The New Year's Quilt (Elm Creek Quilts Novels) (3 page)

“I would have guessed the stable—you love the horses so much.”

The stable would have been Sylvia’s first choice, but she would have risked discovery there. Her father and uncles were in and out of the stable all day, tending the horses.

Mama was silent for a moment, but then she sighed. “Darling, I know how much you love Elizabeth. I know you’re going to miss her when she goes to California. But Elizabeth loves Henry, and she is going to marry him. Being mean to him won’t change that.”

Tears sprang into Sylvia’s eyes. Henry had told on her. She had always known he couldn’t be trusted.

“I suppose I’ve been too lenient. I’ve excused your little pranks because of the holidays, because I know how much you admire your cousin, how important it is for you to be her favorite…” The distant look in her mother’s eyes suddenly disappeared, and she fixed Sylvia with a firm but loving gaze. “I’m sure you want what’s best for Elizabeth. She loves Henry, and Henry loves her. Our family has known him since long before you were born. If I thought he wouldn’t make her happy, if I suspected for one moment that he wasn’t a good man, don’t you think I’d be with her right this moment trying to talk her out of it?”

“I…” Sylvia had not thought about it. “I guess so.”

“Once, long ago, I almost married the wrong man for the wrong reasons, so trust me when I say I’ve learned to recognize a bad match—” Mama caught herself. “But that’s a story for another day. The problem, Sylvia, isn’t Elizabeth’s choice or your feelings about it. The real problem is that you lied.”

Surprised, Sylvia blurted, “No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did. It was very naughty of you to tell Henry that Elizabeth doesn’t want to go to California with him. It was wrong for you to make him think he was making her unhappy.”

But he
was
making her unhappy. He made Elizabeth cry. Elizabeth didn’t want to leave Elm Creek Manor; Sylvia had heard her tell Mama so. “But I didn’t lie. What I said was true, I know it was.”

“Sylvia.” The single word, gently spoken, was reproach enough for Sylvia. She knew she hadn’t lied, but Mama believed she had and could not hide her disappointment. Sylvia wished she had never come in from the barn. The one rule her father and the other grown-ups of the household upheld before all others was that no one should upset Mama. She had suffered a terrible illness that had injured her heart when she was a little girl no bigger than Sylvia. Although Father could not stop Mama from romping with the children in the nursery or riding her favorite horse, his worried admonitions alarmed the girls and made them cautious. Whenever Mama was forced to take to her bed, Sylvia hid from Dr. Granger as he raced up the steps, black bag in hand, certain he would scold her for whatever she had done to make his visit necessary.

What if, by trying to keep Elizabeth close, Sylvia had harmed Mama?

Sylvia flung her arms around her mother. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice muffled by her mother’s sweater.

Mama stroked Sylvia’s long, tangled curls. “It’s all right, darling. I know you won’t do it again. I can’t ask you to like Henry, but for all our sakes, please try to be kinder to him. Perhaps for the New Year you can make a fresh start. Elizabeth loves him. Perhaps you can resolve to try to love him a little, too.”

Sylvia couldn’t imagine ever feeling anything but anger and resentment for Henry, especially now that he had turned out to be a big tattletale, but she nodded to please her mother. She wished the grown-ups understood that she was only doing what was best for everyone. She could not imagine how Elizabeth would ever be happy, so far away in California with only dreary Henry for company.

Concealing her dislike wouldn’t be easy, but Sylvia would have to try because the alternative was to hide in her room until the holidays passed, and she couldn’t bear to miss out on all the fun. This year, Great-Aunt Lucinda had decided to revive an old tradition her parents and aunt had brought to America from Germany, a Sylvester Ball on New Year’s Eve. The last time the Bergstrom family had celebrated the night of Holy St. Sylvester was before Sylvia was born, so Sylvia had no memory of those happy occasions. Great-Aunt Lucinda said there would be dancing, singing, and lots of delicious treats to eat and drink. She also promised Sylvia that she and Claudia could stay up until midnight to welcome the New Year. Sylvia knew that any more naughtiness could cost her that privilege, so she vowed to behave herself, at least until January 2.

Snow fell on the morning of December 31. Sylvia and Claudia spent most of the day outside, sledding and building snowmen, until their mother called them inside for a nap. Claudia went inside without complaint, but Sylvia balked at going to bed in the middle of the day. Only when her mother warned her that she would never be able to stay up until midnight if she did not rest first did she reluctantly come inside.

Cousin Elizabeth passed her on the landing, breathless, her golden curls bouncing, her eyes alight with pleasure and mischief. How could Sylvia not adore her? “Hello, little Sylvia,” Elizabeth sang, sweeping her up in a hug. “Where are you off to on this last day of the year?”

When Sylvia reported that she had been sent to bed, Elizabeth gave her a quizzical frown. “You don’t look sleepy to me.”

“I’m not,” said Sylvia, glum. “Naps are for babies.”

“I couldn’t agree more. Come on.” Elizabeth took her by the hand and quickly led her up another flight of stairs to the nursery. “This is your first big dance, and we don’t have a lot of time to get ready.”

Sylvia threw a quick, anxious glance over her shoulder, but no one was around to report to her mother. “Claudia will tell on me when I don’t come to bed.”

“Oh, don’t worry about her. When I passed your room she was already snoring away. She’ll never know what time you came in.”

Sylvia hated to disobey her mother so soon after resolving to be good, but a chance to spend time alone with Elizabeth might not come again for a very long while, if ever. She tightened her grasp on her cousin’s hand until they shut the nursery door behind them. Elizabeth slid a chair in place beneath the doorknob. “That’ll give you time to hide should anyone come snooping,” said Elizabeth. “We’ll have to keep our voices down. Take off your shoes and show me what you know.”

Sylvia took off her Mary Janes and bravely demonstrated the few ballet steps her mother had taught her and Claudia, half-afraid that Elizabeth would laugh and send her off to take a nap after all. Then she stood in first position, awaiting her cousin’s verdict. “Well, you’re not a lost cause,” said Elizabeth. “In fact, that’s a very good beginning. I started out in ballet myself. Your aunt Millie insisted. But that’s not the kind of dancing we’re going to be doing tonight. You have a lot to learn and not a lot of time.”

Elizabeth took her hands and, over the next two hours, introduced Sylvia to grown-up dances she called the foxtrot, the quickstep, and one Sylvia had seen her parents do—the waltz. When Sylvia proved to be an apt pupil, Elizabeth praised her and taught her the tango and the Charleston. Dancing hand in hand with her cousin, gliding over the wood floor in her stocking feet, smothering laughter and asking questions in stage whispers, Sylvia realized she had not been so happy since before Elizabeth announced her engagement. Henry Nelson seemed very far away, as if he had already gone off to California, alone.

Sylvia gladly would have danced on until the guests arrived, but suddenly Elizabeth glanced at the clock and exclaimed that they had better return downstairs quickly and get dressed if they didn’t want the neighbors to catch them in their underthings. Giggling, Sylvia crept downstairs to her bedroom, where she rumpled her quilt, opened the blinds, and woke Claudia, who never suspected her sister had not just risen from a nap herself.

Soon Mama bustled in, slim and elegant in her black velveteen gown, to make sure the girls had scrubbed their hands and faces and put on their best winter dresses. Sylvia’s was only a hand-me-down, Claudia reminded her, while her own was new; Grandma had sewn it for her especially.

“Now, girls, don’t bicker,” said Mama, brushing the tangles from Sylvia’s hair and tying it back with a ribbon that matched the dark green trim of Claudia’s outgrown dress. Sylvia wanted to protest that she wasn’t bickering, that Claudia was the only one who had spoken, but she had already upset Mama once that day and didn’t want to push her luck, even if it meant letting Claudia get the last word.

Soon the guests arrived, friends and neighbors from nearby farms and the town of Waterford, two miles away. Sylvia stuck close to Elizabeth until Henry Nelson arrived with his family and Elizabeth dashed off to welcome them. Sylvia scowled at them from across the foyer as Elizabeth kissed his cheek and helped his mother out of her coat. It didn’t matter. When the dance began, Elizabeth would come back. Hadn’t she said that Sylvia was a swell partner? Hadn’t they spent two hours practicing? Hadn’t she declared that together they would show everyone what Bergstrom girls could do?

The Sylvester Ball began with a supper of lentil soup, followed by pork and sauerkraut. Pork roasted with apples was one of Sylvia’s favorite dishes, and she loved Great-Aunt Lucinda’s sauerkraut, chopped much finer than Great-Aunt Lydia’s, mildly flavored, and thickened with barley. Since the Bergstroms enjoyed pork and sauerkraut every New Year—although they usually ate the meal on New Year’s Day rather than the night before—Sylvia was surprised to see some of their neighbors wrinkling their noses at the aromatic, fermented cabbage. “Try it,” she urged Rosemary, Henry’s younger sister, but Rosemary shook her head and gingerly pushed the shredded cabbage around her plate with her fork. A few of the more reluctant guests took tentative bites only after Great-Aunt Lucinda insisted that the meal would bring them good luck in the year to come. Germans considered pigs to be good luck, she explained, because back in the old days, a farm family who had a pig to feed them through the long, cold winter was fortunate indeed. “Why do you think children save their pennies in piggy banks,” she asked, “when any animal could have done as well?” And since cabbage leaves were symbolic of money, a meal of pork and sauerkraut would help secure good fortune throughout the New Year.

“Dig in, son,” Uncle George advised his future son-in-law, and Henry gamely took an impressive portion of sauerkraut. Sylvia wished he had refused. That would have convinced everyone that he didn’t belong in the family.

Afterward, the party resumed in the ballroom, where the musicians Uncle George had hired from Harrisburg struck up a lively tune that beckoned couples to the dance floor. Sylvia looked around for Elizabeth, but Claudia grabbed Sylvia’s hand and dragged her over to a corner where they could play ring-around-the-rosie in time to the music. Sylvia had no interest whatsoever in playing a baby game to what was obviously a quickstep, but when she saw Elizabeth on Henry’s arm, she gloomily played along to appease Claudia. When the song ended, she slipped away and wove through the crowd to Elizabeth, but now her beautiful cousin was waltzing with Uncle George, and Sylvia knew she would be scolded if she interrupted.

Her turn would come, she told herself, but dance after dance went by, and always Elizabeth was with Henry, or her father, or Henry’s father, or one of her uncles. Mostly she was with Henry. When she finally sat out a dance, Sylvia raced to her side. “There you are,” Elizabeth exclaimed, and as far as Sylvia could tell, her cousin was delighted to see her. “Are you having a good time?”

Sylvia was miserable, but Elizabeth could easily fix that. “Can I have a turn to dance with you?”

Elizabeth fanned herself with her hand. “Absolutely, right after I rest with some of your father’s punch.” She looked around for Henry, but Sylvia quickly volunteered to get Elizabeth a cup, and she hurried off through the crowd of dancers and onlookers to the fireplace at the opposite end of the room.

Her father sat by the fireside, joking with his brothers and Henry’s father, who waited impatiently to sample her father’s renowned
Feuerzangenbowle
. Into a large black kettle he had emptied two bottles of red wine, some of the last of his wine cellar. Sylvia caught the aroma of rich wine and spices—cinnamon, allspice, cardamom—and the sweet fruity fragrances of lemon and orange. Her father stirred the steaming brew, careful to keep the fire just high enough to heat the punch without boiling.

“At this rate it’ll be midnight before we can wet our whistles, Fred,” one of the neighbors teased.

“If you’re too thirsty to wait, have some coffee and save the punch for more patient men,” Sylvia’s father retorted with a grin. “Sylvia can show you to the kitchen.”

Sylvia froze while the men laughed, relaxing only when she realized none of the men intended to take her father up on his offer. Although many of their neighbors of German descent had brewed their own beer long before Prohibition, few could obtain fine European wines like those Father’s customers offered him to sweeten their deals. They wouldn’t leave the fireside without a glass of Father’s famous punch, and neither would Sylvia. She was determined to serve Elizabeth before Henry did, to prove just how unnecessary he was.

Father traded the long-handled spoon for a sturdy pair of tongs, grasped a sugar cone, and held it over the kettle. With his left hand, he slowly poured rum over the sugar cone, or
Zuckerhut
as the older Bergstroms called it, and let the liquor soak in to the fine, compressed sugar. At Father’s signal, Uncle William came forward, withdrew a wooden skewer from the fire, and set the sugar cone on fire. Sylvia watched, entranced, as the bluish flame danced across the sugar cone and carmelized the sugar, which dripped into the steaming punch below. When the flame threatened to flicker out, her father poured more rum over the
Zuckerhut
until the bottle was empty and the sugar melted away. With a sigh of anticipated pleasure, the uncles and neighbors pressed forward with their cups as Father picked up the ladle and began to serve. Sylvia found herself pushed to the back of the crowd, and not until the last of the eager grown-ups had taken their mugs from the fireside was she able to approach her father.