Megan grabbed another soda just in case, filled another glass with ice, put it all on a blue-and-white striped tray she’d salvaged from a garage sale, and carried it out, heart sinking when she saw Elizabeth sprawled comfortably in the chair next to Vera’s rocker.
Apparently, yes, it was too much to ask.
“Here’s your ginger ale, Vera. I brought one for you, too, if you want it, Elizabeth.”
“Thanks, Megan. That was really nice.” She turned from watching Vera knit and smiled wide, eyes droopy, cheeks and nose flushed. She’d been drinking. Megan wasn’t surprised. That seemed to be all that went on next door since David’s marriage had collapsed.
“You’re welcome.”
Elizabeth went back to being mesmerized by the rhythm of needles expertly thrusting through stitches. “Ella invited me to the next Purls meeting. She said you’d tell me when it was, Megan.”
Megan sat again, took her knitting into her lap, feeling sick. When she’d advertised for a boarder she’d imagined someone who’d want to live her own life. “Of course.”
The ice cubes adjusted in Elizabeth’s glass as she took her next sip, staring now at Megan’s busy fingers. “What’s that pattern?”
“Acre. An old lace pattern.”
“Will you or Vera teach me to knit lace?”
Vera’s hands stilled. She turned questioningly toward Megan. “Well, now.”
Megan made herself smile, shocked at the burn of anger in her chest. She’d taught Vera after Mom died, probably in a futile attempt to fill some of the emptiness. When Megan stopped knitting lace, the day she canceled her and Stanley’s vow-renewal ceremony, Vera had stopped too. Neither of them had mentioned the day since.
“Well.” She struggled for a way to stay gracious. “There’s an idea.”
Elizabeth didn’t have the right personality. She was too impatient, wanted gratification too instantly. The work would suffer under her hands, be uneven and slapdash.
Megan had spent hours watching at her mother’s side, then hours, weeks, months learning until the knitting wasn’t about stitches but whole rows, entire patterns internalized, the way eyes read words, not individual letters. In all the cities they lived in—different climates, different states, different schools, different friends—the only constant was Mom, the lace, and the stories of Fiona and her Shetland community, embroidered with Mom’s flourishes—superstitions of the time or fairy tale plots or lessons she wanted to teach her daughter. Megan had one favorite story, one she used to ask for above all the others, and which she’d dream herself into most nights before she went to sleep.
“I’ll teach her. I have the supplies in my room.” Vera made a big show of preparing to hoist herself out of the rocker.
Megan’s cue to jump up and volunteer instead. For a moment she couldn’t bring herself to. But there was no reason not to let Elizabeth learn except Megan’s territorial nature when it came to lace. And that wasn’t reason enough. “I’ll get what she needs.”
“Thank you. These old bones get tired more easily than they used to. Larger needles for her first time, number twos. And some of that two-ply yarn, she’ll do better with that. And the Cat’s Paw chart. Not too hard for a beginner. And stitch mark—”
“Yes, I know.” Megan escaped again into the house. Vera had sounded so excited babbling instructions she knew Megan didn’t need to hear. Maybe it had been hard for her to give up lace when Megan did. Megan had been so miserable with shock and grief she hadn’t considered anything but her own sudden distaste for the craft she’d loved her whole life.
Through the living room, to the back room they’d converted into a bedroom when Vera moved in, a room that smelled of stale mother-in-law. Vera hated open windows in her room. Megan hated to think how much they paid to have the ceiling fan going day and night.
She opened the top drawer of the old sewing chest that had belonged to Vera’s mother and rummaged for number two needles and a box of the tiny plastic rings for marking sections of stitches. From the bottom largest drawer she pulled a small ball she’d wound herself a thousand years ago it seemed, cream-colored two-ply Shetland wool, soft, spongy, warm and familiar in her hand. Emotion thickened her throat, bitter and sweet.
In the middle drawer she leafed through beginner patterns she’d used to teach Vera and which her mother had used to teach her, pausing over the directions for a simple doily, her first completed project, aged twelve. Where was the family living then? She couldn’t remember that, only the smile on her mother’s tired face when Megan showed off her work. Your great-grandmother Fiona would have been proud, she’d said. Highest praise.
Megan pulled out the Cat’s Paw chart and shut the drawer firmly.
Back on the porch, she handed the supplies to Vera and sat, watching uneasily while Vera cast on, only enough for a few repeats of the pattern. Elizabeth dragged her chair to Vera’s side and peered with tipsy concentration as Vera demonstrated—yarn-over; make one; knit two together; slip one, knit two together, pass slipped stitch over—and explained how the stitches worked together to create the empty spaces necessary for lace.
“I’ll do the first couple of rows and put in the markers. You’ll be doing lace knitting, which is different from knitted lace.”
“How?”
Next door, Ella laughed, then laughed again, low and throaty.
“Knitted lace is when you advance the pattern on every row. Lace knitting is when you advance the pattern on one row, then do a plain knit row on the way back. The angles are sharper, and the patterns are larger.”
“I’ll see if I can remember that.” Elizabeth giggled. “I probably can’t.”
“Here’s the chart you’ll be using. Each row of the grid corresponds to a knitted row, each little box equals one stitch. Here’s the key to the symbols. Blank square means knit, empty circle in the square means yarn-over, forward slash means knit two together, etc. Got it?”
“Oof. Sort of.”
“Just do.” Vera held out the piece. “No better way to learn. Right, Megan?”
Megan wanted to yank the needles and yarn out of Vera’s hands, throw a tantrum worthy of Lolly when she was two, I don’t want you to do it. Lace is mine; my Mom gave it to me. “Yes. That’s right.”
“Okay.” Elizabeth took over the needles and painstakingly started on the first patterned row. Music came on in David’s yard. Ella Fitzgerald with the world on a string. Megan fidgeted, breathing the night air, wanting to escape inside but not able to bear the airless house or being alone.
Got the string around my finger/What a world, what a life—I’m in love.
“I don’t have the right number of stitches in this part, what did I do?” Elizabeth handed over her beginner’s attempt to Vera like a child holding out a broken toy, please-fix-it, to Mama.
“In Shetland, girls learned by doing the plain return rows on their mother’s lace-knit patterns. You’re diving into the hard part right away. Mistakes are normal at the beginning.”
Maybe Megan could check on Deena and Jeffrey. But they were no longer the ages for drawing on walls and sticking fingers in sockets, so if they were quiet they were happy. She needed to get over her silly jealousy, her anger at Vera for taking over as if the lace was in her heritage, anger at herself because it was her fault she hadn’t offered to teach Elizabeth, anger at grave robber Elizabeth for digging up and pillaging Megan’s past.
I can make the rain go/Any time I move my finger/Lucky me, can’t you see—I’m in love.
“Argh! I think I’ve made about twenty mistakes already.” Elizabeth put the tiny swatch down and laughed, face red.
“Maybe next time you can try when you haven’t been”—Vera cleared her throat meaningfully—“to David’s.”
“Is it that obvious? You know, I couldn’t even finish one drink.” She hunched and let go her shoulders. “He pours a lethal one.”
“Yes, well.” Vera snorted. “Practice makes perfect.”
“His drinking
or my knitting?”
“Both.”
Elizabeth laughed and looked dubiously at her not-yet-lace.
“I don’t know if I have the patience for this.”
“Just you wait.” Vera regarded her new pupil with the seriousness of a missionary. “The work will take you over before you know it. You’ll start to feel the patterns rather than read them. You’ll start to connect to all the women who have knit this lace before, and all those who will knit it after you.”
“Wow, really?” Elizabeth’s eyes went wide. Vera couldn’t have hooked her more completely if she’d started her on heroin.
Life’s a wonderful thing/As long as I hold the string/I’d be a silly so-and-so/If I should ever let go.
Vera nodded solemnly. “Yes, indeed. Right, Megan?”
Megan watched the delicate white thread wind around Elizabeth’s finger, remembering the sensuous softness of the Shetland wool, the powerful feeling that she wasn’t so alone when she was knitting with her mother, a feeling that carried over even after Mom died. “That’s what my mother always said, yes.”
Elizabeth bent over her effort. Megan went back to her blanket square. Knit, knit, knit two together, yarn-over, knit, knit, yarn-over, knit two together, knit, knit, knit.
St. Louis. That was where they’d been living when Mom invented Megan’s favorite story and her favorite character. She remembered because there had been a girl in her class, Jill, tall, dark and beautiful, who’d chosen for her project at the start of the school year to make life unbearable for once again “new girl” Megan. Mom had come up with Gillian soon after.
“So, Megan, tell me more about—argh, I’ve dropped a stitch here.”
“Pick it up and keep going,” Vera said.
“I can’t even find it.” She started giggling again.
Ella Fitzgerald began a new song, which Megan recognized as “Witchcraft” because of her mother’s passion for Sinatra. David started singing loudly, drunkenly, not his usual fine voice but just under the pitch and behind the beat. She wanted to be there, laughing with him, sharing pain and dissecting the world the way they used to. And to prevent any mistake he was going to make—or had already made—with Ella. Ella would eat him alive.
But it wasn’t Megan’s place to go over there or to interfere. Not as a neighbor, not even as a friend. And certainly not as Stanley’s wife. Her place was to sit here on her damn porch with her intrusive boarder and mother-in-law, overhearing the fun.
Those fingers in my hair/That sly come-hither stare/That strips my conscience bare/It’s witch—
“Elizabeth.” Megan spoke too forcefully; Elizabeth and Vera’s heads jerked up in surprise.
“Yes?”
Megan didn’t know what to say; she’d had to break the music’s hold. “Why don’t you…tell us about your Polish relatives?”
Elizabeth blinked. “Tell you what about them?”
“What brought them over to this country and…so on.”
Vera lifted her brows and went back to her knitting.
“Oh. Sure. Okay.” Elizabeth peered at her chart. “My great-grandfather came over from Kaszuby, northern Poland, on the Baltic. He and my grandmother settled on Jones Island in Lake Michigan with a bunch of other Kaszub immigrants.”
And I’ve got no defense for it/The heat is too intense for it/What good would common sense—
“Really? What did they do there?” She was losing it. No way to drown out the music or her imagination about what was going on next door. No way to block out the emotions the lace brought on again. So? So she sat, polite, restrained, knitting her part of a blanket that was going to be artless and clumsy.
“Most of the Kazubs were fishermen, so being on the lake in Milwaukee meant they could keep right on fishing. Then in the 1920s the government kicked everyone off the island to build a sewage treatment plant.”
“Where did they all go?” Her voice sounded shrill and forced. She felt like Augustus Gloop from the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie she and her kids watched last month, stuck halfway up the vacuum pipe, pressure building all around, something having to give eventually.
“South Milwaukee, where I grew up with my widowed grandmother and my mom. My dad left when I was five.”
And although I know it’s strictly taboo/When you arouse the need in me/My heart says yes indeed in me/Proceed with—
“Oh, I’m sorry. That must have been hard.” Megan put on a sympathetic face, feeling as if she were going to throw up or laugh or scream or all three. Knit, knit, knit two together, yarn-over, knit, knit, yarn-over, knit two together, knit, knit, knit.
“Thanks. I was young…” Elizabeth looked at Megan curiously before she bent over the chart again. “If we’re talking relatives, Megan, I really want to hear about yours on Shetland.”
“Oh. Well.” Megan smiled at her knitting this time because she didn’t want to smile at Elizabeth. “My great-grandmother grew up there. She moved, though, to the Scottish mainland, when she was eighteen. But she brought her lace-knitting skill with her.”
That wouldn’t be enough. She knew it wouldn’t be enough. Why had she brought up ancestor stories? Dig, dig, dig. Like a dog searching for its bone, holes all over the yard, never giving up.
“Wow. This is so fascinating. Tell me more, I want to know everything. What was her life like when she was—”
“Hi y’all.” Sally, approaching.
“Hey there.” Megan put her knitting aside, nearly ecstatic over the interruption. “Join us.”
“Thanks.” She climbed the first step to the porch; up close it was obvious, even through cosmetic attempts to conceal it, that she’d been crying. “I’m looking for Ella.”
“Ella won’t be any good to you right now.” Vera peered at her with maternal concern. No one could know Sally without wanting to take care of her. “You stay here with us. Megan’ll get you something cool to drink.”
“Lemonade? Diet ginger?”
“No, nothing. Thanks.”
Elizabeth frowned at her. “Are you okay?”
Megan sat again, picked up her blue square. Honestly. Not even giving the poor woman time to get settled, to chat about nothing and ease into her troubles if she wanted to talk about them. “Sally, we were just talking about—”
“You look like you’ve been crying. What’s the matter?”
“Sally honey, have a seat.” Vera patted the chair next to her. “You sure you don’t want any ginger? It’s diet. My doctor says—”
“Vera, let Sally tell us.”
Vera was so shocked by Elizabeth’s calm interruption she subsided, muttering.
“Oh. Well. My dress came today.” Sally dug a tissue from her pocket. “Beatrice ordered the one I didn’t want. The one she liked. I know I’m being a spoiled brat, but it’s so…plain. I loved that other one.”
“Oh, Sally, honey.” Megan’s stomach sank in dismay. Sally had been through so much. She deserved a perfect wedding.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Send it back.” Elizabeth shrugged. “Tell her you want the one you picked out.”
“I can’t do that. She’s paying for it.” Sally dissolved again.
“It’d be so ungrateful.”
“Pfft.” Elizabeth scoffed. “It’s your wedding.”
“Elizabeth.” Megan managed to keep her voice gentle. “I don’t think she wants to start out married life antagonizing her mother-in-law. You sure about the drink, Sally? I’ve got cookies too, oatmeal raisin.”
“You need to draw the line now,” Elizabeth announced. “Or you’ll be catering to this woman the rest of your marriage. If you don’t believe me, Dear Abby says so only every other week.”
Megan frowned a warning, which Elizabeth didn’t see. “Sally, what does Foster say?”
“He says I’ll be beautiful to him no matter what.” She sniffled, wiped her eyes, erasing the camouflaging concealer. “He doesn’t want to take sides.”
“Keep the dress.” V
era harrumphed. “You don’t want to pit your husband against his mother.”
“She needs her husband on her side.”
Megan stood. “I’ll get those cookies.”
“And because it’s strapless I’ll have to find some way to hide the scars on my shoulder from the accident.” She looked toward Elizabeth. “I was in a car wreck when I was a girl. I told Beatrice I can’t wear strapless.”
“Maybe she thought you meant you didn’t look good in that style,” Vera said. “Like how people say, ‘I can’t wear orange.’”
“What did the dress you wanted look like?” Elizabeth asked.
“I’ll show you both of them.”
Megan went inside while Sally pulled out two folded pictures and passed them to Elizabeth. In the kitchen, she clunked ice into another glass and took another soda out of the fridge, put the cookies she’d intended for the kids onto a plate and loaded her tray again. Poor Sally. As the years passed the wedding faded in importance, but brides deserved the day they wanted. Especially Sally, who was cheated out of her dream ceremony the first time by eloping.
At her own wedding, Megan was so happy not to have to move again, so astonished by the intensity of Stanley’s love, that she cared less about the trappings than most. She’d worn her mother’s dress, decorated with Grandma Bridget’s lace.
Back on the porch the women were studying the pictures.
“Here, Sally, honey.” Megan put the tray down. “Have something to drink and a cookie. They’ll make the problem seem less horrible.”
“Megan, you are a doll, thank you.” Sally took a cookie, opened the soda and started pouring.
“Okay.” Elizabeth passed the pictures back to Sally, then put them down on an empty chair when she saw her hands full.
“What can we do to fix the problem?”
“Oh.” Sally laughed uncomfortably. “You’re sweet, Elizabeth, but you don’t need to worry about my problems.”
“Don’t be silly. I’d like to help. There must be something we can do.” She looked to Vera and Megan, clearly expecting an immediate rush of ideas. “We could maybe talk to Beatrice for you, or—”
“No.” Megan and Vera objected simultaneously.
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