Originally written December 2025
The Simmons family were a detached and solitary bunch and the town of Hawborne preserved the two best of them.
To Maudie Simmons nothing proclaimed Home Sweet Home more than a hand-stitched quilt. On the brief, and unsubstantial, visits of Thanksgiving, Christmas and the occasional Easter, when the Simmons Dozen would gather together in varying states of inebriation and petulance, Maudie could always be counted on being the last to arrive; dragging the handle of a red wagon full of wrapped boxes of quilts, always under threat of toppling from the slightest breeze, stacked twice as high as she, and with the help of a Simmons assembly line, the boxes were quickly shuffled from the wagon to the house.
With every occasion that put pen to calendar, Maudie Simmons had a hand-knitted quilt to offer. Aside from the holidays, there was always a birthday, wedding, divorce, bar mitzvah, christening, birth, funeral, a new puppy; I doubt there was a closet in all of Hawborne that didn’t hoard at least one Maudie Simmons original. They were as common in any home as a slice of bread, and the politeness to decline a quilt from Maudie found them in donation bins around the small town, chewed up and piss-stained on dog beds, garden frost covers for the winter and in ample supply at local thrift stores wedged between faded moomoos and college sweaters. New comers were told by the old timers that they were never officially moved in to Hawborne until Maudie Simmons came a knocking with a smile and a quilt.
Maudie had lived in the same two-story colonial since the early 1930’s. The first time I visited was in ‘71. Maudie must’ve been somewhere in her seventies by then. I was six, the same age as Jannie, who lived with her grandmother, and who I was about to meet for the first time for a play date while my mother drove to the city to try and sell an illustration.
The morning I was dropped off at that two-story colonial my mother stood next to me with a Chesterfield dangling between her freshly painted lips, scribbling something down in her date book with one of her drawing pencils. Maudie opened the door and even before my mother could draw a breath for a “hello”, the sight of her cigarette was met with immediate scorn.
Maudie Simmons used to say that smoking killed her late husband. To hear the story, one might arrive at that conclusion, after reaching as high as a toddler for the cookie jar on top of the fridge, but Maudie never tried to convince others, she didn’t need to, her mind on the matter was as set in stone as the commandments.
Ben Simmons, amongst the millions who were hooked, had enjoyed the sensation of the morning trilogy: coffee, smoke, and sunrise. Watching the black sky restyle to shades of pink, orange, and blue, as the sun rose over the mountain peaks, taking a sip of black coffee, lighting up and inhaling the first, euphoric drag of cheap tobacco. Maudie had wanted Ben to quit for years, resulting in years of stalemate in which Ben Simmons would always respond, “yes dear,” without any serious consideration on the subject.
So one morning when Ben stepped out on the colonial’s front porch, coffee in one hand, smoke clenched by the trigger finger of the other, he turned from the front door towards his favorite patio chair and found himself staring in the confused eyes of a black bear halfway up climbing the guard rail. Both man and beast froze, trapped staring at one another as if they’d both been caught pulling their peckers. It wasn’t common for bears to wonder their way in to suburbia, but not unheard of either, especially during the spring thaw, awake and hungry, but Ben had never seen one before, only the aftermath of tipped over trash cans and ripped open garbage bags littering driveways. His curiosity for the situation was so strong that, in the moment, everything he’d been taught to do during a bear encounter evacuated his brain. He simply clamped his cigarette between his teeth, fished the lighter from his bathrobe pocket, and lit up.
A neighbor across the street saw it, and only thought in hindsight that warning Ben Simmons might have been an option, but they were as perplexed as Ben was at the scene. They saw Ben spark the flame from his lighter. Something small, but it must have startled the bear, whose hulking body was awkwardly frozen over the guard rail. It’s dangling paws scrambled for any purchase but the beast flipped over the rail and crashed to the porch. Maudie had been upstairs brushing her hair, heard the crash but thought nothing of it. The bear must have felt suddenly trapped on the porch and decided to lunge. The neighbor saw it frantically dart back and forth looking for escape but there was only one quick way out and Ben Simmons, still in a daze, smoking his cigarette (he never got to take a sip of that coffee), was the only thing in the way.
Maudie found her husband sprawled out on the porch with a mess of scratch marks torn across his sleep shirt and a chunk of his throat missing. The porch was painted in a disgusting mixture of blood and coffee and the bear was no where to be seen. The news and every friend, family member, and anyone on the street who’d known Ben, would tell Maudie it was the strangest thing. “Black bears hardly ever attacked humans”. Maudie thought that people should know that a comment like that couldn’t possibly make anyone feel better, how special she must feel. She wondered if those same people approached amputees and said, “Usually people have all their limbs.” It was with the death of her husband that Maudie Simmons came to believe that most people just said things out of obligation and in their attempts to avoid awkward situations let meaningless blather fill the air like a bad smell. To speak was a privilege, she surmised, and there was never a reason to say ten words when one or two would suffice, or to make it easier, say none at all. So after Ben Simmons was lowered down the ground, Maudie damn near took a vow of silence. Speaking directly and only when necessary. Maudie Simmons was forty-two years old at the time of her husband’s death (or so I can assume) by bear mauling. He left behind a wife and daughter. It was only a few days after the funeral that Maudie started knitting.
My mother was quick to pick up on Maudie’s distaste, quickly stubbing the Chesterfield dead under the heel of her black leather pump and stuffing the butt in the pocket of her skirt. The frown was quickly reversed on Maudie Simmons lips, she never held a grudge, when what she believed was wronged had been righted, it was as if it had never happened at all. A clean slate.
Maudie offered me a singularly worded “hello”, and stepped back, offering access to the house. My mother stayed on the porch and discussed (in a sense that she did all the talking and Maudie only nodded her head and smiled) the details of how long she’d be gone and when she should expect to pick me up. I shuffled passed Maudie and was instantly struck with a pungent smell; a strong concoction of disinfectant, bleach, earthy hairspray and cinnamon potpourri.
But, despite the smell, the inside of the house was strangely normal. The entry way was a glistening wood floor, freshly polished. There was a set of wooden stairs that matched the floor that led to the second story, the shining banisters forking in two paths at the top leading to unseen hallways.
“Michael,” my mother called.
I turned around and she waved good-bye, blew me a kiss and told me she’d see me later. She retreated down the front walk towards the car and I saw her reaching in her bag for another Chesterfield, the lighter came out as the car door closed.
She came down the stairs without Maudie’s call, wearing denim overall shorts and a white undershirt, her bleach blond hair in pigtails that bounced off her shoulders with each step. She leapt from the second to last step to the floor and landed so close to me that she nearly crushed my toes. Hand extended, she said, “my name is Jannie, have you ever built a blanket fort before?”
Maudie brushed passed me and took a left away from the stairs towards the living room. Jannie took my hand and started to shake. “What’s your favorite holiday?” she said. “Mine is Christmas, come on!”
Before I had a chance to speak she was dragging me through the entryway and down a hallway. We stopped at a door. Jannie opened it and the guts of the linen closet spilled out all over the floor.
Nearly buried alive by hand knitted cloth was my first introduction to the quilts of Maudie Simmons. What I would come to find out was that this over-stuffed closet was just the tip of the iceberg in the house. In nearly every inch of available space, that wasn’t in clear view of any visitors, were stacks of folded quilts. They were in all ten closets, including the ones in guest bedrooms and Maudie and Jannie’s own rooms, under beds, crammed in trunks in the attic, draped over every piece of furniture. Pity to any winter coats or fall sweaters, I never found out where they were kept.
Jannie grabbed a healthy armful from the middle of the closest stack that hadn’t fallen to the floor,
“Grab as many as you can and follow me,” she said.
Jannie and I were about the same height but her breadth for quilt carrying vastly out-shined mine. Carrying as many as she did, there was no way she could have seen what was in front of her. Her knees bent heavily under her steps and she used her feet to tap against the walls to make sure she wasn’t about to run in to anything. I followed her down the hall and passed the stairs towards the living room where Maudie was disposed in her rocking chair, clickity clacking the tips of her quilting needles.
We dropped the quilts in the middle of the floor and I half expected Maudie to jolt up from her rocker and condemn us for having the idea of making a mess in her home. The sterile, chemical smell still stung the end of my nose. But she said nothing, just sat in her chair, gently rocking back and forth, focused on the half new contribution, to one of the over-stuffed closets.
I’d yet to say a single word, but Jannie spoke enough for the both of us. She started issuing commands for the construction of the fort and I followed without protest. We used a stand up lamp, taller than the both of us stacked together, as the center pole and started flinging quilts over it, spreading them over the four corners of the room. Wedging quilt corners under furniture feet and table ends to weigh them down. We moved things when we needed the extra space and used any available decor to raise the height. All the while Maudie said not a single word. Occasionally I would go to move something, under Jannie’s order, and look to Maudie for permission. The whole thing felt wrong to me. Our house was much smaller and we had little, save for all my mother’s art equipment, but she was very particular about what we did have and in which place it should stay in forever. So when I would look at Maudie, she would catch my eye and give me the smallest nod and smile for the “okay,” and she would continue knitting and that was it. Clickity Clack. Clickity Clack. The tips of those needles were the metronome for our building pace and soon enough the last quilt was thrown over top as an entrance flap and Jannie and I were able to stand back and admire our creation. It was only then that I realized what she had done.
“They’re all Christmas blankets,” I said.
She looked at me with a surprise in her eyes that had most likely shattered the idea that I was some kind of a mute like her Grandmother, and nodded proudly. “Uh huh,” she said, “I told you my favorite holiday was Christmas.”
But I had picked my quilts at random, hadn’t I?
Some had Santa on his sleigh, some were glittered with snowflakes, big to small, and others, which just contributed to the theme, were pure red and green. We’d just entered the later half of October, when the barrage of Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and all the breaks for school in between, pump the excitement in to a kid like a party balloon. Seeing Christmas this early lit that little fire under my heart.
“So you can talk,” Jannie said.
“Yeah,” I said, “so can you.”
A chuckle came from Maudie behind me but Jannie’s face remained curious. “What’s your name then?
“Michael,” I said.
“Can I call you Mike?”
“Nobody calls me Mike.”
“Can I be the first then?” she asked.
“Yeah, I guess so.” I said.
“Okay Mike, let’s go inside!”
She drew open the flap, a quilt decorated in jingle bells and holly, and I ducked my head and walked passed her into the fort the same way I’d walked passed Maudie in to the house just a while ago.
Jannie followed quickly behind me and when the flap fell closed the resulting darkness nearly made me shriek. Camping in the woods without a fire hadn’t been this dark and no light at all from the living room seemed to penetrate through the quilts.
Something touched my shoulder and I almost shrieked again. I dropped to my knees and wheeled around but couldn’t see anything.
“Shhh,” I heard Jannie. She was close enough to me that I could smell peppermint toothpaste on her breath.
“What?”
“Shhh,” she said again, “Can you hear that?”
I couldn’t hear a thing other than my own breath. I felt trapped, like I was going to suffocate. Outside I thought that if Maudie were to look at the fort she would see some kind of Christmas decorated lung, heaving in and out.
“You have to be quite or else it won’t work.”
Before I could ask what wouldn’t work, that hot peppermint breath washed over my face and, what’s more was, I could see it, as if Jannie were standing in the middle of a winter blizzard.
Jannie touched my shoulder again, lightly. “Listen”, she said.
The tips of her fingers were cold but her touch comforted me, allowed my breath to slow and as it did I could see mine too coming out in thin clouds. Then I started to hear it. Faint at first, like a whisper, but the more focused my listening became, the louder the choir grew.
Joyful all ye nations rise
Join the triumph of the skies
With angelic host proclaim
‘Christ is born in Bethlehem’
Hark! The herald angels sing
‘Glory to the new born king
“Carolers,” Jannie said.
A dim light had sparkered in the fort, the flickering orange glow of a dying candle, enough to see the outline of Jannie’s face invitingly close to mine.
She extended a finger in the direction of the growing choral song, down the darkness of the fort, a darkness that seemed to stretch on for miles, completely defying the parameters of the living room we were set up in. Deep down that darkness, I spotted the little orange light, no bigger than I firefly. The little fire under my heart was quickly dimming. Something wasn’t right. I tried to reach up to feel the quilted roof, I needed something to let me know that I was still in the fort. It was there, the soft fabric tickled the tips of my fingers, but the touch did nothing to calm me.
Ho Ho Ho!
It was distant but loud as the carolers.
Hark! The herald angels sing
“Can you see it,” Jannie said, “the workshop, all the elves?”
I couldn’t see anything, except for the wandering shadows around her face. Suddenly I started to feel very cold, the first snow storm after months of familiar summer heat kind of cold. The visible clouds of breath escaped my mouth at a quickening pace. Something wet landed on the tip of my nose. I touched it and pulled away. The tiniest snowflake, nearly identical to the ones woven to the flap at the front of the quilt. Before it dissolved, I carefully moved my finger to show Jannie. It didn’t matter though. As soon as I turned, a gust of wind blew in three dozen more, sticking to my bare arms, my hair, outlining my shoe. Real, honest to God, snow!
“Jannie,” I said through clouds of breath.
“Let’s go see it, let’s go see the workshop,” she said.
Ho Ho Ho!
“I can’t see anything I said,” and it was true, I didn’t want to look back but when I did all there was was only darkness and… that flickering orange light.
“You can’t see it?” she said. And there was a genuine confusion to the question.
“No.” I said, “No. I want to get out. Can we get out of here please.”
“Some other time right?”
“What?”
“We’ll see the workshop some other time right?”
“Fine. Fine!”
“Okay.”
She reached behind and opened the entrance flap. The light came in to the fort as I scurried out on hands and knees.
‘Glory to the new born king’
The sudden warmth of the living room sent a wave of convulsions through my arms and legs. On my wrist, I watched the last snow flake dissolve to a tiny dew drop. Jannie slapped my back and said “it’s okay!” and I didn’t know how to respond. I was still thinking about that unending dark corridor. Back in the living room, now able to see with fresh eyes just how miniature the fort looked, I couldn’t understand how it was possible. How could it seem so big on the inside, where had the singing voices come from, had Jannie placed a secret radio in during construction, no she couldn’t have I was with her the whole time. Then there was the fact that she had seen something down that darkness that I hadn’t. Santa’s Workshop, she said. Was she just pulling my leg, trying to scare me, or had she actually seen something down that impossible corridor.
Unsurprisingly, Maudie remained placid in her chair, knitting away, her current creation long enough that it draped over her knees and nearly touching her toes. She spared us the briefest glance as we came out of the fort and if she’d noticed any signs of my distress it went unmentioned. I expected her to say something, anything, but I wasn’t learned yet on Maudie’s silence. When it was clear she wasn’t going to talk, I had questions I wanted to ask. Had she heard the singing? Could she feel the cold? The sun behind the linen curtains was starting to dim, how long had we been in there? My mind was mixing a soup of fear, anxiety and excitement. The little fire beneath my heart had sparked again. I decided to not trouble Maudie with any questions, surely this was something I could figure out on my own.
“Wanna build another one?” Jannie asked with the unrivaled adrenaline of childhood.
“Can we just play a board game or something?” I asked.
“Um yeah, I guess so,” she said. I could hear the enthusiasm slipping but I didn’t care. I needed some time to try and get things straight for sanity’s sake.
She disappeared from the living room for a moment and I was left alone with Maudie, the clickity clack of her knitting needles and the creak of her wooden rocker.
Jannie returned with a beat up box of Chutes and Ladders. We spread the board and pieces across the little space that the fort left available, but it was hard for me to find any investment in the game. Something about climbing up so high only for the very next move to slide down so low was poking my anxiety. I could tell that Jannie wasn’t too hot on the game either. She was fidgety and would stare at the board blankly whenever it was her turn. I wouldn’t remind her, I just let her be. She kept stealing glances towards the opening flap of the fort.
We hadn’t finished the game when my mother came to pick me up. I said goodbye to Jannie and she said it back, adding, “remember you said next time.” Behind I could hear my mother talking with Maudie, already arranging my next visit for another meeting she had in the city. Maudie didn’t say anything but she must of nodded because my mother followed the moment of silence with an enthusiastic “great, thanks so much Maudie, we’ll see you then. Come one Michael, lets go!”
“Bye Mike,” said Jannie.
I saw my mother smile.
–
On the short car ride home I didn’t mention anything about the fort. My mother was an artist for a living but her imagination was surprisingly limited and most questions I asked that leaned towards the creative were often met with logic. So, instead, I prodded her with questions towards Jannie.
“How come I never see her at school?”
“She’s home schooled, but once you get to Junior High School you’ll start to see her.”
“Where’s her mom and dad?”
“They’re no longer with us honey, just like your dad.”
“Is Mrs. Simmons her mom?”
“Kind of.”
“She makes a lot of blankets.”
“Mhm.”
“ Why?”
“I think it’s just something for her to do hon, you don’t like being bored do you?”
“No.”
–
That night I laid awake in bed looking up at the ceiling. For years there’d been plastic glow in the dark stars stuck above, along with my night light plugged in to the corner. I would watch those stars while. my eyes grew heavier, and pretended that they were changing positions, that there was no roof over my head and I was looking directly at the night’s sky. I’d asked my mom a while ago to take the stars down, the night light too. That night I wished they were back. I had a feeling that if there was to be anytime to actually see them move, it would have been tonight. Instead I pulled the comforter up and covered my head completely. I was thinking of the blanket fort. I was thinking of Christmas carols.
–
The next time I went to Jannie’s two-story colonial my mother dropped me off at the curb. Maudie was already waiting for me on the porch with the front door opened. She didn’t say anything as I scrambled passed her and went inside.
Jannie was already in the living room, the Christmas themed blanket fort still perfectly intact and taking up much space.
It was the first time I’d seen her looking anything close to solemn and at first she regarded my entrance without even the slightest smirk, but, after a moment of recognition, the excitement sparked back in her eyes and she was up off the floor and pulling at my wrist.
“Come quick Mike, I wanna show you something,” she said and started to drag me from the living room.
“Wait,” I tried to dig my heels into the carpet but her pull was enormous, “didn’t you want to go to Santa’s workshop?” In the week since my last visit I had psyched myself up to go back in the blanket fort, to try and see what Jannie had seen.
“We can do that later,” she said. We were out of the living room and approaching the bottom of the stairs. “I need to show you.”
While I had spent the week preparing my self to enter the blanket fort, Jannie had been hard at work. With my limited knowledge on what “home schooling” was, it was easy to convince myself that Jannie had all the time in the world to do whatever she wanted while I was in the classroom. To me it seemed that every day was summer vacation for her in that house.
She pulled me up the stairs and we hooked a left at the top. Down the hall, all the bedroom doors were wide open and as we passed I saw that each room had a new fort made of Maudie’s quilts constructed in within. One even stood at the end of the hallway, nearly blocking off access to the bathroom. We looped back around and she lead me down the opposite hall at the turn of the stairs. Nearly identical, all the doors were open and within each room, another fort. All in total, she had constructed twelve around the house. Jannie pointed each one out, naming its specific theme. “This one is Halloween. That one is the jungle. The one in my room is the dinosaur times.”
The few times that Maudie ever left the house was to buy new fabric. She was a veteran explorer of craft store bargain bins. Buying Halloween fabric during New Years when it was seventy-five percent off. Shuffling through and picking out heart laden Valentine’s patches in the middle of July. In addition she also had a standing weekly order at some of her favorite stores for all the colors of the rainbow that she would come to collect every Friday with Jannie. I remember being in awe of Jannie’s building abilities, but, as I grew older, what stuck out to me more was the craftsmanship Maudie put in to those quilts. Each one seemed to have been assembled from a carefully drafted blueprint. There was not one misplaced stitch. Every heart, every ghost or jingle bell was exactly where it needed to be in order to serve a grander vision. Maudie had the magic touch. The way certain mechanics that can get forty-year old rust buckets running again, Maudie, through her needles, could bring life in to her quilts.
When the tour was finished we were back at the top of the stairs in the middle between the two hallways. It was a time to catch my breath, my excitement had escalated with each new fort I saw, triumphing over the anxiety I had felt during the car ride over.
“Doesn’t your Grandma get mad at you for having these all over the house?” I asked.
Jannie shook her head, “nope, she likes it.”
I thought of my mom, the everything needs to be in it’s perfect place kind of woman, and the fit she would throw if I were ever to attempt anything like this in our home.
“So which should we go in first?” Jannie said.
It was a much bigger question than I think she’d realized, akin to walking into an ice cream shop with every flavor imaginable and being asked to pick out a single one. I wanted to experience it all. But one choice stuck out before the rest, the one I had psyched myself up for.
“Christmas,” I said, “I want to go and see Santa’s workshop.”
Jannie’s face lit up and she giddily clapped her hands together.
We went down the stairs to the living room where the Christmas quilt fort, and Maudie in her rocker, were in the same spot as the last time I had been there. My body was running on adrenaline and without a moment’s doubt, I was on my hands and knees crawling though the opening flap of the fort with Jannie close behind.
It all come much more quickly this time; the cold, the choir of carolers, the dusting flakes of snow. Maybe I should have asked Jannie to borrow a coat or sweater, but my excitement did good in keeping me warm. We crawled trough the impossible dark corridor, the familiar orange glow of expanding light, until a new world began to come into view.
The orange was replaced with blue. There was a defined threshold from where my hands and knees where on the quilt, to where the ground became wet and cold with packed snow. Beyond was a little village straight out of Christmas card. I could see elves. Real elves! They hurried along a cobblestone stone streets shouldering sacks twice the size of their little bodies; it took two or three together to lug around one. I could see the carolers, gathered around the open door of a bakery. The warmth of the baking bread drew pink roses across their frosty cheeks, they sang on-
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon Virgin, Mother and Child
Holy infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace
Sleep in heavenly peace.
It was looking down the end of the cobblestone that nearly made me cry. The house at the end of the lane, bigger than any of the other buildings, a huge chimney belching thick clouds of a black smoke, parked outside like any car in a drive, a sleigh with nine reindeer, at the front, a glowing red speck that shined brightly through the falling snow.
“HO! HO! HO!”
The exclamation came from the house and the lights inside seemed to spike with each cheer.
I started to crawl foreword but felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned to see Jannie shaking her head.
“We can’t go any further,” she said.
“Why not?” I said.
“Because it’s just meant for looking,” she said.
I wanted to ask what she meant, but didn’t. So we sat there and watched the Christmas village continue along in it’s preparation for the big night. We listened to the carolers, enjoyed the smells of fresh cinnamon rolls, heated sugar and hot chocolate, all the while sneaking glances to the house at the end of the cobblestone hoping to see the big man himself appear. We never did.
I was shivering by the time Jannie touched my shoulder again and motioned that it was time to leave. I followed her and we exited out of the fort back into the warm living room. Maudie, if she knew anything of what happened, never made any mention of it, she just went back and forth in her rocker and kept on knitting. I had a feeling she did know. Like I said, she had the magic.
We had a snack of apple slices and peanut butter in the kitchen and before we were finished I was surprised to see my mother in the entryway ready to pick me up. Something I would learn, was that time in the blanket forts worked a little differently. Only a few minutes inside one of them could be up to a couple hours outside the fort.
Back at home, with permission from my mother to borrow her supplies, I would attempt to draw whatever we’d seen in the fort we chose to travel in. My drawing skills were crude and being limited to a few colored pencils and some charcoal, it was hard to expresses the scenes I had seen. I kept the drawings to myself, never showing them to my mother, and hid them at the bottom of my sock drawer.
The school year ended and as many days of summer break I could manage were spent at Maudie’s two-story colonial, building and exploring different forts with Jannie.
It was during that first summer with Jannie that I tapped into an imagination I had no idea existed in me.
I was allowed to ride my bike to and from Maudie Simmons house and for a chunk of that summer it was the only time I spent outdoors, except, for on occasion, when we would build a blanket fort in Maudie’s grand back yard, though this wasn’t something we did often because the quilts were magnets for dirt and ants. Jannie and I would stay indoors from sun up to sundown, after which I would ride my bike back home in the dark, replaying, like changing stations on a television, what I had seen and where I had gone that day, sketching the worlds as best I could when I got home, always returning the drawings to the bottom of the sock drawer.
Thanks to Maudie’s sheer quantity of quilts, of all sizes, colors and themes, the limitations for what Jannie and I could create were non existent. With yellow and cream colored blankets we were suddenly in the great, sandy expanse of the Sahara, measuring with our fingers the height of the sand dunes and counting the camel jockeys that bumbled along the grains. If we wanted the jungle, Maudie had no shortage of green. Through experimentation we learned that a quilt solely green made an empty jungle and any animals we hoped to see would need the addition of other colors. Thus we added patches of brown to see families of spider monkey’s swinging from vines and orange to see a tiger, bigger than any I’d ever seen at the zoo, skulking through the brush to find it’s next meal.
Somethings Jannie only saw, other things I only ever saw. Jannie saw the UFO gliding through the galaxies in space, witnessed the little green men with four eyes, (the extra two on the tips of their pointy ears) pressing buttons on the craft’s control panel that fired asteroid exploding lasers. She didn’t see the lion crouched down in the veldt, watching us. It was slowly making its way towards us in the predatory way of cats, with such quiet stealth that I started to get scared and told Jannie that we needed to get out. I didn’t know if what we saw in the quilts had the capability of crossing over, and an attacking Lion was not the way I wanted find out (I didn’t yet know the story of Ben and the bear). Whatever we saw that other didn’t, was described with such enthusiastic detail that we never felt like we’d missed anything. When we were done exploring one fort, we simply tore it down and made up another.
One day I arrived to find in Jannie in one of her, then rare, gloomy moods. By then I was permitted to enter the Simmon’s house without knocking, come in as I pleased, and the first thing I noticed, aside from the familiar sight of Maudie knitting away on her rocker, was that the living room was empty of all quilts, except for the one Maudie was working on. Walking up the stairs and down the hall, I saw that all the other forts had been torn down, each room as tidy as if it were about to go on the market. I found Jannie in her room, sitting on the foot of her bed in the dark. My appearance hardly registered with her and when I spoke up to ask what had happened to all the forts, she looked up at me with heavy bags under her eyes and said, “I had to tear them down.”
“Why?”
“They were making noises last night.”
She went on to explain that during the night, after Maudie had gone to bed, Jannie ventured into the rooms with all the different forts and tried to explore on her own. She brought along a little pen flashlight with her.
“But every time I went in one, I couldn’t see anything,” she said. “No matter how hard I tried there was nothing there but the dark. Then I started to hear things. It sounded like crying. People crying like they were scared or hurt. Grown-ups and kids. Animals were crying too. The same sound a dog makes when you accidentally step on its paw. All the forts made that noise when I went in them. They were all crying. So loud. Then I started crying. I had to tear them down so that I wouldn’t wake up grandma.”
She was close to crying again by the time she finished her story. I didn’t know what to make of it but it left me feeling very scared. Not so much the story itself but the way it affected Jannie, who I was so used to seeing as the trailblazer to confidence and excitement.
I noticed her stroking something in her hand, no bigger than a dish towel. I asked what it was and she unfolded a tiny, beaten down quilt, that must have once been white, but too many trips in the washer and all the other messes that come with time, had rendered it the yellow hue of age. In the center was a bright red heart.
“It was the first quilt Grandma gave me. I was only a baby. I wore it at the hospital when I was born.” She told me.
It was her most cherished possession. Never to be used in the construction of any fort, but always near. She told me it had a power in it that none of the other quilts did. I think I know, what she couldn’t articulate as a child, was that Maudie had sewn more than her figurative heart in to that little quilt. She did have the magic after all.
Jannie was hesitant to build any blanket forts that day, but I coaxed her in to trying to build one. We did, in her room and Jannie held tight her little heart quilt the whole time. It wasn’t our most inspired work but by the end of the day the smile had crept back to her face, as we watched a pirate ship battle it’s way through heavy ocean waves.
“Could you spend the night tonight?” she asked, “in case the crying starts again.”
I’d never had a sleepover before and the idea instantly captured me. Jannie told me Maudie wouldn’t mind. So I called my mother and asked for permission. She also agreed, we were at that age when boys and girls having a sleepover wasn’t anything to really worry about yet. She brought over pajamas, a change of clothes for the next day, and my toothbrush. She kissed me on the cheek and said she would see me tomorrow.
After a dinner of soup and grilled cheese, we spent the rest of the night in Jannie’s room monitoring the fort. I never heard any crying. At one point I dozed off only for Jannie to shake me awake.
“What’s wrong,” I sputtered, rubbing my eyes, “is the crying back?”
“No,” Jannie whispered, “look.”
I should have known something was up by how clearly I could see her face in the room that had been so dark before I dozed. I looked over to the fort and it was glowing, glowing as bright as if a firefly the size of a Great Dane were trapped inside.
“Should we go inside?” I asked.
“No,” Jannie said. She spoke softly, as if any sudden noise would scare the light away.
We sat there and watched the light in the fort shine until we both fell asleep on the floor.
–
Jannie and I were still best friends when the time came for her to integrate to public Junior High. By then puberty was starting to creep up on us, something I couldn’t help but notice in her, but never had the guts to ask if she’d seen it in me. Jannie had become beautiful. She’d shot up a foot and a half and her blond hair draped along her back and was as bright as any perfect sunny day. There were other developments that didn’t go unnoticed too and sent my hormonal brain spiraling with equal amounts of lust and shame.
We ended up having a few classes together, including introductory English. I had the luxury of already knowing most of the kids in the class but Jannie was completely new to everyone and everything. I could tell she was nervous and any class we shared, I was adamant in taking the seat next to her so we could pass notes to each other throughout the day.
In our first English class we were prompted to write a one page theme on something exciting we’d done over the summer. I scribbled some half-assed story about visiting my Aunt and Uncle’s lake house in Maine. I could see out of the corner of my eyes that Jannie was writing away with the usual intensity in which she attacked most things.
To everyone’s horror we were instructed to read our themes aloud to the rest of the class. To get to know each other. Now that I’m in the working world, I can say with confidence there’s no better time waster. For the most part, kids barely listen to the speaker, instead sit terrified about their upcoming turn to speak. Jannie went before me. The new girl. She started reading her theme and I nearly fell out of my desk to the floor. Her whole story was about she and I exploring the blanket forts!
She mentioned me by name and looked in my eyes across the classroom. I didn’t know what else to do but to not look at her. It felt like a secret coming to life, and shamefully, the hormones were kicking in and I didn’t want any of the other girls in class to know about our adventures in make-belive land.
“It’s really fun isn’t it Mike?”
She was looking directly at me and a few other heads turned, stifled giggles just waiting for me to corroborate the crazy story of the new girl.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I stuttered.
Right away I started to hear snickers as Jannie talked about jungles, deserts and space. She must have heard them too because halfway through the story her voice started to quiver, and she started reading much more quickly, just trying to get it all over with. When she was finished the teacher congratulated her for her imagination and Jannie took her seat and was quiet.
I read my story about the lake house and had never felt more ashamed. Looking briefly way from my paper I saw Jannie sunk down in her chair, her bright long hair draped over her face. It was clear that the lake house story was not the story she’d expected me to tell and I felt like crumbling up my paper and running from the class room. I’m sure she did too.
That day after school, we sat next to each other on the bus and I apologized, knowing I had betrayed her. She said it was okay, “it was stupid of me to do that. Everyone probably thinks I’m some freak,” topping it off with a little disingenuous laugh used to cover up pain. We got off at the same bus stop and I asked if she wanted me to come over to hang out. She said no, that she would see me tomorrow, and she disappeared inside the two-story colonial.
I have a feeling if there were any blanket forts up inside, that night they were crying.
–
Through most of Junior High Jannie blended herself in with the rest of the girls. She made few friends outside of the classroom but remained on a casual friendly basis with most students. In any kind of assignment or extra-curricular, I never experienced her come close to expressing herself in the way she had on that first day reading the story of the blanket forts.
She kept them up though, all around the colonial, and I would visit nearly every day after school. We would pick a fort to lounge in and finish up homework, all the while Maudie kept knitting away. The secret of the blanket forts never again left the Simmon’s house.
–
In High School Jannie and I started dating. As much as we tried to keep it hidden, High Schooler’s are never as subtle as they think they are. So once everyone knew, there were no attempts to hide our little kisses in the hallway, and we held hands in the classes we sat next to each other in.
We lost our virginities to one another inside one of the blanket forts. It was as close to red and white stripes as we could manage, we wanted a Valentine’s theme but instead we got a carnival. Calliope melodies, the sugary smell of cotton candy, the ring-dings and whistles of the games. We kissed each other. Laid each other down on the floor quilt. She undressed me with much more vigor than I for her. I was nervous, mostly about how long I would last, that I wouldn’t disappoint her. When we were both naked, our bodies shivered against each other and both of our nerves were in full tilt. When I entered her, she gasped out in pain but told me that it was okay, to keep going. As I did we gripped each other tightly, breath panting in tandem. The music of the calliope began to slow and the quilt beneath our embrace began to rise. It started to hover a few inches above the ground and as our awkward teenage love continued, the higher and higher it rose, until we broke through the quilted roof and were floating several feet above ground of Jannie’s bedroom. It was something we both noticed and seemed to only add to the ecstasy. She gripped my hair tightly and we both finished at the same time, by then the quilt was slowly lowering us back down.
On the ground we held each others bare flesh tightly. She said it first and I couldn’t help but say it back.
“I love you.”
–
We were going to different colleges and we had a big fight. Probably it was one of those fights that’s meant to make a break up more bearable. Easier to walk away hating each other than to still be in love. We were both still new to alcohol at that point, and didn’t know what type of drunk’s we were. Turns out we’re both the combative type. The fight was ugly and something I still regret to this day. It ended with Jannie screaming, violent tears, and me smashing my fist through the window of my used Ford Taurus. It was her bringing up not sticking up for her stupid Junior High Story reading that had really set me off.
“I think there’s someone out there for everyone,” she told me, “and I think we needed to do this to be certain that we aren’t those people for each other.”
I said fine, that was good to know, and I drove off in my Ford with the smashed window, leaving her out in the cold.
–
Through college we actually ended up keeping some contact with each other. From what I could gather, from our limited correspondence, she was undeclared for the first few years but had hope that she would find out what she wanted to do. She went home a lot to visit Maudie (who found my dorm address and sent me a quilt every holiday, I was slowly gaining my own Simmons collection). It was on one of her trips home that I got a call. Not from Jannie but from Maudie.
“Is that you David, dear?”
With how few times I’d ever heard Maudie speak it took me a few beats to realize who I was talking to.
“Jannie’s in the hospital dear. She’ll be okay, but she was asking for you.”
It was faster to drive than fly, so I drove for twelve hours straight until I pulled in to St. Anthony’s and frantically asked a nurse where I could find Jannie Simmons.
She was asleep in a bed, as white as the sheet that covered her, but breathing steadily.
They’d pumped her stomach of all the pills and booze and said that she might be asleep for a while but she had occasionally woken up and said something.
Maudie was seated at the end of her granddaughters bed, knitting away. She gave me a little nod, but it was seeing her knitting that I realized there was something wrong with the room. I asked Maudie for the keys to her house and she gave them up without question.
When I returned to the hospital I placed the little quilt, no bigger than a dish towel, worn as ever and with the big red heart in the center across Jannie’s chest.
Maudie regarded the little quilt with a smile, then she placed down her knitting needles and began to speak, to me, to the room, to Jannie, to no one.
“I finished knitting that for her the day she was born. Her mother died in labor, she was the only one who knew who the father was. Soon as I could, I got rid of that horrible hospital blanket and wrapped that sweet baby girl with that big red heart. She’s never let it go since that day. I think it’s the best quilt I’ve ever made.”
In all the years I’d known Maudie, it was the most words I’d ever heard her speak.
With trembling knees I crossed over to Jannie’s bed and gave her forehead a kiss.
I left the hospital and drove the Taurus (with, by then, a brand new window) up to the two- story colonial. I let myself back in the house. It was dark and I kept all the lights off as I climbed the stairs and went in to Jannie’s bedroom. There was still a blanket fort set up in the center of the room. In the darkness I couldn’t discern any color or theme, but I got down on hands and knees and crawled through the opening flaps.
My limbs buckled and I fell to the floor. It wasn’t long before I was crying and not soon before my own crying was echoed in the fort. Adults and children, crying in pain and fear. Animals too, the same sound a dog makes after you’ve accidentally stepped on its paw.
–
Two nights ago I received an email from janniesimmons123:
Maudie passed away last night. The funeral is on Friday, August 28 if you were interested in attending
Thanks Mike.
Jannie
The words all came in doubles and I read it three times without a single registration on what they meant. I rolled over on the couch towards the coffee table where the fifth of bourbon, that was full at the beginning of the night, was sitting. I judged there was about a quarter of the bottle left, a more modest binge than I was used too. I fell back asleep hoping a few more hours of shut-eye and a good couple swigs of water would set me pretty close normal again.
A ray of sun planted in the center of my forehead and woke me up a few hours later, interrupting a dream I’d been having of Jannie. It was all over the place and I couldn’t recall anything that had specifically happened other than she had been present. I couldn’t figure out why I would dream of her and it wasn’t until I stumbled to the bathroom to wash the sandpaper from my mouth that I remembered the email. I hurried back to the living room, grabbed my phone, wedged between two cushions, and re-read the email several times.
It was Wednesday the 26th and the earliest flight I could get was later that night around seven. I booked a ticket and packed a bag, neatly folding the articles that would be appropriate for a funeral. The email had sobered me up pretty good but there was still a couple hours before I needed to be at the airport.
I called my mother, asked her if she had heard the news and if she’d be going to the funeral. The answer was yes and no. She was deeply sorry to hear about Maudie but she was out of town for the week on vacation, she said she told me about it already but I couldn’t remember. The call hadn’t taken up time. I paced around my apartment for a bit but every lap I did made the walls seem to move in a little closer. Anxiety, paranoia or just the last little bit of alcohol leaving my system through a quickly beating heart. I had to get out. So I grabbed my bag, locked up the apartment and started wondering the streets.
It was one of those August days when the see-saw can tilt between summer and winter depending on where you stand. Today was a little chilly but I was managing with a light sweater. I thought I should probably get something to eat but my stomach cramped in protest to the idea. I settled for a cup of coffee, which I took to go so that I could keep walking. I needed to keep moving.
Maudie had been sending me quilts for years, after inquiring my mother for my address, and I had slowly been growing a healthy collection. I hadn’t even thought to try and stuff one in my bag, maybe as something to help me sleep on the plane, maybe as just a token to carry from a woman who’d never forgotten me. I’d left in such a hurry the thought hadn’t crossed my mind until now.
It was true that Maudie had never forgotten me, but what did I really know about her? Nothing I knew about Maudie had I learned from her directly, always in stories from either my mother or Jannie. I knew her husband was killed by a bear, that she didn’t talk much, she had adopted Jannie, and that she quilted as if she were stocking up the whole world for a never ending winter. She sent me a quilt every year for my birthday but I didn’t even know when her own birthday was or the age she’d reached in death. The coffee was jump-starting my brain, sending up memories long dormant, a confrontation that a death forces upon you. I thought back to the first day I spent at the Maudie’s house, the day Jannie and I had built the Christmas fort and then came all the other forts of that summer. It was decades ago but never had there been a day where I doubted, or chalked it up to childhood imagination, that what had happened in those forts actually happened. It had all been real. Fuck myself for every trying to deny or hide it. The magic touch that Maudie wove in to her quilts was real too. I believe now, that what she lacked in spoken words, all those feeling she wove in to her quilts. Everything was feeling, everything she might have wanted to say but didn’t, wonder, exploration, desire, love, real magic, all flowed from her to the tips of her needles. She knew that Jannie and I were outsiders destined to find each other and that when we did we could feed off the magic of the quilts. I feel now that Maudie knew exactly what was going on from the first time we set up the Christmas fort and that little smile she gave when we came bursting out was her way of saying you’re welcome.
I got an Uber to take me to the airport and on the way there I started to get nervous about seeing Jannie again. Since her stay at the hospital, I had only seen her once more at a Christmas party my mother threw a couple years ago, where she had made a brief appearance and she’d insisted that she couldn’t stay long. My mother told me Jannie knew I had gone to the hospital that day and maybe she was embarrassed, I hoped that wasn’t the case, but she told me that since then Jannie had been doing much better, albeit a little reserved, she’d been staying in the two-story colonial to help care for Maudie.
I didn’t even know what she did for a living. Her imagination had always been superior to mine during our fort constructing days and I thought that something in the arts, a writer, painter, maybe even an architect would have been perfect for her. Then I remembered the first day of Junior High, when she dropped her vulnerability, when she tried to share that creativity and was laughed at. How long had the forts been crying? We kept making forts after that but I could tell since then Jannie was very reserved about who she let in. I never had found out why she had taken so may pills. I didn’t have all the pieces to the puzzle but the picture was clear. I silently promised that when I saw her at the funeral I was going to make a real effort to connect with her again. Jannie in the hospital barely breathing, her brief visit at the Christmas party and now Maudie was gone, it was all making me feel very scared.
The flight landed fine and I was able to find a hotel relatively close to the funeral house were Maudie’s service would be held. I had the driver take me by Maudie’s place but the lights were all out. I fell asleep in the clothes I had flown in as soon as my body hit the lumpy hotel mattress.
That night I dreamed about the big fight Jannie and I had before we both left for college. I wasn’t sure if Jannie had even finished college after her stint in the hospital, and I woke up with a thin layer of cold sweat across my brow. It was Thursday, I had the whole day before Maudie’s funeral. I couldn’t help it, or I just didn’t want to wait. I emailed Jannie.
Hey. I’m in town for the funeral. I know your probably really busy but if you wanted to get together, talk, remember things, I’m here and would really like to see you.
Mike
I didn’t really expect to hear anything back, but by the time I finished up a shower there was a response.
Mike,
Grt to heer from you, I’ll bee a Maudie’s hoause all day. Wanty to see you too.
JAnnie
As a veteran of drunk typing, it was easy to spot. I looked at the clock, 9:35 a.m. Who knew how long she’d been going for, how long she was trying to continue on. Again, I saw her laying in that hospital bed and my heart dropped down the pit of my empty stomach. I paid extra for the quickest ride I could get and made it to the two-story colonial in less then fifteen minutes.
–
The door was slightly ajar and there was only darkness on the other side. It creaked as I pushed it open wider and called her name.
Only my echoes answered.
I walked in the house. The chemical smell that had been so pungent on my first visit had been replaced with mildew and hot water. The wood floors shone under the moonlight and only exposed cracks and knicks in the panels. As I passed the sitting room the rocker was empty, the clickety clack needles were nowhere to be seen, put away for permanent retirement.
A sniffle echoed along the empty space and when I looked up the stairs I saw a faint orange light at the top, to the left, where Jannie’s room was.
Walking up the stairs, I called her name again but received no answer.
When I opened the door to her room, the orange light was a candle lit on her windowsill. She was sitting cross-legged on the carpet floor with her face buried in her hands.
“Hey,” I said.
As I slowly came into the room she lifted her face from her hands. Even with trails of mascara bleeding from her eyes and a face bloated from drink, she was the ever beautiful Jannie I had grown up with. No amount of scorn or hate would ever change that. She looked at me with that passion I’d come to know, but the direction of which I could never pinpoint.
“You came,” she said.
“Of course I did.”
“I didn’t think…I didn’t know…we…”
I spotted the half empty bottle of vodka at the foot of the bed. Not worth bringing up. Not now. I walked into the room and, against the will of my tired joints, sat cross-legged across from her on the floor.
After a long moment of silence, spent watching the black shadows of the candle dance along her face, she looked up at me with blood shot eyes and asked, “why did you lie that day?”
“I don’t know,” I said.”
She coughed, or maybe it was a sob. A tear spilled from her puffy eye.
“What was the point of spending all that time together, experiencing all those things?” she said.
I wanted to reach across the room and finish off the vodka. And I did, kind of. I took the bottle and then a healthy swig.
“I don’t know,” I said, again. “It was magical, it was magic.” Only one sip in and I could feel the warmth spreading. “And it was our magic.”
“You were embarrassed of me,” she said.
“I was a new teenager who wanted to get laid, I was embarrassed by anything that got in the way of that.”
“You fucked me though.”
“That’s not how I would describe it,” I said.
She halted for a moment and reached for a bottle that wasn’t there. I handed it to her and she took a long pull. The candle flickered in an absent wind , covering her face in shadow. “Something died in me that day,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Are you?”
“There’s only one way to say it.”
Jannie chuckled and took another swig. “I tried reaching out to you, I wanted to stay close.”
“We were living different lives.”
“Every second of your life is the same second of someone else’s,” she said.
She passed the bottle to me and I took a drink. Years and years, and two straight sips will still send me to euphoria.
“What can I do?” I asked.
“Build a fort with me,” she said without hesitation.
On staggered footing we set out to one of Maudie’s closets and pulled out quilts. As adults we could pull much more. We dropped them in the living room and Jannie instructed and I obeyed. We pulled all the same furniture, decor and lamps as that first day, draped a final quilt for the entry way but before going in, she hoisted the bottle vodka to the ceiling.
“For Maudie,” Jannie said and took a heaping drink. She handed the bottle to me.
“For Maudie,” I said and finished it off.
We crawled through the blanket fort. Jannie went ahead and I followed. Already, I could feel the ground growing colder and soon could see clouds of breath escaping my mouth as we crawled down the endless black tunnel.
Then, she stopped suddenly and placed her hand on my shoulder. “I can’t go further. I’m too tired.”
“I know,” I said. Booze catches up quickly. There one second and gone the next, and with her hand on my shoulder she collapsed to the ground and was asleep in an instant.
I lowered myself gently and laid down next to her. She was wearing a pair of black dress pants and cream colored button up blouse with a corner of fabric peaking out from the top button. I pulled it out.
The faded white, the perfect red stitching of the heart in the center.
I held Maudie’s little quilt to my chest.
And I remembered.
I remembered our trips to space, to the jungle, to Santa’s workshop, to the desert. I remembered feeling the sand between my fingers. The sand. The sands of time. It’ll slip through your fingers until there’s only a few grains left clinging to your skin. Each grain a person, a memory, a love, a loss. You can hold on to them or you can brush them away.
Beneath me the ground grew icy and my breath hovered above in clouds. I held Jannie close. In sleep, I could feel her breath against my chest. I think I smelled peppermint. Between my fingers I held the heart quilt that Maudie had given her at birth and noticed an irregularity, something Maudie would never had let slip.
A thread in the center of the bright red heart was loose.
I took that thread and twirled it around my fingers.
A gust of wind, and a dusting of snowflakes grazed my face.
Then I listened and the chorus came. It was never random. Even with half a bottle in her, I should have known exactly what fort Jannie wanted to build.
Join the triumph of the skies
With angelic host proclaim
‘Christ is born in Bethlehem’
Hark! The herald angels sing
‘Glory to the new born king
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