A Quilter's Holiday: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel Page 11

  Jeremy rolled his eyes. “Great. That explains a lot. I might have to explain the principle of giving to the needy a little more clearly to him.”

  “Be careful. He’s in great shape from all that biking and I don’t think he’s very nice.”

  “Someone has to stand up to bullies or they’ll take over the world. Anyway, the cartons are due to be collected tomorrow and I don’t want to endure the shame of knowing we’re the only building on College Avenue that turned in only—” gesturing to the meager contents of the carton, he continued, “a few boxes of pasta, a canister of raisins, and a package of granola bars.”

  “That would be embarrassing,” Anna agreed, smiling. “So you’ve taken it upon yourself to collect door to door?”

  “Exactly, and after what you’ve told me, I’m also appointing myself Guardian of the Carton, which means I’ll keep it in my apartment and leave a note telling the Key Club where they can pick it up.”

  “That’s very decent of you.”

  He gave her a self-deprecating shrug. “Anyone could have done it. I just thought of it first. And, when I thought of who might have food to give away, I naturally thought of you.”

  Her heart sank. Of course he had naturally thought of her, the plump girl, because big girls always had food stashed away and ought to be all too happy to have someone carry it off before they gorged themselves. Flustered, she smiled, beckoned him inside, and had almost persuaded herself to just let the innocent insult go when she heard herself say, “Why did you think of me?”

  “Because you’re always bringing home bags full of organic produce from the natural foods market way over on Campus Drive rather than shopping at the convenience store across the street like almost everyone else around here.” He spotted the table in her tiny kitchenette and set the carton upon it. “Also, you told me you’re a chef for College Food Services, so you probably have a well-stocked pantry with extra staples in reserve. And lastly, anyone nice enough to sign for as many packages for an across-the-hall neighbor as you have without demanding a tip is surely generous enough to share some of those extra staples with the less fortunate.”

  She hoped she wasn’t blushing. “I bet you say that to all your neighbors you beg food from.”

  “No, just you.” He raised his eyebrows, hopeful. “So, what do you say?”

  So charmed was she by his altruism and humor that she was inclined to give him as much of her pantry as he could carry away, but instead she settled for giving him two boxes of pasta, a canister of oats, and some other staples of which, as he had guessed, she had extras. Jeremy seemed alternately fascinated and amused by the more exotic items on her shelves, and after she found herself passionately defending her expensive imported extra virgin olive oil and Belgian dark chocolate, he began opening various cupboards, pulling out three items at random, and asking her what she could make using all three. The whole-wheat chocolate cappuccino brownies she suggested on his fifth attempt to stymie her sounded so tasty that they decided to make some, right then and there, and Anna had to laugh at how impressed Jeremy was that she invented a recipe on the spot. While the brownies were baking, she accompanied him on his rounds through the three-story apartment building collecting items for the Thanksgiving baskets. Later, they enjoyed the brownies in all their warm, tasty, chocolate-cappuccino goodness right from the pan as they watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving on television, sitting cross-legged on her sofa, licking chocolate from their fingertips, as comfortable as if they had been friends for ages.

  From then on, their accidental meetings in the hall usually turned into lengthy conversations unless one of them was running late, and at least once every two weeks Jeremy came over for dinner or dessert. They met less frequently after Anna began dating Gordon—Jeremy thought Gordon was a pompous blowhard and Gordon didn’t like Anna to pay attention to anyone but him—but they still talked almost every day.

  Anna had been involved with Gordon for more than a year when Jeremy mentioned meeting a beautiful girl at the library, so the sting of jealousy caught her completely off-guard. A few months later, when the stunning, auburn-haired beauty moved in with him and turned out to be as friendly, kind, and interesting as she was gorgeous, Anna silently chastised herself for not being more delighted for Jeremy, her friend. When Summer moved out about two months later, Anna naturally assumed they had broken up, but apparently they were still a couple even though Summer had decided to stay at Elm Creek Manor until her departure for graduate school. It was Summer who helped Anna land the chef’s job, Summer who encouraged Jeremy to drive her back and forth to the manor on days the bus ride would be too inconvenient. But it was Jeremy who seemed the most relieved and satisfied when Anna broke up with Gordon, and Anna who was secretly delighted when Summer’s absence gave Jeremy more free time—which he seemed very glad to spend with her. Their old companionship resumed, stronger than ever, and Anna had come to think of Jeremy as her best friend, although he probably thought of Summer as his best friend. It didn’t matter. She was simply glad he was a part of her life, in whatever way that was possible.

  Entering through the back door of the manor, Anna left her coat and boots in the hall closet and went to the kitchen, still fragrant with spices from the Thanksgiving feast she had prepared the day before. The sight of the gleaming new appliances, granite counters, cozy seating areas, and spacious, well-organized workstations delighted her anew every time she entered. The blank wall above the nearest booth awaited the quilt she and Sylvia were collaborating on, piecing together scraps from a favorite but worn gingham tablecloth and the salvageable fabric from Sylvia’s great-aunt’s feedsack aprons. They had set the quilt aside recently to work on holiday projects, but when it was finished, it would boast an appliqué still life in the center framed by blocks that reminded them of the kitchen: Broken Dishes, Cut Glass Dish, and Honeybee, among others that they had not yet chosen.

  Taking a crisp white apron from the hook on the back of the pantry door, Anna tied it on and noted a few signs that someone had come downstairs to breakfast earlier: The coffee pot was a quarter full and keeping warm, a few crumbs had fallen on the counter near the toaster, and Andrew’s favorite coffee mug sat drying upside down on a towel beside the sink. Anna smiled. No matter how often she and Sylvia encouraged him to put his dishes in the dishwasher, when he had but a single cup, he preferred to wash it by hand. Old habits were difficult to break in a man his age, she supposed.

  Working from memory, Anna gathered the ingredients for her favorite ginger pumpkin bisque soup. As she set a large copper stockpot on the stove, she thought about the two days earlier that autumn when she and Sylvia had emptied all the cupboards and drawers in preparation for the kitchen remodel, sorting tools and pots and pans in good condition from others long past their usefulness. Sylvia had entertained Anna with stories of her family’s holiday traditions, including the history of the cornucopia centerpiece and the tale of the famous Bergstrom apple strudel. Anna planned to surprise Sylvia with a scrumptious apple strudel on Christmas morning, and she was toying with the idea of introducing some of her favorite dishes from her own family’s holiday celebrations, perhaps the panettone recipe handed down through her mother’s side of the family or the pangiallo from her father’s. She still remembered standing on her tiptoes to peer over the counter while her father’s mother, whom she called Nonna, mixed the dough for the sweet bread, which despite its name—”yellow bread” in English—was not yellow at all but dark, rich, and full of nuts, fruits, and bits of chocolate.

  Anna loved to hear Nonna’s stories of the holidays she had enjoyed as a girl back in her village in the mountains of Abruzzi, before she married Nonno and came to America. Instead of decorating the home with a Christmas tree like those in American homes, Nonna’s father would build a ceppo, a wooden pyramid with several shelves and a frame wrapped in festive garland. Upon the bottom shelf, Nonna’s mother would arrange the family’s cherished Nativity scene, a wedding gift from a beloved uncle and a s
ymbol of the gifts from God. On the center shelves she would place greenery, nuts, fruits, and other small presents, symbolizing the gifts of the earth and of humankind. At the very top of the ceppo she would set an angel, a star, or a pineapple, representing hospitality. Lit candles on the shelves’ edges illuminated the scene and gave the ceppo its other name, the “Tree of Light.”

  In years gone by Anna had listened, entranced, as Nonna described the elaborate Nativity scenes or presepi displayed throughout villages across Italy, life-size tableaus in front of churches, businesses, and residences of the wealthy, and smaller but no less beloved figures at homes of people of modest means. The figures resembled the Holy Family and the shepherds, wise men, angels, and animals that had attended them, and sometimes also the people of the town—fishermen, merchants, farmers, whatever trades were most prominent. Often the wealthy paid artisans handsomely to create figures for their presepi that resembled the members of their own family, and one of Nonna’s uncles, a talented woodcarver, had earned a nice living doing so. The much smaller figurines he had carved for Nonna’s mother had become one of the Del Maso family’s most cherished heirlooms.

  On Christmas Eve, Nonna’s family would fast all day and, since their Catholic faith forbade them to eat meat on La Vigilia, they would feast upon fish instead, seven dishes to symbolize the seven sacraments, the seven days of creation, or the seven virtues of faith, hope, charity, temperance, prudence, fortitude, and justice. Nonna could describe the Christmas Eve dinners of her youth in mouthwatering detail: baked baccalà, a type of salted cod; roasted eel; shrimp; sea bass roasted with garlic, thyme, and rosemary; fried calamari; octopus sautéed in lemon, oil, and parsley; and her favorite, linguini in clam sauce. Afterward, the children might entertain the rest of the family with poems and songs they had learned in school, or the family might pass the hours before Midnight Mass playing tombola, a gambling game that sounded to Anna something like Bingo, but with a colorful board of ninety squares, each marked with a number and a picture.

  Anna smiled to herself as she stirred the fragrant soup and remembered the Christmas Eve when she was fifteen and tried to re-create the feast from Nonna’s childhood. The linguini in clam sauce, sea bass, and shrimp had turned out perfectly, but the calamari and octopus had been rubbery and tasteless, and she had not even attempted the eel and baccalà since she had been unable to find them in her neighborhood grocery. With culinary school and years of experience behind her, she knew she would enjoy a much different result if she ever attempted the meal again. She should, and soon, as a Christmas gift for her Nonna.

  “Good morning, Anna,” Sarah suddenly greeted her from the doorway. “You’d better not be making breakfast! Sylvia strictly forbade it.”

  Anna threw her a quick smile over her shoulder. “Don’t worry. This is for lunch. I’m only here early because the bus is running a limited holiday schedule, so Jeremy dropped me off on his way to Chicago.”

  Sarah nodded. “Yes, I heard. He’s going to see Summer.”

  Not even the first major winter storm of the season would have kept him away. Anna turned back to the stockpot and explained that since Summer couldn’t—or wouldn’t, although Anna kept that suspicion to herself—come to Jeremy, he was going to her. He probably would have made the thousand-mile-plus round trip every weekend if his academic schedule and aging car would permit. Instead, he made do with Anna’s company, which Anna enjoyed, so she really shouldn’t complain. Why did she feel like complaining now, when the situation had never bothered her before?

  Anna and Sarah had been chatting only a few moments when Anna felt her cell phone buzz in her back pocket. “Would you mind keeping an eye on this while you have breakfast?” she asked Sarah, gesturing to the stockpot with her spoon, knowing whom the caller must be. “I still have a few more seams to go on my quilt block for the cornucopia. This is my first day-after-Thanksgiving as an Elm Creek Quilter and I want to get it right.”

  When Sarah agreed, Anna quickly untied her apron and hurried into the hallway to answer the phone before it went to voicemail.

  “Dreidels,” said Jeremy, by way of a greeting. “I forgot to mention dreidels.”

  Anna smothered a laugh as she picked up her bag of quilting supplies and went to the ballroom. She intended to finish her block just as she had told Sarah, or her excuse would be a lie. “You called me to talk about a Hanukkah game?”

  “You know about it? I’m impressed.”

  Anna nudged open the ballroom door with her hip, wishing his approval didn’t please her so much. “You should keep both hands on the wheel in this weather—unless you’ve already slid off the road into a ditch so you’re not technically calling and driving?”

  “Relax. I’m using the hands-free headset. I admit it’s worse out here than I thought it would be.”

  Anna felt a pang of worry as she stepped into the nearest classroom, one of several created in the ballroom by tall, moveable partitions. “Maybe you should hang up and concentrate on the road.”

  “I will, after I tell you about dreidels.”

  “Okay. Dreidels.” Holding the phone to her ear with one hand and reaching into her tote bag with the other, she set the pieces of her Best Friend block, almost complete, upon the nearest table. “Those are those little squarish top thingies, right?”

  “Well said.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Yes, dreidels are tops with four sides, each bearing a Hebrew letter—nun, gimel, hey, and shin. The letters represent the phrase Ness Gadol Haya Sham, which means ‘A great miracle took place there.’ “

  Jeremy went on to explain that the letters also stood for the Yiddish words nit, gantz, halb, and shtell, which meant nothing, all, half, and put, respectively. To play the game, all players put a coin into the pot and took turns spinning the dreidel. If the dreidel landed on nun, nothing happened and the next player took a turn. If it landed on gimel, the player won the whole pot. If hei came up, the player claimed half of the pot, and if shin, the player put one coin in. Whenever the pot was emptied, every player put in another coin. The game ended when one player claimed all of the coins.

  “Sometimes we played with candies or poker chips instead of coins,” said Jeremy. “Especially when we were kids.”

  “That sounds like fun,” said Anna, plugging in an iron.

  “It was. Okay, your turn.”

  “My turn for what?”

  “To tell me a holiday story from your childhood. Please? I have a long drive ahead of me and I’m bored.”

  Anna rummaged through her tote bag for the small plastic box of pins she was sure she had packed. “What’s the matter, have you already heard all of Summer’s stories, or didn’t she answer her phone?”

  “I haven’t called her.”

  “And you don’t think that’s odd?”

  “What’s odd?”

  That Jeremy called Anna and not Summer when he wanted company on a long drive. That Anna hadn’t wanted Sarah to know Jeremy was calling her, even though a friend ought to be able to call another friend any time without provoking curiosity in a third friend. That none of this bothered her much until recently.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “So do I get my holiday story? With or without Santa Claus, I’m fine either way. Or do you not feel like talking at the moment?”

  She always felt like talking to Jeremy. Conversation came so easily with him, so effortlessly. He made her laugh, when he wasn’t talking all starry-eyed about Summer, and she made him laugh, too. “My Nonna used to tell me the story of La Befana.”

  “Nonna is your dad’s mother, right?”

  “Right.” Anna sat down in a folding chair beside the ironing board and closed her eyes, remembering her grandmother’s voice, her comforting smell of rosewater and face powder and basil. “In my grandmother’s village back in Italy, the children weren’t visited by Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. Instead, if they were very good, an old woman called La Befana brought them gifts on January sixth,
the Feast of the Epiphany. Children would hang up stockings the night before, and in the morning they would be filled with oranges, chestnuts, coins, candy, or small toys—or coal, if the child was naughty, like you, and talked on the phone when they should have been paying attention to the icy roads.”

  “The driving age must be pretty low in Italy,” Jeremy remarked. “I’ve never heard of La Befana.”

  “I read somewhere once that La Befana means the Christmas Witch, although she wasn’t a witch in the stories Nonna told me and the other grandkids. Legend tells that long ago, La Befana was busy with her housework when the three Wise Men knocked on her door and explained they were searching for the newborn child who would become the King of Kings. They asked for her help and invited her to join them on their journey, but she was skeptical and sent them on their way, declaring that she had floors to sweep and dishes to wash.”

  “Talk about a missed opportunity.”

  “Yes, she eventually figured that out. Later, maybe after folding laundry and dusting lost their charm, she had second thoughts. She tried to catch up to the Wise Men and help them find baby Jesus, but they were long gone. So instead she gave gifts to all the children she could find, hoping that one of them was the child Jesus. Every year she resumes her search, leaving gifts for little Italian boys and girls along the way.”

  “So instead of a fat man in a red suit, you have a confused old woman who thinks the baby Jesus was born in Italy. Didn’t the Wise Men mention that they were heading for Jerusalem?”

  “You’re ruining my Nonna’s story for me, you know.”

  She could tell he was grinning when he said, “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Sure.” Suddenly Anna heard noises on the other side of the partition, the sounds of furniture being moved across the parquet dance floor. “Listen, I have to go. Drive safely, okay?”

  “If you insist. Talk to you later.”

  “Okay.” She hung up the phone and left the classroom to see who had joined her in the ballroom, only to find Matt and Joe moving tables from one of the classrooms closer to the fireplace, setting up for the quilting bee. She offered to help, but they assured her they had everything under control, so she returned to the classroom to finish her quilt block for the cornucopia, wondering what she would do with it after the ceremony. Traditional piecework wasn’t really her thing, so she doubted her Best Friend block was the first of enough to make a full quilt.