They laughed, and Megan put a comforting arm around Julia’s shoulders. They all knew how disappointed she was, how much she had counted on this movie to revitalize her career. After watching Julia on the set and seeing how devoted she was to her craft, Donna knew perhaps better than anyone how bravely she had persevered in the face of disappointment and humiliation. Deneford and his cronies had treated her shabbily, and Donna considered Julia well rid of them. She hoped Julia was wrong, and that Deneford didn’t have the power to blacklist her, as Julia was certain he had done. Her sacrifice for Ellen merited a reward, and Donna believed wholeheartedly that good deeds eventually brought rewards, especially when the doer wasn’t expecting them.
“May I still include my block in the quilt, even though I didn’t accomplish my goal?” Julia asked.
“Of course,” Vinnie declared. “You earned your place. Besides, we’re going to need all the blocks we can get, now ….”
She left the thought unfinished, but Donna suspected they all understood her meaning: They would need every block to complete their quilt, now that Grace would not be contributing hers.
Just then, there was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” Vinnie called out, but the door remained shut. She brightened. “Maybe someone was passing by to call us to dinner.”
“She would have said so,” Megan said, and called out in a louder voice, “Come on in. It’s not locked.”
After a pause, someone on the other side of the door said, “It would be much easier if you would open it, please.”
Donna looked to Vinnie for permission, since it was her room. When Vinnie shrugged and waved her toward the door, she rose and opened it.
Grace stood in the hallway, supporting herself upon two metal crutches.
“Grace,” Donna exclaimed. “What happened? Were you in an accident?”
“Not exactly.” In the room beyond, Grace saw the others rising and coming to the door, then hesitating as they spotted the crutches. She fought the urge to run away—not that she could run. “May I come in?”
“Of course,” Vinnie said, pushing the door open wider and assisting her into the room.
“My bag—”
“I have it,” Megan said. She brought it into the room and shut the door.
Vinnie led Grace to the bed and helped her sit down as the others settled into chairs or on the floor. Nervously, Grace waited for them to ask her about Paducah, about the crutches she unfastened from her arms and leaned against the bed, but they sat watching her expectantly, waiting for her to speak. Grace intended to tell them everything, but now, facing them, she didn’t know where to begin.
Vinnie broke the silence. “It’s good to see you, dear.”
“I guess you weren’t expecting me.”
“No,” Donna said, “but it’s a wonderful surprise.”
The others nodded, and suddenly Grace couldn’t bear their polite caution, their tentative attempts to draw her out when they had always been so open with her. “I’m sorry about Paducah,” she said.
Vinnie waved it off. “Don’t worry about it. We probably got the time mixed up or something.”
The others nodded, but Grace wasn’t about to let herself off so easily, not when she had come to make amends. “No, I saw you, and you know it. I saw you and I ran away.” She glanced at her crutches and let out a small laugh. “Or tried to run.”
Megan’s voice was gentle. “What happened, Grace?”
“I didn’t want you to see me. I didn’t want you to see me with these.” She indicated the crutches. “I didn’t want you to know I needed them.”
“But why?” Donna said. “We’re your friends. You don’t need to hide from us.”
That was precisely what she had been doing for far too long: hiding from her friends, from everyone who cared about her, from herself. “I have MS.” She watched their faces as this sank in. “It’s gotten worse since last year, when I could hide it, and it will probably continue to worsen.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Vinnie said. “Honestly, dear, to go through something like this alone … ” She shook her head.
“I didn’t want anyone’s pity.”
“We wouldn’t have given you pity,” Megan said. “We would have given you friendship. A shoulder to cry on, if you wanted it.”
“I know that now,” Grace said. “But I’m not used to needing people. Whatever problems life has sent my way, I’ve always handled them alone. My ex-husband tells me I’m the most stubborn and fiercely independent woman he’s ever met. If I am, he’s partly responsible, but I can’t ignore the fact that sometimes even fiercely independent people need to share their burdens.”
Vinnie reached out and patted her knee. “That’s not an easy lesson to learn.”
“No, but it’s easier than lying.” She looked around the circle of friends and felt herself warmed by their compassion. “And I’ve lied to you from the beginning. I knew what caused my quilter’s block, and it wasn’t my daughter’s supposed romance. It was my MS and my refusal to admit that it had become a part of my life.” She quickly bent over her bag until she could blink back tears. “All this time I’ve been trying to live in spite of MS, to quilt in spite of MS. It wasn’t working, because living a lie never works for long. It took a good friend to show me I need to live and quilt with my MS, not in spite of it.”
She reached into her bag and brought out the quilt she had begun the day she returned home from AQS, Sylvia’s words still resonant in her heart. Her friends reached forward to grasp the edges, unfolding the quilt so all could see.
It was a wild, chaotic work, a whirlwind of angry reds and oranges and yellows, blazing on a black background. Sharp, jagged lines conflicted with uncontrolled spirals over the barely recognizable outline of a woman crouched beneath a burden of grief. Into every uneven, undisciplined piece and crooked stitch Grace had poured all her rage, her anguish, her loss. She felt the emotions nearly overpowering in their intensity, but as she gazed upon her handiwork, she reminded herself that creating this quilt had freed her from pain, and that if she permitted it, she could sustain the peace that had come from completing the final stitch, filling up the empty spaces in her heart, until the grief subsided beneath a blanket of calm.
Her friends held the quilt tenderly, as if they were cradling a piece of Grace’s soul in their arms.
“This is the quilt that helped me get through my quilter’s block,” Grace said. She meant that this monument to her pain was the only quilt powerful enough to smash through the barriers she had erected around herself. Looking into her friends’ eyes, she knew they understood.
She set the quilt aside lovingly, as if it had been a joy to make, although she had often succumbed to tears of rage and anguish as she worked upon it. “Since I faced my challenge, even though I wasn’t completely honest with you about the true nature of that challenge, I decided I was allowed to complete my Challenge Quilt block.” She smiled, reached into the bag, and brought out a Carpenter’s Wheel block made in burgundy and green and the autumn leaf fabric Vinnie had given her.
“Not you, too,” Vinnie said. “Why Carpenter’s Wheel?”
“Because she discovered she’s the architect of her own fate,” Megan said.
Grace laughed, delighted at the hidden meaning she herself had not considered. “I like that answer, but I admit I didn’t think of that at the time. I chose this pattern because a carpenter taught me it’s possible to transform your life even when all manner of obstacles are placed before you.”
Vinnie nodded in approval, and as Grace’s friends admired her block and showed her their own, she knew the quilt they would make together would be as strong as its creators and as enduring as their friendship, which had been tested by time, distance, and misunderstanding, yet on that day shone brightly, untarnished, as if newly minted.
All that week the Cross-Country Quilters worked on their quilt, attending only a few seminars and spending most of their time in a vacant classroom
Sylvia had set aside for them. First they arranged the blocks in a three-by-three grid, separating their pieced blocks with solid setting squares of background fabric. Donna’s Bear’s Paw block was in the upper left corner, and a solid setting square separated it from Megan’s Snow Crystals block in the upper right. Julia’s Friendship Star occupied the center position, with setting squares on either side. The Carpenter’s Wheel block Grace had made took the lower left corner; Vinnie’s Wedding Ring, the lower right.
They united the sampler blocks and setting squares, then encircled the finished unit with a narrow border of background fabric. Together they scrutinized the quilt and decided that it needed something more. They considered prairie points, or solid fabric borders, and several other ideas before Donna had a brainstorm. One of her infamous unfinished projects was a quilt made of Autumn Leaf blocks in autumn colors. She had brought those blocks with her for a seminar entitled “Finishing Your UFOs,” a class she suspected Sylvia Compson had added to the program with her in mind. Since Donna had completed eight blocks already, they would only need to make sixteen more to create a pieced Autumn Leaf border to surround their sampler blocks.
“Only sixteen?” Julia said, alarmed.
“With all of us working together, we’ll finish in no time,” Megan reassured her. “We can use some quick-piecing techniques, too.”
Julia shuddered. “Please, no quick piecing.” They all laughed, remembering Julia’s disastrous first class the previous year.
Grace shook her head, smiling. “It’s a wonder you stuck with quilting after that introduction.”
“It is a wonder,” Julia agreed, “but I’m glad I did.”
Their laughter rang through the halls of Elm Creek Manor, as it had so often that week. Other campers, made curious by the noise and their feverish excitement, stopped by to see what they were doing. The Cross-Country Quilters took turns telling onlookers the story of how their project had come to be, how each had faced a challenge in her life and had commemorated her success with a quilt block. Some campers asked what those challenges were, but by unspoken agreement, the Cross-Country Quilters refused to divulge the confidences of their friends. Grace had the final word that put an end to the persistent inquiries: “Think of the challenges you face as a woman, as a wife, as a mother. The problems we faced were no different than those any woman faces.”
They completed the pieced top on Wednesday just before lunch, and interrupted the meal with a special unveiling. When the other campers burst into cheers and applause, the Cross-Country Quilters exchanged smiles and knowing looks. The other campers celebrated them for their hard work that week, little realizing that the real work had taken place over the course of an entire year.
After lunch, Sylvia invited the Cross-Country Quilters to a far corner of the ballroom, a place that had not been converted to classroom space. There she showed them a wooden quilt frame that had been polished both with a craftsman’s care and with usage over time. The rectangular frame was the height of an ordinary table, with slender rods running along the longer sides, and knobs and gears at the corners. As the others placed chairs around it, Megan returned to her room for the batting and backing fabric she had brought from home. They placed the layers in the frame: backing fabric on the bottom, batting in the middle, and the colorful pieced quilt top last of all.
They took their places around the frame, but not long after they had begun to quilt, Sylvia returned to tell Julia she had a phone call. Julia followed her to the formal parlor and discovered that Ellen was on the line.
“Ellen,” she exclaimed, astonished. They had spoken only once since walking out of Deneford’s meeting in April. “It’s good to hear from you.”
“It’s good to hear your voice again, too. I hope you don’t mind my interrupting your vacation. Your assistant gave me the number.”
“That’s fine,” Julia assured her, and she meant it, surprised by how pleased she was that Ellen had tracked her down. “How are you? Are you working on anything new?”
“As a matter of fact, I am. How about you? Is your schedule full?”
“Hardly,” Julia said. “I guess you could say I’m semiretired. I’ve looked at a few scripts—all of them awful—but without an agent soliciting work for me, I don’t expect to be working again anytime soon.” She smiled, thinking how a year ago she would have trembled in fear at the very thought.
“If a good project came your way, would you consider it?”
“Oh, certainly. But I’m not as hungry as I used to be. I won’t settle for another Prairie Vengeance to make a quick buck, that’s for sure. There’s been some talk about doing a Home Sweet Home anniversary reunion, and if it comes together, I’d do that for a lark. Otherwise I only want serious, high-quality work, something worth the time and effort I’ll put into it.”
“Would you consider playing Sadie Henderson in A Patchwork Life?”
Julia laughed. “In a heartbeat, but that’s not an option, is it?”
“Actually, it is.”
Julia almost dropped the phone. “What do you mean?”
“PBS wants to produce it. I’m going to direct, and I’d like you to star.”
“But how is this possible?” Julia stammered. “Deneford bought the rights to Sadie’s story.”
“Ah. But he didn’t. He bought the rights to my original script. I own the rights to Sadie’s diaries, and therefore, her story. I’ll have to rewrite the script to make it all nice and legal, but it will be legal. My father’s an attorney, and I had heard enough nightmare stories about Hollywood to be very careful when I signed over my script.”
Julia was impressed. “Ellen, my dear, I underestimated you.”
“So did Deneford.”
His name reminded Julia of a new worry. “Deneford might object to your releasing a film so similar to his. He might even sue.”
Ellen laughed. “First of all, Prairie Vengeance barely resembles A Patchwork Life. Second, I don’t think Deneford will want to remind anyone of Prairie Vengeance. It’s caused him enough damage without him airing his failures in the media again.”
“I don’t understand. Wouldn’t the publicity help the release of Prairie Vengeance?”
“Didn’t you hear?”
“Hear what? I’ve been somewhat out of the loop.”
“Prairie Vengeance went so far over budget in the reshooting that Deneford had to promise the studio he’d take no salary and cover the extra expenses himself. He thought he’d end up making a profit, but the test audience response was so negative that the studio sent the movie straight to video.”
“No,” Julia said, with only the smallest wicked surge of glee.
“Yes. There are even rumors that he’s going to be, shall we say, encouraged to void his contract with the studio.” Ellen paused. “So what do you think? It won’t be the feature film you wanted, and it certainly won’t pay what you were getting from Deneford, but are you interested? Do you want to think it over and call me back in a few weeks?”
Julia didn’t need a few weeks. “I’m interested. Send a contract to my home.”
“You mean it?”
“Of course.”
“You won’t be sorry.”
Julia laughed. “That’s what you said last time.”
“This time will be different,” Ellen promised, and Julia knew in her heart it would be.
Julia returned to the quilt frame with a heart so light she wanted to skip across the marble floor of the grand foyer singing the Hallelujah Chorus. A new project, something she could be proud of. Whatever Ellen’s terms were, she would accept them, although she might ask Maury to come out of retirement to read over the contract first, for old times’ sake.
She couldn’t wait to tell her friends.
Each morning, the Cross-Country Quilters met for an early breakfast before gathering around the quilt frame. As the hours passed, their stitches added dimension and texture to their sampler, and their progress urged them on despite sore fingers and t
ired eyes. They talked as they worked, baring their hearts and unburdening their souls as they felt they could with no other friends, even ones they had known all their lives. There was a sanctity about the quilt frame that promised that secrets could be shared there, and no confidence would be broken or judgment passed.
On Friday afternoon, they finished the last quilting stitch and removed their masterpiece from the frame. Megan made a long strip of bias binding; Donna machine-sewed one of the long sides a quarter inch away from the edge, all around the front of the quilt. They decided a change of scene would invigorate them, so they carried the quilt outside to the verandah, where they arranged chairs in a circle, the quilt in the center. Each woman took one section of the edge, and together they folded the binding around the raw edges of the quilt and blind-stitched it in place on the back.
By late afternoon, they were so close to finishing their project that they decided to skip dinner and work all through the night if necessary. A half hour into the dinner period, Sylvia came looking for them.
“Aren’t you ladies going to take a break?” she asked.
They shook their heads, and Grace said, “Not when we’re so close to the end.”
“Some rest might give you more energy to finish.”
“Or it might make it all the more difficult to continue afterward,” Julia said.
Sylvia sighed. “Very well. You’re forcing me to pull rank. As the founder of Elm Creek Quilts, I’m ordering you to put down those needles and join me in the banquet hall. Now.”
The Cross-Country Quilters exchanged looks of surprise and dismay. “We’ll grab a snack later,” Megan said, but Sylvia would have none of that. Ignoring their protests, she ushered them inside. Resigned, they allowed themselves to be herded along, realizing that they were a bit hungry after all, and that maybe a minute or two of rest wouldn’t hurt.
When they walked into the banquet hall, they were greeted by dozens of women of all ages shouting, “Surprise!”
An Elm Creek Quilts Sampler Page 93