The Knitting Circle

by Ann Hood

  The next night she asked him to roll another joint, but he refused. “Sure, you’ll go home a drug addict and your husband will come and find me and beat the shit out of me.”

  “I do have a husband,” she said.

  It was dusk and the sky beyond the bedroom window was blue-black.

  “I figured,” Connor said. He hesitated, then said, “You told me you were damaged goods. But since my wife died, I can’t connect any more than this. Than what we have here.”

  Relieved, Mary said, “Eventually I have to figure out if it’s really over between him and me.”

  “You’ll figure it out,” he said.

  The inn was closed between Christmas and New Year’s, so they spent a week together, taking walks along the empty beach, building fires in his fireplace, talking little about each other’s lives or plans. They were two people without futures, Mary thought more than once. Two people living in a kind of limbo.

  New Year’s Day, when she finally got into her car to leave, Connor waving goodbye from the wraparound porch’s steps, Mary thought it was entirely possible that she’d never return to Providence at all. She imagined driving south and not stopping until the warm air and palm trees of Florida came into view. Or perhaps she would turn the car west and find a small town somewhere, with a good bookstore, a café that roasted its own coffee beans, a group of strong women who met for coffee and knitting and talk. For a while, the possibilities seemed endless.

  But then Maine turned into New Hampshire, New Hampshire to Massachusetts, and then the WELCOME TO RHODE ISLAND sign appeared and Mary knew that she was not going to do anything but go home, where the pieces of her marriage lay, where Stella’s room sat empty, where the image of her daughter still brought her both comfort and pain.

  “I’VE GOTTEN AHEAD,” Mary told Alice. She was grateful they were speaking on the telephone rather than in person so that Alice couldn’t see her blush. “I was up in Maine and I kept knitting and knitting and I finished my zigzag block.”

  “Good for you,” Alice said. “But I can’t help you with the next one. I’m going home to England for a couple of weeks.”

  Mary fingered her next skein of yarn: brick. Scarlet and Lulu had gone to Costa Rica together for New Year’s. “If you weren’t married we’d invite you along,” Lulu had said, and Mary had pretended that she was indeed married and full of holiday plans. Ellen had moved into an apartment near Boston Children’s Hospital with Bridget while they waited for news of a heart. Even Harriet was off on an Elderhostel trip to the Galápagos Islands.

  “Beth is way ahead,” Alice was saying. “You could ask her.”

  Mary swallowed hard. “I don’t want to bother her,” she said, a half lie. She didn’t want to bother her, that part was true. But she also didn’t want to be around someone sick like that.

  “I think she likes company,” Alice said.

  “How is she?” Mary asked.

  “She’s dying,” Alice said.

  “But there’s always something that can be done,” Mary said.

  “She keeps trying, God bless her. Chemotherapy and surgery. She had one right after Christmas on her lungs. But they only found more tumors.”

  “Oh,” Mary said, tears welling up in her eyes.

  “She’ll be glad for the distraction,” Alice said before she hung up.

  BETH’S HUSBAND ANSWERED the door. Mary was immediately struck by how young he looked, how flushed with fear.

  He reached out a hand for her to shake, saying, “I’m Tommy.”

  Mary surprised herself by moving past his offered hand and hugging him instead. Tommy seemed used to it, and accepted the hug readily.

  “She was so glad you were coming,” he said, taking Mary’s coat and hat and scarf and leading her into the kitchen. “The holidays, you know,” he said. “Everyone’s away. Even Aunt Hennie.”

  “Aunt Hennie?” Mary asked.

  Tommy blushed. He had a shock of very dark hair and a very white face with pink cheeks, a red bow of a mouth, a nervous Adam’s apple.

  “Sorry. Aunt Harriet,” he said. “We always called her Hennie.”

  “Harriet is—”

  “My aunt,” Tommy said. “My mother’s sister.”

  “Your mother’s Viv then,” Mary said, more to herself than to Tommy.

  “You know her?” Tommy asked, surprised.

  “Harriet’s mentioned her,” she said.

  Everything fell so neatly into place. Beth was the niece who did everything so perfectly: the picnics and the Thanksgiving dinner, all of it.

  “Harriet is crazy about Beth,” Mary said, remembering that Beth was the kind of wife Harriet had wanted for her own son.

  Tommy’s Adam’s apple jumped a few times, then he turned from her, moving about the kitchen, lost.

  “Beth would have scolded me by now for not offering you a drink. Eggnog, maybe?” Then he added apologetically. “It’s the store-bought kind.”

  “Nothing. Thanks.”

  Tommy held out a platter of Christmas cookies.

  “I’m all set. Thanks,” Mary said.

  Tommy nodded, but didn’t put down the platter.

  “The kids are at my mother’s,” he said. “She doesn’t like to take all four of them, but…” His voice trailed off and he swallowed again, hard. Then he looked at Mary hopefully. “The doctors are going to see Beth on Monday. There’s something new they want to try. We’re sure it’ll work. You know, back when this all first started, one doctor told her she’d be lucky if she lived a year. And look at her. Four and a half years and there’s still something they can try. On Monday,” he said again, “we’ll go to Boston and we’ll see.”

  “Is Beth in the living room?” Mary asked.

  Tommy frowned. “No, no, she’s staying in bed mostly these days. Just until she feels a little better.”

  It was too hot in the house. Mary felt sweat trickling down her ribs. No wonder Tommy was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, a yellow one with a small light blue pony on the front.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’ll bring you upstairs.”

  Mary followed him, listening to the smack his bare feet made on the floor as he walked.

  Upstairs, the hallway was carpeted in pale green. It smelled of children—fruity shampoo and sweaty socks and baby powder. One room had bunk beds, a table of LEGOs, a wooden train set in various stages of completion. Across the hall a room with lilac walls and a light shaped like a bouquet of colorful tulips. Then another girl’s room, this one pink and scattered with stuffed animals, baby dolls, a pair of ruby slippers.

  “Hey, hon,” Tommy said softly. “Look who’s here.”

  Mary stood in the doorway of Beth’s bedroom. Beth was propped up with a sea of pillows behind her in bed. She had on that same chenille knit cap, and a white cotton nightgown. When she saw Mary, she smiled.

  “Come on in,” she said.

  Tommy rushed ahead of Mary and moved magazines from a chair by the bed. “Here,” he said. “Sit right here.”

  He asked Beth if she needed anything: More water? Some hard candy? A pill?

  But she shooed him away.

  “Just let us knit for a while,” she said.

  She had grown thinner, her cheeks hollow beneath the sharp angles of her cheekbones. Mary stumbled over her own thoughts. Ridiculous, she knew, to ask Beth how she was doing. Too many people had asked Mary that in the months after Stella died and she was too aware of how that question could not be answered. With her own husband gone, Mary felt awkward in the presence of this marriage. She watched as Tommy smoothed Beth’s blanket and bent to kiss her forehead before he left the room. Was Dylan performing such tender gestures with Denise? Mary wondered, her husband’s touch already fading.

  Beth tapped the seat beside the bed. “Sit down.”

  Relieved, Mary sat and busied herself with taking her knitting needles and yarn from her bag.

  “All business, huh?” Beth said. Her breath smelled like peaches that had gone
bad.

  Mary laughed nervously. “No. Not at all. I just don’t want to tire you.”

  “I’m tired all the time. All I do is sleep. Once I recuperate from this last surgery, I’ll be up and around again.”

  Mary looked away from Beth’s optimism.

  “It’s complicated,” Beth said.

  “It must be. You have to keep trying things. But there must be a part of you that is ready to say enough.”

  Mary realized that Beth had pushed herself upright, her eyes wide. “I, I meant the pattern,” Beth said.

  “Oh,” Mary said.

  There was an awkward silence.

  Then Beth said softly, “You know, the day I got my original diagnosis, I looked at that doctor and I told him, ‘I have a baby who’s not even two yet. And a three-year-old and a four-year-old and a son who just finished first grade. I’ve got a lot of work to do.’”

  “I’m sorry,” Mary mumbled.

  “I know this woman who fought her cancer for fourteen years when the doctors told her she only had six months to live. Then, fourteen years later, her oldest son got married and her youngest son graduated from high school and her middle son got into law school and she died that summer.”

  Mary’s fingers trembled around her knitting needles, her palms grew sweaty.

  “A mother can’t leave her children,” Beth said. “You don’t have children, do you?” Beth said, studying Mary through narrow eyes.

  Mary hesitated, then said, “No.”

  “Only a mother can understand maybe,” Beth said thoughtfully.

  “During this last operation,” she continued, “I was out, you know. Under anesthesia. And I saw this really fuzzy…something. Like a world or something. I had to squint to make anything of it, but there were gardens and people and sunlight, but it was just out of reach. I kept trying to get there, but I couldn’t. Do you think that was heaven?” Beth said suddenly.

  Shaken, Mary stammered, “I don’t know.”

  “You seem like someone who reads a lot. I thought maybe you’d read about it—”

  “About heaven?”

  Beth shrugged. She picked up her own knitting, and Mary saw that she was almost finished with her blanket, each square neatly finished, the various patterns perfectly knitted.

  “Spiderweb,” Beth said, examining each square. “Here it is.”

  She held it out for Mary to see.

  “I lied to you,” Mary said.

  Beth looked at her, surprised. “When?”

  “Just now,” Mary said. “I had a daughter. Stella,” she said, choking on the name. “She died last year, suddenly, and she was only five years old.” She was crying now, and dimly aware that she should not burden a dying woman with her own grief, but somehow she needed to tell Beth this one thing, so that Beth would see her differently.

  Beth was half off the bed, taking Mary’s hands into her warm ones. “Oh, oh,” Beth was saying, as if she were in pain.

  “That’s why I’ve been such a bitch,” Mary said. “Every time you talk about your daughter, or knit her a sweater, or show her picture, I’m reminded of what I don’t have.”

  When Mary’s eyes cleared of her tears, she saw Beth’s bloated stomach, the smell of rotting fruit hanging over her.

  “Let me help you,” Mary said, guiding Beth back into bed. Her bones were sharp beneath Mary’s hands.

  The effort of sitting up had worn her out. Beth lay with her head deep in one of the pillows, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow.

  Mary waited a few minutes, then quietly stood to leave.

  “No!” Beth said sharply. Her eyes opened and she had a feverish look about her.

  “Stay,” she said more softly. “It would be nice to talk a bit.”

  Mary hesitated, then sat back down.

  “It’s hard,” Beth said. “Tommy can’t bear to hear what I want to say.”

  “I don’t know if I’m—”

  Beth put her warm hand on Mary’s knee. “Sometimes, someone you don’t know well is the best listener.”

  Mary thought of all the stories she’d listened to since she’d joined the knitting circle. Hadn’t Alice told her that the listener finds solace in the act of listening?

  Beth sank back against the pillows. “It’s hard for some people to understand,” she said, “but all I wanted was to be a mother. I look at some of the women in the knitting circle, like Scarlet and Lulu, and I try to imagine what it would be like not to have any children. To have this successful, glamorous life, you know?”

  “Glamorous on the outside, maybe,” Mary said. “But everyone has their secrets.”

  “I know,” Beth said. “I had mine, didn’t I? Until it came back with such a vengeance.” She chewed her already-chapped lips. “Don’t laugh, but I met Tommy when I was seven years old. He hated me. But I knew then that I was going to marry him. Second grade! He’d always yell, ‘Beth Armstrong, you get away from me!’ And I would. I’d walk away. But deep down I knew that someday…well, here we are, right?

  “In middle school, he went out with my best friend, Leah. It practically broke my heart. But my mother said, ‘Somebody is going to marry Tommy Baker and that somebody could be you.’ So I took a deep breath and dug my heels in. Sure enough, by the time we got to high school, Leah was with another boy, Ronnie Blackhall. The worst kid in school. And she got pregnant. And she dropped out of school and they live in this terrible run-down house in Warren.”

  She paused, satisfied.

  “One day, at a football game, Tommy and his friends came up and sat right behind me and my friends. I still remember exactly what I had on. This puffy pink coat with white fake-fur trim around the hood, and white mittens with pink zigzags on them, and light blue corduroys. And my heart was beating so fast I thought I was going to pass out or something. Tommy never said one word to me until the game ended and we all got up to leave. Then he leaned close and said, ‘You look pretty in pink.’ My mouth went absolutely dry and I was afraid if I tried to talk my tongue would stick to the roof of my mouth, so I just smiled and felt grateful that my braces had come off two weeks before. ‘Want to meet me at Billy’s party tonight?’ he said, and I nodded again and smiled some more and that was it. I met him at Billy’s party and we’ve been together ever since. I don’t know, Mary. I always thought I was blessed with this perfect life. And now this.”

  Mary noticed a tube of Chap Stick on the night table and she took off the cap, slowly rolled up the balm, and held it out to Beth.

  “Thanks,” Beth said, tilting her face upward so that Mary could roll the Chap Stick across her dry lips.

  “I used to tell Tommy that I wanted six kids. Three girls and three boys. Even when we were in high school, I knew that. I was an only child and I remember sitting all by myself in the late afternoon, lonely, and imagining my future. There would be fancy dinners. Lamb chops, maybe. Fettuccine Alfredo. And there would be china dishes, white ones with pink flowers around the rims. And linen napkins. Oh, and there would be children. Lots of them. And they would have freshly scrubbed faces and bright eyes and OshKosh overalls. They would help me set the table and pour milk in the glasses and at dinner they would talk. Loud. And all at once. There would be beautiful, joyful noise.

  “And then there would be soccer practice and violin lessons and ballet recitals and homework. We would do these projects. Like at Thanksgiving we would trace our hands and make turkeys from them, each finger a brightly colored feather and our thumb the turkey’s head. Or we’d cut hearts with scalloped scissors and string them together, all red and pink and white, for Valentine’s Day. And in summer we would go to the beach and build elaborate sand castles, with deep moats.

  “I could see it all so clearly. Then it was actually real. Six days before our first wedding anniversary, I had Christopher, and then they just kept coming. I thought it was strange that I didn’t get pregnant right off after Stella. It just happened, every time. So when Stella was two and I still wasn’t pregnant again, I
started to worry. Tommy said I was crazy. Maybe we’re not having enough sex, he said.” Beth rolled her eyes. “Honestly, to me that was just the way to get another baby. I didn’t not like it. But I didn’t understand why people spent so much time thinking about it.”

  Beth blushed, her pale cheeks burning pink. “I don’t think I ever, you know,” she whispered.

  Mary considered. “You mean you never had an orgasm?”

  Beth giggled and blushed some more. “Right,” she said.

  “But you must have,” Mary said, lowering her voice too.

  Beth shrugged. “Wouldn’t I know?”

  “Sure,” Mary said. “But it isn’t always as dramatic as it is in movies. It can be just like, something building up, then falling away.”

  “Nope,” Beth said. “Not that it matters.”

  “It does matter,” Mary said. “You deserve that. Four kids. Married, how long?”

  “Twelve years,” Beth said.

  The door opened and both women jumped, startled and guilty.

  “Need anything?” Tommy asked.

  Beth laughed, hard.

  “What?” he said.

  “Nothing,” she said, gasping.

  The laughing, or maybe all the talking, seemed to have worn Beth out. She closed her eyes again and her breathing grew shallow and even.

  “Don’t go,” Beth said. “I just need to rest.”

  “Okay,” Mary said.

  After a few minutes, Beth spoke again, without opening her eyes. Mary leaned closer to hear her.

  “That day I found it,” Beth said, “it was summer and warm and beautiful. The kids were running through the sprinkler in the backyard, Stella in just her diaper and the others in their bathing suits, everyone in blue and green, like the ocean. And I was in the shower, soaping up, and reveling in the sounds of them laughing and squealing, the spray of the sprinkler hitting the side of the house. I had my eyes closed and I was smiling and so happy. And my hand on my breast felt it. Round and hard and big. I imagined a clogged milk duct. I imagined a mistake. But it was there. That was how my mother died, when I was in college.