The Sisterhood of the Dropped Stitches (3 page)

“He lived in Hollywood when he worked here,” Becca finally says.

“Really?” I completely stop rubbing down the counter. I never knew that. I'm starting to have a bad feeling in my bones.

“I kind of asked your Uncle Lou about him—just in a general way,” Becca says. “I didn't say anything about his eyes or you dating him or anything. I just asked if he remembered the guy who worked the grill that summer when you got cancer.”

“Becca would never actually betray a confidence and say anything about you and the grill guy,” Carly quickly assures me.

Now I understood why Carly came with Becca this afternoon. They are worried I will be upset about Becca stepping into my business. I think about it for a couple of seconds before I realize they don't need to worry. When someone has stood shoulder to shoulder with you in the wars, it's hard to get upset if they step on your little toe later. Besides, I've wasted enough emotion over that grill guy to last anyone a lifetime. I don't need to make a big deal of him now.

“It's okay. It doesn't matter if you found out where the grill guy lived. He is so not the point anymore.”

“You're sure?” Becca asks. She looks a little anxious.

I give her a smile and a nod. “It's all history.”

Carly and Becca exchange another one of those looks.

That funny feeling in my bones is growing.

“But you wouldn't mind seeing him, would you? I mean, if you walked into him on the street or something?” Becca asks.

“I don't think that would happen,” I say. “I'm sure we don't walk down the same streets anymore. He might have lived in Hollywood when he was a student, but he's probably gone back to Ohio or someplace by now.”

Carly clears her throat.

Becca squares her shoulders. “He might be closer than that. See, your uncle Lou—well, I think he tracked the guy down and he's meeting with him right about now. Your uncle is asking him to take over the grill while he goes on vacation.”

Becca took a sudden interest in the floor.

“Oh.” I see now. My life is a house of mirrors. I look one way only to have to look the other way to try and see the real picture. Everything has shifted.

“I don't want you to be angry,” Becca adds with a quick upward glance toward me. “I know that sometimes I get carried away. But I truly didn't think it would be a bad thing if your Uncle Lou called the grill guy up and asked him to come back to work for a few weeks.”

I look at the two faces in front of me. We've
battled cancer together. What is one grill guy compared to all that?

I take a deep breath. “I'm not angry.”

The feeling in my bones has settled into stiffness in my neck.

“Good,” Carly says as she puts a hand on my shoulder and makes a massaging motion up my neck. She hasn't forgotten that stress settles there for me.

“I am maybe a little concerned, however,” I admit.

Becca nods. “Don't worry. I would never say anything to the guy himself about dating you.”

“With any luck, he won't even remember me,” I say. Carly's neck massage is already making me feel better. And I'm right. The grill guy won't remember me. He's had six years of people pass through his life since that summer—I can't even begin to speculate on how many dates that has been for him. What am I thinking? “He's probably married by now anyway.”

Carly and Becca both look surprised. I am glad they hadn't thought of that, either. One thing we have in common in the Sisterhood is that we all had six years carved out of our lives. We're out of step with the larger world in the same way. While other people had been doing normal things like getting married, we'd been waiting to see if we'd live. Our clocks are all slightly askew. Maybe that's why we've made so much of our goals. Time has passed us by for too long.

“We'll find you three dates someplace else,” Becca says a little too quickly. “Maybe one of those matchmaking sites on the Internet.”

“That doesn't sound safe,” Carly says as she stops the massage on my neck. “She can't go out with a stranger.”

“Maybe if I had an e-mail exchange with them that could count as a date,” I offer.

Becca frowns. I can tell she is tempted. She wants to wrap up these goals so there are no loose ends. But she's always been a player who insists on being fair. “Well, maybe if it was a long and significant e-mail exchange. No, ‘hi, how are you?' kind of a thing.”

“I can do long e-mails.”

“And personal. You know, with information about you. What you do. Your hobbies. That kind of thing,” Becca says.

“Maybe even your experience with cancer,” Carly adds. “And not just the medical stuff—the emotions, too.”

The stress has left my neck, and the funny feeling in my bones is long gone. I can do some e-mails. I don't know why I didn't think of it before.

Everything is going to be okay. I am feeling generous toward Becca and Carly. Maybe they are right to give me a little nudge. A few e-mails won't be bad. And, if I'm on a matchmaking site, there should be lots of choices in men to e-mail. In the
meantime, there's that coffee place in De Lacey Alley. I've got it made.

I, Marilee Davidson, will have my three dates. Just wait and see. I'm home free.

I
found this ancient Chinese proverb one day and brought it to a Sisterhood meeting when we were all doing our chemo routine. We figured it meant that nothing in life is guaranteed. We all knew that fact too well. Still, it was kind of nice to have some old Chinese man from a long time ago agree with us.

Not that we knew it was a man who said it. We sat and talked about it, but couldn't decide if the one who wrote the proverb was a man or a woman. Carly thought it sounded more like a man.

Of course, it might have been a woman who said it and a man who finally wrote it down. Lizabett was the one who pointed that out—she'd turned sixteen and had another argument with The Old Mother
Hen—this time because he'd told her to be careful driving in the rain. It would be just like him, she said, to follow her around and write down what she said.

 

I know you're dying to hear about Uncle Lou and the grill guy, but all I can say is that you need to wait in line. Several hours have passed, and Uncle Lou just got back to the diner. Becca, Carly and I are curious, too. Of course, we don't want to make a big deal of anything in front of Uncle Lou. At least, that's what I'm telling myself. Becca is giving me a nudge and a meaningful look. She apparently sees things differently.

“Becca said you were seeing about someone to work the grill for you,” I finally say to Uncle Lou after he's put on his white bib apron and greeted the regulars by name.

Just to look casual, I clear away the plates that one of the counter customers left.

Uncle Lou grunts as he pulls down a glass from the overhead rack and pours himself some iced tea from the pitcher we keep behind the counter. “Yeah, it might work out. Randy Parker—remember him? He's the college guy who worked the grill here that summer….”

Uncle Lou looks at me and then looks away as though he doesn't want to remind me about the summer I got my cancer diagnosis. Cancer is a conversation stopper, all right.

Fortunately, Uncle Lou continues, “Ah, anyway, Randy's thinking about doing it. He'll let me know. He's got his own place now down on Melrose—some great hangout diner that just got written up in the
L.A. Times
sports section—can you believe it? A write-up like that is gold. Anyway, Randy says he has a fond spot in his heart for our diner here. Said we were his inspiration. So he might just do it. He's one of the few guys I've seen who can really handle that grill. Don't know why I didn't think of him before—if Becca hadn't reminded me of him, I'd still be trying to find someone….”

Uncle Lou's words trail off as he reaches for some of the unshelled peanuts we keep in little bowls on the counter.

Becca lifts her eyebrow to me, but as far as I'm concerned, that's all I'm going to ask. Finally, she grins at me.

“So,” Becca says to my uncle as she picks her backpack up from the floor by the counter stool. “This grill guy won't be too busy with his kids or anything, will he? I mean to work nights?”

My uncle stops cracking the peanut he has in his hand. “Kids? He didn't say anything about kids.”

“So he's probably not married?” Becca asks.

Uncle Lou shrugs. “Didn't ask.”

Just then Annie comes in, full of apologies for being late for her shift. Uncle Lou and I both wave her apology away. We know she carries a full load
of classes and can't always coordinate her schedule. That's always an issue with student employees, but we like to hire them anyway. Uncle Lou says they keep the place young.

Usually, we have a male student who works the grill some and can spell Uncle Lou, but we don't at the moment. Besides, Uncle Lou doesn't want to leave a student in charge of the grill even if we do find someone to train before he goes on vacation.

Becca adjusts her backpack over her shoulders and looks at Uncle Lou. She's like a pit bull when she has a question. There's no stopping her. “But you'll need to ask eventually, won't you? I mean, to find out who to notify if there's an emergency or something.”

By now Uncle Lou has chewed up his peanuts and he gives Becca a long look. “You interested in this guy? I didn't think you knew him.”

Becca has the grace to blush. At least, I think it's a blush—her normal olive skin is rosier than usual. “No, I'm not interested. And I don't know him. I was just wondering about—” I can see her searching for something sensible to say. Finally, she finds it “—employment laws as they relate to married restaurant workers—that's it—employment laws.”

Uncle Lou nods as if he thinks Becca has made sense. “Of course, I forgot. But I can't ask him if he's married—isn't that against some hiring rule they have nowadays?”

Uncle Lou looks at me. Following the rules and regulations is my department so I remind him, “It's always best not to ask marital status. Or someone's age or religious status, either.”

Uncle Lou nods. “Can't hardly ask anything.”

“I suppose you do find out, though,” Becca says. “When you ask about tax withholding and everything?”

I nod and give Becca a warning look. “Usually we do know, but that doesn't mean we can ask or that anyone's obligated to tell us.”

That seems to satisfy Becca.

There's over an hour until it's time for the Sisterhood meeting. I have to finish the accounting for the day, so Becca and Carly take off to do some shopping, and I go into my office. I look around when I shut the door. It's not a large room, but I've never noticed just how small it is before.

I have a calendar of British castles on one wall. I've always wanted to stay in an old castle—my father is half-English and someday I'm going to trace our ancestors back in case we have any family castles in the distant past. That's the extent of the dreamy stuff in my office. The rest is business. I have a metal bookcase on the other wall. There is a small narrow window and my desk on the third wall. I have a straight-back chair beside my desk as well as an office chair in front of it. When the door closes, I have a long mirror on the back of the door.

Maybe Becca and Carly are right, I think to myself. My office had been a much-needed place of refuge when I was sick. Even on my good days back then, I didn't want to be around people. I was happy to escape to this room and work with numbers and suppliers. People I talked to on the phone didn't need to see my face, and I liked that.

No one just passing through could see me and ask me if I was sick, thinking I just had a bad cold. I never knew what to say when people did that. Of course I was sick. I was almost dying. But strangers didn't want to hear that, and I didn't want to tell them. They were just being polite; they didn't need to be brought down with my story. Still, I could hardly lie and say I wasn't sick, so I ended up awkwardly mumbling something about it not being contagious.

So, no, I didn't want to be around people.

I didn't have any pictures of people on my desk. I'd thought at one time about putting a picture of me and Mom on the desk, but I worried that sometime, when Dad stopped in to watch a game, he would want to see my office. If that happened, I didn't want him to see a picture of me and my mom sitting there without him.

I did have one picture, taken when I was about ten, of the three of us together. I had framed it and put it on my desk for several days when I first set up my office, but I was even more uncomfortable with
that one because it seemed desperate to have to go back that many years to find a picture of us all together and smiling. So I put the picture in my bottom drawer and it's been there ever since, sitting next to the old stapler that doesn't work anymore.

These days I'm not exactly hiding from people in my office, but I'm not out there meeting anyone, either.

Maybe it is time for some changes.

I look in the mirror on the back of the door. It's a plain mirror with cardboard backing and a metal rim around it. The first thing I see is my hair sticking out from under my baseball cap. My hair grew back a long time ago, and while it is fine instead of coarse the way it used to be, it's good, healthy brown hair. I used to love having long hair, but now I keep it short. Half of the time, I chop away at it myself. It hardly seems to matter if it's styled or not when I usually wear a baseball cap over it.

I love my baseball caps.

The caps were as close as my dad and I came to talking about the effects of the chemo. He never said anything when he gave me the caps, but every few months or so he'd show up with a new one and put it on my head. Even though he never gave me much of a hug after giving me the cap, I always felt better—as if maybe the cap was his way of saying he cared about what I was facing with the chemo.

My hair is doing fine now, but I keep wearing the caps.

Maybe I
am
stuck in cancer-defense mode. Maybe I do need to take more chances in life, including meeting more men.

I meant what I said to Becca and Carly about feeling fine about my body now. But that doesn't mean my body hasn't changed some. I'm still not sure about me and men in any intimate sense. Maybe I
have
been reluctant to date.

I think about all of that for a minute, and then I take off the baseball cap I am wearing and lay it on a corner of my desk. My hair is flat, of course, but I use my fingers to comb through it a little in front of the mirror on my door. I never thought I'd feel so strange without a cap on my head.

I look at myself again in the mirror. My hair doesn't look great, but it doesn't look as bad as I thought it might. It wouldn't hurt to wear some lipstick, either. My lips are thin, but if they have some color, they won't get lost in my face. I look in my top desk drawer. I find a tube of lip gloss and put that on my lips. It doesn't give them any color, but it does make them look a little fuller.

I'll need to stop by the mall soon and get some lip liner—it wouldn't hurt to get some eye makeup, too, since my eyes will be more noticeable if I give up the baseball caps.

And, of course, there's moisturizer and foundation. It didn't seem worth the trouble of worrying about moisturizer when I was sick, so I gave it up.
But now that old age is a possibility again, I should think about it. I look at my face closely in the mirror. I see two lines that could be forming beside my eyes. I need to get some moisturizer and start using it.

I stare at my face, looking for more fine lines, for a while. Then, I tell myself I can't spend the whole afternoon looking in the mirror.

I sit down at my desk and get to work. I finish doing the bookkeeping for the diner, and then I eat a sandwich.

I take my time, but I'm still the first one to the meeting room.

Usually, during the Sisterhood meetings we're so busy we don't notice the people out front in The Pews eating and laughing and having a good time. There are wood floors throughout the diner so a person does hear footsteps when other people walk around. I can usually gauge the number of customers in The Pews by the noise level. But generally we don't care if a party is going on outside; we in the Sisterhood have our own thing going on inside our room.

There are French doors leading from the main room to the back room, and those French doors have windows. The doors don't stop all of the noise, but they do give us a feeling of privacy. There are gauze curtains we can draw over the French doors if we want, but we usually just leave the windows clear.

I like looking through the door's windows and
seeing the shine of the brass rack hanging from the ceiling over the mahogany counter. The rack holds two hundred water goblets and other glasses. The glasses gleam in the soft light that comes from the electric sconces on the walls and the Tiffany lamps that hang over the tables.

The windows we see through to the outside also let the customers out there look in at us. I've wondered once in a while what the people at the counter think about the five of us sitting around the table in the back room with our heads bent over our knitting. The table and chairs are all antique oak pieces. The walls have delicate ivory wallpaper with embossed gold drawings on it. There's a grandfather clock in one corner, and several green plants on a stand in another.

Uncle Lou redecorated the room when we first started meeting in it all those years ago. Before that time, it had an old pool table and television in it. He thought it should be more like a living room for us.

We've never even considered meeting anywhere else, although some of the Sisterhood have to drive for an hour or so to get here.

We have a ritual with our meetings. We greet each other when we arrive, but we don't talk much at first. We knit for a half hour or so—that quiets our nerves. It's almost like meditation. Then we have a quote if anyone has brought one. And then we open everything up to talk.

This order of things has taught us the value of silence.

Tonight, though, we don't start with silence.

“Your hair,” Carly says with a smile when she looks at me. “I can see it.”

Carly and Becca both come into the room with shopping bags. Rose is already seated at the table, and I see Lizabett coming in the outer door to the diner.

“It's pretty flat,” I say. To tell the truth, since I took off my cap an hour ago, I'm beginning to worry that my hair isn't bouncing back like it used to. There's no lift to it. Maybe my hair has been permanently flattened because of me wearing caps for so long. I have my knitting in my hand, and I put it down on the table so I can go give everyone a hug.

“A good trim will take care of that,” Becca says as she hugs me.

“Her head has a nice shape for short hair,” Rose adds from where she sits at the table. Rose doesn't make it to all of our meetings, but we love it when she comes. She puts down her knitting, too, and stands to greet everyone.

Becca hugs Rose, while Carly gives me a hug. “Your hair's a good color.”