An Elm Creek Quilts Sampler (119 page)

“I wonder what happened to Grace,” Megan said. “Did she know where and when to meet?”

“I sent her the same email I sent you,” Donna said, scanning the crowd.

Vinnie shrugged and said, “There are always delays at that airport. She might be late, but she’ll be here.”

Their conversation broke off as they watched the quilters passing their way to and from the main entrance to the quilt show. Suddenly Donna pointed and cried, “Look who’s here!”

Vinnie expected to see Grace, but instead discovered none other than Sylvia Compson. She was exiting the quilt show with a kind-looking man carrying a shopping bag in each hand. “Sylvia,” Vinnie cried out. “Yoo hoo! Come say hello!”

She had to shout a second time before Sylvia turned their way, but when her eyes met Vinnie’s, she smiled and waved. She and the man made their way across the busy lobby to the Cross-Country Quilters. “My goodness,” Sylvia said, giving Vinnie a warm hug. “Vinnie Burkholder. Of all the people to run into.”

“I should have known I’d see you here.” Vinnie laughed, then indicated her companions. “I don’t know if you remember these two from quilt camp. They were first-timers.”

Vinnie reintroduced Megan and Donna, and in turn, Sylvia introduced them to the man, a friend from Waterford named Andrew. Then she gave them a quizzical frown and said, “Why are you three standing around in the lobby? Are you bored with the quilt show already, or are you waiting for a bus?”

“We’re waiting for a friend of ours,” Donna said. “Grace Daniels. She was at camp with us.”

“Oh, yes, I know Grace,” Sylvia said. “I haven’t seen her yet today, but she should be around here someplace. She was at the banquet last night.”

The Cross-Country Quilters exchanged a look. “She was here last night?” Megan asked. “We thought she wasn’t coming in until today.”

Sylvia shook her head, puzzled. “No, she’s here. We sat together at supper.” Suddenly her expression brightened. “There she is now. Grace!”

Vinnie saw her then, too, and she added her voice to Sylvia’s. When Grace looked around to see who was shouting her name, Sylvia and the Cross-Country Quilters waved wildly. She spotted them through the crowd, and then, to Vinnie’s astonishment, she froze. An indecipherable expression came over her face, and a heartbeat later, she had spun around and disappeared into the crowd.

Vinnie was too astounded to do anything but stare. “What on earth?” she finally managed to say.

Her friends seemed equally dumbstruck. “That was Grace, wasn’t it?” Megan said. “I mean, there were a lot of people walking between us, and she was on the other side of the room—”

“No, that was Grace, all right,” Sylvia said.

“Maybe she didn’t recognize us,” Donna said.

“I don’t believe that for a minute,” Vinnie declared. “She looked right at us.”

“And even if she didn’t remember you three, she would certainly remember me,” Sylvia said. “We’ve been friends for fifteen years.”

Vinnie didn’t know what to think. One glance at Megan and Donna told her they were equally at a loss.

“Well,” Vinnie eventually said, “I guess it’s just us three, then.”

Megan and Donna only nodded in reply.

They bid Sylvia and Andrew good-bye and went inside the conference center to enjoy the quilt show, as much as they could enjoy anything knowing that one of their friends hadn’t shown up lest she jeopardize her career and the other had fled the building rather than speak to them.

Shaking, Grace walked as rapidly as she could away from the convention center, which was slow indeed, encumbered as she was by the two metal crutches she now needed to walk more than a few steps. She had no idea where she was headed, but the urgency to get away compelled her forward. She had waited an hour. That should have been long enough. They should have given up on her and left the lobby, allowing her to sneak upstairs to her room undetected. Now what was she going to do?

She tired too easily to go far, so she went to the Museum of the American Quilter’s Society, which to her relief retained its air of contemplative serenity despite the excitement surrounding the quilt show. She found an unoccupied bench in front of one of the older exhibits and sat down, pretending to study the work in front of her, but in truth, resting and trying to sort out her thoughts. Had they seen her crutches? Then she had a more disturbing thought: Had they pursued her, but stopped when they saw her crutches? That was exactly what she had feared—and exactly what Justine insisted would never happen, not with true friends. “You shouldn’t be ashamed of the tools that help you to live your life,” Justine had admonished her, but Grace had been too exhausted by similar arguments to explain. She wasn’t ashamed of the crutches, nor was she ashamed of strangers’ seeing her use them. As an African-American woman in a white world, she was used to sidelong glances from ignorant people; it mattered little whether they came because she was black or because she looked disabled. What she could not bear was the uncomfortable reactions of friends and acquaintances. At first even her own family had pretended to ignore the wheelchair, and the crutches in their turn until they got used to them, but at least her family soon resumed treating her as they always had. She could not say the same for her colleagues at the museum. Some ignored the crutches and spoke to her loudly, with false cheer in their voices; others looked askance at the crutches and avoided talking to her at all; most humiliating were those who assumed her mind was as weakened as her body, and either no longer entrusted important tasks to her or explained the obvious in slow voices as if she were a child.

And then there was Gabriel, who phoned at least twice a week, offering to pick up her groceries or run her errands or stop by to see if anything around the loft needed to be fixed. For her part, Justine seemed to have forgotten that Grace was the mother and she the child; she checked in every day to see what Grace was doing, where she was going that day, what she was eating, and how often she rested.

How would the Cross-Country Quilters have reacted? Grace couldn’t say for certain, but judging by the reactions of her other friends, they would respond with nervousness, the sort of transparent phony encouragement one saw in cheerleaders for the losing team, or pity. Of the three, Grace despised pity the most.

She stayed in the museum for another hour, long enough for the Cross-Country Quilters to have given up waiting for her to return, enough for them to be well into their tour of the quilt show. Only then did she return to the Executive Inn, and she made sure her friends were nowhere in sight before she rode the elevator to her room.

She had planned to attend a dinner lecture that evening, but instead she ordered room service and read a book until it was time for bed. Saturday morning she had breakfast delivered, and then she hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the door and spent the entire day alone, watching a local cable station’s continuous broadcast of quilt show highlights and wishing she had never left home.

Sunday morning she ventured out of her room, hoping the Cross-Country Quilters had not changed their travel plans. According to their last emails, Vinnie’s tour bus had departed the previous evening, Megan intended to drive home right after breakfast, and Donna’s flight was due to take off at any moment. Since she didn’t have to be at the airport until the afternoon, she could enjoy a few hours of the last day of the quilt show without worrying about running into them.

The crowds had dramatically diminished compared to Friday and Saturday, and Grace found that she was now able to get around the convention center rather easily. She viewed half of the quilts before having a quiet brunch of muffins and grapefruit in the convention center restaurant. She then browsed through the merchants’ mall, which still displayed an impressive array of wares despite having had most of their stock depleted over the previous three days. Grace saw several items she would have liked to purchase, but she did not want to attempt maneuvering with the crutches while toting a shopping bag. Next time she would plan for that, but then again, next year her condition might necessitate using the chair instead of the crutches, or she might not be able to come at all.

At the thought, she abruptly left the merchants’ mall with its reminders of her limitations and returned to the quilt show, where she tried to lose herself in the beauty of the quilts. She found her own, a quilt she had completed three years before, the last full-size project she had made and perhaps would ever make. With machine appliqué and silk ribbon embroidery she had created a portrait of Harriet Tubman encircled by folk-art motifs symbolizing events from her life. A second-place ribbon hung beside the quilt, and for a moment it brought her a small thrill of joy, which quickly faded when a voice in the back of her mind whispered that it could be the last award of her career.

“Well, my goodness,” came a voice from behind her. “Second place. I would have given it first, myself, but no one asked me.”

Grace recognized the voice, and didn’t turn around. “Hello, Sylvia.”

“Hello yourself.” Sylvia walked around her, studying the crutches, looking at Grace from beneath raised brows. “Is this some type of fashion statement, or do you actually need those contraptions?”

Grace’s grip tightened on the handles. “I need them.”

“I see.” Sylvia nodded thoughtfully. “I suppose this is why you took off so suddenly the other day?”

Grace could only manage a nod.

“I must say you can move along quite quickly on them. I don’t think I could have caught up with you at my sprinting pace. Granted, my sprinting pace isn’t what it used to be.”

Grace took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Aren’t you going to ask me why I need them?”

“I assumed you need them to walk.”

“Well, yes, but …” Sylvia’s dry matter-of-factness flustered her. “But don’t you wonder why?”

“Of course I do. I imagine it must be something serious if you’d go to so much trouble to conceal it from your friends. I also assume it must have been afflicting you for some time, including when you visited Elm Creek Manor, which would account for your odd behavior there. On the other hand, I also realize it’s none of my business, and if you wanted me to know, you’d tell me.”

“I have MS,” Grace heard herself say.

Sylvia’s expression became grave. “Oh, dear. Grace, I’m so sorry.”

Grace felt tears spring into her eyes. “Don’t pity me. I hate pity.”

“Grace, dear, it’s not pity I feel.” Sylvia’s voice was warm with compassion, and she placed a hand on Grace’s shoulder. “Let’s find somewhere to sit down, shall we?”

Sylvia nodded toward a bench several yards away, and as they made their way to it, Grace composed herself. Grace marveled at how easily the truth had slipped from her when she had tried so hard for so long to conceal it. “Are you angry that I didn’t tell you in August?” she asked as they sat down.

“Of course not. You’re under no obligation to share your secrets with the world, or even with your friends.” Sylvia looked at her appraisingly. “I do wonder how it’s been for you, though, keeping this particular secret, having no one to talk to about it.”

“It’s been awful,” Grace blurted out. “It’s bad enough knowing I have this disease, knowing its prognosis, but seeing how other people react to me, how they change—sometimes I think that’s worse.”

“People deal with illness and disability in odd ways sometimes,” Sylvia remarked. “After I had my stroke, Sarah—she’s the young woman who runs Elm Creek Quilts—she’s like a daughter to me, but she was so shaken up that she couldn’t even visit me in the hospital. She avoided me after I returned home to recuperate, too.”

“I don’t want people to treat me any differently than they did before.”

“Are you different?”

Grace’s instinct was to say no, but Sylvia’s bluntness forced her to think before responding. “Yes,” she said, realizing that truth for the first time. “I have a sense of my own mortality. I have limitations I didn’t have before. I see the world differently; I see other people differently. I’d be lying if I said my MS has left me unchanged.”

“People probably see those changes in you, and they need time to get to know you as you are now.”

“No, that’s not it,” Grace shot back. “They see the crutches; they see the wheelchair. They see the tremors and the clumsiness. They don’t see Grace adjusting to a disease; they see the disease.”

“I’m sure some of them do exactly that,” Sylvia admitted. “But others would not. It seems unfair not to let them show you. It seems wrong to deny yourself the comfort their friendship could bring you.” Sylvia paused. “Especially since, as I’m guessing, your quilting brings you little comfort these days. Your MS is the root of your quilter’s block, isn’t it?”

“It
is
my quilter’s block,” Grace said bitterly. “It’s stolen my creativity along with everything else.”

“A disease can’t take your art from you unless you let it.”

“You don’t understand. If you could see my studio, you’d find it littered with dozens of sketches, as shaky as if my grandson had drawn them. You’d see appliqués cut awkwardly and sewn with haphazard stitches.” She held out her hands, the hands that had once created so much beauty and now betrayed her every time she held pen or needle. “My mind knows what to do—how to draw, how to cut, how to sew—but my hands can’t do it.”