Elm Creek Quilts [12] The Winding Ways Quilt

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  When Bonnie was old enough, Grandma Lucy occasionally allowed her to attend when the Stitch Witches met at her house. Bonnie’s interest in learning to quilt charmed the older ladies, and as she struggled to sew together squares for her first top, a Trip Around the World, each offered her advice, some of it contradictory.

  Sometimes, if one of their circle needed to finish a quilt quickly, the Stitch Witches would put aside their individual projects and set up a quilt frame in Grandma Lucy’s living room. Pulling up chairs around it, they would sew the three layers together—patchwork top, batting, and backing—with deft and meticulous stitches. Bonnie would sit on the floor beneath the frame, the quilt a canopy over her head, and watch the darting needles pierce the layers and wrinkled, blue-veined hands push them back through to the top. Bonnie was responsible for picking up dropped thimbles and spools of thread, but her duties were so light that sometimes the Stitch Witches forgot she was there and their talk turned to matters usually not discussed in front of children. Holding very still, barely breathing lest she remind them of her presence, Bonnie listened wide-eyed to laments about husbands straying, daughters dating unsuitable men, sons struggling to find work or finish school, or siblings arguing over inheritances. In later years, the details of the individual dramas faded from her memory, but she never forgot how each woman seemed to feel her burden lightened when shared with her friends.

  The Stitch Witches relied upon that unconditional acceptance and support even more as the years passed. Time, which initially allowed their friendship to ripen and mellow, eventually began to exact its toll upon them. One of Grandma’s girlhood chums was the first of the Stitch Witches to pass away, unexpectedly and far too soon, from a heart attack when she was only sixty. The shock of their loss cast a shadow over the circle of quilters, and although no one said so in Bonnie’s hearing, she sensed beneath their visible grief their reluctant acceptance that this would be only the first of many partings.

  Then Grandpa Al died, and the Stitch Witches were there to console Grandma Lucy, as she later consoled those who followed her into widowhood. Gradually, sadly, their numbers diminished as old friends retired and moved away, or succumbed to illnesses, or became homebound. Even though Bonnie was too involved with her own circle of friends in her teenage years to attend quilting bees, she often looked back wistfully upon those days, her heart aching for her grandmother, who grieved deeply for every lost friend. She resolved to do all she could to fill the void when the last of Grandma Lucy’s circle of friends left her. For it was inconceivable that vibrant, clever, indomitable Grandma Lucy would not somehow, miraculously, escape the fate that awaited her aging friends. It was true that she wore bifocals now and did not bound up the attic stairs the way she used to, but Bonnie could not imagine a world where her grandmother was not holding court in her two-bedroom brick bungalow with the attic full of marvels.

  The first signs were easy to ignore. Everyone misplaced car keys sometimes or forgot what errand had compelled them to enter a room. Bonnie misplaced her dorm room key so often that her freshman-year roommate resigned herself to leaving their door unlocked for most of the fall semester. Bonnie’s own parents sometimes called her by her sister’s name, so it was no big deal when Grandma Lucy called her by her mother’s name when Bonnie phoned to chat.

  Then, on a rare weekday visit home from Penn State, Bonnie and her family had just finished dinner at Grandma Lucy’s house when the remaining Stitch Witches arrived for their weekly meeting. Flustered, Grandma Lucy invited them to sit and offered them dessert, and she teasingly scolded them for changing the date without telling her. Her friends apologized and departed, reluctant to interrupt a family dinner even though everyone assured them they were welcome. Later, as she helped clear the table, Bonnie surreptitiously studied the calendar hanging inside the pantry door. The Stitch Witches’ meeting was clearly marked for seven o’clock that evening.

  From that day forward, her grandmother’s lapses in memory became more frequent and bewildering. Grandma Lucy sounded puzzled when Bonnie called her on Sunday afternoons, and Bonnie often had to remind her that she couldn’t come to dinner because she was more than two hundred miles away at school. “Of course,” her grandmother said one afternoon in early February. “And how are your classes?”

  “They’re fine,” Bonnie replied. “My lowest grade is in calculus, but that’s no surprise. I’m supposed to declare a major by the end of the year, but I still can’t decide between business and the liberal arts. History and art are much more compelling, but I’ll have an easier time finding a job after graduation if I take a business degree. What do you think I should do?”

  “Heavens, Bonnie, you’re at college, not trade school. Seize the opportunity to expand your horizons. Education isn’t just a means to an end; the journey itself is what truly matters. A liberal arts degree will show employers that you’re intelligent, hardworking, and an able learner. Let them worry about job training after they’ve hired you.”

  Bonnie laughed. “You sound just like my resident assistant. She’s a philosophy major.”

  “Obviously a person of great wisdom. While we’re on the subject, how are your classes going?”

  “They’re fine,” said Bonnie, surprised. Apparently she hadn’t provided enough detail to satisfy her grandmother. “Like I said, my calculus grade isn’t that great, but I’m still passing, and I should be able to bring it up with a good score on the final.”

  “I’m sure you’ll do fine, dearie. Are those bureaucrats in the administration pressuring you to choose a major yet?”

  Bonnie hesitated, wrapping the phone cord around her finger. “I have to decide by the end of the semester.”

  “Are you leaning toward anything in particular? You have to follow where your heart leads, you know. Study something you enjoy. Education shouldn’t just be a means to an end.”

  Bonnie felt a sudden, deep chill in the pit of her stomach. “The journey itself is what matters.”

  “Precisely,” declared Grandma Lucy, triumphant. A long pause followed. “Are you coming to dinner Sunday? I thought I’d make pork roast. That’s your favorite.”

  Pork roast was Bonnie’s mother’s favorite; Bonnie didn’t care for it. “No,” said Bonnie, with a catch in her throat. “I can’t make it.”

  As soon as Bonnie got off the phone with Grandma Lucy, she phoned her mother. After telling her about the unsettling conversation, she listened, numb, as her mother’s confession spilled forth: her own repetitive conversations with Grandma Lucy, lost items discovered later in bizarre places, unexpected outbursts of anger, and one frightening occasion when Grandma Lucy had driven to meet a friend for lunch only to show up more than two hours later at the public library, confused and asking for Grandpa Al.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” was all Bonnie could say as her mother choked out sobs on the other end of the line.

  No one wanted Bonnie to worry, came the reply. She was doing so well at school and they were so proud of her. They didn’t want to upset her so much that her grades would suffer. They meant to tell her everything when she came home for summer vacation. Not that she had any reason to worry, even now. Grandma Lucy was under a doctor’s care and Bonnie’s parents were hopeful that she would be on the mend soon.

  But by the time spring semester ended and Bonnie returned to Erie, Grandma Lucy had taken a drastic turn for the worse. Instead of providing cures or treatments, her doctor warned Bonnie’s parents that Grandma Lucy’s symptoms were likely to worsen over time. Instead of remedies, he offered brochures for nursing homes where she could be looked after properly so that she did not hurt herself or someone else.

  “I won’t put my mother in a home,” Bonnie’s mother said, voice trembling, as she recounted the events of Grandma Lucy’s most recent examination. Bonnie’s father reached across the dinner table and took her hand, while Bonnie and Ellie looked on, helpless.

  Bonnie had just begun her junior year when her parents decided the time
had come to sell Grandma Lucy’s house and have her move in with them. Although Grandma Lucy was adamantly against the plan, Bonnie’s parents moved Bonnie’s twin bed into Ellie’s room and arranged Grandma’s furniture in Bonnie’s old room. When Bonnie heard how her grandmother had cried and argued on her last night in her beloved home, she felt guiltily, horribly relieved to have missed the ordeal and to have played no part in Grandma Lucy’s traumatic loss.

  The closing date for the brick bungalow was scheduled for the first Thursday of December, so Bonnie, Ellie, and their mother spent Thanksgiving vacation clearing Grandma Lucy’s attic of its treasures. They kept all of Grandma Lucy’s quilts as well as her old sewing machine, which she asked for almost daily, and which would fit between the bed and the window in her new room. Their mother could not part with the family photographs, including the large, hand-colored portrait of Grandma Lucy’s mother in its ornate frame and convex glass. After those obvious items were carried downstairs to be loaded into the car at the end of the day, Bonnie, Ellie, and her mother gazed around the cluttered attic, hardly knowing where to continue.

  The girls wanted to save everything. Every vintage garment, every worn wooden toy, every faded quilt preserved a priceless childhood memory. Their mother, determined to prune ruthlessly, reminded them that they simply did not have room for anything but the most important family heirlooms. “I can’t decide what’s most important today,” Ellie protested. “I don’t even remember everything that’s up here.”

  “Once we give something away, it’s gone,” Bonnie added, feeling tears threatening. “It’s better to keep everything and sort it out later, just in case.”

  “When is ‘later’?” their mother replied. “This attic has to be cleared out before our closing date, and you girls are going back to school on Monday.” But when her daughters pleaded, she relented, saying, “If you can find a place for it in your own room, you may keep it.”

  Even though the sisters’ things were divided between home and school, they had little space in their shared bedroom for anything but their own clothes and belongings. After careful consideration, they packed a steamer trunk with their favorite vintage garments, occasionally pausing to try on a dress or a pair of shoes and reminisce about playing dress-up and make-believe. Their mother rewarded them with laughter, which too soon dissolved into tears. In a moment the three women were embracing, weeping, mourning the vibrant woman they loved who was lost but not yet gone.

  Bonnie and Ellie were safely back at school the day their parents removed the last of Grandma Lucy’s possessions from the small brick bungalow where she had lived since marrying Grandpa Al. Bonnie could not have borne seeing the empty house, hollow and lonely, with every trace of her grandparents swept away. Bonnie did not care what curtains the new owners hung in the windows or what furniture they set out on the porch, but she hoped they would tend Grandpa Al’s prize roses as attentively as Grandma Lucy had. The bungalow was just another house now, the attic just another attic. Its magic had left with Grandma Lucy.

  After the exhausting whirlwind of finals, Bonnie returned home to a family transformed. The twin burdens of work and caregiving had drained her mother of her liveliness, adding lines to her face and gray to her hair. Bonnie’s father, frustrated and powerless, did his best to comfort his wife and manage the family finances, stretched thin by the demands of two college tuitions and medical bills. When Bonnie offered to look out for Grandma Lucy while she was home from school to give her mother a break, the sheer relief and gratitude in her mother’s eyes dismayed her. Her parents never complained over the phone, but offered the straightforward facts about Grandma Lucy’s deteriorating condition with no embellishments, such as how they felt or what they feared. Bonnie had had no idea things were so bad at home.

  The truth she admitted only to herself was that part of her had not wanted to know. She did not want to believe that anything at home had changed, that the Grandma Lucy she had adored all her life would not be waiting for her, ready to beckon her upstairs to explore the attic for an as yet undiscovered treasure. Bonnie was happy at Penn State, enjoying her classes and campus life, going out with her steady boyfriend, and working part-time at the Creamery. It was a relief to know that that life was waiting for her back at school. But until she returned for the start of the spring semester, she was determined to alleviate her parents’ burdens as best she could.

  Bonnie soon learned that Grandma Lucy had to be cajoled into leaving her bedroom, where the familiar furniture seemed to comfort her. Even so, when Bonnie was able to convince her grandmother to come downstairs to the kitchen for a game of cards or a cup of tea, she brightened and resumed some of her old spirit. Bonnie listened to each retold story, laughing anew at Grandma Lucy’s witticisms even if she had told the same joke only moments before. She dutifully answered her grandmother’s repeated questions about school and about her friends. The Grandma Lucy she had always adored was still in there somewhere, she told herself, hidden in a fog of confusion. If Bonnie were patient, the air would clear and Grandma Lucy would appear again. This was what she privately believed, though sometimes her grandmother would look about in confusion and ask for Grandpa Al, or slam her fist on the table and insist that Bonnie take her home right that minute, or stare gloomily out the windows and shake her head vehemently when Bonnie or Ellie offered to drive her to the library or to pay a call on one of the Stitch Witches.

  The four other remaining members of the quilters’ circle still met regularly, though now only monthly. They never failed to invite Grandma Lucy, but to Bonnie’s astonishment, her grandmother had apparently lost all interest in attending. Occasionally a Stitch Witch would drop by with a pie or a loaf of banana bread and sit with Grandma Lucy for a while, but when Bonnie listened in, she knew from her grandmother’s voice that she believed she was merely chatting pleasantly with a friendly stranger. If even those cherished old friendships had faded from her memory, how much longer could Bonnie hope to remain?

  Though Grandma Lucy had drifted away from her circle of quilters, she still pieced blocks by hand. On a particularly good day, she described for Bonnie the lovely Glorified Nine-Patch quilt she intended to make as Bonnie’s bridal quilt. “I know I’m starting early but I don’t want to rush at the end,” Grandma Lucy explained, grinning mischievously. “Do you have a boyfriend yet?”

  “Yes,” said Bonnie, taking from her purse the photo her grandmother had seen dozens of times. “His name is Craig Markham. Here we are at Beaver Stadium during the homecoming game last year.”

  As she always did, Grandma Lucy studied the photo, frowning slightly. “Well, he’s handsome enough, but when you finally settle down, choose someone with kind eyes, like your grandfather.”

  Bonnie promised to do so. She excused her grandmother’s implied criticism because she wasn’t exactly sure what “kind eyes” looked like and why her grandmother apparently thought Craig lacked them. Besides, on both occasions when Grandma Lucy had met Craig, she had found him charming. He could be when he wanted to. Craig always knew what other people wanted to hear, and if he was in a good mood, he said it. Sometimes he said the exact opposite of what people wanted and expected, but he had never been contrary with Bonnie. For her, he never failed to be sweet and generous with compliments, which proved how much he loved her.

  “I’ll have this quilt done before you meet Mr. Right,” teased Grandma Lucy, pinning together two pieces of fabric along the line Bonnie had traced around a template on the wrong side of the fabric. Bonnie threaded her needles for her, too, but Grandma Lucy did all the sewing on her own, as if her fingers had preserved the memory of the stitches when so much else had been forgotten.

  In January, Bonnie returned to college feeling as if she had given her overworked parents a respite and her grandmother solace, despite her confusion and increasing isolation.

  The months passed, given over to lectures, papers, and exams, to dances and dates, to study breaks with her roommates, and long, idle musings ab
out their futures in the real world after graduation, now little more than a year away. Classes, Craig, and her part-time job kept Bonnie on campus except for a spring break trip to Daytona Beach, so she did not return home until the second week in May. Time had worn smooth the edges of her worry, so she failed to consider how much more of her grandmother might be gone when they next met.

  At the end of the semester, Bonnie and Ellie’s father drove to State College to bring them home. Though they already missed their college friends and freedom, the prospect of three months with no classes had the sisters planning beach trips and get-togethers with high school friends—until the sleep deprivation of finals week caught up with them a half hour into the long drive. For the rest of the trip home they did little more than doze, fiddle with the radio, or chat drowsily about taking a week or two off before looking for summer jobs. They had almost reached the exit to Erie when Bonnie thought to ask their father what awaited them at home. When he sighed and flexed his hands around the steering wheel, Bonnie knew that he had dreaded the question. Even before he spoke, she knew that Grandma Lucy would not recognize them when they walked through the front door.

  Bonnie knew her grandmother couldn’t help it. She knew that. And yet it wrenched her heart anew each time Grandma Lucy called her by a long-lost friend’s name or, worse yet, eyed her suspiciously and demanded to know what Bonnie was doing in her room. She had to be watched almost continuously now. In April she had set a kitchen towel on fire while making herself a cup of tea—a detail Bonnie’s parents had omitted from their phone conversations, once again to avoid worrying her. Bonnie’s mother had cut back her work hours and enlisted a neighbor to check in on Grandma Lucy during the day. “Mr. Carew made it very clear that he expects me to come back full-time soon,” Bonnie’s mother told her daughters over dinner on their first evening home. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but I hoped you girls would look out for your grandmother while you’re home for the summer. I need to go back to work before I lose my job and I hate imposing on the neighbors. It’s not fair to you girls, but…” Their mother gestured helplessly. “I’ll pay you whatever you would have earned taking a summer job.”