Cutwork

by Monica Ferris

  She had tried to forbid food in her shop, both because it soiled fibers and because Sophie too often succeeded in garnering a share. In the last few months, by strenuous enforcement of the no-food rule, Betsy had reduced losses thirty percent and helped Sophie reduce her weight to nineteen pounds; the cat’s role had been to complain that she was fading away to a wisp. But the shop’s customers complained and so many persisted in bringing food along, especially when shopping during their lunch break, that Betsy had loosened the reins. And apparently believing Sophie’s complaints, they resumed slipping the occasional tidbit to the cat. Just this afternoon, Betsy had seen Sophie eat a corner of a Hershey bar, a quarter of a sugar cookie, and a fragment of lettuce leaf coated with ranch dressing. God knew what else she’d eaten without Betsy noticing; certainly over the past few weeks she had regained two of the lost pounds.

  So while Betsy still fed Sophie her official dinner scoop of dry cat food, she felt no urgency in getting upstairs to do so.

  In the box Betsy was unpacking were a variety of baskets. When her sister Margot Berglund had owned Crewel World, she had used baskets to display items such as skeins of yarn and small needlework accessories. The baskets had grown shabby, and some had become a source of snags for anything placed in them. Baskets were expensive, so Betsy tried to ignore the problem. But then a customer had indignantly displayed the splinter in her finger. The customer, a Band-Aid on her finger and a free skein of overdyed silk in her bag, had departed only somewhat mollified—and Shelly Donohue had come in with a basket on her arm.

  Shelly was a good friend as well as a sometime part-timer in Betsy’s shop. She had a curvaceous figure, beautiful hazel eyes, and a great deal of light brown hair worn in a fat bun at the nape of her neck. A divorcee, she hadn’t married again, and Betsy sometimes wondered why.

  The basket was neatly woven, about fifteen inches deep and with an unusually high handle. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one like that,” Betsy had said. “Where’d you get it?”

  “In a place called Dell Rapids, South Dakota,” replied Shelly. “I collect baskets, and I used to just display them, but lately I’ve been using some of them. This is just right for a quick trip to the grocery store. I no longer have to choose between choking a fish or killing a tree.”

  Betsy chuckled dutifully at the worn jest, and asked, “What were you doing in Dell Rapids, South Dakota? Is it near Mount Rushmore?”

  “No, it’s a little north of Sioux Falls, where I went to visit some friends. There’s no needlework shop in Sioux Falls, but there’s a nice one in Dell Rapids. And the owner carries baskets made by a local woman, Marcy Anderson. I bought this one and a double-rim.”

  Shelly gave Betsy the name of the owner of the needlework shop, and the owner in turn kindly gave Betsy Marcy Anderson’s address so Betsy could deal with the basket weaver directly.

  And so the box Betsy was unpacking held a big round wool-drying basket on short legs, two double-rimmed baskets, an egg basket whose bottom was shaped like a human bottom, and a mitten basket.

  She enjoyed making displays and soon was deep in design mode, humming to herself, loading the baskets with goodies, and trying out places to put them, when someone tapped on the door to her shop. The sound was as if the person was using a key or coin, and Betsy knew before she looked around who it was. She saw a pair of long, darktrousered legs and a light blue shirt standing at the door. The head was hidden behind her needlepointed CLOSED sign, but Betsy grimaced. It was Jill, all right.

  She went slowly to the door and lifted the sign to see if she could tell how angry Jill was. There was no expression at all on the woman’s face, but Jill had a way with her face—the less it showed, the more she was thinking. Betsy braced herself and unlocked the door.

  “Hello, Jill,” she said. “Come on in.”

  Jill came in, removing her police cap as she did so.

  “I thought when you got to be sergeant, you didn’t have to work nights anymore.”

  “I’m just coming off duty, not going on,” said Jill.

  “Then you’ll have time for a cup of coffee, or tea?”

  “No. I just wanted to say . . . how disappointed I am in you.”

  Betsy nearly put on a surprised face, but caught herself in time. “I’m disappointed in me, too. I’m sorry I broke a confidence, Jill. It won’t happen again.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. Good night.” Jill put on her cap and turned for the door.

  “Jill?”

  She turned. “Yes?”

  “Are we still friends?”

  Jill’s expression had not changed throughout this conversation, nor did it now. “Of course.” She left the shop.

  Betsy turned back to her task, but her heart was no longer in it.

  At home, Jill sat down to her dinner of beef stew over a big biscuit. Jill never dieted; she wasn’t particularly slim, but hadn’t gained or lost an ounce since she was twenty. Tonight, however, she skipped the additional treat of frozen yogurt with strawberries she had planned on.

  Though her surname was Cross, Jill was seven-eighths Norwegian, and had been raised in the cool-tempered traditions of that culture. Except to cheer at Twins and Viking games, she had never heard her parents raise their voices. When disagreements arose, the household settled into a frosty silence until someone was willing to apologize; and even then, there was a distinct chill until hurt feelings healed.

  Jill used to envy people who shouted at one another over trivialities, then quickly got over it and embraced as warmly as they’d quarreled. She was pleased when she started dating an Irishman raised in that kind of family. But she quickly came to dread the no-warning flare-ups and found she had to fake the hasty, easy, sentimental making up that followed. She let the Irishman go and started dating Lars Larson, whose dogged, low-key emotions matched her own.

  Lars had been asking Jill to marry him for well over a year, but Jill knew he didn’t just want a wife: Lars wanted children, lots of them. He once confessed that he hoped Jill would get pregnant on their honeymoon.

  This would have been fine with Jill, except that she was a patrol cop. It was very difficult to chase fleeing suspects or handcuff angry, struggling drunks while pregnant. So Jill had wanted to wait until she got a desk job.

  Well, now she had the desk job, or anyway mostly a desk job, or at least she was no longer engaged in foot pursuits. To get the job, she’d passed the sergeant’s exam.

  Then came the catch. Excelsior had a no-fraternization rule. If Jill and Lars had been married, or even engaged, there would have been no problem. But they weren’t. So unless one of them quit the police force—which wasn’t going to happen—they couldn’t date anymore. Well, if Lars passed his own sergeant’s exam, then they could date, but that wasn’t going to happen, either, because Lars refused to take it on the grounds that he loved the variety and action of patrol.

  Interestingly, it never occurred to either of them to break the rule and see each other secretly. This was first because they were Scandinavians, who were second only to Germans in their passion for obeying the rules; but also because Excelsior had a citizen spy network second to none, and they never would have gotten away with it.

  Which brought Jill to her second serious disappointment: Betsy Devonshire.

  Jill had been introduced to Betsy by Betsy’s sister Margot. Margot had been Jill’s friend for seven years, her best friend for nearly four. Then Margot had been murdered, and Jill drew closer to Betsy for Margot’s sake. The tie had strengthened when Betsy uncovered Margot’s murderer. It was perhaps because the tie had never been questioned or even tested that Betsy’s betrayal of Jill’s trust had been so shattering.

  That’s how Jill saw it, as a betrayal. Even though she was a civilian, Betsy had successfully involved herself in criminal investigations and so, in Jill’s mind, had a special status. So naturally Jill had told Betsy that a juvenile had been arrested for the murder of Robert McFey.

  And Betsy, like any common go
ssip, had told the Monday Bunch meeting in her shop. Which would have been all right, but she had let slip that Jill was the source of her information. Within hours it was all over town.

  The fault was partly Jill’s, too; she should never have told Betsy about the arrest. In fact, she hadn’t specifically told Betsy not to repeat it. So all right, the fault was mostly her own. The thought was enough to make her dinner a cold, unpleasant lump in her stomach.

  Chief Nygaard had not been pleased. Jill had been reprimanded a time or two when she first joined the force, but for nothing more serious than mistakes any rookie might make—and far fewer of them than normal. Never before had an error of hers been called to the attention of the chief.

  Even now, remembering his words (which were few) and his tone (which was cold), Jill felt a painful blush rise from her throat and spread upward to her ash-blond hairline.

  It said much about Jill’s integrity that she hadn’t decided never to see or speak to Betsy again, but rather had gone to see her and in a calm voice expressed her disappointment.

  But it would be a while before she could feel the same warm attachment.

  And dismayingly, she couldn’t go for comfort to Lars.

  4

  Betsy tried to continue arranging the baskets, but at last shrugged and shoved some yarn in the remaining three of them, scattered them all around the shop, then went upstairs to feed her cat and herself. Like Jill, she didn’t much appreciate her meal, and had no appetite for dessert.

  After dinner, to remind herself she’d turned from proprietor of her shop to a student in it, she changed into jeans and a pink cotton shirt before she went back down to wait by the door for people to come to an evening class.

  Charlotte Norton arrived first, as befitted the teacher. Char, a trim woman in her early forties with dark brown hair and hazel eyes, had been a customer of Crewel World long before Betsy had inherited it. Betsy had discovered that Char knitted and was fond of small, quick counted patterns, which she did as gifts for friends. But Char also bought a lot of white, green, and natural linen and a large number of balls of number five and number seven DMC Perle cotton in white and ecru—but nowhere near enough patterns to account for this amount of material. It wasn’t until she asked if Betsy had a certain brand of scissors—Davos—which she didn’t, that Betsy decided to ask just what it was Char was stitching.

  “Hardanger,” Char replied. Betsy had heard of Hardanger, but had never seen any. She asked Char to bring in a sample of her work. A week later she did, a spectacular table runner of her own design. Well over a yard in length, it was stitched on platinum-colored Cashel linen with threads matching in color—“Hardanger is usually stitched color on color,” said Char, meaning white on white, buff on buff, or some color on a matching color.

  The piece was composed of three geometric motifs made up of tiny squares filled with very fine, lace-like designs. These were interrupted by star-like satin-stitch motifs, and the whole surrounded by a border pattern made of more of the little squares in geometric patterns that identify Hardanger.

  “I know it looks complicated,” said Char, “but it isn’t. It’s made up of squares surrounded by five simple stitches on a side. The centers can be left alone, or snipped out entirely, or you can snip the weave threads and leave the warp threads so they look like little stripes, or you can wrap the threads into shapes called ‘bars.’”

  Yes, well, Betsy thought, bending to discover that what appeared to be tiny beads attached to some of the bars were, in fact, a loop of thread. She touched one gently. “Those are called picots,” said Char, which she pronounced pea-koze.

  Delicate rows of triple cable stitch flowed along the outer edge, just inside the buttonhole binding. Every stitch was as flawless as its sister, yet there was an indefinable feel and look to the pattern that said a human hand had done this, not a machine.

  Running her fingers over the luxuriously textured squares, Betsy, feeling more than a little overwhelmed, said, “How long does it take to learn to do all this?”

  Char shook her head. “Not long. If you can count to five, you can make a Hardanger kloster block. After you learn that, the rest is just patience.”

  And Betsy, who at this stage of learning needlework should have known better, believed her. “Would you be willing to teach me? No, let’s do this right: Would you be willing to teach a class here at Crewel World?”

  Char’s hazel eyes darkened with pleasure. “All right.”

  So here she was, carrying a basket filled with beginner kits: fabric squares, fibers, needles, and a sheet of instructional text. “Is everyone coming?” she asked as Betsy let her into the shop.

  “I suppose so. At least, no one’s called to cancel.” Four people in addition to Betsy had signed up. Betsy needed five in order to break even—she didn’t count herself—so this was a bit disappointing.

  Char went to the library table in the middle of the room. She put her materials on it, and stood with her back to Betsy for a moment. “Betsy, can I ask you something?” she said without turning around.

  “Sure,” said Betsy, but before Char could continue, there was a knock at the door.

  It was the first of the other students; the rest followed in quick succession. They were Shelly Donohue, retired librarian Bershada Reynolds, and regular customers Ivy Jackson and Doris Valentine. After they were seated, Char asked each one to introduce herself to the others and tell what kinds of needlework she already knew how to do. Bershada was explaining that she’d done counted cross-stitch for “twenty years, at least,” when there was a knock on the door.

  Betsy went to open it, and found Godwin standing there looking near tears. “What’s wrong, Goddy?” she asked in a low voice.

  “I had another fight with John and it was my turn to go for a cooling-off walk, but I don’t feel like walking. I remembered we have a class in Hardanger starting tonight and thought maybe I could try it.”

  “You’re really upset. Do you think you’d get anything out of it? No, no, wait a minute! This may be just the thing! It’s one of those kinds of needlework that takes a little concentration and a lot of patience. Very soothing to the distressed mind. Come in.”

  “I’ll write you a check tomorrow.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that.” She gave him a quick hug. “I’m glad you came by.”

  “Thank you, my dear,” he murmured, and squaring his shoulders and assuming a cheerful face, he went to the table and sat down. “Hi, Char,” he said with a smile, “hi, Bershada; hi, Shelly; hello, Mrs. Jackson; hello, Ms. Valentine.”

  Char giggled. “I guess this is one person who doesn’t need to introduce himself.” Then she continued, “In theory, Hardanger isn’t difficult.” She handed the small squares around the table. “Hardanger cloth is a variety of Aida, which is a two-thread weave, so be careful not to split the weave or it will throw your count off.” Ivy, the senior woman present, moved down a chair so she could use the Dazor light attached to the table. She snapped it on and held the cloth square under it, looking at it through the big magnifying glass in its center.

  “You make a kloster block by placing five stitches side by side, working over four threads,” Char said. “Everyone cut a length off the Number Five Perle floss.” She handed balls of floss and blunt needles around the table. “You’re less likely to split the fabric if the needle is blunt,” she explained. She noted with satisfaction that no one reached for a needle threader from the jar of them Betsy kept on the table; that meant there were no beginning stitchers present.

  “Now, stitch a row of five vertical stitches near the center top of your fabric.” She picked up her own fabric square, pinched it to mark the center, and began to stitch. Heads came together as bottoms rose off the chairs and everyone looked at Char’s stitching. Satisfied, they all sat down and began to stitch. When everyone had done five stitches, Char said, “Now, bring your needle back through the bottom of the last stitch, and let that be the start of five horizontal stitches.
You want them at an angle of ninety degrees to the vertical stitches.” She began stitching on her own cloth, but this time the others watched only the very start before sitting back down and doing their own.

  Char had them do five vertical stitches across the bottom of the forming square, and five horizontal stitches leading back up the other side. “There, that forms the square that is the basic shape of Hardanger.” She told them to run the end of the thread under the original kloster and cut it off short, “So when you’re finished, it will be hard to tell the top from the underside of the project. In fact, I recommend that once you start your real project, you run a short piece of thread in near the border, bring it back up, and tie the two ends, so when you come back to it after a break, you’ll know which side is the top.”

  She brought out the small heart-shaped project they’d be working on, and everyone started in. “It’s much more important that the stitches be placed correctly than that you finish this in one sitting,” said Char.

  Everyone settled in to stitch; Char went around the table answering questions and pointing out errors. Betsy found it easy to do and went around quickly. But as she was forming the last kloster block, she found she only needed four stitches instead of five. It didn’t seem important, so she ran the end of her thread under the first kloster and sat back with a smile. She was the second one finished, behind Shelly.

  But then Char told them the next step: Snip the fabric at the bound edge of one kloster block and the corresponding block on the other side of the pattern from it. The idea was to pull the threads out. And in Betsy’s case, that was not possible, because the two blocks were one thread off.

  So Betsy had to start pulling out her stitching until she came to the mistake that caused the error. She began stitching from there—and it still didn’t match. She had counted carefully this time; there was no mistake.

  Char came by and at a glance saw that Betsy had made two errors originally and had corrected only the second one. She had to go even farther back to the first mistake.