Retreat to Love Read online

  “What is it you really do? I mean, is it basically just quilting?” Lizzy asked.

  Time for the big eye roll. “‘Oh, I thought quilts were just for sleeping under!’” Our gazes locked. “I’m not making fun—I just hear it all the time. Traditional art form, blah, blah, not just Wedding Rings and Flying Geese, blah, blah, creativity, technology and history intertwined, etcetera.” I sipped at the pulpy juice. “I make art. Just because it’s related to something basically anyone can do doesn’t make it less valuable as an art form. It’s like asking Caleb or Brandon what’s the difference between my vacation photo album and what they do.”

  Wren nodded at Lizzy. “Or why what we make is more important than some Hummel figurine.”

  Lizzy’s counter was instant. “I don’t know about that. Sculpture has a long tradition as art. Collectibles are fine for what they are, but no one’s going around asking why The Thinker is magnificent.” She stopped and let out a breath, then turned more calmly to me. “Do you have any here?”

  “Hummel figurines?”

  “No, quilts. I mean, examples of your art. Or photos of them? I’d like to see the difference for myself.”

  I finished wolfing down my omelet. “Sure, come along now if you like, I’ve a couple with me.” We stood and stacked our dishes, then headed outside.

  “They do make fiber arts in Ireland, you know,” I told her. “Tapestries for one thing, and some extraordinary lacework, but there’s quilting, too.”

  “I’ve never spent a lot of time on traditional arts. I’ve been to the National Gallery and all, but between working and my art I don’t have just loads of time to spend on the kind of culture not speaking directly to me.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I was a chef at a brassiere my ex owns. But we broke up over Christmas and it’s been hell, so I gave my notice when I found out I’d been accepted here. When I go back I’m taking over for a friend of a friend going on maternity leave, at this trendy and wholesome café in Temple Bar. But it should be easier, I won’t have breakfast to contend with and the menu is smaller and less ambitious than Carmel’s.”

  “Was that her name?”

  “The brassiere’s. She’s Moira.” As we turned onto the path to ValeSong, Lizzy added, “Don’t you dare let it get back to Brandon I cook. I need a break from all that, and if it means eating canned soup because it’s all he can manage, it’s fine with me.”

  “Your secret is safe.” I entered my door code and gestured her in. “This your first trip to the States?”

  “No, my parents brought me on holiday when I was fifteen, we toured all round New England and parts of the south.” She wandered rather freely around my studio, opening the cabinets and playing with the lights while I unpacked the bag with my work. “I had my very first lesbian encounter in Maine, of all places. At this kind of day camp for the surly teenagers who didn’t want to go on the lobster-boat tours with their parents. She and I wandered off together when we were supposed to be picking blueberries and kind of mauled at each other in a little wood.” She laughed. “I think the camp director, he was barely older than we were, knew, but he never said a word to our parents. He just asked if Cindi and I wanted to join him at a beach party with some friends.”

  “Did you go?”

  “We told our folks all the kids were going, it was a cookout for the campers, and then we disappeared together under the pier. We were going to swim nude in the ocean together, but it was fekking cold, so we got dressed again and went to a bar and she bought us coke and chips—french fries—and talked about how we would always remember each other and always be friends.” Lizzy shook her head just slightly. “She’s living in L.A. now, and has twin boys.”

  She came up behind me where I was spreading Sprung From Spring on the drafting table. “This is one of them?”

  I nodded. “It’s one of my favorites. Spring is the town I used to live in, a little bit out of Houston. I did this just after I’d moved away from my parents, so it felt, you know, like a release from a kind of moral prison.”

  Lizzy moved around me to touch the surface, fingering the hanging silver manacles and following the spiral of freedoms (boots made for walking, needle and thread of expression, a condom wrapper, a clock stopped at 2:18 am, a net-purse full of coins) as it expanded across the cloth. “I wouldn’t have thought it was so sensual,” she said, looking at me. “The fabrics invite you to touch them, don’t they?”

  “Mmm,” I said. “I tried painting in college, but it always seemed too static to me. Oils dry so hard and relentless. Even when I paint the cloth,” I indicated the brush strokes of the dust storm and tint of the sunrise, “I try to do it as lightly as I can, so it can still flow with the same motion as the quilt.”

  “‘Tis okay, touching them, isn’t it?”

  “Sure. Same as with sculpture; they wear out with time but you can make them as functional as you want when they’re new. When I’m commissioned for baby quilts I always pad them with terrycloth or wool instead of batting, to make them washable.”

  She scrunched her brow at me. “How can you switch so easily from fighting tradition to making something that ends up so functional?”

  I shrugged. “A gal’s gotta eat. And it depends on the piece. My baby quilts are celebrations of the new life, but they’re also meant to appeal to the sight and touch, because that’s so important for developing brains. Besides, I’m not exactly to the pick and choose point in my career.” I moved Sprung aside and unfolded another, an abstract collage of blues, greens, grays and purples with a distant boat askew in the upper right corner and a glimpse of a turreted tower in the lower left. “I’ve known people to encase my work in glass, and to set tables on it, so I try to be flexible in how I make them. This is called The Irish Sea. Does it look right?”

  “This a Martello tower?” she pointed.

  “Yeah, it’s supposed to be the one in Killiney. My Pappa always told us about it being the last he saw of Ireland. He watched it fade into a speck, then turned his head and never looked back.”

  “When was that, then?”

  “In ‘37. He was eighteen and had done as much as he thought he could in Dalkey, so he went first to Liverpool, didn’t like it so much as a haven for Irish Catholics, and caught the next boat to America. It docked at Galveston and he moved up to Houston because he was offered a job timbering.”

  “Did he bring your granny over?”

  “No, they hadn’t met. She was already living in Houston, had been since her parents emigrated here when she was six. It was bad timing, just before the Depression, but they fell in with some good people, a community of local Irish who looked out for each other when they could.” I ran my palm over the rough kaleidoscopic waves on the tightly stitched top. “Pappa met Gran through the same crowd when he had only been in America a couple of weeks. It was on her fifteenth birthday. Fourteen months later, they got married.”

  “And she from Ireland. Traveled across the world to marry the girl next door.”

  “I made this shortly before Pappa died, when I was fifteen. It was to commemorate his arrival in America.” This one I didn’t fold away, but I walked off to look out the window. “Of course, I hadn’t studied art at all at the time, but I’d been quilting for years. Gran had me piecing quilt tops when I was just a kid, six or seven. I’d made others of my own by then, too. Zach still has the one I did when he went to college.”

  I looked around to see Lizzy still handling Sea. “So, have I convinced you I’m an artist? I know that one’s a little raw, but surely you see it’s just not some traditional craftwork?”

  “No, I think I do believe you. I shouldn’t have questioned you in the first place. No one ever challenges me for wanting to sculpt, not that I give them much room, but, then, when they find out I’m a chef it seems to fit some sort of pattern in their eyes.”

  “Creating marble art is an extension of creating culinary art, which in turn is an extension of the womanly art of putting a
nice meal on the table?”

  “That’s it exactly. So even though I’m a freak in some ways, especially in that I’m gay, I’m a very womanly freak. Whereas I feel quite anti-womanly-anything at times. I mean, loving women is a man thing. Chiseling at rocks is a man thing. Being a successful chef, usually a man thing. Men are the ones who do all the exhibitionist sort of creativity, who get their names in the papers for their big passions.”

  “Women are supposed to do quiet things like quilt,” I said.

  “Yes, or if they indulge in art it should simply be about flowers blooming in the spring or the look of love in an innocent newborn’s eyes.”

  “Or hummingbirds in flight. But don’t you think you’re being stereotypical? Isn’t society advanced enough to see past that?”

  Lizzy began to pace. “Maybe in America. I can’t really know. And there’ve been wonderful women artists in Ireland for decades, eons, but I still think when most people I’ve met hear of an artist achieving something, they assume ‘man’ first and only chide themselves a little when they find instead it’s ‘woman.’ Do you not find that?”

  “Stop, look,” I said, pointing. The doe was back. In the brush behind her I saw a buck eyeing the clearing, trying to sense the difference my morning walk there with Wren had made to it. “They know I was there, I think,” I told Lizzy. “She seemed much more at ease earlier. She must seriously like salt.”

  As we watched I thought about our debate. I decided the issue for me was less whether I had an innate right to create art than it was whether what I did was indeed art. And most fiber artists, like most quilters, were women, so I wasn’t crossing any gender barriers, stepping on anyone’s balls, in doing what I did. I could see how Lizzy would be more threatening to a male than I would, in almost all she was. She was hard and intelligent and the things she made were thrust at the world. I was smart, too, but quieter and what I did grew from things women had always done in America. Virtually everyone who bought my work was female. Men often commissioned my quilts, but generally as gifts for their beloved women.

  The buck started suddenly and dashed off, and the doe followed more heavily. Her fawn was imminent, I thought. “They seem large,” Lizzy said. “Are all American deer that size?”

  “So far as I know.” Someone knocked at my door. “That’s what scared them, I bet,” I said, going to open it. Wren was there.

  “You two deserted me,” she accused, tossing herself onto the love seat.

  “I thought it would be wise. Let Team One disappear with the washing up and Brandon go back to his computer and it would be just you and Caleb.”

  Lizzy scooted in next to Wren as I sat cross-legged on the coffee table. “Is there a FireWind fling happening, then?” she asked with a grin. “I love gossip, tell me everything.”

  I laughed. “You’re hilarious, Lizzy. One second you’re raging against the world pinning you to its expectations of women, the next you’re digging for dirt in time-honored fashion. And you accused me of double standards?”

  She pushed her glasses up her nose again. “I’m very complex.”

  “Well, I’m not sure I’ll be of much help to your gossipy side, unfortunately,” Wren said glumly. “We were sitting there chatting and all the sudden he pulls out his newspaper again. As if it takes more than two minutes to read a rag like that.”

  “What, in the middle of your conversation?” I asked.

  “Well, I was running out of things to say. I told him about the houses I was going to make here, and he told me about some big collage he’s got going of buildings over landscape, construction and deconstruction or whatever, and then he told me a little about California, and I rambled on about Connecticut, then I stood up for a last cup of coffee and he opened out the paper. So instead of drinking the coffee I gave my cup to that Theo guy and left.” She looked rather wistfully at the empty coffeepot on my bar.

  “Coffee all round?” I asked, rising. They nodded. “Still and all, Wren, it doesn’t seem too disastrous. I mean, you only met yesterday, you shouldn’t be jumping into bed with him today.”

  “Oh, definitely not,” said Lizzy. “You should wait until at least tomorrow.”

  Wren hunched her legs up under her and leaned forward on her hands. “It’ll be decades before I have sex again, at this rate.”

  “Don’t mope. If you get desperate there’s always me. I’m right next door, you know,” Lizzy said, hugging her with one arm.

  Wren leaned into her. “Thanks. I may have to.”

  I regarded them on the sofa. “What a cute couple you make. I think she’s too tall for you, Lizzy.”

  “A woman can never be too tall or too blonde. Or too busty. It’s my credo.”

  “Well, in the immortal words of Meatloaf, two out of three ain’t bad,” Wren said, and sat up again. “But what are we going to do about Caleb?”

  “Ash here knows him, why doesn’t she set the two of you up?”

  “That’s just what she told me to do this morning. Now you’re ganging up on me.” I rummaged in the cabinet next to the sink until I found three mugs and a spoon. There was sugar but no creamer. “I hope you all like it sweet and black. What’s the plan, then?”

  “We could all go somewhere some night.”

  “Not this week, you’re on dinner duty.”

  “Next week. Sunday night.”

  “That counts me out of the fun, I’m watching Brandon cook that night,” said Lizzy. “But as long as I get the full account the next day, you have my blessing.”

  “So you’ll call your brother and set it up?” Wren leaned forward to take a mug from me.

  “Set what up? I don’t even know what either of you like to do.”

  “Dinner or a movie? A gallery? Something. Is there even anything to do in Wimberley?”

  I flashed back to the hill country guides I’d read in my library. “There’s some restaurants. There’s a great barbeque place not far off, but it’s a meat market, and loud. And Hayes is a dry county, no booze, but there’s a couple of places where you can get a ‘membership’ to a drinking club for a night and get served.”

  Lizzy snorted. “That’s the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard. How the hell am I meant to get drunk every night? I can’t count on Margie supplying me, now, can I?”

  “Well, stupid or not, it’s that or driving to Austin or San Marcos, and unless there’s some event on that’s stretching it a little. I mean, why would you come with us on a Zeke and Ned reunion unless it was local or it was something special?”

  Wren nodded. “You’re right. So see if Zach will come up here and we’ll go to the club place and get drunk and throw stones in a river or something, whatever passes for excitement in small-town Texas, and then I’ll seduce Caleb and we’ll live happily ever after!”

  Her exuberance was fetching. “Whatever you say, darlin’. I’ll email him right after lunch. But for now, you two get out of here. I’m only here for eight weeks and I’d damn well better get a thing or two done while I’m here besides helping you find the love of your life.”

  “You go girl!” laughed Lizzy in her pseudo-American voice. “Come on, Wren, we’re in the way of Ashlyn’s work, and if she tells Margie we’ll be in big trouble. I don’t want to come away with demerits on my first day.”

  I made them promise to return the mugs they were taking, and sent them off. Closing my eyes and inhaling my own coffee, I decided the chain part of the piece could be a collage of reverse sides of the fabrics making up the other patches. And the patches themselves would all center around Gran, of course. It would be the first large thing I made for her, without her supervision. It would be my way of saying thank you to her for her love, and her encouragement, and her offering up of her home as my refuge. And my way of saying to myself ....

  Well, I had ideas. I didn’t have anything definite, but I had ideas. As I went to rummage in my boxes of fabric, it occurred to me that the best thing that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, and perhaps in th
e past twenty-four weeks or so, was I finally had some ideas.

  Chapter 3

  “Bro -

  “You miss me yet? I’m working away here. (Okay, I’m taking a break, but I’ve been at it since breakfast. You’re probably still asleep, right?)

  “Hey, I know I’m clueless, but can you remember Gran’s little brother’s name? I got Brian, Albert, Danny, Maura, “someone”, Mabel. And Berneen. Trust me, this is work related.

  “Long story, but how would you feel about coming up here this Sun. for a Z & N thing? I could bring Wren along & the four of us could have some laughs (gee, what a brilliant idea, which just now popped into my head! Perhaps C & W will hit it off & start a relationship or something! Wouldn’t that be great –> we could be the matchmakers!). Since C & I have to cook that day, it’d have to be a night thing. We could meet at my cabin if you’d be so kind as to pick us up, or we could take the shuttle to town & hook up at John Henry’s (remember THAT place?)—let me know.

  “Okay, here’s the other part. I suppose you should email C on your own & suggest this—I thought I’d swing by to see sis, how bout dinner, etc. So as it’ll be a surprise, you know.

  “Catch up w/ ya later!

  “Love,

  “A

  “PS—Bring some booze for our pal Lizzy, who’s about to dehydrate from a lack of whiskey. A more complete order will follow. Gracias!”

  I hit send just as blondie walked into the computer room.

  “Hey, gal, I hope you’re still on for this thing. I just told Zach to set it up.”

  She lounged into the chair next to me. “I am. Trust me, I am. I’ve been fondling clay all day. My houses look more like dildos.”

  “Please. Stick with the need-to-know, okay?” I logged out. “How many houses are you making?”

  Wren squinted as she thought. “The first series is four. My grandmother’s house in Juneau, the row house on the base of Ft. Stamhood where my brother was born, the ranch house in San Antonio from when I was thirteen, and a little cabin in the hill country I hope you’ll recognize. White, blue, red, yellow. After that we’ll see. If it goes well I’ll move on to orange, green, purple, and black.” Wren had decided to create intricate scales of typical American houses, mono-colored to symbolize the life-phase she was experiencing while she lived in each abode.