The Knitting Circle (23 page)

MARY WAS SURPRISED when she saw Beth, bald beneath a red chenille knitted hat. Beth’s cheeks were a surprisingly healthy pink, and Mary thought for a foolish instant that maybe she had been cured. Beneath the smell of furniture wax and banana bread lingered the sour smell of vomit.

“She looks good, doesn’t she?” Harriet said cheerfully, squeezing Beth’s face tenderly. She placed a cup of weak tea on the coffee table.

The house was dressed for Christmas. A jolly Santa on the lawn. A fat wreath with a red velvet bow on the front door. Inside, poinsettias on tabletops and candles in every window glowing white. A Christmas tree in the room where they gathered stood ceiling high, a gold star glistening at the very top, and white ornaments on every bough.

“She does another tree for the kids,” Harriet beamed. “In their playroom. That one has crazy stuff on it. Trains that chug and balls that play music and reindeer that spin.”

“This year—” Beth began.

“This year you supervised,” Harriet said, waving her hand dismissively.

Beth smiled, but it seemed to take all her energy to do it.

Alice cleared her throat. “Block two,” she said. “Everyone, I assume, finished block one?”

She passed around a finished square so they could see the pattern. “It’s a zigzag,” she said. “Same bottom border. Knit six rows. Then it gets complicated.”

Mary wrote down the pattern as Alice spoke:

Row 1: K8, (p3, k3) 7 times, k2.

Rows 2, 4, 6, 8—

“Who do we appreciate?” Lulu cheered.

Alice rolled her eyes. “There’s always one wise guy.”

“And it’s always Lulu,” Scarlet chuckled.

Rows 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12: K3, p46, k3.

Row 3: K7, (p3, k3) 7 times, k3…

Mary glanced around the room, grateful to be here, in the company of these women, just knitting. Her eyes moved from Alice to Scarlet to Lulu. Ellen was not here tonight. Instead she was with Bridget, both of them waiting for that call to come with a new heart. She settled her gaze on Harriet, who was ignoring Alice’s instructions and knitting away furiously. Then Mary looked over at Beth, who probably had already finished her zigzag and was on her way to spiderweb or dashes.

To her surprise, Beth was sound asleep. Her mouth slightly open, her knitting resting on her chest.

“And finally,” Alice was saying, “the top border is only five rows.”

Somewhere, Dylan was with happy Denise doing happy things. Mary imagined a large golden dog. A garden in bloom. She imagined them blissfully groping each other.

“Mary?” Scarlet said.

Mary saw that they were all looking at her.

Scarlet pointed to Mary’s knitting, which had fallen completely off one needle, her square unraveling in her hands.

The thing about knitting, Mary thought, was when it fell apart, it was easy to fix.

“Need help?” Alice asked.

Yes!
Mary screamed in her head. I need a life raft. A lifeline. I need my life back.

But she said, “I’m good. Thanks.” Carefully she picked up her knitting, and began the slow process of slipping her stitches back on the needle.

IN MEXICO AT Christmas a statue of the Virgin is paraded through the town. Villagers dress like wise men; children dress like Jesus. There is a bazaar so large and full, it takes days to visit all the sellers’ booths. Nativity figures can be had for a few pesos. Tamales are sold steaming from carts in the streets.

Mary’s mother told her they would do all of that and more. Why, she said, if you’d like, we can even fly to Puerto Vallarta. Rent a car and drive on to Sayulita, where the beaches are perfect moons of sand and clear blue water.

“I want to be home for Christmas,” Mary had told her, and even as her mother continued talking, trying to convince her that this trip would be good for her, Mary had realized how truly sad it was that she would rather spend Christmas alone than with her own mother.

In the attic sat boxes, red with green lids, and inside those boxes were Christmas stockings,
Dylan
,
Mary
, and
Stella
written in silver glitter across their tops. There was a Santa who danced to “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and a Nativity set her mother had sent them from Mexico on which Stella had colored over all the painted figures in red marker.

At the Christmas party at the office, Holly wore a Santa’s hat and earrings that blinked on and off like Christmas lights. Eddie and Jessica wore matching accessories: Eddie a bow tie with martini glasses and olives, Jessica a matching scarf. He kept his arm around her waist and spoke into her ear, conspiratorially.

Mary left the party, got in her car, and drove out of town. She was still dressed in her red miniskirt, her black hose with candy canes climbing up her calves, and her holiday high heels. On the seat beside her was her Secret Santa gift, a rubbery fish that lifted its head off its mounting and sang, “Don’t worry, be happy.”

Four hours later, she was somewhere in Maine, on the ocean Route 1. She was tired. It was nine o’clock and she’d only eaten two Christmas cookies all day. A rambling white B and B appeared around the next corner, and Mary pulled into its driveway and parked.

Inside it smelled like cinnamon and evergreen. The place was hushed, low-lit. She could hear a piano. She could hear the crashing of waves. It was Christmas Eve, and Mary could see that families and couples in love were all gathered here.

She would have walked out, but a woman appeared dressed in a red plaid ankle-length skirt and a big Christmas tree brooch. Her gray hair was tied into two braids, like Mrs. Claus. Mary smiled to herself, and asked if they had a room.

“You alone?” the woman asked in a flat Maine accent, narrowing her eyes.

Mary nodded.

The woman glanced around the small overheated room.

“No luggage?”

Mary shook her head.

“Well,” the woman said finally, “we’ve got a room all right. The dining room’s closed but we could probably find you a turkey sandwich or some such thing.”

“That sounds fine,” Mary said.

She followed the woman into another overheated room. There was a long wooden bar and red stools. The bartender stood, looking bored. The Christmas music was louder here.

“Get Miss…” The woman raised her eyebrows at Mary.

“Mary.”

“Get Miss Mary here something to eat. And a glass of wine.” She raised her eyebrows again.

“That would be great,” Mary said. She sat on one of the stools, relieved to slip off her high heels.

The woman touched her shoulder gently. “Merry Christmas then,” she said.

“You too,” Mary said.

The bartender brought her a thick turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce and stuffing in it. He poured her a big glass of chardonnay, then stepped back and watched her eat.

When she pushed the plate away, he said, “Alone on Christmas Eve?”

Mary sipped her wine.

He refilled her glass, poured himself one, and left the bottle on the bar.

“There’s only three reasons a person is alone on Christmas,” he said.

She looked at him, waiting. He was handsome, she realized. Longish sandy hair, a stubbled face, broad shoulders.

“Thrown out,” he said, holding up his fingers to count off the reasons. “Lost. Or running away.”

She almost said,
Lost
.

“Running away,” she said.

“From a jealous husband?”

“Hardly,” Mary laughed. Dylan had called her to talk about Christmas. He had said he would be away over the holiday. Could you be a little vaguer? she’d asked him before she hung up.

“What then?”

“Ghosts,” she told him.

“Ah then,” he said, “we have something in common.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Connor.”

They didn’t say any more about it then. Instead, he came and sat beside her and they talked about the safe things that strangers discuss: snowfall amounts and recent movies and what a person liked in a bottle of wine. They drank that bottle, and before it was finished Mary heard herself flirting with this man whose knee pressed against hers gently. His smile was easy to like. In another lifetime, she had been a woman who might meet a man like this, in a bar, and talk of nothing with him while something built up between them. She had been a woman who might go home with a stranger, who would take pleasure in a man’s large hands running along her body, a tongue on her breast, the newness of lips kissing her for the first time.

Connor pointed to the large window behind her, and she turned to see lacy snowflakes falling outside it.

“Let’s go and catch some on our tongues,” he said, taking her hand and leading her out. They stopped to put on coats, and he took a long scarf from a peg and wrapped it several times around her neck.

“You’re in Maine, you know,” he said. “Got to bundle up.”

Then he tugged on the two ends, pulling her toward him. When they started to kiss, Mary felt all the sad things melt away. For an instant, she thought about Dylan, and wondered if this was why he had left her. For such moments when it was easy to forget.

They kissed and kissed like that, until Connor was unraveling the scarf now, pulling it and her coat and hat off. Mary did the same, removing all of the outer layers he had so carefully buttoned and tied a moment ago. The Christmas music had stopped, and the only sounds were the fire crackling and their breathing, hard and fast, as they continued undressing each other, her skirt hiked up high, his shirt and pants open now. Mary reaching for him desperately.

When he entered her, the shock of feeling someone different than Dylan inside her excited her. Perhaps she should feel guilty; the thought drifted across her mind but got lost in the passion between her and this man she didn’t know. For this brief time, nothing mattered except the two of them on this worn Oriental rug in this inn in Maine.

When it was over, he propped himself on both elbows, looking down at her with that easy smile of his.

“Whatever it was that sent you out on Christmas Eve,” he said, “I’m glad it sent you my way.”

“I haven’t done something like this in…” She laughed.

Slowly, he eased out of her, and kissed her full on the mouth.

“I’m taking you home with me,” he said.

“You don’t even know me,” Mary told him.

Connor pulled her to her feet, and slowly began to put her back together, until once again he was tying the scarf around her neck, and tugging her toward him to kiss.

“I’m damaged goods,” she said.

He laughed. “Who isn’t?” He nodded toward the window.

“Snow already stopped. Let’s go and make snow angels.”

LATER, SITTING ON a blanket in the snowy field beyond the inn, the ocean pounding behind them, Connor asked her what those ghosts were. “Or who,” he added.

“My daughter died,” she said. She rarely spoke those words, and she shivered when she said them. “She was five.”

His arm was already draped around her shoulders, but now he pulled her even closer. His down jacket was cold against her cheek. It was so black out, the streetlights so distant, that Mary could believe they were the only two people in the world right then.

“I came here,” Connor said, “from Boston, after my wife died. I used to work in television news. A reporter. You know, the guy who stands outside in the middle of hurricanes. Now I tend bar in Maine.”

Mary nodded into his chest.

“We never had kids,” he said. “I can only imagine.”

Clouds obliterated the moon and the stars, drifting in a milky dance across the black sky. When Connor bent to kiss her, Mary lifted her face to meet his. He could be anyone. They could be anywhere. It was as if she were floating in space, untethered.

MARY STAYED. SHE never even went upstairs to the room at the inn. Instead, she followed Connor’s old yellow Jeep down icy curving roads to his apartment on the second floor of an old Victorian facing the ocean. The radiators hissed and creaked. The windows shuddered against the wind. She lay naked beneath layers of blankets with this man she did not know, as if she were trying on a new identity. Or finding an old one.

They didn’t speak of their losses again. Instead, they just brought comfort to each other with their bodies. Once, so long ago it was just a whisper to her, Mary remembered doing this with Dylan—the long days in bed, their bodies sore as they explored each other. Connor made them instant soup in chipped diner mugs. He told her funny stories about working as a reporter. He played the banjo for her, and sang songs she had never heard before. They took baths together in his old claw-foot tub, Mary soaping up Connor’s husky body, her hands learning someone new.

One night he rolled a fat joint and for the first time since college she got so stoned she had giggling fits that wouldn’t end. To laugh, even with the help of that strong pot he said he’d brought back from Hawaii, felt so good Mary thought she might die from the feeling.

The next night she asked him to roll another joint, but he refused. “Sure, you’ll go home a drug addict and your husband will come and find me and beat the shit out of me.”

“I do have a husband,” she said.

It was dusk and the sky beyond the bedroom window was blue-black.

“I figured,” Connor said. He hesitated, then said, “You told me you were damaged goods. But since my wife died, I can’t connect any more than this. Than what we have here.”

Relieved, Mary said, “Eventually I have to figure out if it’s really over between him and me.”

“You’ll figure it out,” he said.

The inn was closed between Christmas and New Year’s, so they spent a week together, taking walks along the empty beach, building fires in his fireplace, talking little about each other’s lives or plans. They were two people without futures, Mary thought more than once. Two people living in a kind of limbo.

New Year’s Day, when she finally got into her car to leave, Connor waving goodbye from the wraparound porch’s steps, Mary thought it was entirely possible that she’d never return to Providence at all. She imagined driving south and not stopping until the warm air and palm trees of Florida came into view. Or perhaps she would turn the car west and find a small town somewhere, with a good bookstore, a café that roasted its own coffee beans, a group of strong women who met for coffee and knitting and talk. For a while, the possibilities seemed endless.