A Fatal Yarn

by Peggy Ehrhart

  Holly laughed, displaying her perfect teeth and activating the dimple that accompanied her frequent smiles. “My neighbor got a scare though.” In response to the startled faces that greeted the statement, she amended it. “Just a little scare. Actually, it was more funny than anything else. Somebody left a note in his mailbox, a handwritten note. He showed it to Desmond when Desmond was on his way to the Co-Op the other day, and he asked if we’d ever gotten such a thing.”

  “Did it say the Advocates were an eyesore?” Pamela asked, remembering the note that someone had dropped off at Cassie Griswold’s tag sale.

  “Why yes,” Holly said. “That’s exactly what it said. Desmond remembered ‘eyesore’ particularly. ‘Your soggy Advocates are an eyesore and you had better clean them up.’ ”

  “Did you ever get a note like that?” Karen asked, looking alarmed.

  “Of course not.” A smile activated Holly’s dimple again. “We bring the Advocate in every week on the day it comes and we read every word of it.”

  They knit in silence for a bit then. Nell had embarked on another infant cap in the same soft yellow yarn she’d been using the previous week. Karen’s project was another tiny piece for a lacy pink garment undoubtedly destined for Lily. Holly was making another square, dramatic orange this time, for her color-block afghan. And Bettina, after her extended consultation of her knitting pattern, was back at work on the Nordic-style sweater for Wilfred.

  “It’s gotten late,” Nell murmured after a time. She was staring at the eye-catching sunburst clock that decorated one wall of Holly’s living room. “Past time for our break.” She lowered her knitting into her lap.

  Holly jumped to her feet, exclaiming, “Roland always reminds us!” She hurried toward her dining room and the kitchen beyond. Bettina followed her, turning to observe, “Too many cooks spoil the broth, as Wilfred would say. You all just stay here and I’ll give Holly a hand.”

  Nell was flexing her fingers and seemed happy to relax for a bit. Karen’s fingers were still busy with her slender needles and delicate pink yarn, but she and Nell began to chat about Dave Dowling’s growing expertise in diaper-changing and lullaby-singing.

  Across the room on the loveseat, Pamela had put her work aside. She’d already sewn up the two sleeve seams that had been her task for the evening. Only a tiny bit remained to do before the tunic was complete and ready to be presented to Penny when she arrived home. It was time to think of a new project. But maybe she’d spend a few weeks paging through knitting magazines until inspiration struck. In the meantime . . .

  “Nell?” she heard herself say. Nell turned from Karen to gaze across the room at Pamela. “I’ll make some caps,” Pamela went on, “if you’ll show me how.”

  “Extra hands are always welcome,” Nell said. “And you can use odds and ends of leftover yarn, as long as it’s soft and not itchy. A cap doesn’t take much.” Nell slid her knitting bag onto her lap and began to root around in it, coming up with a partial skein of yarn in a pale shade of peach. “I’ll get you started with this tonight.”

  The tantalizing aroma of brewing coffee had been growing stronger as Nell spoke. Now Bettina stepped into the opening between Holly’s living room and her dining room. Looking past Bettina, Pamela could see Holly’s elegant chrome coffee pot and a squat pottery teapot sitting side by side on the mid-century modern dining room table.

  “There’s coffee for the coffee-drinkers and tea for the tea-drinkers,” Bettina announced. “And wait until you see what Holly has created for tonight’s nibble.”

  Pamela rose, but she let Nell and Karen lead the way to the refreshments. Holly and her creation were still in the kitchen. But in addition to the coffee and tea (and cream and sugar), cups and saucers and dessert plates waited on the table’s pale wood surface, along with sleek flatware and fancy paper napkins.

  “Melmac,” Nell murmured, picking up a heavy plastic cup and saucer set in an arresting shade of pink. “I can’t believe these fashionable young people like all these things I remember from the fifties.”

  “The fifties were awesome,” came a cheerful voice from the kitchen doorway. “You were so lucky to be alive then.”

  “Oh, my dear!” Nell’s smile was tinged with pity. “People had the same worries and fears then—even more, in some ways, but—” She had turned and was gazing at the platter Holly carried. The pity vanished from her smile and it became wider. “I used to make that every Easter,” she said, “when my children were little.” It occurred then to Pamela that Nell’s crusade against sugar had not been lifelong.

  Holly carried the platter to the table and set it down near the stack of dessert plates. She acknowledged the chorus of ohs and ahs with a dimply smile. “I found the most amazing recipe blog,” she said. “It’s called ‘Grandma’s Kitchen.’ ”

  Centered on the platter as if squatting in a field of exceptionally green grass was a bunny—a cake bunny with a pink jelly bean nose, chocolate drop eyes, and white icing fur made more convincing by the addition of shredded coconut.

  “How did you do the ears?” Bettina asked, leaning close.

  “I bought ladyfingers,” Holly explained, “and I spread lots of the white icing on them and rolled them in coconut. The grass is coconut too, dyed with food coloring.” She surveyed her handiwork fondly and then picked up a knife.

  “Ohhh!” Bettina raised her fingers to her face, hiding her brightly lipsticked mouth but displaying her matching nail polish, bright pink. “How can you? It would be like . . . it would be like eating . . .” The ginger cat had wandered in from the kitchen.

  “I’ll pour the coffee,” Pamela said, stepping up to the table.

  As Pamela tipped the chrome coffee pot over the Melmac cups, Holly began to serve slices of the bunny cake, starting at the back. The first serving included the coconut-covered tail, and she offered it to Karen.

  “I can’t eat that much.” Karen waved a delicate hand at the plate. The slice had revealed that beneath the icing and coconut fur, the cake itself was yellow.

  “Just the tail is fine for me,” Nell said.

  Meanwhile, Pamela had moved on to pouring out tea for Karen and Nell. Bettina had stepped up to the table again. She had sugared her coffee and was adding cream to achieve exactly the pale mocha shade that she preferred.

  “I hope your husband got to see your creation,” Pamela said as she accepted a Melmac plate with a reasonably sized portion of cake.

  “He did,” Holly said. “I made it last night. He’s at the salon—we have clients who come in after work—but he’ll have cake when he gets home.”

  Holly began to cut a slice of cake for herself. Bettina was still standing at the edge of the table, sipping her coffee and watching. Holly transferred the slice of cake to a plate and glanced around. Karen and Nell had already returned to the living room with their tea and cake, having divided Karen’s original portion of cake into two.

  “Is that it then?” Holly inquired, her eyes shifting from Bettina to Pamela then back to Bettina again.

  “Well . . .” Bettina raised her brows and tilted her head, casting a sideways glance at the slice of cake on Pamela’s plate. “When a piece is on the plate, it doesn’t look so much like a bunny, so maybe I could . . .”

  Holly laughed and handed Bettina the serving she had just cut for herself. “Go on into the living room,” she said. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  Pamela took a seat in the other angular chair that flanked the coffee table, which was a long slab of granite on spindly legs. There was plenty of room on the table for five dessert plates and five cups and saucers. Holly joined them, and the five women sat cozily facing one another, Pamela and Holly in the angular chairs, and Nell, Karen, and Bettina on the sofa.

  Knitting was forgotten for a time. Perhaps it was that Roland wasn’t there to keep them focused on the task. Or perhaps, with no man present, topics arose that wouldn’t have seemed suitable for general discussion. In any event, when Pamela finally c
hecked the sunburst clock, only fifteen minutes remained until Knit and Nibble’s customary quitting time.

  There was just time for Nell to get Pamela started on an infant cap, lending her needles of an appropriate gauge for the pale peach yarn and guiding her as she cast on the requisite number of stitches and embarked on the knit two, purl two ribbing that would form the cap’s edge.

  Chapter 16

  Pamela awoke, not to the morning sun brightening her bedroom’s white eyelet curtains, but to the steady tattoo of raindrops. She stirred slightly and felt a soft motion at her side. Something was on the move, or rather two somethings, creeping over her belly and chest. A small hump appeared under the folded-back edge of her sheet, then a head appeared. Amber eyes peered at her from a heart-shaped face covered in black fur. In a moment another head appeared, ginger this time, with eyes the color of jade.

  The clock on her bedside table said that it was past eight. A gloomy morning made for a lazy rising, but it was time to be up. And if Pamela herself didn’t awake thinking immediately of food, her bedmates certainly did. Catrina was kneading her chest in an importunate way and Ginger had already leapt from the bed and was standing at the bedroom door.

  Downstairs, her house was dark and chilly. The view through the oval window in the front door was of a yard with colors dimmed by the glowering storm, and of the dark, rain-slicked street beyond. Once she’d switched the kitchen light on though, that room was cheery enough, with its yellow walls and a vintage cloth in a colorful print covering the table. The clicking sounds coming from the baseboard radiators said that the house was warming to the thermostat’s daytime setting.

  Pamela gave the cats their breakfast and refreshed their water dish, then she took her umbrella from the closet, traded her slippers for boots, and hurried out to collect the Register. She left the wet boots and umbrella on the porch by the side of the door and gratefully reentered a house that felt cozy in contrast to the dank outside, tugging her fleecy robe more closely around her.

  Inhaling the smell of fresh ground coffee beans and the deeper, richer smell of brewing coffee, as water dripped from the filter cone into the carafe below, made Pamela feel quite ready for whatever the day had to offer. She sat at her table nibbling the last few bites of whole-grain toast and letting the coffee, in its wedding china cup, warm first her fingers then her whole being.

  She folded the Register’s first section, put it aside, and contemplated the front page of Local. The lead article was about the upcoming Easter egg roll at the county park. As she was turning the page to find the rest of the article, she heard feet on her front porch.

  Thinking it was Bettina, who was known to pay unannounced calls when she had something important to communicate, Pamela headed for the entry. But no figure was visible beyond the lace that curtained the oval window. Perhaps, then, the mail had arrived, though nine a.m. was very early for the mail—especially on a day when one would expect the rain to slow the delivery process.

  Pamela opened the front door and peeked out. There was no sign of anyone, though the mail carrier had been known to move quite fast with his short cuts from yard to yard. She lifted her mail box’s hinged cover and reached inside. Something had been delivered, though it didn’t exactly feel like an envelope or a catalogue. A flyer, maybe. Some industrious soul offering lawn service now that spring was approaching.

  But the words she read when she unfolded the somewhat damp sheet of paper had nothing to do with lawn service—though one might say they had to do, in a sense, with home improvement. “Recycling is not to be put at the curb until 6:00 p.m.,” she read. “Yours was out too early last night. Recycling bins are an EYESORE and they degrade the esthetic effect of the neighborhood. Moreover, the longer the bins are out, the more chance there is for paper or containers to escape and create even more of an EYESORE. Do not let this happen again! P.S. I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE.”

  Pamela stood on her threshold for a moment. She stared toward Bettina’s house, checking to see whether the person who had delivered the note she held in her hand was possibly tucking a similar note into Bettina’s mailbox at this very moment, since Bettina’s recycling had gone out at the same time Pamela’s had. Bettina’s porch was empty, however, and glances up and down Orchard Street revealed no one braving the rain for any errand whatsoever.

  So Pamela returned to the remains of her coffee and toast, first setting the damp note on the counter to dry. It would have to be shown to Bettina. In the meantime, AccessArborville might well be buzzing with discussion of the note-writing Arborville resident who objected to tag-sale posters, uncollected copies of the Advocate, and recycling bins that appeared at the curb before six p.m.

  When the coffee carafe was empty and only a few crumbs marked the spot where toast had lain on a small wedding china plate, Pamela rinsed her breakfast dishes and climbed the stairs to her bedroom. Ten minutes later, dressed for the day in jeans, a sweater, and loafers, she lowered herself into her desk chair, poked her computer’s ON button, and watched as her monitor’s screen came alive with icons.

  Pamela had mixed feelings about AccessArborville. On the one hand, it served a useful purpose. People could share news about town events, give away objects they no longer needed, locate babysitters and housecleaners, and exchange information about local contractors. On the other hand, it allowed people to express ideas that they might not express, at least in such blunt language, if they were communicating face to face with the same people who were reading their posts.

  A lively discussion of the “nutty neat freak,” as he (or she) had been dubbed, was indeed underway. Many people posting had received notes delineating their infractions against public tidiness. And many posters—perhaps those who had not received notes but only heard about them—thought that the neat freak had a point. One poster even proposed a seasonal event, perhaps called Arborville Cleans, to address some of the issues that concerned the neat freak. Another pro-neat freak poster brought up the fact that political candidates didn’t bother to collect their campaign materials after elections were over, the late Bill Diefenbach, may he rest in peace, being the worst offender.

  Other posters, those who called him (or her) the nutty neat freak—and worse things—felt that campaign materials left to deteriorate in public places were perhaps worthy of criticism, but that people had a right to be as messy as they wanted on their own property. Anyone who didn’t like it just didn’t have to look.

  Before visiting the AccessArborville site, Pamela had checked her email. Her boss had already been busy, and the article about the indigo trade was now back in Pamela’s inbox with instructions to edit it, along with the article on women’s weaving collectives in Peru. “We’ll run them both this summer,” her boss’s email read. “The August issue is shaping up to have a strong social consciousness slant.” Pamela set to work and had soon lost herself in the task of making the article on the indigo trade at least a bit more accessible to the average reader. She was grateful when the doorbell’s chime rescued her from the task of untangling a half-page-long sentence.

  Pamela nearly tripped over Ginger as she crossed her entry. Catrina had pounced on the ball of yarn that Ginger had clearly been chasing, and after dodging Pamela’s foot, Ginger began tussling with her mother for the prize. Bettina’s pumpkin-colored coat was visible through the lace that curtained the oval window, and her bright yellow umbrella. In a moment, she had left the umbrella by the side of the door, wiped her yellow rubber booties on the doormat, and stepped inside. She was carrying a white cardboard bakery box.

  “What would you say to lunch?” she asked.

  Pamela looked at the box. “I wouldn’t say no,” she said. “But it’s barely ten.”

  “Lunch at Hyler’s I mean.” Bettina laughed. “With Brandon MacDonald.” She held the box out. “This is for now—if you can take a break.”

  “I certainly can,” Pamela said, thinking of the syntactical chaos waiting upstairs. “I just have to save my document and I’ll b
e right back down.”

  When she entered the kitchen, Bettina had removed her coat, revealing a jersey wrap dress in a swirling yellow and chartreuse print. The burner under the kettle had been lit and the bakery box placed on the table, along with two cups and saucers and two small plates. Bettina was holding the note Pamela had found in her mailbox.

  “We got one too,” Bettina said, flourishing the still rather limp sheet of paper from Pamela’s counter. “Wilfred found it when he collected the mail. He just laughed, but I thought it was sad. Orchard Street has always been a live-and-let-live kind of street. Most people keep their property up nicely, but if somebody gets a little behind on grass-mowing in the summer, or puts an old washing machine out a few days before the proper collection date, people understand.”

  Pamela turned. “The note-writer”—she resisted the urge to use the term neat freak—“might not live on Orchard Street. Marjorie got a note about the tag-sale signs, and last night Holly said her neighbor got one about letting . . . newspapers . . . pile up in his driveway. And according to AccessArborville, lots and lots of people are getting them, for all sorts of things.” She described some of the posts she’d read that morning.

  “I suppose Richard Larkin got one.” Bettina set the note down. Pamela tipped a few measures of coffee beans into her coffee grinder, and for a few moments conversation was replaced by the crunch and whirr of the beans being ground.

  Pamela arranged a paper filter in the plastic cone that fit atop her carafe and poured in the fragrant ground beans. By now the water in the kettle was boiling. She tilted the kettle over the carafe, and soon the slow drip of the boiling water was amplifying the coffee beans’ fragrance as the carafe filled with fresh-brewed coffee.

  Meanwhile, at the table Bettina had untied the string that fastened the bakery box and revealed the contents: two cheese Danish reposing on squares of waxy paper. “I think they’d be better with forks,” Bettina said as she transferred them to the plates. “They’re quite sticky.” The cheese Danishes were smooth rounds of golden pastry, palm-sized, and glistening with a sugary glaze. In the center of each was a smaller round, paler gold, of soft, sweet cheese.