Free Cathedral Windows by Clare O'Donohue Page B

everything: broken furniture, stained drapes, even magazines that go back for years. It’s all in a big a pile in the backyard until I have time to take it to the dump.” He patted the box. “But this was something I thought maybe you or your grandmother could use.”
    I hadn’t known Charlie’s mother, not really. She’d died suddenly of a heart attack last year, just after I moved to town. Charlie was in Afghanistan on a second deployment and came home for only a few days. His house, a two-story frame house a few blocks from the school, sat empty for months. He was discharged around the time that the regular third grade teacher decided to switch careers. Without really deciding if he wanted it, Charlie had a job and a house back in his hometown. Not that he was happy about it. Or unhappy, for that matter. Whenever I saw him he seemed friendly but unsettled, as if at any moment he might have to run for cover.
    Charlie began taking objects out of the box, slowly and carefully arranging them on his desk. Every item had something to do with sewing—an old iron, some needles, spools of thread in more than a dozen colors, and several pairs of scissors.
    I saw a cobalt-blue glass tube among the items and picked it up. “Where’s the top?”
    â€œIt has a top?”
    â€œI think it’s a needle holder. My grandmother has some antique ones like this. They all have round glass tops the same color as the bottom. Women used to put needles into them, so you need the top to keep them from falling out.”
    â€œIt might be in the pile in the backyard,” Charlie said. “I threw a couple of other boxes from the attic out there. There were some pieces that seemed like they didn’t belong with anything. I’ll look for it.”
    I continued my search through this treasure of sewing history. So many ornately decorated items, beautiful and useful. The one “not like the others” was a boot box. I opened it and saw that it contained hundreds of folded squares of muslin, along with stacks of colorful squares piled next to them.
    â€œMy grandmother quilted,” Charlie explained. “I think this is something she started years and years ago, but I don’t know what pattern.”
    I did. It was the makings of a cathedral windows quilt, an extraordinarily beautiful pattern that is traditionally hand-sewn from large muslin squares, repeatedly folded to form a windowpane around smaller colored squares. The colored squares surrounded by the subtle texture of the folds have the effect of stained-glass windows in a Gothic cathedral.
    â€œMy grandmother didn’t usually leave things undone,” Charlie said, “so it’s kind of weird she didn’t finish this.”
    â€œWell, it’s a really time-consuming quilt, mostly hand-sewn, lots and lots of squares. It’s practically a quilting tradition to start one and never finish it.”
    He lightly stroked the fabrics. “I miss her,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. “I miss them all. My mom, my dad, Granny.” He took a deep breath. “But it seems stupid to hang on to a bunch of old stuff that I can’t use. Especially if maybe you could.”
    There was something very firm in his voice that made it clear there was no point in arguing with him. I just nodded, returned the items to the worn cardboard box, grabbed the new nine-patches, and left him alone in the classroom. It seemed to be exactly what he wanted, but I felt a little like the latest in a long line of people to leave Charlie alone.
    I closed the classroom door behind me just as Bill Davis, the fourth grade teacher and baseball coach, pushed past me. “Is that idiot in there?”
    â€œIdiot?”
    â€œLofton.” He didn’t wait for my answer. He flung the door open and strode into Charlie’s classroom, slamming the door behind him. “What kind of fool do you think I am?” I heard