Maid Mary Anne Read online

  Dawn sighed and sat up. “No,” she said. “But I miss it a lot, these days.”

  “Hey, it’s summer in Stoneybrook. Nice and hot. Not too far from the beach.”

  Dawn smiled a little. “It’s warmer. But I wouldn’t call it hot.”

  I laughed. “Guess what. Mrs. Towne invited me over tomorrow to talk about sewing. Isn’t that great?”

  “It really is, Mary Anne,” said Dawn.

  “Should I take some of my sewing? What would you do, Dawn? You know, you were exactly right about her being flattered. She even said so.”

  “That’s great,” said Dawn. She reached over and turned the music off. “Come on and sit down.”

  Still talking about Mrs. Towne, I made myself comfortable at the foot of Dawn’s bed. We talked until Sharon came up to tell us that, summer or no summer, we had to go to sleep.

  “In California, it’s three hours earlier,” said Dawn.

  “We’re not in California anymore,” said Sharon, grinning. “Come on, Mary Anne, Dawn.”

  “Too bad we’re not in California, then, isn’t it, Dawn?” I said getting up. “Good night.”

  “Good night,” said Dawn. As I left the room, I thought I heard her reach over and turn the Beach Boys back on, very softly.

  I knocked on Mrs. Towne’s door at exactly four o’clock the next afternoon. To keep from being too nervous, I was trying to pretend I was knocking on the door of a new client for the BSC. Thinking of myself as Mary Anne Spier, baby-sitter, was easier than Mary Anne Spier, stranger-standing-at-the-door.

  When Mrs. Towne didn’t answer right away, I thought she’d forgotten. Or maybe she’d changed her mind. I raised my hand. I looked down at my feet. Should I knock again? Or run away instead?

  Fortunately, the door opened just then and Mrs. Towne took my upraised hand in hers as if it were perfectly normal to find someone standing at the door with her hand raised to shoulder height as if she were about to wave (or knock). She gave me a quick, formal handshake, saying as she did, “Mary Anne Spier?”

  “Yes. Uh, Mrs. Towne?” Inside I groaned. What a dumb question. Who else would be answering Mrs. Towne’s door?

  But Mrs. Towne didn’t seem to think it was dumb. She nodded, smiling, and stepped back for me to come in.

  I don’t know what I’d expected Mrs. Towne to be like — maybe an apple-cheeked little old lady swathed in a big apron with her hair in a grandmotherly bun. Or maybe someone in a long, old-fashioned dress wearing one of those wrist pincushions stuck full of pins, peering nearsightedly (from all those hours spent sewing) at me through big glasses. Whatever it was, Mrs. Towne wasn’t quite what I’d pictured.

  She was small, hardly any taller than I. But she wasn’t a storybook grandmotherly type with apple cheeks and a big apron. She had sharp, direct brown eyes and very short white hair that looked almost punk. Her skin was pale brown and smooth and soft, so that if it hadn’t been for her white hair, you wouldn’t have had any idea how old she might be.

  No apron either. She was wearing jeans and a blue work shirt and tennis shoes.

  Her house was more what I expected. Or at least, it was sort of familiar to me, because I could see as I stepped inside the door that it was an old farmhouse like ours, with low ceilings and stairs leading from the front hall, the same as in our house.

  The familiarity made me feel less nervous. I began to relax.

  “I’ve been looking forward to your visit,” said Mrs. Towne in a soft voice as she led the way down the hall. “I’ve set up tea on the back porch. It’s a nice view from there.”

  We walked through a big, sunny, old-fashioned kitchen and out onto an even sunnier porch filled with plants of all kinds and sizes. At one end of the porch was a white table with two white chairs pulled up to it. On the table was a teapot, a bowl of sugar, a little pitcher of milk, a bowl of lemon slices, a plate of cookies, a saucer with a silver strainer not much bigger than a tablespoon, and two places set with cups and saucers, small plates, and teaspoons on top of neatly folded napkins.

  “I had just taken the kettle off when you knocked,” explained Mrs. Towne, motioning me to one of the chairs. “I poured the hot water into the teapot before I answered the door, so the tea should be just about right. Do you like tea?”

  Logan, who is from the South, drinks iced tea all the time, and Dawn drinks hot herb tea in the winter, but I’d never really thought about it. I nodded anyway.

  “Oh, good,” said Mrs. Towne. She put a little silver strainer on top of my cup and poured the tea into it, then did the same with her cup. She set the strainer, which had loose tea leaves in it, on a separate plate. “This is chamomile tea. I made it from my own chamomile flowers.”

  Fortunately, I’d heard of chamomile tea. It was one of the teas Dawn drank.

  Mrs. Towne said, “Sugar? Milk or lemon?”

  I put two teaspoons of sugar in the tea (something Dawn never would have done) and took a sugar cookie from the plate when Mrs. Towne offered it.

  The tea was very hot, but it was good. I sipped it slowly, looking around the porch. I’d half expected to see samples of Mrs. Towne’s work everywhere, but the sun porch didn’t have room for anything, not even more plants.

  “The way the porch is designed,” said Mrs. Towne, following my thoughts, “I’m able to use it as a sort of greenhouse for starting seedlings, even in the winter. The windows are all around, you see, and they slide open in the summer to let the warm air in through the screens. In the winter, they slide shut and I put up storm windows and open the heating vent. That way I have sun and warmth all year round.”

  “That’s great,” I said, reminded again of Dawn. Would she think having a sun porch was almost as good as being in California? Somehow I didn’t think so.

  “Have you been sewing long?” asked Mrs. Towne.

  “I’ve always liked it,” I said, “but it wasn’t until recently that I really started to get interested in it.” (I decided not to mention the slight problem I’d had with home ec class.)

  “My grandmother taught me how to sew,” said Mrs. Towne. “I was just a little girl. She could hand stitch a hem as fine as any sewing machine I’ve ever seen. She took in sewing for a living, and although we never had much money, I was always the best-dressed girl in school.”

  “She made all your clothes by hand?” I asked incredulously.

  “Lord, yes.” Mrs. Towne laughed. “We all grew up sewing. We’d sit at night and talk and sew, when there weren’t other chores to do, of course. It was wonderful.”

  It sounded hard to me. And what if Mrs. Towne looked down on people who used sewing machines? I said, cautiously, “I’m just learning to embroider. I’ve read about French hand sewing. And I’d like to learn smocking, and more about sewing, too. But I’ve done most of my sewing on a machine.”

  “Well, I don’t blame you!” said Mrs. Towne. “Times have changed. Sewing machines are great labor-saving devices. Although you still have to do some things by hand.”

  “I know,” I said, relieved. I put down my empty cup.

  “More tea?”

  “Not right now, thank you,” I said. I suddenly realized that the teapot was wearing a little quilted coat.

  “Did you make that?” I asked.

  “The tea cozy? Yes, I did. It’s very old, almost as old as I am. It was one of my first quilting efforts, with my grandmother. Two layers of flannel — one of my father’s old flannel shirts, with cotton batting in between. It helps the tea stay warm inside the pot.”

  “Like insulation,” I said.

  “Exactly,” said Mrs. Towne. She put her own teacup down and stood up. “Why don’t I show you where I work and some of the other things I’ve done?”

  “I’d love that,” I said truthfully. Now that I felt comfortable with Mrs. Towne, I could hardly wait to see her work.

  I followed Mrs. Towne back out to the hall. She opened a door. “This is the guest room,” she said. “And this …”

  “You ma
de that,” I said. Spread across the bed was the most beautiful quilt I had ever seen.

  “The pattern is called Log Cabin. It’s an Amish pattern. The center of each of the squares is red because that symbolizes the hearth of the cabin: fire and warmth and where the meals are cooked.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said. I walked over to the bed. “May I touch it?”

  “Lord, yes! It won’t break.”

  I bent over and ran my hand over the quilted surface. The detail of the quilting — the stitching that sewed the front of the blanket to the back of the blanket — was intricate and precise.

  Looking up the bed, I realized that the pillows were edged with the most delicate embroidery, white thread against the white cotton. “That, too?” I asked.

  She nodded, smiling.

  Mrs. Towne’s handiwork was evident in almost every room of the house: a footstool with a tapestry design worked into the top, the invisible hem on the fluted edge of a curtain — and a quilt in every room, either hanging on a wall, or spread across a bed.

  Then we went into a large room on the front corner of the house. From the windows I could see the road and down the hill to the Stones’ farm.

  “This is my workroom,” said Mrs. Towne. I stepped into the middle of the room and looked around in awe.

  Although the room was big, you wouldn’t have realized it right away, because it was so full. To one side was a quilting frame, with what looked like a crazy quilt stretched across the top of it. Two dressmaker’s dummies, one large and one small, stood in a corner. A rack on the wall behind the dummies held, among other things, several pairs of scissors and shears in various sizes with straight and serrated edges, an assortment of embroidery hoops, a pattern-tracing wheel and a couple of tape measures, and various sewing rulers, curved and straight. A pattern, made of plain tissue paper, with various markings on it in pencil, was pinned to a piece of rose-printed material laid out on a large table. A sewing machine stood in a niche of its own by the window, with a sewing box on legs next to it. The top of the box was open and inside I could see, neatly arranged, dozens and dozens of spools of thread of all kinds and colors. A chest of drawers made up of many tiny drawers stood against one wall. Each drawer was labeled, and I realized that inside were various buttons, trims, pipings, beads, and all sorts of other sewing paraphernalia.

  It was awesome.

  “This is awesome,” I breathed, and then blushed, afraid Mrs. Towne would think I was weird.

  But to my surprise she laughed. “That’s a nice way of putting it! My son, Cal — he lives in Missouri — calls it terrifying. But I know exactly where everything is. I ought to. I’ve been working in this room for years!”

  “A pleater?” I asked. I pointed to a small machine with a row of needles on it. A piece of material was between the rollers behind the needles, waiting to be rolled through.

  “Not everybody would know that!” laughed Mrs. Towne. “Do you have one?”

  “No,” I said. “We just have the basic equipment. You know, a sewing machine, darning and crewel needles, some shears, and a pair of scissors.”

  “Here, let me show you how it works.” Mrs. Towne sat down at the pleater and pulled a chair up next to her.

  I was in sewing heaven.

  Using the pleater wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. After that, Mrs. Towne showed me some basic smocking and what she called “easy techniques for French hand sewing by machine.” It wasn’t that easy, but it was fascinating.

  “You have a talent for this,” said Mrs. Towne as we were finishing up.

  “Do you think … I mean, would it be possible for you to give me some lessons?” I asked.

  To my surprise, Mrs. Towne said instantly, “What a wonderful idea, Mary Anne.”

  “I’d pay you, of course,” I hurried on.

  “When do you want to begin?” asked Mrs. Towne.

  “I don’t know. What’s a good time for you? You have so much work. You must have a very busy schedule.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Mrs. Towne told me. “What about next Saturday afternoon? We could have a lesson and then tea.”

  As Mrs. Towne walked me to the door, we worked out the details. I was so excited I practically levitated all the way home. I could hardly wait for next Saturday to come, to see more of Mrs. Towne’s work, and to begin to learn how to sew like she did.

  I didn’t have to wait until Saturday to see Mrs. Towne, though. On Thursday afternoon I was baby-sitting for the younger Pike kids: Vanessa, Nicky, Claire, and Margo, and we went on another goat-visiting expedition.

  I know, I know, it’s not the usual baby-sitting activity, but as it happened, Elvira Goat has been the star of a play written by Vanessa and performed by the Pike kids when she was being goat-sat by Dawn and me. So it was only natural that they’d want to visit their leading lady. Or maybe I mean their leading goat.

  Of course, the visit was a huge success. Even chewing on the garbage du jour (that’s French for “of the day”) Elvira is terminally cute.

  After the visit, as we were walking home talking about goats (what else?) a voice called to us and I looked up to see Mrs. Towne by one of the flower beds, holding a spade and wearing gloves and a baseball cap.

  “Mary Anne?”

  “Mrs. Towne! Hi! We were just on our way back from visiting the Stones’ farm.”

  “And Elvira Goat,” called Claire importantly.

  “Ah, yes. Mrs. Stone has told me about Elvira,” said Mrs. Towne.

  “Do you like goats?” asked Claire.

  “I do,” said Mrs. Towne. She and Claire exchanged smiles of mutual approval and then Mrs. Towne said, “Would you like to come in for a little while?”

  I hesitated. I thought Mrs. Towne’s house was possibly the most wonderful place on earth, but I wasn’t sure what the Pikes would make of it.

  As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. They seemed as fascinated as I had been. When Vanessa saw the Log Cabin quilt and heard the story of its pattern, she narrowed her eyes and studied it thoughtfully. Vanessa’s career plans (she’s nine) are to be a poet. I could see that the idea for a poem was germinating in her mind.

  Nicky was more direct. “Cool,” he said to Mrs. Towne. “Are there more?” He plied her with questions about every quilt. His favorite, not surprisingly, was a finished crazy quilt displayed on the living room wall.

  But to my amazement, the workroom enthralled them almost as much as it had me. I had noticed the children’s clothes patterns on my first visit, but I hadn’t looked closely at them. Vanessa, however, did, and was instantly in love with the picture smocking that decorated some of them, including scenes from fairy tales. Soon she was pointing out the various characters on a series of pillows Mrs. Towne was making, explaining them to Margo as if she had made them herself. Meanwhile, Nicky and Claire had gravitated to the quilting frame. Nicky bent over to look under it. “It’s just sitting on sawhorses,” he said.

  “That’s right. The frame is used to stretch the top of the quilt out so you can sew the middle and the bottom to it. That’s the part that is called quilting — putting the three pieces together. This frame is a homemade frame. You can buy them, of course, but there’s no need to. My husband made that one for me.” For a moment, the bright, friendly look left Mrs. Towne’s face and she seemed sad, but Nicky’s next question brought it back.

  “Do you have to know special stuff to make quilts?”

  “No. At least I don’t think so. You can buy patterns for most of them. But even with patterns, you have to plan very carefully…. You know, a lot of these patterns are Amish patterns, which is why they are so abstract. The Amish aren’t allowed to show figures or any kind of realism in their quilting.”

  “Cool,” said Nicky again. He reached out and gave the quilt a friendly pat.

  And that gave me an idea.

  We left soon after — the Pikes had to get home. I didn’t say anything about my idea then. I wanted to think it over a little
, and make sure it was as brilliant as I thought it was.

  But I was pretty sure that it might possibly be one of those truly great, Kristy-caliber ideas. And if it was, I could hardly wait to tell my friends in the Baby-sitters Club.

  Asking Mrs. Towne for sewing lessons was supposed to be the hard part. After that, I wasn’t going to be nervous at all. At least, that’s what I thought. But by Saturday afternoon after lunch, I was nervous all over again.

  I wasn’t worried about seeing Mrs. Towne. I was looking forward to that. I could hardly wait to begin my sewing lessons.

  But I couldn’t make up my mind about what to take. At one o’clock I was ransacking my sewing box. Thread? Should I take thread? If so, what kind? How much? What color? And what about scissors? Mrs. Towne had plenty of scissors and shears, but maybe she didn’t like for people to use her sewing equipment. Embroidery hoops? Samples of my own work?

  Finally I settled on some black thread, some white thread, a paper of needles, a pair of scissors and a pair of shears, and a thimble. Then I looked at the clock, and said (just like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland) “I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!”

  I biked at top speed all the way to Mrs. Towne’s house. I wasn’t late, but I was panting when I rang her doorbell exactly at two o’clock.

  Fortunately, Mrs. Towne didn’t come right away. I had time to catch my breath. Then I rang the doorbell again.

  No one answered. I frowned. The doorbell was working. I could hear it. The screen door was shut but the front door behind it was open. I leaned forward and peered into the dim but now familiar hallway. I could see no sign of Mrs. Towne.

  I rang the doorbell again.

  But Mrs. Towne didn’t appear.

  Of course! She was probably gardening and couldn’t even hear the doorbell. I put my makeshift sewing kit (it was an old canvas tote bag with a picture of a kitten on the front) on the porch, went down the stairs, and walked around to the back of the house.

  The air was warm and the bees were making a drowsy buzzing sound among the holly-hocks and zinnias. But there was no sign of Mrs. Towne anywhere. To make sure, I walked back to the front porch from the other side of the house.