Elm Creek Quilts [09] Circle of Quilters

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Before leaving, the provost paused at the door, scrutinized Anna, and said, “Are you new here? I don’t think you’ve been in charge of any of my dinners before.”

  “This is my sixth year at Waterford College,” said Anna. “I’ve worked some of your other events, but always as an assistant.”

  “This is your first banquet as head chef?”

  Anna nodded. “The head chef assigned to your event called in sick. I guess I’m the understudy.”

  “Understudy or not, you’ve done an exemplary job,” the provost said. “I wasn’t even aware of any emergency. Your dishes were intriguing, and your response to the situation is the very definition of grace under pressure.”

  Anna glowed. She knew that a successful banquet with delicious food and excellent service could mean that next year’s faculty salary increases would be paid for by donations rather than tuition increases. “Thank you.”

  “What’s your name again?”

  “Anna. Anna Del Maso.”

  “Well, Anna Del Maso, I’ll be asking for you again.” He nodded a good-bye and left the kitchen.

  As she walked home after the banquet, Anna wished she could share her triumph with Gordon. She wasn’t sure if she should call him. When she called off their dinner plans, they’d had—not a fight, exactly—more like a heated disagreement. “Can’t they get someone else?” he had griped when she called from her cell phone, already hurrying down the stairs of her apartment building on her way to the job.

  “They could, but I don’t want them to,” she said.

  “Don’t you all use the same recipes? Can’t they call that woman you work with—Sandra? Mandy? She’s worked there almost as long as you.”

  “Andrea,” corrected Anna. “She started here two years after I did and I don’t think she wants the responsibility. I do. This is for the provost. This could be my big break.”

  “Oh, come on. Big break? In College Food Services?”

  Anna paused to wait for the crosswalk, annoyed by the sneer in his voice. “If I prove myself, I could finally get promoted to head chef.”

  He was silent so long she thought the connection had broken. “Is that what you really want?”

  It wasn’t her ultimate career goal, no, but it was a significant step in the right direction. The light changed and she hurried across the street. “Of course.”

  “Do you really think it’s a good idea for you to be working more banquets? All those heavy sauces, the rich desserts—”

  “I’ll renew my gym membership.”

  “Don’t be so defensive. I’m just saying it would be easier to eat healthy if you’re working the dining halls.”

  And easier still if she left the profession altogether. Gordon had made that point before. “I’m almost there, Gordon, I’ve got to go.” She hung up without waiting for a good-bye and immediately regretted it. Gordon was easily offended and never accepted an apology unaccompanied by a humbling show of atonement. She would have to make it up to him tomorrow night with a dinner as impressive as the provost’s.

  The central, bewildering puzzle about Gordon was that although he liked delicious food as much as the next person, he did not want his girlfriend to be a chef. Or maybe it was not such a puzzle—if she were thin, her choice of profession might not bother him at all, especially if she also had a Ph.D. to hang on her wall to impress his friends. Like Gordon, they were liberal arts graduate students and aspiring intellectuals with whom Anna had very little in common. Anna would never admit it to Gordon, but his friends intimidated her, and she was relieved that he rarely suggested they go out with them.

  Anna had never dated anyone who wasn’t thrilled that she enjoyed cooking, not until Gordon came along. She thought Gordon ought to appreciate her job, if not for all the delicious, home-cooked, gourmet meals, then for the fact that her work had brought them together. They had met the previous year at a dinner given by the English department to honor a retiring professor. It was the first week of the semester and they had not yet hired enough work-study students, so Anna had to help carry serving trays to the buffet table. A bearded, stocky man not much taller than she had followed her into the kitchen to compliment her on the marinated mushrooms and had stuck around to chat. She was flattered by the attention of someone so well spoken and knowledgeable about world affairs, especially since most academics ignored her, so she accepted his invitation to go out for coffee the following afternoon. His topics of conversation differed so drastically from what she and her friends talked about that she feared she would bore him, but he did not seem to mind that she mostly listened, asking occasional, carefully constructed questions to reveal as little of her ignorance as possible.

  Apparently she had made a good impression because that date led to another, and soon they were seeing each other steadily. He was often too busy with his teaching and research to take her out, but several times a week he managed to stop by her apartment on his way home from the library for a late supper. It wasn’t an ideal arrangement, but he promised her things would improve once he had his degree and no longer had to hit the books sixteen hours a day. She was pleased by this hint that he thought they had a future together because he usually brushed off her hesitant attempts to discuss the direction of their relationship. Most often, he said that he hoped she agreed that modern relationships needed to throw off their patriarchal tendencies and allow all parties room to be. To be what, she wasn’t sure, and in this case she didn’t want to reveal her naïveté by asking.

  She paused to shift her purse; the strap kept slipping off her shoulder and bumping into the paper grocery bag she carried, heavy with carefully wrapped containers of salmon in fresh herb sauce, grilled vegetables, and raspberry tart with chocolate glaze. College Food Services officially discouraged employees from taking leftovers home, but to discourage was not to forbid, and Anna hated to see all that food go to waste. It pained her to throw away good food when she had to monitor her own grocery budget so carefully. If she splurged on luxuries now, she might never have enough money saved to open her own restaurant.

  She had the place all picked out—Chuck’s, a diner across the street from the main gate of campus. Its excellent location guaranteed it a steady business, even though the current owner was nearing retirement and lately had put only a halfhearted effort into running the place. He had sent his two children to Waterford College in hopes that they would take over the business, but they left Waterford for good as soon as they received their degrees.

  Anna hoped he would hold off his retirement for a few more years, just long enough for her to have amassed a down payment. She had an excellent credit rating and ought to be able to get a small business loan to cover the rest. And then she would say good-bye to the dining hall and hello to her own menus and the freedom to work with ingredients that did not have to be purchased in bulk quantities.

  The short walk from campus to her three-story red brick walkup on the eastern end of Main Street always seemed longer at the end of a grueling shift in the kitchen, and hauling the grocery bag up three flights left her winded. She set the bag on the floor outside her apartment door and dug in her purse for her keys.

  A door opened behind her. “Oh, hey, Anna. Just getting off work?”

  Anna glanced up. “Hi, Jeremy. Just going out?”

  Jeremy shook his head, scrubbing a hand through his dark, wildly curly hair. “Not to do anything fun, if that’s what you mean. I have an exciting night planned with my dissertation. I’m going down to Uni-Mart for a snack and something caffeinated. Want me to bring you anything back?”

  “Don’t waste your money on junk food,” protested Anna, reaching into the grocery bag. It was a wonder he had any taste buds left. “Here. I brought home extras from the provost’s party.”

  “Any meat?” he asked, his eyes hopeful behind round, wire-rimmed glasses.

  “Does fish count?”

  “Fish always counts. Just please don’t tell Summer.”

  Anna laughed and a
greed, amused by his guilty expression. Jeremy’s girlfriend was a vegetarian, and although she didn’t insist that Jeremy also avoid meat, he did so when dining with her to spare her feelings. “Take this,” she said, loading his arms with College Food Services containers. “Salmon, veggies, plus dessert.”

  “Chocolate?”

  “There’s chocolate sauce for the raspberry tart.”

  “You are the best neighbor in the world,” he said fervently, peeking in the container holding his dessert. “Thank you for this. Once again. I swear I wasn’t waiting by the door for you to come home.”

  Anna smiled and found her keys. “You do seem to have a strange way of knowing which nights I work a banquet and when I’m just at the dining hall.”

  “Can I at least get you a cup of coffee?”

  “No, thanks, I’m fine.” She unlocked her apartment and carried her bags inside. “See you later.”

  Anna had hoped Gordon would be waiting for her, but she was not surprised to find the apartment dark and quiet. She was disappointed, but not surprised. Graduate students kept long hours, and she had not yet called him to apologize. Besides, she had already given away his share of the leftovers.

  She flipped on the light with her elbow and placed her burdens on the kitchen counter beside the answering machine, whose light was definitely not blinking to notify her of a message. The kitchenette was wholly inappropriate for a chef—no bigger than a walk-in closet with a small refrigerator, a single sink, a two-burner electric stovetop, and an oven too small to accommodate her jellyroll pan. “Someday,” she said aloud. Someday when she had her own restaurant, she wouldn’t care what her kitchen at home looked like. Someday, when Gordon finished his degree, they could move in to a wonderful new home with a state-of-the-art kitchen where she would cook him romantic dinners and serve him marvelous breakfasts in bed.

  “Someday,” she said again, setting the table for one.

  After supper, she washed the dishes, checked the phone for a dial tone to make sure it was working, and decided to unwind before bed by quilting for a little while. After taking her sewing machine from the closet to the kitchen table and retrieving her cutting board from beneath the day bed, she laid the quilt top in progress on the floor and pondered it from atop a chair. “Somehow everything in my life ends up being about food,” she murmured, frowning thoughtfully at the blue circles appliquéd on a background of white and brown. There was no escaping it. What she had intended as an abstract arrangement of circles of varying sizes and hues set against two contrasting forms in brown and white now resembled nothing so much as a cascade of ripe blueberries falling from an overturned bucket into a pool of rich cream. At least it would complement her strawberry pie quilt, her eggs Benedict quilt, and her chocolate soufflé quilt. If anyone asked, she would say that the resemblance was intentional. She could claim the quilts were a series: Quilts from the Kitchen.

  Not that anyone would ask, since it was unlikely that anyone would ever see them. Anna had shown her quilts to Jeremy and his girlfriend once, but since Summer moved out of his apartment and into Elm Creek Manor, Anna rarely saw her anymore.

  She wouldn’t show her quilts to Gordon, either. Gordon knew she quilted but wasn’t interested—although it might be more accurate to say that her quilting perplexed him. After he told her that she was too intelligent to spend her time stitching away pointlessly, she had learned to conceal her quilting projects as soon as she heard his key in the lock. When he had quoted some eighteenth-century woman’s essay denouncing women who had nothing better to do than sit around “stitching upon samplers,” Anna had felt wounded. The wound had stung even more when Gordon had added that Theresa taught that insulting essay in her creative nonfiction class.

  Gordon’s roommate Theresa had been a part of their relationship from the beginning. Even on that first night as Anna and Gordon talked in the kitchen while the rest of the English department enjoyed dessert in the other room, Gordon found ways to bring Theresa into the conversation. When he did it again on their first official date at the coffee shop, Anna asked him if he and Theresa were dating or if they had broken up. He laughed and said that he and Theresa were “special friends,” but they had never had a romantic interest in each other. “Romantic love is mere biochemistry, anyway,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. Anna nodded to indicate that she understood, though she wasn’t sure she did. It seemed a rather cynical attitude for a first date.

  More than fourteen months had passed since then, and Anna had yet to meet the mystery woman. She felt certain she would recognize Theresa if she saw her, though. She must be brilliant and alluring; nothing else could explain Gordon’s preoccupation.

  Anna envisioned a tall, willowy, raven-haired woman with artistic hands and haunting eyes. Since she was a poet, she probably dressed all in black, or maybe she draped herself in yards of wildly colored ethnic print fabric. Theresa definitely wouldn’t be twenty pounds on the wrong side of plump, like Anna, and she would never fear that her boyfriend was ashamed of her job or her lack of a graduate degree or her double-digit dress size. No, Theresa’s mind would be focused on loftier affairs.

  “But she probably can’t even boil water,” Anna said aloud.

  She waited until it was too late for Gordon to call. Only then did she put away her quilting, turn out the lights, and go to bed.

  When she woke the next morning, Anna decided to take her day off seriously and eat a meal prepared by someone else for a change. She considered going to the Bistro, a favorite spot for breakfast and lunch for local residents and college faculty, a popular student hangout in the evenings when the bar opened. She would probably run into some friends there, so she would not have to dine alone. L’Arc du Ciel was another possibility; although the most exclusive restaurant in town far exceeded her usual budget for dining out, their Sunday brunches were sublime and she could pick up a few ideas.

  She quickly settled upon a far less gastronomically pleasing option, but one that had become her favorite dining spot nonetheless: Chuck’s. She tucked a tablet of graph paper and a pencil into her purse and walked a few blocks down the street to the restaurant that would hopefully one day be hers.

  She ordered a chocolate cappuccino and a blueberry muffin, seated herself at an inconspicuous corner table, and, while she waited for her breakfast, drew a floor plan of the restaurant on the graph paper. Since she had never been in the kitchen and could see very little of it through the window where the cooks placed orders for the servers to pick up, she left that part of the drawing blank. By the time her breakfast arrived, she had sketched a rough blueprint of the dining areas and entryway. As she ate, she studied her drawing and compared it to her surroundings, drawing new lines and erasing others. She would remove the counter and the seven stools to make room for more tables. Where the order-up window was now, she would install a brick oven, as much for atmosphere as for cooking. She would replace the wood paneling with off-white stucco to brighten the room and make it more inviting. The entry should be extended to create a small foyer between the outside door and the door to the dining room. Currently there was only one door, and it led directly outside. That wasn’t a problem now, in midsummer, but she recalled from previous visits that in less temperate weather, every new customer brought in the cold and sometimes even drifts of snow. In January she had seen customers leave rather than take a table near the door.

  A merry jingle reminded her of another change she would make—lose the bell over the door. It was fine for a diner, but not for the intimate but friendly, elegant yet casual restaurant she intended to create. She added a quick note to her drawing, then glanced up in time to see the couple who had entered. As the man smiled at the woman and gestured to an empty booth, Anna went motionless from surprise. He was Gordon.

  Instinctively, she put her graph paper on the floor beside her chair and set her purse on top of it. She held still as the couple approached, and when Gordon’s expression didn’t change, she realized that he had not noti
ced her.

  “Hi, Gordon,” she said when they had almost passed her table.

  Gordon stopped short. “Anna? Well, hello. What a surprise.”

  “Yes. It is.” Anna tried not to stare at his companion. This couldn’t be Theresa, the mysterious, glamorous Theresa. This woman was shorter than Anna and not much thinner, and wore thick glasses with black plastic rims. Her frizzy brown hair hung almost to her waist and was held away from her face with an elastic band. A bit of white fuzz clung to her left eyebrow.

  Gordon turned to the woman. “Theresa, this is my friend, Anna. Anna, this is my roommate, Theresa.”

  “Nice to meet you.” Theresa leaned forward and extended her hand.

  Awkwardly, Anna shook it. “Nice to meet you, too, finally. Won’t you join me?”

  Gordon glanced over his shoulder. “Actually, we were justä”

  He broke off when he saw that Theresa was already pulling out a chair and sitting down. He shrugged and took the seat beside her.

  “I’ve heard a lot about you, Theresa,” Anna said. “All good, of course.”

  Theresa’s thick eyebrows shot up. “Really? From whom?”

  Anna paused. “From Gordon, of course.”

  “Oh.” Theresa flashed him a quick grin before returning her attention to Anna. “How do you and Gordon know each other?”

  Anna looked from Gordon to Theresa and back, puzzled. “Well, I’m sure Gordon’s already told you how we met at an English department function, and since then we’ve been seeing each other—”

  “All over campus,” interrupted Gordon. “Just like this morning. That’s what happens at a smaller college. Wherever you go, you see people you know. Right?”