An Elm Creek Quilts Sampler

by Jennier Chiaverini

  Her mother looked surprised and pleased, but her father frowned. “Why do you want to go to college?”

  “To continue my education,” Carol said, as she had rehearsed. “To better myself. If I have a degree, I’ll be able to make a good living.”

  “You mean you want to work?”

  Carol nodded.

  “Your mother doesn’t work. She didn’t go to college. You think you’re better than her?”

  Carol thought of her mother’s life, of the endless cooking and cleaning and washing and sewing and picking up after her husband. Her parents were the same age, but her mother looked ten years older. “No. Of course not. I just want something different.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t know what it will be like. There are smart kids in college, smart kids like your brothers. You won’t be able to keep up.”

  His words stung, but she didn’t let him see it. “I’m going to be class salutatorian, so I think I’ll be able to manage. I know it won’t be easy, but my teachers have confidence in me.”

  “College costs money.”

  “Not as much as you might think.” She told him about the partial scholarship, too nervous to look at him as she spoke.

  Before she could finish, he interrupted. “I won’t waste money sending a girl to college. I’ll pay all that money for a fancy education and for what? Will it make you prettier? Will it teach you to stop moping around? It’s going to be hard enough for you to get a husband as it is. No man will want to marry you if he thinks you’re smarter than he is.”

  A sour taste filled Carol’s mouth.

  Carol’s mother reached over and touched her husband’s hand. “What if she doesn’t marry?” she said gently. They both turned to look at her. Carol felt herself shrinking beneath their scrutiny. She knew what they were thinking. They could not count on a man to come and take their ugly little mouse off their hands. They could not provide for her forever, and she would need to earn her keep.

  Carol was torn between shame and hope as she waited for her father to speak. She knew she was plain and that no man would ever love her, but that was not why she wanted to go to college. It didn’t matter. What was most important was that she got her education. It made no difference why or how.

  Finally her father let out a heavy sigh. “How much will it cost again?” Wordlessly, Carol handed him the letter. He scanned it, frowning.

  “There are lots of nice young men at college,” her mother said.

  “For all the good that’ll do her.” He set down the letter. “Well, I guess it wouldn’t hurt. You can go.”

  Carol nearly burst with relief and gratitude. “Thank you,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.

  “What will you study? Typing? Nursing?” He grinned at his wife. “What kind of classes do they have for girls, anyway?”

  “I’m going to study literature,” Carol said. She wanted to be a college professor someday, and live the life her English teacher had described: hours spent exploring old libraries, discussing the great books with attentive pupils, writing and reading to her heart’s content in an office full of books in an ivy-covered hall.

  But her father’s thick brows had drawn together. “Not with my money you won’t. You’ll be a nurse or a secretary, something practical.”

  “Literature is practical.” She looked from her father to her mother and back, anxious. “I’m going to keep studying until I have my doctorate. I’m going to be a college professor.”

  “How many years will that take?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “She doesn’t know,” he repeated to his wife. Then he turned back to his daughter, stern. “I’ll pay for the same as your brothers got, and no more.”

  “You won’t have to pay. I’ll get a scholarship—”

  “Like you did this time?” He shoved his chair away from the table with such force that he knocked over the salt shaker. He rose and pointed at her. “You’ll be a nurse or a secretary, and that’s final.”

  Anger boiled up inside her. “One doesn’t attend the university to become a secretary.”

  He slapped her across the face, hard. Her mother gasped. Carol clamped her jaw shut to hold in the cry of pain. Slowly she turned her head and met her father’s gaze. He struck her again, harder, so hard he almost knocked her out of her chair.

  “Then you’ll be a nurse,” he said. “Or you’ll be nothing.”

  Her head was reeling, so she didn’t see him leave the room. As she tried to regain her senses, she heard her mother go to the sink and turn on the tap. In another moment she was at Carol’s side, holding a cool washcloth to her cheek.

  “You shouldn’t provoke him,” her mother murmured. “You know how hard he works. He said you could go. If you had just thanked him and left it at that—”

  Carol took the washcloth and shrugged her mother off, furious with her for cataloging her mistakes, for not standing up to her father. She felt her dreams of a scholarly life slipping through her fingers like the grains of salt her father had spilled on the yellow-checked tablecloth. Very well, she thought bitterly. She would be a nurse, if she had to. Anything to get out of there.

  If she had been able to follow her dreams, perhaps she would have turned out like Gwen Sullivan, associate professor of American studies at Waterford College, Elm Creek Quilter, mother of a loving daughter, and woman of many friends. It could have been Carol teaching a workshop full of eager students and waiting for her turn to add a border to the round robin quilt.

  Carol admired Gwen more than she envied her. Gwen’s confidence and wit reminded her of the heroines from her childhood books. She attended all of Gwen’s workshops, even when the lesson plan was the same as a previous week’s. On that day, when Diane asked if she would mind helping some of the new quilters, Carol was so pleased that she almost forgot to say yes. She watched how Diane went from table to table assisting the campers and did the same. Fortunately, Sarah wasn’t around to roll her eyes and scoff at the sight of neophyte Carol offering advice to women who had quilted for years.

  Judy arrived as the workshop was ending, and she helped them straighten up the room for the next morning’s class.

  “How was your trip?” Diane asked. Carol wished she had thought of it first.

  “I expected more cows,” Judy said, trying to grin. “I didn’t see a single one.”

  Gwen put an arm around her shoulders. “How was it really?”

  Judy told them. Carol’s heart went out to her as she spoke of her elder half sister’s anger and her father’s confusion. Carol didn’t know how Judy could bear such disappointment after the hopes raised by Kirsten’s invitation.

  “What are you going to do now?” Gwen asked after Judy finished.

  “I don’t know.” Judy sat down on the edge of the dais and rested her chin in her hands. “Part of me thinks I should wait for Kirsten to make the next move. Another part of me wants to block out every memory of last weekend and never think of them again.”

  “I can understand that,” Diane said.

  Judy gave her a wry half smile. Carol wished she could think of something comforting to say, but she couldn’t. She settled for giving Judy a hug. Judy held on to her so tightly that Carol knew it had been the right thing to do.

  Then Judy sighed and reached into her sewing bag. “The trip wasn’t a complete waste,” she said, producing a folded bundle of cloth. “I finished my border.”

  “Let’s see,” Gwen said, helping her unfold the quilt top. Judy had set the quilt on point as Diane had done, but not with solid triangles. Instead, a design resembling a compass or a sun radiated from each side, the longest, central points nearly reaching the corners. All of the points were split down the middle lengthwise, with dark fabric on one side and light on the other, giving the design a three-dimensional, shaded appearance. The tips were perfectly sharp, and the border lay smooth and flat.

  “Your piecing is amazing,” Diane said, echoing Carol’s own thoughts. “Maybe this w
ill finally convince these machine people to switch to hand work.”

  Gwen looked ready to retort, but before she could speak, they heard the door open on the other side of the room. It was Sylvia, carrying a purse and wearing a light blue dress and a white hat.

  “Quick,” Diane whispered, but Judy was already bundling up the quilt top. There wasn’t enough time to return it to the bag, so she held it behind her back. They nailed nonchalant expressions to their faces and greeted Sylvia as she approached.

  “You four are obviously up to something,” she said, her eyes narrowing as she inspected them. “Are you going to tell me what it is, or will I have to guess?”

  “We’re not up to anything,” Diane said. “We’re just cleaning up after Gwen’s workshop.”

  “Hmph.” Sylvia looked around at the clean tables and the carefully swept floor. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

  Carol fidgeted beneath the woman’s scrutiny. “It’s—well, it’s a surprise—”

  “For Summer’s graduation party,” Gwen interrupted.

  “I see. Very well, then, what is it?”

  Judy gave her an apologetic look. “If we told you—”

  “It wouldn’t be a surprise. Yes, yes, of course. I understand.” Sylvia adjusted her hat. “As a matter of fact, I have business of my own for Summer’s party. That’s what I stopped by to tell you. Andrew and I are driving in to town to fetch some decorations. We’ll be back before supper.”

  Diane’s eyebrows shot up. “You and Andrew, huh? Is this your official first date?”

  “It is most certainly not a date. It’s an errand.”

  “It sounds like a date to me,” Gwen said.

  “Why do I even bother?” Sylvia wondered aloud. “It’s not you four troublemakers I wanted to talk to, anyway. I’m looking for Sarah. If I’m going to be driving downtown, I’d prefer to borrow her truck rather than ride in that enormous contraption of Andrew’s.”

  “You can take my car,” Carol offered, returning to the back table, where she had left her purse.

  “Are you sure it’s no trouble?”

  “It’s my pleasure,” Carol said as she handed Sylvia her keys. The Elm Creek Quilters were always helping each other, and lending her car to Sylvia made her feel more like one of them. So did the way Sylvia went out of her way to include her. She could have said, “You three troublemakers—and Carol.” Carol didn’t mind being considered a troublemaker the way Sylvia had said it, especially if that meant she was part of the group.

  “Have a nice time,” Judy said as Sylvia turned to go.

  “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Diane added.

  Sylvia gave them a sharp look. “It’s not a date.” Before they could disagree, she left the room, more briskly than she had arrived.

  Their mirth turned to relief as Judy brought out the quilt from behind her back.

  “I swear that woman has quilt radar,” Diane said. “She can sense a quilt within a hundred paces.”

  Gwen took the quilt from Judy. “We won’t have to hide this much longer. I’ll add my border, Agnes will finish the center, and we’ll be ready to quilt.”

  Carol hoped that they would let her help.

  The other women left, and as Carol went upstairs to her room near the library, she thought about Summer’s party and tried to remember when she had last hosted one for Sarah. The wedding didn’t count; Sarah and Matt had planned and paid for everything on their own. When Sarah graduated from Penn State, she might have had a party with her friends, but if she had, she hadn’t invited Carol. Carol felt a twinge of guilt until she remembered Sarah’s high school graduation. Carol had held an elaborate open house in Sarah’s honor, even though Sarah had not been valedictorian or even salutatorian or even in the top tenth in her class. Carol had been disappointed. Sarah was such a bright girl; she could have been at the top of her class if she had spent as much time on her studies as she had her social life. She could have earned a full scholarship anywhere—Harvard, Yale, one of the Seven Sisters—if only she had been more industrious. But Sarah settled for the state school as indifferently as she had settled for B’s when she could have earned A’s, with no idea how much Carol envied her the opportunities she squandered.

  No one had thrown Carol a graduation party, not her parents, who were still upset at her for wanting to go to college in the fall, and not her friends, since she had none. Her graduation from high school would have passed unnoticed if not for the ceremony itself, which her parents did attend, and her English teacher’s kindness. On the last day of school he gave her three books: a dictionary, a thesaurus, and a leather-bound volume of the complete works of Shakespeare. Her heart leapt as she held the last and turned the gilt-edged pages to read the inscription. “These will take you anywhere,” her teacher had written. “Congratulations, and may this be the first of many successes for you.”

  His kindness brought tears to her eyes. He alone knew how much it pained her to sacrifice one part of her dream so that she would not lose the whole. If only she were brave enough to defy her parents—but she was not. She would become a nurse rather than stay home until the unlikely arrival of a suitable young man bearing a marriage proposal. She would show her father that she was neither as stupid nor as useless as he thought. She would become the best nursing student in her class if it killed her.

  And she did, but her father never knew it. He died of heart failure during her last semester, so he didn’t see her graduate. Even if he had, he wouldn’t have known how her joy was tempered as she accepted her degree; he would not have been able to detect a single regret, for life in his house had taught her how to hide her feelings. But beneath the placid surface, emotions churned. She never wished for him to die, not even when he beat her, but since it had happened, why then and not years earlier, so that she would have been free to choose her own path?

  The thoughts shamed her, but she could not silence them.

  She found a job in a hospital in Lansing, where almost by accident she made the first friends of her life. She and two other new nurses banded together for mutual support as they struggled with the nearly overwhelming demands of the hospital, and their need soon blossomed into friendship. At least once a week they went out in the evening together, to see a movie or to shop. Once, when they went bowling, a group of three men invited them out for a drink. After a quick whispered conference, they agreed. Boldly, Carol drank as much as the other girls and laughed nearly as loudly. It was the most fun she had ever had, and the next day, her friends insisted that one of the men had hardly been able to keep his eyes off her all night. She was pleased, but she didn’t believe them. She didn’t even remember Kevin’s last name. She had preferred one of the others, a dark-haired lawyer who had put his arm around her as the men walked the nurses to their bus stop. He was well-read and charming, and she wished that it was he, not Kevin Mallory, who stopped by the hospital later that week and asked her out to lunch.

  She accepted the invitation, and when he asked her out again, she agreed. With more surprised fascination than desire, she realized he was courting her. A year later, when he asked her to marry him, she would have laughed except he was so earnest.

  “I’ll be a good husband to you,” he promised. “I’ll take care of you. You won’t have to work anymore. I love you and I want us to be together.”

  She stared at him, astounded. He loved her? He hardly knew her. She searched her heart and wondered if she had fallen in love with him without realizing it. She was almost certain she had not. He was a good, kind man, and she liked him, but passion didn’t sweep over her when she looked at him. When he fumbled to kiss her good-night, she felt the pressure of his mouth but none of the electric warmth her friends described when confiding about their own trysts.

  Still, she did like him, and she knew he would never hurt her. And a woman could not go through life alone.

  “I’ll need to think about it,” she told him. He nodded reluctantly and told her to t
ake all the time she needed; he would wait for her forever if he had to. Carol knew hyperbole when she heard it but decided to kiss him rather than scoff. He responded eagerly, relieved that she had not refused him outright.

  Her girlfriends thought Kevin too dull for a boyfriend but perhaps just right for a husband, since he wasn’t bad-looking and he earned a good living. Her mother, who had never met him, was his strongest advocate. “Say yes,” she urged over the telephone from the town in northern Michigan Carol had successfully escaped. “You might never get a better offer.”

  Carol couldn’t ignore the truth in her words. The next time she saw Kevin, she told him she would marry him. And later, when his insurance company transferred him to Pennsylvania, she gave up her job and the only friends she’d ever had and made a home for him in a three-bedroom house in Pittsburgh.

  Sarah was born a few months after the move. Carol’s mother stayed with them during the difficult months before the birth, when the dangerous pregnancy forced Carol to remain in bed, and afterward, when a thick cloud of despair inexplicably came over her. The bright new baby in her arms brought her little joy, and she did not know why. Sometimes she woke in the middle of the night to find she had been weeping. Other times she could not sleep at all, but paced around the living room of the darkened house, smoking one cigarette after another. She did not know why she wasn’t happy, and she hated herself for it. She had all she had ever wanted—an education, a pleasant house, an adoring husband, a beautiful child who would have everything, everything that she herself had been denied. What was preventing her from enjoying such blessings?

  Her beloved books were forgotten. If not for her mother, meals, laundry, housekeeping, and even Sarah herself would have been neglected, too. Carol nursed Sarah when her mother brought her the child, but otherwise she lay in bed sleeping or sat outside in a chair, alone with her thoughts. After a few weeks of this, her mother taught her how to bathe the baby, change her, dress her, care for her. Gradually, her mother’s quiet but firm insistence helped her develop an interest in the child, and a thin shaft of light began to pierce the heavy fog surrounding her. Carol could not find the words to voice her gratitude, but for the first time, she realized how deeply she loved her mother.