How to Make an American Quilt Read Online Free PDF

Highway 99, passing towns so small they are scarcely towns, and acres of fields, some planted soon to be harvested, some fallow. Hy’s mascara stains her cheeks, leaves long rivulets of black from her eyes to her jawline. “Stop,” she orders, as they reach a town called Sula that boasts a general store, coffee shop, gas station, and some sorry-looking rental cabins. As she reaches for the door handle to get out, Arthur puts his hand on her arm in restraint. Her head snaps toward him (he could swear her teeth were bared), with feral eyes and jaw muscles working, clenching and unclenching.
    Arthur quickly releases her arm, as if shocked by electricity. “I was only going to say that you might want to check your face before you go in.” He is angry now. “Christ, I’m sorry.”
    Hy flips down the sun visor and begins fixing her face in the mirror.
    “I’m sorry that James is sick, Hy. I know it’s terrible, but you aren’t the only one who is losing somebody. You aren’t the only one who suffers.”
    Spitting on a tissue, Hy scrubs the black trails of her tears. She keeps her eye on her reflection and says nothing to Arthur.
    “I don’t know what you want me to do. I don’t know what to say.” He looks at his watch. “Look, I have to call Glady Joe,” and storms out of the car.

    H E RETURNS to find Hy drinking a soda from the bottle, eyes free of makeup traces and closed. She hands him the bottle and he, too, takes a long swallow. “Arthur,” she says as her head falls back against the top of the car seat, “I’m so very tired.”
    “I know, honey.”
    “Can we just lie down somewhere? Before we go back? If I could just get some sleep somewhere for a few minutes, I’ll be fine. I’ll be okay.”
    Arthur turns the key in the ignition and tells her to “relax—by the time we reach home, you’ll have had a nice nap,” but Hy shakes her head. “No,” she tells him, “I can’t sleep at home. I can’t rest knowing we are heading back. Ah, find me a great, shady tree and leave me there. Just for a few minutes.” She closes her eyes as he slowly pulls the car back to the road.

    I T’S LUCKY that he and Glady Joe always keep that ratty old blanket in the trunk of the car. It looks even more pathetic lying underneath Hy, who is sleeping as if drugged: motionless, careless. Arthur lies beside her, looking up into the branches of this golden oak. They are in the middle of an isolated cluster of oaks that he located near the highway on the side of a grassy, sloping hill. Away from the sounds of traffic. Perspiration beads on Hy’s forehead, wets the base of her throat, and intensifies her heavy perfumed odor, which is noticeable even outdoors. It is so goddamn hot and still. He wishes he had thought to buy another drink and contemplates leaving her there while he makes his way back to Sula for another soda. He’d be gone only a few minutes, but what if she awakened and found herself alone? The picture of Hy as she looks when she waits for him on the curb in front of her house crosses his mind and he imagines her waking up, her face flushed from sleep and heat, whimpering because he is gone and she doesn’t know where. He knows she would cry a child’s sad cry of abandonment and not a grown woman’s anxious sob.
    Arthur’s hands feel sticky from the heat. Glady Joe promised tocheck in on James tonight and asked if he and Hy were coming back later or what. Did they want to stay north for the night? But he said, No, no, they’d be back. As soon as he calmed her down.
    He leans back on his elbows, bored with watching the oak leaves, dappled with sky. He turns back to Hy. Funny how she is a more dolled-up version of Glady Joe. Even stranger that neither sister impressed him as being raised in a small agricultural town like Grasse; they each carried some other quality associated with old money or extensive travel, or possessed some gene of refinement. Yes. The Refinement Gene. Maybe it is the clear