The Knitting Circle (21 page)

“Beatrice looked at me finally. ‘What is it?’

“‘I’m a drunk,’ I said, and I laughed, inappropriately. But it was the first time I’d said those words out loud. ‘That’s what I do. I sit at home and I drink. I make plans for the garden, or the ironing, but I never quite manage it. Emmett comes home and I try to act sober and busy. I make us martinis, some dinner if I can manage that, and then it’s gin and television.’

“‘Pete and the boys are camping in the Berkshires,’ she said. ‘They won’t be back until late Sunday night.’

“That weekend we stayed locked in that motel room at the Red Rooster and it was as if no time had passed. I called Emmett and told him I needed time away, time to think. And I lost myself in Beatrice.

“But of course, Sunday afternoon came. I watched her dress to leave me again, sliding the bracelets up her arm, carefully putting on the silver hoop earrings.

“‘It was real after all,’ she said.

“‘I won’t go back to Emmett,’ I said. ‘Not after this.’

“She came and sat beside me. ‘I’ll talk to Pete about a divorce.’

“I had told her that Emmett and I had a cottage on the beach in Rhode Island. I would go and stay there. I wrote down the address for her and told her to come as soon as she could.”

Alice sat again in the chair across from Mary.

“She never came, did she?” Mary asked her.

Alice shook her head. “But she saved my life.”

“She broke your heart!”

“I divorced Emmett and he gave me the cottage. I opened the store. I stopped drinking.”

“Did you ever fall in love again?”

“In love? I don’t know. I’ve had some wonderful relationships. I’ve been happy, in my own way.”

“You never drank again after that weekend?” Mary said.

Alice laughed. “Oh no, it doesn’t work quite that easily. Even now I would like nothing more than to get good and blotto. But I joined AA and, well, you know that already.”

Mary looked at her, confused.

“Why, that’s where I met Mamie. Your mother. I was a few years sober by then, and I became her sponsor. I sat her down right where you’re sitting and I taught her to knit.”

“You met her in AA?” Mary said.

“You never knew that?”

Mary shook her head no.

“I told her to store up energy for a day when boredom and grief cannot touch you. Then get some old wool and needles and play with knits and purls.”

Later, as Mary drove home in the dusk, down that driveway and then the dirt road, leaving the ocean behind her, moving west toward Providence, she began to cry. Who was this woman that Alice described? A desperate woman, needing help, sitting in a powder blue chair by the sea, learning to knit. Her own mother. Mary remembered the dozens of tiny hats, carefully knit, then wrapped in tissue paper and boxed to be sent to the hospitals.
I hate you!
Mary had screamed at her mother.
You’re crazy!
Her mother had just sat, quietly, desperately, knitting.

12

THE KNITTING CIRCLE

WEEKS PASSED AND
Dylan came home late most nights. “Meetings,” he explained. “Over wine?” Mary asked him, tasting it on his lips when she kissed him good night. Was it her imagination, or were they really making love less often? She thought back, trying to gauge frequency, intensity, interest.

“Half of the marriages of people who lose a child end in divorce,” she reminded him one October afternoon as he worked diligently on the crossword puzzle from that day’s newspaper.

He looked up at her, then went right back to the puzzle.

“Since when do you do crossword puzzles?” she asked him.

“I used to do one every day. It’s good for the brain,” he said, tapping his pen against his temple.

“When was that?” Mary said.

“A long time ago,” he told her. “Before I knew you.”

Mary frowned. “Were you an entirely different person before I knew you?”

“We both were different people,” he said, shrugging. He turned back to the crossword puzzle and carefully filled in the squares.

Mary watched him, remembering the small details he had told her so long ago about his first wife, how she didn’t use enough laundry detergent and his clothes never smelled clean; how she liked to sew and made the curtains for their house, and her own skirts and summer shifts; how she always served Jell-O salads at dinner parties, with cut-up fruit inside and a dollop of mayo or sour cream. She had sounded like a woman from the 1950s, with her sewing and her Jell-O.

“What?” Dylan said, looking up at her now.

“I was just remembering things you told me. Trying to figure out who you are.”

“You know who I am,” he said, irritated.

“Of course,” Mary agreed. But really, watching him like this, she felt like there were many things she didn’t know.

MARY’S MOTHER DIDN’T ask questions. When Mary tried to tell her how much she missed Stella, how long her days had grown, how sad she was, her mother suggested she knit more, travel more, join a book group, take a class. Mary knew her mother was still stung from her refusal to visit back in September, but she’d promised Thanksgiving, and reluctantly intended to keep that promise.

She and her mother had had exactly two visits alone together, both disastrous. Back in college, her mother had come for a weekend and Mary, out of nervousness or anxiety, had gotten drunk and thrown up in the rental car. The next day she’d been too hungover to sightsee with her mother. And, over their final dinner, her mother had lectured her about the dangers of drinking and driving, of taking drugs, of having sex with too many boys. She’d talked about gonorrhea and unwanted pregnancies until Mary had told her to please be quiet and go back to her hotel.

The second trip was back when Mary had lived in San Francisco. Her mother came for a week, sleeping on the futon in the living room. She’d complained about all of the things that Mary loved: the steep hills, the brisk air, the endless variety of people. At the airport her mother had said, “I don’t know how you stand it here. Too touristy.” “Mom,” Mary had told her, “you are the first person I have ever met who doesn’t like San Francisco.” Secretly she was relieved; maybe her mother wouldn’t come back.

Now she was facing the prospect of Thanksgiving with her, eating Saul’s turkey mole and missing Stella.

“When we’re in Mexico—” Mary continued, interrupting Dylan’s crossword puzzle again.

“Mexico?” he said. “Oh, hon, I’m sorry. I thought I’d go to my sister’s, like we did last year.”

“You’re not spending Thanksgiving with me?” Mary said, shocked. “We always spend the holidays together.”

“Okay,” he said, raising his hand like a cop, “if it’s important to you.”

“If it’s important to me? Why isn’t it important to you?” She heard her voice growing shrill, and shuddered.

He slipped the cap on and off his pen a few times. “It just doesn’t matter without Stella,” he said finally. “Remember that song she used to sing at Thanksgiving?”

Tears sprang to Mary’s eyes. She nodded, hearing their daughter’s voice as if from a great distance:
Turkey and stuffing on the table, sweet pumpkin pie is mighty fine, mother and father, aunts and uncles, Thanksgiving is a family time!

“It all seems so pointless,” Dylan said softly.

“But
we’re
not pointless,” Mary said, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “Are we?”

Was it her imagination, or did he wait too long before he said, “Of course not.” And did he hesitate before he put down the newspaper and went over to her to wrap her in his arms?

HOLLY SOMETIMES MADE a pot of strong dark roast, and everyone kept a mug by the coffeemaker, just in case. Mary rinsed out hers, filled it, and took a slice of Holly’s pumpkin bread. Holly was too busy moving in time to her iPod and typing away on the computer to hear Mary’s “Thank you.” It would have been good to have company, even for a few moments. This morning she had called her mother and made excuses to not visit her at Thanksgiving. Her life felt too precarious to leave for even a few days, especially to spend time with her mother, who would somehow manage to make Mary feel even worse.

Mary leaned against the wall, sipping her coffee and listening to the peculiar sound the wind made as it whistled. The building, a former mill, still had elevator shafts and closed-off areas that did funny things with sound. Combined with the distant sound of Holly’s music played so loud Mary could almost catch it too, Mary settled into the high-pitched noise and thumping bass.

Mary straightened. She walked around the corner and saw it wasn’t just wind and rain and the Black Eyed Peas. Eddie and Jessica were fucking in his office, right against the closed door.

Why did this upset her so much? Mary wondered as she hurried back to her own office. Holly came in right behind her and closed the door.

“I know,” Holly said. “It’s like gross, right? What’s that thing Eddie always says? Don’t pee in my pool?”

“Don’t shit where you eat,” Mary said.

“Right,” Holly said, nodding.

Mary slipped on her shiny yellow raincoat and put her computer to sleep.

“I’m going home,” she said.

“Got a party or something tonight?” Holly asked brightly.

Mary shook her head no.

“I’m going as a black widow spider,” Holly was saying. “I made this great costume out of black velvet with all these arms that I can manipulate with strings.”

“Sounds great,” Mary said, suddenly crying. She bent her head so Holly wouldn’t see, and walked as fast as she could out of the office to the elevator. Incense from the yoga studio downstairs filled the little waiting area. Mary jabbed the down button several times, hard.

When she turned, Jessica was standing there.

“The mayor,” Jessica said. “He’s hosting this thing at his house.”

She had on a black trench coat belted tight so that it showed off her tiny waist, and knee-high black boots. Mary thought of Nazis, of hostile invasions and takeovers.

Jessica smiled, smugly, Mary thought.

“You’re off to do this knitting story?” she said.

Mary nodded. The elevator arrived with a creak and a sigh, the door sliding open slowly. They rode down together in silence.

At the door, Jessica opened a pale blue umbrella decorated with white puffy clouds.

“By the way,” Mary said, pulling her hood up, “that El Coyote is probably the worst Mexican food I’ve ever had.”

Jessica raised her tweezed eyebrows. “Really?” she said. “Eddie loves it.”

Mary watched Jessica’s skinny self go downtown. Despite the rain, Mary walked slowly. Eddie was, after all, just her boss. But somehow she felt alienated now, unable to drop in his office and talk, or to speak freely about assignments, about Jessica herself.

The umbrellas in the outdoor patio at Jake’s dripped rain onto the empty tables. This was one of Dylan’s favorite places. Hamburgers stuffed with blue cheese and two-dollar pints of beer. Maybe they would come here tonight, Mary decided. She looked at the Halloween decorations in the windows, big cardboard witches and scarecrows.

She stopped.

There, at a window table between a witch and a scarecrow, sat Dylan, his head leaned forward toward a woman. Mary stared at them. The woman, with her blonde wispy hair and wire-rimmed glasses looked familiar. Then she remembered—it was the woman from that party, the one who had told the boring story about her year studying in Florence. The one who had stood by Dylan’s side, in his cluster.

She watched her husband sip his beer. He was smiling in a way that made Mary start to cry all over again. The woman was talking, was making him laugh now. She also held a pint of dark beer.

Mary took a few steps toward them, watching as the waitress appeared with food. That hamburger for Dylan; a big bowl of something for the woman. But they didn’t seem to notice. They stayed like that, heads bent across the table, almost touching, talking and laughing in the way people did when they were…Were what? Mary asked herself. Having an affair? Or simply having lunch? She glanced at her watch. It was three-thirty. Too late for lunch.

Then Dylan reached over and wiped a strand of that wispy blonde hair out of the woman’s eyes. Mary’s stomach lurched. Without thinking what she would say, she walked into the dimly lit restaurant, dripping water on the floor as she moved.

“What a coincidence,” Mary said as soon as she reached the table.

They both looked up at her. The woman still smiling, Dylan expressionless.

“I was walking by and I was thinking that we should come here for dinner tonight,” she said. She imagined what a mess she looked with her rain- and tear-streaked face, her silly yellow coat. Everyone else—Jessica with her trench coat and this woman in her black pantsuit and Dylan with his tie loosened and his shirtsleeves rolled up—looked like grown-ups. She just looked ridiculous.

“I’m his wife,” Mary said.

The woman said, “I’m Denise.”

Mary nodded. “Denise. I’ve heard nothing at all about you, which makes me even more nervous.”

Dylan was getting to his feet, reaching for his wallet. “I’ll take you home,” he said.

But even as he was putting his hand on her arm to move her away, he was talking to Denise. She had thin lips, and pink lipstick, and eyeliner on the top and bottom of her eyes.

“No, no,” Mary said, shrugging out of his grasp. “You don’t need to take me home. Stay and finish your lunch. Or dinner. Or whatever it is.”

Denise had the vegetarian chili. A vegetarian with pink lipstick and glasses. This was who her husband was having an affair with.

Dylan was urging her away from the table. Could a person be more embarrassed? Mary wondered. More heartbroken? What is left? she was thinking as she walked away from them. She slipped on the wet floor, but didn’t fall. Instead, she kind of glided out. Like an ice skater, she thought. She could hear Dylan’s voice, but she wasn’t sure who he was talking to. Mary didn’t stop to find out. She just kept going, out the door, into the rain.

WHEN HE FINALLY came home, Mary was in the bathtub. It was dark out, still raining. Her skin was wrinkled, and the bathroom was steamy. When the water cooled, she emptied it and refilled the tub with more water as hot as she could bear it. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been doing this when Dylan opened the bathroom door and moved through the steamy air to the edge of the tub, where he sat.