Knitting

by Anne Bartlett

  It didn’t feel good enough, leaving Martha there like that, all by herself. But it’s not life-threatening, she told herself. She’s just got an infection or something. She’s safe there, in good hands. What can happen? And they’ve got the phone number. Martha’s managed all her life by herself. Give yourself a break.

  Back in bed, the electric blanket on high to warm her cold body, Sandra couldn’t sleep. Too busy justifying abandoning Martha. She tried the rational approach.

  Come on, she told herself, you’ve got students dependent on you. You took the initiative, you took her to hospital. What more do you want?

  But the accusing finger still wagged. Traitor. She knew what it was, of course. She could see it now, Jack’s white cheekbone turned away from her, toward the window and the light.

  “Leave me,” he had said. “Go and get some rest.”

  She had gone. And when she came back, he had gone.

  THE following day, when Sandra went to the hospital, she could hear Martha’s voice, loud and monotonous, even before she reached the room. The curtain was drawn around the bed. Sandra stood still and listened.

  “My name is Martha, make no mistake,” it said. “I don’t like mistakes. I don’t like mistakes in knitting. I like knitting but not making knitting mistakes. I like order. I like the order knitting makes. If you knit one, purl one, repeat, all along the row, and back again the same, you make rib. That’s on even stitches. If you have odd stitches you make moss stitch. Rib is for ribbing, for cuffs and collars and bands on the bottom, for necklines, and puckers in patterns. Puckers, evenly spaced, drawn in and stretching out, make for interest. I’m interested in knitting. I’m very interested in knitting. It interests me. Colors also add interest.”

  “Martha?” said Sandra, stepping closer to the gap in the curtain.

  “I am interested in colors,” the voice went on. “I’m interested in colored stripes, and blending edges of rows like rainbows. To blend, one knits two strands together. Strands means yarn. This is a yarn about strands. You can knit two yarns together, but this makes garments bulky. Bulky garments are full of texture.”

  “Martha?” said Sandra again. She looked through the gap. Martha was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling. Her hands opened and shut as she talked.

  “Texture is bumps and lumps, and smooth silky spaces, and knots and curls and knobby buttons. To make different textures you must change purl one knit one. Starting at the star you begin: knit two together, yarn over needle, knit one, yarn over needle, knit two together through back of loop, repeat from star.”

  Knitting nonsense, thought Sandra.

  “Martha,” she said, firmly this time. “It’s me, Sandra. I’ve come to see how you are.” But the hands opened and shut just the same, and the voice droned on. Sandra looked around for a chair.

  “To make a lacy texture of holes and fills, turn around and purl. Pearl is also a kind of color. Colors are all the colors of the rainbow and the colors between the rainbow colors between. I can never get indigo. Year after year I wait for indigo, but even when the fashion is navy, you never get indigo, the glow, the long slow glow of indigo in the high night sky.”

  There were no chairs in the room, but Sandra found one in the corridor. She brought it in and sat by the bed. She was loud and deliberate about it, to startle Martha out of this strange intensity. Where was the real Martha, the Martha she knew?

  “Why do you knit, Martha?” she asked. Perhaps if she entered her strange world Martha would follow her out. Without missing a beat, Martha answered.

  “I knit at night in order to have ease. It’s easy to keep order in knitting. Count one, two, three. Simple numbers, knit one purl one, simple knowledge, yarn over needle, slipstitch. Simple notions, simple numbers, easy rows. So easy. Easy does it. Drop a stitch and catch it up again. It’s easy to fix mistakes in knitting.”

  “Martha, look at me! It’s me, Sandra.”

  Martha turned her face toward Sandra, but her eyes were glassy and strange.

  “The mind is not like knitting, Sandra. Mistakes in the mind cannot be easily fixed. Knitting is straight, orderly, neat rows with even numbers. But the mind is messy, most uneven. The mind is like a cat in the wool making tangles. You can untangle wool, though a tight knot must be cut. With scissors. Two cuts, either side of the knot made by the cat. Cut. Cat. Cut.”

  Sandra was frightened now. Martha kept on staring at her, and Sandra met her gaze, but it was hard. She wanted to look away. She wanted to run away, but she couldn’t leave her like this.

  “They say my mind is tangled, and call me Loopy Loo. The o’s in Loo are loops.” Martha described large loops in the air with both hands, and looked back toward the ceiling.

  “But o’s are round and simple, circular. My mind goes round in circles. Oh no, it will not make an o. It won’t join up: it spirals out and tangents. Spirals and tangents are maths. Maths are like Martha, with bits missing and a spiraling s.

  Where were the nurses? How could they let someone rave on like this? Sandra poked her head into the corridor but couldn’t see anyone. The nurses’ station was empty. Uncertainly Sandra went back to her chair.

  “My mind shoots into knitting. Bang! Bang! Bang!” Martha’s voice was louder now, the pitch higher. “Which pattern, this pattern, that pattern. Big size little size. Pink wool, blue needles. Black wool is best on white needles. Sharp needles. Sharp needles but a comfortable chair, that’s best. It’s best to knit.”

  Martha’s voice dropped to a whisper.

  “If I knit, I don’t get into knots, the loops stay even. If you increase the tension, anything can happen. You must keep the tension even, decrease evenly. Oh, Sandra!”

  Sandra jumped.

  “Yes, Martha dear, what is it?”

  “Oh, Sandra!” she said again. Sandra saw that her eyes were full of tears. “I would like to turn around. On circular needles you don’t turn around. You keep going on the same old stitches in the same old direction, round and round and round.”

  She looked back at the ceiling and clenched her hands.

  “Martha! Martha, listen to me.” But Sandra didn’t know how to continue, and Martha didn’t stop.

  “Circular needles are good for Fair Isle. When you change rows on circular needles, tie a third strand between the rows. A third strand makes all the difference: you can tell the rows apart. I’m apart, in my apartment. Knitting. A part of knitting. Knitting the next part. Once I knit my name into a garment with no mistakes at all. Won’t somebody please fix all my mistakes? My name is Martha, poor Mad Martha, make no mistake about that.”

  The voice stopped. Sandra waited for it to start again, but although Martha’s breathing was still rapid she had stopped talking. Sandra quietly put the chair back against the wall and crept out.

  A DAY later Martha had stopped raving but had retreated deep inside herself. She acknowledged Sandra’s presence, but that was all. She still burned with fever. That evening Malcolm, Martha’s brother, asked to meet Sandra in the hospital foyer the next day.

  Sandra watched him come down the escalator. This had to be her brother—the same oval face, the long chin, the same sandy strawberry look.

  “Are you Sandra?” he said while still some yards away, talking to her as though she were on the far side of a pickup or a tractor. She nodded and he strode toward her, extending a large square hand that looked as if it could fix anything. He shook her hand and took a step backward. His eyes were clear and curious. She imagined that he’d walk around stock auctions with that same intent look on his face.

  “Shall we have coffee?” asked Sandra. “There’s a coffee shop up on the fourth floor.”

  Malcolm stood aside for her at the elevator, gesturing her in ahead of him. He wore a wedding ring, large and solid-looking and shiny. New. Or not worn often. They lined up along the stainless steel counter with their mugs of coffee. Sandra let Malcolm pay.

  Malcolm spoke first. “She talks a lot about you. Thanks for al
l you’ve done.”

  Sandra shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”

  “When the hospital rang I thought she’d had another breakdown. She gets this perfectionist streak, can’t bear mistakes in her work. She unravels them or starts something else, but she never chucks them out or leaves them behind. Has to carry them everywhere, says she’s going to undo them and rework them, but she never does. Well, that’s how it used to be, so I thought she’d had another crash. But it’s an infection, they say. She’s just slow to respond to treatment.”

  “Do you see her very often?”

  “Once a month or so, when I come to the city. But it’s hard to tell how she really is sometimes.”

  Martha had barely mentioned her brother.

  “Does she visit you at all?”

  “Not often. Christmas sometimes. She doesn’t have a car, and getting to our place is awkward. It’s a long way. And—she and my wife don’t get on. She wants everything to be just as it was, and she tells Penny how to do things—small things, like setting the table—but constantly, so it’s irritating. After her husband died—did she tell you she was married?”

  Sandra nodded.

  “She was very young. They were living in the house we live in now. It flipped her out. She had to have everything just so, in order to cope. At first she said she had to have everything right for when he got home—she didn’t accept his death for some months, really—and you could hardly walk into her place without her trying to tidy up your shadow. But then it seemed to sink in, and she started to go out a bit more and began knitting for people in the neighborhood. Though she still had this thing about getting things right.

  “Anyway, we were all there together. Things came to a head between Martha and my wife. Martha was making life hell for Pen, and we suggested she move down here. She’s worse at the farm. Maybe it reminds her of all she’s lost, or maybe it’s something from her childhood. It didn’t just start when Manny died; it was there long before that. And she’s been quite happy in town. She enjoys the Art Gallery and the museums and things like that. She’s been living here fifteen, twenty years now.”

  He was quite a talker, this brother. He wasn’t finished, either.

  “She sort of manages, but she still carries her bags. I don’t know if she ever looks in them. She just shoves things in. Pen emptied them all out once, and Martha just about killed her. Real catfight. If she’s careful she can knit a whole garment without trouble, but if she gets uptight, she makes mistakes and goes over the edge.

  “Anyway, she told me weeks ago you’d been a good friend. I just wanted to meet you and fill you in a bit, just in case anything happens. But it’s just her kidneys, they say.”

  “Kidney infections are serious! And she’s been delirious.”

  “Yes, but that will pass. I know it’s bad, but it’s more straightforward than the other stuff. She’s still got her bags, I see, but that’s OK. That’s normal. And her temperature’s coming down.”

  “Do you think she might have some kind of delayed reaction after this? Like a breakdown?”

  He shrugged and looked at his watch. “Maybe. I don’t know.” They talked for a few more minutes, then Malcolm stood up.

  “Sorry, I have to go. I spent some time with Martha before this, and my parking meter’s about to run out.” They stood up and he proffered his big hand again. “Thanks for looking after her. It’s a relief to know she’s got someone like you.”

  AFTER saying goodbye to Malcolm, Sandra went up to see Martha. She was awake, lying on her side, unnaturally flushed and still on an IV. To Sandra’s relief she smiled weakly. Sandra put the box of candy on the bedside table, next to a vase of irises with a card from Kate and Tony.

  “Thanks.”

  “Shall I unwrap one for you?”

  “No. Might puke.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Same. Sorry, can’t knit. Tried, can’t do it.”

  “Never mind.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Don’t know yet.” Sandra held herself together and said the right words. “Don’t you worry about it. Just get better. Do you need anything from home?”

  “Pajamas. My key’s there in the drawer.” Martha indicated the drawer with a turn of her head. Sandra opened it and took out a key on a rubber-duck key ring.

  “Where are they?”

  “Drawers by the bed.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Undies. Next drawer.” Talking was an effort, Sandra could see.

  “I just had a coffee with Malcolm. He seems nice.”

  “Yes.”

  They sat without speaking for a few minutes. Martha’s eyes closed at intervals. Sandra stood up and touched her arm with two fingers.

  “I’ll go now, Martha. Get the staff to ring me if you need anything.”

  SANDRA made her way up to the sixth floor of the parking garage and got into her car. She had parked with her nose to the street and was looking through the safety grille at an office block. If your accelerator got stuck and you rammed the barrier, you would sail through into the street below. Life was full of danger and treachery.

  Martha was sick.

  She was too sick to finish the knitting in time for the exhibition. Why hadn’t Sandra seen it coming? Martha was sick in the body and sick in the head, a perfectionist living on the edge. What person in their right mind went through life lugging three large bags?

  Sandra thumped the steering wheel. This is why you don’t get involved with strangers in the street. You never know what you are taking on. Now the exhibition was off, and there’d be all that explaining and apologizing. And the funds, all the tricky business of money and reporting that went with grants. Martha was a long way from normal health, and it was too late to find new knitters. Damn damn damn.

  But below the inconvenience was something worse. The exhibition had been holding her together. She hadn’t gotten over Jack, and she’d landed herself another sick person. She never knew where to draw the line. Here she was, parked outside a hospital again and trying to mount a doomed exhibition. It had all been going so well.

  THE drive home took her near Kate’s street. She drove past the corner, then changed her mind and went back around the block. Kate opened the door.

  “Sandra! What’s the matter?”

  “Martha’s in hospital. The exhibition’s off.”

  “Yes, I saw Cliff when I was shopping, and he told me. How is she? Is she any better?”

  “Not really. Kidney infection, py—. Oh, I can’t remember. Something nephritis. She’s on IV antibiotics but not responding. They think she might have a blockage in the ureter: she’s having a scan in the morning. I think she was delirious yesterday—all this crazy knitting talk. And on top of that her brother Malcolm tells me she’s in line for a breakdown.”

  Kate put coffee in front of Sandra.

  “Why did he think that?”

  “History of mental illness. You know, all those bags she carries. Do you know what’s in them?” Sandra laughed grimly. “Her mistakes! I wonder how many of my exhibition garments are stuffed in those bags.”

  “Your exhibition garments?”

  “Martha’s. Ours.”

  “I thought she’d finished a lot of garments already.”

  “Yes, but there’s a lot more unfinished. I have no idea what stage they’re at.” Sandra spilled some coffee and swiped at the wet spot with unnecessary force. “Why couldn’t she have told me she wasn’t coping?”

  “Hold on a minute,” said Kate. “Aren’t you confusing the issues? One, Martha’s sick, and two, the exhibition is affected. The actual work was going all right, wasn’t it? She didn’t know she was going to get sick.”

  “She should have told me about her perfectionist streak, that there might be problems.”

  “But you knew about that. Didn’t you?”

  “No, how would I?”

  “Oh, Sandra, you only have to watch her work! How she concentrates, and how
she checks and counts all the time. But she didn’t let it affect anything. You were getting the garments. Anyway, I thought the exhibition was mainly for Martha, to showcase her work?”

  That’s what she’d told Kate. How could she tell anyone why she needed it so much, this little exhibition in a church hall? It had gathered more momentum than she’d expected, but it wasn’t that big in the scale of things. Just a funny little project to block the view of the bottomless chasm called Life-Without-Jack. A little project that had grown beyond expectation into something more significant. But even with Kate it was hard to be honest.

  “Well, yes, but it’s bigger than that. Of course it is. You know what I was trying to do, Kate. Women and work and domesticity. The invisible history, the patching of fragments.”

  Kate smiled.

  “It’s never really had much to do with Martha, has it? She was the means to an end. It’s always been your project.”

  “No! It was just as much for Martha! So people could see how brilliant she is.”

  Kate was silent.

  “Kate?”

  “As I remember it, you were very keen, and Martha was reluctant, but she did it for your sake. The overseas interest meant it picked up speed, which put the pressure on her even more. But the timelines were tight, right from the start. She’s really been struggling. She’s been knitting from about nine in the morning until midnight every night. I’m not surprised she’s sick.”

  “Well, why didn’t she tell me? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “She told me in confidence. She didn’t want to let you down.”

  Sandra put her head in her hands.

  “So now what? Where does that leave me? Martha’s sick, it’s all my fault, and we’ll have to cancel. Oh, sorry, Jonty, it’s all off.”

  “You don’t have to cancel it. Just postpone it. It’s only the church hall, after all. There’s nothing else coming up, it’s not as though it’s booked. Have you sent out the invitations?”