“What are you making?” Ikey asked.
“A sweater.”
Ikey glanced at the windows as if to confirm the season. But there was nothing to see at the windows except heavy drapes. For a brief moment, no spring waited outside. No season or world at all. Just this house. And Rose. And the countless satellites of silent music boxes.
The urge to ask how she could possibly knit swirled around Ikey’s innards, but to ask might risk offending her again.
“Can you teach me?” Ikey asked. “Please.”
“Teach you what? To make a sweater?”
Ikey nodded. “To knit.”
Rose remained still and quiet. Ikey closed his eyes and opened his ears for the subtle machination of gears and springs and whatever transpired as Rose thought her thoughts.
“I guess I could. I don’t see why not,” Rose said. “But why? It’s not exactly a task men concern themselves with. They’re always glad to have the warmth when they need it, but they never give a thought to the process or those who made it.”
“I do,” Ikey said. “I mean, I think about the process. I used to listen to my sister and my mum knit in the evenings. I miss it.”
“Perhaps you’d be better off asking someone else to teach you.”
“No,” Ikey said. His posture straightened. “I’ve got nothing else to do. And I’d like to learn. Please.”
“Oh dear,” Rose said. “A man who would lower himself to women’s work? Aren’t you a treat. Very well, then. I’ll teach you to knit, and I’ll even keep your secret from Cross.”
“What secret?” The lantern’s flame trembled in Ikey’s grasp.
“That you’ve decided to try knitting.”
“Oh.” Ikey’s shoulders relaxed.
“Would you care to begin tomorrow evening?” Rose asked.
“How about now?” Ikey asked. “I’m not that tired.”
“Very well.” Rose sat back in her chair and pointed at an ottoman beside the sofa. “Pull the ottoman up here.” She waved her hand at the floor before herself. “And be sure to return it to the exact position in which you found it once we are finished. Also, you’ll find a couple of sconces along the wall. You may light them if you need better light. Elsewise, I don’t know where you’ll place your lantern. Finally, fetch a ball of yarn and a pair of needles from my basket. Preferably a set not currently in use.”
The sconces along either side of the room were simple affairs with flues to turn and regulate the flow of gas. Small lamps milky with dust perched atop them. Ikey set the lantern on the coffee table, moved the ottoman to the position Rose had indicated, and placed an unused ball of yarn and a pair of needles upon its surface. Finally, Ikey stepped back over to the lantern, studied the layout of the room a few seconds, then blew the lantern out with a puff.
Rose’s voice lifted out of the dark. “What are you doing?”
“Show me how to knit,” Ikey said. He stepped over to the ottoman. With a groping hand, he found the needles and yarn. He picked them up and sat. The ottoman’s cushion wheezed with his weight.
“Did you blow out the lantern?” Rose asked.
“I did.” Ikey clutched the needles in one hand, the ball in the other. Behind him, the idea of Rose loomed. He wanted to lean back, settle his weight into her, feel the solidness of her.
“But you didn’t light the sconces. Can you see?”
“Show me.”
Ikey waited. The coolness in the metal needles dissipated. The ball of yarn grew warm and scratchy in his palm. The dark swayed. For a moment, it seemed that the needles and ball were the only things holding Ikey to the world.
Rose asked, “What is this?”
“What do you mean?”
“What are you trying to accomplish here? What are you trying to prove?”
Ikey took a deep breath, then exhaled through his nose. If it weren’t for the floor beneath his boots, he’d swear his breath propelled him back along through the dark.
“I’m not trying to prove anything,” Ikey said. His thumb ran along the shaft of a needle. “Show me how it is for you. I want to learn.”
The dark hummed. Ikey swore that the music boxes surrounding them had grown large, dish-like eyes, and they peered down with their opaque irises and copper pupils and through the blackness they saw Ikey’s skin prickle in anticipation. And in silence, they recorded all on tiny cylinders of wax and waited to tell Cross in their odd and lilted songs.
Rose’s hands settled on the sides of his shoulders. Ikey shivered.
“Is this okay?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Her fingertips brushed along his arms until she reached his hands. Coolness radiated from the tips of her fingers. “I’ll take these,” she said, her voice behind him.
A sweet scent drifted over him like summer clouds; a flowery scent that reminded him of a fresh shirt pulled dry from the clothes line. After she plucked the yarn and needles from his grasp, his hands drifted to his lap.
The needles clicked off to his left, then again behind him. Fabric whispered and Rose’s chair let out a sound that was neither a creak nor a groan, but almost a purr. She pressed briefly against the sides of both his arms, right beneath the shoulders.
Close to his ear, Rose said, “Find my hands before you.”
Ikey raised his hand until it bumped against Rose’s forearm. He traced the satin of her sleeve with a knuckle until it scraped against the lace at her wrist. Rose took his hand in hers and guided it towards them until their hands hovered close to the bottom of his chest. She pressed a strand of yarn against the tips of his fingers. Reflexively, he pinched the yarn between thumb and forefinger.
She let go. “This is called casting on,” Rose said as she took his left hand and maneuvered it close to his right hand. “You want to take up the yarn in the left hand as well. Let it lay over your hand. We’re going to make a knot.”
Ikey fished in the dark with his left hand. He didn’t realize he had captured the strand until tension tugged at his right thumb and forefinger. He pulled his left hand away an inch. A tickle of wool slid over the crooks of his curled left fingers. The moment he ceased moving, the yarn disappeared from his senses.
“Now twist the yarn around like this,” Rose said as she guided his hands and wrists and fingers through a series of motions.
Ikey attempted to picture the motions in his mind, imagining his hands and the yarn before him and pretended he could see it all plain as day. But the yarn eluded him. As he rolled his wrist over, the tension of the yarn tugged at his fingers, but then it disappeared from his imagination the instant he stopped moving. He could picture his posture, his hands before him, and he felt the cool pressure of Rose’s hands on his, but the yarn had transformed itself into something exotic; a material that existed only when moved.
“There,” Rose said. “Once finished, you should have this.” She traced a pretzel shape over the flat fingers of his left hand, the heart of it pinned underneath the pad of his thumb. Her touch tickled. “Take a moment to study it for yourself.”
Ikey reached up and mimicked the path drawn by Rose’s finger. He barely felt the yarn at all.
“Are you following?” Rose asked.
“Yes.”
“Good. I’m going to hand you the needle, and with your right hand, you will want to dip the tip of the needle here.” She dabbed her finger below his thumb. “Then bring it under this thread and out through here,” she continued as she traced her fingertip along his fingers. “Understand?”
“Yes,” he said. He had no clue. It was like clutching water.
Rose pressed the needle against the back of his right hand. He took it. It felt a million miles long. The tip of it might as well be in America for all he could tell. And which way was it even pointing?
Ikey took a deep breath.
“Are you all right?” Rose asked.
“I’m fine.” Ikey pictured Mum and his sister knitting, pictured them handing needles to each other. The
y always passed them with the points in the air. Rose would do the same, right? But why hold their needles with the points up? To keep their stitches on the needle. Ikey nodded to himself. That made sense. They kept the points up out of habit. It was the proper position for a needle, and so she had likely passed it to Ikey in the upright position as well.
Ikey grinned at his cleverness. He pointed the tip of the needle at his left hand.
His grin evaporated as he realized he still didn’t know where the point was. Where along the shaft did he have a hold of it?
“Do you need help?” Rose asked. “If you want to light the lantern—”
“No,” Ikey said. “I got it. I can do it.”
Ikey stretched his thumb up the shaft and felt more of the same. He held the needle upright and loosened his grip to encourage the needle to slide down until he found the tip with his thumb. Sweat coated his palms, and the needle stuck fast. Once he opened his grip enough to free the needle, it slid straight through his hand and clattered to the floor.
“Piss,” Ikey said.
Rose chuckled.
Ikey reached down and patted the hardwood floor in sloppy, growing circles.
“Why don’t you light the lantern?” Rose asked.
“I’ll find it,” Ikey wheezed, doubled over with his ass still on the ottoman.
Her hand brushed across his back. Ikey stopped groping. He realized his eyes were shut. He opened them wide. It made no difference, so he blinked into the dark as Rose’s palm rested below his shoulder blade.
“Why are you doing this?”
He didn’t want to budge or do anything to cause her to remove her touch, but while doubled over, his breath came in short, shallow pulls that lit a fuzziness in his chest. He sat up. Her fingertips grazed his back, then slid over the ridge of his shoulder. The tips of her fingers rested below his collarbone.
His breath came in short, shallow pulls. “Doing what?”
“Sitting with me in the dark.”
“I haven’t been away from home before,” Ikey said. It was flavored with the truth.
“But why put out the lantern? You don’t need to sit in the dark if you want to visit.”
Ikey shrugged. Rose’s grip on his shoulder tightened.
“I wanted to see how you do it. What it was like.”
Silence stretched out. Ikey resisted the urge to thump his boot on the floor for the noise, for the jittery chatter of the music boxes.
“What did you think?” Rose asked.
“About what? Knitting?”
“Knitting without eyesight.”
Ikey blew a breath past his lips. “It’s hard. Harder than I thought. How do you know where the yarn is?”
Rose sat silent a few seconds. A slight squeeze flickered across his shoulder. “It’s where I put it,” she said. “I can’t explain it any better than that.”
“But how do you know where the tip of the needle is?”
“It’s where I put it. It’s always at the end of the needle.”
Ikey smirked at her comment. “I couldn’t find the tip. I was searching for it when I dropped the needle. I wasn’t sure how far away the tip was from my hand.”
“Are you able to tell where your hands are in relation to one another?”
“I am.”
“Then next time, set the shaft on your arm and draw the needle back until you find the tip. Would you like to try again?”
The thought of Rose removing her hand left a cold spot in Ikey’s belly; a fear that he would be set adrift without her touch to moor him in her world. Furthermore, he wasn’t finished soaking up the only tender act he had encountered in a long time. Yet it felt daft to continue sitting on the ottoman, demanding her attention like a dog nuzzling one’s hand.
“Sure. I’ll try again,” he said. “Let me fetch the needle…”
Rose’s grip tightened. “Allow me.” Her left knee and thigh found purchase on Ikey’s hip as she leaned forward and over, her torso brushing Ikey’s back.
The thought of Rose disappeared. She was no longer this womanly creature, tall and long and willowy in her black satin skirts and veil. She ceased to be anything more than a pattern of movement and touch. She became the ripples on the pond.
The needle scraped along the floor, then Rose’s torso brushed past him. Her leg pulled away from Ikey’s hip and suddenly Rose was gone. Out of existence. And Ikey sat adrift in her universe without paddle or rudder or sail. He tapped the toe of his boot.
“Rose?”
“Hmm?” Her voice rippled through the dark.
“Thank you. For teaching me.”
“You’re welcome. But I haven’t taught you anything yet.”
The needle’s shaft pressed against his arm.
Ikey took the needle. “I dropped the yarn.”
Rose snickered. “I’ve got the ball right here.”
Once she had the ball wound, she demonstrated again how to cast on. Before long, Ikey had 25 stitches on the needle, and he knit back and forth across the row. He imagined each knot crafted at the end of the needle, and he imagined those knots linked together to form the tongue of a scarf. After every few stitches or so, his needle pierced nothing but air, and he would draw it back and feel along the other needle with the tips of his fingers, pressing lightly against the shaft like a flutist searching for holes. Instead, he felt for the slight bumps of stitches, and finding the last one, passed the working needle through it and hoped to feel the tiny pull of tension as the friction between the needle and the stitch registered in his wrist.
By the time he wrapped the yarn around his working needle, he had forgotten the network of stitches he had constructed in his imagination. They were gone. Absent. All of the work done up to that point evaporated. Only the stitch before him mattered. The loop under his finger. The needle in his hand. The yarn across his palm and wrapped around his forefinger. The tug and slide of yarn. The click and swish of the needles. The feedback in his wrists that suggested his needle was stuck in something more than pitch black. The knitting became the motion, the management of tension like an instrument—a violin played in silence, its quiet song spooled into a tapestry to be handled with fingers, felt and drawn to the face, the cheek, pressed to the lips where one could inhale and smell the wool and its slight vinegar scent.
Ikey missed a stitch several times before finally catching it. He took a deep breath, stretched his back, and blinked into the dark. The knitting sank into his lap as he yawned.
“Tired?” Rose asked.
The instinct to deny it flashed through him, but the excitement of the day wore on him. Furthermore, both the rhythmic motion of knitting—when he could briefly achieve a rhythm—and the dark lulled him towards sleep. He nodded, then added, “I am. It’s been a long day.”
“I imagine so.” Her arm brushed against his as she leaned forward. The veil tickled his ear. She picked up his wrist with one arm. The needle tugged at his hand as she plied the bit of scarf he had managed to produce.
“That’s not so bad,” Rose said. “Not for a first time. In the dark, no less. Finish your row. It’ll make it easier to start tomorrow. Then be sure to push your stitches down to the bottom of the needle so they don’t fall off.”
Ikey did as instructed, then swept his hand under the needle to feel the scarf. He ran his hand over it and rubbed it between thumb and forefinger. Unlike the scarves his mum had knit, his was full of bumps and holes. As he explored the texture of it, his thumb snagged a series of holes that laddered up to the needle. Eyes weren’t needed to know it was a mess.
“It’s a mess,” Ikey said.
“It’s a start. You can’t be good at everything on your first try. Cross tends to disappear each evening to either his workshop or the pub. If you’d like, we can work on this. Though I understand that sitting in the dark and playing with sticks and string may not offer a young man the same allure as the pub, I can, however, tell you that you’ll be far better off in the long run by learning to kn
it as opposed to learning to drink.”
“I’d like that,” Ikey said. He hesitated, then added, “Cross wouldn’t want me along anyway. He doesn’t care much for me.”
Rose stood. “I wouldn’t take it personally. Cross doesn’t care for much of anything other than drink and his own thoughts.” Her knee brushed across Ikey’s back as she moved away from their seats.
“Come along,” Rose said. “I’ll show you to your room.”
She passed into the dining room. As she walked, the music boxes broke their stubborn silences and sang their tilted and loping songs to her, their time measured by her long strides.
Ikey closed his eyes and concentrated on the layout before him; the boundaries of the doorway and the dining table beyond. Landmines lay between him and the stairs. Everywhere sat invisible corners and forgotten edges to bark his shins and trip him up. He shook his head. How ridiculous that he should be the one limited, handicapped in this house.
Rose’s footsteps stopped. “Are you all right?”
“I’m coming,” Ikey said. He slipped a match from his pocket, then crouched to the floor. He laid the head of the match against the wood and flicked his wrist across the grain. The match flared into a brilliant aura of white that twisted his eyes shut against the smart of the light. A second later, he opened his eyes and saw the orange cap of flame wavering over the blackened head of the match. His fingers and knuckles were whisked back into existence again, solid and observable with bits of grease worked deep into the wrinkles, along with a thin ribbon of pink flesh where the yarn had wrapped around his forefinger for control of tension.
Ikey lit the lantern on the table, and under the umbrella of light, he followed the black-clad shadow of Rose up a flight of stairs. On the third floor, Rose motioned to the water closet as they passed. At the end of the hall, she showed Ikey into a bedroom cramped with furniture. After seeing the sparse decorations around the rest of the house, the bedroom looked out of place with its large, four-post bed and dresser with matching wardrobe. At the foot of the bed sat a trunk with a folded nightshirt resting on top.
“Since you didn’t bring any baggage into the house with you, I assumed you’d need a set of night clothes,” Rose said. “I cut off one of Cross’s old nightshirts. He never wears them. If you need more covers, you’ll find them in the blanket chest. Anything more I can get you?” Rose asked. She folded her hands behind her back.
Arachnodactyl Page 9
