Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 30, No. 13, Mid-December 1985

Patchwork by Janet O’Daniel

The village had stood there since before the Articles of Confederation were signed. It was busy and thriving before the Continentals made their stand on Breed’s Hill. It had hummed with life long before John Adams began writing to Abigail from far-off places — those measured letters of love and domestic concern. (“Pray how does your asparagus perform?”) In such a venerable town, it was not to be expected that twentieth century conventions would be entirely respected. Street corners did not meet at right angles, houses were surprisingly close to the sidewalks. Shops and dwellings alike could be hazards for those who were not natives. Floors dipped, steps wavered. Odd levels and corners abounded.

Wickedness, of course, thrived there as anywhere.

The building that was to become The Patchworks stood on Main Street on a corner — or what would have been a corner except that it was really a curve. It was where the road had bent to trail off in a westerly direction once, long ago. Cows being driven to outlying pastures after the morning milking had perhaps preferred it that way. And because it was on a curve, the shop’s front stoop was rounded, as were its stone steps.

“I could be happy there,” Dorcas said the moment she saw it. Richard, holding her hand, looking at her, knew she was telling the truth; knew too that he would be happy if Dorcas was.

“It’s not a long drive into the city,” he said reasonably.

“And the station’s close, in case you don’t want to drive.”

“We’ll have to see what sort of shape it’s in.”

“But it looks just right for my shop. And we could live up overhead.”

“Sort of run down, isn’t it?”

“We can fix it up.”

“Oh sure. Anything can be fixed.”

Thus, trying to sound reasonable and pragmatic, but with their minds already made up, they approached the corner, mounted the rounded steps, and pushed the door open. The sign over the door said smokes — NEWSPAPERS — SOFT DRINKS. A bell jangled as they entered.

“We could keep the bell,” Richard said hesitantly as he looked around.

They kept the bell, but that was all. By the time Dorcas’s shop opened for business in September, all else had been swept, hauled, or carted away. Splintery counters, cracked mirrors mended with electrician’s tape, scarred shelves that had held Fritos and potato chips, shabby racks that had held newspapers. Cork ceiling tiles were removed to reveal foot-thick beams; mullioned front windows were re-glazed and puttied.

SMOKES — NEWSPAPERS — SOFT DRINKS came down. In its place, gently swaying, hung Dorcas’s new sign: THE PATCHWORKS. QUILTING SUPPLIES. SUNDRIES.

“Don’t you love Sundries?” she asked Richard, and Richard, who loved Dorcas, said he did.

It was a time everywhere of restoration, rediscovery, revival. And timing, it has often been noted, is all. Dorcas’s shop opened on a tide of nostalgia, of appreciation for things past. While antique shops sold washboards for twenty-five dollars, Depression milk bottles for ten, Dorcas sold quilts she had made, quilts she had collected, and on the other side of the shop sold, yard by colorful yard, the materials with which to make quilts. However, many of her customers had more will than skill.

“I don’t get it,” one woman frowned. “I mean — how do you put all those little pieces together? I’d love to do it. It would be — I don’t know — a statement of my own. Made to the world, you know? Only I don’t know how.”

Dorcas, who thought that in itself something of a statement, wisely did not say so. “I’m sure you could learn,” she said kindly.

“But how did you learn?”

Dorcas sought back in memory and knew that she had taught herself. Her own fingers and feeling had taught her. There had never been a time when she had not felt comfortable with a needle in her hand and scraps littered around her.

“I suppose I just picked it up,” she said. Then an idea came to her. “Perhaps I could teach you — and some of the others who’d like to learn.”

“A class.”

“Yes, a class.” Trying it out in her mind, Dorcas decided she liked the idea. But she and Richard were property owners now. They had a Mortgage.

“There would be a fee, of course,” she added primly.

The classes were a great success and good for business. Dorcas held them in the late afternoons in one corner of the shop, keeping an eye on the counter and taking care of occasional customers at the same time. But many women — and one man who inquired rather shyly — worked at their jobs by day and wanted to attend an evening class. Would she consider it?

“Well, possibly,” Dorcas said, but she was thinking of Richard and their time together in the low-ceilinged rooms upstairs. “I’ll think about it.”

Then one day before she had made up her mind, a woman came into the shop carrying an armful of folded quilts. Dorcas thought she was not yet forty, yet she had a gaunt, weary look. Something older than forty was in her eyes. Some wisdom, it seemed to Dorcas, or perhaps only knowledge, which is of course useful, but less than wisdom. The two of them looked at each other and seemed, in that first moment, to see something, each in the other. The thing had a name, but neither of them called it anything as yet. The name was understanding. They understood each other but did not know that they did.

“I have been noticing your sign,” the woman said.

Dorcas’s eyes flickered toward what the woman was carrying. “You make quilts?” she asked.

“It’s something I’ve always done,” the woman said, minimizing it.

“And you’d like to sell them?” Now Dorcas was filled with dread, for she had met a number of these earnest needlewomen since opening her shop. For the most part their creations were dreadful shiny affairs, with a great deal of polyester in shades of orange, lime green, fuschia. Skillful fingers but no eye for color, design, balance, proportion. Once or twice she had, spinelessly, agreed to take them on consignment, and had felt wretched over her lack of backbone. I will not take these if they’re ugly, she told herself. I will not.

“I would like to sell them, yes, ma’am,” the woman said.

Dorcas, feeling serious and mature at being called ma’am, cleared a space on the counter. “Well. Let’s have a look.” The feeling — still with no name — was working in her, and stronger now. She began to think the things might not be ugly after all.

The woman placed them on the counter and unfolded the top one for Dorcas to see.

It was in the pattern called Bear Paw and was made in shades of soft rose and beige, with dark red at the center of each block. Neither of them said anything. The woman put it aside and unfolded the next one. This was done in dozens of colors but so skillfully assembled that not a single piece clashed with any other. The blocks were separated by strips of midnight blue that made the quilt look like a stained-glass window. Dorcas recognized the pattern.

“That’s the Monkey Wrench, isn’t it?”

“Yes ma’am. I always thought it a poor name. No real sound to it. But when you set this pattern kitterin’, you call it the Anchor. I like that better.”

“Kitterin’?” Dorcas echoed.

“On the slant, like.”

“Oh yes, diagonally—”

The woman unfolded the next one. Stars in shades of blue set against white. “This here they call the Lemon Star.”

Dorcas recognized the LeMoyne Star, but she rather liked the sound of Lemon. She studied the tiny stitches, the smooth seams, the corners that met without a pucker.

“Your work is very good, Mrs.—”

“Lillian Shaw.”

“Mrs. Shaw. It’s very good indeed. I’ll be happy to take them on consignment. How much do you want to ask for them?”

“You decide, ma’am. Anything you get is all right with me.”

Dorcas saw Lillian Shaw’s look move to the bolts of cloth standing upright in rows on the shelves behind the counter.

“Do you need more material?” she asked.

“Oh no, ma’am. No. Maybe if any of these sell, I might buy some.”

“I could let you have some and deduct it later from the money you’ll have coming.”

“If the quilts don’t sell, it’d be a debt.”

“I’m sure they’ll sell.” Dorcas was already thinking of a dealer in antiques and crafts who would handle something this fine. She could sell him the lot, she was sure. “You should look on it as a business investment.”

“Well — if you’re sure it’s all right.”

She chose a soft green that Dorcas herself loved, a pale shade with darker green designs of ferns and feathery growing things. With it she placed a strawberry pink. Exactly right, Dorcas thought. The colors of spring and growth. She watched Lillian Shaw’s hands move over the bolts of cloth as though making their selection partly by touch, loving the smoothness and feeling the quilt already made.

“What pattern will you choose for this one?”

“Tree of Life,” Lillian Shaw replied without hesitation. In her head it was already made, Dorcas thought. The two of them looked at each other again, and it seemed to Dorcas that with each look she knew something more about the woman. She knew right now, for instance, that it was important to Lillian to take this material home with her — the pale green, the young glowing pink. That she needed it. Because Lillian sewed her quilts for the same reason women of an earlier time must have sewn theirs in the long howling winters, in the cold lonely cabins. To keep from going mad.

“She’s a real artist,” Dorcas told Richard that night. “Only very poor, I could tell.”

The two of them, so rich in blessings, considered this.

“Artists often are,” Richard ventured.

“And not happy.”

“You could tell that, too?”

“Yes.” Then Dorcas mentioned the evening class that had been suggested. It gave Richard a chill, thinking of lonely evenings without Dorcas.

“Maybe you could get this woman to teach it,” he said.

Dorcas had been giving this some thought herself.

“What a good idea, Richard,” she said, and put her white arms around him in the darkness.

“Two evenings a week, say. Perhaps two hours each time. And you’d be paid,” Dorcas said. “We’d charge a fee.”

Lillian Shaw, who had come into the shop for thread, considered it. “Could I, do you think?”

“Of course. Just show people how you do it yourself. How to measure and cut, that sort of thing.”

“Can I let you know?” Lillian said. “I’ll have to—” She did not finish saying what she had to do, but Dorcas thought she knew. There was someone she had to ask.

“Yes, of course,” Dorcas said. Then she added, “Do you live far? Would it be hard for you to come in, evenings?” It was winter now, and dark early.

“I live out on the Spoon Hollow Road,” Lillian said. “But my boy could probably bring me.”

It was the most she had revealed about herself. She had a home which could be located; she had a son old enough to drive.

“Fine,” Dorcas said. “You can let me know.”

Two days later Lillian came in and said she would give it a try.

The small group of students overflowed with enthusiasm. Lillian got on well with them. She began to smile now and then. The money was not much, but it seemed to satisfy her. Dorcas augmented it by giving her material for sewing. Twice a week in the early evening Lillian was brought to the shop by a boy in a rusty pickup truck. The boy had straight light hair which fell across his forehead, and he wore a plaid lumber jacket but no hat or gloves. Dorcas, watching through the window, could see the redness of his hands, the bony raw look of his wrists. She saw too that each time he left Lillian he waited until she was inside the door of the shop before leaving. His eyes followed her with a look of concern until she turned and gave him a little wave before going inside. He was always there to pick her up two hours later.

“His name is Edward,” Lillian explained.

“He seems a fine boy,” Dorcas said. Lillian looked pleased.

“He wants to join the Marines.”

“Oh?”

“He wants to get on. You know, learn things. The Marines, they teach you things.”

“When will he go?”

Lillian looked troubled. “I don’t know. I want him to go now, but he says no, not yet. He worries—” She broke off and did not finish.

Then one night it was not Edward who came for her but a man, a large man whose massive shoulders filled the doorway, whose head almost touched the bell when he stood up straight. He wore a checked flannel shirt and a down vest over it. His eyes were narrow and cold as he looked around the shop — at the colors ranged on the shelves and spilling over the big cutting table, at the group of learners in their sewing corner. Their voices stilled one by one as they felt the draft from the door and turned. Dorcas, who had come downstairs for a spool of thread to match a shirt she was mending for Richard, paused with the spool in her hand. The man swayed very slightly. A smell of drinking had come into the shop with him. His jaw was set. Like a rock, Dorcas thought.

Lillian, who was leaning over Mrs. Rodman’s shoulder, pointing to a corner that was not quite true, was the last to notice. When she straightened and turned toward the door she went white and, without a word, walked to the corner where her worn brown coat had been tossed over a chair.

“I must go,” she said. They were the only words she spoke as she pulled on her coat and her knitted hat and went out the door with the man. He had left the door open all the time he waited for her, and the shop was cold now. Dorcas, still clutching the spool of thread, swallowed and turned to the students.

“I believe that will be all for this evening,” she said.

She too was white by the time she returned to Richard upstairs.

“But what are you afraid of?” he kept asking after she had told him about it. “What is it?”

Dorcas only shook her head and pressed herself closer in his arms, shivering.

Two days later Lillian came to the shop again, but in the daytime. She had walked, Dorcas guessed by the look of her, for her knitted hat was pulled down over her forehead and her scarf wrapped her almost up to her eyes. Dorcas fluttered around her and said, “Lillian, you look frozen. Come sit down. Take your things off, and I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

“I don’t need anything,” Lillian said, and as she unwrapped herself slowly Dorcas could see the swelling around her eyes, the bruises over her cheekbones, the split upper lip. And Dorcas, who had very little experience in such matters, whose life had been painted with a palette of soft colors, began to tremble.

“Are you all right, Lillian?” And then, even though she knew, “What happened to you?”

“I won’t be able to teach the class any more,” Lillian said. “My husband doesn’t like me to be out at night.”

“But surely—” Dorcas began, and saw Lillian close her eyes slowly, as if against some pain too great to be looked at. “But you can still come in the daytime. You’ll be needing material now and then, and if I sell those quilts of yours you may want to bring me more. If you have more, that is—”

Lillian’s eyes came open, but slowly, as if Dorcas’s determined optimism wearied her. “Oh yes,” she said. “I have more.”

“Well then — if you want to part with them, that is—”

“Part with them?” Bitterness crept in now. “Oh yes, I’d part with them all right.”

“Well then, you see? We will be seeing each other.” Dorcas, recognizing what was in the other woman’s eyes, still could not help painting with her own set of colors, trying to brush in pale rose, sunny yellow. “It’ll be all right, Lillian, you’ll see.”

Richard was horrified when she told him the story, although he tried to hide it and appear worldly. But he kept seeing it as Dorcas, her soft flesh bruised, her lovely face swollen.

“What the devil would make a man do a thing like that?” he said angrily. “He knew she was coming here, didn’t he?”

“Yes of course. She told me she had to ask him.” Dorcas paused. “No she didn’t. She said, I’ll have to—” Have to what? “I thought she meant she had to ask her husband. But maybe what she meant was she’d have to see if she could do it without his finding out.” She looked at Richard. “And he did find out.”

Business stayed brisk in Dorcas’s shop. Winter wore away. March blew in on a wild wind, bringing with it one last snowfall, heavy and wet, that broke limbs and knocked out power for a time. Dorcas and Richard lit candles and sat close together by the fire. Rain followed the snow and brown bare spots appeared on the hills around the village. There were freezing nights still, but during the sunny daylight hours there was thawing. Dorcas put on her boots and walked around the small back yard behind the shop, seeing raccoon tracks, like those of little human hands and feet, rambling about in the snow that remained. There were skunk tracks too, stodgy and less wandery.

Lillian Shaw did not return to the shop.

The dealer who had taken Lillian’s quilts sold them. He sent Dorcas a check. Dorcas wondered about sending the money to Lillian. She kept seeing the man with the stony jaw and the way his cold eyes had moved around the shop. She decided to wait. She made a note of the amount — owed to Lillian Shaw, she wrote — and put it under the drawer in the cash register. When the dealer called and asked, “Any more where those came from?” Dorcas said she would let him know.

The wind began to lose its sharp bite. The birches showed yellow-green buds. Crows left the woods out beyond the village to feed in the bare spots, then gathered to talk it over noisily in the pine trees. Mud was everywhere. Signs of spring appeared daily, although people meeting on the street told each other as they did every year that it certainly was uncommonly late.

Then on a Sunday in April, with jonquils poking up through last year’s matted leaves, the sheriff’s car went tearing through the village with a look of urgency. Richard walked out to buy the Sunday papers and learned that a man named Reuben Shaw had been found dead at the foot of the cellar steps in the old farmhouse he and his family lived in out on the Spoon Hollow Road. His wife had been in the field behind the house gathering early dandelion greens. She had come home and found him. Her basket, with greens scattered all around, was beside the body.

Later word had it that the sheriff had investigated and had confirmed that Reuben Shaw had died of a deep head wound. The sheriff pointed out a jutting stone shelf built into the foundation of the house — such things were used in the old days for storage. No doubt the man had hit his head on it as he fell. A bit of blood was found on it. It had been thought at first that the victim might have encountered housebreakers; there had been such trouble out that way recently. In which case, the sheriff theorized, he might have been struck over the head first, thrown down the steps afterward. Unlikely, the sheriff said, refuting his own argument. Shaw was a heavy man, and strong. Not the likely work of two hurrying burglars. And in broad daylight? No, accidental was the way he saw it. Accidental, he entered in his report. Shaw was known as a heavy drinker. Smelled of it when they found him.

Then on a day in May Lillian Shaw appeared at the shop with her son Edward. The boy was carrying an armload of quilts, randomly stacked.

“Lillian! I’m so glad to see you!” Dorcas cried out, but then paused because Lillian looked in some way different to her. Subdued, withdrawn. Not unhappy, not troubled. Quiet, rather, and serene.

“You said you could use more of these,” Lillian said.

“Yes, of course. Oh, I have missed you, Lillian,” Dorcas could not help saying. She turned to the boy. “Hello, Edward.” He looked different in the warm May air. The sleeves of his blue denim shirt were rolled up, his hair was riffled by the breeze. He smiled in his quiet way and placed the pile of quilts on the counter.

“And I have money for you, too. From the others you left with me.” Dorcas hurried to write a check and hand it to her. Lillian stared at it, holding it carefully. “Thank you,” she said quietly. Then she added, “Edward’s leaving tomorrow.”

“Oh?”

“For the Marines. He’s been wanting to.”

“I know — you said. Good luck, Edward. And Lillian, you must stop in again now that you’ll be — by yourself. You will, won’t you?”

The corners of Lillian’s mouth went up slightly. A wisp of a smile, no more. She dipped her head a little to acknowledge the invitation. A sort of thanks. Perhaps, she indicated, but did not say. Dorcas did not press it. Then Lillian looked at her. A meeting of eyes. And there was the thing between them again, each seeing it in the other. Understanding. With a shock of realization Dorcas knew that Lillian Shaw would do whatever she chose to do now. Strength glittered around her like a medium’s aura, striking life into her dull hair, squaring her tired shoulders. Dorcas swallowed as a slow, freezing chill seemed to start up in her, shivering its way from deep inside to surface along her arms where the small hairs rose.

“Will you be wanting material to take home with you today?” she asked, but only for something to say because already she knew the answer.

“No,” Lillian said quietly. “I don’t need anything.”

That night she and Richard sorted out the quilts upstairs. Dorcas arranged and rearranged them until she thought she had the order right.

“This one’s first, of course,” she said. “It’s called the Double Wedding Ring.”

“Yes. And then this one?”

“That’s called Sawtooth.”

“Why is that next?”

“Oh — realization, sharp edges, pain.”

“I suppose. Then what?”

“World Without End. That’s this one here.”

“Hopeless, you mean—”

“Yes. But then, you see, here’s Flying Geese.”

“I don’t get that.”

“Dreams, I think. She must have dreamed.”

“How about that next one?”

“That’s called Drunkard’s Path.”

“Self-explanatory,” Richard said.

“And this one’s called Storm at Sea.”

“Storm at sea?”

“Well, mostly the storm part. Terrible turbulence. Indecision.”

“And this one’s last?”

“Yes.” Dorcas unfolded the Tree of Life. It lay before them, spread over her knees, the growing green and vibrant pink, the little trees made of green triangles, all fashioned with thousands of determined tiny stitches, all reaching, stretching as if toward the sun.

“It’s Edward,” Dorcas whispered. “It’s her love for him. That’s what this one is. It’s his chance.”

Richard said slowly, “Do you think — I mean, could they possibly, the two of them—”

But Dorcas had stood up suddenly. The Tree of Life fell from her lap, and she leaned over to pick it up. Began folding it with short choppy gestures. Her mouth was thin-drawn, a severe line Richard had not seen before.

“You heard what the sheriff said.” It was a sharp, hard voice, new to Richard. “That’s all I know. All I want to know.”

Richard, feeling that he was in the presence of some awesome woman-knowledge, some secret freemasonry that excluded him, decided nervously that he wouldn’t bring it up again.