Sicilian Quilt

PROLOGUE

It has taken me more than five decades to write this story. It’s my story, or more precisely, the story of certain pivotal events that unfolded over the course of two months back in the summer I was nineteen, 1959. So let me share just a few notes here before we get started.

When I look at late-teen girls today, this is what I see: An often breathtaking array of experience, arcane knowledge and stupefying tech savvy.

Nonetheless, most of them still seem like children to me. Eager yet unformed, swinging wildly between certainty and confusion, arrogance and anxiety. And, yes, at the absurdly advanced age of seventy-four, that is precisely how I still see my nineteen-year-old self. Often unsympathetic (unlikable, some will say), so obsessed with myself that I took everything personally, even the ways of the world that we women have been fighting for millennia.

Today I readily admit my memory is no longer what it was. But in the years following that seminal summer, I filled two spiral notebooks with repeated attempts to capture the truth about what happened back then. Occasionally I would pull them out, read them over, annotate and add to them. Decades later, when I finally found the gumption (or foolish pride) to think I could actually turn all those notes in various ballpoint colors into a coherent narrative, I wrote it in the third-person, an approach supposedly providing the kind of distance that better serves the truth.

Over the years, I produced several different drafts which I sometimes amplified and sometimes trimmed. There were many years when the manuscript never emerged from the drawer. Eventually, of course, it became a computer file, so easily accessed and altered, until the story finally became what it should have been all along, my own first-person account.

About the truth of things told here, suffice it to say, I see no point to this kind of enterprise without a constant effort at total honesty. Thus, the only things I have fictionalized are names. So, for example, I call my loving, complicated father Michael and my creative but house-bound mother Maria.

Finally, you may wonder at the number of words I expend on my old home town, Grosse Pointe, that famed American locus of privilege and power. All I can say is that, even though I haven’t set foot there in over thirty years, I became almost obsessed with getting the place right. Maybe it will help to view it as one of my major protagonists.

Chapter 1

At nearly four in the morning I sat by the phone in my father’s den. Moving silently in his hand-made rocker in the glow of his lighthouse lamp, I wondered if feeling close to him, in this room where we had last spoken, might help me think more clearly. So far my sense of his presence here seemed only to make me tense and uncertain.

The house was silent with sleeping women—Mrs. Marsalla in Judith’s old quarters in the basement, Maggie in her bedroom upstairs and our mother in her suite retreat, where she’d been since our return to Grosse Pointe. If the phone rang now, it would mean the man in our lives was gone.

Maybe I should have waited at the hospital, in the lounge with the people who belonged to the heart attack and the double pneumonia. Maybe that would have looked less suspicious. But the urge to leave the hospital quickly had been overwhelming.

I stared at the phone, wanting to grab it on the first ring, before it woke the others. Watched, it made no sound. Unfolding my father’s note, I studied his hopeless scrawl in pencil on white typing paper. That first night, after the police had found him, and after I’d come home from the hospital at midnight, there it was under my pillow along with the bank draft and the small red leather-bound book.

8/5/59

Dear Val,

Use this money to begin a new life for yourself. My will dissolves the business, so that is not an option for you. Your mother is well-provided for. You do not need to give up your life to care for her. Margaret, of course, also gets her fair share. So follow your dreams. And try to forgive me.

I love you,

Dad

Refolding the note, I dropped it in my lap. It seemed strange he would include the date, but then what did I know about such notes?

At the hospital the next day, Maggie had announced that she and Marty had already decided they’d go on with their plans. The wedding was just over three weeks away, and then it would be off to South Bend for three years of law school and teaching.

And the Malloys? How were Marty’s parents taking all this?

Just fantastic. She had said it a little too quickly.

No doubts or second thoughts about the family into which their son was about to marry?

They’re all for us to go right ahead.

The phone rang.

Startled, I waited a beat to pick it up but still got it before the second ring.

Hello.

Hello, this is Sister Marie George at Bon Secours Hospital. The nun’s voice was more formal than usual.

Yes, Sister, this is Valerie.

Oh, Valerie, dear, I’m sorry to have to call you at this hour and with this news. Your father passed away just a little while ago.

I see.

Yes, dear, apparently the trauma was just too much for him. But I’m sure he passed on with little or no pain or discomfort.

Yes.

Of course, as you know, he was given the last rites. So all we can say is that God in His infinite wisdom decided it was time for your father to be with Him.

Who found Michael?

I’m sorry?

Who found my father?

Oh, Nancy, the ward nurse, found him. Just a short time ago.

I see. Well, thanks very much for calling, Sister. And for all your kindness.

God be with you, dear, and with all of your family.

Thank you, Sister. Goodbye.

Good night, dear.

I replaced the receiver and stared at it. When I looked up, my mother was in the room, a few feet inside the doorway, standing there in her long flannel nightgown with its muted flower pattern, her black and gray hair loose down her back, her sad, puffy face forming a question.

What is it, Val?

I looked at her for a couple of seconds. Daddy died.

She glanced at the floor, then at the lighthouse, saying nothing, her face next to tears. Finally, she managed to say, Well, I guess it’s for the best. But her brown eyes welled up.

I found myself moving to hold her. It is for the best, Mom. It’s a blessing really.

How many years since our last embrace? Yet it offered that same musty scent, the smooth touch of the flannel and the warmth of that soft body. She clung to me for a while, and I began to sob. Was it for her? For Michael? For myself?

Finally, we let go of each other. Tearfully, she looked deeply into my eyes, then turned and left without a word. I stood in the room, thinking for a long time about my mother’s gaze and our embrace. Then I turned off the lighthouse lamp and went up to my bedroom.

On my bed in the dark I tried to fall asleep. If I did nod off, that would be a sign I should change my plans and stay, at least until after the funeral. But I was wide awake, and this was no way for someone almost twenty-years-old to make a major life decision.

From my closet I quietly pulled two large suitcases and opened one on my bed. Over the next hour I packed everything I could jam into the two cases. In the back of a desk drawer I found my passport, secured a year earlier when I had planned to work in Europe. I slipped it into my purse along with the bank draft for $20,000 and the little red book.

At a quarter to six I called the cab company from the phone in Michael’s den. I thought maybe I should leave a note for my mother and sister, if only to keep them from worrying and searching for me. On Michael’s drafting table I found another piece of typing paper and a pencil. Just a quick note because I wanted to watch for the cab from a window in the living room, so its driver would not ring the bell and stir someone in the house.

Dear Mother and Maggie,

Now that Michael’s gone, I see no reason to stay. Don’t worry and don’t send out search parties for me. I am fine and will be safe and well-provided for no matter where I go. My plan right now is to travel a great deal.

I love you both, but I cannot stay here.

Val

I folded the paper so it would stand up on its own, then walked to the kitchen and placed it on the table there. Moving past the suitcases waiting in the foyer, I headed to a living room window. The cab was just pulling up in the misty light of an end-of-the-summer dawn. I opened the front door before the driver, a dark little man about fifty, could reach the porch and then motioned him to the suitcases. Struggling with them out the door, he banged one of them so hard against the jam that I was sure everyone in the house had been wakened. Closing the door quietly but firmly, I walked to the cab through warm, moist air filled with a mourning dove’s song.

Chapter 2

In the back seat of the cab I took one last look at the house, its familiar Georgian lines softened by the hazy light.

All set, miss? Where to? The driver surprised me with a very deep voice.

The voice of doom, I thought. Nonetheless, I said, Metro Airport. The international terminal.

Yes, ma’am.

As the cab pulled away I opened my purse and found the little red book Michael had left me. About the size of a wallet, its thin leather cover embossed with the word Dreams. Inside on its yellowed and partially torn first page I read:

DREAMS

Olive Schreiner

Robert K. Haas, Inc. Publishers,

(Formerly Little Leather Library Corporation)

New York, N. Y.

There was no copyright date, but it was obviously quite old. How Michael had come by the book would forever remain a mystery. It contained several short parables, but he had marked one in the middle with the bank draft. I turned to the story and read it again.

LIFE’S GIFTS

I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep she dreamt Life stood before her, and held in each hand a gift—in the one Love, in the other Freedom. And she said to the woman, Choose!

And the woman waited long: and she said, Freedom!

And Life said, Thou has well chosen. If thou hadst said, ‘Love,’ I would have given thee that thou didst ask for. I would have gone from thee, and returned to thee no more. Now, the day will come when I shall return. In that day I shall bear both gifts in one hand.

I heard the woman laugh in her sleep.

So where you headed, miss, the driver asked in his absurd basso profundo.

I gazed at the place name in tiny print tucked in the left corner below the parable I had just read. I’m going to London, I said.

Ah, the world’s greatest city. I’ve always wanted to go there myself.

Yes.

Knowing he could see me in his rear-view mirror and hoping against further conversation, I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. How was it, I wondered, that I was feeling almost nothing in the midst of a decision that would completely change my life?

Feeling the warmth of the seatback against my neck as the cab moved through the dawn, I thought of that June night, just two months earlier, when the season’s first deep heat had baked the summerhouse, not letting me sleep.

Damp and sticky under a thin sheet, I had felt no breeze from the lake. A wide-open window offered no air at all. In the old double bed I lay a few inches from my sister’s side and tried not to think about the future. A year’s preoccupation had made any effort to look ahead seem pointless. How about the past? This soft old bed had often rolled us together. Then waking in summer darkness, I’d find myself snuggled in Maggie’s arms.

Are you sleeping?

Yes, she said.

Lifting the sheet I moved to the window. Oh, Maggie, the moon is so big. Come and see. It’s a big round slice of Pinconning cheese.

Val, go to sleep.

Com’on, Maggie, it’s lovely out there. Let’s go for a swim. It’s so warm.

It’s the middle of the night.

So what! We’ve done it before. Away from the window I pulled on the sheet.

Not since we were kids. Maggie pulled the sheet back. Besides, I thought you wanted to go downtown with Father in the morning.

It won’t take long. Just a dip. Com’on. That cheerfully imperative tone usually got the better of my older sister.

I don’t think I want to go swimming.

Of course you do.

My suit is probably still wet.

So? Once you get in, what’s the difference?

I hate a wet clammy suit.

So let’s go naked.

Don’t be silly.

Oh, hell, who’s going to see us? Com’on, get your suit and let’s go.

Don’t order me. I’ve told you that.

Maggie’s new voice made me feel desolate for a moment.

I’m not ordering, Maggie. It’ll just be so much fun together. Please come! Kneeling in the bed I found my sister’s hand, then pulled gently until Maggie moved.

Later I would see this mild tug-of-war as emblematic. Maggie and I did not think or act alike, see ourselves or the world in the same way, nor look sufficiently alike to be taken for sisters. Yet ours was a deep, occasionally painful connection: we had shared the same secrets, fears and confusion for as long as each of us could remember.

* * *

Diving quickly from the end of the long wooden dock I entered the dark water with a cold familiar crash. Lake St. Clair, part of the link between the Great Lakes Erie and Huron, was never really warm until mid-July. I arched upward until warm air bathed my face, my body shuddering with its new chill.

Oh, it’s so cold!

Maggie above on the dock: I told you.

It seemed warmer this afternoon.

Sitting, Maggie dangled her feet. It’s like ice.

Com’on, it’s not that bad.

I’m staying right here for awhile.

At twenty-one Maggie was tall and slender, maybe more graceful than I, though not as stacked, as the boys we knew would put it. Framed with naturally curly brown hair, her face was handsome with clear blue-gray eyes and a small but nicely shaped mouth. Unfairly, she thought herself no match for my looks. Her main assets, as she saw them, were an easy friendliness and good common sense. Tact, a natural warmth, a talent for liking people, as she once put it in the journal she kept religiously and which, on occasion, I secretly sampled.

She never dove, always immersed herself gradually, wading slowly to her thighs, rubbing the water on her upper body and arms.

Get yourself wet. You’ll feel better. Turning on my back I floated. With no breeze the lake was flat, the sky darkly overcast. I think it’s going to storm.

It’s too early for this kind of heat. Maggie held her feet out of the water.

But look at the moon.

Full and yellow it gleamed between two banks of black clouds. I swam vigorously away from the dock, my body warming quickly, my breath coming easily as my arms lifted and legs pumped. Circling back to the sloop at the dock behind my sister, I held to the stern and slipped out of my suit.

Com’on, Maggie. It’s wonderful.

Stop saying ‘Com’on.

Pushing away, I headed for a spot about fifty yards out where the moon glowed on the glass-like surface. Naked in the water I felt completely free and unhindered. A strong swimmer, I loved to race with Michael and to beat him even though he prided himself on his condition. In the glow on the water I floated and gazed at the moon as it bathed me.

Buoyant, relaxed, I called to Maggie on the dock. Why don’t you come out here? It’s so gorgeous.

Why don’t you come in here?

It’s so peaceful out here, I think I’ll drown.

Letting my legs sink I drifted down, my toes waiting to feel the smooth sandy bottom. Why not stay under and feel my heart pumping until I couldn’t feel any longer? Drowning, they said, was one of the easiest, least painful ways to leave. I wouldn’t have to do a thing, just let it happen. And when they found me naked in the morning all the young men would marvel painfully at my beautiful dead body. Michael would come and wrap me in a blanket and carry me into the house, and Maggie would be hysterical.

When air became a necessity I found myself moving up. My head finally freed itself, my mouth opened with a gasp.

Val, please come here. Stop playing silly games.

Maggie, I almost drowned that time. I almost decided to stay down there. I had always loved teasing my sister.

Be serious. Anything can happen when you stay under that long.

I’ll try it again unless you get into the water right now.

If you don’t come in here, I’m going in the house.

If I come now, will you get in the water?

Yes.

I moved in with long easy strokes. Slipping from the dock into thigh-deep water Maggie spread the chill in her usual fashion.

I’m going to get pneumonia.

Wading several shuddering steps onto our narrow strip of beach, she wrapped herself in a towel. Reaching the dock I hesitated for a moment, then left my suit hanging on the sloop. I climbed the ladder and stood up smiling.

What are you doing like that? Maggie sounded annoyed.

Like what? I walked toward my sister, breasts moving, hips working smoothly. I was swimming in the nude. I thought you could see.

How could I in the dark? Maggie turned away and walked toward the house.

Maggie, look. Cupping my breasts, I wanted my sister’s gaze on my body. You think I’m beginning to sag?

Okay, so you’ve got boobs, Val, but you’re really still a child. Maggie walked quickly through the garden, her slim angular figure retreating in the darkness.

Looking up for the moon, I couldn’t find it. In a soft, self-mocking whisper I sang, I am the witch who ate the moon, beware, beware.

Chapter 3

Care for a bite? Wrapped in a towel, I strolled into the bedroom eating a banana. I found it under the gold chair. That’s Maria’s new cache.

Don’t make fun of Mother. Maggie was already in her nightgown and back in bed.

So you’re a college grad now, I said. You even took a course in psychology. How do you explain this dopey obsession with hoarding bananas?

"You say it’s an obsession. Anyway, psychology was a bore."

I slipped a gown over my damp head. Two years earlier, while looking for Maria’s new kitten Minerva, I had found an over-ripe banana under a love seat in the living room. Knowing our mother’s love for the fruit and lacking a more interesting theory, I had quickly developed the notion that Maria had taken to hiding bananas. In truth, though looking under furniture periodically, I had never found another. The one I was eating now had come from the kitchen counter.

I can’t really blame you, I said. I thought everything about that place was a bore. I meant St. Mary’s of the Woods in South Bend.

Maggie said nothing. Her first night home after graduation and it seemed years since we’d been able to talk as we did so often when we were younger. The previous summer she had spent with her classmates on a bargain tour of Europe, and tomorrow the new bed for our maid Judith’s old room was supposed to arrive. This could be the last night we would ever sleep in the same room.

I don’t feel like sleeping, I said, slipping under the sheet. Let’s talk awhile.

About what?

I don’t know. How’s Martin?

He’s fine. But why talk about someone you dislike so much?

I’ve never said that.

Well, let’s see, so far you’ve called him small-minded, spoiled and insipid.

I have not.

You practically hump your back and spit when you see him.

I do not. He just doesn’t seem to be my type.

Right. He’s kind and gentle and...

You mean he likes puppies and he doesn’t brawl in bars? I could feel the ice in Maggie’s glare.

No, he’s just a gentle man, that’s all. He’d never hurt anyone.

More strained silence. I searched under the sheet for Maggie’s hand and held it warmly.

He’s a little shorter than I am, said Maggie finally.

Oh, that’s nothing. It all depends on how you feel about it. I squeezed Maggie’s hand. Already there was perspiration.

I think he’s good-looking, and he’s dependable. Reliable. He comes from a good family, and he’s got a good future. We’re not getting married tomorrow. We’re not even officially engaged. I don’t know what else there is to tell. She turned and faced the wall. The important thing is how I feel.

"How do you feel?" I kept my voice calm and gentle.

Maggie paused. I don’t know. Different, I guess. Just different. I’ve never really liked myself all that much, and now I feel almost like a different person.

That sounds good.

It’s very good. I don’t know. It sounds stupid and trite, but Marty makes me feel more like a woman. I’ve never really felt this way before.

You mean like hot in the crotch or what?

Oh, shut up!

Maggie, I’m sorry. I reached for her hand again but couldn’t find it.

You’re just like Father. He’s so damn vulgar, but why you?

Maggie, be quiet. You’ll wake Maria. But, really, I’m serious. I want to know what this guy has. Why you find him so attractive.

It’s none of your business.

But it is, Maggie. I love you. All I want is for you to be happy, and I’m frightened he’ll only make you miserable.

How would you know? Anyway we’re not even engaged.

But you’ve talked about marriage.

Of course we’ve talked. It’s perfectly natural.

That’s all I hear. How perfectly natural it is. Why can’t people see that half the population isn’t cut out for it, and the other half just likes to suffer?

How could Maggie even consider living the rest of her life with this fellow? Even if he seemed to be a nice guy, what a predictable and boring existence that would be.

We all want different things. Maggie’s voice held an irony difficult to gauge.

Not when it comes to basic things. How can you want his children?

Who said anything about children?

Oh, com’on, Martin’s the type who’d want ten just to prove he’s got a dick.

Oh, Marty’s got one all right. I can assure you.

Maggie’s roguish air surprised me. God, I can’t imagine you letting that little runt crawl all over you in bed.

That’s not what one does in bed, Val.

Yes, I know what one does in bed. Letting some sweaty guy paw and poke you isn’t exactly my idea of fun or pleasure.

Maggie stared at me for a moment and then said, You know, you really have a child’s attitude toward sex. It’s really kind of strange. Maybe you should talk to Dr. Varner about it.

Our mother’s psychiatrist. The suggestion had been made before, usually when Maggie seemed cornered.

So you’re really hot to trot with Marty? I kept my voice soft but insistent.

Marty doesn’t mean sex to me.

Then what does he mean? Are you really going to promise to love, honor and obey this guy? Serve his every whim and wish? Humble yourself and say, ‘Here I am. Now walk all over me and I’ll make babies for you.’

Val, that kind of thing went out with the last century.

No, it didn’t. Nothing’s changed.

We were silent for a while, until Maggie nodded slightly, then turned in the bed and faced me squarely.

You know, I used to think you were the modern one and I was old-fashioned. But it’s really the other way around. The trouble with you is that you’ve shaped your whole conception of men from Father.

Leave Michael out of this.

See? You always defend him. But he damaged Mother by treating her that way.

That’s nonsense. I ruined Maria.

Don’t be silly.

It’s true. If I’d never been born, Maria would be fine.

No, any man as infantile and goatish as Father...

I said leave Michael out. We’re talking about Martin now. He snaps his fingers, you have to submit. That’s what Holy Mother the Church says, and you know it.

Yes, I know all about what the Church says.

So? I thought you were concerned about saving your soul.

Let’s not get started on that again. Marty says he doesn’t want me to submit, as you say. He thinks all decisions should be made by both of us equally.

How idyllic.

It’s true. Marty’s not the type who needs to tyrannize.

Marty couldn’t tyrannize if his life depended on it.

Maggie sighed and stared at the ceiling. I thought you were worried about me submitting.

What kind of a life would it be to sit around and command some ineffectual male worm?

Maggie glared at me. Look, if you’re going to keep on insulting me or Marty, go sleep on the couch or take another goddamn swim.

There would be an end to the talk now unless I apologized. And even so, there would be no more talk of Martin. Throwing off the sheet, I sat on the edge of the bed ready to leave, then changed my mind.

I’m sorry, Maggie. Slowly I stretched out again and raised my thin, limp nightgown almost to my hips.

I don’t know what’s wrong with you, said Maggie. You’ve been awful ever since I got home.

I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know what it is either. I don’t know why I’ve done a lot of things lately.

We were silent for a long time. I knew my sister was deciding on suitable restitution.

Finally, Maggie said, Since you’re in such a mood to share secrets, how about telling me what happened at school?

I had expected this. A year and a half earlier, late in the fall of my first and only term at St. Mary’s, at age seventeen I had been expelled. They found me in bed with my roommate. What else is there to tell?

I don’t really believe that. I want to hear your story.

That is my story. It’s true. They had witnesses.

Witnesses?

Oh, there’s nothing to hear, really. One night I just couldn’t stand that food any longer so I went into town and ate at The Volcano. When I got back, old Olive Oil had finally carried out her stupid threat.

Olive Oil?

Elizabeth, my roomie. She looked kind of like that cartoon.

Maggie frowned, and I told myself to stop being vicious.

Anyway, we never got along at all. She was so damn neat, and I was such a slob. Our room was always a mess, thanks to me, of course, and she kept saying I’d better help clean it up before the floor prefect came around and confined us both to quarters. Naturally I wouldn’t raise a finger, so she says she’s going to draw an imaginary line down the center of the room and straighten her side out and let mine go to ‘Hades.’ That always killed me. She always said ‘Hades.’ So anyway, when I came back that night, her side was all neat as a pin, everything hung up, stacked, and swept clean. And my side was even more of a mess than usual, because she had tossed everything of mine from her side over on my bed. There was this pile of junk scattered all over—books and clothes and lipsticks and dirty bras and everything just thrown all over my bed. And here she was over in her bed sound asleep. She must have worn herself out doing all that work. Actually I kind of admired her for having the nerve to really do it. So anyway, I look at her bed and I look at my bed and I start to feel sleepy myself, probably because of the wine I had at The Volcano. I look back to her bed and here she’s sleeping as usual right flush against the wall and, like I said, she’s very skinny. So I said, ‘Okay, I’ll sleep right here and give her the shock of her life when she wakes up.’ And that’s what I did. I got out of my clothes and into her bed and off to sleep without even remembering to lock the door.

And so somebody came in and found you like that.

And so everybody came in. Every last one of them must have come tip-toeing in and had their thrill for the year.

But couldn’t they see? It was perfectly harmless.

"Well, but apparently after awhile I started tossing and threw my arm around poor Elizabeth. You know how I’m always grabbing things in my sleep. Well, anyway, they got a committee together and went to Sister Mary Recordia. The floor prefect, this ugly little pinch-faced nun who was always very petty. Of course Sister wasn’t about to miss this golden opportunity either, so she comes in and feasts her eyes and then wakes us up and orders us to report to her office immediately. Poor Elizabeth started to cry and never stopped for a day and a