The Sisterhood of the Dropped Stitches

by Janet Tronstad

  I had never thought of my caps as a collection before, although it is true that I have a cap of most of the major baseball teams. I hesitate a minute. I’ve never lent my caps out before. “Will you take care of them?”

  “You’re welcome to come with me to guard them if you’d like,” Quinn offers with a smile. “We could use some more women to help get the girls interested.”

  “Why, that would be nice.”

  I look over at Becca. She is giving me a thumbs-up sign.

  “We could go have a cup of coffee afterward or something,” Quinn says.

  “That would be nice.” I am feeling pretty good. That’s one date.

  “Well, I drink coffee, too,” Gregory says as he steps farther into the room and gives Lizabett a hug. “And I’ve been wanting to talk to one of your Sisterhood buddies.”

  “You don’t need to check up on me,” Lizabett says. “Quinn does enough of that for everyone.”

  “Who’s checking up on you?” Gregory says. “Maybe I want to get a few pointers on how to knit.”

  Lizabett rolls her eyes.

  Gregory looks directly at me. “How about it? Can I buy you a cup of coffee some night soon?”

  It’s the second date that does it. What are the odds that two men would walk into our Sisterhood meeting and both want to have coffee with me? I glance at Aaron, and he’s frowning a little bit, as though he’s wondering when to jump in with his own offer for coffee.

  “Do you like movies?” Aaron finally says as he gives me a smile.

  Okay, that’s definitely the last clue.

  “Thanks,” I say. “But you guys don’t need to do this. It’s my fault—”

  Two things happened at once right then to interrupt me.

  Carly’s cell phone rings and someone knocks, rather loudly, on the French doors to our room.

  Lizabett is closest to the doors and opens them.

  Another guy comes into the room, only this guy makes my heart stop. I would know those stormy eyes anywhere.

  “They said out there that you guys might know where Lou is,” the guy says.

  It is the grill guy.

  “Sorry to barge in like this,” the grill guy says when no one answers right away. I’m not sure any of us can answer. We are stunned. “It’s just that I’m parked at a meter and I want to get back to my car.”

  “If Lou’s not in the kitchen, try the bookstore next door. He sometimes goes there to get a newspaper,” I say, and my voice doesn’t creak nearly as much as I expect it to. “Or, if you want, I could give him a message for you.”

  “Thanks. Tell him Randy says yes, he’ll do it,” the guy says as he turns to leave the room.

  Even Becca needs to swallow before we go on.

  I hear Carly speaking softly on her cell phone.

  “Did anyone see his ring hand?” Becca asks before she seems to realize there are three single men in the room. Becca looks at them with a moment’s embarrassment, but then recovers. “Oh, Lou was wondering if the burn on the guy’s hand healed.”

  “The guy’s going to work the grill when Uncle Lou goes on vacation,” I add nervously.

  “To Florida,” Lizabett adds for good measure.

  “Oh, no,” Carly says in a voice so non-Carly that we all look at her. She’s still got her cell phone in her hand, and it’s obvious she’s not been paying attention to the grill guy like the rest of us. “My cat’s gone.”

  “What?” I say.

  Carly puts away her cell phone. “That was my mom. Marie ran away.”

  “Marie’s her cat,” Lizabett says to her brothers.

  “Her expensive cat,” Becca adds.

  “Well, we’ll have to find her,” I say.

  “Before next Thursday,” Becca says.

  That’s right, I realize. Without the cat, Carly has no longer met her goal. Just when it is beginning to look as though I might reach my goal and make the Sisterhood completely successful with our goals, Carly loses hers.

  “She can’t have gone far,” I say as I wind up my knitting. “We’ll find her.”

  “Of course we will,” Becca says as she walks over to the table and picks up her knitting to put in her backpack. “How far can a cat go at night?”

  “Pretty far,” Quinn says. “We’d better go with you. Firefighters are known for getting cats down from wherever they climb to.”

  “Good,” Lizabett says with a smile.

  I know what she’s thinking. A walk in the dark should count as a date even if it’s only to find a cat. The reason I know what she’s thinking is that I’m thinking the same thing. I have a feeling Becca is thinking it, too. Maybe if I walk a little with each of Lizabett’s brothers, that will count for three dates. Now, if we only get Carly’s cat back tonight, we’ll all be successful.

  Chapter Four

  Do not ask questions of fairy tales.

  —Jewish proverb

  I brought the fairy-tale quote to the Sisterhood shortly after we began to meet. During that time, I wanted nothing more than to have some “happily ever after” in my life. But there was none.

  My dad was living in an apartment on California Avenue, and I kept waiting for him to move home where he belonged. I must have written his address down ten times in my journal, but I could never bring myself to go there and see him. I couldn’t imagine just knocking on his door and saying “Hi, thought I’d drop by.”

  Added to that, my mom was still going to that church of hers, and I kept waiting for her to stop. It seemed as if I was waiting and waiting and nothing was happening the way I wanted it to happen.

  You might have noticed that I have not ended the story of the Sisterhood even though I have already covered how we got started. I have always liked writing down my thoughts like this in a journal. I’ve had quite a few journals, but this is the first one that is devoted to telling about the Sisterhood, and I want to continue with it.

  Earlier this evening, I asked the others if they were okay with me going on, since it is their story, too. It doesn’t seem right to just end it with our sickness. I wanted to show who we are when we’re well, too. Everyone said they wanted me to continue.

  Becca even said she’d like to help.

  I can tell Becca has something on her mind that she wants to add to the journal. She and I came back to The Pews after looking for Carly’s cat—which we did not find even though we looked every place we could in the darkness around Carly’s house. I couldn’t believe a mansion like that had something as ordinary as a cement foundation. But, even though we looked behind many bushes, we didn’t see anything but that foundation. There was no cat.

  Finally, everyone knew it was fruitless to continue tonight. We decided to talk in the morning and figure out what to do.

  Lizabett and her brothers left from Carly’s place, and Carly stayed home in case her cat returned on her own. Rose left earlier, as she works tomorrow and will have to drive all the way to Long Beach for her job. That left Becca and me to drive back to The Pews.

  That’s where we are now.

  I keep finding reasons to put off giving Becca this journal. I’m not entirely sure what she wants to add, but I suspect it is something about me. She’s been giving me a look all night that says I should be talking about the guys I’ve just met. But what’s to say?

  Forget that question. It’s rhetorical. I’m sure Becca has plenty to say. I’m just not comfortable reading what others write about me. I guess I’ll have to, though, if Becca puts her words right in the middle of the journal. Oh, well, here it goes.

  Finally, she gives me the journal! Hi, this is Becca. I didn’t think Marilee would ever turn over this book. She’s right, of course. I do want to talk about her. But that’s only because I don’t think she will tell you everything herself. Have you ever had a friend like that?

  You know what I mean then. You should have seen her when the grill guy came into the back room at the diner. She pretended not to notice him, but who could not notice him? Please. T
he man is drop-dead gorgeous. And with muscles—well, it made me shiver a little just looking at him, and he’s never asked me out as he asked her out. There’s got to be something still there, don’t you think?

  I thought so, too. And even if there’s nothing from the past, there could be something in the future. I doubt Marilee’s grill guy has to give a woman more than one long look with those eyes of his before the woman is falling all over him. Those eyes smolder—they remind me of some old movie star who I can’t think of right now—maybe it’s just that the eyes look as if they should belong to some movie star.

  Anyway, the grill guy remembers Marilee. I could tell. She said he wouldn’t, but I saw the way he looked at her. He remembers all right. If Carly weren’t so upset about her cat, I would have suggested Marilee stay at The Pews while the rest of us went cat hunting. Lizabett’s brothers all look as though they can find a cat if anyone can. But Marilee always calms Carly. I knew Marilee would want to be there for Carly—see, Marilee, I’m not writing bad stuff about you.

  I did get a minute to talk to the grill guy before we left and I do have a few stats on him. Hey, somebody has to pay attention to business or none of us would meet our goals—you know what I’m saying? Anyway, the grill guy’s restaurant is as good as home to half of the pro athletes in Los Angeles. He even takes phone messages for some of the guys. This Randy Parker, the grill guy, is a good catch. His diner must do more business than The Pews. Randy named some of the regulars who go to his place. Even I plan to go there and check it out some night.

  Randy is also very nice. He told me he’ll give me a free cup of coffee when I come to visit, and he’ll introduce me to any players that might be around.

  See how easy it would be for Marilee to connect up again with him? The guy is friendly.

  But if I weren’t here to tell you, I know Marilee wouldn’t say a word. She isn’t the most trusting person when it comes to men, and she finds it hard to believe that a good-looking guy like Randy would want to date her.

  So, instead, she’s going to tell you how pleasant Lizabett’s brothers are. She’ll say how they’re sturdy and helpful. And that’s all true. If there’s a fire anyplace, they’re the first ones I’d call. But trust me, none of them shine like the grill guy does.

  That’s all I wanted to say. And, Marilee, I want you to know that I wouldn’t have had to say any of this if you were really writing down everything, including just how cute one particular guy is.

  Well, I’m glad that’s over. This is Marilee again. And, just for the record, it doesn’t matter what I think about the grill guy. He’s so far out of my league that there’s no way he’s going to ask me out. Besides, I turned him down six years ago. A guy doesn’t forget a turndown—especially a guy like Randy. I can’t believe any woman, except me, has ever been crazy enough to say no to him when he asked her out.

  Fortunately, Becca and Carly both agreed I can count tonight as a date. Quinn MacDonald—you remember Lizabett’s brother, “The Old Mother Hen”—even held my hand for a while. It wasn’t totally romantic because he didn’t hold my hand because he meant anything by it; he held it because he thought I was chilled. I knew he wasn’t thinking romantic thoughts because he was fussing at me about the cold air, as if he was afraid I was going to have a relapse or something. He sounded like Rose.

  I felt like telling Quinn that no one gets cancer from a slight chill, but I didn’t want to give him a hard time. Besides, I figured a little hand-holding would make tonight count as a date for sure, and I owed the man for that.

  Quinn was actually quite nice about the hand-holding.

  He and I were searching behind Carly’s house for the cat. Quinn had a flashlight, and he was aiming the light behind the shrubs. I must confess I was paying more attention to Carly’s house than I was to finding her cat. I couldn’t seriously believe any cat would run away from a house like this one.

  The house—well, the mansion, really—was like something you would see on one of those television programs about the rich and famous. It was huge, and I counted six chandeliers just looking through the windows while searching for the cat. Carly’s family even had a maid in a uniform who opened the door for Carly.

  No wonder Carly doesn’t talk about how she lives. Now that we all know, it will be hard not to feel jealous of her.

  Quinn didn’t seem rattled by the house, though. When I asked him about it, he just said there was a lot of wood in the house that was vulnerable to fire.

  “And the roof must be in bad shape—a lot of these rain runoffs are clogged,” Quinn said as he used a stick to poke one of the pipes that came almost to the ground. Decaying leaves came out the pipe.

  “A cat would be too big to fit in those anyway,” he said.

  “Besides, it would go someplace warm,” I added, just to show I was really worried about the cat and not just awestruck about the house. Between you and me, though, I figured even a fancy, purebred cat would be smart enough to come back to a house like this one.

  Quinn nodded. “The grounds are so big, though, I doubt the cat’s left the yard.”

  Quinn put down the stick he had and looked at me. That’s when he took one of my hands to check it for chill. I think my comment about the cat going someplace warm tipped him off that I was cold. This time he frowned a little and rubbed my hands with his. “You should have mittens.”

  I shrugged. His hands were nice and warm. “I have pockets. I just need to put my hands in them.”

  Quinn smiled at that. “Before I know it, you’re going to call me an Old Mother Hen, too.”

  “Well, not quite.” I noticed Quinn didn’t let go of my hands even though he did stop rubbing them. It was okay with me that he kept holding my hands. It felt nice. Not be-still-my-heart romantic, but nice.

  “Lizabett keeps saying I worry too much, but I can’t help it. She was so sick,” Quinn said.

  “I know.” For a minute I thought I still felt the chill even though my hands were warm by now. I had been most worried about Lizabett when we were all so sick. Maybe because she was the youngest, I wondered if she had the strength to fight anything.

  “I wanted to do more, but all I could do was nag her about getting chilled or not eating her dinner or lifting a box when she knew I was right in the next room and could do it for her.” Quinn’s fingers curled around mine so that he wasn’t just holding my hands to check for coldness anymore. I still wasn’t sure he meant to be holding my hands, however. He just looked distracted—as if he was seeing what used to be.

  I could sympathize with Quinn. My mom had wanted to do more to take care of me, too, but I fought it. When you’re as sick as we had been in the Sisterhood, you want to stay as independent as you can for fear it will get even worse if you let down your guard.

  “I’m sure Lizabett appreciates all you did,” I said.

  Quinn laughed at that.

  He was right. I had to change what I had said. “Well, maybe she doesn’t appreciate it yet, but someday she will. It’s always good to have someone care about you when you’re sick.”

  I decided it was time to give my mother another thank-you for all she’d done for me back then. I’d already thanked her a thousand times, but it still wasn’t enough. Maybe I should give her some flowers. That would make her happy. I shut my mind to what would really please my mother the most because I had no intention of going to church with her.

  “I wanted to be there for her,” Quinn said. He was looking off into the dark night, and I wondered if he’d forgotten I was there even though he was still holding my hands. He was no longer smiling. “I promised my dad before he died that I’d do my best by the rest of the kids.”

  Quinn looked down at me when he’d finished talking, and I realized he’d never forgotten I was there. He was frowning a little bit as though he wanted to be sure I understood how important his promise had been.

  “How old were you when your dad died?” I asked him.

  “Nine.”

  I
sucked in my breath. “No nine-year-old should have to make a promise like that.”

  “The others were even younger, and they were without a father, too. I wanted to step in where I could for them.” Quinn smiled. “Even if one of them does call me an Old Mother Hen.”

  I have always been a soft touch for father stories. “I don’t think you’re an Old Mother Hen. I think what you’ve done for Lizabett is wonderful.”

  I knew even when I was talking to Quinn that I wished my dad had given me the kind of caring support, that Quinn had given to Lizabett. I told myself that my dad tried to be supportive and maybe he did. He gave me the caps for my head. Granted, he never did actually talk to me about my cancer and how it was for me. I used to wonder if he knew how bad it was—as if maybe that Uncle Lou or my mother told him how it was when I was going through the worst of it. Anyway, if my dad knew how bad it got, he never said anything to me about it.

  “The best part,” I told Quinn as I looked up into his face, “is that you talked to Lizabett. Just having someone ask how you’re doing—that’s a good thing.”

  Quinn grunted. “Of course I talked to her. But I always wished I could have done something more than that.”

  We were silent for a minute, both of us remembering the years when Lizabett and I had been so sick. I couldn’t look around me, so I kept my eyes on the ground. By now my hands were comfortable resting in Quinn’s large palms. He has nice, strong hands.

  “I bet your dad did lots of things for you,” Quinn finally said.

  I looked up at that. “No—well, he did come to see me sometimes at the diner and bring me a cap for my hair.”