The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society

by Beth Pattillo

  The new preacher had already left. True, he didn’t keep overly long office hours, but Ruthie didn’t mind. He’d said she could leave as well when her work was done. In his opinion, that’s why God made voice mail.

  Ruthie heartily agreed.

  But Mondays were her long days because the newsletter had to be ready to copy first thing Tuesday morning. The Folding Fiends, as the group of elderly volunteers called themselves, would arrive around nine o’clock tomorrow ready to get to work. By eleven, they would have folded, sealed, and sorted all four hundred newsletters, and Ruthie would take them to the post office on the way to lunch.

  No one had experienced true pressure until they’d been under a deadline for the Folding Fiends.

  Ruthie’s office had two windows—one to the outside and another that was really a glass partition between the church offices and the foyer. Dusk was falling earlier each day. In another hour it would be dark. Ruthie sighed and stretched, arching her back before settling back in to finish the last page of the newsletter. She was typing in the latest additions to the prayer concerns list when she heard the outside door open.

  She looked up and saw Esther walking into the church foyer. Ruthie suppressed a sound that vacillated between a sigh and a groan. Why now? Esther had a knack for coming to call at the exact moment Ruthie needed to focus all her attention and energy on something else.

  Esther opened the swinging glass door and entered the office area. “Afternoon, Ruthie.”

  “Hello, Esther.” They never called each other “sis” or any easy nickname. No, for as long as she could remember, they’d used their first names and first names only. “What brings you here today?” Normally Esther only came to the church on Sundays for worship or when she had a bee in her bonnet about some church matter. “I’m afraid Rev. Carson has left for the day.”

  “I’m here to see you, Ruthie.” She glanced around. “May I sit down for a minute?”

  “Sure.” Ruthie got up and went around the desk to pull a chair over from the little sitting area outside the pastor’s study. She never kept chairs in front of her desk because she didn’t want to give church members a comfortable spot to linger. People liked to talk to the church secretary, and she had difficulty enough managing her time when they had to stand. Imagine how long they’d stay if they got comfortable in one of those chairs.

  Esther didn’t sit in the chair so much as perch on the edge of it. Ruthie slid behind her desk again. “What’s on your mind?”

  Esther pursed her La Prairie–coated lips. “I need your help.”

  Finally. Relief ran through her. She’d been wondering when her sister would come clean about her inability to knit, and watching her subterfuge at the Knit Lit Society meetings had been excruciating. Ruthie often wondered who her sister was paying to complete the projects for her.

  “I’d be happy to help you,” Ruthie said.

  “You don’t know what I’m asking yet.” Esther’s lips pursed more tightly.

  “It’s not about your knitting?” The moment she’d said the words Ruthie saw that she’d offended her sister.

  “My knitting? Why would I need help with that?”

  “It just seemed as if …” Her voice trailed off. Few people dared to point out any shortcomings to Esther. The last one who had was the former pastor—emphasis on the word former.

  “Then what do you need my help with?” Please, Lord, don’t let it be another luncheon. She’d spent hours crafting the centerpieces for the last one she hadn’t attended. Of course she would help if her sister asked, but—

  Esther sniffed. “Rev. Carson doesn’t keep very long hours, does he?”

  “I believe he mentioned stopping by the nursing home to visit Gladys Pippen.” That quieted her sister for a moment.

  “So we can talk then? Privately?”

  Ruthie cast a nervous eye at the screen of her computer monitor and then looked at the clock. Esther couldn’t have picked a worse time if she’d tried.

  “It’s about Frank,” Esther said. “I need your help with him.”

  Ruthie kept her expression carefully bland. Esther had told her about his cardiology appointment, but she knew more than her sister had told her. Far more, obviously.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “You know he’s refused the bypass surgery.” At Ruthie’s nod, she continued. “I need your help to convince him to change his mind.”

  Ruthie picked up a paper clip from the desktop and twisted it between her fingers. “I don’t know how I could persuade him if you can’t.” She’d spent half her lifetime engaging in this kind of duplicity. No wonder she’d gotten so good at it.

  Esther set her designer handbag on the floor and then laid her hands, palm up, in her lap in an expression of supplication. Ruthie couldn’t tell if the gesture was intentional or accidental.

  “Ruthie, you can change his mind.” Esther was looking at her with an uncomfortable degree of intensity. “I know that you can.”

  What could she say in response to that? Ruthie sat, twisting the paper clip, while the silence grew longer and deeper. Her lack of response was an indictment, but at that moment she couldn’t bring herself to mouth any of the false platitudes that had been her life’s work when it came to her sister. She suddenly wished for her knitting needles instead of the paper clip she was mangling between her fingers. Their comforting feel, the soothing repetitive motion of stitching, would settle her, guide her.

  “Esther, if Frank doesn’t want to have the surgery, I doubt there’s anything any of us can do to talk him into it.”

  “I wouldn’t have come here if I wasn’t sure.” Her sister’s hands now flexed with anxiety, but Ruthie doubted she was wishing for a pair of knitting needles. Unless, of course, she wanted to stab Ruthie through the heart with one of them.

  “Have you asked Alex to talk to him?”

  “He said to leave Frank alone because he’d always done as he pleased anyway.”

  Which wasn’t true. Ruthie of all people knew just how false that statement was.

  “Then I don’t think there’s any more you can do.”

  Esther, to her credit, didn’t waver. “Of course there’s not. But there’s something you don’t know, Ruthie. Something that makes a difference.”

  By now the paper clip held no resemblance whatsoever to any form of office supply. “Esther—”

  “Don’t.” She held up an impeccably manicured hand as if she were a school crossing guard stopping traffic. Then she lowered her hand, but this time her fingers were clenched into a fist. “I need Frank to live,” Esther said. Though the statement was obvious, Ruthie could hear the desperation threaded through her sister’s words. “We haven’t … That is, we’ve always had numerous expenses. The house. Alex’s college. And we have a certain standing in the community to maintain.”

  A cold tremor worked its way up Ruthie’s spine. “Are you saying you’re in financial trouble?”

  “No, of course not,” Esther snapped. “However, if Frank’s income were suddenly to be lost …”

  Even after all these years, the depth of her sister’s mercenary tendencies could still surprise her. “This is about money?”

  “This is about my life!” Esther almost came out of her chair. “Everything I’ve ever been. Ever done. Of course it’s not just about the money. I want my husband to live.” She paused, and then the color drained from her face. “Contrary to what you’ve always thought, I do love him, Ruthie.”

  Unbidden, the book they’d been reading for the Knit Lit Society came to mind, and Ruthie thought of young Sara Crewe, the little princess of the book’s title. She’d borne her demotion from an indulged child of a wealthy man to a servant in the school where she’d been the star pupil with the courage and grace of a classical heroine. Esther, however, was not made of the same stuff as the fictional Sara Crewe. Not when it came to the thing that mattered to her the most—the appearance of perfection.

  “What do you want me to do?
” Ruthie asked.

  “Has he talked to you about this?”

  Ruthie’s hesitation spoke volumes. Esther pursed her lips. “I thought as much. What did he say?”

  Ruthie had been dreading this very conversation for decades, and she had certainly never expected to have it at four o’clock on a Monday afternoon sitting in the church office. She’d imagined different scenarios, of course, most of which involved Frank declaring his love for her and informing her of his decision to leave her sister. But when it had actually happened that night at her house—well, reality was a very different thing from one’s imaginings.

  “He’s just upset. He’ll see sense soon,” Ruthie said. “I’m sure of it.”

  “But what did he say to you?”

  Ruthie knew now why she never should have let Frank into the house that night. “Whatever he said doesn’t make any difference. He’s your husband, Esther. If his mind is to be changed, you’ll have to do it.”

  “Is he going to leave me?” Suddenly, Esther looked every one of her fifty-plus years, something she never, ever did.

  “No. He’s not going to leave you.”

  “Because he wants to stay or because you wouldn’t give him a reason to?”

  The accuracy of her sister’s question chilled Ruthie to the bone. “Esther …”

  “You have to tell me.” She leaned forward in the chair, and Ruthie thought she might slip off, her balance was so precarious. “I have a right to know.”

  All those years, Ruthie thought. Days and weeks and months of living one life while dreaming of another. Guarded words and furtive glances. Loving her nephew as if he were her own, because under different circumstances he might indeed have been hers. All of that was going to end right here in the church office on an ordinary day.

  “He said that he’d have the surgery if we could be together,” Ruthie said finally.

  Her words hung in the air, as fragile and as sharp as glass. Ruthie saw understanding and then acceptance fill her sister’s eyes, and it was the most painful sight she’d ever seen. In some ways even more painful than looking at herself in the mirror every day. Because she’d known all this time that she’d been wrong to stay in Sweetgum. She should have left long ago. It would have been the brave thing to do. The Christian thing to do, for that matter. But she’d stayed and suffered and secretly hoped that someday, somehow, this very thing would happen. Even though she’d known that a happy ending for her was no different from a tragic one. The desires of her heart could only come at the price of her sister’s broken one.

  “You have to go to him,” Esther said with a matter-of-fact tone that brooked no argument. “Tell him anything he needs to hear that will get him to agree to the surgery.”

  “Esther—”

  “No.” The crossing guard hand again. “You owe me this, Ruthie.”

  “I owe you this?” A little flame of anger kindled in her chest. “How in the world can you think that?”

  “What else am I supposed to think? I’ve known every day for more than thirty years that my sister is in love with my husband. I’ve lived with that. Pretended that it didn’t matter. Overlooked it with determination.”

  “And loving Frank puts me in your debt how exactly?” Ruthie stood up, and the secretary’s chair that had molded to her body over the years rolled to the edge of the protective plastic mat beneath it.

  Esther, too, rose to her feet. “It’s not your love for Frank that puts you in my debt,” she said. “It’s his love for you.”

  “How in the world did you come to that conclusion?” Ruthie moved around her desk to stand a few feet from her sister. “I’ve never heard anything more ridiculous in my life.”

  “Because you never told him no, Ruthie. You never did me the honor of killing his hope. Every family dinner, every Christmas, every birthday party for Alex. There you were. A living reminder that his life might be there in our marriage, but his heart wasn’t.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” Ruthie couldn’t believe she needed to defend herself. She had been the one who lost the most. No husband. No children.

  Esther scooped up her handbag from the floor and flung it on her shoulder. “It’s time, Ruthie. Time to stop all of this pretending. It’s not a matter of sibling rivalry anymore. Now it’s a matter of life and death. Frank’s life and death.”

  “And your financial well-being.” Ruthie knew even as she uttered the words that they were unfair. Life was never that simple. Neither were human beings.

  “Do what has to be done, Ruthie. That’s what I’m asking of you. Tell him whatever he needs to hear.” For the first time, tears appeared in Esther’s eyes. “After the surgery, you can tell him that you lied.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “How long do you think it would take for the good people of Sweetgum to run you out of town on a rail when they find out you’ve been trying to seduce my husband all these years?”

  “But that’s not true. You wouldn’t—”

  “What makes you think I wouldn’t?”

  “I’m your sister.”

  “And Frank’s my husband. Also, you’re not in any danger of dying at the moment.”

  “I won’t do it.”

  “You will. Sooner or later, but it better be sooner, Ruthie. Frank may not have a later.”

  With that, Esther turned and walked away. She pushed open the glass door and marched across the foyer, and all Ruthie could do was watch her go.

  Esther refused to cry in public, so why were tears streaming down her face as she hurried to her car? Anyone might see her, and the last thing she could stand at the moment would be sympathy or concern.

  Her fingers trembled, and she struggled to unlock the car door. Cars drove past on Spring Street, but Esther kept her head down. Hold on, she ordered herself sternly. Just a few more seconds …

  She slid behind the wheel and pawed through her handbag for her sunglasses. When she had slipped them on, she let out a sigh of relief that sounded more like a choked sob.

  He had really done it, the coward. He had told Ruthie he was ready to leave his marriage. The very thing she’d feared for so long had finally happened. Why? Why couldn’t he love her, or at least respect her enough to stay away from her sister? And the irony of it? When now was the one time Esther would want her sister to act on her feelings for Frank, Ruthie refused.

  She started the engine and checked for traffic before backing out of the parking space. No one who passed by now would ever suspect that Esther Jackson, in her dark green Jaguar, had just sought to bring about the thing she most feared in order to keep her husband alive.

  Merry never should have agreed to take Hannah to Nashville to the yarn store. She realized that yet again as they drove the long, straight stretch of I-65 north. In fact, after Jeff had been so uncooperative about it, she’d delayed the trip twice until Eugenie had started to pester her about it every time Merry went to the library to return another overdue book for her kids. Then she knew there’d be no escaping her promise. Truth be told, Hannah hadn’t seemed any more eager to go than Merry had been to take her.

  Merry saw Hannah now and then as she was dropping Courtney off at the middle school, waved to her, and received only a vague nod in return. Hannah rode the bus with the free lunch kids, as Courtney called them despite Merry’s scolding. Merry would see Hannah slouching down the long sidewalk from the bus to the school’s front door, looking neither left nor right. At first Merry thought she must have headphones in because she seemed so removed from her surroundings. But further observation discounted that theory. No, Hannah simply had the ability to withdraw so far into herself that she almost wasn’t there.

  Almost.

  When Merry had announced her plans the night before at dinner, Courtney had pitched the obligatory fit. “You’re doing what?” It had ended with Merry’s older daughter stomping out of the dining room. Jake had frowned briefly when she told him she wouldn’t be at his soccer game, but he brightened upon hea
ring that Mrs. Redding was the snack mom for the week. Homemade sugar cookies iced to look like soccer balls could apparently cure any feelings of abandonment. Sarah took the news with the most aplomb, but then she had a play date to spend the day with a friend whose family owned an entire stable of horses.

  “You’re good to go?” Merry asked Jeff as she stocked her purse with mints and tissues and snagged a bottle of water from the refrigerator. “If you lose track, just call me on my cell phone.”

  Jeff sighed. “Honey, I manage to run a law office pretty much on my own. I think I can handle the kids for one day.”

  Merry decided not to correct him. Let him learn for himself why that statement was so laughable.

  And now here they were, she and Hannah, having spent most of the last hour in deafening silence. Hannah curled into the passenger seat of the minivan, her feet propped up on the dash. Merry would never let Courtney get away with that, but she was afraid to say anything to the girl. What if Hannah flat-out defied Merry’s authority? It was too late now to threaten to turn around and take her home.

  “There are three yarn shops in Nashville. We can visit as many as you want,” Merry said as they passed the upscale CoolSprings Galleria. Nashville’s newest mall swam in a sea of big-box shopping, the roads packed with cars like schools of fish. “I thought we’d start with the one farthest north and then work our way back this direction.”

  Hannah grunted what Merry assumed was her assent.

  “Sorry it took a couple of weeks to set this up,” Merry said and then mentally kicked herself. When it came to teenagers, apologies were the death knell of authority.

  They drove for another twenty minutes in the same silence. Merry wished her cell phone would ring. Something, anything to fill the emptiness. Even a wrong number would help.

  She exited off the interstate onto White Bridge Road and followed it around toward a commercial area a couple of miles into town. Haus of Yarn was tucked into the bottom level of a brick shopping center across the street from a sprawling Target. The abundance of stores made Merry’s mouth water. The shops in Sweetgum could fill most of her family’s basic needs, but real selection or novelty required a trip to the city.