The Monday the Quilts Came Out

The fence

Courtney came out on her deck again a little after eleven.

By then I had swapped out the first eight quilts for eight more, and Roger was carrying the first batch inside one at a time, folded over his arm. There were four cars parked along our road.

Courtney stood at the railing with her arms crossed. Then she came down the steps, across her yard, and stopped at the wire fence between our places.

All the old women stopped talking at once. I have never heard a backyard go so quiet.

I set down my clothespin bag on the picnic table and walked over to the fence.

She was taller than me, and younger than I’d thought from a distance. Her eyes were red around the edges. She had on a gray sweatshirt from some college and a pair of slippers that were going to be wet from the grass.

“If this is about the citation,” she said, “I get it. All right? You made your point. There have been cars in front of my house all morning. People are staring at my windows.”

Her voice was shaking, but she held her chin up. I’ll give her that.

“It’s Monday,” I said. “Monday’s wash day. These needed airing. My mother aired every one of them every April of her life, and I do it for her now.”

“All of them. The Monday after.”

“Yes,” I said. “I won’t tell you I didn’t think about you. I did. I wanted you to see what that line is. I didn’t want to shame you. I wanted you to see it.”

She looked past me at the line. At the women in the lawn chairs. At Roger, who had stopped halfway to the house with a quilt over his arm and was standing very still, watching, the way he does.

Her face did something complicated.

“I’m making a fresh pot of coffee,” I said. “Would you come in and have a cup?”

She didn’t answer. She just looked at me like I’d said it in a foreign language.

From the lawn chairs, Dorothy called out, “She makes good coffee, honey. Better than the church.”

And Courtney Hale, who had lived in our village four months and had never once come past our property line, laughed. It was a startled little laugh, like it got out before she could stop it.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

I opened the gate.