small magazines in his hand as if they were about to bite him.

“It's not a dream.” I looked at the magazines Ken held, and said, “We have words to describe the sort of things we're experiencing. Words like 'serendipity'. Or even words like 'odd' or 'weird'. Why have these words if they don't describe reality?”

“Good point,” Ken said. He put the magazines back inside the bag, then tucked the bag under his arm. “Let's go home and check out our booty.”

We began walking back home, retracing our steps through the neighborhood streets, which would effectively double our walk time. When we approached the spot where I had found my serendipitous gift, we both looked at one another, but said nothing. I suddenly felt dizzy and grabbed hold of Ken's arm to stabilize myself. The world spun around me at an ever increasing speed. We both stood still, Ken helping me to stay on my feet, as I waited for my personal world to stabilize.

“Are you okay?” Ken asked.

“Give me a minute. I'll be alright.” I felt fine except for this dizzy spell. I had no other aches or pains. My last physical checkup, which was only a few weeks ago, was excellent for a woman my age. I focused my mind and willed this dizziness to leave - if such a thing was possible. It must have been. It worked. I tugged on Ken's arm to signal that I was ready to continue on home.

****

We arrived home and placed our found items on the dining room table. I spread out the quilt block, smoothing out the wrinkles with my hand, and studied it closely. Ken took his magazines from the bag, laid the detective magazine on the table, and took the UFO magazine into the living room. He sat down in his leather recliner and thumbed through the magazine like an excited little boy.

It was approaching 10 am, and I thought it late enough to ring Nell and see how she was doing. Hopefully, this conversation will be much less confusing than the last one. I dialed her from the landline phone.

“Hello. Nell speaking,” Nell said cheerfully.

I was surprised to hear her answer so quickly, but I didn't want to sound surprised. This caused me to hesitate a moment before answering, “Good morning Nell. How are you today?” I hope my response came off sounding calm and unperturbed.

“Fine. Just fine. Sorry about my call yesterday. I was a bit confused, but I'm okay now. Yesterday was an off-day. It happens.”

“Yes it does. It happens to the best of us. I wanted to check if there was anything you'd like me to bring to the group? Any snacks or drinks?”

There was a long pause on Nell's end. For a second, I thought we'd lost our connection. “Good thing you called. Bring a big bag of corn chips.”

“Anything else?” Again, a long pause. Long enough for me to worry.

“Yes. Yes there is. The most important thing of all. If you've recently discovered an interesting quilt block, bring it. It doesn't matter if it's one you've made or not. I've asked all the members to do this. It will make for an interesting project.”

Now I was the one to pause the conversation and create an uncomfortable silence. Serendipity.