The Quilt in the Dog Crate
Courtney had come up behind us by then, carrying Hattie in the carrier with both hands. Dr. Reyes was with her, and one of the doctors’ wives, and I could see by Courtney’s face that she had walked the whole length of that hall hoping the floor would open.
“Then I don’t understand,” Mrs. Lindahl said. She did not say it unkindly. “Courtney, dear, at the tea you told me you had nothing handmade in the house worth donating. How did your own daughter’s quilt come to be in my auction?”
Nobody answered. Jeff looked at his wife. He did not answer for her either. He just waited, and I thought, that is Grandma in him.
I could have said it. I had the words ready and nineteen people would have repeated them by church the next morning. I kept my mouth shut.
Courtney’s chin shook.
“I put it in the dog’s crate,” she said.
The doctor’s wife said, “You what?”
“I put it in the crate. For the dog to lie on.” She was looking at the floor. “I said it was finally good for something. Denise asked for it back and washed it. She called and offered it to me again and I told her they’d be lucky to get forty dollars.”
It was a brave thing to say in front of those women, and I will give her that. She could have lied. I had left her room to.
Mrs. Lindahl was quiet for a moment.
“Well,” she said. “It brought thirty-six hundred. So now you have been told, by people with no reason to flatter you.”
That was all. She did not raise her voice. But the doctor’s wife had already stepped a little away, the way you step back from somebody who has spilled something, and I saw Courtney feel it.
Dr. Reyes was the one who broke it. She crouched down by the carrier, right there on the fellowship hall floor.
“Is this her?” she said. “Is this Hattie?” She touched one finger to the back of Hattie’s hand, and Hattie, who had slept through thirty-six hundred dollars, opened her eyes. “Look at you. Look at those cheeks. You were five pounds and one ounce and you would not eat for anybody.”
“She eats now,” Jeff said. His voice cracked on it.
“I wanted it for our family room,” Dr. Reyes told me, standing up. “Where the parents wait. My mother quilted in Garden City all my life, and I know what four hundred hours is.” She smiled. “But I think it is going where it belongs. I only made him work for it.”
“Thank you,” I said. It did not seem like enough.
One of the youth group boys brought the quilt, folded. Jeff took it in both arms like something that could break. Then he bent down and tucked one corner of it loosely over Hattie’s feet in the carrier, the corner with the red flower, and picked up the carrier himself.
“Let’s go home,” he said to Courtney. Not hard. Just tired.
She went with him. At the door she looked back at me, and I could not read it.
Jeff called the next day after church.
“You got one of those sleeves?” he said. “For hanging a quilt? I looked it up. It says you need a sleeve on the back.”
“I can sew one.”
“Come over, then. Bring your thimble.”
When I got there he was in the nursery with a stud finder, a level, and a length of closet rod he had cut down in the garage and sanded. Everything in that room was gray and white, just as she had said. Gray walls, white crib, a gray elephant on the shelf.