Elm Creek Quilts [09] Circle of Quilters Page 6

  “That’s wonderful,” said Lucy, relieved. “I really admire you. I could never give up everything I’ve worked so hard for.”

  “You’d be surprised what you can do when you believe it’s right for your family.”

  “I suppose so. I admit sometimes I envy you. It must be so nice not to have to work.”

  Karen kept her smile fixed in place and nodded.

  Despite the swim lesson, Karen and her boys were not the last of the playgroup to reach the park. Janice and her four children did not arrive until more than twenty minutes after Karen parallel parked her compact car between the minivans already lined up along the curb.

  Janice’s three eldest children ran for the playground as Janice followed, carrying the oversized tote bag with their lunches and balancing her one-year-old on her hip. Though she was only five months into her pregnancy, she could easily pass for eight, a fact that had panicked her until an ultrasound confirmed that she was not carrying twins. Janice had said that whenever she took all of the kids to the grocery store, other shoppers regarded her with either profound sympathy or alarm. Once, a well-meaning elderly woman had taken her aside and kindly encouraged her to discuss birth control options with her physician, secretly if she had to, if her husband disapproved. At her last prenatal appointment, a pregnant woman struggling to amuse her bored two-year-old in the waiting room remarked that Janice was either very brave or very insane. Janice laughed as she recounted the stories, but Karen knew she had begged her husband to get a vasectomy two children ago. Whenever she was especially annoyed with him, she threatened to perform the operation herself.

  “Sorry I’m late,” said Janice, panting, as she spread out her blanket and settled herself and the baby upon it. “I got trapped in a phone call with the food police.”

  “What was it this time?” asked one of the other mothers, who was changing her three-year-old’s pull-up pants on a nearby blanket. “Peanut butter?”

  “No! God forbid. Even I know enough not to bring peanut butter. Peanuts can kill.”

  “You forgot to cut the grapes in half,” guessed Karen, who had committed that same infraction on her first turn to provide the morning snack for Ethan’s nursery school class, earning herself a lecture on hidden choking hazards from the room parent.

  “Your school is strict,” remarked Connor, the only stay-at-home father in the playgroup. “We can bring anything except candy and soda.”

  “The food police aren’t official representatives of the school,” said Janice. “The peanut rule is a school policy, and understandably so, but the others have been tacked on by a few overzealous parents with too much time on their hands.”

  “So what did you do?” said the oldest mother in the group. She and her husband had been surprised by a late-in-life third child, and she regarded with bemused skepticism the innumerable new parenting rules that had sprung up since her first two children passed through the preschool years.

  “I brought the wrong kind of milk.”

  “Buttermilk?” asked one of the mothers. She was an uncertain parent who often described her child’s development in terms of the dog obedience classes she had put her standard poodle through a few years before. “Chocolate?”

  “Spoiled?” said Karen.

  “No! Honestly, do you really think I’m that bad? I brought milk. Fresh milk, regular nonchocolate milk. However, I failed to select organic, BGH-free milk.”

  “What’s that?” asked the oldest mother.

  “One more thing to worry about,” said Connor, who regularly regaled them with magazine articles on subjects such as pesticide residues in applesauce.

  Janice smote her brow in mock dismay. “I thought I brought those children something healthy, but apparently it was not quite healthy enough. Tell me, where am I supposed to find organic, bovine growth hormone-free milk? And how much more than regular milk does it cost?”

  They all laughed, except for Connor, who looked ready to defend the food police, and Karen, who knew exactly how much that kind of milk cost and where to find it because it was the only kind Nate allowed in the house other than soy.

  “Some kids are allergic to dairy,” one of the mothers warned, then excused herself to chase down her youngest daughter, happily wandering from the playground.

  “I promise I’ll take soy next time,” Janice called after her. Then, all at once, every child seemed to need something: a push on the swing, a snack, a referee, a cuddle. The conversation broke up in a scramble of caregiving, as most of their conversations did. Few of their chats were as long in duration as this one had been. They had learned to converse in bits and snatches.

  Later, as Karen and Janice pushed their youngest ones on the swings, Karen told her about her morning with the coven of mean swim moms and her former coworker. Janice interrupted with incredulous laughter when Karen repeated Lucy’s statement that Karen did not work. “Oh, of course we don’t work,” said Janice. “We just sit around and let our feral children scavenge for food and clothing in the streets.”

  “When working mothers imagine our days—if they imagine them at all—they think of playdates at the park, hugs and kisses and peaceful naptime on spotless cotton crib sheets. Hours of maternal bliss and fully requited love. They have no idea what it’s really like.”

  Janice nodded emphatically and Karen did not bother to continue. Janice, mother of four and a half, already knew very well what life as a stay-at-home mother was like. That was one of the reasons they got along so well. Each admired the other for simply managing to shower, dress, and get out of the house once a day. Sometimes Karen felt as if Janice was the only person she knew who demanded nothing more of her.

  Karen adored her children. She loved them beyond measure. However, if pressed, if forced to admit the truth, she would confess that she structured her entire day around coordinating the boys’ naps so that she could have a half hour to collapse in a chair and catch her breath. Some days she could almost weep just thinking of the mind-numbingly repetitious nature of her daily routine. And while she claimed the playgroup was for the boys, it was really for her, because if she did not have a conversation with someone above the age of four at least once during the day, she sincerely believed she would go stark raving mad.

  Worst of all was the knowledge that someday she would have to give it all up.

  “Motherhood is the only job in the world where your every decision is questioned and doubted and criticized,” said Janice. “No matter what you do, no matter what choice you make, someone somewhere is convinced that you are doing irreparable harm to your children. And she probably has a vocal, militant group of like-minded mommies on the Internet backing her up.”

  “Maybe not the only job,” said Karen. “What about President?”

  “Okay, maybe President. But he’s well compensated for it.”

  “And we all know that if you don’t get paid for it, it isn’t work.” Karen had been guilty of that assumption before she had children, and now, thinking of the millions of working women who still operated under that misconception, she could not feel angry, or indignant, or even frustrated. She simply felt tired, much too tired to try to enlighten them.

  Janice pushed her son’s swing for a moment in silence. “Speaking of paid work …” She paused. “There’s no delicate way to phrase this. I’m getting a nanny.”

  Karen stared at her, forgetting to push the swing or move out of the way. Lucas bumped into her. “Mama, Mama, no no no,” he complained as he twisted in the swing.

  She straightened out the chains and gave Lucas another push. “You’re serious,” she managed to say. “Why do you need a nanny?”

  Stupid question. Who needed a nanny more than Janice?

  “Don’t hate me,” said Janice. “I’m going back to work. In a manner of speaking, since I’ll work out of the home. Remember the birthday parties I ran for Elise’s and Jayne’s girls?”

  Karen nodded. Janice, a former producer of children’s public television programs, t
hrew legendary birthday parties complete with themes, costumes, and games that could only be described as enchanting. When her eldest daughter turned five, Janice arranged a fairy tea party like something out of a movie, with cute little girls dancing around the backyard in ballerina skirts and delicate wings made from wire and tulle. Even Ethan, the only boy, wore a pair of emerald green wings and ran around calling himself a dinosaur dragonfly. The photos would surely mortify him in years to come, although he had enjoyed the party as much as the girls.

  “I’ve helped so many other moms with their parties that I finally decided to make it official,” Janice explained. “I can do something I enjoy, still be with my kids, and make a little money, too.”

  “I’m sure you’ll make tons,” said Karen, forcing a smile. “Enough for a Mercedes with built-in car seats. Congratulations.”

  She asked for more details, reminding herself that Janice was her closest friend, the only friend who understood her anymore, and she ought to be delighted and encouraging for her sake. Instead, she was so stunned and envious that she soon gave up responding with anything more than wordless murmurs. I am a bitter, mean, little person, she thought. I nag my husband and I can’t be happy for my best friend.

  It seemed a long time before Janice finished explaining the specifics of her new job and discussed her family’s need for extra income with the new baby coming and five college tuitions to plan for, as well as her own ache for some kind of life of her own apart from bottles and diapers and nursery rhymes.

  “You never needed a life before,” said Karen lightly, watching the older children running and climbing and tumbling over the playground like a pack of happy puppies. “You were as committed to the calling of maternal drudgery as the rest of us.”

  Janice laughed, but as her eyes followed Connor as he raced to stop his youngest from pouring a bucketful of pebbles down the front of her sundress, her smile faded. “I want my own income. There’s no such thing as job security anymore. Or marital security.”

  “What?” exclaimed Karen. “Is something going on with Sean? His job, or … you two?”

  “No. Not yet. But sometimes you never see it coming.”

  “Janice, no.” Karen shook her head. “Sean would never leave you. He adores you. He would never be interested in someone else. He can hardly keep his hands off you.”

  Janice gestured to her round belly. “That much, at least, is true.”

  “Please don’t tell me you’re taking this job as an insurance policy in case Sean leaves you. I’ve never seen a man so in love with his wife, and that includes my own husband, as much as I hate to admit it.”

  “What are you talking about? Nate worships the ground you walk on.”

  “You’re half right. He worships the ground. I know he loves me and he loves the boys, but the reason he’ll never leave me is that he knows he’ll never find anyone else who will agree to wash and reuse aluminum foil.”

  “I don’t think Sean will leave me for another woman, either,” Janice acknowledged. “But it’s not just about the money. I need this. Don’t get me wrong. I love being a mom. You of all people know I do. But I need something else. Something that’s just for me. Sometimes …” Janice gestured to the playground, where Connor had all but disappeared beneath a shrieking, laughing pile of children. “Sometimes I feel that the woman I was before I became a mother is drowning, and if I don’t reach in and hold her above the waves long enough for her to take a breath, she won’t make it.”

  Karen did not know what to say. In silence they watched the older children play until their two toddlers kicked their dangling legs and fussed, indignant at being forgotten in the swings.

  They ate lunch at the park and played for an hour more before a chain reaction of toddler meltdowns set in, signaling the end of the play date. Karen drove around for a half hour before Ethan and Lucas fell asleep in their car seats. Then she turned the car toward home, torn between guilt for the waste of precious fossil fuels and giddiness at the thought of perhaps as much as an hour to spend as she pleased. Miraculously, she was able to carry Lucas to his crib and Ethan to the living room sofa without waking either boy.

  After checking the answering machine and the mail, she hurried downstairs to the basement. If they ever saved enough money for a larger house, Karen would insist upon a home with an extra, above-ground room she could claim as her own, a quilting room that could double as a guest room. For now, a desk salvaged from a garage sale, a second-hand sewing machine, and two stacks of milk crates for storage served as her quilt studio.

  She switched on the baby monitor and pulled out the magazine, settling herself down on a metal folding chair in front of the desk. She had read the ad so often that the magazine fell open at the proper page, and she read the requirements again although she had nearly memorized them. The Elm Creek Quilters wanted someone accomplished, but they were not asking for the impossible. Karen knew how to piece and quilt by hand as well as by machine, and she considered herself especially adept at foundation paper piecing, which ought to qualify as a “notable quilting technique.” She met the requirements. Other applicants would probably far exceed them, but Karen could not let the potential competition discourage her from applying.

  The logistics of returning to work would make the competition for the job seem like a breeze. Ethan would need to be transported to and from nursery school three mornings a week. Lucas was still nursing, and she didn’t relish the thought of hauling a breast pump to Elm Creek Manor. She would just have to wean him. If she’d had any backbone at all, she would have stopped nursing him months ago, but it was less exhausting to simply give in to his demands. Eighteen months was definitely old enough for her to wean him without guilt, and it would be easier once she had a strong motivation to stick to it.

  But who would care for the boys in her absence? She had heard too many alarming reports of day care centers to contemplate one for her children, but Nate’s job was secure—and would become more so, once he had tenure—and they could afford a nanny. Her heart quaked at the thought of peeling her sobbing babies from her legs and handing them over to a grandmotherly woman with a crisp British accent and her hair in a bun, but she quickly turned her thoughts to the beautiful estate where the quilt camp was held, the friendly, encouraging faculty, the joy of creativity and camaraderie she longed for in her daily life but had not truly felt since quilt camp. At the time, in the middle of her first pregnancy, she had laughingly described her week at Elm Creek Quilt Camp as one last opportunity for fun before the demands of motherhood took hold. A few months after Ethan was born, she finally understood why the other mothers at the Candlelight welcoming ceremony had nodded knowingly instead of smiling at her joke.

  She would hire the best nanny in the world, she told herself. A Penn State student majoring in elementary education or premed with a concentration in pediatrics. Mary Poppins. The nanny would be so nurturing and affectionate that the children would not even realize Karen had left the house until she returned home in the evening. They would run to meet her at the door as they ran to meet Nate, and they would beg cuddles and kisses as they told her about their fun, educational, and enriching day. They would probably cry when Nanny said good-bye. They would probably cling to her and beg her to stay for supper. On weekends, they would ask why Nanny had not come, and if they fell and scraped a knee, they would sob for Nanny rather than their mother.

  She had not even mailed in her application yet, and already guilt and jealousy had set in.

  She brushed the thoughts aside and plugged in her laptop. She had nearly finished updating her résumé—she had very little to add—when Lucas’s cry pealed over the baby monitor. After scrambling to conceal all evidence of her activity, she ran upstairs to her younger son, vowing that she would tell Nate her intentions that evening as soon as he came home from work.

  She procrastinated by waiting until after supper, for that brief period of relative calm after the boys finished eating and ran off to the living roo
m to play and before they returned to ask for popsicles. Karen insisted on clearing the table while Nate finished his water, realizing too late that this was a sure sign she wanted something from him. They never waited on each other except on birthdays, after arguments, or when one was feeling amorous and was hoping to overcome the other’s desperate need for sleep.

  Until Karen quit her job, they had always divided their expenses equally. Even on their first date, she had insisted on paying half of the check. Nate had put up a modest fight, but eventually his desire to convince her he was a modern, sensitive, egalitarian male overcame his instinct for chivalry. They were students, with students’ modest incomes. Frequent dating would quickly bankrupt him if they didn’t split the costs, and neither wanted anything to stand in the way of seeing each other again.

  Karen had never expected a simple blind date for lunch to turn out so well, even though her roommate and her roommate’s boyfriend had been trying to set them up all semester. For months, heavy course loads and a general reluctance to find out exactly why their mutual friends considered them an ideal match prevented them from arranging to meet. Eventually they ran out of excuses and agreed to meet between classes for a quick bite to eat. Karen skipped her favorite seminar to stay for a dessert she really didn’t need and more amazing discoveries of all she and Nate had in common—a fervent belief in the musical genius of Paul Simon, an inability to care about professional sports, an almost embarrassing depth of knowledge of Buffy the Vampire Slayer lore. Nate’s earnest charm and warm sense of humor had quickly erased Karen’s doubts about their four-year age difference and the gap between Nate’s graduate student status and her own as an undergraduate junior. He had already confessed his environmentalist leanings, and after he walked her to her car and saw a late model, low-emission, fuel-efficient Volvo at the curb, he seized her hand and kissed it. Karen was suddenly very glad her parents had insisted she take her mother’s car instead of her father’s Cadillac to college, and forever after wondered what Nate would have done had she come on bicycle.