An Elm Creek Quilts Sampler (91 page)

In appliqué class after lunch, Julia still held the needle guardedly, but Donna was pleased to see that her pupil was making progress. Even so, Julia spoke so little during class that Donna worried that Vinnie had truly offended her. “Don’t mind Vinnie,” Donna apologized later, after they had begun their private needle-turn class in Sylvia Compson’s formal parlor. “She’s probably asleep by prime time.”

“Hmm? Oh, that. I had forgotten.”

Donna wasn’t quite sure if she believed her. “About that confidentiality agreement … since you told the others about the movie at lunch, does that mean I can talk about it now?”

Julia sighed. “I suppose so.”

“Does it really matter how recently you’ve learned to quilt?” Donna ventured. “What’s important is how well you quilt when they’re filming, right?”

Julia set down the leaf appliqué she was stitching to her Whig Rose block. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. Except for my pride, of course. My agent—my former agent—told the producer I already knew how to quilt. He won’t be pleased to learn we deceived him.”

“What do you mean, ‘we’?” Your agent lied, but you didn’t. If the producer does learn the truth, you can just tell him your agent made a mistake.”

“He’s not a very gullible person.”

“Maybe not, but you’re a very good actress.”

“That’s true.” Julia smiled briefly and picked up her block again. “If he hears the truth from me first, I won’t have to worry about one of these other campers running to the tabloids and telling them what a terrible quilter I am.”

“You’re not a terrible quilter,” Donna chided her, then hesitated. “Do you really think one of the other campers would do such a thing?”

“I’m no longer surprised by what anyone will do, for the right price.”

Julia spoke airily, as if accustomed to betrayals. Donna felt a sudden surge of sympathy for her. It must be difficult going through life suspecting everyone, guarding your words and your actions. Quilters aren’t like that, she wanted to say, but uncertainty held her back. For all she knew, campers were taking notes and snapping photos of Julia with hidden cameras. Julia’s paranoia was rubbing off on her. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” she said, her loyalty to her fellow quilters outweighing her desire to appear agreeable.

“I have much to worry about. You have no idea how important this role is to my career. Now that the series is over, if something doesn’t go right for me soon, I’ll be lucky if I can get a spot in an antacid commercial.” She shrugged and flashed Donna what was probably meant as a nonchalant grin, but the pain beneath it was obvious.

“You can’t mean that,” Donna said. “You’ve won five Emmys. You must have directors begging you to star in their shows.”

“Four Emmys,” Julia said. “And a Golden Globe. But that doesn’t matter much when you’re my age. How often do feature films star a woman, and I mean really star, as the main character and not just someone’s girlfriend or wife? And how many women over forty do you see in any roles at all?” She shook her head and began stabbing her quilt block with her needle in quick, emphatic motions. “In Hollywood’s version of America, women over forty have all but vanished.”

Donna barked out a laugh. “It’s not just Hollywood. We haven’t disappeared, but we might as well be invisible for all the respect your average wife and mother receives in our society. At least you have your career. People have to respect you.”

“For being an entertainer?” Julia said. “For reciting lines someone else wrote? What’s the merit in that? What exactly have I contributed to the world?”

Their eyes met briefly, and for a moment Donna was struck with the unsettling sensation that Julia Merchaud envied her. “Your work is important,” she said. “You present stories and situations that teach, that make people think.”

Julia brushed that off with a wave of her hand. “Please. ‘Next, on a very special
Family Tree
, Grandma Wilson cures cancer and feeds the hungry.’”

“I’m serious,” Donna insisted. “Your work can be positive or negative, but if people watch it, it will influence them. My daughter studies drama, and she would tell you the same thing.” Donna suddenly lost her enthusiasm. “Or at least she used to study drama.”

They worked on in silence, but Donna’s thoughts churned. Who was she to be making impassioned speeches, as if she had cornered the market on confidence and self-worth? She had spent far too much of her time apologizing for being a stay-at-home mom, all the while secretly consoling herself with the assurance that she was doing what was best for her children. But now, despite all her love and encouragement, one child was dropping out of college to get married, just as Donna herself had done. Maybe Grace was right: If a mother worked outside the home, she proved to her daughters that there were other possibilities for women.

She felt overcome with heartsickness. She couldn’t bear the thought that she had set her own sights too low and had thereby influenced her daughters to do the same.

Lindsay used to study drama. Soon, Donna would say that her daughter used to be a promising student at the University of Minnesota, that she used to be active in college organizations, that she used to have a future bright with promise and possibilities. Too much of her daughter’s life was shifting into the past tense with this impending marriage, and Donna couldn’t accept that.

And why should she accept it, without first trying to persuade her daughter to take another path? In hindsight, she should have stepped in earlier, when Lindsay moved into Brandon’s apartment at the beginning of the summer. She had not protested then because she didn’t want to appear out of touch or old-fashioned. Well, she was old-fashioned, and although Lindsay might prefer that Donna accept every one of her daughter’s choices without question, Donna would do so no longer.

She couldn’t simply order Lindsay not to marry Brandon or postpone the wedding; young women who thought they were in love rarely listened to logic or common sense. Instead, Donna would focus on Lindsay’s education. Surely she could find a way to convince Lindsay that furthering her education would be best for her—and by extension, for her marriage—in the long run.

Lindsay had to finish school. Donna couldn’t let Brandon become Lindsay’s whole life.

Five

V
innie woke Wednesday morning with a sense of triumph. She had made it to her eighty-second birthday. She said her morning prayers quickly, eager to start the day. Before she left her room, she studied her face in the mirror and practiced looking surprised. If Sylvia and her staff discovered she anticipated their annual surprise parties, they might stop having them.

At breakfast, Vinnie graciously collected birthday greetings and a few ribbon-tied fat quarters from well-wishers she had met during previous years’ camp sessions. “When’s the party?” several whispered when no one on the staff could overhear, forcing Vinnie to feign innocence. Keeping up the pretense of surprise was part of the fun.

Vinnie loved celebrating her birthday and was impatient with people who refused to acknowledge their own. What was so shameful in living another year? It was considerably better than the alternative. Vinnie never missed an opportunity to have fun, especially when other people wanted to show their affection for her. She had learned that from Aunt Lynn and her aunt’s friend, Lena.

Lena was the blond woman who had driven Vinnie from her home to Aunt Lynn’s small house in Dayton so many years ago. She had tried to engage Vinnie in conversation as they drove, but Vinnie was too numb to respond. Her father had sent her away—and although he had not explained why, she knew. If she had only been good, he would have kept her, as he had kept Frankie.

As the weeks passed, Vinnie’s shock and grief lessened but never quite left her. A chasm of grief and loneliness seemed to separate her from the other girls at her new school, and she still felt like a stranger in Aunt Lynn’s home. Her new teacher was kind and encouraged the other children to include her in their play, but Vinnie usually wandered off to be alone and think.

She had to find a way to persuade her father to let her come home. She wrote to him often, telling him how good she had been and how she never got into trouble at school anymore. She told him that Aunt Lynn had taught her to clean and sew, and how she would do all the chores, hers and Frankie’s both, if he would just let her come home.

He responded to her first letter, writing that he was pleased she was being a good girl and he was sure she wouldn’t give Aunt Lynn any trouble. Frankie wrote frequently, reporting on the neighbor’s new puppy and a trip to the zoo with Daddy, but Daddy rarely sent letters, and never once did he respond to Vinnie’s questions about when she might return home.

One day, after many months, Aunt Lynn asked Vinnie how she would like to celebrate her upcoming eighth birthday.

“I want to go to the zoo with my daddy,” Vinnie said, remembering Frankie’s letter.

Aunt Lynn and Lena exchanged a look. “How about if we take you instead?” Aunt Lynn asked. “Your dad might not be able to go.”

Vinnie felt her eyes welling up with tears. She didn’t care about the zoo; all she wanted was to see her father. “If he can’t take me, I don’t want to go.”

“Would you like to do something else?” Lena asked.

“I don’t want to have a birthday at all.”

“We have to celebrate your birthday,” Aunt Lynn said.

“We didn’t last year.” Last year, so soon after her mother had died, no one in the family could have imagined celebrating. Talk of her birthday called back all that grief and loneliness, which were never far away.

Without another word, she left the room rather than cry in front of Aunt Lynn and Lena. She doubted they would ask her father about the zoo; even if they did, he would refuse, if he bothered to reply at all.

Aunt Lynn and Lena said no more about her birthday, so she assumed they had forgotten about it, as she wished she could. Then one Saturday morning, Aunt Lynn and Lena bounded into her room and threw back the curtains. “Get up, sleepyhead,” Aunt Lynn sang out.

Lena sat on Vinnie’s bed and bounced up and down on the mattress, grinning. “Come on. You don’t want to sleep in on your birthday!”

“I thought I wasn’t having a birthday this year,” Vinnie said, sitting up and blinking in the light.

“We decided to celebrate anyway,” Aunt Lynn said. “In fact, we’re celebrating twice as much. You missed two birthdays, so we have to make up for lost time. Otherwise we’ll have to celebrate three times as much on your next birthday, and that might be too much for us old spinsters.” Aunt Lynn and Lena looked at each other and laughed.

“Well, get up,” Lena admonished. “The Pot-Luck Pals will be here soon.”

Vinnie needed no further enticement. She flung back the covers and scrambled to get ready.

Vinnie hadn’t made any friends of her own in the neighborhood yet, but the Pot-Luck Pals were the kind she hoped to have someday. Aunt Lynn and Lena’s friends came over twice a month for a pot-luck supper and wild games of gin rummy that lasted long after Vinnie had been sent to bed. Some of the ladies were married, but most were single women in their late twenties and early thirties, like Aunt Lynn and Lena. They were shopgirls and secretaries and schoolteachers, and they were unlike any grown-up women Vinnie had ever known.

Not long after breakfast, the Pot-Luck Pals began to arrive, each bearing a covered dish and two colorfully wrapped gifts. “Happy seventh birthday,” Margaret said, kissing Vinnie on one cheek. “And happy eighth,” she said, kissing the other. Carla, the oldest, put a funny paper hat on Vinnie’s head and placed an identical one on her own dark curls; her sister, Ethel Mae, picked up Vinnie and spun her around for good luck, seven times for her seventh year, and eight more times for the eighth. Afterward, she collapsed on the sofa and said, “If I keep this up, I won’t need any of Lynn’s punch!”

Never had the Pals filled the little house with so much warmth and laughter. They laughed and joked and played party games; they turned on the radio and danced themselves breathless. At noon they had a pot-luck lunch, one of the best the Pals had ever prepared, and then Vinnie opened her presents. She blew out candles on two birthday cakes and drank lemonade until she thought she would burst. The party grew louder and happier as the Pals indulged in more of Aunt Lynn’s famous punch, the kind Aunt Lynn told her she’d be allowed to have on her eighteenth birthday and not an hour before. When Aunt Lynn wasn’t watching, Ethel Mae let Vinnie have a taste from her cup; it burned going down, and Vinnie couldn’t imagine why the Pals liked it.

The party lasted all day, until one by one the Pals went home, leaving the house a whirlwind of dirty dishes and party favors. Vinnie was exhausted, but happier than she had been in years. She helped Aunt Lynn and Lena begin to clean up the mess, but before long the three of them collapsed on the sofa, Aunt Lynn and Lena leaning against each other, Vinnie’s head resting in Aunt Lynn’s lap.

“Look at that grin,” Lena said, nudging Aunt Lynn and nodding down at Vinnie. “I didn’t think the kid knew how to smile like that.”

Vinnie’s smile broadened even as her eyelids drooped with sleep.

“I wonder what she wished for when she blew out her candles,” Aunt Lynn said, her voice sounding far away.

“Don’t make her tell, or the wish won’t come true.”

As Vinnie drifted off to sleep, she held her secrets close to her heart. As the last candle on the first cake had flickered out, Vinnie had wished that she would never forget that day as long as she lived. Over the candles on the second cake, she had made not a wish, but a promise: One day, she would be as carefree and confident as Aunt Lynn, Lena, and the other Pot-Luck Pals. No one would ever again believe she didn’t know how to smile.

She kept her promise so well that people who knew her later probably never imagined that Vinnie had ever been anything but happy. Her birthday wish came true, as well, although some years—the birthdays when Sam was overseas, the time all four kids came down with the chicken pox, the first lonely birthdays as a widow—Vinnie found it more difficult to celebrate. If not for that brochure about the first Elm Creek Quilt Camp, she might have let her promise slip away, and a fine show of appreciation for Aunt Lynn and Lena that would have been. She filled out the form and sent it in over the protests of her children, who had planned to throw her a party. “You don’t want to spend your birthday alone,” her daughter said.