A Quilter's Holiday: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel (7 page)

“Everyone else volunteered the information.” Curious, Diane left her things on the ironing board and returned to the cutting table for a better look. This time she was sure Anna was fighting the urge to fling a yard of fabric over her work so Diane couldn’t see it. She glimpsed gold stars on a deep blue background, nothing that Anna should want to hide from friends, nothing that would inspire anything worse than constructive criticism. “It doesn’t resemble food,” Diane said helpfully, knowing that this was quite an accomplishment for Anna—unless this time she was actually
trying
to create images of food, a still life in fabric. “Come on, let’s have a look. No tossed salad jokes this time, I promise.”

As Diane attempted to peer over her shoulder, Anna spun around and held out her arms, touching the edges of the cutting table. “Diane, a little space, please. I want this to be a surprise.”

“I promise I won’t breathe a word to your Aunt Mabel or Cousin Bob or whoever this is for.”

Anna smiled, but held up her hands as Diane stepped forward. “That’s close enough. I can’t have you spoiling the surprise.”

“Spoiling it for whom?”

“Allow me to refer you back to her aforementioned concern about spoiling the surprise,” Gwen called out, tightening the bolt on her lap hoop and gathering the folds of fabric and batting.

“She can at least tell us who it’s for, can’t she?” protested Diane, and then turned back to Anna, whose smile had turned apologetic, and a little wary. “What’s the harm? This can’t be a gift for any of the Elm Creek Quilters or you wouldn’t be working on it in front of us.”

“That’s not necessarily so,” remarked Sylvia. “Remember the year Bonnie gave us those lovely homespun plaid table runners for Christmas? She worked on them right here in this ballroom throughout our quilter’s holiday, and none of us suspected she was making them for us.”

“She hid them in plain sight,” Agnes chimed in, but then she sighed. “I hope Bonnie’s having a wonderful time in Hawaii, but I do miss her so.”

“I’m sure she’s not missing this weather,” said Carol, nodding to the window just as a sudden gust of wind scoured the pane with icy crystals.

Diane forgot Anna’s inexplicable secrecy as her concerns about the storm returned. She resigned herself to leaving early, but at least she had fulfilled the quilter’s holiday tradition even if she would not accomplish as much sewing as she
had hoped. The traditions she kept at home were equally important as those she observed with her friends, and she would miss out on several if she were snowed in at Elm Creek Manor over the Thanksgiving weekend. And if she didn’t keep the family traditions going, who would? Not her husband, she thought with reluctant certainty, and not the boys.

It wasn’t that Tim, Michael, and Todd didn’t enjoy marking important occasions as a family. They did, at least most of the time, as long as she handled all the preparations and reminded them where to show up and when. Sometimes, during those difficult years when Michael had struggled in school, glowering sullenly in the shadow of his popular younger brother who excelled academically and athletically and every other way it was possible for a teenager to excel, Diane had thought that their traditions were all that held the family together. The family dinners Diane had insisted upon every night, even if it meant dining at nine o’clock to accommodate a school event, prevented the boys from withdrawing too much into the world of their peers and leaving Diane and Tim utterly unaware of how they spent their time and with whom. Weekly Mass taught the boys the importance of faith and instilled in them a moral code that would last a lifetime, even if its immediate results were not apparent. Or so Diane had told herself, sometimes while clenching her teeth when Michael vandalized the middle school, or when he was arrested for
skateboarding in a marked zone downtown. Throughout the years when she had held her breath, hoping that Michael would surpass his guidance counselor’s predictions and graduate from high school, and through the long months when she questioned Todd’s choice of friends, arrogant boys whose sense of entitlement rendered them void of humility, she had found strength in ritual and faith.

Through it all, their traditions, both religious and secular, had held the family together, and every prayer and lesson seemed justified when she reflected upon the fine young men her sons had become. Michael flourished at Waterford College, on his own even though he was never more than a few miles away from his childhood home. He shared a rented house downtown with a few friends and came home almost every Sunday to do laundry and have dinner with his parents, moments of reconnection Diane cherished. Todd had started at Princeton only a few weeks before, and although he didn’t stay in touch as often as Diane wished, when he did call or email, he sounded happy, excited, and involved, reveling in the first real challenge to his academic gifts. Though separated by distance that would perhaps increase after the boys graduated, they would not fragment as a family. Their love would unite them, and the practice of their traditions would draw them together in spirit, despite the miles that might separate them.

And yet—

Diane sighed, frowning. Without her as the impetus for maintaining their traditions, she doubted they would endure. Their traditional pumpkin patch trip and scary movie night the Saturday before Halloween had gone the way of the tooth fairy in middle school when Todd’s basketball practices took precedence. It had been ages since she and Tim had taken the boys to the Pancake Café before visiting Santa at the Elm Creek Valley Mall on the first day of Winter Break. Diane accepted these changes as the sad but inevitable consequence of her sons’ journey toward adulthood, and her nostalgia was tempered by the introduction of new, more age-appropriate activities. But Diane believed some traditions should not fall away as children grew. Some should have become so essential to their identity as a family that Michael, Todd, and Tim should look forward to them and nurture them as much as Diane did.

And yet sometimes it seemed as if they didn’t care.

Only two days before, Diane had gone out for coffee with some friends after their Pilates class and, upon realizing that she had completely lost track of time, had raced home to get dinner in the oven. Any other night and she would have pulled a made-ahead casserole out of the freezer, but on that night only one meal would do. Ever since she was a newlywed, Diane had made lasagna for supper the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. On that day in that first year of their marriage, she had asked Tim what he wanted for supper, and he had said anything but turkey. Diane had interpreted that to
mean that he wanted the least Thanksgiving-ish meal she could devise, and she couldn’t think of anything that reminded her less of Thanksgiving than lasagna. As she shopped for noodles and ground beef, it occurred to her that salad was even less Thanksgiving-ish in that it was the opposite of a feast, so she added salad to the menu. Asparagus was a spring vegetable and thus likely not served by Pilgrims in an autumn of the days of yore, so into her grocery cart went a bag of frozen asparagus.

Tim delighted in her explanation of the meal, and so it became a tradition: a supper with no logical connection whatsoever to Thanksgiving to cleanse their palates for the harvest feast to come the next day. Sometimes she varied the recipe— adding spinach or mushrooms to the sauce, substituting whole-wheat noodles for semolina—but it was always lasagna on Thanksgiving Eve. She enjoyed the whimsy of the tradition, and she thought the boys did, too.

But that year she had lingered too long with her friends at the Daily Grind, chatting about their holiday plans and how the predicted storm might interfere with their travel. It was after five o’clock when a glance at her watch sent her racing to her car. She had prepared the lasagna earlier that day and had left it in the fridge, and if she had left instructions on the counter for Tim, it could have been on the table piping hot by six. If she had remembered to charge her cell phone, she could at least have called to have someone preheat the oven, but with
her cell phone spent and useless in her purse, all she could do was hurry home and hope no one minded that supper would be a little late.

But when she arrived home, she found Tim at the stove, spatula in hand, Todd setting the table, and Michael rooting around in the refrigerator. “Did you put the lasagna in?” she asked, still in her coat and boots, gym bag and purse slung over her shoulder. The smells wafting through the kitchen suggested ground beef and frying fat, without the least note of tomato or oregano.

“Oh, hi, honey,” Tim greeted her, glancing over his shoulder before quickly returning his attention to the stove. “You didn’t answer your cell.”

Diane set her bag on the floor and purse on the counter, taking in the scene warily. “The battery died.”

Michael shut the refrigerator door with his shoulder, his arms loaded down with ketchup, mustard, a jar of pickles, and a plastic bag of buns. “See, Mom, there’s this really cool thing called a cell phone charger. You plug one end into the wall outlet and the other end into your phone, and after a while, your battery is recharged and you can use it again.”

“Yes, thank you dear. I’ll remember that.” Hamburgers. Tim was definitely flipping hamburgers. “What are you guys thinking? You’re going to spoil your supper.”

“This
is
supper,” said Todd, grinning, his hair flopping in his eyes. He had never worn it so long but he kept laughing
off Diane’s offers to schedule an appointment with the barber while he was home from school.

Diane opened the refrigerator. Sure enough, the glass dish of lasagna was exactly where she had left it. “Why didn’t you heat up the lasagna?”

Tim glanced at her, wary. He knew her well enough to realize they had done something wrong. “We didn’t know whether you were saving that for something special.”

“I was.” Diane shut the refrigerator. “Tonight’s dinner. We always have lasagna on Thanksgiving Eve.”

“You weren’t home, honey, and we couldn’t reach you.” Tim lifted hamburger patties from the pan to a platter on the counter. “You’re going to spend hours cooking for us tomorrow, so we thought we’d cook supper tonight.”

They were trying to help, Diane reminded herself, and they were clearly pleased with themselves. She knew she should thank them, but she couldn’t help pointing out, “You could have heated up the lasagna. That would’ve been just as helpful with much less effort.”

“We felt like hamburgers,” said Michael. “And Todd thought maybe that pan was something you’d made for your lunch with the quilters.”

“It couldn’t have been. Our recipes have to be made from Thanksgiving leftovers.” Honestly. How many years had the Elm Creek Quilters celebrated their quilter’s holiday with the potluck, and her family still didn’t grasp the simple rules?

“We can have the lasagna Friday,” said Todd. “It’ll still taste good and that’ll give you more time to quilt with your friends.”

Their faces were clouding up with uncertainty that could easily become disappointment. Only moments before they had been cheerful and industrious, expecting her to welcome their surprise with delight and appreciation. Instead, she kept harping on about the lasagna, as oblivious to their helpfulness as they had been to their tradition.

The most important part of the tradition was that they were gathered together for a family meal. Did it really matter what they ate?

She took a deep breath and forced a smile. “There’s sliced cheddar in the deli drawer if anyone wants to upgrade to a cheeseburger.”

Tim’s hamburgers were tasty and filling, the company welcome, and the conversation full of the boys’ amusing stories from school. It was a pleasant meal, and Diane tried to drive away her lingering disappointment that they apparently didn’t care about the lasagna as much as she did.

But it was just lasagna, after all, and she knew she should get over it and save her righteous dismay for the passing of far more important traditions—such as her sons’ waning interest in attending Mass. They could fill their bellies with an endless variety of meals but only church would nourish their souls.

Though neither of her sons had ever bounded out of bed
early on a Sunday morning declaring that they greatly preferred hard, wooden pews to soft, warm quilts, from the time they were babies they had attended Mass week after week without too much grumbling or complaint. As they grew, they had prepared for the sacraments and had been proud to receive them. Still, they were boys, and Diane had always suspected that without her prodding they would have slept in; if it had been up to them, they would have been contentedly reading the comics over a sugary bowl of cereal while the priest delivered his homily.

Even so, on the first Sunday after Michael moved into the freshman dorm at Waterford College, she had expected him to join the rest of the family at church. She had called him the day before and asked if he wanted a ride, and when he said he didn’t, she assumed he intended to walk the few blocks from campus. Through the first reading, the second, and the Gospel, she kept turning around in her seat to scan the pews for her son, until Tim patted her knee and told her to relax. Michael had overslept, she told herself, an excusable one-time mistake considering it was his first week of college. Or perhaps he had attended Mass with friends the night before in the campus ministry chapel.

Mindful that he was officially an adult, she held off asking him where he had been that morning, reluctant to appear overbearing. When he didn’t show up the next week or the
next, her resistance broke down. She called him, and after a few perfunctory questions about his classes and professors, she inquired, as casually as she could manage, how he had spent the past three Sunday mornings.

“Sleeping as late as I could,” he told her drowsily. She could picture him lying in his loft, eyes closed, feet dangling over the wooden safety rail Tim had insisted Michael and his roommates add to the design. “We stay up late Saturday night.”

“Maybe you should go to bed earlier so you won’t miss church the next day,” she suggested. “We’ve been saving a seat for you.”