The Wedding Quilt

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “You voted for me,” Gwen pointed out as everyone laughed. “Twice for city council and five times for Congress, or so you said.”

  “Those were first, last, and only times I’ve ever voted for a liberal,” Diane declared. “And I wouldn’t have done that for anyone but you.”

  “And I appreciate it,” said Gwen, grinning. Everyone there knew Diane had done much more than simply vote for her longtime friend. She had dared wear a “Sullivan for Congress” button to her Republican women’s club meeting and had candidly explained to her friends and acquaintances why she was breaking party loyalty to support a self-professed bleeding-heart liberal. Diane had even planted “Sullivan for Congress” signs in her beautifully manicured front yard, despite the unappealing way the blue cardboard clashed with her roses. And although she had not intended to, Diane had inspired Gwen to run in the first place.

  Sarah remembered when the seed was first planted. She was in labor with the twins, and several of the Elm Creek Quilters had come to her bedside to encourage her. Conversation turned to how the friends had first met, and after describing her first impression of Gwen—that she was “a loud, obnoxious hippie”—Diane had added, “I’ve figured out you’re all bluster. If I ever suspected that you might actually do something to foist your liberal values on the rest of us, I might worry, but I know you’re harmless.”

  “Oh, don’t tell me that,” warned Gwen, shaking her head vigorously. “You’ll force me to do something to prove you wrong.”

  Although none of her friends realized it at the time, Gwen had taken Diane’s words to heart. Was she really all talk and no action? Had she become too settled, too complacent? She hated to think of herself as harmless, an old curmudgeon who complained and censured, who pointed out problems but never took action to solve them. For days she brooded over Diane’s inadvertent criticism, and for a few months afterward, she resolved to become more engaged in her community. She wrote letters to the editor of the Waterford Register when she disagreed with an editorial, attended city council meetings when important issues arose, and participated in town hall meetings when important political figures visited campus. But over time, eroded by the pressures of her academic career and commitments to Elm Creek Quilts, her resolve weakened, and she fell back into her old habits of shaking her head in disgust and dismay as she read the morning news and airing her complaints to like-minded friends—that, and little more.

  Then Union Hall came under attack, and although Gwen was too busy with graduate student advising and a heavy undergraduate course load to do much more than commiserate, she looked on in admiration as Agnes led the successful grassroots campaign to preserve the historic building. While it had been Gwen’s suggestion to prevent a quorum from meeting, without Agnes to figure out how to do that and how to motivate everyone to make it happen, Union Hall would have been reduced to rubble. What use were brilliant ideas, Gwen mused, if she lacked the resolve to implement them? She didn’t like to think of herself as a spectator calling out plays from the sidelines. She wanted to be in the game.

  She tested the waters by running for city council on a progressive platform of environmentalism, preservation of historic sites, improved relations between the town and the college, and eliminating waste and fraud in city services. Ten candidates, including five incumbents, vied for the six seats up for election on the second Tuesday of April that year. Gwen won one of them handily, thanks to her strong performance in the race’s sole debate and an unexpectedly high turnout of eligible student voters. Her experience on the city council gave her an opportunity to explore the role of a legislator without obliging her to quit her day job. She soon discovered that she had a gift for negotiation and implementing policies, and she was proud of the measures she had enacted that made Waterford a greener, more efficient, more tolerant, and more sustainable city.

  As her first term approached its end, she ran for and won reelection. A few weeks into her second term, she considered all she had accomplished for the city of Waterford and all the greater good she might do if she held a higher office. After careful thought, she formed a nominating committee of influential local party members she had met through her work on the city council and began raising funds. Friends warned her that she would face a tough battle, one made even more difficult by her late entry into the race, and she would probably lose. The incumbent from her district had served a member of Congress for more than twenty years and had a satisfactory if not remarkable record to show for it. He also possessed enough name recognition and personal wealth to ensure that every two years he would run unchallenged in the Republican primary and trounce his opponent in the general election by double digits.

  Gwen knew she couldn’t win unless she used his firmly entrenched position to her advantage, and she started with securing her party’s nomination. None of the more prominent Democrats in the district wanted to challenge him, preferring to wait until he retired rather than attempt to unseat him. Someone had to run against him, though, so when Gwen’s name came up, the local party authorities were relieved to put her on the ballot, although they warned her that they couldn’t afford to sink much money into what would likely be a losing race.

  Gwen thanked them graciously, amused that they were impressed by her willingness to be the sacrificial lamb—but Gwen had no intention of losing. She took a leave of absence from Waterford College and devoted herself to meeting as many constituents of the twenty-second congressional district as she could. She spoke at every community gathering that would have her, listening to the people’s concerns, asking questions, and making plans. She learned that the citizens weren’t particularly enraptured with the incumbent, but although he hadn’t accomplished anything remarkable, he hadn’t done anything to disgrace the office, either, and that was about the best you could expect from a politician anymore.

  Their willingness to settle for the bare minimum from their elected representative appalled Gwen. She began breaking away from her stump speech to make long, impassioned entreaties for her listeners to demand more from their government, to make elected officials earn their taxpayer-funded salaries. She began to draw sharp distinctions between what she would do—work hard to improve the lives of the people of central Pennsylvania—and the coasting downhill toward retirement that her opponent apparently planned to do. She insisted upon speaking with straightforward honesty rather than cloaking her responses with vague generalities designed to offend as few people as possible, a trait her own advisers as well as her opponent’s people considered a weakness until, astonishingly, she began gaining in the polls. By October she had closed the gap to single digits, but while her party leadership was pleased that her inexplicable rise had forced the Republican party to invest money into a campaign that a few months earlier was considered a sure thing, they still expected her to lose.

  Late at night on the second Tuesday in November, Gwen won the election by two percent of the vote. Pollsters declared that the incumbent had been undone by complacency: He had not campaigned vigorously because he had not faced a serious challenge since his first campaign and had never perceived Gwen Sullivan as a serious threat. The national party leadership had not pumped additional money into his campaign in the final days because a loss in the twenty-second district was inconceivable and they couldn’t afford to divert funds from closer, more urgent races. Most significant of all, his loyal supporters had believed his confident predictions of certain victory and had stayed home in droves. If Gwen had challenged her opponent in a presidential election year when voter turnout was higher, she might not have stood a chance, but her message resonated with enough new and disgruntled voters to put her over the top.

  For a while, bemused pundits asked themselves how a single-mother, liberal college professor who advocated gun control and green energy could have unseated a longtime incumbent backed by the GOP, NRA, and FOX in rural central Pennsylvania. For a while, they floated theories about idealistic young voters and tossed around new buzzwords like “pizza dad
s” and “minivan moms.” But eventually they found something else to talk about, and Gwen went to Washington and got to work.

  She kept her promises, too, and two years later she won reelection by a five-point margin, and by twice that two years later, until she began to joke that she had become the longtime incumbent she had once unseated. Her friends assured her she resembled him only in longevity. She never took her position for granted, never pretended to believe anything she didn’t in order to win a vote or a donation. When she finally retired from Congress after five successful terms, having achieved most of the goals she had set to accomplish so many years before, Waterford College begged her to return to the faculty. She missed academic life, so she accepted their offer and taught for one last, celebratory year before retiring for good. After spending the summer at Elm Creek Manor—for the first time, enjoying camp as a quilter and artist in residence rather than as a teacher—she moved out to Palo Alto to be closer to Summer, her son-in-law, and her grandchildren. There, though ostensibly retired, she wrote her memoirs and several children’s books about American political history. She had left public office, she often declared, but she wasn’t going to settle for being a spectator on the sidelines ever again.

  But her days of door-to-door campaigning were over, not because she didn’t care about causes, but because her knees weren’t up to the task. Sarah watched as Gwen rose stiffly from her chair, leaning heavily on her cane. “I’ll help Anna and Gina in the kitchen,” she said, “but I’ll take a few unsigned quilt blocks and pens with me. If anyone comes by for a snack, I’ll hit them up for a signature.”

  “Thanks, Gwen,” said Sarah.

  “I’ll join you, Mom,” said Summer, bounding up from her seat on the armrest.

  As the mother and daughter left the library, Sarah distributed unsigned Memory Album blocks and pens to the rest of her friends and reminded them which guests they still needed to call upon. This time luck was with them, and by the time Anna and Gina called everyone for dinner, for the first time Sarah hid more signed blocks than unsigned in the desk drawer.

  Supper was another culinary triumph spent in the warm company of cheerful, loving friends and family. Sarah’s heart swelled with happiness as she watched Caroline and Leo together, so joyful, so perfectly at ease, so very much in love. Leo would be good to her daughter, she realized, and Caroline would never take him for granted. For a moment, she forgot the stress of wedding preparations and simply watched her daughter and loved her, and felt her misgivings ebbing away. They were not too young. They knew their hearts and minds, and surely Caroline, at least, had no illusions that the love they felt that day would endure through the years without attentive care.

  A sense of reassurance and peace fell upon her, easing her troubled heart. Later that night, for the first time in weeks she drifted off to sleep without running through her mental to-do list and working herself into such a state of worry that she couldn’t justify going to sleep until she crossed off one more item.

  The moon had set and Matt was snoring softly beside her when she woke, disoriented, to the sound of footfalls and muffled laughter in the hall. Climbing out of bed and making her way carefully in the darkness, she opened the bedroom door to find James, Leo, and the other men of the bridal party in the hallway stealing toward the staircase, their shoes in their hands. She blinked at them dumbly for a moment, and then someone muttered, “Run!”

  Choking on laughter, they made haste for the stairs, James bringing up the rear.

  “James,” she called in a stage whisper, stepping into the hallway and shutting the door behind her. “James, don’t you dare pretend you don’t hear me.”

  Reluctantly, James slowed to a walk as the other young men disappeared down the staircase.

  “What is going on?” Sarah asked, striding toward him. “Why aren’t you boys in bed?”

  James looked pained, as if he were mulling over the wisdom of telling her the truth. “We’re going out.”

  “Going out? At this hour? Where?”

  He held up his hands in a placating gesture. “We aren’t doing anything stupid. We’re just going downtown for a night out with the guys.”

  Her suspicions soared. “This is it, isn’t it? The bachelor party.”

  “Yes, Mom, it’s a bachelor party.” He glanced over his shoulder, but the other young men had long since departed. “And if you keep me here to debate it, they’re going to leave without me, and not only am I the most responsible of the crew, I’m also the designated driver.” He folded his arms across his chest and regarded her, and after a moment, she realized he was unconsciously imitating her own posture. “Well?”

  She shoved her hands into the pockets of her nightgown. “Go ahead,” she whispered. “Keep them out of trouble! Especially Leo.” When he nodded and turned to go, she caught him by the arm. “And no strip clubs.”

  “He’s marrying my sister,” James exclaimed, a little too loudly. “Do you really think I’d let him do anything that would upset her?”

  Sarah shook her head. No, of course he wouldn’t. She released his arm, and he gave her a quick kiss on the cheek before hurrying off after the other young men. She returned to her room, unsettled and wide awake, and climbed carefully into bed to avoid waking Matt. James was the most trustworthy person she knew. If he said they weren’t going to do anything stupid, he meant it. Besides, he was twenty-five, and Leo and most of the groomsmen were a few years older. If they were intent upon a night of wild abandon, there was very little she could do to prevent it.

  She resisted the urge to sit in the kitchen nursing a cup of herbal tea and watching through the window until she saw headlights crossing the bridge over Elm Creek, as she had during the twins’ high school years whenever they were out late. Somehow she managed to fall asleep, but in the morning, worry overcame fatigue and shook her awake early. Matt slumbered on, oblivious to the night’s adventures, so she climbed gingerly from bed to shower and dress. He stirred as she left the room, and mumbled something about the orchards, but when he rolled onto his side and sank back into sleep, she closed the door without a sound.

  Downstairs, she peered out the back door, relieved to see all the vehicles present and accounted for. She put on a pot of coffee and glanced at Anna’s meal planner notebook lying open on the counter, wondering if she should start breakfast and deciding that she could at least wash apples and peel oranges for the fruit salad. Anna and Gina soon arrived, and as the mother and daughter cheerfully accepted her offer to help, Sarah resisted the urge to ask Gina if she knew where the young men had gone the night before, and what time they had returned.

  She expected, and feared, that they would lie abed all morning and creep downstairs at noon, bleary-eyed and clutching their pounding skulls, desperate for a hangover remedy. To her surprise, the young men showed up for breakfast not much later than usual, joking and grinning and hungry for waffles and scrambled eggs. Later, after the dishes had been cleared away, Sarah caught James lacing up his running shoes on the back stairs and dragged the story out of him. The young men had spent a few hours at the Wolves’ Den, a campus bar whose name referred to the Waterford College mascot rather than the sort of wild bacchanalia one might seek for a bachelor party. They shot some pool, drank a few beers, talked, and utterly destroyed a group of frat boys in a Vertex soccer match on the big screen. “Knowing the boss of the guy who wrote the app gave us something of an edge,” James said, grinning. “Michael adds cheat codes not even his programmers know about until the players talk them up online.”

  “So no one got trashed.”

  He stifled a laugh. “No one’s gotten ‘trashed’ in fifteen years, Mom.”

  “You know what I mean.” Sarah tried to remember the word the kids used. “No one got blonked.”

  He put his hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eye. “No one got blonked,” he assured her, “and if they had, I would have gotten them home safely. You know you can trust me.”

  “I trust you,
” she said. “And I hope you trust me.”

  “Of course I do,” he said, surprised.

  “Then tell me, what’s really going on with you and Gina?”

  He released her shoulders and inched a step backward, suddenly wary. “Why? What have you heard?”

  “Nothing, which is why I’m asking you.”

  He glanced at his watch. “Sorry, Mom. No time to talk. I have to go now or I won’t be back in time for . . . stuff. Wedding stuff.” With a wave, he darted off at a pace more suitable for a sprint than a cross-country run.

  “You can’t evade the question forever,” she called after him as he raced over the bridge. Sighing, she went back inside, narrowly avoiding a collision with Caroline in the back foyer.

  “Anna said I’d find you outside,” said Caroline, relieved. “Can you help me, Mom?”

  “Sure, honey. What is it?”

  Caroline took her by the arm and led her down the west wing toward the front foyer. “I’m having trouble finding something to wear tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” said Sarah, eyeing her daughter curiously as Caroline led the way up the grand oak staircase. “This is just a suggestion, but why not wear that beautiful wedding gown you picked out a few months ago?”

  Caroline managed a laugh. “I’m definitely wearing the gown, but I need a few things to wear with it or carry. Something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.”

  “ ‘And a silver sixpence in her shoe,’ ” Sarah completed the Victorian rhyme. “Sweetheart, you don’t have to follow that tradition. It’s meant to bring good luck, but you’re not superstitious and I know you can’t really be worried about warding off evil spirits.”

  “Of course not, but I’d like to follow the tradition anyway. Didn’t you?”

  Sarah had, in fact. Brides wore or carried something old to represent their families and continuity with the past, and so Sarah had carried a beautiful lace handkerchief her grandmother had given her. Her wedding gown had counted as something new, a symbol of hope for a bright future, success, optimism, and the new union she and Matt would create together. A bride borrowed something to remind her that she would be able to rely on friends and family throughout her married life, and accordingly, Sarah had borrowed a rhinestone tiara from her best friend, had attached a fingertip veil and white silk roses, and had worn it as her headpiece. The baby blue lace trim on her garter had sufficed for something blue, which represented purity, faithfulness, and loyalty.