Needle and Thread

by Ann M. Martin

  But Mr. Sherman slammed the door of his truck then, and most of the dogs bolted, disappearing from view. Paw-Paw and two others remained behind, though, stealing last bites from the dishes, even as their hackles rose and low growls rumbled in their throats.

  Nikki had just reached the shed door and was preparing to heave the bag of food inside when her father stumbled toward Mae, a rake raised above his head.

  “Mae!” shrieked Nikki, and she dropped the bag.

  “What did I tell you about feeding these dogs, these filthy beasts, these mutts, what did I tell you?” Mr. Sherman spoke deliberately and slurrily, spitting when he said the word “beasts.” Then, stumbling, he pitched the rake in the direction of Paw-Paw and the last two dogs, who had finally abandoned the dishes and were slinking toward the edge of the property. Nikki heard a yelp when the rake landed in the underbrush.

  Mr. Sherman teetered across the yard, collected the rake, and approached his daughters again. They stood as if frozen until he raised the rake again and began to swing it downward. Then Nikki sprang forward, grabbed Mae, and shoved her into the shed.

  “You don’t listen to me, you don’t listen to me, any of you, what did I tell you, what did I tell you a thousand times?” said Mr. Sherman in a frighteningly quiet voice.

  “Not to feed the dogs?” whispered Nikki.

  The rake crashed to the ground.

  “Not to feed the dogs?” mimicked her father.

  Nikki heard the front door to her house fly open then, heard it open with such force that it crashed against the wall. (Years later, Nikki would still be able to see the dent it left in the siding.) The next thing she knew, her mother was running across the yard. “Howie!” she yelled. “What is going on out here?”

  “These two,” said Mr. Sherman, and Nikki had the unsettling notion that her father couldn’t recall her name or Mae’s at that moment, “these two have disobeyed my orders.” He stopped to catch his breath. “Time and again,” he went on, “time and again they disobey my orders.”

  Mrs. Sherman caught her husband by the elbow. “Calm down,” she said. “Just calm down. Leave the girls alone. Are you all right, girls?” she called over her shoulder as she led Mr. Sherman toward the house.

  Nikki, on the verge of tears but not wanting Mae to notice, nodded in answer to her mother’s question, then realized that her mother couldn’t see this, so she managed to croak, “Yeah.” She waited until her parents had entered the house and her mother had closed the front door behind them before she led Mae out of the shed and knelt in front of her.

  Mae sank down until she was sitting cross-legged on the ground. She rested her head in her hands and began to sob.

  “It’s okay, Mae,” said Nikki. “He’s inside. Mom took him inside.”

  Mae didn’t answer, but her sobs grew quieter. Nikki put her arm around her sister.

  “I was scared,” said Mae.

  “So was I. But this is what you have to think: Nothing happened. He didn’t hurt us and Mom came outside in time. So it’s okay.”

  Mae jerked her head out of her hands then and stared off into the gathering dark. “He hurt Paw-Paw!” she cried. “I heard Paw-Paw cry.”

  Nikki remembered the yelp. “You might be right. We’d better go check.”

  Nikki found a flashlight in the shed, turned it on, took Mae by the hand, and led the way into the underbrush.

  “Paw-Paw, Paw-Paw!” Mae called softly.

  “I’m not sure he’ll come to us after what happened,” said Nikki.

  But at that very moment, Paw-Paw poked his head out from between two mountain laurel bushes and looked warily at the girls.

  “It’s okay, Paw-Paw. It’s us,” said Mae. “We won’t hurt you.” She held her hand toward his soft brown snout.

  Nikki, moving slowly, extended her hand, too.

  Paw-Paw sniffed the hands and finally emerged from the bushes.

  “Are you all right?” said Mae.

  Nikki passed the beam of the flashlight over Paw- Paw’s body. “I see a scratch on his back, but that’s all. He’ll be okay.”

  “Shouldn’t we put something on the scratch? Like a Band-Aid?”

  “Well, not a Band-Aid. It would stick to his fur. But maybe some ointment or something. We’ll have to wait, though. I’ll try to do it later tonight. Maybe Tobias can help me when he gets home.”

  Mae nodded, then sat down, wrapped her arms around Paw-Paw’s neck, and began to sob once again.

  Nikki’s father didn’t stay awake long. He wanted to leave, he said, wanted to take the truck out again, but Tobias, who had returned by then, shoved his father onto the couch, where Mr. Sherman immediately fell into a deep slumber.

  “Good. He can sleep it off tonight. He won’t wake up until the morning,” said Tobias, who gave his father a look of disgust before heading out to his shed.

  That was when Nikki did something she had never before done, not once in her life. She waited until her mother was putting Mae to bed, then tiptoed into the kitchen, checked to see if the phone was working, and called a friend.

  “I just needed to talk to you,” said Nikki.

  “I’m really glad you called,” replied Olivia, who could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she and Nikki had spoken on the telephone. “What’s the matter?”

  Nikki hesitated. She knew she couldn’t relate the whole story to Olivia. Her mother had told her and Tobias and Mae many times that the authorities would come after them if they found out about Mr. Sherman. Nikki wasn’t positive what that would mean, but it didn’t sound like something she’d want to experience. So she focused on the dogs.

  “There are just so many of them,” she said to Olivia. “I can’t keep up with their food. I don’t have enough money.”

  “Won’t your parents help you?” asked Olivia.

  “They can’t. They don’t have enough money, either.”

  “Maybe I could help you. I’ve saved a little money from working at the store.”

  “Thanks,” said Nikki, “but I really don’t want money. I just wanted to talk to you. Cheer me up. Tell me something funny.”

  “Well …” said Olivia thoughtfully, “how about this: I got a little bit mad at my mom this afternoon — it’s not important why — so I decided to play a trick on her. I took Sandy out of his cage, put him in the cookie jar, brought the jar into the living room, and asked my mom if she wanted a cookie. When she lifted the lid, Sandy poked his head out and my mom screamed and fell off the couch.”

  Nikki giggled. “Didn’t you get in trouble?”

  “A little,” admitted Olivia, “but it was worth it.” She paused. “Did that make you feel better?”

  “Yes,” said Nikki.

  “Then it was definitely worth it.”

  When Nikki and Olivia went to bed that night, each was smiling: Nikki because she had discovered the sweet pleasure of talking with a friend when she was having a bad time, and Olivia because she had been able to help her new friend.

  When Flora had lived with her mother and father and Ruby in her old town, she had not known nearly as many people as she now knew in Camden Falls. There had been only a few families on her street, and they had not been as closely knit as the Row House neighbors. And when Flora had gone downtown, she barely knew anyone in the shops. She recognized the couple who ran the bookstore, and her mother was friendly with one of the women at the hair salon, but that was about it. It was a big town and people were busy and many of them, Flora reflected, didn’t seem to have time for children. But in Camden Falls, partly because it was a small town and partly because of Min — where she lived and where she worked — Flora had a huge network of friends and an extended family.

  And yet, there were times when Flora felt lonely. These were usually the afternoons when Ruby was at a rehearsal and Olivia was at a Whiz Kidz class and Nikki had gone home and couldn’t come into town. Flora would walk into town after school by herself on those days, drift into Needle and Thread,
and either begin her homework or pull out a sewing project. She knew she wasn’t alone at these times, but still, she occasionally felt lonely.

  On one of these afternoons, a drizzly day at the beginning of the second week in November, Flora flopped onto a couch in Needle and Thread and looked around the store. Her eyes fell on Mary’s worktable, which Mary had tidied the last time she’d been in the store. Flora studied the rack that held Mary’s spools of thread, arranged by color, and the neatly laid out markers and scissors, measuring tape, pincushion, and needle case. Sitting squarely in the middle of the table, Flora saw, was a paper bag with an index card taped to it. On the card was written Mary.

  Flora stood up, threaded her way through the aisles of fabric to the worktable, and peeked in the bag. She could see a pile of clothes, which she suspected needed to be hemmed or mended.

  “Min?” said Flora.

  Min was holding a bolt of fabric and discussing it with a young man who was frowning over a pattern. She glanced at Flora and held up one finger.

  Flora waited patiently, then, when the man had gone off in search of thread, she said, “Min, I was just wondering — that package on Mary’s table — would you like me to take it to her house?”

  Min looked at Flora in surprise, but all she said was, “Thank you, Flora. I’m sure Mary would appreciate that. If you take it to her now, she’ll be able to work on it at home, get a head start.”

  And so it was that ten minutes later, Flora Northrop was on her way to visit Mary Woolsey for the second time in her life. If anyone had asked her why, she wouldn’t have known exactly what to say. She was simply aware that she frequently found herself thinking of her first visit with Mary — sitting in the little parlor with Daphne and Delilah, watching the cuckoo glide out of its painted house, listening to Mary talk about Flora’s great-grandfather and the anonymous gifts of money. Flora knew there was much more to the story of Mary’s life — and of Lyman Davis’s and possibly her very own — and she wanted to hear it all.

  Flora now made her way through Mary’s gardens, which were even more stark and barren than when she had last visited. She paused at the top of the stone steps and gave the lion’s head knocker three sharp raps.

  The door opened a crack. “Who’s there?” said Mary.

  “It’s me, Flora.”

  The door opened all the way, and there stood Mary Woolsey. “This is a surprise,” she said.

  Flora held out the bag. “Someone left this at the store and I thought you might like to have it today.”

  “Well, that was very thoughtful of you.”

  Mary took the bag, and for a moment Flora thought she was going to be sent on her way. She backed up a step.

  “Would you like to come in?” asked Mary.

  Flora shrugged. “Okay. Sure.”

  They sat in the parlor again. Flora found Daphne and Delilah sleeping together in an armchair, and she squeezed in beside them. Mary settled herself on the couch.

  “The last time I was here,” said Flora, eyeing the cuckoo clock to see when she could expect it to chime, “you said my great-grandfather had been helping you out and that it was a very long story. Could you tell me that story?”

  “Now?” replied Mary.

  Flora nodded. “If you want to. It sounds like a good story, and I don’t know much about my great-grandfather. I mean, I know what Min tells me, but a lot of things happened to her father before Min was born.”

  Mary leaned into the couch cushions and removed her glasses. “Well,” she said, “in order to tell it, I have to go all the way back to nineteen twenty-nine. That’s when the story really begins.”

  “Nineteen twenty-nine?” exclaimed Flora. “Really?”

  Mary looked at her in surprise. “Yes. Why?”

  Flora hesitated. “Remember the box I told you about? The one where I found the old photo of you and my mom?” (Mary nodded.) “There was a lot of other family stuff in there, too, including a whole bunch of letters that Min’s mother had written. I don’t know how they wound up back at our house, but anyway, they sort of tell this story about Min’s father and something he did when there was that big stock market crash.”

  “How interesting,” said Mary. “The stock market crash is part of my story, too. All right. Let me figure out how to start. I haven’t told this story to anyone before.” She folded her hands in her lap, stared out the window, and then began to speak again.

  “In nineteen twenty-nine, my mother, Leticia Woolsey, was just nineteen years old. She was employed as a maid at your house, Flora. She worked for your great-grandparents. Your grandmother and her sister hadn’t been born yet, but their older brother had been. I believe he was about four in nineteen twenty-nine. My father, Ian, worked in an office in town, and he and my mother were expecting me. They didn’t have a lot of money, but with two incomes, they weren’t doing badly. My father was able to build this house and he even had a small savings.

  “Then came the stock market crash. Your great-grandfather, as you may know, left his job shortly after that, and he also lost a lot of his own money. So he had to let my mother and two other maids and, of course, his office staff go. My mother had planned to stop working after I was born, so this wasn’t much of a blow for her and my father. But something else was: Your great-grandfather had convinced my father to invest his savings in the stock market. In fact, your great-grandfather had done the investing himself. So when the market crashed, not only did my mother lose her job earlier than she had planned, but my parents lost their entire savings. Then my father was let go from his job, too. Now my parents had no jobs, no savings, and a baby on the way.”

  “And it was all my great-grandfather’s fault,” said Flora in a whisper.

  “Well, not entirely,” replied Mary. “He couldn’t have prevented the crash.”

  “I know. But still, I wonder …”

  “What?” asked Mary. “What do you wonder?”

  Flora shook her head. “Tell me what happened next.”

  “Well, a few months later, in nineteen thirty, I was born.” Mary smiled at Flora. “Now you can figure out exactly how old I am.”

  Flora smiled back. “You’re six years older than Min. That’s not so old.”

  “Someone taught you excellent manners,” said Mary, “and I suspect it was your parents.” She turned a determined gaze on Flora. “I’m not one to tiptoe around things,” she said. “Your parents must be mentioned.”

  Flora stroked Daphne’s ears and nodded her head.

  “Anyway, by nineteen thirty, when I was born, my parents had nothing except this house. They were practically destitute. Eventually, my father found work again, this time in a factory — it was the only job he could find — but our lives were still precarious. It was, after all, the Great Depression. And then one day,” said Mary, “there was a fire at the factory. It was a horrible fire. The factory burned to the ground and many lives were lost. The families of the factory workers ran into town and waited there, hoping for news of their loved ones. My mother joined them. She waited and waited. At the end of the day, she went home and waited some more. My father didn’t come back.”

  “That’s awful!” cried Flora.

  “The fire was a tragedy that affected Camden Falls for years,” agreed Mary.

  “What did your mother do?”

  “She dug in and worked hard to support us. She was one of the hardest-working women I’ve ever known. She never married again, and she raised me to be independent. She said that in the end, the only person you can truly depend on is yourself. After the fire, my mother didn’t reach out to others, and she taught me not to reach out to others, either. I’m afraid that what she created for us, finally, was a very insular life. Do you know what ‘insular’ means?”

  “I think so,” said Flora. “It means isolated, even when you aren’t really isolated.” As she spoke these words, she found herself thinking of Nikki.

  “That’s a very interesting way of explaining it,” replied Mary.
“You do have a way with words, Flora. So — our life went on. I grew older. Our days became predictable. Then one day, several years after the fire — I suppose I must have been about seven, but I didn’t know about this until many years later — something unexpected arrived in the mail.”

  “What was it?” asked Flora.

  “An envelope. It was addressed to my mother, and inside she found an anonymous gift of money with a note that read simply, ‘For Mary.’”

  “And it was from my great-grandfather?” asked Flora.

  “Yes. But I didn’t figure that out for a long time. In fact, my mother didn’t even tell me about the money until I was eighteen. By then, there was quite a bit of it. The envelopes had kept arriving over the years, each containing cash and each with a note reading, ‘For Mary.’”

  “Why did your mother wait so long to give you the money?”

  “She wanted to be certain that I would handle it responsibly. It was quite a nest egg. My mother had deposited each gift in the bank, so the money had earned interest, too. The money was still arriving even after I turned eighteen, by the way. In fact, the gifts were still arriving — not as often, but every now and then — in the nineteen sixties. The last gift I received was in nineteen sixty-six. By then, the envelopes were addressed to me and not to my mother.”

  “You said you figured out for yourself that the money was from my great-grandfather. Didn’t your mother tell you that?”

  Mary shook her head. “All she would say was that the gifts were from an anonymous benefactor. And I didn’t know enough about her past to have any idea who that might be.”

  “So how did you finally figure it out?” asked Flora, and she and both cats jumped when the cuckoo clock chimed. Flora turned to watch the bird, and she smiled when he retreated into his house.

  “It was in nineteen seventy,” said Mary. “I was forty and my mother had just died. I decided to clear some things out of the house and, just like you, I came across old letters and papers. When I discovered that my mother had worked for your family, I began to wonder about your great-grandfather. I did a little research on him. The more I learned — about his wealth and also about his reputation as a philanthropist — the more certain I became that he was the source of the money. I reasoned that he might feel guilty about what had happened to my family.”