Make Quilts Not War (15 page)

“You should have called me,” he said automatically.

“So you could ask Michelle’s permission to come out? I don’t think so.”

“I want to see you again.”

“I want to see you, too. But not until the festival’s over. We can
talk,
but, Aiden, there won’t be any point to it unless something
changes.”

“I guess that’s all I can ask,” he said and shrugged into his coat.

“I wish you would talk to someone about your sister, someone who isn’t me. There must be a family counselor in Foggy Point, or maybe you could see Pastor Hafer.”

He stood in silence, his lips clamped tight. She sighed and put her coat on, picked up her purse and keys and led the way to the garage.

Harriet got up early the next morning and went straight to her studio. Connie had found a box of granny-style dresses made with small print floral cotton fabrics stored in her attic. She’d distributed them among her friends; but since she was shorter than anyone else in the Loose Threads, the dresses didn’t reach the ankle length they were intended to be but ended mid-calf.

Harriet dug through her stash and found a similar piece of fabric in a coordinating print. She pulled out the hem on the dress and used her fabric to make a border, covering the seam with a piece of flat lace that was left over from another project. She held it up when she’d finished.

“Well, boys,” she said to her two pets, “it’ll have to do.”

Scooter wagged his tail, but Fred had no opinion.

An hour later, she was showered, had eaten and was wearing
her handiwork. She’d put gel in her short dark hair and blown it dry, fluffing it into her facsimile of an afro. She’d pulled on a pair of running tights under the dress and added hiking boots to finish the look.

“You boys behave yourselves,” she said to the dog and cat. “I’m going to be a little late, but Uncle Rod is going to come by twice just to be sure you’re okay.”

With that, she picked up her purse, stitching bag and coat and headed for the garage.

Jenny was standing by her quilt when Harriet came into the exhibit hall; she had done a more extensive makeover on her granny dress. In addition to adding wine-colored velveteen around the bottom, she’d sewn a velveteen panel up the front of both the skirt and bodice, trimming it with strips of small flat lace.

“Far out,” Harriet said.

“Groovy, isn’t it?” she said dryly.

Harriet smiled.

“Thank you for last night,” Jenny said. “I don’t know what I was thinking, not calling nine-one-one right away.”

“I’m sure you were in shock,” Harriet said. “I hope it isn’t too much of a hassle.”

“Actually, I’ve got my car back already. The tire store opens up at six am. They put on new tires and even delivered it before eight o’clock.”

“At least that was nice, I just wish we knew who did it.”

“It has to have been my brother. It’s the sort of thing he’d do.”

It definitely wasn’t her brother, but Harriet couldn’t tell her that without confessing that Lauren’s friends were following him.

“Are you going to the prom tonight?” she asked.

“No. Since it’s Friday, the committee decided we should keep
the quilt show open until the dance is over. My group is already down a person, and Sharon really wanted to go to the prom. She’s dating again for the first time since her husband died, so she needs to go. How about you? Have you and Aiden patched things up yet?”

“You say that like it’s a foregone conclusion.”

“Isn’t it?”

“I’m not sure. His sister is a powerful influence. We talked about
it again last night, but we never get anywhere. She doesn’t like
me—or any other female, really—and she’s making him choose between
us, with lots of dramatic gestures thrown in. He doesn’t want to
have to decide, so here we are. I’ve suggested he talk to a professional about it, but so far he’s been resistant to that idea.”

“What about Tom?”

“It doesn’t seem fair to get more involved with him while things are still up in the air with Aiden. He’s so easy to be with I don’t want to take advantage of him.”

“If you like him, and he’s easy to be with, maybe there’s a message there.” Jenny smiled at her. “He’s good-looking enough.”

“Maybe,” Harriet said.

“So, if you’re not going to the prom, what are you doing?”

“I’ll be helping Lauren protest the war in front of the entrance.”

“Really? Aren’t you going to freeze to death in that dress?”

“I have a Vietnam-era army coat I found at the surplus store. But since the event is sanctioned by the festival committee, we will be inside the main entry doors in the foyer.”

“Is there any chance you could swing by and give me a potty break partway through? I hate to ask, but I think the rest of the Threads are all going to the prom. It doesn’t seem right to take them from the dance, and the committee volunteers are stretched thin because they have so many events going on tonight.”

“I’d be happy to help. I’m sure I’ll need a break from sitting down myself. We may be indoors, but it’ll still be a hard tile floor we’re sitting on.”

“I’ve got a pillow I use for my back in the car. I can bring it in when I go to lunch. You’re welcome to sit on it for your protest.”

“Thanks, that’ll be great. I better get on to my booth. I’ll talk to you later.”

“I’ll be right here,” Jenny said.

Harriet kept busy all morning with potential customers and even took two orders to stitch queen-sized tops. She was just finishing with a woman who had made her lay out every stitch sample she’d brought and then looked through both of her photo albums of past projects before announcing that she’d have to think about it before making a decision.

“You have my permission to send Diane Frank packing if she comes back,” Aunt Beth said. “She pulls that nonsense every time we have a booth at any sort of show.”

“And never once has it resulted in an order,” Mavis added.

Harriet hadn’t seen the two women come into the opposite end of the booth while she was tending to Diane.

“What are you two up to?”

Mavis held up a brown paper bag.

“Jorge made taco salads for today’s special. I hope you don’t
mind, but we got three of them and thought we’d have lunch with you,” she said.

“That’s great,” Harriet said. “Let me make a space on the table here.” She spent a moment packing her samples into plastic storage boxes and stowing them under one of her tables.

“Have you heard anything more from Lauren?” Aunt Beth
asked.

“I haven’t seen her.”

“Beth told me what Lauren found out last night,” Mavis said around a bite of salad, but she was interrupted before she could add her own thoughts on the matter by the wiry little man they had assumed was Colm Byrne’s manager.

“I brought you ladies the extra backstage passes we talked
about,” he said with an expression that landed halfway between a charming smile and a lecherous leer. “These are good for the dance to
night and the big concert on Saturday night.” He handed four
large yellow cards and their lanyards to Aunt Beth and Mavis.

“By the way, we haven’t been formally introduced,” he said to Harriet, “but they call me Skeeter. Your aunt and her friend helped us out when the refrigerator in our food truck went belly-up yesterday. Will four be enough?” he asked. “Colm wants you to be able to bring all your friends after you saved our bacon, literally,”

“Don’t forget you already gave us three, the other day.”

He smiled, and Harriet saw he was missing two bottom teeth. Apparently, only the onstage talent had to look beautiful.

“Four should be plenty,” Harriet said. “Our friend missed the impromptu concert, but I’m sure she’d love to come.”

Skeeter separated two more passes and began untangling their lanyards.

“Yes,” Mavis said. “She’ll be the one in the Afro wig.”

Skeeter dropped the passes and their lanyards. Harriet looked at her aunt as he bent down to pick them up. He yanked a pass out of the mess, thrust it into Mavis’s hand and turned abruptly and walked away.

“Well, that was bit strange,” Harriet commented.

“I’m sure a lot is strange in that little man’s life,” Aunt Beth said and turned back to her salad.

“Did you notice that he has the same tattoo Jenny’s brother has?” Harriet asked. “That stylized peace symbol. They both have them as part of other images, but it’s the same tattoo.”

“Oh, honey, everyone had peace symbols on everything back in those days. And that elongated variation was quite common,” Mavis said. “It’s a sign of the times, you might say.”

“We better get going,” Aunt Beth said when everyone had finished their lunch. “We promised Marjory we’d help with the prom decorations.”

“See you later,” Harriet said. “I’ll be the one with the ‘Make
Love Not War’ sign.”

Aunt Beth glared at her over the top of her glasses but didn’t say anything.

“Love you, too,” Harriet said as they walked away.

Lauren came by as Harriet was closing up for the day. The nature of her business meant she didn’t have to deal with a cashbox at the show, so shutting her booth down for the day consisted of putting her samples under the table and getting her purse and coat out. This time, she pulled her army jacket from a bag and put it on and picked up the pillow Jenny had brought during her lunch break.

“I’m as ready as I’m going to be,” she announced.

Lauren was dressed in hip-hugging wide bell bottoms that had
been embroidered with antiwar slogans, and an embroidered
Mexican peasant blouse over a fitted navy blue long-sleeved T-shirt. She wore round-lensed granny-style eyeglasses to complete the look.

“Where did you get the pants?” Harriet asked.

“I hate to admit it, but I found them two years ago at a thrift
store
in Seattle. They were too classic to pass up. What’s with the pil
low?”

“Jenny had it in her car. She thought I might need it, especially if we have to sit the whole time. Will we be getting up to march, or will this be more of a sit-in?”

“I think we’ll mostly sit there. Marjory wants us to get up and march when the mayor and the Chamber of Commerce president arrive. We do have to chant off and on, though.”

“So, what are our chants?”

“Most of them aren’t anything that can be said in polite company, so we’ll use ‘Hey-Hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today,’ ‘Hell, no, we won’t go,’ and ‘Draft beer not boys.’”

“Those are the tame ones? What happened to ‘make love not war,’ and ‘give peace a chance?’”

“The first one is a slogan for a sign, not a chant, and the second is a song by John Lennon—again, not a chant.”

“Okay, whatever you say,” Harriet said. “Lead the way.”

Lauren’s group looked more like computer geeks from the two thousands than protesters from the nineteen-sixties, but to their credit, there were a lot of them, and they all carried signs with appropriate slogans.

“You sit on this side,” Lauren directed Harriet when they’d all gathered in the foyer of the exhibit hall. “I’ll sit on the other side. When I get up, you make sure everyone between us does the same. Marjory will call on my cell when the mayor and the president are about to arrive.”

“Sounds easy enough,” Harriet said, and it was. The march went off without a hitch an hour later. The mayor and his faux-police escort had clearly been prepped ahead of time. Both Harriet and Lauren were “arrested” and restrained with toy handcuffs.

“They didn’t tell me we were going to be arrested,” Lauren said when they’d been freed and were returning to their floor space inside the entrance.

“At least it gave us a chance to get up and move around a little,” Harriet said and returned to her spot on the other side of the group.

“Can I talk to you a minute?” said a soft male voice from over her left shoulder. “Outside,” the man added.

Harriet turned and was surprised to see Bobby Cosgrove crouched behind her. He stood up and went outside.

“I’ll be right back,” she said to Lauren and followed him. “What do you want?” she asked when the door had closed.