The Knitting Circle Page 25

  Before Mary could speak, her mother was pushing her way back through the crowd.

  Mary stood and watched her go. A woman in a bright purple dress kept jostling her to get by, but Mary stood still, watching until her mother disappeared completely. Then she joined the crowd moving toward security.

  When it was her turn to place her bags on the conveyor, Mary found the neatly folded envelope her mother had slipped into her hand. She shoved it into her pocket, then collected her bags and walked hurriedly toward the plane that would take her home.

  THE KNITTING CIRCLE was meeting at the Sit and Knit Two in Westerly. Roger had sent invitations to everyone for a knitting party on opening night. On her way there, Mary stopped at Dylan’s office and left him the divorce papers, small Post-its flagging all the places for him to sign.

  By the time she pulled into the parking lot, everyone else had already arrived and the champagne had been opened.

  Roger greeted her at the door.

  “Finally home,” he said, planting a big kiss on her cheek.

  Inside, she was blinded by color. Roger had arranged the yarn by color rather than brand, so that hills of orange spilled out of containers in one corner, every shade of blue dominated another, the pinks rose against one wall and the greens against another.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place,” she said. Her eyes settled on the familiar faces of the other women and she at last began to relax.

  Mary lifted her bag and announced, “Presents!” She pulled out the yarn she’d bought in Mexico from a small group of women who raised their own sheep and spun and dyed the wool.

  Soon, she was surrounded by Scarlet and Lulu and Ellen and Alice and Harriet. They hugged her and cooed over their presents.

  A man stood behind Harriet, hanging back shyly.

  Harriet took his arm and pulled him forward.

  “This is my son,” Harriet said, her eyes downcast. “My son David. Remember? I told you about him?”

  Mary smiled. “I do remember.”

  “I’m going to teach David how to knit,” Roger said. “My first victim. I’ve got an all-men’s knitting class on Friday nights, and a Sunday morning knitting brunch.”

  Alice shook her head. “He’s offering knitting and yoga,” she said. “How do you knit in downward dog, that’s what I want to know.” She beamed proudly at Roger. “You just need the knitting. That’s what I told him. But he’s got ideas.”

  Roger winked behind David’s back. “Yes, I do,” he said.

  Later, at home, Mary stood in her bedroom, remembering how she and Dylan had waited out her pregnancy in here, the two of them snuggled in this bed, reading books of names, dreaming about all that their future held. Dylan used to place headphones on her belly and play Beatles songs from his Walkman. “She’s got to love the Beatles,” he’d say. This was where newborn Stella used to sleep, in a cradle by their bed, the two of them awake all night listening to her baby sounds. Soon a new family would live here, and put their own imprints on this room.

  Sadly, Mary began to undress, slipping off her shoes, shrugging out of her jacket. As she folded it, she felt the small tight square of paper she’d put in the pocket at the security gate in León.

  Mary retrieved the envelope and went downstairs. In the living room, she turned on a lamp and sat, carefully opening the envelope.

  There were two sheets of paper. The first was dated the day she’d left Mexico. In her perfect penmanship, her mother had written simply:

  Mary-la, Even in my darkest days I wanted to let you know how I felt. But I have never been very good with words, like you are. I give you this now. It is what I wrote to you in one form or another every day of your young life. I offer it not for forgiveness, but for understanding. With all my love, Mom

  Mary put the paper down and looked at the other one, also written in her mother’s perfect penmanship. This one was undated. It read:

  Daughter, I have a story to tell you. I have wanted to tell it to you for a very long time. But unlike Babar or Eloise or any of the other stories that you loved to hear, this one is not funny. This one is not clever. It is simply true. It is my story, yet I do not have the words to tell it. Instead, I pick up my needles and I knit. Every stitch is a letter. A row spells out “I love you.” I knit “I love you” into everything I make. Like a prayer, or a wish, I send it out to you, hoping you can hear me. Hoping, daughter, that the story I am knitting reaches you somehow. Hoping, that my love reaches you somehow.

  Part Ten

  CASTING OFF

  So you’ve knit a good, long strip and you want to get it off the needles and secure it so it doesn’t unravel. This process is called casting off.

  —KRIS PERCIVAL, Knitting Pretty

  19

  MARY

  MARY STOOD AT the window in her small office and looked down at the street. It was two weeks before Christmas. The bar across the street had fat colored lights strung above its windows and drooping over the door. They blinked on and off in the early evening. A lazy wet snow fell, melting before it even hit the ground. Eddie had bought some strange collection of Christmas carols and it played endlessly in the outer office. Mary could make out the Chipmunks’ nasal singing.

  She had a fiber-optic snowman on her desk and it glowed eerily, changing colors with the slow creepy movement of a lava lamp. Walking past the antique shop on Wickenden Street, Mary had seen this funny snowman dripping colors across its popcornlike skin, and bought it immediately. She carried it to work, careful not to break its fake stick arms, and plugged it right in. Then she stood back to admire it. Even then it didn’t occur to her that this was her first act of celebration since Stella had died.

  That came later, when she got home and dug out her Andy Williams Christmas CD. Mary put it on while she cooked a complicated stew, humming along with Andy as he sang “Winter Wonderland.” She paused. Her kitchen smelled of onions caramelizing and the crisp freshness of just-chopped carrots and celery. Small white lights twinkled in the windows. She could catch the smell of the heat that gurgled through the radiators. All that was missing, she thought, was everything else.

  Mary had stood, still holding the long wooden spoon, looking at her life. Dylan had agreed to bring the divorce papers back to her quickly. No Dylan. No Stella. Instead, this new life, so different from the one she had been living.

  Now she tried to count her blessings: New friends. Knitting. She faltered. The Chipmunks. The fiber-optic snowman. Mary closed her eyes and made herself remember every detail of Stella’s lovely face. Stella, she added to her list of blessings. Still, always, Stella.

  “Uh,” Holly said from the doorway. “Are you like, meditating or something?”

  Mary opened her eyes, her heart oddly full. “Just thinking,” she said.

  “I like the snowman,” Holly said.

  Holly had lost all of her pregnancy weight. Her hip bones jutted against the blue miniskirt she wore, and her skinny legs poked out beneath it. She’d stopped breast-feeding, and her breasts were small and flat again, boyish beneath her Clash concert T-shirt.

  Mary frowned at Holly’s clothes. It was December and snowing and she was dressed for summer. But she didn’t say anything. Jessica was always reprimanding Holly—she hadn’t breast-fed long enough, she didn’t play classical music tapes in the car, she needed more black and white toys. All of Jessica’s ideas made Holly even wearier. Jessica and Eddie’s baby, Waylon, was only a month old but had a regular routine of stimulation. Mozart, tapes of Dr. Seuss books read aloud, scary pictures of black and white faces. Holly didn’t have to hear Mary telling her she was dressed inappropriately.

  “Are you going home?” Mary asked Holly.

  She felt sorry for her. Holly was in over her head. She’d imagined a playmate, not a baby. Sometimes, Mary babysat Jasper so that Holly could go out. She would come home drunk long after Mary had put Jasper to bed, her makeup smeared and her miniskirt all twisted. Mary would put her to bed too, Holly mumbling her
thanks.

  “Um,” Holly said, her heavily lined eyes gazing at the snowman’s changing colors. “No. Going to a party. I met this guy the other night? When you babysat?”

  Mary lifted her eyebrows. “Really? That’s great.”

  “Um,” Holly said again. “Yeah. So far. I haven’t told him yet. You know.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Mary said. “Just have some fun.”

  “Right,” Holly said. Her eyes shifted to Mary, then back to the snowman. “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “Did Eddie go home?”

  Holly rolled her eyes. “He took Waylon to a fucking swimming lesson. I mean, the kid can’t even sit up yet.”

  “Go on your date,” Mary said. “I’ll lock up.”

  “Thanks,” Holly said, relieved. “He’s cute, this guy. Rocco.”

  “Rocco?” Mary laughed.

  “Yeah. He kissed me and it was like, zap! You know?”

  “You be careful,” Mary said. “Zap got you in trouble.”

  Unexpectedly, Holly gave her a quick fierce hug. “Thank you,” she said. “I left you something at my desk,” she added when she let go.

  “Like a Christmas present?” Mary said.

  Holly brightened. “Yeah,” she said. “Like a Christmas present.”

  “But the party’s not until tomorrow.”

  Holly shrugged helplessly. Then she walked away quickly, the heels of her boots tapping against the hardwood floor.

  It wasn’t until after Mary heard the ding of the elevator arriving to take Holly away to her date that she wondered who was babysitting Jasper. Maybe Holly’s sister had agreed to do it. If it were possible, her sister Heather was even less reliable than Holly herself. She didn’t even like to hold Jasper. “Too squirmy,” she’d said. “Makes me itchy, like I’m holding a worm or something.”

  Mary unplugged her snowman and put on her coat and the gloves she’d knit. That was what everyone was getting for Christmas this year. Just last night, she’d laid them all out on the dining room table, a dozen pairs of wool tweed gloves in rich jewel colors, topaz and garnet and emerald and amethyst. Her own pair was a deep ruby with flecks of pink and purple.

  In the outer office, the silver aluminum tree with pom-pom-tipped branches glittered in the fluorescent lighting. Eddie had brought it in the other day in a long skinny box that smelled of mothballs. Mary and Holly had helped him stand up its spine and stick the branches into its holes. They’d hung blue balls on every branch. Those balls reflected Mary’s own face now, distorting it. She hit one lightly, watching it spin.

  Eddie’s CD was playing a song by Tiny Tim now, and Mary happily turned it off. After she checked that all the doors were locked, she stood in the silent office a moment and watched the fake tree glisten before she flicked off the overhead lights and went out to the elevator.

  One came quickly. But as soon as the door slid open she remembered that Holly had left her something. She could just get it tomorrow, she supposed. But Holly seemed so fragile lately that Mary was afraid she’d be disappointed if she came to work in the morning and saw that Mary had left the present there, unopened.

  Mary dug the keys from her coat pocket and went back, unlocking the two locks on the main door, then flicking on the lights again. They hummed, then blinked on. For some reason, the tree had lost its glitter and looked ridiculous, a stick with peeling aluminum branches and chipped blue ornaments.

  Mary remembered that when she bought the snowman, she’d seen one of those old color wheels, the ones that looked like a Trivial Pursuit playing piece, all filled in with colored wedges. You plugged it in, and it splashed color across trees like this one. She decided she’d buy it for Eddie’s Christmas present and give it to him at the party tomorrow. She’d already bought too many Baby Einstein products for Waylon, but this gift was too perfect to pass up. In fact, she’d go to the store on her way home.

  For now, though, she didn’t see any present on Holly’s desk. Just the usual chaos of papers and Post-its and tubes of cheap lipstick. Holly had probably taken the thing with her. Mary could sympathize with her spaciness. She remembered too well how a new baby seemed to gobble up your brain cells. That, combined with lack of sleep, had left her in a fog. A pleasant fog for Mary. But Holly was doing it alone, and working full-time.

  Something caught Mary’s eye on the floor behind Holly’s desk. A big red bow. She hoped Holly hadn’t spent too much money on her, an extravagant thank-you for babysittng for free. That would be like Holly. She could barely pay her rent but she still bought expensive shoes and vintage clothes. She probably went overboard on presents too.

  Mary walked around the desk and wheeled the chair out of the way.

  “Holy shit!” she said.

  There, asleep in his jumpy seat, was Jasper. Taped to the top of the seat was a card with a big red bow.

  Careful not to wake the baby, Mary leaned over and quietly pulled off the card. On the front was a candy cane with cat hair stuck all over it. Despite the fact that Holly had just left her baby with Mary, she smiled. Holly’s entire apartment was covered in cat hair.

  Underneath the printed holiday message inside, Holly had written:

  You’re a good mother. I know. I saw you do it. And I suck at this. Why should someone like you be deprived of your baby? Why should someone like me deserve one? Keep him. Make sure he knows I love him but I just couldn’t do it. I know you’ll do better. Your Friend, Holly Patterson

  “Holy shit,” Mary said again, after she’d read the note three times to be sure she understood it.

  She grabbed the phone and punched in Holly’s cell phone number. But she didn’t answer. Of course. Mary tried to think straight, glancing nervously at the sleeping baby. Who had Holly gone off with? Bruno somebody? No. Rocco. Rocco without a last name. Or maybe he was just a ruse for Holly to get out and leave Jasper behind while Mary was still here.

  Mary flipped through Holly’s Rolodex until she found her sister Heather’s phone number.

  Heather answered right away, sounding as if she just woke up.

  “Heather? It’s Mary Baxter.”

  “Who?”

  “Mary? I work with Holly?”

  “Oh. Uh-huh,” Heather said.

  Mary wasn’t convinced Heather remembered her, or even knew where Holly worked. “I need to find Holly. Have you spoken to her?”

  “Yeah,” Heather said through a yawn. Then, to someone else,

  “It’s some lady looking for my sister.”

  “Heather?” Mary said impatiently. “Do you know where she is?”

  “Aruba?”

  “What!” Mary said. Then, hopefully, she said, “You’re not talking to me, are you?”

  “Yeah. I’m telling you. She went to Aruba. Or maybe Barbados. One of those islands. I get them mixed up.”

  That explained the light clothing she’d been wearing.

  “Do you mean she’s gone already?” Mary said.

  She was practically shouting. Jasper stirred. He crunched up his face and she held her breath. But he just relaxed it again and continued to sleep.

  “She met this guy a couple weeks ago and his friend has a house on the beach in like Tobago or somewhere,” Heather was saying.

  Mary sunk into the swivel chair, pressing the phone hard to her ear.

  “Tobago?” she said.

  Heather laughed. “Somewhere like that.”

  “Heather?” Mary said. “I’m going to give you my phone number, okay? I desperately need to talk to Holly. If she calls—”

  “Do they have phones down there?”

  “Yes, they have phones,” Mary said. Knowing it was useless, she very slowly told Heather her number. “Can you repeat it back to me?” Mary said.

  “Uh,” Heather said. “Two-seven-three?”

  “Two-seven-two,” Mary said, clenching her jaw.

  She repeated the number again, but before she could make Heather say it back to her, Heather said, “Got it. Bye,” a
nd hung up.

  Mary placed the phone back in its cradle. When she glanced down at Jasper, he was awake. He stared at her calmly with his dark blue eyes.

  She bent and unclasped the buckle on the safety strap, then lifted him out of the seat and into her arms. Mary felt his wet diaper against her arm. No diaper bag. No car seat. Nothing. Jasper was studying her as if he was waiting for further instructions.

  “Okay, buddy,” Mary said. “Let’s go.”

  Settling the baby on one hip, she picked up the bouncy seat and tucked it against the other. Slowly, awkwardly, she made her way out of the office toward home.

  A MOTHER DOES not forget how to be a mother. Like riding a bicycle many years later, or the way your feet remember how to waltz, when a mother is handed a baby she knows what to do.

  For Mary, this maternal memory came with an ache that had dulled somewhat over all these months. The heft of a baby in her arms, the acrid smell of baby wipes, the funny wet sounds a baby makes, the toothless grins, the way a baby’s face crumples in on itself before he breaks into tears, all of it brought back memories of mothering Stella. And with those memories came the pain of loss all over again.

  Still, she had to tend Jasper. Holly had left her no choice. She needed diapers, formula, baby things. Who knew how to take care of a baby? Without thinking, Mary picked up the phone and called Dylan.

  He came right away. At first, they had stood awkwardly together in the kitchen. But when Mary held Jasper to her chest and Dylan made a list of what he needed to get, a sense of routine and familiarity settled over them.

  At the door, the list in his gloved hand, Dylan paused to watch Mary with the baby.

  “What?” she said harshly when she saw him still there.