She set his eggs and sausage on the table as he entered the kitchen. “Morning, sweetheart,” he said, kissing her. His cheeks were shaved smooth, his hair carefully combed. He looked as prepared for a day at work as any other husband on the street, even though his commute took him only as far as the garage.
“Morning to you, too.” She poured his coffee and took her own seat to his left. It was a small table, just big enough for two plates, two cups, and a serving dish. Their dining room table sat four comfortably, six if they didn’t mind getting a little cozy. When it was just the two of them, though, it was too much trouble to clear off her fabric and sewing machine three times a day.
“I forgot to tell you,” said Joe, buttering a slice of toast. “Clyde came around yesterday to see if we wanted to meet him and Jan at the fish fry at the VFW tonight.”
“I can’t,” said Gretchen. “Heidi’s having a party. She wants me to come by and help out beforehand.”
Joe frowned. “Will you still be on the clock or is this volunteer work?”
“Oh, Joe, don’t start.”
“All I’m saying is that she can afford to hire help. She doesn’t need to draft you into service unless she’s going to pay for it.”
“I work for Heidi and you know it.” Gretchen tried to sound reasonable, but it was exasperating that they still argued over this. “My family has always worked for hers. I don’t think she could manage without me.”
“Darn right she couldn’t, which is why she should pay you what you’re worth.” He set down his coffee cup with a bang, a mulish look in his eye. “If I could work, you could quit your job and tell Heidi to stick it where—”
“I like my job,” Gretchen reminded him. “I don’t want to quit working. The quilt shop is like a second home to me.”
“At least you could drop all the extra fetching and carrying and cleaning.”
Gretchen bristled with annoyance—in part because she knew he was right. She liked Heidi, but it was often inconvenient to pick up Heidi’s dry cleaning on her way in to work, or collect her mail and newspapers while her family was away on a Caribbean cruise, or to help the housekeeper clean Heidi’s grand home in Sewickley for a party to which Gretchen would never be invited as a guest. “It’s all part of the job,” she said. “I prefer to think of it as helping out a friend.”
Joe grunted, and Gretchen knew what he was thinking: In Heidi’s eyes, Gretchen was closer to a servant than a friend.
Perhaps Heidi did not consider Gretchen a friend, but through the years, Gretchen had learned that a shared history was as important as affinity. Perhaps more so. As people who had known her since childhood grew scarcer, they became more precious, even if they were not the same people who made her laugh or whose company she most enjoyed. And if nothing else, Gretchen and Heidi shared a history, one that had begun before they were born.
When Gretchen’s grandmother emigrated from Croatia, she lived with a cousin’s family and found a job at a butcher’s in the strip district in Pittsburgh. Because she was pretty, clean, and good with sums, she was occasionally told to ride on the wagon to make deliveries to the fine houses in Sewickley on the other side of the river. On one occasion she met Heidi’s great-grandmother, who sized her up as a quiet, industrious sort of girl and hired her to replace her second housemaid, whom she had recently fired for theft. Gretchen’s grandmother was almost let go herself when the lady of the house discovered she spoke only rudimentary English, but she relented at the recommendation of the housekeeper, who appreciated a hardworking girl who would not talk back. Gretchen’s grandmother was relieved to stay; the work was hard, but no more so than at the butcher’s, and in the Albrechts’ house, she had her own bed in a small, third-floor room she shared with the other housemaid.
Years later she married, but continued to live with and work for the Albrechts until well into her first pregnancy. When her own children were old enough, she returned to work as a housekeeper for her original employer’s daughter, now married with a baby of her own. Gretchen’s mother left school after the eighth grade to work alongside her mother, eventually taking over her position when her mother grew too old for the arduous labor. She married a steelworker and moved into a small house on a hill in Ambridge, where Gretchen was born a year later.
Gretchen was six when Heidi was born, and she remembered her mother leaving before dawn to catch the bus to Sewickley, where she bathed Heidi, fed her breakfast, and, in later years, escorted her to school. While Heidi was at school, Gretchen’s mother tended the Albrecht home, hurrying to finish the work before it was time to walk Heidi home and prepare the family’s supper. She returned home to her own family after dark, exhausted, but still eager to hear about her daughter’s day. As soon as Gretchen was old enough, she learned to start supper early so her mother could put up her feet for a little while before Gretchen’s father returned home from the steel mill.
Gretchen listened with amazement to the stories her mother told of little Heidi: the extravagant birthday parties, the closets full of dresses, the ridiculously inappropriate gifts Mr. and Mrs. Albrecht showered upon her. “A string of pearls for a four-year-old,” she marveled one Christmas, “when all the poor little dear wants is their attention.”
Gretchen did not think Heidi was a poor little dear. Heidi had everything—pretty clothes, a big house, and Gretchen’s mother at her beck and call. If that wasn’t enough for her, she was just being selfish.
Perhaps her mother sensed Gretchen’s feelings, because when school ended for the summer the year she turned twelve, her mother received permission to bring Gretchen along with her to the Albrecht home. Mrs. Albrecht may have assumed Gretchen was there to begin learning the duties she would one day take over, but Gretchen knew her mother wanted to teach her only that Heidi’s life was not one to covet. It was true that the Albrechts had come down in the world somewhat since Gretchen’s grandmother’s day, but they still lived in a large, luxurious house in one of Sewickley’s most prestigious neighborhoods. Gretchen’s mother as well as a cook, gardener, and driver waited upon them.
Six years Heidi’s elder, Gretchen was more of a caregiver than a playmate to the younger girl, and she learned quickly to give in to Heidi’s demands rather than try to teach her to share or to play nicely. The first time she told Heidi not to boss her around, Heidi burst into tears and fled to her mother, who was entertaining guests and was greatly annoyed by the interruption. It was Gretchen’s mother she scolded, however, rendering Gretchen heartsick with shame. She did not make that mistake again, and eventually she convinced herself that Heidi could be a happy, charming girl if given her own way.
Since Gretchen was six years ahead of Heidi in school and an able student, she naturally slipped into the role of Heidi’s tutor. It was then that Heidi’s mother began to take more notice of her, complimenting a flattering change in hair style or suggesting she “smarten herself up a bit.” “You’re becoming a young lady,” she said once. “Why don’t you take some of your wages and buy yourself a pretty dress?” Relieved to have Heidi taken off her hands, she hurried off without waiting for a reply. Gretchen would have explained, if Mrs. Albrecht had let her, that the clothes her mother sewed for her suited her just fine, and she preferred to save her money for college. After discovering how much her tutoring had helped Heidi, she had contemplated becoming a teacher.
Gretchen made the mistake of confiding her plans to Heidi, who immediately decided that she wanted to be a teacher, too. Her declaration mystified Mrs. Albrecht, who could not fathom how such an idea would have entered her daughter’s head. To her credit, Heidi did not reveal the source of her inspiration, not to spare Gretchen a reprimand but for the thrill of keeping a secret from her parents. Gretchen should have known better than to mention her private wish in Heidi’s presence. Whenever she invented a game or made a joke, Heidi claimed it as her own, embellishing it for her parents, who praised her for her cleverness. If Gretchen happened to admire a dress in a storefront window,
within days she saw Heidi wearing a younger girl’s version of it to school. Gretchen’s mother told her she ought to be flattered that Heidi admired her so, but Gretchen quietly resented Heidi’s mimicry. Heidi honestly seemed to believe that the ideas and tastes she picked up from Gretchen originated in her own mind, or worse, that Gretchen’s ideas naturally belonged to Heidi, just as Gretchen’s family belonged to the Albrechts.
At eighteen, Gretchen graduated from high school and won a partial scholarship to college, where she intended to major in elementary education. This news astounded Mrs. Albrecht, who sat her mother down for a serious chat about Gretchen’s future. In a conversation Gretchen overheard from another room, she explained how Gretchen’s parents would be far wiser to direct her down a more practical path than to indulge an imprudent dream. “You want to be kind, I understand that,” said Mrs. Albrecht sympathetically. “But you must think of how much more hurtful it will be later, when she discovers that one cannot rise above one’s station in life.”
Gretchen’s mother thanked Mrs. Albrecht for the advice, and on the bus home that evening, she tentatively suggested that Gretchen reconsider. Gretchen adamantly refused, but over the next few days, her mother’s worried expressions and tearful arguments wore her down. She agreed to compromise: She would major in elementary education and home economics. Her mother’s thankful relief at this promise filled her with a cold, angry helplessness that worsened when Mrs. Albrecht congratulated her for making such a sensible decision.
Two years into her program, she still would not admit aloud that her home economics courses were among her favorites. She learned to sew and design garments even better than her mother, and she especially enjoyed the creative outlet her quilting class provided. The instructor, a graduate of the college’s art education program named Sylvia Compson, spiced her lectures about patterns and stitches with stories of the etymology of quilt block names, the role of the quilting bee in the lives of early American women, and commemorative quilts that promoted justice and social change. Gretchen took to quilting as if she had learned at her grandmother’s knee, as most of the other students in the class had done. The small class size fostered the creation of deep friendships, strengthened by the teasing they endured from their fellow coeds who thought both home economics and quilting trivial subjects, pursuits in which no woman who wanted to be taken seriously would engage.
Perhaps that was why Gretchen rarely spoke of her inspirational teacher or home economics program to anyone but Joe, the handsome young man she had met at church and the one person with whom she felt she could be completely honest and free with her opinions. He was a wonderful dancer, a machinist at one of the steel mills, polite and respectful to her parents. He wanted to marry her right away but agreed to wait until she had taught for a few years, although sometimes after a date, when they had to tear themselves away from each other, breathless and dizzy from fervent kisses in the shadows of the pine trees obscuring her parents’ view from the house, Gretchen considered abandoning her education and marrying him soon, tomorrow, that very night, because the wait seemed unbearable when he held her in his arms.
Even in those days, Joe did not like the Albrechts. He called Heidi’s parents rich snobs who took advantage of Gretchen’s mother, and his mouth turned in a skeptical frown whenever Gretchen had to cancel a weekend date to help Heidi with one crisis or another. He said nothing when Heidi went off to an exclusive New England college with plans to earn a teaching degree. His raised eyebrows and knowing look conveyed his meaning with perfect clarity, as it had when Mrs. Albrecht remarked that she and her husband could not be prouder of their daughter, for didn’t it reveal Heidi’s tremendous strength of character that she was so passionate about educating the less fortunate?
Joe had plenty to say, however, a few years after he and Gretchen married. As Heidi’s own wedding approached, she asked Gretchen to make her a nearly identical gown, but of silk instead of cotton brocade and with lovely seed pearl accents. When Gretchen stayed up past midnight for the third night in a row in order to finish the gown in time, he folded his newspaper, flung it on the table, and said, “You be sure to keep track of your hours and charge her a living wage. No more favors for Princess Heidi.” Then he stormed upstairs to bed.
Joe was not a temperamental man. Gretchen knew he wished the beautiful silk gown was for her, and that he could have afforded to buy it for her.
He hated that she needed to pick up occasional work from the Albrechts to supplement his wages from the plant and the small salary she received for teaching at a Catholic primary school. He did not want her to have to work, period, but he knew she enjoyed teaching, even on days when her more outspoken girls rolled their eyes when she assigned a sewing project and declared that they ought to be allowed to take metal shop with the boys instead. He took as much overtime as he could, but every time they saved up a promising sum, the car broke down or the furnace went out or the roof needed to be repaired. But they were frugal and found their happiness within each other, and as they slowly built up a nest egg, they were hopeful that more prosperous times would come their way.
Then came the dark morning when the principal came to Gretchen’s classroom and in a hushed voice informed her that the plant foreman had called. Joe had been taken to Allegheny General Hospital after a support beam fell and pinned him to the floor. His back was broken and he was not expected to live.
When he survived that first night and regained consciousness the next morning, Gretchen seized that faint glimmer of hope and would not allow the doctors’ grim predictions to dispel it. Stubborn to a fault and determined to prove his doctors wrong, Joe lived when they said he would die and fought to learn to walk again after they concluded he never would. They urged Gretchen to convince him to accept their diagnosis, to encourage him to let go of false hope, but Gretchen refused. Let the rest of the world condemn him to a wheelchair; someone had to believe in him. Joe needed her to believe in him.
Bedridden for months and in almost constant pain, Joe struggled to regain use of his legs—and to accept that for the time being, he must allow his wife to do things for him that a grown man ought to do for himself. Gretchen quit her job to care for him. Their modest savings quickly disappeared, but Gretchen made ends meet on a small monthly stipend from Joe’s union. When that proved insufficient, she paid a call on Heidi and asked for work. Heidi grandly offered her a job cleaning her house on Saturday mornings, when Gretchen could arrange for a neighbor to check in on Joe.
She knew from his silence that he hated to see her going hat in hand to the Albrecht family, but he did not lash out at her as some husbands might have done. He redoubled his efforts to recuperate, and within months he could sit up in bed unassisted. Soon he could move from the bed to the chair on his own, and within a year, he could stand. From the kitchen below she would hear him attempting slow, shuffling steps across the bedroom floor, but she resisted the temptation to dash upstairs to watch, knowing his pride would suffer. For Joe, it was bad enough that she had to work to support them, a fact of their married life they both accepted but did not discuss. If he did not want her to watch him struggle to walk, she would leave him alone until he was ready.
There were no more Saturday night dances or Sunday matinees with friends. Instead, they entertained themselves in the evenings by listening to the radio or reading aloud to each other. Most often, Joe would read aloud while Gretchen quilted. His voice, as strong and deep as before the accident, comforted her, and the piecework drew her attention from the shabby furniture, her made-over dresses, the diminishment of their expectations, the loneliness and isolation of their lives. Gretchen’s scrap quilts brought warmth and beauty into their home, allowing them to turn the thermostat a little lower or to conceal a sagging mattress and threadbare sofa cushions. Gretchen knew Joe appreciated the softness and bright colors, since he rarely left the house except to go to church.
Gretchen was glad that Joe admired her quilts, for it seemed that no one else did
. No one she knew quilted anymore. Her women friends were taking on jobs outside the home, enrolling in community college, competing in local elections, and declaring that women could do anything men could do. Gretchen had known that for a long time, but it was quite another thing to watch from the sidelines as other women her age and younger broke into realms from which they had traditionally been excluded. Even Heidi, who had given up teaching after one unfortunate semester, had worked her way onto boards and committees that a generation ago would have pleasantly but firmly steered her toward a woman’s auxiliary instead of allowing her to be a part of the decision making. Gretchen watched with awe and admiration as other women’s lives became busier and fuller, and she nodded vigorously when former coworkers talked about equal pay for equal work and valuing woman’s contributions. It took her time to realize that they were not referring to many of the contributions she valued most.
Other women had abandoned quilting, but not because they were too busy. Quilts had become old-fashioned, the craft of the poor and the unsophisticated, an unwelcome reminder of the limitations of their mothers’ and grandmothers’ lives. Quilting, with its inherent association with the domestic sphere and the traditional “woman’s work” of housekeeping and family tending, was something for women to avoid tripping over as they strode into the male world of work that mattered.
Gretchen refused to apologize for her love of quilting, but she decided to stop discussing it one Saturday morning at Heidi’s house. Heidi had set Gretchen to work clearing out some old cartons from the basement, where she stumbled across a box of old fabric scraps, half-sewn patchwork blocks, and an envelope stuffed full of brittle, yellowed quilt patterns clipped from the newspaper. The envelope bore Heidi’s great-grandmother’s name and the address of their older, grander house. Gretchen immediately hurried off to report the find to Heidi, who regarded her with bewildered skepticism as she described the treasure trove downstairs.
Elm Creek Quilts [09] Circle of Quilters Page 23