How to Make an American Quilt Read Online Free PDF Page A

of muscle or nerve disorders? Lived in any exotic locales?
    Only here, she answered, in Grasse, this California farm belt. She resisted the impulse to add, But I’ve always felt so out of place here, as if
this
were the location most foreign to my life. The strangest place I could have chosen.
    Well, said the doctors, what about pesticides?
    At which point she informed them that her husband was not now and never was a farmer; he was a man of finance.
    Ah huh, they said.
    She wanted to say, James and I thought of living elsewhere, places we visited, and fed each other strange culinary delicacies made from the organ meat of animals or almost unpronounceable leafy vegetables and herbs—unusual mixes of sweet and bitter with nuts and white roots. We sat in an English café, outside, only to be told later that it was a “pub garden.” James passed wine from his mouth into mine. Christ, what awful wine the English drink. We were told not to drink our beer cold, but warm. In the Middle East we were kept from entering sacred monuments because our legs were bare; in Rome, we were again kept out because our shoulders and my head were uncovered. In northern Africa we smiled freely at strangers, only to be scolded in their native tongue at our American rudeness.
    Still, we promised ourselves that we would return and live abroad, perhaps Europe or Africa, but we never did. We were so out of sync with the local customs, like drinking cold beer in England or not understanding the language in Morocco, that we thought, if we are going to be outsiders, then why not just settle down at home, in Grasse?
    Hy smiles to herself as she recalls how she and James would discuss the local occurrences in Grasse or Bakersfield, with all the wonder of itinerant travelers who were only passing through and happened to find themselves here.
    Hy brushes her hair from her forehead, catches a whiff of her perfume as it passes her face. James sighs in his sleep; his “good” hand moves at his side. He is nothing, she thinks, but a prisoner awaiting his own death. She has to lean close to him these days in order to hear him speak.
    Suddenly, she jumps up from her chair. In the middle of all her drifting and meandering thoughts came this one:
I want him to die. I want this to be over and done with
, and she is even more surprised to realize that this declaration is not accompanied by compassion but by anger and impatience. She grabs her purse and rushes from the room. She cannot even kiss James goodbye; she does not have the right to stay in this room or touch him. She needs to be touched.

    I N THE HALLWAY she tries to get Glady Joe on the phone, but there is no answer and she ends up calling Arthur’s office. He says, Of course I’ll come and get you. Say, you aren’t…James hasn’t…
    No, no, says Hy. Just come.
    She yanks the car door open before Arthur has brought the car to a complete stop and hurls herself into the seat. Crosses her arms like an unhappy, disappointed teenager, then begins to weep with loud, unrestrained sobs and tears that seem to fall two at a time from each eye (
eyes like Glady Joe’s
, thinks Arthur,
eyes like my wife’s
). Her foot bangs against the underside of the glove compartment and she commands Arthur to “drive out of town and let me out.”
    “Hy,” says Arthur, “let me take you home.”
    “No,” she screams, “NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.”
    Arthur quickly cranks the wheel and heads toward the outskirts. He silently curses Glady Joe; they had an arrangement—Glady Joe would pick Hy up from the hospital—yet here he was.
    “And don’t even think about stopping until we are a million billion miles from here. Until we’re out in the middle of goddamn nowhere.”
    “Hy,” Arthur begins.
    “Don’t even try,” she whispers hoarsely, “don’t even try tocomfort me or understand me or anything with me. Do it and I’ll hate you until I die. I promise. I will despise you.”
    They find themselves on