Round Robin

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Diane couldn’t speak for a moment. He looked so proud and happy. “I’m impressed,” she said. “I’m also terrified you’re going to break your neck.”

  Michael laughed. “It’s not as dangerous as it looks.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  Michael rode a while longer, until Diane told him he had to go inside and do his homework. To her amazement, he obeyed without protest.

  “What happened to our kid?” she whispered to Tim.

  “I don’t know, but I’m not complaining.” He put an arm around her shoulders and they crossed the lawn side by side.

  The next day, Diane went to the manor earlier than usual to have lunch with the new campers and some of the Elm Creek Quilters. She had the whole group laughing with the story of how she and Tim had punished their wayward son by building him his own skateboard ramp.

  “Why does Waterford have such a problem with skateboarding?” Summer asked. “There aren’t any laws against in-line skates. How are skateboards any different?”

  “I suppose it’s because skateboarders tend to be teenage boys who dress a certain way and listen to a certain kind of music,” Gwen mused. “They might be the nicest kids in the world, but they project an image which makes some people uncomfortable.”

  Diane was forced to agree. Michael was a basically good kid, but he looked like the stereotypical punk teenager. If he dressed differently, cut his hair, and lost the earring, adults would treat him with more respect. Unfortunately, despite her many attempts to explain, he didn’t see the connection.

  When she brought Todd home from band practice later that day, Michael was in the backyard with three other boys—no, two other boys and a girl. “Kelly, I suppose,” Diane mused. She had assumed Kelly was a boy, since Tim had not indicated otherwise. She watched them through the kitchen window as they took turns zooming up and down the ramp. When it was Kelly’s turn, Michael called out something that made her laugh. One of the boys nudged him and Michael grinned.

  Well. That was certainly interesting.

  Just then, Michael and his friends put down their skateboards and began walking toward the house. Diane let the curtain fall back across the window and busied herself emptying the dishwasher. They came into the kitchen laughing and talking and looking for food.

  “We have apples and grapes in the fruit bin,” Diane suggested, not surprised when they grimaced. She found them a package of cookies instead, and Michael took four glasses from the cupboard and filled them with milk. Kelly helped him carry them to the kitchen table and paused to thank Diane for the cookies. She was a pretty, dark-haired girl, and Diane decided she liked her.

  When they finished their snack, Diane took the round robin quilt outside to the deck so that she could plan her border and watch the kids skate. She swung back and forth on the porch swing in the shade of her favorite oak tree and held up the quilt top. Sarah’s border of squares on point used a cream background and varying shades of blue and green, so Diane decided to use similar colors. But what pattern should she choose? She had never participated in a round robin before, and she wished Agnes had given more specific instructions. Should she use squares, too, since Sarah had, or was the point to make each border completely different?

  “Yoo hoo. Diane, yoo hoo.”

  Diane smothered a groan and tried to hide the quilt on her lap. “Hello, Mary Beth,” she said to the woman peering over the fence. “How are you?” It was an automatic question. She couldn’t care less how Mary Beth was that day or any other day. They had never been friends, and Mary Beth had never forgiven Diane for challenging her for the office of president of the Waterford Quilting Guild. Diane would have won, too, if Mary Beth hadn’t made an impassioned speech to the guild the night before the election, asking them if they were willing to hand over the responsibilities of the Waterford Summer Quilt Festival to someone who had never won a ribbon. After Mary Beth’s reelection, Diane and her friends were so fed up with the silly politics that they left the guild to form their own bee.

  For years Diane had resented Mary Beth, but suddenly she realized she ought to thank her. If not for Mary Beth, she and her friends wouldn’t have formed their own bee, so they couldn’t have invited Sarah to join it, and then Elm Creek Quilts might not have existed.

  But Mary Beth’s phony smile pushed all gratitude out of Diane’s mind. “What do you have there?” Mary Beth asked, craning her neck to see what was in Diane’s lap.

  Reluctantly, Diane held up the quilt top. “It’s a round robin quilt I’m making with the Elm Creek Quilters. One person makes a center block and the others take turns adding borders to it.”

  “Oh, I know. I’ve made dozens of them.” Mary Beth squinted as she studied the quilt. “You do realize you’re supposed to put something in the middle? Not just leave it a big blank square?”

  “Oh, really? My goodness. I had no idea. I thought it looked strange, and now I know why. Thank you for clearing that up.”

  Mary Beth eyed her, as if trying to gauge her sincerity. “You’re welcome,” she finally said. She nodded to the skateboard ramp as if seeing it for the first time. “What on earth is that?”

  “It’s a skateboard ramp.”

  “It looks like an accident waiting to happen.” Mary Beth shook her head and made tsking noises with her tongue. “Do their parents know how high it is?”

  Diane felt a pang of worry, but she refused to let Mary Beth see it. “Of course. In fact, some of them think it’s not high enough.”

  Mary Beth’s eyes widened. “No kidding? Well, I guess that’s fine, then. I wish I were as brave as you. If that thing were in my backyard, I’d never have a moment’s peace. I’d be too worried about liability.”

  Diane felt a twinge of nervousness. “We’ve taken care of all that.”

  “Of course. Tim is so practical.”

  Diane nodded and turned her attention to the quilt, hoping that Mary Beth would take the hint and go away.

  “Aren’t you worried that a skateboard ramp will attract—how can I put this—a certain undesirable element?”

  Diane’s head jerked up, and when she spoke, her voice was cold. “That undesirable element you’re talking about is my son and his friends. They’re under my supervision, and they aren’t bothering you, so why don’t you just leave them alone?”

  For a moment Mary Beth just gaped at her—stunned, for once in her life, into silence. “You don’t have to snap at me. I was just trying to help, in case you haven’t thought it through.”

  “Thanks all the same, but we have thought it through, and if I wanted your advice, I’d ask for it.”

  “Fine.” Mary Beth sniffed and set her jaw. “You’re wrong, you know, about one thing. This monstrosity is bothering me, and it’s probably bothering a lot of other people, too.”

  “No one else has complained.”

  “Not yet, maybe, but we do have rules in this neighborhood, you know, ordinances and things.” Mary Beth gave her one last glare and marched back into her house.

  Diane tried to return her attention to the quilt, but Mary Beth’s remarks nagged at her. Eventually she put the quilt away and crossed the lawn to speak to Michael’s friends. Their faces fell when she told them there would be no more skating until their parents came by and inspected the ramp for themselves. Brandon said his mom could be there in five minutes, but Kelly and Troy said their parents were working and couldn’t come over until that evening, at the earliest.

  “I’m sorry,” Diane told Michael, and she meant it with all her heart.

  Michael scowled, humiliated. “You said we could skate.”

  “It’s okay,” Kelly said, sparing a quick glance for Diane before turning back to Michael. “We can watch a video or something. We can skate tomorrow when everyone’s allowed.”

  Michael muttered something, gave Diane a dark look, and motioned for his friends to follow him inside.

  Diane went inside, too, after stopping by the deck to retrieve the quilt and glare at
Mary Beth’s house. If Mary Beth thought she could scare Diane into taking down that ramp, she was more foolish than Diane had given her credit for, and Diane had never been stingy when it came to estimating Mary Beth’s faults.

  By Tuesday evening, the parents of Michael’s friends had inspected the ramp and had given their children permission to skate there. Diane enjoyed meeting them, especially Kelly’s mother. “For weeks it’s been Michael this and Michael that around our place,” Kelly’s mother said, shaking her head and smiling. “Kelly says Michael’s the first boy she ever met who doesn’t think it’s odd for a girl to skate. He told her that boys who say girls can’t skate are just worried about the competition.”

  “Really?” Diane was pleased. Somehow she’d raised a feminist. Gwen would be proud of her.

  On the following night Diane joined the other Elm Creek Quilters for a staff meeting at the manor. Afterward, she updated her friends on the saga of the skating ramp. “I used to think like Mary Beth,” she admitted. “But when I look at Michael now, it’s hard for me to imagine why I ever disliked skateboarding. He hasn’t seemed this well adjusted since the second grade.”

  “It isn’t the skateboarding per se,” Gwen said. “It’s the attention you and Tim have been paying him lately.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Spock, but Michael’s never lacked parental attention.”

  “But this is positive attention for an activity he enjoys. He’s probably thrilled that you finally support one of his pastimes.”

  “You expect me to encourage his usual hobbies?” Diane shot back, thinking of the heavy metal music, the vandalism at the middle school, the fights with Todd. “Besides, it’s not like you have any experience dealing with this sort of mess. Summer never gave you a moment’s trouble.”

  Gwen held up her hands, apologetic. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “I used to get in trouble a lot when I was Michael’s age,” Judy said. “Talking back to the teachers, skipping classes, fistfights, you name it.”

  “Fistfights?” Bonnie said. “You? I can’t believe it.”

  “It’s true.” Judy smiled wryly. “I got picked on a lot at school. The other kids would go like this”—she put her fingers to the outer corners of her eyes and stretched the lids into slits—“and tell me to go back to China.”

  “Their grasp of geography is depressing,” Gwen said.

  “You try explaining the difference between China and Vietnam to a bunch of obnoxious adolescents. They’d do Bruce Lee imitations and steal my lunch, saying I couldn’t eat it anyway since I didn’t have any chopsticks.” Judy shook her head. “It sounds silly and stupid now, but at the time it was very painful. I guess I acted out because I didn’t have any friends, anyone to support me. I didn’t want to complain at home, because my mom had already been through so much.”

  “So what happened?” Diane asked. “You obviously straightened out somehow.”

  Judy shrugged, and her long, dark hair slipped over one shoulder. “My dad figured out what was going on and had me transferred to another school. No one teased me there, so I didn’t need to cause trouble anymore.”

  “Do you think I should have Michael transferred to another school?”

  “That’s probably not necessary,” Bonnie said. “Wait and see. It sounds like things may be turning around already.”

  “And making him leave his friends might make everything worse,” Carol said. “The more advice you give your children, the more you try to help them do what’s right, the more they insist on going their own way.”

  Sarah gave her a sharp look. “Sometimes parents try to help too much when no help is needed.”

  “Sometimes children don’t know what’s best for them. Sometimes they’d be wise to learn from their parents’ mistakes instead of fumbling around on their own.”

  “Who’s fumbling?” Sarah asked.

  Carol said nothing, and an awkward silence descended on the foyer until a group of new campers arrived, sending the Elm Creek Quilters back to work.

  The next day’s classes kept Diane so busy that she had no chance to ask any of the Elm Creek Quilters about the strange exchange between mother and daughter, so she put it out of her mind. On the way home, she stopped at the grocery for a few things for supper and more cookies. The night before, Todd had complained that Michael and his friends had eaten all the snacks in the house, leaving nothing for Todd’s friends.

  “There’s fruit,” Diane had said, but Todd had scowled and muttered something about how things sure had changed around there. It was obvious he did not mean they had changed for the better. Diane hoped that an ample supply of snacks would appease him, if only temporarily.

  As she pulled into the driveway, Diane saw the curtain in Mary Beth’s living room window move aside. Her eyes met Mary Beth’s before the curtain fell between them. Diane frowned and parked the car. Didn’t Mary Beth have anything better to do all day than to spy on her neighbors? She carried the bag of groceries into the kitchen, then returned outside to check the mail. In her peripheral vision she saw Mary Beth’s curtain draw back again, but she ignored it. That woman really needed a hobby.

  Diane collected a handful of envelopes from the mailbox and leafed through them as she walked up the driveway. Credit card application, bill, bill, credit card application—and a thick envelope with a return address of the Waterford Municipal Building. She stopped in the middle of the driveway and opened the envelope, dreading the news. Rumor had it that the property taxes in their historic neighborhood were going to be reassessed, despite residents’ complaints to the Zoning Commission.

  The first line made it clear that the letter was not about taxes, but her relief soon turned to dismay. The Waterford Zoning Commission had received complaints that the Sonnenberg family had erected a skateboard ramp in their backyard. Since that structure met the definition of an Attractive Nuisance, and since they had not applied for the proper building permits, it must be razed within forty-eight hours.

  “Is this some kind of a joke?” Diane exclaimed, gaping at the letter. The ramp was on private property. The Zoning Commission couldn’t force them to tear it down, could they?

  Diane looked up, her mind racing—and saw Mary Beth watching her through her living room window.

  She crumpled the letter in her fist and marched across the lawn to Mary Beth’s house. She could see the panic in her neighbor’s face—before Mary Beth quickly hid behind the curtain. Diane stormed up the porch stairs and pounded on the front door. “Mary Beth,” she shouted. “Get out here, you vicious little troll! I know you’re responsible for this.” She paused, but there was no response. She hammered on the door with her fist. “I know you’re in there. Come on out!”

  Mary Beth wisely remained inside. Eventually, Diane gave up and returned to her own house, seething. The nerve of Mary Beth, to turn Diane’s family in to the Waterford Zoning Commission! “May her fabric bleed, her rotary cutter rust, and all of her borders be crooked,” Diane muttered, slamming the door behind her and storming to the kitchen to call Bonnie. Diane was reluctant to interrupt her at Grandma’s Attic, but this couldn’t wait, and she wasn’t going to risk getting a busy signal later that evening because of Craig’s constant web surfing. Bonnie had served on the commission in the past as a representative from the Downtown Business Association. If the Sonnenbergs had any options, Bonnie would know what they were.

  Quickly, Diane explained what had happened, then asked, “I know there are certain restrictions because this is a historic neighborhood, but is there anything I can do?” She steeled herself. “If I crawl over there on my hands and knees and beg Mary Beth to withdraw the complaint, and if by some miracle I manage to persuade her, would the Zoning Commission let us keep the ramp?”

  “That’s not how it works,” Bonnie said. “Once the commission has made a ruling, the original complaint no longer matters. You have two options at this point. You can either comply with their request and tear down the ramp, or you can file for an
exemption. That means you’ll have to present your case to the commission at a public hearing.”

  Diane couldn’t believe it. “You mean the kind of hearings they hold when someone wants to build a new mall or a new road?”

  “I’m afraid so. According to their bureaucratic way of looking at things, your ramp is no different than a major construction site. You’ll have to convince the commission that the skateboard ramp isn’t a hazard to local residents, doesn’t create unnecessary noise or traffic problems, and doesn’t destroy the aesthetics of the neighborhood.”

  Diane groaned. “I know. I remember that part.”

  “I don’t understand why Mary Beth went to the authorities instead of trying to work things out with you personally. Maybe you two aren’t friends, but you are neighbors.” Then Bonnie paused. “What do you mean, you remember?”

  “Look, I have to go. Michael’s going to be home from school any minute, and I have to figure out what I’m going to tell him.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t. You’re not hanging up until you tell me what you meant by ‘I remember.’”

  “Mary Beth has been a thorn in my side for too long.” Diane sank into a chair, propped her elbows on the kitchen table, and let her head rest in her palm. “She never would have known about that ordinance if not for those stupid wind chimes.”

  “What?”

  Diane’s anger faded into chagrin. “Two years ago, Mary Beth hung some wind chimes outside her kitchen window. I swear to God, they were the wind chimes from hell, clanking and banging with the slightest breeze. They must have had amplifiers or something. They scared away every bird for miles—”

  “Miles?”

  “Well, yards, anyway. And they kept me and Tim awake all night. The only way we could escape the noise was to shut every window facing the backyard, and that wasn’t fair. So I asked her very nicely to take them down—”

  “Oh, I bet you did.”