The Knitting Circle

by Ann Hood

  Holly ran her fingers through her choppy hair. “I know. Isn’t it crazy?”

  “So how did it happen?”

  “Jeez, Mary. The usual way. I just don’t know who the father is. I mean, I have some ideas, but, you know me. I kind of like variety. It’s the rice of life, right?”

  “Spice,” Mary said.

  “You are sad now, aren’t you?” Holly chewed her bottom lip, worried. “I’ve made you sad.”

  How could Mary admit that weddings and babies made her depressed? Especially to Holly, who was like a big open heart with her skinny-armed hugs and her gooey cakes.

  “No, no,” Mary heard herself saying. “I’m happy.”

  SCARLET HAD THE next knitting circle at her loft. The smell of sugar and vanilla filled the air, even in the hallway that led to her apartment. They were all making a baby sweater that day. As it turned out, each of them had a pregnant friend and Alice decided to have a baby-sweater knitting circle. “Then our gifts will be finished!” she’d said.

  Mary rang the bell and heard Scarlet shout, “It’s open!”

  Inside, Scarlet was heating milk for cafés au lait, pouring it into colorful oversized mugs of hot coffee. Warm cinnamon knots and elephant ears dusted in sugar were carefully laid out on a red and yellow tray. Mary watched Scarlet fill one cup with just-steamed milk, then add some almond syrup to it.

  “Beth’s here,” Scarlet said. She held up the warm milk. “This is for her.”

  Mary took the cup and brought it to Beth, who sat in the living area, dwarfed in the overstuffed chair. But despite being so thin, she looked remarkably well. She’d put on frosty pink lipstick, and was dressed in jeans and a pale pink sweater. She wore a white knit hat with a crazy trim of sparkly pink, red, and silver yarn.

  “Hey, beautiful,” Mary said.

  Beth laughed. “I’m trying.” She took the cup from Mary and sipped.

  Mary sat on the sofa and began to unpack her knitting bag. “How are you?” she asked Beth.

  “I’m good. In a couple of weeks I get another scan and I know the tumors are gone. I can feel it. This was a scary one, but I’m almost back one hundred percent.”

  Women’s voices grew louder and Scarlet, Lulu, Harriet, and Alice all walked in with their coffee and knitting.

  “So,” Alice said, “who knew this would turn into a celebration of sorts.”

  “What are we celebrating?” Beth said.

  The women all settled themselves, Scarlet placing the tray of pastries on the wide coffee table.

  “Ellen’s girl, Bridget,” Alice said. “Even as we speak, she’s getting her new heart. They got the call at four o’clock this morning.”

  “Thank God,” Beth said.

  Mary swallowed hard. She thought of Stella in that hospital room, the doctor’s stethoscope pressed to her chest. Around her, the women were talking about organ donors, about Bridget’s bravery and Ellen’s dedication to her daughter.

  “How simple,” Alice said gently. “A one-skein cardigan. We’ll be done in a few hours.”

  The yarn was thick and lush, with variegated colors. Mary had chosen purple and green and blue for Holly’s baby, and even as she cast on, the colors revealed themselves vividly.

  Other than the clacking of needles and Alice’s instructions from time to time, the room was quiet. For once, Beth knit slowly, her fingers swollen and sore from treatments.

  “Who’s your sweater for?” Beth asked Lulu.

  “My sister is pregnant again. Both of my sisters spit out babies like crazy.”

  “How about you, Scarlet?” Beth said.

  Scarlet kept knitting. Already the back of her sweater was on stitch holders, and she had marked the places for the sleeves with pins.

  “Scarlet?” Beth said.

  Scarlet carefully laid the front on her lap, its rich pinks and magentas bright against her black pants.

  “I guess,” she said, “it’s kind of for me. I just got approval from China to adopt a baby girl,” Scarlet said, as if she couldn’t quite believe the news herself.

  Mary watched as Lulu and Alice ran over to hug Scarlet. She watched Beth’s face break into a smile. Even Harriet gave a reluctant nod of approval. Slowly, Mary got up and joined Alice and Lulu by Scarlet’s side.

  “You really did it,” Mary said.

  Scarlet squeezed her hand.

  It grew dark outside as they sat knitting their sweaters. Scarlet turned on lamps and made more café au lait. Each woman had a front and a back and two small sleeves and now knitted the right front band, making careful buttonholes. Except Beth. She had fallen asleep, and Scarlet had taken the sweater pieces from her and placed a quilt over her. She breathed heavily in her sleep, her face pale in the glow of lamplight.

  “She’s remarkable, isn’t she?” Harriet said softly.

  Alice patted Harriet’s knee. “Yes,” she said. “Of course she is, darling.”

  Then they were silent again, interrupted only by the sound of Beth’s breathing. When the phone rang, Lulu jumped, startled, and dropped a few stitches.

  Scarlet took her baby sweater with her as she went to answer the phone.

  “It’s Ellen!” she said to everyone. “Bridget is doing great. The operation was successful.”

  The women cheered and called hellos and good wishes to Ellen while Scarlet held out the phone so she could hear them. Mary let them believe that, like all of theirs, her tears were from happiness. How could she ever let anyone know how stingy her heart had become? She wanted Bridget well, and alive, and Ellen to have her daughter. But she wanted her Stella more.

  “Of course,” Harriet said after Scarlet had hung up and they had all returned to their sweaters, sewing up the sides, adding the buttons—flowers on Lulu’s, fish on Mary’s, antique silver ones on Harriet’s, and small pink hearts on Scarlet’s—“of course, these things don’t always work out. Sometimes the body rejects the new heart. Sometimes—”

  “Sometimes,” Alice said, holding up her finished tiny sweater,

  “sometimes everything goes perfectly.”

  DYLAN HAD MOVED out four months ago, and even though he still called her once a week—“Just checking in,” he’d say—her work had finally managed to keep her from thinking too much about him and their mess of a marriage. This was what he had been able to do after Stella died—work so hard that he could lead a life again. Mary understood that now. She wondered if he understood that she had not been able to help herself until now.

  Sitting at her desk with her computer humming and her brain finally working, she thought about calling him. But she couldn’t. From her office, she watched Holly and Jessica whispering by Holly’s desk. Lately, she’d felt the two of them had grown fond of each other and her sense of betrayal had deepened. Even now, the way their foreheads bent close together, the secretive smiles on their faces, Jessica’s hand placed possessively on Holly’s arm, made Mary uncomfortable and a little jealous.

  It was hard enough watching Holly’s stomach grow bigger seemingly every day. With the warmer weather, she had taken to wearing thin baby-doll dresses that showed off her pregnancy. She looked ridiculous, Mary decided as she watched them. Holly began to dig around in the big bag she toted everywhere, pulled something from it, and gave whatever it was to Jessica.

  Holly had been Mary’s ally against Jessica, and suddenly here was Mary alone. On today of all days. She found herself wishing for Dylan, the way he knew the right things to do, his good self.

  She gathered her things and headed out for lunch. A new restaurant had opened on Thayer Street, with the unlikely and inappropriate name Takie-Outie Sushi. Mary avoided Thayer Street if she could. It was full of chain stores and restaurants and too many students clogging the narrow street sipping oversized, overpriced Starbucks coffees. But she needed to get out of here and it was a far enough walk to get her some good exercise. She’d managed to lose almost ten pounds since January.

  When Mary walked into the foyer, Holly and Jessica
stopped talking, stepping away from each other guiltily.

  “What’s up?” Mary asked before she could stop herself.

  She saw Holly glance sideways at Jessica before she said, “Oh, you know.”

  “I’m pregnant,” Jessica said.

  Holly let out a little gasp. “Jess,” she said firmly.

  “Twelve weeks. We thought it would take a while but we were wrong.”

  Mary saw what Holly had handed Jessica: a bottle of prenatal vitamins from the natural-food store.

  “Congratulations,” Mary said, hoping Jessica couldn’t tell how dry her throat had grown.

  “Well, off to a new sushi place,” Mary managed. “Any takers?”

  There was a moment of awkward silence before Jessica said,

  “We can’t. No raw fish.”

  “Right,” Mary said, walking away from them. Behind her, their voices once again rose in that excited and anticipatory way that pregnant women have with each other.

  THE NEWS AT the next stitch-of-the-month club was that Bridget was coming home from the hospital that weekend. Last month, Alice had taken donations and made up a knitting basket for her: soft pastel yarns and a variety of needles, a measuring tape shaped like a woolly sheep, and a simple pattern for a hat. Scarlet and Alice had delivered it to the hospital themselves, and reported that Bridget looked healthy, healthier than she’d ever looked. Ellen was, of course, exhausted, but her cautious optimism could not be hidden.

  Now Bridget was coming home with a good prognosis. The transplanted heart was pumping as if it were her own, and she could breathe easily, even doing light exercise.

  In between working on this month’s stitch, the chevron, everyone discussed a welcome-home party for Ellen and Bridget. When they chose a date, Mary lied and said she couldn’t make it.

  “We’ll reschedule then,” Alice said, opening her appointment book again.

  “No, no,” Mary insisted. “I’m so crazy with work. You’ll never get there if you wait for me.”

  She didn’t look up into their silence. With her head bent and her focus on her knitting, Mary could avoid considering how ungracious she had become. The world around her was full of babies about to be born, daughters whose lives got saved, triumphs over adversities. Mary carefully paid attention to the row she was knitting. Knit five, purl four, knit two…

  THE DAY OF Bridget and Ellen’s welcome-home party, Mary drove an hour south to the small seaside town of Westerly. A movie theater had opened there a few months earlier that showed old movies and served soup and panini, wine and espresso. She’d been meaning to review it, and by going today she felt slightly less guilty for avoiding Ellen.

  Mary glanced at her watch and saw she was just on time. She hurried inside, ordered a mozzarella and tomato panini and a beer, then entered the already-dark movie theater. Although Mary had expected to be alone at a matinee on a sunny afternoon, there was only one empty table. She sat and began to eat her sandwich just as the screen came down and Mrs. Miniver began to play.

  By the time the credits rolled, Mary had fallen in love with the place. What a comfort to escape into a darkened theater for an old movie. She watched the faces of the people as they left and knew they felt the same way. Back in the lobby, she waited in line for dessert and coffee beside a tall, balding man who—like Mary herself—was still teary from the film. He saw her watching him and shrugged apologetically.

  “I can cry over anything,” he said.

  Mary studied his face a moment, finding him familiar. “I think I know you,” she said finally.

  He shook his head. “I just moved down here. I’m opening a knitting store across the street.”

  “Knitting?” she asked.

  “Men knit, you know,” he said, his blue eyes sparkling. Fishermen invented it from the knots they used to repair their nets.”

  Mary took a step back to better see his face. “That’s how I know you. From Big Alice’s.”

  His smile froze, then disappeared.

  Mary put her hand on his. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was there that night you finished the blanket.”

  “Ah,” he said.

  “Roger, right?”

  By now they both had their desserts and coffees. Roger motioned to an empty café table. “Want to sit awhile?”

  “I do,” Mary said.

  Roger pointed across the street. “My store,” he said. “The Sit and Knit Two. Alice is my not-so-silent partner.”

  “I had no idea,” Mary said, surprised.

  “She knew I needed to get away, to do something different. After what happened, all I did was sit at home and knit. I have a lot of sweaters, let me tell you.”

  When they finished their desserts, Roger suggested a walk by the river that flowed noisily behind the theater.

  “I bought that building,” he continued as they walked, “and spent the winter making the upstairs livable, and now I’m getting ready to open the store.”

  Mary pointed toward her car. “This is me,” she said.

  “Matinees every Thursday,” he said.

  “Maybe I’ll see you next Thursday then,” Mary told him.

  Roger grinned at her. “See you then,” he said.

  THE NEXT THURSDAY, after Tea and Sympathy, Mary told Roger about avoiding Ellen.

  “Me too!” he said. “God knows I wanted that child to make it. But then I felt so riddled with jealousy that I can’t bear it. I sent an overly extravagant flower arrangement. It had guilt written all over it.”

  “So did I!” Mary admitted.

  Roger wagged his finger at her. “We’re transparent.”

  “Ellen’s going to be at the next stitch-of-the-month meeting. I have to visit before then,” Mary said.

  Roger leaned close to her. “We’ll go together. What do you say? Two brokenhearted cowards.”

  Mary saw that he had tears in his eyes. “All right,” she said.

  “But not next week. Next week is The Days of Wine and Roses. We can’t miss that.”

  “All right,” Mary said again.

  “You’ll stay for dinner afterwards,” Roger told her.

  Mary took a breath and then said, “Since my husband moved out to pursue a happier life, I happen to be free for dinner.”

  “Oh, honey,” Roger said.

  “It has to start getting better, right?”

  “It already has,” Roger said.

  THE WALLS OF his loft were the purple of eggplants, and religious folk art hung from them: oversized silver milagros, ornate paintings of the Black Madonna, heavy wooden crucifixes and bright retablos.

  “We collected them,” Roger explained. He was mixing a pitcher of Cosmopolitans—“the best ones you’ve ever had,” he’d told Mary. “We traveled in Mexico quite a bit. Central America. Peru. His Spanish was excellent.”

  Mary took the frothy pink cocktail he offered her.

  “Is it the best you’ve ever had?” Roger said.

  “The best,” she agreed.

  Roger flopped onto the red velvet couch. “Wasn’t Lee Remick so beautiful? So tragic?”

  “Those Brandy Alexanders,” Mary said, shaking her head.

  “They did her in.”

  “That’s what I should have made,” Roger said. “In honor of the movie.”

  “No, this is perfect,” Mary said. “May I tell you how awful it is to work with two pregnant women and one expectant father?”

  Roger refilled their martini glasses, then leaned back into the cushions. “Every time I see two men walking down the street together, I want to run them over. Honest, I do.”

  Mary considered a moment, then she asked him, “But you’re okay, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said quietly. “But sometimes I curse even that.”

  Mary went and sat beside Roger on the couch. Its cushions were so soft they seemed to swallow her up. “I have thought that too,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be better to be with Stella than alone here without her?”

  “We
don’t get to choose,” Roger said.

  “Dylan chose,” Mary said. “He chose to leave me.”

  Outside the apartment’s large bank of windows, it had grown dark. But he made no move to turn on any lights other than the small lamp beside the sofa and the soft globe light still on in the kitchen.

  “Do you think there’s anything afterwards? Heaven or anything?” Mary asked.

  “I don’t know,” Roger said. “I want there to be. But I just don’t know.”

  “I want there to be too,” Mary said.

  It was one of the things she feared most, that Stella was simply gone forever. She would not ever again hold her daughter, or see her soft round face. In the hospital, she remembered praying for Stella to call out to her, to say “Mama.” And Stella had said it. She squeezed her eyes shut against the memory.

  “Have you done the medium route?” Roger said, his voice returning to its playful self.

  “No. A friend wanted to take me once, but I just can’t buy it. You?”

  “Alice came with me once. ‘Rubbish,’ she said before it even started. ‘A bunch of rubbish.’” Roger sighed. “I suppose it was,” he said.

  Mary held out her glass and he got up to refill them.

  “Okay,” Mary said, “here’s a totally sexist question.”

  “How did I ever start to knit?” he laughed.

  “You are the only man I’ve ever seen knitting,” she told him.

  “Being homosexual isn’t a good enough reason?”

  She shook her head.

  “I learned probably for the same reason you did. To save my life.” He rubbed at the stem of his martini glass absently. “We had these few idyllic years. Gave up our tiny tiny apartment in the West Village and moved to this eighteenth-century farmhouse. Totally restored it. Opened a nursery. The plant kind, not the kid kind. Made friends. Like Alice. And we had fabulous dinner parties on our big wooden table with white candles dripping wax on it and good wine. People still talk about our New Year’s Eve party. We used to say that we felt like we were living in a Ralph Lauren catalogue.

  “Then he goes for a routine physical and we’re not even worried. I mean, if you were a gay man in New York City in the eighties, you have had your AIDS test, believe me. That was part of our charmed life. That we had escaped it somehow. Then one night I’m standing at the stove making spaghetti carbonara. I’ve got the pancetta browning and the spaghetti cooking, I’m working on a big glass of a very nice Barbera, and the light from the garden is coming in the window just so that it casts a small glow on him at the table. The phone rings. He leans over and picks it up. And zap! our life ends.