by Molly Macrae
Mel added two hats in a soft shade of orange to the pile. “I’m in my melon period,” she said. “Sorry. Maybe more next week.” She picked up the honeydew green hat she was working on and went back to knitting.
“Are you sure it isn’t your melancholy period?” Debbie asked. “Something wrong, Mel?”
“Not a blessed thing,” Mel said. She didn’t snap at Debbie, but her mustard yellow spikes were as eloquent as raised hackles.
“Ta-da!” I quickly added my hats to our collection, drawing curious eyes away from Mel’s unsmiling face and aggressively clicking needles.
“Two!” Ernestine picked up one of my hats, held it close to her thick lenses, and admired it. Ernestine liked to encourage me. My knitting skills had atrophied over years of academic and professional pursuits, and these two hats, in simple stockinette, were absolutely nothing to exclaim over. “The sky’s the limit now, Kath. Before you know it you’ll be adding ribbing and bunny ears.” Ernestine was a small, round woman who reminded me of a cheerful mole. She was probably in her seventies and though she squinted at the world through her glasses, she rarely missed the nuances of the conversations going on around her.
John rubbed his hands and asked the second of the two important questions. “What delicious sin did you bring us today, Mel?”
Mel kept knitting and didn’t answer. But she didn’t need to, because Reva Louise breezed in, her project bag under her arm and the answer to the second important question in a covered cake carrier.
“Was that you sounding greedy, John Berry?” Reva Louise asked. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m just teasing, sweetie. Look, I brought rhubarb ginger upside-down cake, and there’s enough so you can each take some home. I’ll put it over here and we can have it after we get some work done. It’ll be good incentive. Mel, I asked you to bring the coffee along. You didn’t forget it, did you?”
“The coffee’s right there, Reva Louise,” Mel said. She continued to knit and didn’t look up.
“Why, yes, it is.”
It went through my mind that only Ernestine would be so blind as not to see the insulated coffee carafe already sitting on the sideboard where Reva Louise was setting out her cake. But that was the kind of unkind thought Granny would have tut-tutted over.
“Is Sally Ann watching the café?” I asked.
Mel nodded.
“Does she knit?”
“No, ma’am. The knitting must come from one of those wandering paternal genes,” Mel said.
She was referring to the odd fact that while Reva Louise and she had the same father, Reva Louise and Sally Ann Jilton shared a mother and an upbringing down in Gatlinburg. Sally Ann and Mel were close in age, early forties, and maybe five years older than Reva Louise. Sally Ann, a thin, chain-smoking, hardworking woman, had been waitressing at Mel’s for two or three years when she and Mel discovered their family connection one night over a couple of beers and a new recipe for sweet potato pie.
Looking at Reva Louise that afternoon, I had trouble seeing her resemblance to either of her half sisters, in looks or style. She wore a snug, dark green T-shirt and slacks in the same midrange brown as the hair she tucked behind her ears. As she studied the layout on the sideboard, her hands ran through a silent checklist, pointing to plates, napkins, forks, and cups. She picked up the insulated carafe, twisted the lid, and with her eyes closed inhaled a waft of coffee aroma.
“Mm, delicious,” she said. “Do you think you brought enough, Mel?”
Mel probably didn’t hear the question over the industrious clicking of her needles.
“Mel takes good care of us,” I said. “And it was nice of you to bring extra cake, Reva Louise. We’ll all enjoy taking some home.”
“You’re so welcome, Kath.” She smiled and sat down in the faded chintz armchair next to mine. “Of course there might not be extra if some of our other members would bother to show up.” She plopped her project bag on her lap and looked around at the group. “But this is fun, isn’t it? How did we do this week?”
“We’re still counting,” Debbie said. “Ernestine, how many for you?”
Ernestine held up three daffodil yellow hats. “Three and—”
“Wonderful!” Reva Louise cut in. “That makes fourteen.” Without giving Ernestine’s hats a glance, she pulled the others toward her and spread them out across the table. “That means mine almost put us over twenty for the week.”
“Wow, you made six?” I asked.
“Well, no, I said almost,” Reva Louise corrected me, although she obviously enjoyed my astonishment. “I did make five, though, because I believe in pushing myself. There, now, aren’t these fun?” She pulled five raspberry-colored pixie hats from her project bag and laid them on the table. “Isn’t the color yummy? I got it at the most amazing yarn shop over in Knoxville.”
The hats were pretty cute, but they would have been cuter if she’d bought the raspberry-colored yarn downstairs. Debbie blinked and looked at me but was too polite to say anything.
Ernestine was still holding her yellow hats, her mouth still open from being preempted. When Reva Louise sat back, she continued. “And Thea and Joe send their apologies for missing again this week, but they gave me their hats to bring along.” She laid her three hats on the table and brought out two done in leaf green and three with red and white stripes. “There. That puts us four over the top for the week, and I can’t think of a better reason to celebrate. Let’s have that ginger cake and coffee. John, bring me a big piece, will you?”
“Cream, no sugar?” he asked.
“Exactly right.”
Reva Louise rolled her eyes and shook her head, but joined the rest of us at the sideboard. When I looked back at Ernestine, she was peering closely at one of Reva Louise’s pixie hats. She picked a small bit of something from the inside of the hat and tucked the bit into her skirt pocket. Then she ran her hand around the inside of each of the other pixie hats, put each one back on the table, smoothed her skirt over her knees, and sat back smiling myopically at a dress form in the corner. An odd but interesting old duck, Ernestine Odell.
Geneva chose that moment to drift into the room. She didn’t often join us on Friday afternoons. According to her, the relentless clicking of knitting needles reminded her of so many mice clittering across the top of a coffin. “Clittering” was her word, and I wasn’t sure it was one, but it was plenty descriptive.
“Why so quiet in here today?” she asked, and then, when I didn’t answer, “What’s the matter? Ghost got your tongue?” She never got tired of that joke. “Well, don’t mind me. I’m just here because I thought I smelled gingerbread and, oh my, I do smell ginger. You can’t imagine how that takes me back.”
“It does?” I said, surprised.
“Yes, and I say bless the woman who made it. I don’t ever want to hear a word against her.” Geneva closed her eyes and followed her blissful nose to the sideboard, circling Reva Louise and making her shiver.
Mel looked at me over the rising steam of her coffee, spiked hair alert. “‘It does’? What are you talking about, Red?”
“Did I say that out loud?” I tried to laugh it off, but my never having had a knack for the easy lie, the laugh ended in a “heh” and a shrug. “Sorry, Mel. That was part of a different conversation. I was sort of reliving it, I guess.” Outright lies might not come easily, but shading the truth wasn’t so tough.
“Different’s okay, Red. Nothing wrong with different.” Mel brushed past me and sat down with her coffee. No cake, I noticed. Too bad she couldn’t give her share to Geneva.
I’d never seen Geneva react to a smell before. She was floating three feet above the sideboard on her back, looking like a sea otter gently rocking in the waves. No, come to think of it, except for the rocking she probably looked more like a body laid out on a slab. Strangely, that didn’t put me off helping myself to a slice of the cake.
“I think I’ve died and gone back home to my mama’s kitchen,” Geneva murmured, “or maybe to heaven
.”
This was really very interesting. Had she ever mentioned smelling anything before? I couldn’t remember. She’d said she couldn’t feel anything but cold and she couldn’t eat or taste. But smells—smells evoking memories—aroma therapy for ghosts? I wanted to ask her about her mother, her mother’s kitchen. Could I use smells to jog her memory of who she was and finally get some answers?
“I know I’m charming,” Geneva said, still floating on her back above the sideboard, “and you could stare at me all day, but don’t. It’s rude. Besides, your friends are wondering why you’re so fascinated by that nail hole on the wall behind me. Go play with your knitty friends. Shoo.” She closed her eyes and dismissed me with a minimal wave of her fingers.
I didn’t want to lose the moment, but there wasn’t anything I could do in a roomful of people, so I whispered, “Ginger, tell me later.” If she heard, she ignored me.
As I turned around with my cake and coffee to rejoin the group, Reva Louise was saying something that sounded like “a little fey, I think.” Her smile was friendly, though, and she raised a forkful of cake toward me in a toast, so maybe I misheard. None of the others looked suddenly abashed as though I’d caught them talking behind my back about odd, staring behavior. John and Mel were back to knitting. Debbie and Ernestine lingered over the crumbs on their plates. I sat down and Frank Sinatra started singing from someone’s bag.
“That’s your phone, Reva Louise,” Mel said without looking up from her knitting.
“Is it?” Reva Louise looked unconvincingly startled.
“You’re the only one I know with ‘My Way’ for a ring-tone,” Mel said.
Reva Louise put her cake plate down and dug through her project bag for the phone. When she checked the display, a look of annoyance crossed her face. With a cluck of her tongue, she stood, dropping her project bag on the chair. She spoke one harsh “What?” into the phone before hunching her shoulders and walking over to the sideboard with it.
“How long do you think people have been cooking with ginger in this country?” I asked.
“That’s an interesting question,” John said.
“A nice diversion, too.” Ernestine glanced toward Reva Louise. “She doesn’t look happy with that phone call.”
“Some people swear by ginger as a cure for mal de mer,” John said.
“And I like it on my oatmeal in the morning,” Ernestine said. “Oh no, that’s cinnamon. I don’t suppose it would hurt to try a little ginger, though, too. Kath, dear, you have your grandmother’s knack for starting interesting conversations.”
“Thank you, but I really would like to know how long we’ve been cooking with it in this country.”
“George Washington’s mother supposedly baked gingerbread for Lafayette,” Mel said.
“Oh.”
“That’s it? ‘Oh’? I throw out an interesting crumb of ginger trivia like that and you’re disappointed?” For the first time that afternoon, Mel sounded and looked more like her usual self. “I don’t know about you sometimes, Red.” She shook her head, a spark of fun glinting in her eye.
“I’m very happy for Lafayette,” I said. “Any idea when ginger became easily available around here? If it was commonly used or more of a luxury?”
“Nope,” Mel said. “Your first question stretched my reserve of ginger trivia thin, and now it is depleted. But that’s what the Internet and Thea were invented for.”
“You’re right. Thanks, Mel.” Huh. Thea Green, one of our absent knitters, was also the town librarian. She lived to look things up. I picked up my knitting and then we heard Reva Louise raise her voice.
“I said not now!” Still with her back to us, she took the phone from her ear, obviously finished with her call. And from the rise and fall of her shoulders and the sound of repeated slow, deep breaths, she was just as obviously working to compose herself. When she turned around she appeared calm again.
“The problem with cell phones,” she said, “is that there’s no app for slamming a receiver in the other person’s ear. We’ve lost that simple satisfaction. Isn’t that a shame?” She laughed lightly and sat down.
“I think there is one,” I said.
“If there is, it could not possibly be good enough,” Reva Louise said.
Geneva, her floating ginger daze interrupted by Reva Louise’s outburst, had followed her back to the group. She circled around behind Reva Louise, making mother hen noises. Reva Louise shivered and rubbed her hands to warm them.
“Troubles?” Mel asked Reva Louise.
“No.”
“Oh,” Mel said, and to my ears her “oh” sounded more disappointed than mine had over the lengthy presence of ginger in the Americas.
“Poor Reva Louise,” Geneva crooned, continuing to circle poor, unsuspecting Reva Louise. “Keeping a smile on her face. Putting her best foot forward. So strong after such a harsh exchange of words. So brave. She’s so much better at lying than you are.”
Chapter 4
“Do that thing you do,” Geneva said, “and find out what our poor Reva Louise is lying about.”
I touched my left ear. Geneva and I were experimenting with various cues for me to use when I couldn’t openly communicate with her. Clearing my throat or coughing attracted too much attention, and touching my left ear was our latest effort. It was supposed to mean “shh,” “no,” or “not now.” Unfortunately, Geneva preferred to think of the cue as a suggestion and sometimes chose to interpret it as “ask again.”
“You know what I’m talking about,” she said.
I touched my ear, then brushed it so she would notice and get the message. She paid no attention.
“Don’t be a chicken.”
I rubbed my ear and shook my head. I did know what she was talking about and I was surprised she was talking about it. It was something I’d never discussed with her or anyone else. In fact, this was the first time I knew, for certain, that she was aware of it. But it wasn’t anything I “did.” It was something that “happened” and, as far as I could tell, I had no control over it.
She was talking about a crazy sensation I felt sometimes when I touched someone’s sleeve or shoulder—a sensation charged with that person’s emotions. It had only been happening since Granny died. It was extremely weird. I didn’t like it. And I couldn’t explain it any more than I could explain the presence of Geneva in my life. Or a few other things. I was dealing with it by not thinking about it, more or less successfully. And by not touching people. And I wasn’t about to oblige a pushy ghost by reaching over and patting Reva Louise on the back to see if I could tell what kind of personal stew she was in. Geneva was right; I was chicken.
“Go on. I dare you,” she said.
I rubbed my ear so hard that I dumped most of the stitches from my needles, and what I communicated then, openly and more volubly than I should have, offended Geneva. From the askance looks they gave me, Debbie, Ernestine, and John were startled, too.
“My sensitive ears cannot bear that kind of language,” Geneva said. “When you feel like apologizing, you will find me in my room.” She huffed her way out, nose in the air. I rubbed my right ear, in case she looked back. The right ear was our sign for “yes” or “good.” I hoped she would interpret it as “good riddance.”
“Has that tricky stockinette got your panties in a twist?” Reva Louise asked. “Hand it over and I’ll straighten it out for you.”
I resisted the sudden urge to get up and tug on clothing and underwear. “I can get it, Reva Louise. Thanks, anyway. Sorry about the slip of the tongue, there.”
“You should try knitting something more in line with your skill level,” she said. “Stick to scarves or little washcloths. They’ll be less frustrating for you.”
“Kath is hardly a beginner.” Debbie practically harrumphed in my defense. “She’s rusty, as who wouldn’t be after devoting her time and energy to her professional life?”
“Oh yes, I heard how you lost your job,” Reva Louise said. “Wh
at a blow. I hope your professional ego wasn’t too fragile, and I hope you don’t think I meant to offend you about the knitting.”
“It was nice of you to offer the advice.”
“I’m always ready to help,” Reva Louise said. “Mel can tell you.” Mel might have told me, but she didn’t get the chance. Before she could open her mouth, Reva Louise brought up the subject I’d been dreading. “And I am so excited about helping in our demonstration booth at Blue Plum Preserves next weekend. In fact . . .” She got up and went to one of the Welsh dressers where there was a salt-glaze crock holding a bouquet of hand spindles. She picked one with a blue-and-white ceramic whorl and held it up. “You don’t mind if I borrow this, do you? I hear we’re demonstrating spinning this year, so I guess I’d better learn.”
“Ardis told you the demonstration schedule is full, though, didn’t she? She’s already got experts using wheels and spindles and working with wool, flax, silk, cotton. One woman even spins dog hair.”
“My goodness,” Reva Louise said. “How outlandish of her. But you can never have too many demonstrators at an event like this.” She brought the spindle back to the coffee table and gave it a twirl. “Oh, fun! Look, it’s like a top.”
“Yes, we can have too many demonstrators,” I said, making a grab for the spindle before it spun off onto the floor. “There’s limited space and we want the visitors to have a good experience, so quality is better than quantity. Have you ever used a spindle before?”
“But it doesn’t look so hard. They’re like training wheels, right? You get the knack and then move on to a real spinning wheel. Ha-ha! Training wheels. Get it?”
Debbie, as skilled a spinner as Granny had been, kindly laughed at the joke she’d undoubtedly heard before. “But they aren’t really, Reva Louise. Hand spindles are useful tools all on their own. Let me find a better one to start with.” She took the ceramic spindle from me, put it back in the crock, and chose another. “Here. This is a good beginner’s spindle.” She handed Reva Louise a spindle with a plain, smooth, wooden whorl. “It’s less likely to break if it drops.”
