Elm Creek Quilts [09] Circle of Quilters (5 page)

“We will have to keep in touch as best we can,” said Mrs. Stonebridge. “With any luck, two or three of us will end up in the same place.”

The Courtyard Quilters nodded, believing their longtime leader by force of habit, or, Maggie thought, as an act of faith.

That evening at the quilt shop, she taught her class so woodenly that Lois thought she was ill and offered to take over. Maggie briefly told her what the real problem was and forced herself to shake off her worries and get through the evening. She could not afford to lose this job, too.

As she packed up her teaching materials, Lois entered the classroom with a magazine in her hand. “I’m tempted not to show you this,” she said, opening the magazine as she passed it to Maggie. “I would hate to lose you.”

Maggie read the ad Lois had circled in red pen. “A quilt camp,” she said. “That sounds like heaven. But it’s all the way across the country.”

“You could come back to visit. And teach for me.”

“Don’t worry,” said Maggie, hugging her friend. “I couldn’t leave California.”

“When you see Elm Creek Manor, you’ll change your mind.”

Maggie doubted it, but she tossed the magazine in the box with her class samples and took it home.

The next morning, she scanned the Help Wanted ads over breakfast. There were several listings for jobs in geriatric care, but none comparable to her current position in either authority or compensation. After a tense day at work, where she comforted more than one tearful junior colleague in the staff lounge and promised to write letters of recommendation for several more, she found Lois’s magazine in her quilt studio and gave the ad for the quilt camp teaching position a second look. After supper, she went online and Googled Elm Creek Quilts. She perused the camp’s own website thoroughly, but also read evaluations and reviews former campers had posted on quilting bulletin boards and blogs. The comments were unanimous in their praise. Elm Creek Quilt Camp sounded like a wonderful place, though Maggie was not sure how she would fare in winter weather after spending her entire life in California.

With nothing to lose, Maggie put together the portfolio the Elm Creek Quilters had requested and sent it off, hoping for the best.

She also sent out résumés to every retirement community within a hundred miles, but received only three requests for interviews. As the weeks passed, the residents of Ocean View Hills
began to disperse as children and grandchildren found them new homes. Going to work became lonelier and more dispiriting as one by one the Courtyard Quilters departed and her closest friends among the staff left for new jobs or retired at a fraction of their pensions.

A month after Maggie submitted her portfolio, Sarah McClure from Elm Creek Quilt Camp called with an invitation to come to Pennsylvania for an interview. As a test of her skills and creativity, Maggie was also instructed to design an original quilt block that could be used as a logo for Elm Creek Quilts. She was so thrilled to have an interview that she would have agreed to anything. She adapted two of Harriet Findley Birch’s patterns, a leaf design and a star, and overlaid them to create a new block. Imitating Harriet’s flowing script, in one corner of the block she embroidered “Elm Creek Quilts” and in another, “Waterford, Penn.”

Throughout the years, Harriet had often felt like a guardian spirit to Maggie, lingering just beyond her vision, offering wisdom, encouragement, sympathy, understanding. Maggie wondered what Harriet would make of her pinning all her hopes on a job on the other side of the country. Perhaps more than anyone else, she would have understood.

The plane touched down at the Pittsburgh airport after a bumpy descent above meandering rivers. Maggie rented a car and drove the rest of the way to Waterford on a winding journey through the Appalachians, whose lush, forested hills cradled patchwork farms in valleys below.

From the highway, the town of Waterford appeared to be everything Lois had warned—remote, rural, and overpopulated by college students. Beyond the outskirts of town, Maggie drove down a rough gravel road through a leafy wood, taking the left fork that led to the rear parking lot as Lois had recommended.
The narrow road wound through the trees and emerged into a sunlit apple orchard through which several women strolled. The car passed a red barn, climbed a low hill, and crossed a bridge over a creek. Then the manor came into view-three stories of gray stone and dark wood, its unexpected elegance enhanced by the rambling, natural beauty of its surroundings.

She parked the car, leaving her messenger bag in the trunk with her suitcase. She considered going around to the front entrance, but when three other women entered through the rear door without knocking, she followed them inside. She peered through the first open doorway she passed and found herself in the kitchen. Two women bustled from stove to countertop to refrigerator, too intent on their work to look up. “Summer, would you help me with this?” one of the women asked as she opened the oven to reveal a large roasting pan.

“You’re on your own,” replied the younger, auburn-haired woman. “I don’t eat anything with a face, and I don’t help cook it, either. I could have put together a very plausible tofu chicken if you had let me.”

The first woman made retching sounds, and Maggie left, reluctant to disturb them. She continued down the hall until she arrived at a foyer with a black marble floor, tall double doors on the far wall, and a ceiling open to the third story. Women of all ages climbed a grand oak staircase that led to balconies on the second and third floor, or passed through a doorway opposite the front entrance. Maggie asked one of the women where she might find Sarah McClure, and was told to try the library on the second floor. At the library, an older woman wearing glasses on a silver chain told her to try the kitchen. Perplexed, Maggie said, “I was just there, and I didn’t see anyone but the two cooks.”

The woman laughed. “Two cooks? Oh, that’s rich. Well, rather than send you on a mission to find Sarah, may I help you instead?”

“My name is Maggie Flynn. I’m here for a job interview, but
it’s not until tomorrow. Sarah McClure said I should spend the night here.”

“Maggie, of course. I should have recognized you from the photo in your book.” The older woman shook Maggie’s hand briskly. “I’m Sylvia Compson. Have you had a chance to look around?”

Except for getting lost on her way to the library, Maggie had not, so Sylvia proposed a tour. She showed Maggie what seemed like the entire estate, from the library where most of the camp business was conducted to the hallways lined with bedrooms for the campers. Back on the first floor, Sylvia led Maggie into a grand ballroom that had been separated into several classrooms by tall, movable partitions. Voices and sewing machines created a happy buzz, and when Maggie remarked that she wondered how the students avoided being distracted by the sounds from adjacent classrooms, Sylvia said, “Distracted? Oh, they enjoy eavesdropping on one another. We consider it part of the entertainment.”

From the converted ballroom they went to the banquet hall, where four young men, three of them surely no more than teenagers, were setting ten round tables for supper. “Michael, don’t forget the soup bowls,” Sylvia called out. “And close the curtains partway so it’s more difficult to see the food.”

The eldest looked up from his work and nodded solemnly. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.” Another boy, blond and handsome, snorted and shook his head.

“They’re brothers. The younger one has trouble accepting that the elder is in charge,” Sylvia confided as she led Maggie from the room. “The other two are new this summer. One is the son of the neighbor of one of our instructors, and the other is the son of one of our instructor’s colleagues. They’re working off a rather large debt to another Elm Creek Quilter. They’re quite a pair of juvenile delinquents, or so I’ve been told, but Michael and Todd will keep them in line.”

Maggie nodded, trying to sort out the tangled relationships. She wondered how much she would be expected to remember for the interview the next day. And why would Sylvia not want the campers to see the food on their plates? Lois, who had attended the camp twice, had praised the cooking. Her only complaint was that she had gained two pounds from the rich desserts.

The tour turned to the grounds of the manor, which Sylvia seemed to believe were just as essential to the camp as the classrooms and dining facilities. They passed several quilt campers who recognized Maggie, and a few of them asked if she had come to Elm Creek Manor to teach a class. Grateful for the perfect timing of their praise, Maggie told them she had come for an interview, but she would be thrilled to become an Elm Creek Quilter.

By the end of the day, she realized that was true—and not only because she desperately needed the work. She longed to be a part of the world these amazing, inspiring women had created. It was a haven in the central Pennsylvania countryside, a place of respite and healing. If they offered her a job—whether as teacher or office clerk or scullery maid—she would gratefully sign up for a lifetime term.

Sylvia left her to explore the estate on her own until supper, when she joined the staff and campers in the banquet hall for a delicious meal of roast chicken, sautéed vegetables, and an amazing spicy chickpea soup served with warm flatbread. Five women introduced themselves as the other Elm Creek Quilters and made her feel as welcome as if they had known her for years. After supper, she toured the north gardens with Sarah McClure, the woman she had mistaken for the head chef earlier that day. Sarah told her about the manor’s history, from its founding in 1858 by Sylvia’s great-grandparents and its role as a station on the Underground Railroad to its rebirth as a retreat for quilters. When Sarah mentioned that Sylvia’s ancestors had left behind quilts and a journal from the manor’s earliest days, Maggie thought of how long
she had yearned to discover a similar record of Harriet Findley Birch’s life. She hoped that Sylvia treasured these gifts and wished she could be invited to see them.

As twilight approached, Sarah escorted her back to the manor for the evening program, a fashion show of the campers’ quilted clothing. Afterward, Sarah showed her to a charming room on the third floor with a private sitting area and a sampler quilt on the bed, and bade her good night.

Weary from travel and the extended effort to impress, Maggie slept soundly.

The next morning after breakfast, she repacked her suitcase and dressed in her new tan slacks, a crisp white blouse, and a blue blazer, hoping that they would mark her down for not wearing a suit. Her only suit, a black, somber ensemble she wore to funerals and board meetings, summoned forth too many memories of unhappy occasions to be worn on a day when she needed every ounce of confidence.

Carrying her small suitcase and messenger bag, she went downstairs to the first floor to find the parlor where she was supposed to officially meet the Elm Creek Quilters. On her way across the foyer, she heard a frustrated sigh drift down to her from somewhere above. She looked up and spotted a white-haired woman seated in an armchair on the second-floor balcony.

“Are you okay?” called Maggie. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, it’s nothing. I just can’t appliqué a smooth curve to save my life, that’s all.”

Maggie glanced at her watch and saw that she had a few minutes to spare. “Want me to take a look?”

When the older woman gratefully agreed, Maggie returned upstairs and demonstrated her variation of the needle-turned appliqué technique. The older woman took a few awkward stitches and shook her head in frustration. “I still don’t understand.”

Maggie showed her again, but more quickly this time, mindful
of the waiting Elm Creek Quilters. Then she apologized and explained that she was late for an appointment.

“That’s all right, dear.” Behind her pink-tinted glasses, the older woman’s blue eyes beamed with satisfaction. “I think I’ve learned all I need to know.”

Maggie hurried back downstairs to the parlor and knocked on the door. Sarah McClure invited her inside, where some of the other Elm Creek Quilters were seated on the far side of a coffee table, across from a single armchair.

“Gwen couldn’t make it,” said Sarah as Maggie seated herself. “She has a class. But this is really more of a formality, since you’ve already met everyone.”

“Almost everyone,” said a pretty blonde Maggie did not recognize. “I had to go home and feed my family last night, so I missed the supper party. I’m Diane.”

“Maggie Flynn.” Maggie rose to shake Diane’s hand, which felt smooth and cool, though Diane squeezed a fraction harder than necessary.

Sarah began with a few perfunctory questions about Maggie’s employment history. When Sylvia asked her to tell how she came to publish a book, Maggie told the story of discovering Harriet Findley Birch’s quilt and how that one chance encounter had changed her life. At another Elm Creek Quilter’s request, Maggie showed them the block she had designed. Everyone complimented her pattern and handiwork—everyone except Diane, who took a page from a folder on her lap and frowned at it. Giving it a surreptitious glance, Maggie recognized the paper as a color copy of a photograph of her original My Journey with Harriet quilt. With a quaking heart she thought of her first few blocks, those first stumbling efforts that had eventually launched her career, and wondered if Diane was marking her mistakes. Surely a missed stitch or two would not be evident in a picture of that resolution.

Then Diane set down the photocopy and tapped two squares with her pen. “I thought your original block looked familiar.”

Maggie did not like the emphasis Diane placed on “original block,” but she nodded. “I adapted two of Harriet Findley Birch’s patterns to create my own. Since I’m best known for documenting her quilt, I thought that would be appropriate. Was I wrong?”

“Your block is fine,” the youngest Elm Creek Quilter assured her.

Diane did not look as if she agreed. “I was wondering, too, why you didn’t send us any pictures of your other quilts.”

Maggie hesitated. “I sent twelve photos.”

“Yes, but all twelve are of the same quilt. You haven’t made twelve different quilts; you’ve made twelve versions of the same quilt.”