“But he wasn’t dead,” said Betsy.
“I know, and that puzzles me,” said Martha. “He was always sure what he was doing was right, that he had a good reason, that he could make me understand. Up to then, I always had.” She reached for the framed piece.
But Betsy stepped back out of reach, to take another, longer look. Her eye was becoming educated to the nuances of needlework. This piece was competently done, no fancy stitches, but no flubs or missed stitches. The piece wasn’t matted; it went all the way to the frame, which was of some dark wood with a very narrow gold stripe on it. “I suppose she framed it herself,” said Betsy.
Martha looked at it in Betsy’s hands. “Yes, I think so. We mostly did, back then. It wasn’t as if it was real art.”
Betsy smiled. “You know, Diane Bolles came into my shop not long ago. She thinks needlework is valuable and hopes to sell some of it in Nightingale’s, which as you know commands some stiff prices.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice? I know some of us have far more pieces tucked away than we have on display. There just isn’t enough wall space.”
Betsy smiled. “Diane said people should rotate their displays, because otherwise it becomes invisible.” She hid the front of Jessica’s work against her chest and asked, smiling, “What color did she do your initials in?”
Martha thought. “Let’s see, the heart is pink, Carl’s initials are gold … so, uh, blue, to match the flowers.”
Betsy laughed and turned the frame around. Martha laughed, too. “Diane obviously has a point,” she said.
Betsy turned it back to look some more. The MW & CW were worked in a simplified gothic style—and, she noticed, were not quite centered. And, now she held it so the weak winter sunlight beaming through Martha’s kitchen window fell on it, the area around the MW and the ampersand was a slightly different shade of pink than the rest of the heart. Remembering her own difficulties, Betsy could guess what had happened. Jessica had gotten it wrong, torn it out, done it again, possibly gotten it wrong again. Whether after once doing it wrong or twice—or three times—she’d run out of pink. And Betsy knew now from her own bitter experience with embroidery that dye lots can vary, so that even buying the same brand and color number didn’t guarantee a perfect match. And if Jessica was like Betsy, she didn’t notice the difference until she’d redone the doggone section she’d frogged. And about then she saw the initials weren’t centered.
And she said to herself what Betsy would have said: To heck with this. I have a friend in pain who needs to see this more than I need to get it done perfectly.
Betsy felt a sudden kinship with Jessica. Betsy’s bright red scarf had at least three errors in it. She had gone back and corrected others, but these three hadn’t been discovered until Betsy was at least two inches away from them. And she just didn’t have the heart or whatever it was that possessed “real” needleworkers, who would undo hundreds of stitches to correct one wrong stitch. And guess what? The scarf was just as warm as if it had been knit without errors.
Besides, if people like Jessica and Betsy decided to undo and redo until they got it right, the scarf and this touching tribute might still be unfinished, languishing in drawers somewhere, waiting for the needleworker to get over her frustration and take it up again.
She was suddenly aware that Martha was waiting for her to continue. “I’m sorry, I was standing here woolgathering—” Betsy chuckled. “—literally, because I was thinking about knitting. Thank you for showing this to me. It’s kind of an inspiration.” She handed it back.
Martha looked at it doubtfully. “How can that be?”
“It tells me I should keep going toward my goal and not think so much of the process.”
Martha smiled. “‘Finished is better than perfect.’ You’ll hear that a lot from needleworkers, though most of them take it as advice, not a rule.”
“If needleworkers ruled the world, there’d be less done, but what got done would be done exceedingly well. I’ll stay in touch and let you know if I find anything important or have more questions.”
Monday morning there were enough customers, some with complicated questions, that noon had come and gone before Betsy and Godwin knew it. Perhaps it was because the day was sunny, a continuation of Sunday afternoon. The temperature now, at one o‘clock, was forty-seven; the streets and sidewalks were wet from melting snow. “What is this, global warming?” asked Betsy.
Godwin said, “Could be. But the forecast is for much colder tomorrow.” He said this with a curious sort of satisfaction. I think he’s proud of the harsh winters they have up here, thought Betsy. He’ll actually be disappointed if we don’t have at least one blizzard before Christmas.
“How about I go get us some lunch?” said Betsy.
“Sandwich and salad for me,” said Godwin. “Thanks.”
She went next door to the sandwich shop and bought two chicken salad sandwiches. Instead of potato chips, she got a double order of a “finger salad,” made of baby carrots, celery sticks, cherry tomatoes, and rings of sweet bell peppers—no dressing, even on the side. After eating her sandwich and enough of the crunchy stuff to feel satisfied, she washed her hands and began working the counted cross-stitch pattern again.
“Godwin, do you do the backstitching as you come to it, or wait and do it all afterward?” she asked, holding out the pattern of a raccoon, now nearly complete.
“Oh, I hate backstitching,” he said. “So I always put it off until the end.” He reached for a carrot. “These really are good for your eyes, did you know that? I used to have such bad night vision, I was actually terrified to drive after dark. Then I needed to lose five pounds and started eating these things instead of candy, and one evening I was out on the road and I asked John, ‘Why does everyone have their lights on so early?’ Because it didn’t seem dark at all to me.”
He cocked his head and looked at her. “That’s what it’s like for you, isn’t it?”
“Oh, I suppose my night vision is about as good as the average person’s.”
“No, I meant about detecting. While the rest of us wander in darkness, it’s all clear as noontime to you. You’ve been going out talking to people, collecting clues, and now you got more of them from questioning Martha and Alice this weekend. I bet you’ve formulated a theory about what really happened, haven’t you?”
Betsy stared at him, then began to laugh.
Godwin sat at the library table, a blank white piece of evenweave and a heap of perle cotton floss in front of him. The Monday Bunch hadn’t arrived yet, and there were no other customers in the shop. The radio was playing light jazz and big band music.
He preferred needlepoint to counted cross-stitch, but he had fallen in love with a pattern and decided to try it. He was sorting the floss, smoothing the strands through his fingers, inhaling the faint scent of the fibers, enjoying the texture. His eyes were distant. The pattern, an angel in a forest watching over a fawn, called for silks on dark green cloth, the center worked in shades of dappled sunlight. But he was going to work it on white in darker colors. Except for the angel, which he would work in cream, gold, yellow, and palest green. The forest all around would be a threat of dark green, deep blue, brown, and black. Even the edges of the fawn would be darkened. A quarter stitch of white in its eye would make it look afraid, perhaps. The subtle shimmer of perle cotton would tease the eye into finding shapes of wolves or cougars. If this worked—if!—he would enter it in the State Fair next year.
He sat dreaming of blended colors while his fingers stroked and smoothed and separated.
“Godwin?”
He came back to himself abruptly, aware this wasn’t the first time his name had been called. “Yes?” He looked around. It was Patricia Fairland.
“Oh, is it time for the Monday Bunch meeting already?” he asked.
“No, not yet. I came early because I wanted to talk to Betsy. Is she here?”
“No. You can ask me.”
She smiled. “Are you her
Watson?”
“I wish. She’s playing this one very close to her chest. I know she’s finding things out, she comes in excited or sad. But she won’t share.”
“Well, I didn’t want to talk to her about this skeleton business anyway. I’m going antique hunting this weekend and I wanted to know if she could come along. She likes antiques, doesn’t she?”
“I have no idea.”
“I’ll ask her when she comes in. Do you know where she is? The meeting starts in about fifteen minutes.”
“At the nursing home out on Seven. She’s starting to look for someone who would love to have a little Christmas tree.”
“Oh, is she keeping up Margot’s custom? How sweet! I’ll have to donate an ornament.” Pat turned toward the tree on the checkout desk. It already had half a dozen ornaments on it. “Which one of those is hers?”
“She hasn’t finished one yet. She’s doing a counted cross-stitch one. Jessica was here on Saturday and says she’ll do a crocheted angel for the top, and I’m going to do a kitty in a stocking on plastic canvas.”
“I’ll bring mine in next Monday,” said Patricia, and she went to see if any new needlepoint canvases had been put up on the doors.
The nursing home was clean, and there were cheerful paintings on the walls, but it was still depressing. Patients slumped in wheelchairs or slept in easy chairs or looked with sad, haunted eyes at Betsy as she went to the window separating the receptionist from the front lounge. Betsy explained her errand and was shown to the director’s office around the corner.
The director was a pleasant woman, and her office had a real wood desk but was otherwise very modest.
“I’m Betsy Devonshire,” said Betsy. “My sister Margot owned a needlework shop called Crewel World, which I have inherited. She used to offer a small Christmas tree with handmade ornaments on it as a gift to someone who didn’t have anyone to remember him or her. I’d like to continue that custom.”
“Unfortunately, we have a number of patients who rarely or never have visitors,” said the director. “Most of them have Alzheimer’s, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t like to get a present or have a visitor.” She consulted a list. “But you know, we also have a patient whose mind works a little strangely, but who is quite aware and alert. She is all alone in the world. She might make an excellent candidate for your gift. Perhaps you’d like to meet her and see for yourself?”
“All right,” said Betsy a little doubtfully. What could she say to someone whose mind worked a little strangely? She had no experience with this sort of person. She reminded herself not to say anything about the tree, which wouldn’t be given away for weeks, and besides, she had only begun her search for a person to give it to.
She followed the director obediently and was taken to a double room. The other bed was stripped to its mattress which meant, the director said, that Dorothy didn’t have a roommate at present. Betsy remembered reading somewhere that the death rate in nursing homes would give a hardened combat sergeant fits. The room was clean, with an attractive bow window, its deep shelf containing a big geranium and a plaster statue of Elvis.
“Dorothy made that in our crafts room,” said the director, and left Betsy alone.
Dorothy was in bed, her blankets pulled up to her chin. She was very old and frail, exceedingly thin. She peered at Betsy fearfully. “Who are you?” she asked.
“My name is Betsy, and I’ve come to say hello.”
“Hello. Can you take me with you when you leave?”
“Don’t you like it here?”
“The food is terrible and the nurses are mean.”
“I’m sorry you don’t like this place. Did you really make that Elvis statue?”
“They made me make it. I wanted to make the clown, but Robert got to do that. He always gets what he wants because he’s a man, and men are little tin gods. Are you the police? I think thieves work here. I can’t find my glasses.”
“No, I own a needlework shop. I sell knitting needles, embroidery floss, and crochet hooks.”
“I used to knit.”
“I’m still learning how. I made this scarf, and I’m making my first mitten.”
“I made love, I made supper, I made good time with my Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight,” she said.
Betsy, beginning to feel she was Alice through the looking glass, asked gamely, “Where were you born?”
“I was born at home a hundred and two years ago.”
“Where’s home?”
“There used to be a place in Excelsior, Minnesota, for me, a long ways from here.”
“It’s not so far. I live in Excelsior.”
“All the people who live in Excelsior are wicked.”
“Not all of them, surely,” said Betsy.
“Yes, all of them. I had a son named Henry, and he got a girl drunk and scared her. I told him he was a bad boy and would come to a bad end.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t mean anything by it, but they played eight to the bar, Company B, and he died, a Dutchman shot him in the head in the water. Never set foot in Omaha, he was shot and drowned both together. And Alice was married to our pastor, the naughty girl. But I never told.”
“It was good of you not to tell,” said Betsy, trying hard to stay with the sharp curves of this discourse. “So that makes one good person, doesn’t it?”
Dorothy chuckled, the tears gone as if they had never existed. “I guess so. But everyone else was bad. Vernon Miller hit Gertrude, broke her nose when she was only fifteen. The sheriff wouldn’t arrest him, he was a bad sheriff. Vernon wanted to marry the girl, but she was too fast for him. She kissed all the bad men, and Carl, too. He was the worst. He pretended to be good, but he was in love with all the girls.”
“Didn’t you like Carl Winters?”
Dorothy nodded sagely and looked at Betsy slantwise with clever, pleased eyes. “He cheated on his mistress. He was the worst.”
“You mean he cheated on his wife.”
“He cheated on everyone who was a woman. He said he loved them, but he talked like a chicken, cluck, cluck, cluck, only he never laid that egg.”
“Trudie—Gertrude—was his mistress?”
Dorothy chuckled. “Everyone was badly wrong. He met his mistress at the State Fair and got all greasy. They used to grease pigs and a pole at county fairs. He done her wrong with Gertrude, but he was doing Gertrude wrong, too.”
“What about his wife?”
“She didn’t talk to common folk like me, proud, proud, the first deadly sin. Carl wasn’t proud, but he was a bad man. They were all bad.”
“I don’t understand. Who was Carl’s mistress?”
Dorothy nodded several times. “Her husband flew in airplanes way up high in the air, but they got him anyhow. She fried hot dogs and served hot food and soda pop. She thought Carl would marry her, but they had a big fight and then he ran away.”
“Who thought? Trudie?”
“Trudie thought Vern would marry her, but he joined the army, and she was mad.”
“No, Vern didn’t join the army until after Trudie disappeared.”
“She ran away with Carl.”
“No, she didn’t,” said Betsy. “They found her bones on a boat, the Hopkins.”
“Ah,” said Dorothy, and closed her eyes. But after awhile, she opened them again and looked sideways at Betsy. “Who are you?” she asked.
Betsy sighed. Then she remembered a simple test for brain function. “Do you know what year this is, Dorothy?”
Dorothy frowned. “It’s later than nineteen ninety-seven, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. And who is President of the United States?”
The eyes were suddenly clever and amused. “I always guess Dwight David Eisenhower, because he was my favorite.”
14
It was Tuesday, late-closing night. Betsy was dead tired. There hadn’t been many customers that evening, but practically every one of them had been disappointed because either the shop didn’t have exactly wha
t they were looking for or Betsy couldn’t answer their how-to questions. The honeymoon, she realized, was over. She shouldn’t have sent Godwin home at five; his encyclopedic knowledge and indomitable good humor would have made the evening at least endurable.
Not for the first time, Betsy wondered what on earth she thought she was doing, trying to keep the shop going. She should be working for some other company, for someone who knew his or her business, someone who would give Betsy only tasks she could actually do and not make her responsible for the welfare of the entire company. Someone who would be positively aggravated if Betsy attempted to shoulder more responsibility than she’d been hired to carry.
She could sell the shop if she wanted to, she didn’t have to wait until her sister’s estate was settled. Margot had had the wisdom to incorporate, to name Betsy as an officer of the corporation, so that when Margot died, the shop went directly into Betsy’s hands, to do with as she pleased. Why was she torturing herself like this?
She looked around the shop. It was quiet right now, the darkness outside a splendid contrast to the twinkling Christmas lights in the windows. The shop was warm with color. The track lights picked out baskets heaped with wine, amber, royal blue, and pine green wools, made deeper the patterns of the sweaters. It was all so attractive! But like all beautiful temptations, full of traps for the unwary. One saw the beautiful yarns and the finished sweaters or pillows or framed projects on the wall and wanted to have done that, wanted the admiring comments of friends when showing off a finished project. The problem came when one actually tried doing the work, because the work was arduous and difficult.
A painted canvas in the “final discount” basket caught her eye. The design was of a round basket full of balls of wool. A customer had nearly bought it awhile ago, then changed her mind, saying there was a spotted cat asleep in that basket, and she didn’t like cats. Betsy couldn’t see any cat, and neither could another customer consulted on the matter. That’s why the canvas was desperately seeking a buyer; whoever had designed it wasn’t much of an artist.
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