Margaret Goes Modern

Persimmon Moon Amanda has counted twenty-seven pumpkins in all, and twenty-seven seems like a lucky number. It’s not a prime number, but two is prime and so is seven, and in Amanda’s opinion, twenty-seven is close enough to a prime number to be considered lucky, if you consider prime numbers lucky, which she does. “We could have used thirty,” her sister Lucy says when Amanda walks into the kitchen to report the news. Lucy is carefully measuring vanilla into a mixing bowl. Lucy is always carefully measuring something into a mixing bowl, and she doesn’t believe in lucky numbers. There is only one bit of superstition Lucy holds onto, and it’s the worst kind, the kind that leaves her stuck exactly where she is. “But twenty-seven is good,” Amanda insists, “and the pumpkins are all perfect and almost ready to be picked. Vonnie said she wanted the pies for the Harvest Festival next Saturday, and she’ll have them, and we’ll have lots of lovely money in exchange.” “Not lots of money,” Lucy says, cracking an egg into a blue ceramic bowl. “A little bit of money. Not enough money.” “But we’ll be on our way to having enough money.” Amanda leans across the counter and steals a piece of shaved bittersweet chocolate from the cutting board. All this money talk is making her nervous, and when Amanda gets nervous, she eats. She eats a lot in the fall, because fall is when their money gets tight. Fall is when the crowds at the farmers market begin to thin, as does Lucy’s cutting garden. The asters and toad lilies are still blooming, and so are the Russian sage and the colchicum. But now Amanda and Lucy can sleep until six-thirty on market days, whereas in the summer they had to be up at four to have enough time to clip and arrange the abundance of flowers the garden provided. “I think we should plant an apple tree out front,” Amanda says. “We could sell apple pies this time of year, or jars of applesauce. We could make apple crumble. People like apples.” “By the time an apple tree matures, we will have sold the house and moved to an apartment on Barkley Street,” Lucy says. “We’ll both work in horrible office jobs and spend all day on computers.” Both sisters shudder. They have never had a computer in their house nor ever desired one. A few years ago, Lucy broke down and bought a smartphone because businesses that carried her baked goods insisted they be able to reach her via email or text, but that was as far into the computer age as either sister has ever been willing to venture. Amanda believes strongly that any device with a screen is dangerous and possibly soul-sucking, although sometimes she sneaks over to her best friend Emily’s house to watch black-and-white movies on Friday nights. She makes sure to sit as far away from Emily’s television as she can, just to be on the safe side. “Well, if we’re not going to plant an apple tree, why don’t we plant blueberries? Everyone loves blueberry preserves.” Lucy sighs, and Amanda doesn’t push any further. Besides, she already knows about blueberry bushes, how they take three or four years to mature. She and Lucy don’t have three or four years. They are three or four months from running through the last of their inheritance, and when that happens they will have no choice but to put their house on the market. The irony is, Amanda thinks, that if they sold their house, they’d have enough money to stay in their house. More than one realtor has come to sniff around, dropping hints about what a cottage as charming as theirs might bring from an eager buyer. Lucy pours the eggs into the mixing bowl and begins whisking in a way that seems aggressive to Amanda, as though her sister has a bone to pick with her batter. “Your cake is going to turn out tough if you don’t lighten up,” she says, and Lucy stops and takes a deep breath. “Amanda, I know you don’t want to talk about this, but we have to. If we don’t do something, we’ll have to put the house up for sale in January. I’ve looked at the budget every way possible, but even if we had a hundred pumpkins for a hundred pies, even if our sunflowers bloomed through the winter, we’d come up short.” Amanda sits down at the kitchen table. She wishes she had a cup of peppermint tea. She wishes her cat Gretel was curled purring in her lap, and she wishes she knew how to knit. It would be so lovely to drink peppermint tea and knit with a cat curled up purring in her lap, not having to worry about leaving the only house she has ever lived in or ever wanted to live in. “I was born in this house,” she says to Lucy, and Lucy rolls her eyes. Lucy turned thirty-two in May, and Amanda thinks that’s much too old to still be in the eye-rolling stage of life. “Well, the way things are going, you won’t die in this house,” Lucy says. “At least that’s some consolation.” “It’s not,” Amanda says and has to stop from pouting. She herself has recently turned thirty, and she feels that pouting past age twenty-nine is undignified. Lucy walks around from behind the counter and takes a seat across the table from Amanda. Wisps of ash-blonde hair have escaped from her ponytail and curl delicately around her face, softening its sharp angles. Amanda has never been able to understand how a woman who spends half of her day baking can stay so thin. It must be that she spends the other half of her day out in the garden with a hoe in her hand. “Honey, you have to listen to me,” Lucy says, reaching her hand across the table and putting it on top of Amanda’s. “It’s time. If you want to stay in this house, you’ve got to start selling your quilts.” Amanda pulls her hand back and shakes her head as hard as she can. “I don’t quilt for money. Not any more.” “You had one bad experience, and really, it wasn’t that bad.” Lucy’s tone makes it clear she thinks her sister is over-reacting. Is always over-reacting. “And you can do things differently this time. You could find another way.” “I can’t make a quilt with colors that don’t speak to me. I can’t use other people’s patterns or follow their ideas. Melinda Blanchette wanted stars, and I was in the wrong place to do stars. And she wanted me to use yellow at a time when yellow was the farthest thing from my mind. It was an awful experience.” “But Melinda loved those stars, whether you did or not,” Lucy insists. “And she still talks about that quilt every time I see her at the market. She’s got a daughter getting married in the spring, and she wants you to make her a Double Wedding Ring quilt. How hard would that be?” “That would be — impossible.” Amanda is near tears. “I can’t think of anything more terrible.” “And you know what?” Lucy continues as though she hasn’t heard her sister. “Every time I stop by the inn, Vonnie tells me someone has asked to buy that quilt you gave her. You know how she has it on the armchair by the fireplace? All people have to do is touch it — just lean back against it — and suddenly they’re happy. All their burdens disappear.” Amanda nods. “It’s a healing quilt. I made it for Vonnie when she was going through chemo. Of course it makes them feel better.” “My point is, you could sell all the quilts you wanted through Vonnie. And you could charge whatever you wanted.” “It doesn’t work when you’re doing it for money.” “What doesn’t work?” Amanda leans forward and whispers. “The magic.” Lucy leans forward and whispers. “Who cares? People want to buy your quilts, and we need their money.” Amanda is quiet for a moment. What she’s about to say isn’t fair, and she knows it, but it’s the only card she has to play. “If we need money so badly, marry John. With both of your incomes and the money from my dressmaking, we’d have enough. John loves the house, so we wouldn’t have to sell it.” Lucy’s face darkens. “You know I can’t.” “I know you can. And I know you want to. And he wants to. And you’d be so happy together!” “I need to put the cake in the oven,” Lucy says, standing. “So that’s it? That’s the end of the discussion?” “End of discussion.” “You have a degree in biochemistry!” Amanda is standing now, too. “How can a person with a degree in biochemistry be so superstitious?” “How many times do I have to say this?” Lucy is leaning down to turn on the oven and doesn’t even bother to look at Amanda. “I am only superstitious in this one regard. If anything happened to you because I got married, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. I’d have to jump into the river with rocks in my pockets.” “Nothing would happen.” “Aunt Lucinda said it would, and I believe her.” Amanda can’t listen any more. She stomps out of the kitchen and heads for her sewing room. Of all the stubborn people in the world, Lucy Whitfield is the stubbornest. The queen of the mule-headed. Queen Elsie — no, Elsie was a cow. Queen Francis! That’s it. Queen Francis the Talking Mule. If only Lucy hadn’t been named after Aunt Lucinda, then maybe she wouldn’t feel like she had to pay attention to the old woman’s words of warning. Of course it didn’t help that Lucinda had been right about other things, terrible things. She’d predicted their mother’s death, and done it at their father’s funeral! “Five years,” Aunt Lucinda had whispered to Lucy and Amanda as they watched their mother drop a handful of dirt onto their father’s casket. “That’s all she has left.” Amanda had despised her for it — despised her at the time for making the prediction and despised her five years later for being right. Aunt Lucinda’s final prediction had been at their mother’s deathbed. Hannah, her body wasted by cancer, had summoned the last of her strength to call Lucy to her side. Amanda and Aunt Lucinda had taken a few steps back as Lucy sat on the stool next to the bed. “Promise me you won’t marry until after Amanda does,” Hannah had rasped into Lucy’s ear. “I know you’re older, but Amanda needs someone to take care of her.” “I’ll be fine, Mama,” Amanda said over Lucy’s shoulder. “Please don’t worry about me.” Lucy turned and shushed her, then looked at her mother. “I promise, Mama. I’ll wait until Amanda marries.” “If you don’t, Amanda will die,” Aunt Lucinda pronounced in a loud voice. “Gone a week after you take your vows.” “Oh, Cindy, don’t say such a thing,” Hannah had wheezed from her pillow. “It can’t be true.” “I don’t say things if they’re not true,” Aunt Lucinda said, pulling herself to her full height of five feet one inch. “If Lucy marries before Amanda, Amanda will die.” “Please don’t worry, Mama,” Lucy said as Hannah’s eyes fluttered and then closed. “You have my word.” “I should hope so,” Lucinda said. “She’s your mother, after all.” “I know who she is,” Lucy hissed at her aunt. “You don’t have to tell me.” Aunt Lucinda is the worst person on the face of the earth, Amanda remembers thinking, and although Lucinda died only a few months after Hannah, and that was six years ago, Amanda thinks it still. At the time of Lucinda’s warning, Amanda assumed getting married in a timely fashion would present no problem at all. She was twenty-four, by all accounts pretty (if a little plump), and had had scores of boyfriends from seventh grade on. Nobody serious, although she longed for a deep, romantic love. An artist might do the trick, she’d thought in college, or a poet. But for reasons she could never understand, the artists weren’t drawn to her and the poets left her alone, even when she was the only one who came to their readings. On the other hand, lacrosse players and political science majors rang her phone off the hook. But Amanda found them dull. They bought her beer when she longed for champagne, and not one of them dreamed of going to Paris or stealing kisses on top of the Empire State Building. When she moved back home to help care for her mother, Amanda set her sights lower. Milton Falls was not known for its bohemian scene or literary salons. It was a scenic little river town with two inns and a proliferation of fall foliage that drew in the tourists from the end of September through mid-November. Young people left Milton Falls in droves after high school graduation and then returned in their middle years to raise their children on its neatly laid-out blocks, the schools all within walking distance of the neighborhoods they served. Unmarried men Amanda’s age were few and far between. There had been that pleasant young school librarian, Joe Stillwell, who’d had such clean fingernails and a silver ring in his ear. If only he hadn’t smelled of library paste and peanut butter! If only he hadn’t constantly quoted his favorite lines from Napoleon Dynamite.