The Knitting Circle (17 page)

“So am I,” she said, the sight of the shiny grease on the duck turning her stomach.

“Sorry,” Dylan said in a tone that let her know he was not sorry at all. “It sounded like you were knitting.”

Mary pushed her plate away. “I’m going to bed,” she said.

“Wait!” Dylan said.

Mary turned. Maybe they would make up, until next time.

“Some lady dropped this off for you.” He put a peach-colored plastic thing down in front of her. “Your stitch holder.”

“Harriet,” Mary said softly. “What a strange duck she is.”

Despite himself, Dylan laughed, his face glistening with grease. Mary laughed too; the fight was over.

“This is the greasiest duck I’ve ever had,” Dylan said.

Mary smiled. “Jessica loves it,” she said. She dug around in her bag until she found her notebook.
Greasiest duck ever,
she wrote.

EDDIE WAS WAITING for her when she got to work. It was the first day of spring and right on schedule the sun came out, flowers bloomed, buds appeared on the tips of trees. I will not think about how I took Stella outside every March 21 and we used to say together:
Spring has sprung, the grass has riz, I wonder where the flowers is
. S tog, Mary thought.
S tog.
Say together.

“You hated Funky Duck,” Eddie said, opening her office door and following her in.

“Yup,” she said. Her throat felt like she had swallowed a tennis ball. Inside that tennis ball, she knew, were endless tears.

“Good,” Eddie said gently.

He flashed her a peace sign—or maybe it was victory?—and left.

When Mary and Stella had walked outside last March 21 and S tog, Stella only had three short weeks to live. Mary closed her eyes against the image of Stella pointing to the dogwood tree. “Look, Mama!” she’d announced. “It’s about to burst!”

ANNIVERSARY: THE DATE on which an event occurred in some previous year (or the celebration of it).

Birthday, jubilee, wedding anniversary, centennial, bicentennial, tricentennial, millennium.

All happy words, Mary thought. Surely jubilee and jubilant were from the same root word. She scrolled word definitions and dictionaries online when she should have been writing a book review. But she could not find anything that explained what this anniversary meant to her. The opposite of jubilant. A day she wanted to forget, not to mark.

Then Eddie was peering over her shoulder.

“Have you ever heard of knocking?” Mary said.

He placed his hands on her shoulders. She could smell him, cigarette smoke and mothballs.

“You don’t need to do that today,” he said. “I’m in my office trying to decide, is it better to say something or to shut up? Is it better for you to be here, or at home? I don’t know.”

“I don’t know either,” Mary said.

“Where’s Dylan?”

“Work,” she said.

“Maybe we could take a drive?” Eddie said. “Maybe a drive on a beautiful day is good?”

Mary shook her head. “It only makes me wonder how the fucking sun can still shine. You know?”

He squeezed her shoulders and then stepped away. “I’m thinking about her today,” he said. “I want you to know that. How she used to like to spin in my chair. And stamp the date all over her arms. I used to like when you brought her in. I would be back there, in my office, and I’d hear those little-girl footsteps and I’d grin. I would.”

Mary turned to face him. “Thank you,” she said.

AT HOME, THINGS were waiting on her doorstep. Plants, full and pink and ostentatious. Cards. Notes. It would be worse if no one remembered Stella. Mary understood that, and she was grateful for these offerings. But each petal, each word, broke her heart again and again.

Inside, the answering machine was blinking. She didn’t know if she could bear hearing all those messages. She heard the sound of Dylan’s key. She splashed cold water on her face and ran her fingers through her hair. But when he walked into the kitchen and she saw his face, stricken, she was crying again, and so was he.

“I just want her back,” he said. “I just want Stella.”

“Let’s hide,” Mary said, wrapping her arms around him.

“There’s nowhere to hide,” he said, his voice full of resignation. “I’ve tried all day.”

The phone jangled. Dylan’s voice told the caller they weren’t available, then Mary’s mother’s voice filled the kitchen.

“I am thinking about you today,” she said. “I am far away, but I am holding the three of you close.”

Mary heard a catch in her voice before she said, quickly, “Bye.”

LIKE A PERFECT 1950s wife, Harriet greeted her in a smart green shirtdress, belted to show her still-small waist. The gold bracelet. Low-heeled shoes. She must get her hair cut every week, Mary thought. It never seemed to grow, always staying just at chin length.

“Let’s go where we can spread out,” Harriet said.

She led Mary down a hallway—moss green wall-to-wall carpeting—into a large family room. Down two steps and onto the gray stone floor. Overstuffed dark red leather couches and chairs. Even the coffee table was leather, with big brass nails holding the leather down at the corners. Mary caught sight of a pool beyond the sliding glass doors, an arbor of wisteria, a patio with lots of glass furniture and a grill, also oversized.

“We had some parties out there,” Harriet said, following Mary’s gaze. “Long ago.”

Mary began to take out the pieces of the sweater, laying them on the coffee table. “Are these okay here?” she asked.

“It’s
leather
,” Harriet said. “You can’t hurt it. Cows are outside in all sorts of weather, aren’t they?”

Harriet had a way of making her feel small. Or young. Or both. At least she would leave here with a sweater.

Harriet adjusted the blinds until she was satisfied with the amount of light they let in.

“My husband and I bought it in Barcelona,” Harriet said, running her hands over the soft leather top of the coffee table.

“Had it sent here. Our friends thought we were mad. ‘Can’t you find a suitable coffee table here?’ they all said. But George said,

‘No.’ It had to be this one.”

She stood at the corner of the sofa and gently touched the side table there, a round hammered-brass top.

“This we carried onto the plane from Morocco. The stewardess said, ‘I’m not sure I can find a home for that,’ and George said, ‘Dear, we have a home for it. We just need a place to store it until we get it there.’”

“Are you widowed?” Mary asked, immediately regretting her boldness.

“No,” Harriet said. “Divorced.” She smoothed her dress and went to sit beside Mary. “Let’s see what you need to do here.”

“I’m sorry,” Mary said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“There’s nothing to pry into,” Harriet said matter-of-factly.

“I was married for twenty-five years and I’ve been divorced for fifteen. Do you read biographies?”

“I used to,” Mary said. “I’m not reading much these days.”

Harriet frowned at her in disapproval.

“I told you,” Mary said defensively. “I lost my daughter. I can barely get up in the morning.”

“I lost my son a few years ago,” Harriet said evenly.

Harriet had lost a child? That was why she had this tough veneer. “You know then,” Mary said cautiously. “You know how it ruins a person.”

“Yes,” Harriet said. “I know.”

She got up again and walked across the room to the bookshelves. Mary watched her carefully select some framed photographs from the shelves. Her heels echoed as she walked back across the stone floor toward Mary. Almost tenderly she sat again, the pictures on her lap.

“My boys,” Harriet said, pointing to the picture on top, a black-and-white studio photograph of two little boys in sailor suits. “Danny and David.”

“Cute,” Mary said.

Harriet placed that one on the coffee table, standing upright facing them. “Danny’s graduation picture,” she said. “He went to Williams College. Very bright, Danny was.”

“It sounds like you had a nice life,” Mary said. “Barcelona. Morocco.”

“We did,” Harriet said. “I grew up right here in Barrington. On Rumstick Point. My father was a doctor, a surgeon. And my sisters and I never wanted for anything.”

There was a tone of boastfulness as Harriet described her family’s affiliation with all of the upper-crust institutions in Rhode Island. They meant little to Mary, but she oohed and aahed appropriately, and her enthusiasm softened Harriet a bit.

“When I married George it was one of the happiest days of my life. Even now, with all that’s happened, when I look back on that day I smile. It was November. All my girlfriends were June brides, but I wanted to wear a satin dress and to have my maids in green velvet. My dress had one hundred perfect buttons running down the back. It took my sister Viv an hour to button all of them. I was almost late for my own wedding! And I held calla lilies. White ones. I still adore calla lilies. You can’t grow them here, you know. I’ve tried. And I’ve been told that if I can’t grow something, then it simply cannot be grown.

“Viv tried growing peonies for years. Finally, I went to her house and I planted some. Why, she is positively overrun with peonies now. So trust me when I say that one cannot grow calla lilies in this climate. George and I saw them in Sorrento, growing everywhere, in the most gorgeous colors—purples and fuchsia and every wild color you can imagine.”

Harriet got up and went to adjust the blinds to accommodate the shifting sunlight.

Mary glanced down at the photos she hadn’t yet shown her. On top was a wedding picture. Mary recognized Danny, his hair trimmed now, grinning in his tuxedo beside a blonde wife in a white column of a wedding dress.

“Liza,” Harriet said. “I never much cared for her,” she continued. “I know we’re not supposed to speak poorly of the dead, but she was not for Danny. When they met he had been working in advertising. For J. Walter Thompson. And she was a broker. Wall Street. Big money. She didn’t come from anything, so the money really impressed her. I mean, she went to the University of Delaware, for Christ’s sake. Pretty, though.”

Mary agreed. Long golden hair and eyes so blue that even in a picture crowded with people they showed themselves.

“He looks so happy, doesn’t he?” Harriet said. “I’ve regretted that I didn’t like Liza and that I let him know that. I regret so much. How I didn’t visit that summer like I was supposed to. They were renting a house in Sag Harbor, and they asked me for the weekend. The Labor Day weekend. But it was too complicated to get there alone. I would have to drive, in all that traffic. Then David was going to be there with his friend, as he calls him.” She glanced at Mary, then averted her eyes.

She took a breath. “The long drive. David being there. Oh, and Liza’s parents. What a pair. Instead I went to a lovely barbecue at my niece’s. You know, she does everything so beautifully. Tastefully. Liza always had to be over the top.

“Late on that Monday night, about ten o’clock, I was sitting right where you are now, knitting, and I heard a rapping on the sliding doors and who was standing there but David and his friend. ‘I couldn’t drive by without stopping in to say hello to my dear old mom,’ David said. I invited them in, and served them something cold to drink. Finally, David said, ‘Danny would kill me if I told you, but he’s really disappointed you didn’t come this weekend.’ I tried to explain about the long drive and the traffic, but he wasn’t listening. He said, ‘They’re pregnant! And they wanted to tell you themselves. Act surprised. They’re going to come this weekend,’ he said, ‘to tell you the news.’

“After they left, I couldn’t sleep. I thought about George. We fell in love. We got married. We had these two boys. This house. Every two years a new black Cadillac. Every year a lovely vacation. For our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, the silver anniversary, we renewed our vows right in the backyard. It was November, but they erected a big white tent. Heated. Our whole family was here, toasting us. The silver we got that night! George gave me a silver bracelet inlaid with all of our birthstones, mine and his and Danny’s and David’s. Two rubies, a sapphire, and a diamond. So beautiful together like that. The perfect happy family. Everyone said so.

“Two weeks later, George comes into this very room. I was sitting in that chair over there, knitting a sweater for Danny, for Christmas. George pulls up the ottoman, and sits right in front of me, and tells me, very calmly, ‘Harriet, would you get naked right now and run through the backyard?’ It was three o’clock in the afternoon! I said, ‘George, what about the neighbors? What about the fact that it’s December?’ And he stood up, and he said,

‘I’m going to do it, Harriet.’ He undressed, right there, by the bookshelves, undressed right down to nothing. Naked! Then he went to the sliding doors, and I jumped up and told him to get back inside. But he walked out. And he faced the house and he yelled, ‘Look at me, Harriet!’ It was so cold that I could see the puffs of air coming from his mouth. I was horrified. Then he came and stood at the door, letting all the heat out, and he said,

‘Harriet, come outside with me.’ I said, ‘I absolutely will not.’ He walked back in, slid the door shut, gathered his clothes—didn’t put them on, mind you. Simply gathered them up, and said, ‘That is exactly why I cannot stay married to you for one minute longer.’”

Harriet shook her head, took a deep breath before continuing.

“The next morning I called Danny at work and told him I wanted to come and visit. ‘Liza and I were thinking of coming to you,’ he said. ‘Next weekend.’ But I insisted on going there. He checked his calendar and he said, ‘How about next Tuesday? A week from today?’

“That following Tuesday I caught the early train. The Acela. It arrived at Penn Station at eleven-thirty and I would take a taxi right to Danny’s office. Danny and Liza worked just down the hall from each other. They were going to take me to lunch, I suppose to tell me their news. The train stopped suddenly and didn’t start up again. We sat and sat, until finally I asked the man next to me if he thought something was wrong. He had his computer on and he looked at me, horrified, and he said,