The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society

by Beth Pattillo

  Ruthie watched as her sister started to knit, slowly at first and then gradually beginning to get the hang of running the yarn through the fingers of her left hand. Most people knitted what was called English style, with the loose yarn trailing off to the right, but that required a large wrapping motion for each stitch. If Esther could manage with the thread through her left hand, she would be knitting Continental style. Not so common, but faster and often with better results.

  Esther continued haltingly for the rest of the row, the yarn slipping off her fingers several times and Ruthie patiently helping her to thread it again.

  “I think that’s working,” Ruthie said, a strange feeling of triumph welling in her chest. When was the last time Esther had ever let her be the expert on anything? True they were in a mess right now with Esther’s machinations to get Frank to have the surgery. But perhaps this could be a turning point. Ruthie didn’t want to leave without—

  “Oh, honestly, this is ridiculous.” Esther’s fingers tangled in the yarn and she threw the needles in her lap in disgust. “Your method’s supposed to be easier?” She shot Ruthie a dark look. “Or are you just trying to sabotage me?” Ruthie bit her tongue. What use was there in pointing out that Esther’s approach hadn’t been working to begin with?

  “Why on earth would I want to sabotage your knitting?”

  The moment Ruthie asked the question, she wished she hadn’t.

  “Because—” And then Esther stopped. Suddenly, she looked defeated and far older than her years.

  The phone at the information desk rang. “Will the Jackson family please come to the desk?” the volunteer in the pink jacket called out. Ruthie’s pulse skyrocketed. She scooped up her own knitting, shoved it back in her bag, and wasn’t more than a step behind Esther when she made it to the information desk.

  “The doctor’s on his way down,” the volunteer said. Ruthie had meant to spend the morning praying, not trying to teach her sister to knit. Esther reached over and gripped Ruthie’s hand. Hard.

  “It’ll be okay,” Ruthie heard herself say. Not because she believed it, but because she thought it needed to be said.

  “Of course it will,” Esther snapped, but Ruthie knew her sister’s bravado for exactly what it was.

  Fear. Fear that her whole life might collapse. Fear that her plan hadn’t worked, that it had been too late to save Frank.

  Ruthie knew what Esther was feeling because she felt exactly the same.

  Because even with everything that had happened, they were still sisters.

  Since the moment Merry hung up the phone with the middle school principal, she’d been dreading the inevitable confrontation with Courtney. Now, hours later, they sat on opposite sides of the dining room table, Merry rubbing her belly and Courtney with her arms crossed over her chest. The table felt as wide as the Mississippi.

  She’d been rehearsing her speech all afternoon. She hadn’t even mentioned the phone call until after she’d dropped off Heather and Lindsey. She’d kept her silence until they’d arrived home and she’d installed Sarah in front of the television set with an hour’s worth of The Wiggles playing on TiVo.

  “I’m really disappointed in you, Courtney.” She’d been so weepy the past couple of weeks, mostly due to hormones, but knowing that didn’t help Merry control her emotions in the long run. “Hannah’s done nothing to you, and you deliberately embarrassed her. You’ve never done anything like that before. I don’t understand, so I need you to explain it to me.” She’d gotten that last sentence verbatim out of one of her “parenting your teen” books.

  Courtney gave her obligatory rolling of the eyes. “It’s not that big of a deal. You wouldn’t have even known about it if Lindsey hadn’t gotten caught in the hall by Mr. Wharton. Jake gets in fights all the time, and you don’t go all commando on him.”

  “First of all, Jake is nine and you’re not. Second, we’re not discussing your brother. We’re talking about you.”

  “Wouldn’t that be a refreshing change of pace?” Courtney snapped.

  No one could infuse a question with sarcasm quite like a thirteen-year-old. “That attitude’s not going to help us solve this problem.”

  “What problem is that, Mother?” Courtney only called her mother when she needed to put Merry in her place. “If you want to hang out with the dregs of society, that’s entirely your business.”

  Ah, so that was the problem after all. Merry had thought of it as soon as the principal related the story of Courtney’s misbehavior, but she hadn’t wanted to believe it was true. “Just because I spent some time trying to help Hannah doesn’t take anything away from you, honey. Can’t you feel a little compassion for the poor girl?” She reached her hand across the table, hoping Courtney might meet her halfway, but her daughter’s hands remained firmly tucked in her armpits.

  “I get it, Mom. I get how not important I am to you.”

  “Courtney! What in the world are you talking about?” Her lower back felt like it might snap, and the baby was doing somersaults worthy of an Olympic gymnast in her stomach. “Can you please try not to be so dramatic? Just this once?”

  The flash of hurt in her daughter’s eyes was as uncomfortable for Merry as her swollen belly or feet, but honestly, couldn’t Courtney think about someone besides herself for a change?

  Courtney’s face screwed up with the effort of trying not to cry. “I begged you to take me to Nashville to shop for a dress for the winter dance. And you took that scummy Hannah instead. You’ve been nagging me for two years to let you knit me something, and I finally see a pattern I like in that magazine you had. The one for that cute pink shrug. And then you spend two weeks making an ugly brown shawl for her. Okay, Mom. I get it. You’re disappointed. I’m an embarrassment to you. Whatever. Message received, loud and clear.

  Courtney McGavin, oldest daughter, Not Important!”

  With each word out of Courtney’s mouth, Merry felt her heart thump faster. She was short of breath anyway since the baby was pushing against her ribs, but as the truth of her daughter’s words washed over her, she was a drowning woman with no access to oxygen. Dear, sweet heaven, it was true. Every word out of the child’s mouth. She’d been so busy being frustrated with Courtney, being mad at her, fuming at everything her daughter hadn’t done, that she’d ignored what Courtney was actually trying to say to her. And what Courtney was trying to say was no different than what she’d said to Merry when she was Sarah’s age, poised at the top of the playground slide. Watch me, Mommy. Watch me. Only now, at thirteen, Courtney wanted far more than her passive attention. Despite her push-me-pull-you act, what she’d wanted all along was her mother’s presence in her life. Here she was on kid number four, and she still hadn’t gotten the hang of being a mother. Not in the most important ways. Not in the ways that counted.

  “Oh, Courtney.” She tried to lever herself out of the chair, but such a task was easier said than done. “Sweetie, it’s not like that.”

  Courtney’s sobs grew until she was in full-blown weeping mode. “It feels that way to me.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand like a little child.

  With a final push, Merry made it out of the chair. She maneuvered her way around the table to stand beside her daughter. “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” How in the world did parents ever survive having teenagers? In so many ways they were like toddlers—only more articulate and with more expensive tastes.

  “Look, you’ll have the spring dance in a few months, and we’ll definitely go to Nashville then.” Of course, they wouldn’t be able to afford to shop at their usual haunts, not with the bankruptcy looming so large, but Merry would figure something out. She would have to.

  Courtney shot an angry look at her belly. “No, we can’t. You’ll have just had the baby.”

  Merry smiled and stroked her daughter’s hair. “Well, you’re too young to remember, but when you were little, I took you everywhere. Just you and me and the stroller. Your dad was finishing
law school. We didn’t have much money, but you and I had a lot of fun taking long walks and feeding the ducks in the city park.” She leaned over and hugged her daughter as best she could. “You’ll always be my first baby, sweetie.”

  Courtney didn’t say anything, didn’t get up from the chair. But she did reach up and put her arms around Merry. And that, at least, was a start.

  Frank’s face looked whiter than the sheet beneath his head. A large teddy bear lay improbably by his side, there for him to clutch to his chest and cushion his torso when he coughed. The night sounds of the hospital crept around the partially closed door—muffled footsteps, the nurse typing at the computer station outside Frank’s door, the rattle of a cart as the meal trays were finally taken away by some unseen hand.

  He’s alive, Ruthie reminded herself. That was what mattered. If only Ruthie’s heart was in half as good a shape as his was now. She kept the small light over the bed burning so she could see to knit, although truth be told, she could probably stitch in the dark if she needed to.

  “You still here?” Frank mumbled from the bed. His speech was slurred, the effect of the pain medication in his system.

  “Guilty as charged,” Ruthie said. “Do you want some ice chips?”

  They’d kept him in the intensive care unit for two days and moved him into this regular room earlier in the evening. Step-down unit, they called it. Ruthie thought “step-up” would have been a more inspiring name.

  “You don’t have to stay,” Frank whispered. “Go and get some rest.”

  “I wouldn’t be going anywhere but to the hotel.” She set down her knitting so she could reach over and place her hand on top of his. “That cot over there’s as comfortable as anything at the Hampton Inn.” She was still maintaining the fiction that Esther wasn’t in Nashville, still covering up the fact that they spent their nights at the Loews Vanderbilt Hotel. Tonight, though, she simply couldn’t deal with her sister anymore, so she’d elected to stay at the hospital. Ruthie looked at Frank and ignored the moisture that gathered in the corner of his eyes. “Besides, someone has to be here to make sure you don’t yell at the nurses.”

  He looked away. “It hurts, Ruthie. Hurts pretty bad.”

  “Here’s your button.” She handed him the contraption that looked like the buzzer contestants used on Jeopardy. “That’s your morphine drip. Just keep pushing it.” She couldn’t tell him that the timer on the machine showed he wasn’t due for another dose for twenty minutes. She’d have to distract him until then. “We can buzz your nurse if you’d like some broth or something else to drink.”

  “No. Ice is fine.”

  She was surprised to feel so awkward with him, but this was an intimate situation, and they didn’t have decades of marriage to rely on for familiar routines and habits.

  “You should go to the hotel,” Frank said again.

  “Am I making you uncomfortable?” No sense beating around the bush. “You’re not used to having me around when you don’t feel well.”

  He spread his fingers so that hers fell between them, interlocking. He squeezed her hand. “No, you don’t make me uncomfortable. And there’s no one else I’d rather have around.”

  His eyelids slid down, and soon he was snoring lightly. Ruthie remained where she was, her hand in his, treasuring the contact. So little after all these years. But somehow, for just this moment, it was enough.

  The scrape of the door to Frank’s room woke Ruthie early the next morning. She’d fallen asleep in the chair beside the bed.

  Rubbing her bleary eyes, she tried to focus on the person entering the room. To her surprise, Esther walked in like the Queen of England making an entrance at a state dinner. Her outfit was as impeccable as her makeup, not a hair out of place.

  “You can go now,” Esther said calmly and without preamble.

  Ruthie glanced at the clock on Frank’s bedside table. It was a few minutes past five o’clock in the morning. “What are you talking about?” Bleary-eyed, she struggled to sit up straighter in the chair.

  Esther set her bag on the counter next to the sink, but her eyes wouldn’t meet Ruthie’s. “Frank’s going to be fine. The doctor told us last night that he’s officially out of danger. I appreciate your help in this matter, but now that the surgery’s over I’ll take it from here.”

  “Esther—” If only she weren’t so tired and could form a coherent response.

  “Yes?” She was checking her lipstick in the mirror above the sink.

  All her life Ruthie had wanted to have the ability to arch one eyebrow as Esther was doing now, but apparently it was a gift. You were either born with it or you weren’t. Esther had been born with it. Ruthie hadn’t.

  “I can’t just leave. Frank will worry—”

  “I’ll explain everything to him when he wakes up.”

  Even though Ruthie had known this might happen, she still wasn’t prepared for it. “Don’t you care about his feelings at all?”

  Ruthie could count on one hand the number of times in her life she’d truly seen into her sister’s soul. Esther had always kept everyone—including her only sister—at arm’s length.

  Today was no different.

  “Of course I care about his feelings.” Esther turned to face her. She looked genuinely wounded, but Ruthie wondered whether it was because she was questioning her sister’s integrity or because Ruthie was putting up an argument.

  “How could you even suggest such a thing?”

  “Because—”

  “Midlife crisis.” Esther waved a dismissive hand in the air.

  “That’s all this has been, brought on by his heart problem. Whenever men are faced with their own mortality, they try to jump back into the past. But,” she said, giving Ruthie a pointed look, “they always come to their senses and return home, where they belong.”

  Could you claim to have been played if you knew the score all along? Ruthie wondered as she got up from the chair, collecting her purse and tote bag. “Please don’t upset him when he wakes up,” she begged her sister. “The doctor said no excitement.”

  “I’ll tell him you were too exhausted to stay.”

  “But he won’t be expecting you. He thinks you’re in Sweetgum.”

  Esther shooed Ruthie toward the door with a wave of her hand. “If you want to take my car and drive back to Sweetgum, Alex can bring us home in a couple of days when Frank’s released.”

  Dissed and dismissed. Ruthie had no idea how she knew that slang phrase, but it popped into her mind. Rather appropriate.

  “Esther …” But really, what was there to say? After all they’d been through, she should know by now that her sister would never really change.

  “I’ll call you when we get home to let you know everything’s all right.” Esther smiled as if they were exchanging the cheeriest of farewells. “Get some rest.” Her sister would never acknowledge everything that had happened in the last few weeks. Not unless Ruthie forced the issue, and as Esther well knew, Ruthie never forced the issue.

  “Okay then. Good-bye.”

  There would be no tearful farewells, no emotional explanations for Frank to struggle to comprehend. Esther would deliver the news of Ruthie’s departure with all the precision and impersonal skill of his heart surgeon. Only not even Esther knew how final this good-bye would be.

  Ruthie would go home and pack. That’s what she would do. Her visa should arrive soon, and once that came through there was nothing tying her to Sweetgum. She tightened her grip on her tote bag, slipped out of the hospital room, and made her way toward the elevators.

  She had known it would have to end. She just thought

  she’d be more prepared when it did.

  By the time Frank awoke, Esther had set the hospital room to rights. She’d introduced herself to the nurse on duty, organized Frank’s toiletries, and read the morning paper. So she was more than prepared when her husband finally opened his eyes.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Esther smil
ed. True, his words hurt, but she refused to let him see how his question pained her. “I’m here to take care of you, obviously.”

  “Where’s Ruthie?”

  “She’s gone, Frank.”

  “Where?”

  “Home. To Sweetgum.”

  If possible he suddenly looked paler against the snowy sheets. “What about the divorce?”

  “Divorce?” Esther looked at Frank and frowned. He didn’t understand. “I’ve changed my mind.”

  His face turned purple then, but now the harsh color didn’t frighten Esther. It was an indication of his emotional state, not his physical one. She had known he would be angry, had prepared for how she would handle it, so she kept moving around the room, straightening a bouquet on the windowsill, throwing away the straw wrappers that had accumulated on the bedside tray.

  “You tricked me.”

  “Yes.”

  The fight went out of him then. He closed his eyes for a long moment. “God, you’re good.”

  The contempt in his voice almost cracked her resolve. She dug her nails into her palm to keep from showing any emotion. “It’s not a matter of being good, Frank. It’s a matter of doing what’s right.”

  “What’s right for whom?” he barked. “For me? For your sister? Or for you?”

  Something inside Esther snapped. “Ruthie can play the pure in heart all she wants, but she’s the one who chose to go to Africa rather than stay home and marry you. I’m not the villainess of this piece. You didn’t wait twenty-four hours after she left before you asked me out. And I agreed to the date because I’m not a fool like my sister. I know to grab on to a good thing when it comes along.” She stopped, took a deep breath, and looked him in the eye. “I wasn’t looking to ensnare you, Frank, but you made it pretty clear that you wanted me.” She paused. “You made that more than clear.”

  “I was just a kid. I was angry with Ruthie. I didn’t know what I wanted.”