Leaving college to marry was never more than a fleeting temptation, of course, for she was determined to achieve her goal. In time she earned her degree, found a job teaching at a Catholic primary school, and married Joe in the same church where they had met. Her salary was modest, and Joe took on as much overtime at the steel mill as permitted, but they often found themselves coming up short at the end of the month. Although Joe didn’t like it, when that happened, she accepted housekeeping work with the Albrechts to make ends meet. What choice did she have? She and Joe were frugal, but every time they built up a modest savings, the furnace went out or the car broke down or the roof needed to be repaired. So they found their happiness in simple pleasures, and as they gradually saved for their future, which they hoped would include children, they remained hopeful that more prosperous times would come along.
Their dreams were shattered one dreadful morning when the principal came to Gretchen’s classroom and gravely informed her that the steel mill foreman had phoned with terrible news. Joe had been rushed to Allegheny General Hospital after a support beam had fallen and pinned him to the floor. His back was broken and he was not expected to live.
Gretchen refused to believe it. Closing her ears to the doctors’ warnings that she must prepare herself for the worst, she sat by Joe’s bedside and held his hand, alternating between silent prayers and gently spoken reminiscences of their happiest moments together. She knew that if he heard her voice, he would come back to her, no matter how far away he had drifted.
When he survived that first night and regained consciousness the next morning, Gretchen would not allow the doctors’ grim predictions to dispel her hopes. When the doctors told Joe he would never walk again, Joe fixed them with a stubborn, steely look until their voices trailed off weakly. Gretchen knew then that he was determined to prove them wrong.
In the long, slow, painful months of his recovery, Gretchen quit her job so she could stay home to care for him. Their modest savings quickly disappeared, but she made ends meet on a small monthly stipend from his union. When that too fell short, she ignored Joe’s protests and sought work with Heidi Albrecht, who hired her on the spot as a housecleaner.
Gretchen knew Joe blamed himself for the misfortune that had forced her to give up teaching, which she loved, for dull, exhausting labor in the home of a privileged young woman who felt entitled to her loyal service, thanks to their families’ intertwined history, but she never blamed him. It was an accident of fate, no one’s fault, but he refused to see it that way. He resolved to regain his mobility and reclaim his old job so she could quit hers.
Within months he could sit up in bed unassisted. Soon he could move from the bed to the chair on his own, and within a year, he could stand. But although Joe defied his doctors’ expectations and learned to walk again, he never fully recovered his old strength, and an accidental jolt could make him grimace from pain. Eventually he had no choice but to abandon his plans to return to his old job, his old life. Since he no longer needed her constant attention, Gretchen found a new job as a substitute teacher, and while it was not steady work, it helped pay off some debts and got her out of the house.
Throughout those difficult years, quilting was her solace and escape. She quilted to add beauty to her life, to give purpose to her hours, to distract her from the unfairness of fate, to bind herself to her unknown foremothers who had suffered greater hardships than she had ever borne. Joe often read aloud to her while she sewed. His voice, as strong and deep as before the accident, comforted her, helping her to forget their shabby furniture, her made-over dresses, the diminishment of their expectations. Her scrap quilts brought warmth and beauty into their home, allowing them to turn the thermostat a little lower or to conceal a sagging mattress and threadbare sofa cushions.
In time, impressed by Gretchen’s resolve and intrigued by the solace she found in creating objects of comfort and beauty, Joe took up restoring old furniture when, on his daily walk around the neighborhood, he happened upon a discarded antique rocking chair, brought it home, repaired it, and sold it for twenty dollars. Next he restored a bureau and matching chest he had purchased for a few dollars at a yard sale, and sold both for a fifty-dollar profit. Within months, neighbors and strangers alike were stopping by at all hours of the day to browse through the finished pieces on display or to schedule an appointment to drop off worn or damaged furniture for him to refurbish. Eventually Joe made a sign and hung it above the garage door: Joseph Hartley: Fine Furniture Repaired and Restored. He worked when he felt able, rested when the strain on his back and legs required. He taught himself cabinetmaking and woodworking from library books and soon began designing and building his own original pieces. An antiques shop in downtown Sewickley began selling his wares on commission, and after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran a half-page article on him, customers from as far away as Harrisburg ordered custom-made pieces.
“What a fine pair of artists we are,” Gretchen liked to tease him.
“Starving artists,” Joe teased back, but it wasn’t far from the truth. Even so, they enjoyed a rich, rewarding life. They had each other, and many dear and loyal friends, and fulfilling work that paid the bills, at least most of the time. They were active in their church and shared their time and talents with the community.
And although they were never blessed with children, many children came into their lives nonetheless.
As Joe’s reputation as a master woodworker grew, he took on as many commissions as he could handle, but he set everything aside when Gretchen’s grandmother made a special request. Her church, a Croatian parish in Pittsburgh, needed a skilled restorer to repair ornate cabinetry in the sacristy, someone who knew how to properly care for the old wood but wouldn’t cost them a fortune. Joe promptly accepted the job pro bono, delighting Gretchen’s grandmother. “You married a treasure,” she exclaimed, patting Gretchen’s arm.
“So he tells me,” she replied, giving her husband a sidelong smile.
The repairs in the sacristy of Holy Family Catholic Church took Joe several weeks, and whenever Gretchen had a day off from teaching, she would spend the morning with her grandmother and bring Joe a sack lunch to share at noon. One day, when the restoration was nearly complete, the pastor remarked that he knew of another worthy organization that could benefit from his talents. “They won’t be able to pay,” he admitted, “but you’re a faithful steward of your talents, and I think you’ll find the work has other rewards.”
Joe agreed to accompany Monsignor Paul to the other site a few blocks away, and Gretchen tagged along, curious.
As they left her grandmother’s neighborhood behind, the small but well-kept bungalows gave way to row houses in disrepair—broken windows, trash in the gutters, graffiti on walls and telephone poles, crumbling stoops leading to front doors boarded up with plywood. The monsignor led them to a three-story Victorian house with peeling paint and a front yard entirely taken up by a vegetable garden and a rusty swing set. An elderly man and a woman a few years younger than Gretchen browsed at two card tables set up in the driveway, one stacked with canned goods, the other with used clothing. A neat, hand-painted sign near the entrance announced that they had arrived at Abiding Savior Christian Outreach.
When the monsignor knocked on the front door, a barrel-chested, dark-skinned man wearing a brightly colored tunic opened the door and welcomed them with a broad smile. “This is the man I told you about,” Monsignor Paul said, resting his hand on Joe’s shoulder. “Joe Hartley, the carpenter who’s restoring our sacristy so beautifully. This is his wife, Gretchen. Gretchen and Joe, I’d like you to meet Louis Walker, my good friend and a true servant of Christ.”
“I’m glad you can help us,” said Louis in a rich baritone flavored with a southern accent. After shaking their hands, he beckoned them to follow him inside, into a small front room with shabby sofas and chairs lining the walls and a table covered in parenting magazines in the center. Upstairs an infant squalled, and from somewhere nearby came the v
oices of young women engaged in heated conversation punctuated by laughter. The floorboards creaked beneath worn carpeting as Gretchen trailed after the men, past a dining room with a long table set with at least a dozen mismatched chairs and into a kitchen where the smells of fried chicken, scorched oil, and boiled greens lingered in the air.
The tour halted there, and the project requiring Joe’s talents was immediately apparent: well-used but poorly constructed cabinetry. Even Gretchen’s inexpert eye noted that the doors were too large and banged into each other rather than closing properly. Joe tested one and could open it only a third of the way because the hinges had been set too far from the edge. Gretchen lingered in the doorway as Louis and Joe discussed the project and the priest looked on in satisfaction. At the sound of voices, she scooted out of the way just as three teenage girls, two in the last trimester of pregnancy, one carrying an infant, burst into the kitchen, chatting and teasing one another. Their demeanor became more reserved at the sight of the priest, whom they greeted respectfully, but they bantered cheerfully with Louis as they filled glasses of water at the sink and he queried them about their homework.
As the girls finished their drinks and darted off again, Gretchen realized that Abiding Savior Christian Outreach was a home for girls in trouble, as her grandmother would have phrased it. She wondered where the girls’ parents and the fathers of their children were.
While Louis and the monsignor discussed seeking donations of new hinges from a parishioner who owned a hardware store, Joe raised his eyebrows in a silent question to Gretchen. She replied with the barest nod. Of course he must complete the repairs, and not charge a dime for materials or labor. These girls needed a safe, comfortable, functioning home, and Joe would never refuse to help someone in need.
After Joe and Louis worked out the details, Louis gave Joe and Gretchen an appraising look, read the unasked questions in their faces, and explained that he and his wife, Andrea, ran a shelter for homeless girls who were pregnant or had recently given birth. Six girls lived there presently, but they averaged about ten. The most he and his wife had ever cared for at one time was the maximum the house could fit, twenty. “Most of our girls come from Pittsburgh,” he said, “but some run away to the city from small towns in Ohio and western Pennsylvania after their parents throw them out. When they end up on the streets, homeless folks and shelter workers know to send them our way.”
“Their parents throw them out?” echoed Gretchen, shocked. “So young, and—and in their condition?”
“A pregnant, unmarried daughter is a bitter disappointment to some families,” said Louis. “Their anger gets the better of them and they think throwing the girl out is a suitable punishment. Teach her a lesson.”
“What lesson is that?” asked Joe, appalled.
Louis shrugged. “If they break the rules and shame the family, it won’t be under their roof. Sometimes homeless girls get pregnant. Sometimes pregnant girls get homeless.”
Gretchen, who longed for a child of her own, could not imagine throwing a precious daughter and unborn grandchild out into the world. Family was family, and compassion must always rise above anger.
Sometimes the world seemed broken beyond repair.
The project stretched out over several weeks, since Joe tended his own business in the mornings before heading over to Abiding Savior by mid-afternoon. After Joe mentioned that Gretchen was a home economics teacher, Louis asked if she would teach the girls skills that could help them tend their babies as well as themselves after they left the shelter. And so Gretchen began volunteering at the mission, showing the young mothers and mothers-to-be how to prepare simple, nutritious meals, how to do laundry, how to keep a house clean and safe for a toddler, how to keep a household budget and balance a bank account—something a few of the girls claimed they would never need to know. Unlike her, they would never have enough cash to open a bank account, never enough left over at the end of the month to save.
“Is that what you think?” said Gretchen. “When I was your age, and even younger, very few people imagined a better life for me than to become a housemaid just like my mother and grandmother, but I worked hard in school and earned a scholarship to college, and now I’m a teacher.”
“We can’t go to school after we have our babies,” retorted the smallest of the girls, a fifteen-year-old who wore her hair in tight cornrows with red beads on the end.
“You can find a way,” Gretchen said firmly. “Your first duty is to your child, but if you work hard, live frugally, and save, you can make a better life for yourself. I can’t do it for you, but I can give you the tools you’ll need—and that means learning to balance a checkbook, even if you don’t have a bank account yet, because someday you will.”
The girls still looked dubious, but they settled down to their studies, and in some of their eyes, Gretchen thought she glimpsed the light of possibility dawning. “A steady job cleaning houses sounds pretty good to me,” said one seventeen-year-old with a sigh, absently stroking the head of the baby slumbering peacefully on her lap.
“It is good,” Gretchen quickly agreed, chagrined. How thoughtless of her not to realize that the humble fate she had been so determined to rise above could seem to other young women a life to aspire to. For those who had not been blessed with the advantages of a loving home and an education, her starting point was an impossibly distant destination they might reach after a lifetime of struggle.
Education was the key to crossing that vast distance.
As part of her lessons, Gretchen also taught the girls to sew, for she believed every mother needed to know how to sew on buttons, let down hems, and mend torn seams. Most of the girls had never held a needle, so to practice and perfect their stitches, they worked on small, scrap Four-Patch quilts for their babies. Even the girls most ambivalent about motherhood warmed to the project, and as they sewed squares of cotton and poly blends together, they spoke about their hopes and fears for the future. How different their lives were from those of the students Gretchen met as a substitute teacher, girls who were, for the most part, happy and well adjusted, with plenty to eat, decent clothes to wear, and a caring adult at home to love and guide them. And yet she knew that some of the residents of Abiding Savior had enjoyed comfortable, secure, middle-class lives before they had ended up on the streets. Who among the girls who attended her classes and always turned in their homework, she wondered, felt unloved at home and contemplated escape by running away, or sought comfort in a boyfriend’s arms?
As the years passed, Gretchen taught an ever-changing group of young women domestic skills and held their newborn babies when they were desperate for a few uninterrupted hours of sleep. Often, frightened and alone when the first labor pains began, they begged Gretchen to come with them to the hospital and stay with them until it was over. So it was that, although she never bore a child of her own, she was granted the great privilege of welcoming many newborns into the world and caring for youngsters who needed every bit of love she had to offer.
Over time, their experiences at Abiding Savior reminded Gretchen and Joe of how richly they had been blessed despite the hardships they had faced, and the hope and optimism of their newlywed years were renewed. Gretchen began teaching quilting to neighborhood girls, and then to their mothers, and then to their mothers’ friends, and eventually she founded a quilt guild. She traveled to other guilds in Ohio, West Virginia, and throughout Pennsylvania to lecture and teach, all the while nurturing a dream to open her own quilt shop. When she was unable to secure a business loan, she agreed to partner with Heidi Albrecht, who had the funds to make Gretchen’s business plan a reality.
Their shop, Quilts ’n Things, soon became the most successful quilt shop in the region. They enjoyed a long, successful run until Heidi’s controlling behavior and determination to take credit for all of Gretchen’s ideas ruined everything. Heidi’s ongoing, casually cruel reminders that Gretchen was only a junior partner and her former cleaning lady—spoken in a joking manner i
n front of customers as well as when they were alone—made Gretchen dread going to work. Just as she was wondering how she could keep her chin up and make the best of it until she could afford to retire, she spotted an intriguing ad in a quilting magazine: Elm Creek Quilts was seeking two experienced teachers to join their elite faculty.
What a dream job that would be, Gretchen thought wistfully, and how wonderful for Joe, who often spoke of retiring to the country, where he could have space for a larger workshop, plenty of fresh air, and a perfect creek for fishing. The more she mulled over whether she should apply, the more she realized that the job had come along at precisely the right time, as if it were an answer to her prayers. And so she mailed off her application packet, traveled to Elm Creek Manor for an interview and tour, and waited anxiously for their decision. It was not long before Sarah called to offer her the job.
Gretchen was thrilled, and Joe almost burst with pride, but as eager as they were to embark on their new adventure, it was difficult to leave behind their longtime neighbors, dear friends, and the people they had met through Abiding Savior. When it came time to say goodbye to Louis and Andrea, Gretchen embraced them both and promised that she would still make quilts for their residents, as she had done for years.
To her astonishment, Louis refused. “Your former quilt guild has volunteered to provide us with as many quilts as we could ever need,” he explained. “I’m sure you’ll find a worthy cause in your new community that needs your gifts—both material and of the spirit. If you don’t find them, they’ll find you.”
The Christmas Boutique Page 9
