didn’t have anything nice to say to Maureen or, for that matter, to most any of my former friends—if you could call them that.
For the previous couple of decades, we’d lived in the same neighborhood, wheeled our babies and walked our dogs together, been in each other’s babysitting co-ops, belonged to each other’s book clubs, served on the same PTAs and high school booster clubs and church committees, gone to each other’s Mary Kay Cosmetics parties, and yet, when it came to my divorce, most of those women dropped me like a hot potato, as if I suddenly carried a contagion that threatened to infect their own marriages.
When I saw them in the grocery store, they would ask how I was holding up, their faces a picture of sympathy. Initially, I’d told them the truth, how devastated I felt, how betrayed, how foolish, how lost. For a minute or so they’d keep their eyes fixed to mine, clucking sympathy, and nodding in all the right places, but then they’d look at their watches, suddenly recalling an appointment and scurrying off, promising we’d have lunch real soon, but we never did. It didn’t take me long to realize that when someone asks you how you are, “Fine” is really all they want to hear. So the fact that my former friends disapproved of my plans didn’t bother me a whit; I’d written them off months before.
There was one person, however, who thought my move to Connecticut was a good one—Mary Dell Templeton. I’d met her only a few months before Rob came home and announced that he wanted a divorce, but I don’t know how I’d have gotten through it without her. She was a gift from God. Isn’t that strange? Here I was, surrounded by people who’d known me for years, and in the end a woman whom I’d just met turned out to be the best friend I had.
Mary Dell is a native Texan, the real deal. She has a voice like praline syrup, dark and honeyed, and I never saw her without a Dr. Pepper close at hand. We met at the fabric store, where we were both taking an appliqué class. She had recently moved from Waco and was a first-rate quilter. Later, when I went to her home, I saw that the wall of her sewing studio was studded with ribbons she’d won for her original quilt designs, but her skill was obvious from the start. When I expressed surprise that she was bothering to take a class, she said, “Baby Girl, there’s always more to learn, you know what I mean? Ripe fruit rots. Isn’t that right, Howard?”
Howard was Mary Dell’s son. He was about Garrett’s age and had Down’s syndrome. He accompanied his mother to every quilting class because, as Mary Dell said, “Howard’s got a gift for picking out just the right fabrics. Me? I can sew, but I got no more color sense than I got fashion sense, do I, Howard?”
“No, Mama,” Howard said with a regretful shake of his head. “None at all.”
Which would cause Mary Dell to laugh and me to join in because it was so true. With Howard’s help, Mary Dell’s quilts radiated a subtle vibrancy that set them apart from the ordinary, but when it came to her wardrobe, subtlety went out the window. She liked to mix bright colors and bold patterns, usually several within the same outfit, as if she were a walking, talking crazy quilt. And topping it all off were her astounding earrings: enormous hoops, dangly beaded chandeliers that nearly brushed her shoulders, and huge clip-ons studded with geegaws and rhinestones that would have come in real useful if she’d ever been stranded on a desert island and needed to signal a passing ship.
“I don’t care what anyone else thinks, I like them and I’m the only one I’m looking to please. The way I see it, little earrings are for little girls, and I’m a woman. W-O-M-A-N!” she declared, and then she said it again, just for good measure.
Though we’d only known each other for a couple of months, on the day I showed up at class with bags under my red-rimmed eyes, Mary Dell quickly assessed the
For the previous couple of decades, we’d lived in the same neighborhood, wheeled our babies and walked our dogs together, been in each other’s babysitting co-ops, belonged to each other’s book clubs, served on the same PTAs and high school booster clubs and church committees, gone to each other’s Mary Kay Cosmetics parties, and yet, when it came to my divorce, most of those women dropped me like a hot potato, as if I suddenly carried a contagion that threatened to infect their own marriages.
When I saw them in the grocery store, they would ask how I was holding up, their faces a picture of sympathy. Initially, I’d told them the truth, how devastated I felt, how betrayed, how foolish, how lost. For a minute or so they’d keep their eyes fixed to mine, clucking sympathy, and nodding in all the right places, but then they’d look at their watches, suddenly recalling an appointment and scurrying off, promising we’d have lunch real soon, but we never did. It didn’t take me long to realize that when someone asks you how you are, “Fine” is really all they want to hear. So the fact that my former friends disapproved of my plans didn’t bother me a whit; I’d written them off months before.
There was one person, however, who thought my move to Connecticut was a good one—Mary Dell Templeton. I’d met her only a few months before Rob came home and announced that he wanted a divorce, but I don’t know how I’d have gotten through it without her. She was a gift from God. Isn’t that strange? Here I was, surrounded by people who’d known me for years, and in the end a woman whom I’d just met turned out to be the best friend I had.
Mary Dell is a native Texan, the real deal. She has a voice like praline syrup, dark and honeyed, and I never saw her without a Dr. Pepper close at hand. We met at the fabric store, where we were both taking an appliqué class. She had recently moved from Waco and was a first-rate quilter. Later, when I went to her home, I saw that the wall of her sewing studio was studded with ribbons she’d won for her original quilt designs, but her skill was obvious from the start. When I expressed surprise that she was bothering to take a class, she said, “Baby Girl, there’s always more to learn, you know what I mean? Ripe fruit rots. Isn’t that right, Howard?”
Howard was Mary Dell’s son. He was about Garrett’s age and had Down’s syndrome. He accompanied his mother to every quilting class because, as Mary Dell said, “Howard’s got a gift for picking out just the right fabrics. Me? I can sew, but I got no more color sense than I got fashion sense, do I, Howard?”
“No, Mama,” Howard said with a regretful shake of his head. “None at all.”
Which would cause Mary Dell to laugh and me to join in because it was so true. With Howard’s help, Mary Dell’s quilts radiated a subtle vibrancy that set them apart from the ordinary, but when it came to her wardrobe, subtlety went out the window. She liked to mix bright colors and bold patterns, usually several within the same outfit, as if she were a walking, talking crazy quilt. And topping it all off were her astounding earrings: enormous hoops, dangly beaded chandeliers that nearly brushed her shoulders, and huge clip-ons studded with geegaws and rhinestones that would have come in real useful if she’d ever been stranded on a desert island and needed to signal a passing ship.
“I don’t care what anyone else thinks, I like them and I’m the only one I’m looking to please. The way I see it, little earrings are for little girls, and I’m a woman. W-O-M-A-N!” she declared, and then she said it again, just for good measure.
Though we’d only known each other for a couple of months, on the day I showed up at class with bags under my red-rimmed eyes, Mary Dell quickly assessed the
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