Tapestry of Fortunes A Novel - By Elizabeth Berg Page 0,77

told Penny about something Dennis said to me the other day. We were talking about photography and he said, “The greatest understanding of a thing is when you can’t reduce it any further.” For me, those words reverberated in so many directions at once.

We’re hosting a potluck dinner tonight, Dennis and I. We’re eating outside under the maple trees, at a long wooden table covered with a few of my sturdier quilts, set on point. When I first laid them out and stepped back to see how they looked, it was like seeing a row of people waiting for a show to start: sitting up straight, happily expectant, chatting quietly among themselves. I’d put out vases of peonies and roses, a candelabra. Now it’s time to light the candles against the gathering dusk.

I go inside to the kitchen, for matches.

In the gloaming. We always liked that phrase.

“We always liked that time of day, the golden hour.”

Yes, we liked how the colors changed, how they always seemed their richest selves, then.

I hear a burst of laughter and look out the window at the crowd of people, all so dear to me. There’s Lise and Joni and Renie and their new roommate, Paula Martinez, a stained-glass artist. Phoebe and baby Michael, who is my godson. Marianne Florin, a young woman who teaches photography with Dennis, and Jeanne Murphy, a woman with whom I work at the Arms. We’ve become very good friends, we are each other’s go-to girls. My mother is there with my stepdad; they’re seated at the head of the table, and I’m sure it’s a story my mother told that precipitated that laughter. She overdressed for the occasion in a flouncy turquoise chiffon blouse and white linen slacks and silver sandals, but I have to say she looks absolutely beautiful. There was a time when she appeared for a moment to choke on something, and Early laid his hand on her back, and looked over at her. She nodded, I’m okay, and he nodded back, and I thought my father was right to suggest she avail herself once more of the comfort of having someone to watch over her, and of watching over someone in return.

Dennis is out there, too, of course, charming the dickens out of everyone.

In the drawer, I find some matches. They’re from Fabulous Fern’s, a restaurant Penny and I loved. I put them in my pocket with misplaced tenderness.

I used to talk to Penny about a certain kind of discontent I was having in my work. I believed I was doing exactly what I wanted; yet there was something missing, there was always something missing. On a hot day in the last summer we had together, we sat on my porch drinking lemonade, the box of fortunes open, the contents spread out all over the table. I was searching for something I couldn’t name, and on this day everything that I consulted offered me exactly nothing.

“Well, look,” Penny said. “Maybe your message is off point. What is it that you really want to say? What are you just dying to tell other people? It has to be honest in order for it to really work. It has to be urgent.”

I shrugged. I had no answer.

Now I look again at the people gathered in my backyard, feeling a deep appreciation for the events that brought us all together. We are a convergence of fates, a tapestry of fortunes in colors both somber and bright, each contributing equally to the Whole.

I see how the corner of the Compass quilt lifts in the breeze and resettles itself. How, beneath the long table, you can see Riley sleeping. How people have slipped their shoes off, the better to feel the grass between their toes. How baby Michael, his blue eyes wide, has used his palm to plaster banana in the general vicinity of his mouth. How the blush of the peaches looks against the green of the bowl and how the blackened red peppers laid out on a white oval platter glisten with oil. How the tree branches filter light into an unduplicatable pattern. How a solitary lightning bug has appeared to illuminate the base of a bellflower. How plates have been emptied and filled, emptied again and filled again, and how there is still more.

This is what I want to say. This is what I want to tell. But there are no words for it. There is just the tightening of hands, the spread of an odd pressure