An Elm Creek Quilts Sampler

by Jennier Chiaverini

  “On your marks,” Sylvia called from the front of the room. “Get set, go!”

  There was an excited scramble as papers were flipped and pencils seized. Grace skimmed the list of twenty anagrams, but nothing came to mind.

  “I think I have number three,” Donna cried. “‘Plane Pipe.’ That’s Pineapple.”

  “That’s right,” Megan said. “Nice work.”

  As Grace wrote the correct answer on her sheet, she overheard a woman at the adjacent table say, “You guys, the third one is Pineapple.” Grace looked up in time to catch the woman’s guilty glance before she looked away.

  “Well, I never heard of such a thing,” Vinnie declared, glaring at the woman.

  “Never mind her. Don’t let it distract us,” Megan urged. “Just keep your voices down from now on.”

  Murmuring answers across the table, Grace’s team worked their way down the list, unscrambling Trip Around the World, Broken Dishes, Hole in the Barn Door, and Feathered Star. Sunbonnet Sue and Grandmother’s Fan gave them considerable trouble, but soon they, too, were untangled. Megan and Vinnie quickly proved themselves the strongest members of the team. Although Donna solved several puzzles, Grace was unable to unscramble a single one. Instead she began giving only half her attention to the paper while scanning the other tables to judge how much progress the other teams were making.

  “The team closest to the dessert table seems confident, but intense,” she reported. “They might be close to finishing.”

  “That figures,” Vinnie grumbled. “They can reach out and get more fuel anytime they need it.”

  “Here.” Megan passed her the last cookie. “Refuel with this. We’re doing fine.” It was true; they had completed all but two anagrams.

  “I have one,” Donna said. “‘A pathless totter’ is Steps to the Altar. How appropriate.”

  When Megan nodded in wry agreement, Vinnie gave them a sharp look. “Not necessarily. It depends who’s taking those steps.”

  Only one anagram remained. “‘Our nouns be drudgery,’” Grace murmured to herself. Our nouns be drudgery. Something about it tickled a memory in the back of her mind, and suddenly she could picture the answer as clearly as if the letters had rearranged themselves on the page. “Burgoyne Surrounded.”

  Megan shot her a look. “What did you say?”

  “Burgoyne Surrounded.”

  Donna looked dubious. “Is that a real block?”

  “Of course. It’s a pattern of squares and rectangles, usually done in two colors. According to tradition, it was named to commemorate British general John Burgoyne’s defeat in the Revolutionary War—”

  “Skip the history lesson and write,” Vinnie cried. Quickly they filled in the last empty line on their papers and waved them in the air. “We’re done! Sylvia!”

  A groan went up from the other tables, the loudest of all from the group nearest the desserts. Sylvia held up her hands. “Now, now. Don’t give up yet. We still have to check their answers.” She crossed the room, took Megan’s paper, and read the answers aloud. Then she smiled. “We have our winners.”

  Grace’s team cheered and exchanged high-fives. One of the staff members came to their table to award them their prizes: ribbon-tied bundles of fat eighths, hand-dyed in a gradation of rainbow colors. As Grace ran her hand over the soft cloth, she wondered if maybe this fabric would spark the inspiration she so desperately needed. Maybe those fat eighths would become her next quilt.

  Sylvia returned to the riser at the front of the room. “While you were working, Sarah and Summer read your questionnaires. The results are in, and we’re ready to announce the winners.” A young woman with long red hair handed her a sheet of paper. “Which camper has the greatest number of Unfinished Objects? With a grand total of …” She read from the sheet silently, then turned to the young woman. “This can’t possibly be right, is it?” When the red-haired woman nodded, Sylvia shrugged and turned back to her audience. “With a grand total of one hundred seventeen …” A gasp of awe went up from the quilters. “Yes, you heard right, ladies. With a grand total of one hundred seventeen UFOs, Donna Jorgenson!”

  Red-faced, Donna rose and went to the front of the room to claim her prize as the campers applauded and laughed. “I’m so embarrassed,” she said as she returned to her seat. “As soon as I get home, I’m going to finish some of those quilts.”

  “At least you won a prize,” Vinnie consoled her, leaning over to peer into her closed hand. “What is it?”

  Donna handed her a small metal object. Vinnie studied it and nodded in approval before passing it around the table. When Grace received it, she saw that it was a pin with the words “Elm Creek Quilts” encircling a picture of a house and a grove of trees. It seemed familiar somehow, and suddenly she remembered seeing a similar design on a medallion quilt hanging in the manor’s foyer.

  Sylvia continued. “And now, for the quilter with the least number of UFOs, with a grand total of zero”—this the quilters interrupted with an exclamation of astonishment—“Grace Daniels!”

  Her heart heavy, Grace pushed back her chair and went to the front of the room for her prize. Sylvia gave her a sympathetic, almost apologetic smile as she placed a pin identical to Donna’s in her palm and closed her fingers around it.

  When Grace returned to her table, Megan said, “I was sure I was going to win that one. I only have two UFOs.” She shook her head in admiration. “How do you stay so organized?”

  Grace’s first impulse was to respond with a joke, but she decided to be honest. “It’s not organization. It’s lack of ideas. I’d do anything to have as many projects in the works as you do, Donna.”

  “No, you don’t want that,” Donna said. “All my prize shows is that I have a short attention span.”

  “At least you both got pins,” Vinnie said grumpily. She rapped her fingernails on the table and frowned expectantly at the front of the room.

  Sylvia went on to announce the rest of the winners, who claimed their prizes amid praise and teasing. Grace half expected to win a second pin for owning the most fabric, but a woman from New Mexico whose stash filled two entire rooms had them all beat.

  Vinnie’s fidgeting increased with each new camper who earned a pin. “Don’t let it bother you,” Megan said. “I’m not going to win anything, either. Besides, we won the group prize.”

  “I don’t mind,” Vinnie insisted, her voice falsely innocent. “I can be a good loser.”

  The other three members of her team exchanged knowing glances as Vinnie hungrily watched three campers, who had taken their first lessons just that morning, approach the riser to receive pins for being the newest quilters.

  “And last but not least,” Sylvia announced. “For the camper who has quilted the longest, a woman who began quilting at age six and has stuck with it more than seven dacades—Vinnie Burkholder!”

  “Hooray for Vinnie!” someone cried out.

  “Vinnie, Vinnie,” Megan chanted, and soon the whole room had joined in, calling out Vinnie’s name in time with their clapping hands. Vinnie sat frozen in her chair, her mouth forming an O. Donna nudged her and motioned for her to stand up. Vinnie started and rose, then brightened and walked to the front of the room waving and bowing graciously to her admirers.

  “Vinnie, Vinnie,” Grace chanted, laughing and clapping her hands as Vinnie accepted her pin from Sylvia and stepped onto the riser beside her, beaming.

  As Vinnie returned to her seat, Sylvia Compson looked out over the crowd of quilters. Some chatted with their teammates; others mingled, going from table to table, greeting old friends or making new ones. She watched as her dear friend Grace admired Vinnie’s pin; she looked on as women who had been so shy and tentative at Candlelight now threw back their heads and laughed and joked along with the most outgoing of the group. Yes, she thought with satisfaction, the week of camp was off to a fine start, indeed.

  Four

  Vinnie began each morning with a conversation with God. You didn’t
take away my aches and pains in the night like I asked You to, she would pray, but at least You let me see another day, and at my age I ought to be grateful for that. Then she would thank Him for His many blessings, especially her children and grandchildren, and ask Him to watch over her family and protect them throughout the day.

  That morning she added a special request: Donna and Megan can shout coincidence all they want, but I think I see Your hand at work. If I’m mistaken, please let me know—and make it obvious so I won’t miss it. Unless I hear otherwise from You, I’ll fit a little matchmaking into my vacation.

  Satisfied, Vinnie threw off the covers and got up. As she showered and dressed, she thought about Megan and the confidences she had shared with Vinnie and Donna over supper the night before. Megan’s ex-husband, Keith, sounded like a scoundrel. Back in Vinnie’s day, men hadn’t been able to lift a dustcloth to save their lives, and they might have spent one night too many with friends down at the local bar, but at least they had known what a man’s obligations were. Nowadays, men seemed to think they could cast off one family and start another, bearing no responsibility for the first wife and the first children. Sometimes the women were just as bad. Vinnie often didn’t recognize the world, it had changed so drastically.

  But on holidays or other special occasions, when all her children and grandchildren and now even great-grandchildren gathered around her, she would shake off the melancholy of aging and be content. With each graduation or new addition to the family, Vinnie would feel the love of her descendants and admit to herself that she would not trade her presence among them for anything, not even to be reunited with Sam. She’d see him again in God’s own good time, and Sam would understand if she lingered. As he had always told her, when you got right down to it, family was all they had and all that truly mattered.

  These days families dispersed to the four winds, mothers and children separated by half a continent or more. She was lucky that her children had stayed relatively close, scattered around the state rather than the entire country. Some of her friends in Meadowbrook Village had children in California or New York or Florida, whom they rarely saw. One woman had never seen her own grandchildren. “Why doesn’t that son of yours bring them out for a visit?” Vinnie had demanded.

  Airfares were too expensive, she was told, and hotel fees for a family of four were out of the question. Her son would pay for her to visit them, but Vinnie’s friend refused. “I’m too old to fly so far,” she had said, her face crumpling in grief.

  Vinnie had not known what to say, and rarely was she at a loss for words. She was two years older than her friend, but as much as she disliked flying, if a four-hour flight was the only way to get to her family, she would suffer through it. She promised herself right then and there that she would never say she was too old for anything.

  Several times since, she had been tempted to chide her friend into getting out of her chair and making that trip, but she held her tongue. Not everyone felt as strongly about family as Vinnie did. Maybe a person needed to grow up without a family to truly appreciate one.

  She corrected herself; she had had a family—two, in fact, although the second had been more unconventional than the first.

  For six years she had been part of a family she supposed other people would consider ordinary: her parents, her elder brother, Frankie, and herself. They lived in a small house in the Hartwell neighborhood of Cincinnati, and Vinnie remembered being happy and content there, until her mother’s death changed everything.

  Later, Vinnie learned that her mother had succumbed after a long battle with cancer, but at the time, her mother’s death seemed as sudden as it was incomprehensible. The funeral passed in a blur of grown-ups with dark clothes and hushed voices. Relatives hugged her and told her that her mother had loved her very much; neighbors dropped off casseroles and told her to be a good girl. Only when the bustle of activity ceased did a chill of realization settle in Vinnie’s heart: Her mother wasn’t ever coming back, and nothing Vinnie did could make their family whole again.

  Her father seemed to wish he had gone away with Mother. He rarely left his chair by the radio, and he seemed not to notice when his children spoke to him. Frankie looked after Vinnie, fixing her cereal and toast three times a day and making sure she brushed her teeth at night. They played quietly in their rooms or in the backyard, avoiding their strangely silent father. Vinnie knew this wasn’t normal, but she pretended not to notice.

  Then one day, a neighbor spotted them outside, and when she questioned them, something in their hushed voices and guarded manner sent her hurrying inside to her telephone. A few days later, their father’s elder sister arrived with a suitcase and a look of determination that reminded Vinnie of how Daddy used to be.

  Vinnie was glad to see Aunt Lynn, since in her presence, Daddy remembered to shave and change his clothes. He returned to work. At suppertime they had hot meals; at night they slept in clean sheets scented with lavender. When Vinnie cried at night for her mother, Aunt Lynn came to her in the dark and rocked her until she fell back asleep.

  Vinnie didn’t know why Aunt Lynn didn’t have any children of her own, except that ladies had to have a husband first, and Aunt Lynn didn’t. That was one of the things that the other aunts didn’t like about her. They also didn’t like that she wore lipstick and worked in an office and had turned down two marriage proposals. Vinnie didn’t understand why the aunts whispered such things when Aunt Lynn wasn’t there; she thought Aunt Lynn was very pretty and nice, and her life sounded terribly exciting.

  When she left several weeks later, Vinnie was sorry to see her go. She asked Aunt Lynn to stay, but Aunt Lynn said her boss needed her. “Your Daddy will look after you,” she promised, then kissed Vinnie and carried her suitcase outside, where a taxi waited to take her to the railroad station.

  As the days passed, it seemed that Aunt Lynn had taken Daddy’s restored energy with her. He still went to work and sent the children off to school each morning, but in the evenings he sat alone in his chair by the radio, smoking and listening to music. Vinnie eventually grew accustomed to the gloom, but her memories of happiness grew ever fainter.

  She ached for her mother. She ached with the large, constant pain of knowing her mother was gone, and in dozens of small ways when each day brought another sign of how much Vinnie still needed her. The sight of an incomplete Nine Patch block reminded Vinnie that her mother would never finish the quilting lessons that had begun only months before. Each morning Mother had plaited her brown locks into two smooth braids, but the braids her father attempted hung loose, with tufts of hair sticking out here and there, and her bangs grew nearly to her chin. When the popular girl who sat across the aisle at school told her she looked like a sheepdog, Vinnie pretended not to hear her and tried to poke the unruly bangs into the braids. When that failed, she tucked the strands behind her ears. She thought she looked better, but the popular girl snickered. Vinnie’s face grew hot with shame, and she whispered, “At least I’m not worst in the class in spelling.”

  The popular girl’s face grew sour, and at once Vinnie knew she should have ignored her. At recess the girl waited until the teacher was out of earshot before calling her a sheepdog again, and before long her friends had joined in, laughing and jeering. Vinnie stood very still, watching the popular girl’s sour little mouth blabbering insults, the smug disdain in her eyes, the sunlight gleaming on her two perfect, blond braids—and then something inside Vinnie exploded. She charged into the girl, knocking her to the ground. By the time the teacher ran over and pulled her aside, the popular girl was sobbing, her face red where Vinnie had repeatedly slapped her.

  Vinnie was sent home. When her father read the principal’s note, he sighed so heavily that Vinnie grew even more ashamed. She stammered out an explanation, but her father seemed not to hear her. Then he said, “Bring me the scissors.”

  Her heart sank as she found her mother’s sewing basket, untouched for so many months, and brought her father the sciss
ors. He sat her down in his chair by the radio, combed out her sloppy braids, and began to trim her bangs. He frowned in concentration as he worked, cutting straight across above her eyes, trimming the uneven edges, then pausing to study his work before cutting again.

  “Daddy, that’s short enough,” Vinnie said, alarmed by the sight of the snipped ends collecting on her lap.

  “Be still. I’m trying to make this even.”

  Vinnie hoped for the best, but when her father finally sat back, satisfied, and sent her to look in the mirror, she discovered a short brown stubble where her bangs had once been.

  She felt tears gathering, and tried to hide her face before her father noticed, but his eyes met hers in the mirror. “I can fix it,” he said hastily. “If I cut the sides a little shorter, they’ll blend in.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Sure,” he said, and steered her back to the chair. Vinnie clutched her hands together in her lap and closed her eyes, cringing inside with each snip of the scissors. As her head grew lighter, her stomach grew more queasy. She was afraid to open her eyes, but when her father told her to, she obeyed.

  She looked into the mirror, and a familiar face stared back at her in horror. Frankie’s face. Daddy had cut her hair so that it looked exactly like Frankie’s.

  She burst into tears. “I can’t go to school like this.”

  Her father stared at her, an odd, distant expression on his face. “Your mother is dead, and you’re crying over your hair.”

  Vinnie’s tears choked off abruptly. She climbed out of the chair and went to her room.

  The next day she went to school and got into another fight when the popular girl’s cronies teased her for looking like a boy. The following morning she walked to school with Frankie as usual, but as soon as he ran off to join his friends, she doubled back and hid in her bedroom. The school contacted her father when she had been absent a week. He was instructed to bring her in for a conference, where the principal lectured them on truancy while Vinnie stared at the floor and her father repeated assurances that Vinnie’s absences were over.