The Oysterville Sewing Circle

by Susan Wiggs

  She snapped the book shut. “As the saying goes, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” She looked around the circle. “So you’re my first step.”

  Caroline didn’t move a muscle. She felt heartsick and frustrated by the stories she was hearing. The losses caused by abuse mounted. Hearing the women speak was humbling. They came from every sort of diverse background, every stratum of society. The one common thread was that each had suffered at the hands of an intimate partner. A husband. A boyfriend. A girlfriend.

  Economic hardship was part of nearly everyone’s story. Women shackled themselves to abusers in order to survive, and they stayed trapped there, sometimes for years. Most people didn’t have parents like Caroline’s, offering a safe haven.

  She had lived her life taking independence for granted. Now that she had children to look after, she could understand the compromises women were sometimes forced to make. She wanted to create something so successful that she could afford full-time help from Echo. And hiring Echo was only a small step. Caroline needed a bigger plan. She vowed to expand her business beyond superhero T-shirts. She wanted to create more opportunities for more women. Like Amy. Caroline was already paying a commercial driver to take her bagged and tagged garments to Seattle and Portland. Why not Amy, who loved to drive? And if the income stream ever permitted it, she’d hire Willow in a heartbeat, to help with the business side of things. Caroline knew design. Patternmaking and sample sewing, fit and sourcing. The business structure—not so much.

  The latecomer named Ilsa rifled through the basket. “I don’t see anything in here for me,” she said. “I’m not even sure I belong in a group like this. I’ve never been married, haven’t been in a long-term relationship. I’m here because I had . . .” Setting down the basket, she kept her eyes trained on the floor. “I don’t even know what to call what happened to me. A bad date? A bad encounter?”

  She absently rubbed the side of her neck with her hand. To Caroline, she looked very young, barely out of her teens. “It was a guy I’d just met for drinks, and he seemed kind of cute. I’m a web designer, and he was interested in my work. Good profile on a dating app. I was a little drunk,” Ilsa went on. “I shouldn’t have gotten in the car with him, but I was in no shape to drive. He offered to take me home. Then he wanted to make out, so we did that for a while, but I really wanted to go home. And . . . and he started forcing me, and I’m like, no, but it wasn’t really a hard no. I didn’t want to be awkward or dramatic. And he’s like, ‘Oh, you want it rough,’ and he yanked off my blouse and tried to force me.”

  The young woman’s words ignited a deep sense of outrage in Caroline, awakening an old but never-quite-forgotten memory. She didn’t move, but felt her hands curl into fists.

  “I—he . . . Somehow I managed to wriggle free. I shoved the door open and literally fell on the ground in the parking lot. Then I ran like hell to my own car. I don’t even remember getting in. I remember him peeling out of the parking lot. I just sat there in my car with all the doors locked, shaking. Shaking so hard I thought my teeth would fall out. Finally I managed to get the key in the ignition. By then I was stone-cold sober. I’m sure I was in shock. God, it happened so fast . . .”

  These things can catch you off guard, thought Caroline, feeling a prickle at the back of her neck.

  “I should be grateful that I managed to get away,” Ilsa said. “And I figured, that’s that. It’s over. It was a bad moment. I’m just going to forget it happened and move on.”

  Finally she looked up from the floor. “I can’t forget. The whole incident took up maybe five minutes of my life, but I can’t stop thinking about it. I go over and over it in my mind. Was I stupid to have one too many? Idiotic to get in his car? Was my skirt too short? My blouse too tight? Then I wonder if I should tell someone—my mom, a friend. But I couldn’t bring myself to speak up. This is the first time I’ve said a single word about it. And here’s the kicker. He keeps texting me, trying to get me to go out with him again. He’s acting like we had a good time. He even sent me a dick pic. So I guess . . .” She hunched her shoulders. Rubbed her neck again. “That’s why I’m not sure about being here.” She stared down at her hands, picked at her nails. “Like, was I abused? Was it a sexual assault? Or just a really bad date?”

  You were assaulted, Caroline told her with silent, fierce certainty. That’s an absolute fact. She could scarcely imagine the trauma the girl must have felt. Except . . . maybe she could. A long-buried incident, never quite forgotten, nudged its way up from the past. The smell of salt water on his skin, Jägermeister on his breath. The weight of him, pinning her on the blanket. His husky voice in her ear. That, too, had been the briefest of encounters, but years later, it was burned into her memory. She was surprised by the vehemence she felt all the way down to the bottom of her gut. Now she realized that if the intimacy didn’t feel right, it probably wasn’t right.

  “You’re welcome here,” Lindy Bloom said. “There’s no prerequisite to join us.”

  When the basket came to Caroline, she took a moment to study the contents, even though she’d put the thing together. Ordinary objects. Things encountered every day. In her work, Caroline had made presentations to high-powered design professionals and creative directors, to the world-renowned designers themselves. Yet speaking to the group of women in Oysterville felt far more intimidating.

  She took out a cockleshell, pinkish brown with ridges, a common find on the beaches in the area. “I’m drawn to this one,” she said, holding the shell in her palm. “It reminds me of my old family nickname—C-Shell. I nearly forgot about that until I came back here. Now I’ve turned it into the name of the clothes I’m designing.” She took a breath and looked around the room. “I have to tell you, I’m blown away by everything I’ve heard. And although I’ve never been in an abusive relationship, I have had an incident like the one Ilsa described.”

  Without even looking at her sisters, she could sense them sitting up as if someone had stuck a ramrod up their backs. “It was a long time ago, and I didn’t speak up, either, but it still haunts me sometimes.” She knew her sisters were going to be full of questions, and she’d answer them later. Maybe. Memories were powerful. They could haunt and torment and plague the soul with what-ifs and should-haves. She gripped the shell so tightly, she could feel its sharp edges biting into her.

  “But that’s not why I wanted to create a group like this. My life has been touched by domestic violence in a serious way. One of my closest friends was a victim. I wish I could tell you she’s a survivor, but she didn’t make it.”

  She took a deep breath, trying to gather her thoughts. She shut her eyes and the memories swept in, fresh as yesterday. “When I was a designer in New York, I worked with a beautiful model who I thought was at the top of her game in the fashion world. One day I noticed bruises on her. She brushed off my concern, and I didn’t press her. I wish . . . I should have pushed harder, but I didn’t know. I didn’t realize . . . and then not long afterward, she came to me in a panic with her two kids. They needed a place to stay. I tried to help. I thought I was helping. Then one day I came home and found her dead of an overdose. I had no idea she was using drugs. I can’t help but think it’s related to her being abused. Now I’m taking care of her children and I’m overwhelmed. I’m trying my best to help them deal with what happened.”

  She knew she would forever be haunted by the promise she had made, sincerely and naively, to her friend. She was plagued by questions, doubts, uncertainty. Should she have called the police right away? Should she have pressed harder, bullied Angelique into opening up? Was there some other choice she could have made that might have changed the outcome?

  “I miss my friend,” she said, closing her eyes and picturing Angelique in all her glory. “She was more than beautiful. She had so much will and grit, maybe so much that the world looked past what was going on inside. I know I did. And now I’ve lost her, and everything happened so fast I haven’t really mou
rned her. My worst fear is that I won’t do right by her children.”

  Taking another steadying breath, she pressed the shell between her hands and continued talking to the group. “I’m grateful to be here and proud of my sisters and friends for helping me organize this. I’ve always known Georgia and Virginia were older and wiser than me, but I never realized how much wiser.” The story had come out in a jumbled rush. Had she said too much? Did she sound like a blithering idiot?

  When she looked around the circle, she saw only acceptance. “I’m hopeful that if I gain a better understanding of what happened to the children’s mother, I might be able to help and protect them.”

  There was more talk. More eating of cookies. And at the end of the evening, every person present agreed to come the following week. As they were putting the room back together and boxing up supplies, Caroline felt a wave of hope. “It’s a start,” she murmured to no one in particular. “I’m glad we started.”

  Before going to bed that night, Caroline slipped into the children’s room. Checking on them was a nightly habit now. Flick and Addie slept with sweet abandon, their breathing light and untroubled. Flick liked to sleep with the binoculars she’d bought him, his new prized possession. He claimed they helped him see the stars at night. Addie stuck with Wonder Woman, always.

  Soft light from the hallway fell across their faces, and their utter vulnerability struck Caroline with an aching mixture of love and sadness.

  Angelique, they’re wonderful, she silently told her friend. I wish you could see how fast they’re growing, how much they’re learning day by day. They miss you so much. I miss you.

  Their world is so different here. It’s the world where I grew up. It was safe. I never had to think about being safe, growing up. I just was.

  That’s what I want to give them, Angelique. A childhood where safety is not just a goal, but a given.

  Part Three

  For memory, we use our imagination. We take a few strands of real time and carry them with us, then like an oyster we create a pearl around them.

  —John Banville

  Chapter 14

  The first time Caroline went to the old Jensen place, she was twelve going on thirteen. It was the very start of summer—three glorious months of no more teachers, no more books, no more homework, no more bells, no more dress code or walking in a straight line. The summer people were already arriving in their shiny cars with surfboards and picnic hampers, streaming from the cities to escape the heat and the traffic.

  The wind in her face as she rode her bike down the shady lane felt like pure freedom, cool and sweet, flowing out endlessly behind her. The fat tires of her beach cruiser rattled over the dappled road, and she had to keep checking to make sure the jars of her mom’s strawberry-rhubarb jam were nestled safely in the front basket.

  Mom had sent her to deliver the homemade jam to old Mrs. Jensen as a thank-you, because Mrs. Jensen had made a nice donation to the town library, which was one of Mom’s pet projects. Caroline was going to earn five bucks for making the delivery. If she had been a better person, like her perfect sister Georgia, she probably would have given the five to the library as well. But she wasn’t Georgia. She wasn’t perfect. She needed the money to buy fabric at Lindy’s shop, the most special place on the whole peninsula. She had an awesome idea for a summer dress, her grandmother’s old sewing machine was oiled up, and she couldn’t wait to get started on it.

  The Jensen place was a grand mansion, or apparently it had been back in the day. The house was covered with flaking greenish paint, with a wraparound porch and gabled windows. There was a railed walkway along the roofline overlooking Willapa Bay. In one of Caroline’s treasured childhood books, A Little Maid of Nantucket, she’d learned that the rooftop lookouts were called widow’s walks on account of women whose men went out whale hunting. Left behind, the wives used to walk around up there, watching for their men to come back. This made no sense at all to Caroline. Why couldn’t the women find something better to do? Like sew a gown, one of those fancy ones with hoopskirts and layers of crinoline.

  She parked her bike and took off her helmet, then picked up the basket and went to the front door. A scruffy brown dog scampered over, barking his head off. His feathery tail waved, indicating he was friendly.

  “Hey there,” she said, stooping down to give him a pet. He wore a red collar with a tag. “Duffy,” she said, reading the tag. “Is that your name, boy?” He wriggled and bowed, then feinted away, picking up a dry stick.

  She looked around, not seeing anyone else. The porch was furnished with white wicker chairs and a two-seater swing. There was a wrought iron table with a big aspidistra plant, and a boot scraper in the shape of a wiener dog. The chair cushions were covered in vile cabbage rose damask. Caroline had never understood why people liked damask. It always seemed so heavy and dull.

  A historical society plaque was posted by the door: the arne jensen house. 1881. In 1881, girls wore petticoats and boots that fastened at the ankle with a buttonhook. And corsets that looked brutal to wear but were also kind of awesome.

  Caroline went up the steps, knocked on the door, and waited. Nothing. Cupping her hands around her eyes, she peered through the wavy old-fashioned glass into a foyer. She could see a hall tree and mirror, and a wooden staircase. Nobody home.

  She knocked again, then turned and shaded her eyes, scanning the area. There was a giant barn with walls made of weather-beaten wood, its roof sagging like a sow’s belly. In the distance were the docks and oystering sheds. Still nobody around, though.

  Oh well. She left the basket by the door and propped Mom’s thank-you note beside it.

  “Hey.”

  Startled, Caroline swiftly turned. A boy stood on the gravel path leading in from the dock. Tall and skinny, he was dripping wet from head to toe, holding a mask, flippers, and a snorkel. He had blond hair slicked to his head like a seal’s fur, freckles, and blue eyes that were framed by the imprint of the snorkel mask.

  Her heart skipped a beat. Even dripping wet, he was totally cute. Lately she noticed boys in a new way. A way that made her chest feel warm and squishy.

  “Hey,” she said, wondering who this kid could be. She’d never seen him before.

  “You looking for somebody?” the boy asked.

  “Old Mrs. Jensen.” She gestured at the basket. “I have a delivery for her.”

  “You mean my grandmother. She’s not that old. Jeez.”

  She looked around at the fields and tidal flats, the big coastal cedars permanently bent like old men by the wind. “This is your grandparents’ place?”

  “Yep.”

  “Are you visiting, or . . . ?”

  “For the summer.”

  One of the summer people, then. He didn’t look so fancy in his swim trunks, his bare chest pale as a fish’s belly.

  He set down the snorkeling gear. “I’m Will Jensen.”

  “Caroline Shelby,” she said. “I live in town. Year-round.”

  Like everyone on the peninsula, she had mixed feelings about summer people. They descended each season to soak up the sun and play in the surf, filling the campgrounds and beach motels, racing their bikes up and down the boardwalks, flying kites and shooting off illegal firecrackers almost every night. Her older sisters and their friends were obsessed with having summer boyfriends, which as far as Caroline could tell were boys they made out with and then never saw after Labor Day.

  She glanced again at his snorkel gear. His legs were long and pale, and seemed made of equal parts muscle and goose bumps. “You like swimming?”

  He nodded, and his bluish lips quirked up in a smile. “My granddad says I’m part fish. I didn’t see much around the dock, though.” He gestured over his shoulder. “Anemones and crabs, mostly. I wanted to watch the birds diving, but I got too cold.”

  “Ever try a wet suit?”

  “Nope.”

  “You can stay in a lot longer if you wear a wet suit. They have ’em for sale at Swain’
s store.” Being a local made her feel slightly superior, knowing her way around.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” He moved out of the shade and into a patch of sunlight. His eyes were as blue as her favorite color of gumball.

  The squishy-warm feeling came back. “Do you have a bike?” she asked in sudden inspiration.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I think there’s an old beach cruiser in the barn.”

  “Want to go for a ride?”

  “Sure. I’ll go change.” He patted his thigh and Duffy followed him to the house.

  While she waited, Caroline filled her lungs to the brim with the heady air of adventure. It seemed as palpable as the tang of brine on her tongue. As a general rule, she didn’t like boys. With two younger brothers, she was well aware of their shortcomings. Boys were noisy, and they smelled like hamsters, and they had an incomprehensible habit of wearing the same dirty shirt day in and day out until someone made them change.

  This boy, though. Will Jensen. There was something interesting about him, and it wasn’t just the freckles and blue eyes. For some reason, he didn’t seem annoying like her brothers or the boys in her class. Not yet, anyway.

  After a few minutes, he came clumping down the porch steps. His Go Navy T-shirt looked clean enough. His blond hair had a shampoo-ad shine now that it was dry. That hair was way too pretty, she thought. For a boy.

  “The bike probably needs air in the tires,” he said, leading the way to the barn.

  She fell in step with him. “You like the navy?”

  “My dad’s in the navy, so I’d better like it. We’ve been stationed in Guam the past two years. Know where Guam is?”

  “I’d be lying if I said I did. Sorry.” She glanced away, feeling ignorant.

  “That’s okay. I probably wouldn’t know either, except I live there. It’s an island in Micronesia—in the South Pacific.”