Elm Creek Quilts [09] Circle of Quilters (2 page)

“It will mean so much more coming from you, don’t you agree?” Mrs. Stonebridge smiled. “Should we say … a month? Do you think that would do?”

Mrs. Hicks agreed, and for the next month, three times a day, Rita Talmadge waited at her favorite lunch table while a repentant Mrs. Hicks brought her meals to her on a tray. Mrs. Talmadge was satisfied, and Mrs. Hicks, who received a clean bill of health from the staff physician, learned to be more courteous of her fellow residents.

Maggie marveled at the simple elegance of Mrs. Stonebridge’s solution and how well it restored harmony to Ocean View Hills—and at how willingly Mrs. Hicks and Mrs. Talmadge had complied. Over time Maggie learned that conflicts were often resolved with Mrs. Stonebridge’s guidance and she found herself thinking that it was a shame the former professor of anthropology could not lend her services to heads of state in troubled regions of the world. Mrs. Stonebridge read the
Sacramento Bee
daily and the
New York Times
on Sunday, and her opinions on world events were always thoughtful and well reasoned. At least Maggie thought so. She had no doubt Mrs. Stonebridge could offer brilliant and graceful solutions to conflicts around the globe if only political leaders knew where to find her—and if those same leaders could be persuaded to submit to her decisions with the same humility and desire for harmony as the residents of Ocean View Hills.

Since Mrs. Stonebridge kept herself apprised of events in the
lives of the staff members with the same thoughtful diligence she applied to her fellow residents and to world events, when Maggie’s personal life took an unexpected turn, she decided to tell Mrs. Stonebridge right away. She would ferret out the truth eventually anyway, and Maggie would not want to hurt her feelings by having her hear it secondhand.

On the morning after her twenty-fifth birthday, Maggie came into work early so she would have time to deliver the news before her shift started. She found the Courtyard Quilters gathered in the recreation room, their chairs arranged in a circle in front of the windows with the view of the garden, just like always. Mrs. Stonebridge looked up from her sewing to smile at her. “Well, there’s the birthday girl. How was your party last night?”

“It was all right,” said Maggie. After work, she had met her two best friends for happy hour at La Hacienda, where they filled up on free nachos, sipped margaritas, and discussed the men at the bar—at least her friends did. Maggie merely played along, pretending to admire the cute guy in the tan suit who had smiled at her. She had little interest in meeting someone new a mere four hours after breaking Brian’s heart.

“Well?” inquired Mrs. Blum, trying to get a good look at Maggie’s left hand, which she quickly concealed in her pocket. “Did he pop the question or didn’t he? Don’t leave us in suspense.”

“He didn’t,” Maggie said. “We broke up.”

The Courtyard Quilters’ exclamations of astonishment and dismay brought an orderly running from another room. Mrs. Stonebridge waved him away with a shake of her head and a reassuring word.

“That louse,” said one of the quilters. “I always knew he was no good.”

“He’s a good man,” Maggie defended him. “He’s just not the right man.”

“How can you call him a good man after he broke your heart?”
said Mrs. Blum, tears in her eyes. “And I’ve already started your wedding quilt!”

“I warned you not to,” said another quilter. “That’s bad luck. Never start a wedding quilt until you’ve seen the engagement ring on the bride-to-be’s finger.”

“He didn’t break up with me,” explained Maggie. “I broke up with him.”

This time, the quilters responded with exclamations of incredulity. “It’s not because of that sense of humor thing, is it?” demanded one. “Because that’s a lot of malarkey. Who cares if a man laughs at your jokes?”

“That’s not it.” At least, that wasn’t the only reason, although Maggie had always been troubled by how out of sync their senses of humor were. She could not remember a single time in three years that any of her small witticisms or amusing anecdotes had made Brian laugh. Smile politely, perhaps, but not laugh out loud in pleasure or joy. If he had no sense of humor at all, she could have excused it, but he laughed loudly enough at movies—even dramas—and at his friends’ corny jokes. What made a person laugh spoke volumes about one’s way of looking at the world. Brian’s stoic response to things that amused Maggie made her feel as if they were gazing upon the same landscape but facing opposite directions.

She understood the Courtyard Quilters’ astonishment. In their three years together, she and Brian had occasionally discussed marriage, but Maggie had assumed their discussions were purely hypothetical. They had attended friends’ weddings and confided how they intended to do things differently when their time came—but neither of them explicitly said that they were talking about marrying the other. Then came the day Brian’s mother invited Maggie to try on her late mother-in-law’s emerald engagement ring, a treasured family heirloom. “You’ll need to get it sized,” she had advised her son as the ring slipped too easily past Maggie’s knuckle.

Inexplicably, Maggie had been seized by panic. She quickly removed the ring and replaced it in the jewelry box, managing a fleeting smile for Brian’s mother. Had everything been decided without her? Brian’s family seemed to assume that he would propose and that when he did, that she would accept. The thought filled her with dread. She liked Brian; she liked him very much. He was friendly and cute and loyal and easy to please—“All qualities one would look for in a golden retriever,” Mrs. Stonebridge had remarked only weeks ago, when Maggie confided in her after the engagement ring incident. “But do you love him?”

Maggie wasn’t sure. She enjoyed spending time with him and believed they could have a decent, steady life together. But she had to believe there was something more, something greater, in store for her. It was unbearable to think that she had nothing more to look forward to but a good old reliable ordinary life.

She had hoped for more time to sort things out, but as her birthday approached, Brian hinted that he had a very special evening planned. He reserved a table at the finest restaurant in Sacramento two weeks in advance, and she found a bottle of expensive champagne hidden in the back of his refrigerator. Alarmed, Maggie began making excuses not to see him, but he knew her shifts, her haunts, her home so well that he merely showed up wherever he knew she would be, forlorn and determined to put things right. He was so hurt and bewildered by her sudden, inexplicable coolness that she knew she would never have the courage to turn down his proposal. So she broke up with him before he had a chance to ask. Worse yet, she broke up with him by email, which was so cowardly of her that she couldn’t admit it to the quilters.

“What was it, then?” asked Mrs. Blum, bewildered. “Brian seemed like such a nice young man.”

“He was. He is,” said Maggie. “But he’s not the one.”

“Maybe he’s not the one but he’s good enough,” retorted one of the quilters, whom Maggie knew had never married.

“Hester, you won’t change her mind,” said Mrs. Stonebridge. “Maggie’s holding out for true love.”

“As you should,” said another quilter, wistful. She was famous among the residents for her five marriages and four divorces. “I didn’t, and look where it got me.”

“I did,” said Mrs. Blum. “I was blessed that I met my true love when I was only seventeen. He’s out there, Maggie dear. You’ll know him when you meet him.”

“In the meantime, you’ll always have us,” said Mrs. Stonebridge. And since Mrs. Stonebridge seemed to think Maggie had made the right decision, everyone else thought so, too, and she never heard another word of dismay or disapproval on the subject.

Two days later, Maggie walked home from the bus stop after work, dreading the thought of spending the rest of the evening alone packing up Brian’s scattered belongings. He had already returned a carton of her own things—books and CDs, an old toothbrush anyone else would have thrown out. She would have to return the faded green sweater she had borrowed from him so long ago that he had probably forgotten it had ever been his. It had been her favorite, but she could not bear to put it on anymore.

Maggie reached her own street and passed a middle-aged couple cleaning up after a garage sale. More to procrastinate than to hunt for bargains, she browsed through some books and old vinyl albums stacked in boxes on a card table. She found a copy of Brian’s favorite Moody Blues album and had to turn away. At the next table were several folded baby blankets in pink and yellow gingham. She moved on down the aisle and had nearly summoned up enough fortitude to go home when a glimpse of faded patchwork brought her to a stop.

It was an old quilt draped indifferently over a table. Intrigued, Maggie studied the patterns as best as she could without moving
the tagged glassware displayed upon it. The two quilts she had made in her lifetime—one a Girl Scout badge requirement, the other a gift for her sister’s firstborn—by no means made her an expert on quilts, but she knew at once that this quilt was unique, a sampler of many rows of different, unfamiliar blocks. The Courtyard Quilters would probably be able to identify each pattern easily—if they could see the pieces clearly enough through the layers of dirt.

“How much is this?” she called to the woman running the garage sale.

“That?” The woman dusted off her hands and drew closer. “You mean the quilt?”

“Yes, please. Is it for sale?”

The woman looked dubious. “We were just using it to hide an ugly table. I guess I’ll take five bucks for it.”

Maggie reached into her purse. “Are you sure?”

“Are you?” the woman countered. “Don’t you want to take a better look at it first? It’s not in very good shape.”

Maggie agreed, though she had already decided to take the quilt home. They carefully moved the glassware and lifted the quilt from the table. The woman held it up so that Maggie could examine it. It was filthy; a good shake flung up a cloud of dust but left the surface as grimy as before. The woman apologized for its condition and explained that it had been kept in the garage since they moved to the neighborhood twenty-six years earlier. Her mother-in-law had bought it at an estate auction, and when she tired of it, she gave it to her son to keep dog hair off the car seats when he took his German shepherds to the park. Still, it was free of holes, tears, and stains, and the geometric patterns of the blocks were striking.

Maggie paid the woman, folded the quilt gently, and carried it home. There she moved the coffee table aside, spread the quilt on the living room carpet, and studied it. All one hundred of the two-color blocks were unique, and each had been pieced or appliquéd
from a different print fabric and a plain background fabric that might have been white once, but had discolored with age and neglect. Along one edge, embroidered in thread that had faded to pale brown barely distinguishable from the background cloth, were the words “Harriet Findley Birch. Lowell, Mass. to Salem, Ore. 1854.”

The discovery astounded her. How had a beautiful 133-year-old quilt ended up as a tablecloth at a garage sale?

The next morning she took the quilt to Ocean View Hills, and on her first break, she hurried to the recreation room to show it to the Courtyard Quilters. They were as excited and amazed as she had anticipated. “This is a remarkable find,” said Mrs. Stonebridge, bending over to examine a block composed of sixteen tiny triangles. “What an impressive assortment of fabrics, and what care she must have given to every stitch for the quilt to have held up so well through the years.”

“This is a genuine treasure,” exclaimed Mrs. Blum. “Here’s a LeMoyne Star block, here’s a Chimney Sweep…. Hmm. Here’s one I’ve never seen.”

The other Courtyard Quilters drew closer for a better look, but no one recognized the pattern.

“I wonder who Harriet Findley Birch was,” said Mrs. Stonebridge. “She had an excellent sense of proportion and contrast.”

The other quilters agreed, and one added, “Maybe if you found out more about the quilt, you could find out more about her. Or vice versa.”

“And of course you must find out how to care for such a precious antique,” said Mrs. Stonebridge. “Well, my dear, it seems you have yourself a research project, just in time for the weekend.”

On Saturday Maggie went to the Cal State Sacramento library to search for books on preserving antique quilts. She found a few books of patterns and others with old black-and-white photos of traditional quilts, but none with the information she sought. A librarian
suggested she contact a professor in the art department, so she made an appointment the next day during her lunch hour. After viewing the quilt, the professor put her in touch with a friend, a museum curator in San Francisco named Grace Daniels. Maggie had to take a day off work to meet with her, but the ninety-mile drive from Sacramento was well worth it. The curator confirmed that the quilt was indeed a rare and unusual find. Grace offered to clean it properly for Maggie in exchange for permission to allow the museum’s photographer to take a photo for their archives and for information about the quilt’s provenance.

Maggie agreed, and the next day she returned to the home where the garage sale had taken place. The woman was surprised to see her again, but invited her inside to talk about the quilt. She called her mother-in-law, but all she remembered was that she had bought it at an estate sale run by an auction house in Bend, Oregon, about 130 miles southeast of Salem.

Maggie returned to the library and searched microfiche versions of all the phone books for the state of Oregon. She listed every Findley and Birch she could find, beginning with the Salem area, then Bend, and then working outward. It was slow, painstaking work that consumed several weekends while she waited for Grace Daniels to finish tending to the quilt.

Starting at the top of her list, she phoned the Findleys and Birches and asked if they knew of a Harriet Findley Birch, a quilter originally from Lowell, Massachusetts. Most said they had never heard of her; a few mentioned other Harriets much too young to be the one Maggie sought. One man said he did not know any Harriets, but he knew several Harrys she could call.