The Sisterhood of the Dropped Stitches

by Janet Tronstad

  I guess my problem is that I just thought the whole thing would be more fun. I always thought that, if I had been able to go out with the grill guy, the whole evening would have been gold-dusted romance and my heart would have been permanently altered. I thought that date would be a turning point in my life.

  It doesn’t feel that way anymore. I’d just as soon stay here and write in the journal or read a book or clear some tables. Maybe too much time has passed since I was hot for the grill guy—no pun intended, by the way. Maybe my enthusiasm just got worn down by waiting. Maybe—and I’m not willing to swear to this—the grill guy never was my dream guy after all.

  Wow. Did I really write that down in black and white? Life is sometimes peculiar, isn’t it?

  As I’ve been standing here thinking and writing in the journal, I’ve been putting silver dangling earrings in my ears and fancy shoes on my feet. Lipstick colors my lips and my cheeks have a nice blush. I check myself in the mirror and I look good—ready for any date.

  I wish I could dress my attitude up as easily as I prettied up the rest of me, but from where I stand now the best part of going out with Randy is that I will be able to chalk one up for my Sisterhood goal.

  Speaking of which, I better send that e-mail.

  I sit down at my computer and begin to type. I keep it short: Goal in process. Coffee with the grill guy tonight. It will be date number one. That leaves 4 more days for 2 more dates. Looking for a busboy for date #2. Wish me luck.

  I know that’s going to get some reactions about my counting, but I have decided not to count any of my times with Quinn. I’m confused about how many dates, if any, we’ve had, and I refuse to count them anyway. I don’t want to look at him as just a number on the way to meeting my goal. Quinn’s my friend. He deserves better than to be a notch on some dating belt.

  Of course, I suppose Randy does, too. Now, that’s a thought to depress me. Since when have I, Marilee Davidson, been a user? And with the grill guy? What’s my world coming to?

  I put my jacket on and walk to the door of my office. Maybe Randy will want to make it an early night, too. I walk out into the main part of The Pews. Uncle Lou already knows where I’m going, so he waves at me from the counter. “Just make sure he walks you back here if it’s late.”

  Uncle Lou doesn’t want me walking down Colorado Boulevard alone after nine o’clock. Before that time, all of the businesses are open. Around nine a few start to close down and then more follow.

  “I won’t be that long,” I say as I start moving toward the door.

  I walk halfway to the door before I turn around. “There’s a lot of people here tonight,” I say to Uncle Lou. “Maybe I should cancel this coffee thing and help Annie wait tables. I can call Randy on his cell phone.”

  “There’s no more people than usual. We’ll do fine.”

  “I’ll come back early,” I say as I walk toward the door of The Pews.

  “No need. Have some fun.”

  Yeah.

  Colorado Boulevard is lit up at night. There are restaurants and little boutiques all of the way up and down the street. Half of the restaurants have outside seating so the sound of people laughing and having a good time spreads over the whole street. It feels good just to be outside hearing it all. Someone is playing a saxophone in one of the restaurants and the sound pours out onto the street. I think I can even see a few stars—or maybe it’s just the lights on top of Mount Wilson.

  Randy is waiting for me at the coffee place. I notice him right away. I’ve got eyes. I can see he’s looking fine. His black shirt makes his stormy gaze look deeper and more mysterious and brooding than ever. There’s a blond woman sitting alone at the counter, and she is just waiting to see if someone joins him. I know. I see her scowling at me as I walk toward his table.

  Okay, this is it, I tell myself as I wait for something to click inside me. Maybe I was slow to get excited, but this is the real thing. There’s still no click. I suddenly begin to worry about what I will say to this man while we drink our coffee. And how long do we need to sit here? Is an hour long enough for a coffee date?

  I sit down.

  I hope I’m going to have fun writing all of this down for you later, because a closer look at Randy’s face tells me neither one of us is going to have loads of fun tonight.

  At least the coffee will be strong. I order a Colombian blend when someone asks me what I want.

  I love the smells of all of the coffees and the place is full of windows and plants. I mention that one of the plants is a particularly fine-looking philodendron. Randy nods in agreement.

  Our first twenty minutes are pathetic. We are reduced to actually talking about the coffee. Does anyone really do that? You know, listing the benefits of freshly ground beans and wondering if certain flavors add or detract from a good cup of coffee. We could be a commercial for coffee—and not one of those glamorous commercials with the attractive people sipping coffee before beginning their exciting days.

  No, we are more like an ad for some cable station that can’t afford actors so they use someone’s cousins who don’t know what to say and there’s nothing extra for a stage or makeup or even a really good cup of coffee for inspiration.

  You don’t want to be there.

  Once we finish talking about coffee, Randy begins to relax. Then he starts to complain about Carly and how she is the most confusing woman he’s ever met and how she runs hot and cold and every temperature in between.

  “Carly?” I say at the last bit. The Carly I know is more even-tempered than anyone I’ve ever met. She never snaps or yells or confuses people. “You mean our Carly?”

  “Yeah,” the grill guy says, and he broods some more.

  I take another sip of my coffee. Humm, this is interesting.

  “Maybe she’s coming down with something,” I finally say, to give Randy some comfort. The guy looks miserable.

  “Yeah?” Randy perks up at this. “Do you think that’s why she wouldn’t go out with me?”

  “I don’t know. When did you ask her out?”

  “Yesterday morning—before we went over to the ball game,” Randy says. “Maybe it’s my timing.”

  Now who’s keeping secrets? I think to myself. Carly hasn’t said a word. This adds a whole new light on Carly’s attitude at the game. Maybe I didn’t read her emotions as well as I thought I had.

  “I asked her to go to dinner in the Ritz-Carlton Dining Room,” Randy continues. “I thought she’d like the place—it’s classy and all. Stuffed lobster and atmosphere—that kind of thing. I even called to make reservations. Of course, I had to cancel them later, but…”

  I am starting to feel a little stirring of emotion finally. “Did you ask her for tonight?”

  Randy nods.

  I don’t know why that should annoy me, but it does. Carly got an invitation to dinner at the Ritz-Carlton, and I got a cup of coffee. “Maybe she’ll change her mind.”

  Randy shakes his head. “All she thinks about is that cat of hers.”

  I try to hold on to my indignation about the dinner versus the cup of coffee, but I find I can’t. Randy looks too pathetic, and Carly will be so excited. “She is a wonderful person. You wouldn’t want to let her get away.”

  Randy looks at me oddly. “She said the same thing about you.”

  “She did?” For the first time since I’ve stepped into the coffee place, I feel a genuine smile curling my lips. “Isn’t that nice of her?”

  I can always count on the Sisterhood.

  “Yeah, real nice,” Randy says as he takes another gulp of coffee. He sets his cup down.

  I am feeling pretty good about now. “I think if you ask Carly out again, she might say yes.”

  “Really?” Randy is looking interested now.

  I nod.

  “I thought maybe I’m not rich enough for her,” Randy finally says. “You saw that house.”

  “Oh, yeah.” I didn’t add that I even counted the chandeliers. And noticed the maid
with the uniform. And did a quick appraisal of the value of all that land in the heart of one of the most expensive neighborhoods in all of Los Angeles County.

  “I grew up in Fontana,” Randy says. “Nobody has a house like that out there.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  I can see Randy is working his way through his fears.

  “Carly’s not a snob,” I say. “She’s reserved, but she’s not all about money.”

  Randy nods.

  “Maybe next time just ask her to meet you for coffee,” I say. “Start out a little smaller. Don’t put so much pressure on both of you.”

  I know I sound a little like Dear Abby, but that’s the way I’m feeling so I go with it.

  By now Randy is grinning wide enough to make the woman at the counter look at me as though she’s wondering what my secret is. I just smile at her. Who knew I had it in me to bring a look like that to the grill guy’s face? The woman at the counter doesn’t need to know the look is courtesy of good advice.

  When I get back to The Pews, I come right back to my office so I can write about it all in this journal. I can’t believe I waited six years for this date.

  The only good part of the date was the realization that Randy isn’t interested in me any more than I am interested in him. Well, that and the fact that I am genuinely one hundred percent happy for Carly. I can’t wait for her to tell us about Randy. We’ll have to devote a whole tab in the journal to that. Actually, we don’t have any tabbed sections yet, but I think this might warrant one—a large one. Maybe it should even be volume two of this journal thing. That’d be nice. Carly could be in charge of that one.

  I help Uncle Lou lockup that night. Lockup is my favorite time of the day and I stay whenever I can. Uncle Lou seems happier than usual tonight. Maybe there is something in the air around here besides smog tonight.

  “It’s good to see you go out,” he says to me as he puts clean glasses in the rack over the counter. He does that every night. “A young woman like you should have a boyfriend.”

  “I don’t need a boyfriend to be happy,” I say as I wipe down the counter. I have already completely closed the window blinds.

  “You’re too serious,” Uncle Lou says. “A boyfriend might make you laugh more.”

  I shrug and keep wiping. “I laugh enough.”

  “Not everyone is like your parents,” Uncle Lou says. He finishes with the glasses and starts untying the apron he wears. “Always fighting. Some marriages are about laughing, too.”

  Uncle Lou walks me to my car in the parking structure even though he lives in a small apartment over the diner so this means he has to walk back to his place afterward. Whenever he does this, he says it’s good to stretch his legs.

  When we get to my car, I give Uncle Lou another hug good-night. His legs have been stretched all day long; he’s not walking me to the parking place because he wants some exercise. “You’re the best.”

  Uncle Lou hugs me back, “You’re not so bad yourself.”

  Yeah, I definitely have to hug my Uncle Lou more.

  I think about Uncle Lou’s words as I get ready to go to bed. When I slide into bed, I pull the covers up to my shoulders. The night is chilly enough that I want blankets on my bed.

  I don’t want to think about Uncle Lou’s words, but I do. I wonder if he’s right. Did my parents’ marriage lower my expectations for finding happiness with a man? I had always assumed it was the cancer that did that—especially when I had the partial mastectomy. Despite what I told the others earlier, I do feel a little different about my body now. Not hugely, horribly different. It is just that I never take my body for granted the way I did before. I’m not sure what that means for me and men.

  I worry when I wear T-shirts that they might be too tight even if they are modest. The reconstruction on my breast had gone very well, but I have yet to put on a swimsuit that isn’t matronly.

  If a man hugs me—and only a few have since my operation—I always turn to the side a little. Of course, it might be my father who’s responsible for that. He stopped giving me regular hugs when he left Mom and me. If he hugs me at all now, it’s an arm around the shoulders kind of half hug. It could be the partial mastectomy or it could be because of his leaving that he does that.

  I go to sleep wondering if my cancer will follow me all of my life, or if the day will ever come when it will be as if I’d never had it.

  Chapter Twelve

  Do not employ handsome servants.

  —Chinese proverb

  Sometimes we just couldn’t take another serious thought. That’s when someone, usually Rose, would bring us a silly quote and we would sit and talk about what our lives might have been. When Rose brought us the handsome servant quote, Lizabett thought we should pretend to have servants.

  It was Becca who pointed out that we already did have servants—well, sort of.

  We spent weeks chuckling over our handsome servants—the nurses, the lab techs, the doctors—all of them working for us. The whole thing wasn’t much, but I can’t tell you what it did for us to have our own private joke that no one else understood.

  I wonder if someone in a thousand years will pick through the pages of our journal and find little proverbs or quotes. By that time, cancer will hopefully be a novelty and the idea of us sharing our thoughts about the disease might interest people. We’ll be like the old Chinese people who wrote the proverbs I’ve used in this journal. If these pages get that ancient, I want to say right up front that anyone is welcome to quote anything in them. And don’t bother to try and figure out which one of us wrote the words you pick. Anonymous is fine with us.

  I hope you can read my writing okay. I haven’t exactly written things down with a thought to preserving them that long. Anyway, if you can’t make out a word or two just make up one that sounds as if it fits. Don’t worry if it’s the wrong word. We’ll all be gone by then so we won’t care.

  I woke up feeling determined. I don’t know what I had been thinking about during the night—whether it was my Uncle Lou’s words or the realization that I had faced my fears and my dreams both when I went out with the grill guy after so many years—but sometime during the night I decided I was tired of hiding from my fears and hopes. Hopes are sometimes just fears flipped around, don’t you think? It seemed that way to me this morning as I lay in my bed and watched the sunshine work its way through the blinds in my bedroom.

  Anyway, I decided to talk to my father. Today, after work, I will go to his apartment and, in a very civilized manner, I will ask him if he knew I had cancer when he left me there with Mom. Just like that. I’ll put the question out there.

  I am writing this all down in the journal so that I won’t back out. I’m not going to fold any pages over or put in any clips. Everyone is free to read what I am going to do. And, if I haven’t done it, they are welcome to nag me until I do.

  I know the other day at The Pews my father probably overheard my conversation with Uncle Lou, but I need to know for sure. I need to hear from his own lips that he left us knowing I was sick.

  I don’t know what I will do with that knowledge. I don’t think I’ll be ready to forgive my father if he did know about my cancer when he left and I’m not sure I’ll believe him if he claims he didn’t know. It’s one of those no-win situations.

  I could always ask Pastor Engstrom about it all when I go to his group on Thursday morning—and I intend to go. There’s a lot I don’t know about things like forgiveness and faith. I’m beginning to think Quinn is right about it not being easy. Plus, now that my father knows I’ve gone to church, it doesn’t feel as though it’s so complicated to go again. He never once seemed to think I was taking sides.

  In the meantime, I want to spend some of my time today calling around to see if I can find a place for Lizabett’s ballet troupe to have their performance. I go into The Pews around ten and I usually have some time before lunch when I can do some calling.

  I’m also going to check my e-mail and
see if I have any responses to my announcement about my date with the grill guy. I am especially interested in what Carly’s response will be, if anything. I might even invite everyone over to The Pews for lunch today. It’s a long time until Thursday, and I think we might need to touch base with each other. I particularly want to give Carly the message that the grill guy is all hers—which isn’t something you can just blurt out in an e-mail. It requires some finesse.

  I drive down Foothill Boulevard and then go south to Colorado Boulevard to get to The Pews. If there’s no roadwork going on, it’s an easy drive. Today I have to wait for a couple of trucks beside a construction site—new condos going up. But I don’t mind the wait. It’s a warm day and I can see the leaves starting to come back on those trees that lose their leaves around here, which is not all of them.

  The Pews is never busy on Monday morning, and once I greet everyone, there’s no need for my help up front, so I head back to my office.

  I don’t even get back to my office before I hear Becca coming in the door and saying hello to Uncle Lou. I wait in the hallway going to my office because I can hear footsteps.

  “There you are,” Becca says as she turns the corner and sees me.

  I think she’s here to talk about me counting my dates, but she’s not.

  “I need a job,” Becca says as she walks closer. “Well, I guess it shouldn’t be a job—at least I shouldn’t get paid.”

  “You want to work for free?”

  Becca nods. She’s walking toward my office and, since she’s not stopping where I am in the hall, I follow her to my office door. I keep my door locked so I get the key out of my purse and open the door.

  Becca turns the light on as she steps through the door and heads for my spare chair next to the desk. “I talked to that law clerk finally. Seven o’clock this morning I called. I knew someone like him would be at his desk before everyone else.”

  Becca seems very satisfied with herself.