The Quilt Read Free

you and tell me about the family.”
    Everett sat down with an exaggerated sigh and decided to risk it. “Momma, what on earth do you think you’re gonna do? You can’t even—”
    â€œDon’t you go telling me what I can and can’t do,” Mary replied. “There’s been something bothering me for almost a year now, something I’ve left undone. Been searching for it the best part of every night, wondering if maybe the Lord was trying to tell me something.”
    â€œBut a quilt, Momma,” Everett protested. He gave a swift glance at her hands. The arthritis had turned the fingerssideways, so that they stuck out from her palm at this weird angle. Everett didn’t like to look at Mary’s hands. It always gave him this little twist of pain down in his gut.
    â€œIf that’s what the Lord wants me to do, son, then that’s what I’m gonna do.” There was a firmness to Mary’s voice that brooked no further argument. “Now tell me about the family.”
    Everett held his peace in front of Mary, but that evening he really let his wife Lou Ann know what he thought of it all.
    â€œCan you imagine?” Everett pushed his dessert plate back far enough to lean both elbows heavily on the table. “The woman can barely read a big-letter Bible, she’s gotta have the television almost in her lap to see it. Fingers all bent over, shoot, I wonder how she’ll even be able to pick up a needle. And she thinks she’s gonna sew herself another quilt.”
    Lou Ann thought of the four quilts Mary had already done for them, the big one for their own bed and the three with patches of animal-covered fabrics for the children. “Mary makes the prettiest quilts I ever saw.”
    â€œMade, honey. Mary made the prettiest quilts. I didn’t say anything about that, now, did I. Not a peep. Wouldn’t trade anything for those pretty ones upstairs. Sell my car before I sold my quilt. Wasn’t talking about that for a minute. I just don’t want the old lady to get disappointed.”
    Lou Ann knew better than to hit her husband head on with any disagreement when he was in one of his moods. “She tell you how the Lord told her to do the quilt?”
    â€œNo, she didn’t, and I’ll bet you it was because she was afraid I’d show her just how wrong she was to even think it.” He picked up the last bit of pie his littlest girl had left on her plate and pushed it in his mouth, then licked his fingers carefully. Lou Ann made just about the best brown sugar pie he’d ever tasted. She’d even managed to improve on the recipe Mary’d given her.
    â€œI don’t know, honey.” Lou Ann stood and started gatheringplates. “Mary’s not the type of lady to say it was a message from the Lord when it wasn’t.”
    â€œMomma’s the best woman I know,” he said to her, retreating back, then added hastily, “except for you, honey. But I do declare she’s getting on. You know, she’s reached that point where maybe she’s not thinking so clearly anymore.”
    Lou Ann appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Don’t you let her hear you say that.”
    â€œWhat, you think you’re married to a crazy man?” Everett asked, rolling his eyes.
    Being an intelligent woman who loved her husband very much, Lou Ann hid her smile in the kitchen and held her tongue.
    â€œYou know what I love the most about Mary?” Lou Ann told Jody, Jonas’s wife, the next morning. “She’s always so involved.”
    â€œThat just about says it all,” Jody agreed. “She’s just about the most involved woman I’ve ever met.”
    But Lou Ann wasn’t finished. “You don’t ever get the feeling that she’s just sitting there on the sidelines watching you go through whatever it is that’s ailing you. Mary’s right in there with you. When I talk to