“You made these?”
In the soft light of the front hall in the Stitchery, his eyes had glinted with pride. She didn’t hide how much the gift had touched her, even though she suspected it might be gauche to gush over the flowers the way she did. The roses had no practical function—Bitty would probably call them dust collectors—but they had a purpose. They whispered a message that had no words.
Vic did not immediately tell her where they were going, but when they parked, she guessed. He’d circled the block a few times, passing the Tarrytown Music Hall repeatedly, before finally settling on a spot far from the old theater, where the road sloped down toward the lip of the river. They walked up the hill to the hall, beneath spotty streetlights that cast umbrellas of light beneath the darkening sky, passing a colorful candy shop and a bright ice cream parlor and a svelte, sexy bar.
“Is this okay?” Vic asked. “You said a few weeks ago when we were talking at the library that you’d never seen House of Dark Shadows, even though they filmed it right down the road.”
“That’s right!” She remembered talking to him about the vampire tours they’d started giving at Tarrytown’s gothic mansion—which led to talk of the vampire movie. She’d thought he was just making mundane, forgettable small talk to be friendly; apparently, he’d been listening to everything she said. “I totally want to see it. But do you think it will be too scary for me?”
“The only thing that might scare you is the dialogue,” he said. “Or the acting. Or the plotline. Actually, there’s a lot to be scared of—in a so-funny-it’s-scary kind of way.”
“Sounds perfect for Halloween,” she said.
They walked into the foyer, which had probably seen better days. The theater had opened in 1885 to a Gilbert and Sullivan show; now Aubrey and Vic settled into folding chairs in front of a movie screen just as the reels started to turn. The crowd was lively, reacting with exaggeration to each new plot twist or meaningful stare. All the clichés of vampire horror were unleashed: A platinum vampire seductress in a white nightgown thrashed at the men who held her down, while another approached her with miserable bravery and a wooden stake in hand. Aubrey laughed aloud.
After the movie, they drove out of Tarrytown, out to the voluptuous pastures and acres of sweet fields that silvered under a high, bright autumn moon. Aubrey couldn’t get her fill of Vic. He told her he was the oldest child, and he talked about taking care of his younger brothers and sister after his father died—about his mother crying when certain songs came on the radio, and about his sister getting pregnant and then moving in with him. He talked about how much he loved cities—any cities—for the bonds that came of people living so close to one another, but he also confessed that he was not as interested in traveling as he was in getting his feet under him, strong and solid, to settle down. By the time they parked, Aubrey knew she was half in love.
Slowly, arms linked, they walked across a wide piazza surrounded by the fieldstone walls and steep roofs of a grand, Normandy-style farm, with buildings and walkways made of dark stone. Aubrey had been to the busy farm many times to watch the pigs rooting in and tilling up the dirt fields, to sit and have a rustic lunch on a picnic table, to watch the hooded beekeepers pump smoke at drowsy honeybees. Now the moonlight touched the hillsides, the looming silo, and steep slate roofs, and Aubrey’s heart was in her throat.
“Too much?” he asked.
She shifted her eyes from the moon above the stone silo down to his face. “Do you want to sweep me off my feet?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s not too much,” she said.
Inside, the restaurant was beautiful, simple, dimly lit. Tiny orange pumpkins and green-and-yellow squash were laid out on sideboards. Real candles flickered. At their table, Vic folded his hands; they were hands that spoke of hard work, dirt and grease that had dug in so deep no amount of soap would get it out, and it was a shock to see them against the bleached white of the tablecloth. And yet he didn’t seem uncomfortable, so neither was she.
They talked—not about Tappan Square, about eminent domain laws, about the possibility that they might lose their homes. Instead, they talked about the little things, childhood pets and favorite books and preferences for coffee or tea. And they ate. She got an egg that she swore was made of sunshine. Turnips that, if she closed her eyes, tasted of grass and rain. Vic had ordered a bottle of champagne: She drank until her thoughts began to effervesce and burst cheerily in her mind.
For the first time in her life, she was on a date that was going perfectly. Just a week ago, her understanding of Vic was incomplete and not fully formed—and yet it had been enough to make her heady with curiosity and wishes. But now, as each moment passed and her date with him become more romantic, more intimate, she saw that the promise being fulfilled in him was even better than she might have imagined. She did not allow dark thoughts to creep into her mind; she didn’t think about the Stitchery—which had always had a way of making itself the exclusive and singular priority of guardians past. Nor did she think about her previous romantic failures. The evening felt enchanted, seamless, infinite, and full of a thousand possibilities—all of them good. She wondered if it was too soon to be thinking of what she’d been missing in her life before this evening with him.
Vic might have felt the same way. He leaned his cheek on his fist and gazed at her, a faint smile playing around his lips. “When are you going to knit something for me?”
“Oh,” Aubrey said. “You need a spell?”
“I don’t want a spell. I want something from you. You can knit things that don’t have spells in them, right?”
“That’s always a little bit of a question. A knitter always leaves something of herself in everything she makes.”
“Nobody’s ever knit me anything,” he said.
“Never?”
“Not since I was a kid, and I didn’t know enough to appreciate it.”
“Aren’t you worried that I’ll knit some kind of spell into it without telling you? Maybe a spell that will make you have a sudden impulse to repaint the Stitchery? Or a love spell …?” She blushed; apparently, she’d had too much champagne.
“I trust you,” he said. “If you need the Stitchery painted, all you have to do is ask. And if you want to knit a love spell, then … I guess I’ll just have to enjoy the ride.”
She smiled to herself and looked down at her plate, emotions warring. She must have been quiet for too long, because when he spoke again, he was apologetic and embarrassed.
“You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry. I guess it’s a really personal thing to knit a gift for someone, and I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No, it’s not that!” she said. “It’s just that there’s a rumor. Like, a curse. Well, not a real curse. Not one that’s associated with the Stitchery. But there’s this thing that happens; it’s called ‘the curse of the boyfriend sweater.’ ”
He laughed. “Sounds like a B horror movie.”
“The theory is that as soon as you make a new, um, boyfriend, a sweater, or something, you get on the fast track to splitsville. It’s like the Murphy’s Law of knitting.”
“So I should be glad you don’t want to knit for me.”
“I wouldn’t mind if you stuck around.”
“What a ringing endorsement.” He chuckled. “How long will I have to wait?”
She felt her throat tighten. “I don’t know. I’ve never knit a boyfriend sweater before.”
“You haven’t?” he said, and then he caught himself. “Oh—I’m sorry. I know you just said you haven’t, obviously. I was just surprised.”
“It’s okay,” she said, and she kept the rest of her thoughts to herself.
“Have you been with anyone, seriously?”
She let the waitress refill her glass of water. The ice tinkled. “I’m not sure what constitutes serious.”
“Someone you loved,” he said.
She forced a smile that she hoped looked mysterious and flirty. �
�Why would it matter?”
He edged away, leaning against the back of his seat. “Maybe I want to know what I have to contend with. If there’s anybody I should be worried about.”
“There isn’t.”
“No?”
“No.” And she almost added, How could there be? How could there be anyone but you?
He was looking at her. She had taken off her sunglasses when they’d sat down—not because she’d wanted to, but because the layers of candlelight and shadow in the restaurant were so dim that she could not read the menu or see her glass of water if she kept her glasses on. And yet, across the table, Vic regarded her steadily, directly, and without the skin-tightening around his eyes that suggested he was uncomfortable looking at her.
Aubrey could see, in that moment, that whatever he felt for her was serious. He gave her a thing she had been missing for most of her life: He looked at her eye-to-eye, without judgment. He—of all the men she’d ever met—confirmed what she’d sometimes suspected about herself: that she was beautiful in her way, in spite of her eyes.
Her heart swelled with gratitude and, strangely enough, with a hope that she’d never dared claim: Was this even happening, this possibility of love? Could it be that her dire projections about her long, lonely future in the Stitchery were wrong?
She saw Vic’s face change, his pupils darkening, his breath coming between open lips.
“God … this table,” he said. His hands gripped the edges; the tablecloth bunched. “Do you think anyone would notice if I threw it over, got it out of the way?”
Aubrey felt like a thousand little butterflies had alighted on her skin. She wanted Vic’s mouth, his hands. When she spoke, her voice rasped. “What’s stopping you?”
It took a moment before she realized that the buzzing and chiming in the back of her mind was not her overwrought imagination but was her phone ringing in her purse beside her. She hadn’t known she’d been clutching the stem of her champagne. She put it down. “Sorry.” She shoved shaking fingers into her bag until she found her phone.
The Stitchery. She answered immediately. “What’s wrong?”
It was Meggie’s voice she heard. “I think we need you. Quick.”
“What happened?”
“Craig happened. He’s here.”
“Why?”
Meggie was whispering. “He says he’s not leaving without the kids.”
“We’re ten minutes away,” Aubrey said. She snapped her phone shut. “I’m sorry,” she told Vic, her heart sinking. She had the sense of something inevitable happening, of the Stitchery herding her violently back into the microcosm of her normal life. It had been nice, she thought, to get away for a while.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I’m so sorry. I need you to take me home.”
From the Great Book in the Hall: There are times when it will be critical to know how to knit quickly. Early knitters in the British Isles developed methods of knitting for an economy of movement; the smaller the motion, the quicker the stitch. They threaded their yarn in their left hands, to work fast by the light of a fire in a winter hearth. This was functional knitting to bring in money—knitting that fed children, paid doctors, patched fences. Human as machine.
Some people have said that when factories began to erode the work done by cottagers, yarn-holding techniques shifted. The highborn lady did not knit for income. She knit for leisure. She knit at teatime in sun-bright parlors; she exchanged patterns with friends. And so she held her yarn in her right hand not her left, a choice that forced her hands to swoop and loop beautifully for each stitch, a choice that distinguished her from the callused and bone-sore farm women who knit so fast and crudely for their bread.
We women of the Stitchery today, we have always learned to knit with both hands, not because one hand is better than the other, but because each hand has its advantages. We knit for speed. We knit for gratification. We knit because we must, either way.
Craig Fullen was a large man. In his youth he had been muscular and bulky, an ox of a boy with wide shoulders. But now, long past his high school years, his largeness was no longer quite so firm. He had neat black hair and a handsome face, with a good-sized nose. He was memorable, people said. Not because he said witty things or stood out in a crowd, but because of how perfectly he was just enough of everything: just enough handsomeness, just enough humor, just enough arrogance, just enough kindness—just enough and never too much. At least, this was how he appeared to good society.
Now he stood in the Stitchery’s yard, with his capacious lungs bellowing out and in, and his arm raised in a fist like an upside-down exclamation mark. Bitty had suggested he come inside so they could have a quiet, private talk. But he had refused; in the rust- and pothole-scarred hovel that was Tappan Square, there was no reason to be on his best behavior. He thundered at his wife with a tenor’s paunch and gusto, demanding that Bitty send his children outside with packed bags.
“I’m not giving you a choice here!” He raised up his cell phone in the darkness; it shone like a searchlight. “Send those kids outside to me right now or I’ll call the police.”
Bitty stood on the porch, looking down on the man she’d married. “Don’t be an ass.”
“Me—an ass? Me?”
“You’re the only middle-aged man I see standing in the freezing dark and yelling like the sky’s falling—so, yes, you.”
“Elizabeth,” Craig said. His voice was dark with warning. “You should think carefully before you talk.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because if you’re thinking about trying to divorce me, if it ever comes down to that, then you’ve just handed me the winning hand.”
“How do you figure?”
“Do you honestly think I would let you just take our children away from me? That I wouldn’t come looking for them? What you’ve done here is kidnapping—no question about it. You took our kids away, in secret, without my permission. You kidnapped them. And I’m three seconds away from calling nine-one-one.”
Bitty’s stomach began to burn. Oh God. Had she kidnapped the children? She’d meant to antagonize Craig a little bit by disappearing and leaving only a note. But … kidnapping? Could what she’d done be misconstrued that way? She began to tremble.
“I didn’t abduct them.”
“No need to waste your time convincing me that you didn’t take them,” he said. “Save your breath for when the cops get here.”
“You wouldn’t put our kids through that,” she said.
“Oh no?” He laughed. “Try me.”
“I won’t let you have them,” she said between her teeth.
“I won’t let you have them,” Craig said. “Not now. And if you’re going to be a bitch about it, not ever.”
“Excuse me?”
“You know I won’t go in that dump.” He gestured toward the Stitchery, his lip curled in disgust. “So—fine. You’ve managed to keep them away from me for a few days. But if you’re thinking you’ll get the upper hand by divorcing me, think again. I’ll have better lawyers than you. Much better. You’ll have a state-assigned rube and a rap sheet for child abduction.”
Bitty laughed as if he’d just told a joke over the fizz of champagne. But her fear was rising, rising from her belly to the middle of her chest and tightening, rising up to the base of her throat and clotting there. She reached out for a porch post and hoped the gesture looked more breezy than desperate.
“And what would you do with our children twenty-four hours a day while you’re at the office, or going to cocktail parties, or going—wherever you go? I don’t think you have any idea of what it’s like to raise your own children; and I don’t think that’s something you’d even want to do alone.”
“Who says I would be doing it alone?” Craig said.
Bitty wanted to double over—her stomach hurt so bad. Her fingernails dug into the wood. “What do you want?”
“This ridiculous power play of yours ends now. I’m taki
ng the kids back. They’re my kids. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll send them out here. I’ll give you five minutes. Why are you still standing there? Go!”
“Okay, I get the point. The whole neighborhood does,” Bitty said. She could barely hear herself over the banging of her heart in her ears. “Just—hold on.” She turned around. The front door gaped and the hallway enfolded her, and then she was inside and Craig was in the yard, and she actually felt a little relieved to be behind the Stitchery’s walls.
Since her adult personality had first begun to take shape, Bitty had spent her time trying to take control of her circumstances. And she had succeeded admirably—without needing the unreliable and pathetic fallback of magic to help her succeed. She had taught herself how to make men love her; then she nabbed Craig. She had thrown in her lot with him because she knew he would give her a stable, respectable life; like her, he wanted an orderly existence, with everything just so. The problem, of course, began when Craig’s idea of a good life began to conflict with—and even encroach upon—Bitty’s idea of it. And now it had come to this.
She headed to the kitchen, where she knew her family had taken refuge. Aubrey was still dressed from her interrupted date, having slipped through the back door by way of a neighbor’s yard. Meggie was beside her, her pixie’s face rumpled with concern. Bitty’s children were standing so close to each other that their shoulders were touching.
“Mom?” Carson said.
“Everything’s okay,” Bitty said. She went to him and kissed his head, his baby-fine hair. She did the same to her daughter, who smelled of strawberry shampoo.
“Let me guess,” Nessa said. She mocked her mother’s voice: “This is between me and your father.”
“That doesn’t help,” Bitty said. The Stitchery had grown hot. She was sweating. “I need you to take your brother upstairs right now.”
The Wishing Thread Page 19