The Christmas Boutique

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “We’ll hang it up right away,” said Gretchen, gathering it up and draping it over her arm. “I think that spot between the two windows would be perfect.”

  “This quilt is more traditional,” said Anna, holding one edge and looking to Diane for assistance. Diane took hold of the opposite side, and between them they unfolded the second quilt and raised it high. It was a charming sampler made in jewel-tone greens, reds, purples, and golds, twenty-five six-inch blocks, each a different star pattern, with Celtic knotwork appliqué adorning the sashing and outermost border.

  “How lovely,” Sylvia exclaimed, drawing closer to inspect the intricate machine quilting. “This doesn’t look like your usual style, Anna.”

  “I wouldn’t have recognized it as your work,” said Diane. “It doesn’t look like food at all.”

  Gwen groaned, Sarah shook her head, and Sylvia sighed quietly. Gretchen alone looked baffled.

  “What?” said Diane. “You all know what I’m talking about.”

  “We’re aware of your assessment of Anna’s particular style, dear,” said Sylvia mildly.

  Gretchen looked around the circle of quilters. “I’m sorry. I’m utterly lost.”

  “That’s because you weren’t at Anna’s job interview.” Sarah rested one hand on her abdomen and winced. Either one of the twins had just delivered a strong kick to her rib cage or Diane’s remarks pained her. But why should they? Everyone, Anna included, knew that her abstract designs always ended up reflecting her beloved profession whether she intended it or not.

  “You recall, of course, that as a test of their skills and creativity, each candidate for our faculty was asked to create an original block representing Elm Creek Quilts,” said Sylvia. Gretchen nodded. Of course she remembered; she had made one herself. “I’m afraid that when Anna unveiled her quilt block, Diane declared that it looked like a tossed salad.”

  Gretchen gasped. “She didn’t.”

  “Of course she did,” said Gwen. “This is Diane we’re talking about.”

  “But it did look like a tossed salad,” Diane protested. “Anna said so herself at the time. Remember?” She threw Anna a beseeching look. “You agreed with me, right?”

  “You weren’t wrong,” said Anna ruefully. “Somehow everything in my life ends up being about food. Like that quilt I finished when I first came to Elm Creek Manor? I intended it as an abstract arrangement of circles of varying sizes and hues set against two contrasting forms in brown and white, but in the end, it looked like a cascade of ripe blueberries falling from an overturned bucket into a pool of rich cream.”

  “I love that quilt,” said Sarah.

  “I do too, but the thought of it is making me hungry,” said Gwen.

  “At least it complements my strawberry pie quilt,” said Anna, sighing, “and my eggs Benedict quilt, and my chocolate soufflé quilt. If anyone asks, I’m going to tell them that the resemblance is intentional. They’re a series—‘Quilts from the Kitchen.’”

  Everyone laughed, Diane a bit sheepishly.

  “What accounts for this departure from your usual style?” Sylvia queried, studying the sampler. “Was it your first quilt? A project designed by a teacher, perhaps, to help you learn the basic techniques before you went off to experiment?”

  “It wasn’t my first, but it was a fairly early project,” said Anna. “When I was in high school, I worked part-time in my aunt’s quilt shop. She asked me to make this to test a pattern for a class she wanted to teach.”

  “It’s simply lovely,” Sylvia declared, and everyone chimed in, in agreement. “As for where to best display it, I think that empty spot to the right of the doors would be perfect.”

  “We’re still about three quilts short,” said Gretchen, glancing around the walls. “And to think, when we first took on this project, I hoped we might have enough to decorate the banquet hall too.”

  “What about you, Diane?” asked Sylvia, peering at her over the rims of her glasses. “I don’t see any of your quilts gracing our walls.”

  Diane tried not to squirm beneath her knowing gaze. “I’ll bring some in soon.”

  “Very soon, I hope,” said Sarah. “You’re running out of time. The boutique opens tomorrow morning.”

  The reminder sent a frisson of anticipation and anxiety around the circle of friends. “I’ll deliver mine later today, after the interview,” said Diane. “I didn’t forget. I just wanted to see what the rest of you were bringing in first, so I’d know which of my quilts would best coordinate with them.”

  “Sounds plausible,” said Gwen. “Barely.”

  Diane prepared a retort, but at that moment three women entered the ballroom, their arms full of bags and boxes. Diane and her friends hurried forward to welcome them and help them unpack their donations for the boutique. They had not yet finished when a young man and woman arrived together, each carrying one flat, heavy box full of jars of preserves, delightfully colorful in the sunlight that streamed through the south windows.

  The next hour passed in a flurry of activity—welcoming Nancy and Melanie’s team of volunteers, accepting donations for the sale, arranging merchandise in market stalls, helping the volunteers set up signs and affix price tags. Anna had returned to the kitchen long ago, but when Andrew and Joe arrived to hang up her quilts, Diane noticed her bright smiles and shining eyes, and recalled Jeremy’s fond reminiscences and above-and-beyond helpfulness. Her curiosity rekindled.

  With all the bustle in the ballroom, it took Diane a while to catch Gwen alone. “Is it just me,” she mused, “or are Anna and Jeremy very friendly?”

  “Of course they’re friendly,” said Gwen, her attention on the table of hand-knit scarves she was arranging. “That’s a good way to go through life. You should try it.”

  “I’m not referring to ordinary friendliness. I mean, they seem very friendly, for people who are just friends.”

  Gwen sighed. “So you’re saying friends shouldn’t be friendly? Wouldn’t that make them enemies?”

  “Would you put down that scarf and listen?” Diane glanced over her shoulder, drew closer, and lowered her voice. “Let me spell it out for you: I think Jeremy and Summer have broken up, and now Jeremy and Anna are seeing each other. Or is it just me? Am I seeing drama where none exists?”

  Gwen inhaled deeply, turned away from the table, and regarded Diane grimly. “It’s not just you. I’ve noticed it too.”

  “When did Jeremy and Summer break up? Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Because I just found out myself.” Gwen planted a hand on her hip and looked away to the ballroom doors, where they had last glimpsed Anna walking back to the kitchen, a happy bounce in her step. “They broke up over Thanksgiving. Maybe Jeremy didn’t turn around because of the storm that weekend. None of us knew his visit was supposed to be a surprise. Remember when we were taking turns talking to Summer on the phone, and Sylvia mentioned that he was on his way? Maybe afterward Summer called him and told him not to come.”

  “What’s with all the ‘maybe’s?” asked Diane. “Summer hasn’t told you?”

  “Not in great detail.”

  “But you’re always bragging about how well you two communicate, how Summer tells you everything.”

  “Exactly,” said Gwen. “Why is she shutting me out? And what about Jeremy and Anna? Summer probably has no idea what’s going on with them, if anything is, and I’m going to have to tell her.”

  “Oh.” Diane mulled it over. “That’s going to be a very awkward conversation when Summer comes home tomorrow.”

  Gwen gave a wry laugh, shook her head, and resumed folding scarves. “Don’t I know it.”

  Diane could think of nothing reassuring to say, so she too got back to work, sorting items into categories and placing them on the appropriate tables, until it was time to drive home and prepare for her interview.

  As she left the ballroom, Gretchen called after her, “Diane, don’t forget your quilts. We’re counting on you.”

  �
��I’ll see what I can do,” she replied, glancing over her shoulder, forcing a smile, and giving a jaunty wave.

  There was no getting out of it now.

  Pensive, a bit abashed, Diane drove home to change clothes and freshen her makeup. She deliberately turned her thoughts away from quilts—those she had promised but might not actually have—to her talking points about the Christmas Boutique. By the time she was back in her car on her way to the television studio, anticipation for the interview had chased away her lingering worries. Nancy met her in the lobby, and they had a few minutes to confer before they were summoned onto the set during a commercial break.

  The interview went brilliantly. Nancy was knowledgeable and enthusiastic, Diane was clever and charming, and together they were so lively and interesting that the reporter gave them five minutes on air rather than the scheduled three. Afterward, they were so pleased and proud of themselves—as well as ravenous, since they had been too nervous to eat beforehand—that they decided to get lunch downtown. Over soup and salad, Diane updated Nancy on her publicity efforts, and in turn Nancy gave her some last-minute, minor logistical changes she wanted her to pass on to Sarah and Sylvia. “No problem,” Diane assured her. “I was planning to head back to the manor after lunch.”

  But first, she would have to stop at home to change out of her interview outfit—and to search her sewing room for something, anything, that might qualify as a holiday quilt suitable to display at Elm Creek Manor alongside the works of the master quilters she called friends.

  Back home, clad once again in casual clothes, she strode into her sewing room, planted her feet, and glowered as she scanned the shelves and closets, certain she was wasting her time but determined to search, just so she could say she had tried. “Quilt inventories,” she echoed Sarah grimly as her gaze took in the bookcases of pattern books and magazines, full of inspiration that had led her blithely from one project to the next: the shelves of fabric in every hue, each yard and fat quarter purchased with a specific pattern in mind, and yet unused; the plastic zipper bags full of incomplete blocks and the carefully cut pieces needed to complete them; the boxes of finished blocks yet to be assembled into tops; and the tops that would be finished as soon as she attached the borders.

  None of these would do.

  At last her gaze came to rest on the only part of her so-called quilt inventory that offered her any hope in her current predicament: a small stack of finished tops, ready for layering, basting, and quilting as soon as she got around to it.

  And she did, absolutely, mean to get around to each one someday. She never began a quilt she didn’t sincerely, wholeheartedly intend to finish. It was just that life got in the way sometimes, or her interest waned, or the exigency for a particular quilt diminished, and a project just fell by the wayside. Diane was unique among the Elm Creek Quilters in that she did not have a vast collection of gorgeous finished quilts, each one a future heirloom destined to be cherished by her descendants for generations. What she had was an embarrassingly large stockpile of UFOs—Unfinished Fabric Objects—fated to earn a few bucks at the inevitable estate auction of her worldly goods, hopefully sometime in the far-distant future.

  It wasn’t that she never finished any quilts. She had made quite a few in her quilting career: cozy scrap quilts the family used around the house for warmth and comfort; gifts for relatives and friends; samples for her Beginning Piecing classes at Elm Creek Quilt Camp; and several especially cherished works she had entered in Waterford Summer Quilt Festivals, now given pride of place on the walls of the Sonnenberg home. But she had not learned to quilt until she was a thirty-something mother of two, whereas her friends had taken up the art as teens or even as children. That, combined with her preference for piecing and quilting by hand—an emotionally rewarding but time-consuming process—meant that she had very few finished quilts to her name. Of those she had not given away, none had been made especially for the holidays, in holiday colors or with a holiday theme or from blocks with “Christmas” in the name. Considering how much Diane adored the festive season, it was an astonishing oversight, one she could not possibly correct in time for the opening of the Christmas Boutique.

  As for all of those unfinished projects, including several that would have fit Agnes’s holiday decorating theme perfectly if only they were quilted and bound, Diane had a very valid excuse for why she had set each one aside. But the Elm Creek Quilters could not adorn the ballroom walls with pretty excuses.

  She especially regretted abandoning the appliqué Advent calendars she had begun the day after Thanksgiving. Years before, one late November day when Michael and Todd were young, Diane had impulsively added an Advent calendar to her shopping basket when she was buying Christmas cards and wrapping paper. The double square of sturdy card stock had an attached, foldout stand and was whimsically decorated with colorful symbols of the season—a snowman, a cardinal perched upon an evergreen bough, a candle, a golden bell with a red bow, a gift wrapped in striped paper, a reindeer, and more, one illustration for each pocket, all encircled by a plume of ivy and holly with bright red berries. That December and for years thereafter, she had filled the paper pockets with coins and small pieces of candy, and the boys took turns opening them and enjoying the prizes discovered within, one pocket each day from December first until Christmas. The boys had delighted in the daily surprises, and Diane and Tim had enjoyed watching their anticipation for Christmas grow as they counted down the days.

  Every January, she had tucked the Advent calendar into a rigid cardboard folder and put it away with the other holiday decorations, but it was only card stock, and time took its toll. One by one the pockets fell off until only half remained, and then the foldout stand tore so they had to prop the calendar against the wall or leave it lying flat on the counter. By the time Michael started high school, it had become so dilapidated that Diane winced when she removed it from the cardboard folder, having forgotten how faded and forlorn it had looked the previous year. “It may be time to send this to the Island of Misfit Toys,” she had told Tim ruefully as they packed up the ornaments and garland after New Year’s Day, but she had saved it all the same.

  Several years passed, and one Christmas after another, the once-cherished decoration had remained at the bottom of the storage carton. This year, when the Elm Creek Quilters had gathered at the manor on the day after Thanksgiving for their annual quilters’ holiday, Diane had spotted a pattern for a quilted Advent calendar in one of Sylvia’s magazines. Inspired, she immediately began choosing fabrics and cutting out pieces for two calendars, one for each of her sons. She couldn’t wait to see their reactions when they unwrapped them on Christmas morning. They would remember the old card-stock version that had brought them so much joy, fondly reminisce about Christmases past, and implore her to revive the once-cherished tradition, a request she would happily grant.

  The thought of it brought a warm glow to Diane’s heart, but Gwen soon doused it with a bucket of cold reality. Diane had started too late and would never finish in time for Christmas, she pointed out. “And to get the most out of the calendars,” she added, “you really ought to give them to your boys on the first day of Advent, right?”

  Diane was perturbed for a moment, but then she shrugged. “So they’ll have them for next year’s Advent rather than this one. I’ll tuck something special into the last pocket to make up for any disappointment they might feel at missing out on the other surprises.”

  “Like what, a hundred-dollar bill? It would take something on that order to get most college kids I know interested in an Advent calendar.”

  “Gwen,” Agnes had admonished, and Sylvia promptly chimed in that she thought Diane’s project was a lovely idea. But doubt had crept in, and as Diane rearranged the appliqués on the snowy-white background fabric, she wondered why she bothered. Folk art Advent calendars for college men? What a stupid idea. Her sons wouldn’t remember the Advent calendar from their childhood. When they unwrapped their gifts Christmas morning, th
ey would study them in bemusement and offer her perplexed thanks. By early afternoon of their quilting marathon, she concluded that Gwen was right. She was wasting her time in a futile effort to continue a tradition that meant nothing to anyone else in the family.

  Feeling very sorry for herself, she abandoned the project. Then the blizzard struck the Elm Creek Valley, and her misguided attempt to drive home left her car stuck in a snowbank on the forest road. She had to trudge back to the manor and might have gotten frostbite if not for Jeremy, who had given up on his trip to Chicago, had come upon her struggling through drifts on the forest road, and had driven her back to the warmth and safety of the manor.

  However, the event and the forced overnight stay had given her time to reconsider her choice. Maybe folk art appliqué Advent calendars weren’t such silly gifts after all. If Michael and Todd didn’t appreciate them this year, they might someday, when they had children of their own and were nostalgic for the Christmas traditions of their childhood. In the meantime, Diane could make one for herself to replace the dilapidated paper version she would always remember fondly.

  The following day, after the roads were cleared and she finally made it home, her family greeted her as if she had been trapped on an arctic ice floe for a week rather than overnight at one of her favorite places with her closest friends. When she set down her tote bag and a few appliqués spilled onto the coffee table, Todd picked up a piece of brown fabric that was meant to be the side of a log cabin. He found a few others and quickly assembled the cabin and the red, snow-covered barn beside it.

  Michael found a green piece cut in the shape of a pine tree, matched it to a brown trunk, and slid it in place beside the cabin. “This looks like that Advent calendar we used to have,” he said, studying the scene. “Remember, Mom? You’d put candy or money in the pockets and we’d open one for each day of December leading up to Christmas.”