Door County, Before You Die

by Mary Bowers

  Turning on the charm, Gail thanked Henry for inviting her to his table. “It’s such a lovely time to get to know people – while you’re sharing a meal.”

  We said we had enjoyed her company, and she went off to her own cabin.

  “What about you two?” Henry said. “Got any plans today?”

  “Do you mind if I borrow my aunt, just for the morning?” I asked him. “I want to go shopping, and you don’t look like a shopping kind of guy. I promise you can have her back this afternoon. And of course, we’re all having fish boil together tonight.”

  “I think I can keep myself company for just one morning,” he said in his usual, barely-audible murmur. He and Nettie were smiling at one another in a cozy sort of way.

  “Well,” I said to my aunt, “what do you say we take a ride up to Ephraim this morning? Let’s go see if that knit shop is still in business.” I took a lungful of sharp, cold air, and thought I detected a trace of leaf-burning smoke, but maybe that was just wishful thinking. Yellow sunlight was filling the hollows between the trees all around the cabins. “I feel like knitting something.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Then we can go to that malt shop in Ephraim and eat lunch like a couple of teenagers.”

  “An even better idea.”

  Chapter 8 – Knitting with Gerda

  I drove to Ephraim, but not all the way into town; just enough to get the first glimpses of the bay’s waters. The shop I wanted, if it was still in business, was just outside of town, on the south side. Along the quiet road, we passed through thinly wooded areas touched with patches of color set against the damp, dark earth.

  Watching carefully for the string of cabins that comprised a row of shops in a woodsy setting, I found it in time to pull the car to the side of the road and look at the directory. My knit shop was still there. You never know about these one-off places owned by independent shopkeepers. They come and they go, but this particular shop had been there since my first visit to Door County, when I was a teenager, and I was happy to see it on the directory.

  In spite of the darling-aunt stereotype, Nettie doesn’t knit. She crochets, but she doesn’t even do much of that anymore. Hoping she wouldn’t be bored, I asked her to come in with me and help me pick out a project – something small like a stocking cap or a scarf, that I could finish in just a few days.

  She agreed, and we went into the little cabin together.

  Yarn shops are like candy stores to me. The colors, the textures, the slubby or glittery specialty yarns, all make me want to run around and take out a skein of each one and think about what I could do with it.

  In the corner, the owner was standing by a table where two women were knitting things, chatting and having coffee. She looked over at us as we came in and smiled, telling us her name was Irene, and to let her know if we needed help.

  “Got any patterns for a small project?” I asked. “Something that takes a really pretty specialty yarn?”

  She nodded and came away from the table, going to a big folder behind the counter where she kept her own line of patterns.

  “How about mittens?” she asked. “It’s getting to be about time for them.”

  “Perfect.”

  Growing serious, she told me, “What everybody wants these days is convertible mittens – the kind where you can pull back the section that goes over the fingers and button it back out of the way, if you want to send a text, for instance. See what I mean?”

  She showed me a pattern with a color picture of the finished mittens. They were done with a three-color pattern and I immediately loved them.

  “I have some fun little buttons you can use, too,” she said. “Now you don’t have to follow the color chart if you don’t want to. You can just do them in all one color.”

  I stopped her right there. “I love knitting in colors. Do you have the right size stitch holders? Of course you do. And I guess I’ll need double-pointed needles. Size six or seven?”

  “Six,” she said, “but you can knit them both at once on a round needle.” She paused and looked up at me doubtfully. “Do you know what I’m talking about?”

  “Yes, I do. You don’t remember me, but I was here with my parents a long time ago. Maybe 2003? I remember you, though.”

  She smiled and simply mentioned that I must have been just a teenager then. “Welcome back. My name is Irene. I’m glad you remembered my little shop.”

  “I never forget a knit shop.” I smiled back and looked down again at the picture on the pattern, getting excited about the project. “So here we go: worsted-weight yarn in three colors and a size six round needle. That should make a good, tight fabric. I didn’t bring any tools, but I won’t need much, will I? The yarn, the needle, some markers . . . .”

  The discussion got technical and Irene and I had our heads down over the pattern when the shop door opened and closed. Irene took a quick glance past me, but I didn’t bother to look. Nettie had gone over to the table and joined the two knitters, admiring their projects and getting friendly, so Gerda took us all by surprise when she announced her presence in her booming voice.

  “Oho,” she said, “so you knit, too, Paige. I am not surprised. You have a way about you that suggests cleverness about such things. I knit too. I suppose you noticed my cardigan this morning at breakfast?”

  I had. And I hadn’t admired the workmanship, vaguely wondering at the time if she’d gotten it at a charity bazaar. Those church ladies know how to knit, though, so I should have known it had been Gerda herself.

  “Oh, yes, I did notice it,” I told her. I quickly changed the subject to the only one I could think of. “It’s going to be interesting for you, having a colleague staying at the same hotel.”

  “You mean Professor Wagner?”

  “Sure. Logan.”

  “Ah, yes,” she said pensively. “You’ve gotten friendly with him. So it’s Logan, is it? And the two of you had dinner together last night. Are you seeing him again tonight?”

  “It was the four of us,” I corrected her, beginning to catch a drift of something. How had she found out about that already – and more to the point, why did she care? “My aunt and Mr. Dawson were there, too. Why?”

  “No reason. I only hope he hasn’t begun to try to persuade you to his way of thinking.”

  I chuckled. “I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about the kinds of things he has theories about.”

  “No, no, I suppose not. I thought at first that you were the kind of woman who is open to the magic around her, but perhaps your age is against you. I wish I had known you when you were young, when your mind was still open.”

  “I’m not that old.”

  “But you are past the innocence childhood. Still, Professor Wagner may try to persuade you with his rigid ideas. I sense that he is pursuing you. Don’t let him close your mind.”

  “Hardly.” Irritated, I started to tease her. “Why the interest in me and Logan? Were you hoping to see more of him yourself? To further your discussions on . . . you know . . . whatever it is you do?”

  The mole beside her mouth gave a tremble.

  She seemed about to explode, and I quickly tried to head her off. “Well, to answer your question, no, Logan and I didn’t make plans for tonight. If you want to make a date with him, go ahead and ask him.”

  “Certainly not!” she said with exaggerated disdain. “It would be a waste of my time. You haven’t said yet what you think of my cardigan.”

  Caught, I had to say something. “Of course, I knew right away it was a handknit. The yarn is beautiful. Wool?”

  She lifted her chin. “Merino. Handspun. By a woman I know in Michigan, whom I met while researching post-paleo agrarian handcrafts. She actually shears her own sheep, cards it, then spins and dyes the yarn. Ah, I see you’re looking at patterns. Personally, I don’t use them. I’m able to devise my own designs, straight onto the needles. Once I have my gauge, I’m off.”

  I had recognized her pattern as a fairly com
mon raglan technique, knit in one piece from the neck down. I don’t need a pattern for that, either. I’ve been knitting so long I don’t remember learning how, and I’ve always liked a challenge. I only use the neck-down technique when I’m feeling lazy. Still, I nodded, trying to end the discussion, and looked back down at the mitten pattern that was laying on the counter.

  But now Irene was interested. Gerda had worn a topcoat over her clothes, and Irene asked to see the cardigan. Peeling the topcoat, Gerda waited to be admired. The ladies at the table paused in their knitting and looked over. Irene examined the sweater expertly, then said, “Very nice, but next time I suggest using smaller needles. That’s the wrong gauge for that weight of yarn. It’s not going to keep its shape.”

  The ladies at the table looked back down at their own work and resumed knitting without comment.

  I threw a sidelong glance in Nettie’s direction and she was giving me a penetrating look, warning me not to provoke her.

  After a pause, Gerda told Irene, “I’m sure your employer would disagree.”

  “You mean the shop owner?” Irene said, neither hostile nor friendly. “This is my shop; I’ve owned it for twenty-three years now. If you’d like help with your projects, I’d be only too happy.”

  With steely reserve, Gerda said, “Do you have any homespun? I make it a point to only use natural fibers.” She glared at a fringy party yarn.

  “Of course. Over on that wall. I’ll be with you as soon as I’ve finished helping this customer.”

  She turned back to the mitten pattern and concentrated on me.

  We didn’t take long picking out the yarn and the colors – cherry red and pistachio green against an unbleached, oatmeal color, all heather-flecked – but Gerda didn’t wait.

  “Thank you,” she said as we were looking at the tools I’d need. “I don’t see anything I want to put my work into,” and she left.

  “Friend of yours?” Irene asked.

  “She’s staying at Trollhaven, and so are my aunt and I. We met her for the first time this morning. You know, I thought the same thing right away: she should have used smaller needles.”

  It turned out that Irene was a good friend of the Klausens, and by the time I was out the shop door with my aunt and my project, Irene and I were like old buddies.

  “Say hi to Evaline for me,” she called as we left, and then she sat down beside the knitters at the table to help one of them pick up a dropped stitch.

  Outside, while walking to the car, Nettie said, almost out of the side of her mouth, “Did you forget we’re having fish boil with Logan tonight?”

  “Oh, hell, I do have a date with him,” I said. “I guess I forgot because it’s not really a date. He’s just going to be there. I hope Gerda doesn’t find out. She probably wrote the book on Ancient Witchcraft for Dummies, and tomorrow I’ll wake up and find out I’m a frog.”

  She chuckled.

  Ready to change the subject, I asked her, “What were those ladies making?”

  “Baby afghans. They’re both following the same pattern, but they’re not getting the same results,” she added regretfully. “I’m proud of you for holding back when Gerda started to brag back there, by the way. I saw how you were looking at that sweater at breakfast this morning, and I was glad you held your tongue then, too. Time was that you could be regrettably outspoken.”

  “Oh, I’m all over that. I’m all grown up and ladylike now. By the way, as long as it’s just the two of us, I think Gerda is a nasty old bag.”

  “Now Paige,” my aunt said, preparing to instruct me. “You shouldn’t make an issue of her age, or use gender-based epithets, either.”

  I thought it over. Reciting like a schoolgirl, I said, “I think Gerda is a nasty person of a non-specific age group.”

  “Much better,” Nettie said.

  Emboldened, I added, “Also, she’s a lousy knit-person.”

  “Well, you would know about that,” she said complacently, “I wouldn’t. Now, let’s have lunch.”

  * * * * *

  I was about halfway through a salted caramel milkshake and a big fat hamburger with everything on it when I decided that Logan was going to be a problem. He had been waiting for a seat at the soda fountain when we got to the front door of the diner, and he immediately joined us, telling the hostess we needed a table for three. Didn’t even ask us if he could.

  I’m selective about my food binges, and I make sure they don’t happen too often, but when I do have one, I want to enjoy it in a fog of endorphins with no interference from the food police. Logan was rash enough to make a joke about a cute little lady like me being able to eat like a lumberjack. I decided then and there that he wasn’t the man for me. Long-term relationships demand a shared sense of humor, and that kind of crack hasn’t been in good taste since the ‘sixties, if ever. My aunt, the etiquette lady, should have corrected him, but I think she figured he wasn’t her responsibility. On a collage campus, though, he would have been hit over the head with a “Peace” sign.

  Even worse, it turned out he lived in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, a bare 30-minute drive from my aunt’s house in Sleepy Hollow. He made a remark about it being quite a coincidence, but it wasn’t, really. Door County is a favorite vacation spot for the people of northern Illinois, and it wasn’t a coincidence at all that everybody – Logan, Nettie, Henry, and temporarily, me – came from the same general area.

  I didn’t mention that I’d dropped him from the hot list right away, but I definitely cooled off, and the burger got a lot more attention than he did after that. Nettie, understanding all the subtexts, managed to get him talking about pixies, of all things. They must have been the first creatures from folklore that came to her mind, and she just threw it out there. After apologizing for not being an expert on pixies, per se, Logan proceeded to deliver a lengthy dissertation on the things. Anyway, I was able to drop out of the conversation.

  And when Matthew went whizzing past on the state route, which took an embracing bend around the diner, I let myself go ahead and stare.

  After a time, with Matthew long gone up the road, I decided I’d had enough of earth elementals and said, “We saw your colleague just now, in the knit shop.”

  “Colleague? You mean Gerda?”

  “The one and only, unless you’ve got the rest of the faculty up here beating the bushes for gnomes.”

  “She’s the only one I’ve seen,” he said in a soft voice with a shy look in my direction. I think he knew he’d stepped in it, and he was trying to ingratiate himself with me again.

  I gave him a pretty little smile – forgiving but not encouraging. “Do you know her very well?”

  “No. No, not really. Like many people who work in the same narrow field, small differences in theories tend to blow up into angry debates, and Gerda is not a very diplomatic person. She’s published rebuttals to my research papers and the conclusions I’ve drawn that were unnecessarily, ah, personal.”

  I put my elbows on the table beside my empty lunch-plate and set my chin in my hands. “You came right back at her when she published, right?”

  The waitress came by and asked if we wanted anything else, and we ordered coffee.

  When she walked away, I looked back at Logan and persisted. “I mean, you think her theories are just as dumb as she thinks yours are, right?”

  He let out a little burst of laughter. “Her theories are . . . let’s just say they’re a bit of a reach.”

  “So? Put it in print. Let her have it. Maybe if somebody put her in her place every now and then she’d learn a thing or two. If nobody ever disagrees with you, you get to thinking you must be right. That’s why a lot of people only talk to the ones they know are going to agree with them – they don’t want an opinion; they want reassurance. Affirmation. So . . . let her have it. It’ll do her good.”

  “I doubt it,” he said. “She’s not the kind of person who values anyone else’s thinking. She’s not looking for affirmation. She’s looking for adulation.
I’m sorry to see her here, frankly. After our last dispute, which got embarrassingly public, I was hoping I’d never see her again. I’m planning to publish again soon, taking a new direction entirely, and I’m dreading her reaction. It’s the wildest of coincidences that she and I happen to be here at the same bed-and-breakfast at the same time.”

  Nettie said, “Perhaps while the two of you are on vacation here together, it would be a perfect opportunity to get to know her a little better and maybe she’ll soften up towards you. I’ve always found that personal contact with someone changes your opinion of them for the better.”

  I snorted. “You’ve seen Gerda twice now,” I told her. “Did your opinion improve after the second time?”

  Nettie gave me the disapproving aunt look. “Now, Paige, don’t joke about it. There’s something about face-to-face contact that makes people behave better. They’re going to be here for a few days together, and I think it would be a wonderful idea if he would take her out for a drink one night and spend time talking to her. It’s different, when you’re with somebody, instead of throwing out comments on the Internet, where it doesn’t seem real, somehow. As if you can toss off a cutting remark, being very clever, getting a laugh from a lot of invisible strangers, and nobody is going to get hurt. When you’re sitting there with them, that kind of thing doesn’t happen. People are more civil. They’re a little more careful about hurting a person’s feelings, or disrespecting them.”

  “I’m afraid,” Logan told her, “that Gerda is one of those thick-skinned souls who thrive on conflict. If I took her to a bar and we both had a few drinks, things could only get ugly. She doesn’t have a husband, you know; she doesn’t have any children. I think her mother is still alive, but they don’t get along. She’s all alone in the world, and the only thing she has to validate her existence is her research and her theories, and they’re in a field that doesn’t always get a lot of respect. Her theories are her children. She defends them like a wildcat.”