Solution: Knit this man a sweater.
Okay, I wasn’t the most skilled in the subtle art of obtaining a commitment. In fact, most of my time with men, up till then, had been spent perfecting the not-so-subtle skill of slinking away. I can only guess that at this moment in time, being thirty-seven, uterusless and insecure, but with energy (at least in my fingers), I deduced that a triumphant display of my abilities in the domestic arts would really close the deal. I would create clothing with my own two hands! His heart would warm toward me, literally, from the wool in the lovely sweater. How could he feel anything but overwhelming gratitude? Surely he would rush out and buy a ring.
My grandmother, Henrietta, taught me to knit in a very basic way when I was a kid. I never made anything useful, just practiced on scraps of yarn until I lost interest, which was probably pretty quickly. Henrietta knit in the American style, which means that you circle the yarn around the needle, like a man around his partner at a square dance.
When I learned to knit all over again, in Los Angeles, my teacher, Suss, who is Swedish, taught me the European style. This method eliminates the big elaborate circle and instead you just grab the yarn from behind like you’re kidnapping it while it’s not looking. The European style is highly efficient and the American style is absurdly inefficient and even showy. It’s as if, when Europeans first sailed to America, the boat ran into trouble and the only knitter who survived was eight years old and sadly, mentally handicapped, and it was she who taught the art of knitting to everyone in the New World and even the subsequent waves of knitters who arrived were too polite to point out her crazy style and then somehow, as these things are, the tradition was minted.
In any case, my Los Angeles knitting education took place in a little shop on Beverly Boulevard called Suss Design, owned by the aforementioned Suss. When I arrived at class I met about eight other women. We all sat around an enormous wood table while Suss directed us to start a project, “Something small. A hat. A thin scarf.” But not for me: I wanted to start with a man’s extra-large sweater.
Joe was from Pocatello, Idaho, and he worked for a company based in Seattle. His job was to install virtual reality games for archers in sporting good stores. This meant he was always on the move, but in between work installations he either stayed with me in L.A. or spent time back home in Pocatello, where his parents lived. Joe also had a son, Joe Jr., who was about six years old when we first got involved with each other. Joe Jr. lived with Joe’s ex-wife in Logan, Utah, about an hour and a half from Pocatello.
Joe Jr. and I had a rocky start. His parents had split up when he was two years old, but he still didn’t welcome a new woman in his father’s life. Over time, however, we developed a mutual understanding. Joe Jr. had visited Los Angeles with Joe often. I’d visited with Joe Jr. in Pocatello several times, too. Since I’m from Spokane, Washington—a place relatively close to Pocatello, perhaps psychologically most of all—Joe’s family and demeanor felt familiar and comfortable. Their lovely house felt like home.
So there I was knitting this man a sweater. Whenever I thought about sharing my desire for a baby with Joe, I kept my mouth shut and my fingers moving.
And it worked.
Joe smiled at me more frequently and we laughed more often. The sweater had quelled much of the angst inside me. I was a genius!
I knit. I knit and knit.
I knit all evening and then sometimes woke up in the night unable to sleep and kept on knitting. My agent joked that I could have been writing a salable screenplay but instead I was knitting a sweater. For my boyfriend. The one who didn’t really want another kid. And who probably already had a sweater.
I knit while my classmates made their scarves and baby hats. I knit as they graduated to child-sized vests and funky hats. I knit and knit.
In the meantime, I got to know my fellow knitters. You can’t eat while you knit; it’s one of knitting’s great attributes. Talking and knitting, however, is no problem. We poured out our souls. We knew each of each other’s significant others. We knew each other’s hopes and dreams. We knew each other’s knitting mistakes and life mistakes. We celebrated each other’s achievements: A scarf! A hat! Leg warmers! But I knitted away at this grand project of mine, this enlarging mass of navy blue, emerging from my own hands like a sea monster slowly pulling itself out of dark blue water.
For nearly a year I knit this sweater, and as I finished each section the class had a celebration. First, the front, then the back, then on to a sleeve. I’d hold the finished part above my head and kick up my legs and everyone would laugh. Each week, they would check in with me: “How’s the left sleeve coming along?” We would toast with our glasses of white wine after each hurdle in the sweater.
When the day came that the sweater was finished for good, Suss opened a bottle of expensive champagne. We all toasted the sweater. Suss helped me sew a small leather patch on the inside: “To Joe. Love, Julia.”
Then, like a newborn, the sweater was passed from woman to woman, all eight of them caressing it, inspecting it, putting it on, and dancing with my baby, the navy blue sweater.
So you see, even though I decided to knit the sweater for reasons that were, at best, unconscious, or at worst, passive-aggressive and possibly sinister, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the process and the result. I couldn’t wait to give Joe the sweater. I was thinking I might start a sweater for Joe Jr. next.
I finished when Joe was in Idaho on his autumn hunting trip. We’d planned for me to go up and stay with his parents, and that way I’d be there when he came out of the woods. To get there, we also had arranged that I would fly to Salt Lake City, rent a car, and drive to the town of Logan, where Joe Jr. lived. Joe Jr. wanted me to see his grade school. He was in fourth grade. By this time, Joe Jr. and I were getting very close.
After I got Joe Jr. from school, we went to his house so he could pack his things for the weekend. I lay down on his bed while he packed. He began to go through his whole closet, item by item. He told me how each thing found its way into his possession: “I got this one at Christmas from my stepdad. I got this T-shirt when my cousin Josh outgrew it. My mom bought this sweater for me at Penney’s.” His small hand would display the item of clothing like Carol Merrill on Let’s Make a Deal.
“This orange shirt is my favorite.” “This blue shirt is my fourth favorite.” I loved his eagerness, his awkwardness. This thorough cataloging of his clothes seemed to come from a combination of not knowing what else to say and a real desire to show me the innards of his world.
Then Joe Jr. and I drove to Joe’s parents’ house. Joe wasn’t expected until the next day. I showed his mother the sweater I’d knit. She was a knitter, too, and she ran her fingers over the stitches approvingly.
Joe arrived home the next day and I gave him the sweater, which of course was not a surprise, since I’d been knitting nonstop for almost a year. He thanked me profusely, genuinely. He put the sweater on and admired its nice fit. He modeled it for his parents and Joe Jr. and we all laughed together and then ate some apple pie. The dream, people! The dream realized!
But then.
Late that night Joe and I began to quarrel. He wasn’t going to be able to make it to L.A. the next week like he thought he would. In fact, he was unsure when he would be traveling back to L.A. The issue of a child came up in the wee hours of the morning, when both of us were so exhausted from arguing that we didn’t know what day it was or what part of the day it was. “You don’t need me,” he said. “What do you need me for?”
“To be the father of our child,” I replied.
I couldn’t understand what he was talking about. He was already a father, and a good one. Why did he seem confused about what a father was needed for? He looked at me like I was an enemy. I felt like everything I said or did was received as a threat.
The next morning, we went out to breakfast at a Perkins Restaurant. If you don’t know what one of these is, it’s like a Denny’s. The overhead lights are harshl
y fluorescent, and for some reason, this is an important detail. Maybe because I felt like I was being interrogated while simultaneously not being allowed to answer any questions. In other words, we sat in stunned, sad, tense, accusatory silence. I ordered oatmeal.
Then I got dumped. He said it was over between us. The end.
At first I felt I couldn’t breathe and the whole world went topsy-turvy. I felt like I was on the movie poster of Vertigo and like Jimmy Stewart, I was falling backward. I pulled myself together and nodded, almost choking.
I had to drive the rental car back to Salt Lake City to fly back to L.A. On the drive I felt I’d been gutted. I was the animal he’d been trying to kill that week in the woods. In retrospect, I realized I’d been happily, obliviously careening toward an arrow with my name on it.
It was raining hard. I was crying hard. It seemed like the whole world was crying and my whole body was liquefying. In the official breakup conversation, the sweater wasn’t mentioned, but I understood that knitting the sweater was a big mistake. I had made an embarrassing miscalculation. The sweater: a million yards of hopes and dreams—the yarn had been a noose around his neck, tightening with every knit and purl.
I got myself back to L.A. and managed to pull myself into the knitting class on Wednesday, arriving about ten minutes late. All eight women and Suss turned their happy faces toward me. “Well? What did he say about the sweater?” “He loved it,” I told them. They all smiled and turned back to their own projects.
“And then he broke up with me,” I added.
I can remember each micro-shift in their expressions, maybe five or six separate ones—they went from benign, good-hearted joy to confusion, to sadness, to open rage. “He what?” they said, nearly in unison, becoming a choir of furies. I felt the temperature in the room rise. The women’s eyes widened, and their hair seemed animated, like the snaky locks of Medusa. I could feel the knitting needles in their hands ready for action, weapons of the first order. Ready to kill. They would drive their knitting needles through his heart; I just needed to say the word.
That was one of the most satisfying reactions I’ve ever gotten after delivering news, ever. Bless them and their sympathetic rage. I’ve frozen this image of these women, and it rests on top of the memory I’ve put away under Joe #10. They guard it, making sure I do not succumb to melancholy or self-reprimands over the debacle.
Soon after, I stopped knitting. I figured that was the end of that.
But alas, no. Here I am again.
Mulan and I recently took a “Mistakes” class together. We learned how to “tink.” Tink is knit spelled backward, and it means to undo mistakes. Mulan asked me, “Have you ever made a really huge knitting mistake?” I said I had. I told her the story of knitting the sweater for Joe. Her face wrinkled up in disapproval. “Why would you do that?” she asked. “It was obvious that he didn’t want a sweater or a kid. Plus he already had a kid.”
“I know!” I said. “That was a bad idea.” I try to sound breezy, like: life can be full of bad choices, but hey, you get over it. I suspect she will not take as long as I did to understand the dynamics of romantic relationships. She is not a pleaser like I am. Even though that fact also drives me nuts. But all right, okay, I suspect it will spare her some heartache.
At home, Mulan and I knit as we watch TV at night. My husband, Michael, will sometimes cringe as he watches me knit—to him, the mindless repetition is unbearable and the opposite of relaxing. Maybe the specter of me in automaton mode, eyes dilated but distant, listening to the chatter of my own mind while my fingers move with machinelike precision, is frightening. Hell, writing that sentence was frightening.
Sometimes while I knit, my mind floats and I see scenes from my own knitting opera, the mistaken—miss taken—sweater for Joe. I will finish a row of purls and the image of Joe Jr. carefully describing the clothes in his closet will rise above the music. I’ll see the sad drive from Pocatello to Salt Lake City. Joe’s parents’ basement TV room, its shag rug and paneled walls. The laughing, the apple pie.
About three or four years ago I did a show in Park City, Utah. After the performance a good-looking twenty-something guy waited to talk to me. It took me a moment to realize it was Joe Jr. He’d grown into a handsome young man and was attending a nearby college. We reminisced and laughed and promised to email each other regularly.
I really liked him.
But I’m not going to knit him a sweater.
CHAPTER THREE
Channeling Food
Last year I made a refrigerator in my basement. I needed to figure out how . . . you know there is no such thing as “cold.” There is only less heat.
—Alton Brown
Less heat, indeed.
I came home from Pocatello and assessed my situation. I was now nearly thirty-eight. I wanted to be a mother. I had no uterus, sure. But now I didn’t even have a boyfriend. My heart was broken like never before. I felt physically weak. As blasphemous as this may sound, this breakup was harder than cancer. Part of me thought: Fine, just go there. If you are that sad, be friggin’ sad. I had a few regular voice-over gigs that could sustain me financially with little need to leave the house. I let myself go down. I went way, way down. I understood how someone could die of a broken heart. My life seemed empty. I felt I had nothing. But then I realized, that was not true.
I had a sofa and a television.
I turned on the TV, and there was the Food Network flickering at me, beckoning me with its seductive power. Suddenly I had to have it on constantly—one show after another. Sarah Moulton answering callers’ questions, Gale Gand making dessert, Alton Brown and his puns: they were all there to keep me company, to let me be around—but not eat—glorious food. I watched them all at an angle, because I was lying on my side. Sometimes when I had the energy to cry, tears from the top eye would river over my nose, along the ridge of my glasses, and then stream down the bottom lens, turning Bobby Flay into a Renoir painting.
I was in a dark wood. The right road lost.
I ruminated.
Particularly comforting was Two Fat Ladies, a British show featuring two elderly zaftig gals riding around on motorbikes and making things with butter and bacon. When one of the fat ladies, Jennifer, died, I watched the Food Network tribute for her, sobbing while eating an entire box of saltine crackers and drinking nearly a whole bottle of wine. I began to wonder if I was getting dehydrated from crying so much. I wondered if one should cry into a cup and then drink the tears back up again.
There should be a Food Network show just for people who’ve gone through excruciating breakups. The host would be a woman like Aunt Bea from The Andy Griffith Show. Every day she’d make slight variations of the same thing: mashed potatoes. And she would say things like, “And what did he say to that?” And “Well, any man with half a brain would be crazy to let you get away! Well, I never!”
As I lay on the couch learning how to julienne carrots correctly, I contemplated my life and all the decisions I’d made and where I now stood. It dawned on me, that in the Irish, Catholic culture that I was raised in, my role was clearly meant to be that of the Barren Aunt.
My father had five Barren Aunts, his mother’s sisters. They were all big round cat-eyeglass-wearing women from Chicago. When I moved here to Wilmette, I was surprised to find that most of these aunties were buried in a family tomb in Evanston, at the Calvary Catholic Cemetery, a place that I occasionally visit. Of course I don’t know if any of these women were actually barren. But that was beside the point. They did not have children. They were career women and they showered their nieces and nephews with attention. I myself have three: Aunt Barbara, Aunt Shirley, and Aunt Bonnie.
The Barren Aunt is someone who, when they send you a book as a present, it’s from a museum. And if they send you a sweater, it’s a cashmere sweater wrapped by the department store. When the Barren Aunt asks you how you are, they look you in the eye and listen to every word. They inquire about school meaningfully. When you
are a teenager, the Barren Aunt is someone you can ask, “That family that I’m from . . . they’re crazy . . . right?” And the Barren Aunt says, “Yes. Yes, they are.”
Fortunately I was already an aunt to two delightful kids, my brother Bill’s children, Nick and Katie, who at that time were four and five years old, respectively. So, even though my relationship with Nick and Katie was already really important, it was suddenly even more important. In between Food Network shows, I started calling them more often. I went home to Spokane at Christmas and spent more time with them. We made a plan that during their school’s next spring break, I would fly up to Spokane and hang out with them every day, all day. I thought, My need for my own child will really be out of my system after spending a whole week with two little kids.
Every day I was in Spokane, Nick, Katie, and I went swimming or Rollerblading or bicycling. When I had to leave at the end of the week, I found it excruciating. By the time I got home, I was missing them so much, I realized that for me, being the Barren Aunt was just not enough.
I got back on the sofa and turned on the Food Network. It was St. Patrick’s Day, and Emeril was teaching me how to brine my own corned beef. It occurred to me that after watching this channel for so long, I’d never actually made anything. The Food Network had become cooking pornography to me.
So I decided to bake this green shamrock cake that my mom used to always make on St. Patrick’s Day. You just use Duncan Hines white cake mix, cut the cake into the shape of a shamrock, and then put green icing on it and little green sprinkles that chip into the enamel of your teeth.
I always had such superior contempt for this cake when I was growing up—I mean, it’s not even Irish. But my youthful superior contempt always balanced out my mother’s unbridled enthusiasm for it. After admiring my creation, I thought, maybe I should invite some friends over to eat the cake. Then I thought, maybe I’m not ready for guests just yet. I mean, what if I suddenly had to be in the fetal position again, watching the Food Network? That could be very awkward for my guests.
If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother Page 2