Elm Creek Quilts [12] The Winding Ways Quilt

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Bonnie could have hitched a ride with Diane every day just like Agnes did if she had accepted Agnes’s invitation to move in with her. Bonnie had shown up on Agnes’s doorstep the night Craig had locked her out of their condo and had settled into a spare bedroom while she sorted out the messy details of her collapsing marriage. At first Bonnie had hoped to move back into the condo after the dust settled, but that conniving, deceitful Craig made sure that couldn’t happen. Agnes assured Bonnie she was welcome to stay as long as she wished, but halfway through the summer, Bonnie happily announced that she had found a charming apartment in Grangerville on a quiet street near a nature preserve. Agnes worried that she had somehow made Bonnie feel unwelcome, but Bonnie assured her she only wanted to assert her independence and see how much she enjoyed the novelty of living by herself. On moving day, Agnes helped her load her belongings into the old station wagon and said, a little sadly, “The invitation stands.” Bonnie promised to remember that and waved cheerfully as she drove off.

  Agnes had not yet seen her new apartment, for Bonnie hadn’t invited any of the Elm Creek Quilters over, despite their curiosity and their repeated hints that they wanted to throw her a housewarming party. Agnes wanted to believe that Bonnie had simply been too busy to unpack and that she wanted to wait until she was settled before entertaining friends, but she couldn’t help worrying that Bonnie’s standard of living had taken a nosedive too embarrassing to allow her friends to witness.

  If that was the case, the insurance settlement ought to help. Agnes was doing her part to help, too. It was she who had discovered that Craig had hidden his assets by decorating his office with valuable antiques whose true worth only an expert would recognize. Fortunately, a good friend of Agnes’s late husband’s had been just such an expert, and even now he was appraising the collection and preparing it for sale. Agnes didn’t know what Craig had been using for office furniture ever since the court order obliged him to turn over the collection, and she didn’t care. Let him sit on the floor and balance his computer on an old milk crate. It was more than that wretched man deserved after how he had treated Bonnie.

  The final sale was supposed to go through any day, and the money would be split evenly between Craig and Bonnie. Agnes had made her friend promise to call her as soon as the sale was final so that she could be the one to break the good news. Her husband’s friend had assured her it would be good news; the only question was how good.

  It was a pity any of the money had to go to Craig.

  At the sound of a car approaching, Agnes glanced over her shoulder, hoping to see Bonnie arriving right on time. Diane misread her line of sight and jerked her head toward Gwen’s car. “She’s here, all right. Better late than never.”

  Agnes placed a hand on her arm. “Diane, dear, I’ve known you since you were a little girl, and I’ve learned to accept that sometimes you speak without thinking. Today, however, I must insist that you mind your words. If Gwen didn’t get to say good-bye to Judy, she’s going to feel bad enough without you heaping criticism upon her. This is not the day to tease and bait her. Understood?”

  Diane’s eyes widened with injured innocence. “Of course. I can be sensitive.”

  Agnes patted Diane’s arm. “Today you can prove it.”

  They climbed out of the car just as Jeremy and Anna pulled up in Jeremy’s weather-beaten compact. Anna was weaving her long, dark brown hair into a single braid, and as she wrapped a band around the end, she said something that made Jeremy toss his head and laugh. Instinctively, Agnes clutched her purse to her side and pressed herself against Diane’s car. Jeremy was a smart young man, but at the moment, he wasn’t watching where he was going.

  The car stopped inches away from Diane’s. Anna hopped out, breathlessly smothering her laughter when she noticed Agnes and Diane. “Sorry, that was my fault. I shouldn’t distract him when he’s driving, but he just said the funniest—well, it’s not important. Has anyone heard from Gwen?”

  “Anna said she never showed last night,” Jeremy said, his brow furrowing as he locked the car. Tall and slender, he wasn’t handsome in the conventional sense, but he had a cheerful look about him that Agnes found charming, and when he was enjoying himself, his crooked grin lit up his face so that Agnes couldn’t help smiling, too. She had also never heard him say an unkind word about anyone, revealing a generosity of spirit that Agnes much admired.

  “I spoke with her this morning,” Agnes said, and as they crossed the parking lot, she repeated their brief exchange—so brief, in fact, that she finished before they reached the kitchen.

  “I hope she made it to Judy’s house in time.” Anna tied on an apron and put on a fresh pot of coffee. “It would be so sad for both of them if they didn’t get to say a last good-bye.”

  “That’s what I said on the drive over and Agnes almost took my head off,” Diane grumbled as she searched the cupboards for her favorite mug.

  Jeremy and Anna both stared at Agnes in astonishment, then looked at each other and burst into laugher. “I’m afraid they don’t believe you, dear,” said Agnes, smiling.

  “That’s because they don’t know you as well as I do.”

  Agnes folded her hands on the table. She supposed she could give someone a proper scolding when they deserved one, but she had been gentle with Diane. “All I meant was that Gwen surely didn’t mean to slight Judy, and we shouldn’t judge her without knowing what happened.”

  “We could go ask her,” said Jeremy, but he didn’t seem in any hurry to do so.

  “I’m under strict orders not to say anything,” said Diane, with a pointed look Agnes’s way.

  “I didn’t mean you shouldn’t speak to her at all,” Agnes protested. “Just be sensitive. Empathetic.”

  “You might as well ask me to wear a muzzle.” Diane slammed a cupboard door. “This never would have happened if she had just stuck around after the farewell breakfast instead of running off to the library. It’s just like last spring when Bonnie didn’t show up for her classes and we had no idea what had happened to her. I don’t know why you people can’t let people know where you’re going to be or at the very least keep your phones turned on. Where is that stupid mug?”

  Looking slightly alarmed, Anna took a large pink cappuccino mug from the dishwasher and handed it to Diane. “We have lots of other mugs.”

  “This is my favorite,” said Diane, slightly calmer. “I can get the perfect coffee-to-milk ratio if I fill it to that little crack on the inside.”

  “No wonder you’ve been unusually grumpy this morning,” said Agnes. “You were genuinely worried about Gwen. You thought we’d have a repeat of that terrible incident at Bonnie’s quilt shop.”

  “Only at first,” said Diane, reaching into the refrigerator for a carton of nonfat milk. “Last night after I dropped you off, I drove past Gwen’s house and saw the light on in her office window. She was there working blissfully away, so I knew she was fine.” Diane sloshed milk into her coffee mug. “Once I knew she wasn’t passed out in an alley somewhere, I started to get mad.”

  “Her office faces the back yard,” said Agnes. “You snuck around back and peeked in her window?”

  “What else could I do? She wouldn’t pick up the phone!” When Jeremy laughed, Diane glared at him. “Tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing if Summer wouldn’t answer your calls.”

  “I wouldn’t have to,” said Jeremy. “You’d beat me to it.”

  “For the sake of my peace of mind, I wish all of you who live alone would move into the manor.” Diane sounded as if she was only half joking. “Especially Bonnie, since she’s essentially homeless. But why not Gwen, too? She’s been living alone for years now, ever since Summer moved out. What’s there to hold her back once Summer leaves for Chicago?”

  “Summer will visit so often we’ll hardly know she’s left,” Agnes interjected, casting a sympathetic look Jeremy’s way. He was frowning and studying the floor. Surely he would miss Summer as much as Gwen did, perhaps more, in
the way of young lovers.

  “She’ll flunk out of school if she does that,” Diane scoffed. “And why not you, Agnes? You must want the company, or you wouldn’t have asked Bonnie to move in with you.”

  “I love my little house and garden, and I need my own place for when my grandchildren visit,” said Agnes. It wasn’t loneliness that had compelled her to invite Bonnie to move in with her, but compassion. “What about you? You’ll be an empty nester soon. Why don’t you and Tim take a suite upstairs? He’ll have plenty of Elm Creek husbands around for company.”

  “After he retires, we might do just that,” said Diane, who knew when she was being teased. “For now, he likes to be close enough to campus to walk to work. What about you, Anna? You don’t need to be close to campus anymore, now that you’ve resigned from College Food Services.”

  “Me? Move in here?” Anna let out a small laugh and disappeared into the pantry. “Oh, I don’t know. My apartment’s a shoebox compared to the manor, but I like it.”

  “Think of the money you’d save on rent,” Diane persisted. “And the time you’d save on your commute. Plus the bus fare. Jeremy surely won’t be able to drive you every day.”

  “It’s no trouble,” said Jeremy.

  Diane shook her head. “Maybe not now, but after Summer leaves, you won’t have any reason to come out this way.”

  “Really, it’s not a problem,” said Jeremy, directing his reply to Anna.

  “Living here would save me a commute to Elm Creek Manor, but what about my other job?” Anna emerged from the pantry carrying a sack of flour. “I’d still have to get to campus several days a week, and sometimes the special events I direct for the provost run later than the last bus out this way.”

  A cry of dismay went up from Agnes and Diane. “Haven’t you resigned from College Food Services?” asked Agnes, wondering if Sylvia and Sarah knew.

  “You mean we’re in a trial period?” asked Diane. “You’re keeping both jobs until you decide which you like best?”

  “Of course not,” said Jeremy.

  “That’s not it,” Anna assured them. “You don’t need me when camp isn’t in session, right? I’m taking vacation days from College Food Services for the rest of August so I can work here. After Labor Day, I’ll go back to full-time at Waterford College, but I’ll come around often to supervise the kitchen remodeling. When camp resumes in March, I’ll be all yours, full-time.”

  “Thank goodness for that,” declared Diane. “It would be cruel to tease us all month with fine cuisine and then disappear as soon as we become spoiled for anything else. You know what would prove your commitment to your new job? Moving into the manor.”

  “Don’t mind her,” Agnes told Anna, who appeared increasingly distressed. “Diane just wants you here first thing in the morning so you can have her coffee waiting for her when she arrives.”

  “So I have selfish motives,” Diane retorted. “Everything I said is still true.”

  “I don’t know.” Anna took out mixing bowls and a rolling pin. “Elm Creek Manor is beautiful, but I like living downtown, and sometimes it’s good to be able to leave work at work.”

  Diane shook her head and feigned bafflement. “I have no idea what you mean.”

  “Leave the newbie alone,” said Jeremy. “You’ll scare her off. You can’t all move into the manor. You won’t have any rooms left over for campers.”

  Diane looked ready to debate the point, but she was distracted by the coffeemaker’s beep signaling that a fresh pot was ready. As she rushed forward, mug in hand, Agnes regarded her young companions with a fond smile, enjoying their customary banter. It would not be so bad to give up her own home and garden to share the manor with friends such as these, and if she did not like her own little house so much, she might consider it, though it would be a strange and wistful homecoming. What Diane had apparently forgotten, and what Anna and Jeremy probably did not know, was that Agnes had once called Elm Creek Manor home. Long ago, when she was little more than a girl, newly wed and far from her soldier husband, she passed many lonely days as an interloper among her husband’s family.

  When she met Richard Bergstrom she was fifteen, the daughter of a wealthy Philadelphia businessman, a granddaughter of a senator, and a popular student at Miss Sebastian’s Academy for Young Ladies. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving was a traditional day of service for Miss Sebastian’s girls and the young men from their brother school, Warrington Prep. More than half a century earlier, the schools’ progressive-minded founders had made service to the poor a voluntary but strongly encouraged part of the curriculum. They wanted the children of privilege to learn compassion for the less fortunate and gratitude for their own blessings, which had come to them by accident of birth rather than merit. While acts of charity were encouraged throughout the year, the schools made a concerted effort at Thanksgiving, when their students collected canned goods for food pantries, cleaned up parks, or sorted donated clothing to distribute to the poor. Afterward, Miss Sebastian’s girls hosted a social for the Warrington men, where the students’ hard work was rewarded with dining and dancing late into the night. Every year, a few of the more progressive young ladies pointed out that the women had to work twice as hard as their male counterparts since they performed community service all day and played hostesses to the men in the evening, and that the community would be better served if they canceled the party and donated the money they would have spent on food, music, and decorations to the poor instead. But most of the other girls were eager for any excuse to mingle with the Warrington men, so the dissenters never won out.

  Over time, the social became the highlight of the day and giving thanks to the people of Philadelphia a necessary hurdle to surmount before the fun could begin. Many of the wealthier students took to hiring workers to fulfill their community service commitments or making large donations to charity instead. With a pragmatism that would have deeply offended both Miss Sebastian and Mr. Warrington, the administrations permitted it, noting that the less fortunate were being provided for, and that was what mattered.

  Agnes’s parents, like many others, did not concur that this was all that mattered, so they never offered to pay for her or her siblings’ exemptions. They wanted their children to be mindful of their blessings so that they would work hard to keep them, and it didn’t hurt her grandfather’s standing in the polls for voters to see the Chevalier children serving meals at soup kitchens or planting vegetables in a community garden. As for Agnes, she seized any chance to experience some of the “real life” her parents endeavored to shelter her from, and she was glad that almost all of her classmates honored Miss Sebastian’s principles too much to buy their way out of the day’s work. Among the men of Warrington Prep, the ratio skewed in the opposite direction. The young men claimed to be unable to sacrifice a day of study so close to the end of the term, and by hiring workers to fill in for them, they were making an additional contribution to the community by providing a day’s wages to otherwise unemployed men.

  “You’ll have a fine career in politics with that gift for rationalization,” Agnes declared when a Warrington Prep senior offered her that excuse at a meeting of the two schools’ committees planning the event. To her disgust, he took such a remark from a senator’s granddaughter as high praise and asked her to save the first dance at the social for him. She made him no promises, but smiled sweetly and returned to the task at hand—examining requests for helpers from community groups and deciding whom to assist. It galled her that on the eve of Thanksgiving, the young men of Warrington would toast themselves for a job well done and accept congratulations from the leaders of the civic organizations the service day benefited, all without lifting a finger themselves.

  “You never said yes when he asked you to save the first dance for him, but that’s what he heard,” one of Agnes’s friends teased her as they walked to class after the meeting.

  “I couldn’t refuse him in front of his friends,” said Agnes. “He might be lazy and ri
diculous and completely oblivious to the point of community service, but I don’t need to shame him.”

  “You should have promised to dance with him if he did his own work on service day. He would have been first in line to stock shelves at the food pantry.”

  “I should have,” Agnes replied. “We all should have. It’s too late now.”

  Or perhaps it wasn’t. There was always the next year’s service day to consider.

  Thus began Agnes’s campaign to goad the men of Warrington Prep into serving their community themselves instead of through proxies.

  She met a great deal of resistance at first, especially among the girls who had steady boyfriends among the Warrington men. How could they refuse to dance with their boyfriends simply because they had taken the gentleman’s way out? “A true gentleman doesn’t shirk his duty to his community,” Agnes replied. But wasn’t it cruel not to warn the men ahead of time that only those who worked that day would be dancing that night? “Of course you should encourage your boyfriends to participate,” Agnes answered, wishing that her sister students had done so regardless through the years, in which case her rebellion might not have been necessary. “But appeal to their sense of civic virtue; don’t tell them it’s a quid pro quo. Only the element of surprise will guarantee full participation in next year’s service day. I promise it will, as long as we hold together. We all have to do it, or it won’t work, and things will never change.”

  Naturally Miss Sebastian’s girls wanted the Warrington men to do their share of the work instead of merely enjoying the fruits of the young women’s labor, so with a bit of peer pressure and promises that the girls would still dance the night away, only with a smaller selection of partners, Agnes and her friends swore their sister students to fidelity and secrecy.