Round Robin

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Craig appeared, startled. “What is it?”

  “There’s a big protest on the square, and we think Diane’s son is involved. Will you watch the store while we go check it out?”

  “Are you kidding?” He hurried toward them—then continued on to the front door. “I’m not going to miss this.”

  They locked the shop and raced down the street and up the hill to the square. They saw a crowd gathered near the bandstand and heard music blaring and someone shouting. They saw Diane ahead of them, working her way through the people who had come to see what all the excitement was about.

  When they reached the square, they forged ahead to the front of the crowd, where they found Diane gaping at a group of children skateboarding on the paved surface surrounding the bandstand. Gwen counted five boys and a girl—and two of the boys were Michael and Todd. The crowd stood on the grass as if held off the cement by a force field that only the skateboarders could penetrate.

  Even Diane did not leave the safety of the grass to seize her children. “Michael and Todd, get over here right this minute,” she yelled over the sound of hip-hop blaring on a boom box.

  “We can’t, Mom,” Michael said as his companions continued weaving back and forth on their skateboards. “We have to stand up for our civil rights.” His gaze shifted to Gwen, and he brightened. “Hi, Dr. Sullivan! Isn’t this cool? We’re having a skate-in!” With that, he pushed off on his skateboard and zoomed around the bandstand.

  Diane glared at Gwen. “I don’t know how you did it, and I don’t know why, but I do know you’re responsible for this somehow.”

  “Who, me?” Gwen tried to look innocent.

  Summer stuck two fingers in her mouth and let out a piercing whistle. “You go, Michael,” she shouted. He waved happily.

  The crowd was growing, but Steve spotted them and made his way toward them, grinning. “Hey, Diane, mind giving me a quote for tomorrow’s paper?”

  “I’ll give you a quote,” she shot back. “Those clowns in the municipal building brought this on themselves. If they would have permitted my family to keep our skateboard ramp on our private property, these kids would be skating at our house right now, instead of creating a scene in a public park.”

  “Good, good,” Steve said, writing it down.

  Just then Todd turned off the music. The crowd grew quieter as Michael climbed the stairs to the bandstand. “My name’s Michael, and I’m a skateboarder.” His friends burst into cheers and applause. “I’m not a criminal, I’m not a troublemaker, I’m not a druggie. I just want to ride my skateboard. But because of the fascists in the city government, I’m not allowed to, not even in my own backyard.”

  “Where did he learn a word like fascists?” Bonnie wondered aloud.

  “You never know what they’ll pick up in the public schools,” a man beside them said scornfully. They glared at him.

  “My parents tried to reason with them, but they wouldn’t listen,” Michael went on. “They forgot that in this country, at least, elected officials are not gods. They are subject to the will of the people.”

  “This sounds familiar,” Summer murmured, giving her mother a sidelong look.

  “My friends and I can’t vote yet, but we can show the city officials just what our will is. Skateboard laws affect kids more than anybody else, but kids can’t vote for the people who make laws against skateboards. That’s discrimination without representation.”

  Craig cupped his hands around his mouth. “That’s un-American!”

  “That’s right,” Michael shouted back. A smattering of applause went up from the crowd.

  Diane shook her head. “I don’t believe this.”

  Gwen couldn’t, either.

  “So, since we can’t skate in my backyard, we’re going to skate right here. It says right on that sign over there that this is a public park. We’re the public, too, so we’re going to skate.”

  Gwen let out a cheer, and Craig began to clap. More of the onlookers joined in this time.

  But Michael wasn’t done yet. “We have some extra skateboards here if any of you want to join us.” Then he left the bandstand, turned on the music, and jumped on his skateboard. Soon he and his companions were zooming around, shouting and cheering.

  “I had no idea Michael was such an orator,” Bonnie told Diane.

  “Neither did I.” Diane stared at her sons.

  “He’s right, you know,” Summer said. “If you believe in something, you have to be willing to stand up for it. It probably wasn’t easy for him to do this, knowing how you’d feel, but he believed in it strongly enough to risk your anger. He’s a brave kid.”

  “Brave or completely out of his mind. He’s going to get in trouble, and not only from me.”

  “Even if he does, you have to let him make his own mistakes. You raised him well. You taught him right from wrong. Now you have to let him loose in the world to make his own way.”

  Diane looked dubious. “He’s only fifteen.”

  “I didn’t mean let him that loose,” Summer said, laughing. She caught Gwen’s eye. “You know what I mean?”

  Diane shook her head, but Gwen nodded. Her heart lifted when Summer smiled at her.

  Then, suddenly, Summer stepped onto the pavement. “What do we want? Skateboard freedom! When do we want it? Now!” she shouted, motioning for Michael to pause. The others joined in the chant as Michael gave her a skateboard, and soon, she too was circling the bandstand, her long auburn hair flying out behind her.

  Suddenly Gwen knew what she had to do.

  “Are you crazy?” Diane shrieked, grabbing her arm. Gwen shook her head and peeled Diane’s fingers off her arm.

  “What do we want? Skateboard freedom!” she shouted, climbing on the skateboard Michael offered her. She wobbled back and forth unsteadily until Summer took her by the hand and helped her steer. Hand in hand they skated around the bandstand, chanting until they were hoarse.

  Craig kissed his wife on the cheek and grabbed a skateboard. Soon he was zooming past Gwen and her wonderful, strong-willed, bright star of a daughter. “Bonnie wanted to join us, but I told her I would instead,” he said gallantly. “If one of us has to have a police record, we’ll let it be me.”

  “I guess chivalry isn’t dead after all,” Gwen said. She and Summer looked at each other and laughed.

  Every time they passed Diane, they encouraged her to join them. Every time they did, the crowd was a little larger, a lot noisier. Diane finally gave in and mounted a skateboard about five minutes before the police arrived and wound up arresting them all on charges of disturbing the peace.

  “Did you really want me to go away and miss all this?” Summer shouted to her mother as they were being led away to separate police cars.

  “I never wanted you to go away,” Gwen shouted back. “Never.” She could say nothing more because the police officer was guiding her into the back seat of the patrol car, careful not to bump her head on the door frame. Gwen was so elated, she wouldn’t have felt it if he had. She and Summer were friends again, and that was all that mattered.

  That was why Gwen didn’t finish her border that evening as she had planned.

  When she worked on it the next day, she cut a few pieces from the new fabric Summer had helped her select and added them to those she had already sewn in place. Just when she thought she had planned the pattern perfectly and that her work was nearly complete, Summer had given her something new to work with, something she had to learn to integrate with what she already had. Invariably this would alter the pattern, but perhaps that was not such a bad thing.

  She chose blues and greens, golds and creams as her friends had done, for they had yet to lead her astray. If she did make a mistake, she could rely upon them to gently remind her what she was supposed to be about. All the quilt classes and quilt books in the world couldn’t teach her as well as her friends did.

  She pieced crazy quilt blocks to match her crazy quilt of a life, with patches going this way and that, a
pparently haphazard, with no discernible plan or pattern. That was what a careless glance would see—a random scattering of cloth. Only with more careful, thoughtful scrutiny could one discern the order within the chaos. For the patches of various sizes and shapes were stitched to muslin foundations, perfectly square, one block aligned with the next but not a part of it. The blocks were so very much alike but they were not the same, and she had learned to accept that.

  The crazy quilt blocks encircled the round robin quilt in a wild and joyful dance, a mosaic of triangles and squares and other many-sided figures Gwen could not name. It was an embrace of blue and green and gold, unbroken.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sarah drove Sylvia to the police station to bail out their friends. Before they left, Carol admonished them for laughing about their friends’ plight. “I don’t see what’s so funny,” she said. “Now they’ll have criminal records. This will stay with them for the rest of their lives.”

  They were laughing more from astonishment and dismay than from humor, but Sarah was too annoyed to bother trying to explain. “Relax, Mother,” Sarah said as she helped Sylvia into the truck. “It’s not like they knocked over a liquor store.” Carol gave her a sour look and returned inside the manor. Sarah wished that just once her mother would relax her impossibly high standards. She cared too much about meekly submitting to propriety and looking good to the neighbors. So a third of the Elm Creek Quilters had been arrested—so what? They had done what they thought was right, and Sarah was proud of them. She wished she had been there.

  “I can’t wait to hear the whole story,” she said as she and Sylvia drove through the forest toward the main road leading to downtown Waterford. “I’m surprised Craig was arrested with them. This seems like the kind of thing Gwen and Summer would get involved in, and you never know what Diane’s going to do next, but Craig?” Sarah shook her head. Craig seemed too stuffy, too rigid, to get involved in something so wacky. It was almost as difficult to picture Craig on a skateboard as it was to imagine Carol complimenting her daughter.

  “Perhaps he was trying to redeem himself for his foolishness earlier this spring,” Sylvia mused. “I believe he’s done it. Gwen, too.”

  “Gwen?” Sarah glanced at Sylvia before returning her gaze to the road. “Why would Gwen need to redeem herself? What’s she done?”

  “Oh, you know the way you daughters are,” Sylvia said lightly. “You always think your mothers are guilty of something.”

  Maybe that was true, but it didn’t answer Sarah’s question. Was Sylvia referring to Gwen’s less-than-enthusiastic response to Summer’s decision to forgo grad school? That wasn’t even in the same realm as Craig’s betrayal of Bonnie. Sylvia must have meant something else, but whatever Gwen had done, Sarah knew Sylvia wasn’t going to tell her about it. Sylvia disliked gossip and deplored the breaking of confidences. “I know too well how the idle ramblings of vicious minds can destroy lives,” she had said once, and Sarah remembered that, more than fifty years before, a handful of members of the Waterford Quilting Guild had driven Sylvia and Claudia from the group with their malicious words, unfounded rumors that the Bergstroms sympathized with the Germans during World War II. Claudia had told their brother, Richard, about the rumors, never dreaming that he would enlist to prove his family’s patriotism. When Sylvia said that gossip could kill, she meant it literally.

  Sarah respected her friend’s feelings, so she didn’t persist. Then she allowed herself a small smile, thinking that if Sylvia wouldn’t talk about Gwen, maybe she’d talk about herself. “What were you and Andrew doing in the garden when I came to find you?” Sarah asked.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sylvia straighten. “What do you mean, what were we doing?”

  Sarah shrugged. “It’s just that when I was looking toward the gazebo from the other side of the garden, it seemed like you two were sitting very close together. I thought maybe Andrew was having trouble with his hearing or something, or maybe he was helping you get something out of your eye.”

  “We most certainly were not sitting very close together. We were no closer than you and I are now.”

  “Oh. I guess it must have been an optical illusion. Maybe the spray from the fountain refracted the light rays or something.”

  “All right, young lady, I know what you’re insinuating, and I don’t appreciate it.”

  “What? What am I insinuating?”

  “You know very well.”

  “I don’t,” Sarah insisted, then began to laugh. “Tell the truth. Were you two being naughty?”

  “Honestly, Sarah, I don’t know where you get these ideas.”

  “Well, why not? He obviously likes you, and you’re always together—”

  “Are we, indeed?” Sylvia looked left and right, up and down. “I don’t see him now.”

  “Almost always, then. And you’ve been fixing your hair differently and wearing your best outfits. You can’t tell me Andrew isn’t the reason.”

  “I most certainly can. I’ve been wearing my spring clothes, not my best. You’ve merely forgotten them over the long winter.” Sylvia patted her hair. “And I changed my hairstyle because Agnes recommended it. If I did it for anyone, I did it for her.”

  “Is the lipstick for Agnes, too?”

  “Sarah, you try my patience. He’s much younger than I am—almost seven years. He’s Richard’s age.”

  Sarah glanced at her, skeptical. “Do you really think seven years matters at this point?”

  “Well—” Sylvia hesitated. “I don’t suppose it does. Or rather, it wouldn’t, if I cared for him the way you think I do, which I don’t. Now, I must insist that you say no more about this.”

  “But—”

  “I insist,” Sylvia repeated, in a voice that would tolerate no disobedience.

  So Sarah kept her curiosity to herself for the rest of the drive. Maybe Sylvia was telling the truth, or maybe she didn’t yet recognize what her friends saw. Either way, Sarah hoped Andrew would postpone his trip east a little while longer. His company was good for Sylvia, so as far as Sarah was concerned, he was welcome to stay forever.

  With Sarah’s luck, it would be Carol who decided never to leave.

  When they reached the police station, they went inside and followed signs that led to a waiting room. Bonnie was already there, talking to Judy’s husband, Steve. Michael and Todd, who hadn’t been arrested, stood close by, whispering to each other and looking around with wide eyes. Bonnie spoke excitedly, gesturing in frustration as Steve nodded and wrote in a small notebook. When Bonnie spotted Sarah and Sylvia, she looked so relieved that Sarah wished she had driven faster. “Thank God you’re here,” Bonnie said. “Diane is raising such a stink in there, I’m afraid they’re going to lock her up for good.”

  “They can’t do that, can they?” Michael asked.

  “Of course not,” Sarah assured him, hoping it was true.

  “We came as quickly as we could,” Sylvia told Bonnie. “Naturally we couldn’t refuse a request to bail our friends out of the pokey.”

  Bonnie almost smiled. “It’s not really bail, just a fine. They’re going to be released on their own recognizance once they pay. I feel so awful. I wanted to pay for everyone, but—”

  “But you didn’t want Sarah and me to feel left out, since we already missed most of the fun. That was kind of you.”

  Bonnie nodded, grateful, and Sarah knew that Sylvia was the one who had been kind, interrupting Bonnie before she had to admit that she didn’t have enough for all the fines. It was no secret that the Markhams had to watch every penny, but the Elm Creek Quilters pretended not to notice. In turn, Bonnie pretended that her friends really did need two yards of an expensive fabric rather than one and that, as they insisted, as the most experienced teacher she deserved higher pay for the classes she taught for Elm Creek Quilts.

  Sylvia wrote a check, and as they waited for their friends, Bonnie gave them more details about the protest. The police had shown up about a ha
lf hour after Michael’s speech and had asked them to turn down the music and stop skating. When the protesters refused, the police listed several noise ordinances they were breaking, reminded them of the skateboard law, and warned them that they needed a permit to hold a public gathering in the square. Gwen began quoting from the Bill of Rights and told the police that if the city of Waterford wanted them to stop skating, they were going to have to arrest them. The police agreed, and took her up on the suggestion. The adults were taken into custody, but despite their insistence on being arrested as well, the children were driven home to their parents. Bonnie had accepted responsibility for Todd and Michael.

  “Will they have to go to trial?” Sarah asked.

  Bonnie shook her head. “Not a trial, a hearing, but only if they decide to contest the fines.”

  “I suspect they will,” Sylvia said.

  Just then they heard their friends’ voices floating down the hallway. “What do we want? Skateboard freedom! When do we want it? Now!” they chanted, their voices growing louder and louder. Steve burst into applause at the sight of them. Sarah joined in, noticing that the ovation was unanimous, even though most people in the room had no idea what was going on.

  Michael and Todd ran over to hug their mother. “I knew they couldn’t keep you locked up for long,” Michael told her.

  “Were you in a cell?” Todd asked. “Did you get to see solitary confinement? Do they call it ‘the hole’?”

  Diane embraced her sons. “No, we were all together in a conference room. This isn’t Attica, Todd. Michael, where’s your skateboard?”

  “In Bonnie’s car.”

  “Good,” Gwen said. “You’re going to need it. Come on, everyone. Back to the square.”

  Summer, Diane, and the boys cheered, but not Sarah. “You’re not serious?”

  “Of course. We can’t give up now.”

  Sylvia placed a hand on her arm. “Perhaps discretion is the better part of valor, at least for now.”

  “Are you kidding? We have not yet begun to fight!”