Over the sound of her friends’ laughter, Sarah heard the door open. “That makes twelve,” she said, turning to greet the last new camper.
A middle-aged woman stood just inside the doorway, a suitcase in her hands. “Hello, Sarah.” As the door closed behind her, she shifted her weight from one foot to the other and broke into a hesitant smile.
Sarah stared at her, unable to speak.
“Do you know her?” Summer murmured.
“Yes.” Though sometimes Sarah felt she didn’t know her at all. “She’s my mother.”
As one, the Elm Creek Quilters gasped—all but Sylvia, who deliberately avoided looking in Sarah’s direction.
“Mom.” Matt bounded across the marble floor and down the stairs leading to the front door. “How nice to see you.” He took her suitcase and leaned forward to kiss her cheek.
She laughed self-consciously and endured the kiss. “Please, call me Carol.”
Matt beamed, unaware of the slight, or ignoring it. Sarah felt a smoldering in her chest—astonishment, dismay, and the tiniest flicker of anger. “What are you doing here, Mother?”
Carol’s smile faltered. “I came for a visit, of course. And for quilt camp.”
“Quilt camp? You don’t quilt.”
Sylvia gave Sarah a sharp look. “Then there’s no better place for her to learn.”
“That’s what I thought when I saw Elm Creek Quilts on America’s Back Roads.” Carol followed Matt to the registration desk, where Bonnie helped her sign in and gave her a room key. “You remember America’s Back Roads, don’t you, Sarah?”
Sarah nodded, unsure how to interpret her mother’s nonchalance. Her mother looked thinner than she remembered, and her reddish brown hair hung past her shoulders. All the other campers had worn casual, comfortable clothing, but Carol had shown up in her usual conservative skirt and blouse.
Then Sarah noticed that Summer was giving her an odd look. “Aren’t you going to go say hi or something?” she whispered.
Sarah nodded and forced herself to cross the foyer. Naturally, Summer would think it odd that she hadn’t wrapped her mother in a great big welcoming hug the instant she crossed the threshold. Summer and Gwen liked each other, shared interests, were friends as well as mother and daughter. Sarah could only imagine what that felt like.
“Welcome to Elm Creek Manor, Mother,” she said, her words as stiff and formal as the hug they exchanged. Perhaps it was her imagination, but it seemed her mother clung to her a moment longer than she used to, and held her tighter. Over the top of her mother’s head, Sarah glimpsed Matt grinning broadly as he watched the embrace.
As Sarah pulled away, her mother took her hands. “You look good,” she said, holding her daughter at arm’s length. After further appraisal, she added, “I suppose if you’d known I was coming, you would have gotten a haircut.”
Sarah gave her a tight smile. “I got my hair cut last week. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” She almost said “warn” instead of “tell,” but her friends’ presence urged restraint.
“I thought it would be a nice surprise.” Carol’s smile mirrored Sarah’s own. “Besides, if you’d known I was coming, you might have found some reason to leave town for the week.”
“That’s ridiculous. How can you say that?”
“Here, Mom—Carol.” Matt touched his mother-in-law on the shoulder and picked up her suitcase. “Let me show you to your room. You’ll love it.”
Carol gave Sarah one last inscrutable look before following Matt upstairs. Sarah watched them go, Matt gesturing with his free hand as he described her room, her mother listening and nodding. Only when they disappeared down the second-floor hallway did Sarah relax.
“Well,” Sylvia said. “I suppose I’ll get supper started.”
“Not so fast.” Sarah caught her by the arm before she could escape down the hallway. “So this is why you so generously offered to take care of the registration sheets this time.”
Sylvia brushed her hand away. “There’s no need to get angry.”
“There is so. Why didn’t you tell me she was coming?”
“Why? So you could cut your hair?”
“Of course not. So I could prepare.”
“We did prepare, when we made the manor ready for our quilt campers.”
“I mean prepare mentally.” Sarah looked around the circle of friends. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. Were you all in on this?”
Summer’s eyes widened and she shook her head. “I sure wasn’t.”
“We’re just as surprised as you are,” Judy said.
“Sarah, you know very well I kept this to myself.” Sylvia’s voice was brisk. “If I had told one Elm Creek Quilter, I would have been obligated to tell the others, and we all know Diane can’t keep a secret.”
“Hey,” Diane protested.
“Now, we’ll have no more of this pouting.” Sylvia held Sarah by the shoulders and looked her squarely in the eye. “Your mother’s here, and I expect you to treat her with respect befitting the woman who raised you.”
“You have no idea how difficult this is going to be. We don’t get along.”
“So you’ve said, and so I’ve just seen for myself. That’s no excuse. You made a promise to me, don’t forget, a promise that you’d reconcile with your mother.”
“I’ve tried.” Sarah wanted to squirm out of Sylvia’s grasp. Her gaze was too knowing, too determined. “We talk on the phone, and Matt and I visited her last Christmas—”
“For a mere three days, as I recall, and you speak on the phone once a month at best. That’s hardly enough time to rebuild your relationship.” Her voice softened. “Nearly two years since you made that promise, dear, and so little to show for it. After that television fiasco, I had to invite her. Don’t you see? If she had waited for you to ask, she would be waiting forever.”
“I’m sure you mean well, but you should have told me.”
“Next time, I shall.” Sylvia gave Sarah’s arms an affectionate squeeze. “I promise.”
Sarah nodded, hoping there wouldn’t be a next time. Her stomach wrenched when she thought of what the week would bring—a constant stream of criticism about her hair, her clothes, her speech, her attitude, and anything else that caught her mother’s attention. No matter how well Sarah lived her life, Carol seemed to think she herself would have done much better in her daughter’s place. Sarah sensed but had never understood the urgency behind the criticism, as if Carol was preparing her daughter for some impending disaster she alone could foresee. Carol was so unlike Sarah’s easygoing, indulgent father that Sarah often marveled that they had ever considered themselves compatible enough to marry.
Sarah knew her father would have liked Matt as much as Carol disliked him. If only he were there to keep Carol’s criticism in check as he used to when Sarah was younger. If Carol got started on Matt—“that gardener,” as she used to call him, and perhaps still did—she could aggravate Matt’s growing concerns about his job at Elm Creek Manor. He loved the grounds, the gardens, the orchards, but recently he had begun to wonder if he should have stayed at his old firm instead of coming to work for Sylvia.
“But Exterior Architects assigned you to Elm Creek,” Sarah had reminded him when he first brought it up. “You’re doing the same work at the same place. What’s the difference?”
“The difference is the source of my paycheck. Exterior Architects used to pay me. Now Sylvia does.”
Sarah had stared at him, perplexed. A year ago he had been all too eager to have Sylvia buy out his contract. “What’s wrong with that?”
“I don’t feel comfortable investing our entire future in one place, that’s all.”
“Why not? Lots of people who own their own businesses do.”
“That’s my point. We don’t own our own business. Sylvia owns it.”
“Of course she owns it. It’s her estate. But so what? You know she’d never fire us.”
“Yeah, I know.” He walked away, saying that he h
ad to check on the orchards, or the north gardens, or the new greenhouse. Sarah didn’t remember which excuse he had used that time.
Now he was escorting Carol to her room, where her litany of complaints would surely begin. The room would be too small, or too shabby, or too far from the bathroom, or too near. Matt would nod to be agreeable, and her words would strengthen his own misgivings about living in Elm Creek Manor.
At that thought, the joy Sarah usually felt at the beginning of quilt camp went out of the day.
She could hear the new guests talking and laughing upstairs as they went from room to room getting acquainted. It was time for the other Elm Creek Quilters to leave for the evening, to return to their homes and their other responsibilities. Sarah and Sylvia walked them to the back door, then went to the kitchen to prepare the evening meal.
Sylvia wanted to discuss the week’s schedule as they worked, but Sarah found her mind wandering. Her thoughts drifted back to the day she told Carol she was dating Matt McClure. “What about Dave?” Carol asked, referring to Sarah’s previous boyfriend, whom she had dated for more than a year.
Sarah wrapped the phone cord around her finger and took a deep breath to steel herself. “Actually, we kind of broke up.”
“What?”
“We’re still friends,” Sarah hastened to say, though she knew that wouldn’t appease her mother. In truth, Sarah hadn’t seen him in weeks. She had put off telling Carol about the breakup, knowing how much her mother adored him. Dave had charmed Carol just as he did everyone else.
“Maybe if you apologize, he’ll take you back.”
“I don’t want him back. And why do you assume that he broke up with me?”
“Because I know you’re a smart young woman and you wouldn’t let a great catch like Dave swim away.”
“He isn’t a fish, Mother.” And he didn’t get away; it had been all Sarah could do to send him away. It had been a struggle to convince him that she didn’t want to see him anymore. “You’ll like Matt. Just give him a chance.”
“We’ll see.” Carol’s voice was flat, and Sarah realized Carol was determined to despise him and wouldn’t give him any opportunity to change her mind.
Sarah hung up the phone with a sigh. She couldn’t really blame Carol for not seeing through Dave; after all, it had taken Sarah fourteen months to figure him out. But now she could see that he was all style, no substance. As a freshman she had been dazzled by his popularity, his expensive car, the luxurious lifestyle his parents had provided him—but in the weeks preceding the breakup, she had grown restless. Dave was charming and witty, handsome and athletic, but something was missing. He wouldn’t allow anyone to bring him down with bad news or serious conversation, not even Sarah. With him she had to feign perpetual cheerfulness or lose his interest. Once when she needed to talk about a frustrating argument with her mother, she watched as his face went blank and he began to look over her shoulder for someone more pleasant to talk to. That was when Sarah understood that Dave kept her around not because he loved her—although perhaps he thought he did—but because she worked so hard to amuse him. She had learned early in their relationship that there were plenty of other women on campus who would pretend anything, hide anything, if it meant having his warm smile directed at them. But Sarah was tired of acting, of being onstage every moment they were together. She wanted someone who could love the real Sarah, with all her bad moods and faults.
After knowing Matt only a short while, she realized she had found that someone in him. He was kind and sensible, and though he didn’t have Dave’s charisma, he was handsome in a strong, unpolished kind of way, and he made Sarah feel valued. The first time they kissed, she learned that what she thought was love with Dave had not been love at all, or even a close approximation. Infatuation, yes; admiration, definitely. But not until Matt came into her life did Sarah truly know what it meant to love someone and be loved in return.
It would have been pointless to explain this to her mother. She was convinced that Sarah had traded in a pre-med student from a good family for a man whose ambition in life was to mow lawns and prune bushes. Even after she met him, Carol never saw Matt’s solid core of strength and kindness, and never sensed how much he truly cared for Sarah. Those qualities made Matt worth two of Dave, with his roving eye and his refusal to plan anything more than a week in advance. Sarah saw this, but Carol couldn’t, or refused to.
Carol evidently never gave up hoping that Sarah would change her mind, not even when Sarah told her she and Matt were getting married. Then Carol grew frantic. She warned Sarah that she would never be happy if she settled for a man like Matt. She begged Sarah to wait, to date other men, if only to be certain that she wasn’t making a hasty decision. She offered Sarah a check—enough for a more lavish wedding than Sarah could afford or even wanted—if only Sarah would cancel the ceremony.
Sarah managed to hold her fury in check long enough to point out that Carol herself had chosen a man much like Matt. “Did you settle for Dad?” Sarah demanded. “Would you have let your parents buy your affection?”
“I didn’t have your choices,” Carol said.
“I’ve made my choice,” Sarah said, and as far as she was concerned the matter was settled. But Carol wasn’t willing to give up, and her appeals continued throughout the engagement.
Sarah had torn up and discarded the letters long ago, but she could still see them in her mind, page after page of her mother’s small, neat handwriting on the Susquehanna Presbyterian Hospital letterhead she’d probably stolen from the receptionist’s desk. “Marriage will change your life, and not for the better,” Carol had written. “Twenty-three is too young. You should have a life of your own first. You could go anywhere, do anything, and you ought to do it now, while you’re young. If you marry that gardener, you’ll be stuck in some little town forever, and everything you ever wanted for yourself will be swallowed up in what you do for him.” Marriage was expensive, she argued in letter after letter. Sarah could forget about the little luxuries that made life bearable. If she took a job in an exciting city, she would come into contact with all sorts of eligible men, lawyers and doctors rather than overgrown boys who liked to dig around in the dirt. After a few years, while she was still young enough to look pretty in a wedding gown and bear children, she should consider marriage. But not now, and not to that gardener.
“I understand why you find him attractive,” her mother had written. “But young people today don’t have to be married to have sex. You can do that, if you must, and get it out of your system without ruining your chances with someone better. Besides, if you marry him, the sexual attraction will fade once the novelty wears off, and then where will you be?”
Carol’s signature followed, as if anyone else could have written such a hateful letter. There was a postscript, but Sarah’s hands trembled, rattling the paper so that the words blurred and she could barely make them out: “Please know that my feelings are specifically about you and your friend. They are not a reflection of my relationship with your father. We had a happy, loving marriage that ended too soon.”
At once, Sarah snatched up the phone and dialed her mother’s number. When she answered, Sarah didn’t return her greeting. “Don’t you ever, ever spew such filth about Matt again,” she snapped. “Do you hear me? Do you understand?”
She slammed down the phone without waiting for a reply.
The letters halted, and despite her earlier threats, a few months later Carol came to the small wedding in Eisenhower Chapel on the Penn State campus. She spoke politely with Matt’s father, posed for pictures as the photographer instructed, and wept no more than was appropriate. Sarah could hardly look at her, could hardly bear to be in the presence of someone so spiteful to the man she loved. She knew Matt sensed the tension that sparkled and crackled between them, and hoped he attributed it to the inherent stress of the occasion.
The memory of those letters stung as sharply as if she had received them only yesterday.
“What do you think, Sarah?” Sylvia asked, startling her out of her reverie.
“Oh.” Sarah carried a bunch of carrots to the sink to wash them. “Whatever you want to do is fine with me.”
“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?”
Sarah shook the water from the carrots. “No. I’m sorry.” She avoided meeting Sylvia’s eyes as she returned to the counter. “I’ve been thinking about our newest camper.” She picked up a knife, lined up a carrot on the cutting board, and chopped off its top with a sharp whack.
Sylvia’s eyebrows rose as she watched the cutting board. “I see.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “Tell me. What brought about this estrangement? Did your mother abuse you? Neglect you?”
Sarah dispatched another carrot with a few strong chops of the knife. “No.” As angry as she was at her mother, it wouldn’t be fair to accuse her of that.
“What was it, then? It must have been something truly horrible, the way you two act around each other.”
“It’s hard to explain.” Sarah divided the carrot slices among four large salad bowls and began cutting up the rest of the bunch. “Sometimes I wish she had done something bad enough to justify cutting her out of my life altogether. As a mother, I’m afraid she was all too typical. Lots of mothers constantly criticize their daughters, right?”
Sylvia shrugged.
“That’s what my mother did. Does. Nothing I do is ever good enough for her. For most of my life I’ve been knocking myself out trying to please her, but it’s useless. It’s like she thinks I’m not living up to my potential just to spite her.”
“I’m sure your mother is proud of you, even if she doesn’t always show it.”
“I wish I could be so sure.”
Sylvia opened the oven door to check on the chickens. “You do love her, though, don’t you?”
“Of course I love her.” Sarah hesitated, then forced herself to say the rest. “I just don’t like her very much. Believe me, the feeling is mutual.”
“Sylvia, Sarah, would you two like some help?”
Quickly, Sarah looked up to find Carol standing in the kitchen doorway. Two other quilters stood behind her, smiling eagerly. Sarah’s heart sank. How much had her mother overheard?
Round Robin Page 3