She turned the handle on the skein-winder more vigorously, annoyed with herself for obsessing. But it was hard to think about anything else. Even when she put on the Fun Home soundtrack full blast, she found herself singing along by rote but not really paying attention.
It couldn't have been a breakup—she'd never seen a headline announcing the divorce of a celebrity's relative, only the celebrity themselves. Some kind of sickness made more sense, although she wasn't really sure why that would be newsworthy—unless Snowplow had posted an Awareness post about it. Like if Danielle had Lyme Disease or something, and Snowplow wanted to bring attention to Lyme. Marilyn from the knit group had Lyme once. She seemed serene about it now, but whenever Clara went hiking with Lindsay, she insisted on them both checking each other for ticks with fierce scrutiny afterwards, fired up by Marilyn's frank stories of impaired short-term memory.
Clara pulled the skein off the skein winder and twisted it into the fat, fluffy coil the customer would get in the mail.
Some kind of homophobic or misogynist rant coming from her uncle would definitely upset Danielle, but that would be out of the blue and completely inconsistent from Snowplow's usual ideology. For a brief moment she wondered if he'd suddenly announced he was converting to Christianity, but her intellect caught up with her imagination and she remembered that Ritchie wasn't the type of person to realize that someone like Danielle might find that distressing.
Was Snowplow sick? Or maybe Danielle's father, who was presumably his brother?
It couldn't be something innocuous like Snowplow outing Danielle without her permission, could it? Although maybe that wasn't as innocuous as Clara initially thought. Not everyone lived in Clara's happy liberal bubble. And it would explain Ritchie suddenly shutting himself up. Golden Rule, after all — never out anyone without their permission. That was an old one. It's not like Ritchie knew Danielle was out to Clara already.
At some point her brain entirely left reason and started coming up with things like He's been called up for the House on Unamerican Activities Committee or It turned out he was an alien spy all along — like the Disguisers on Captain Werewolf.
"This is dumb," she said to the cat, who looked back at her with big, blasé eyes. "Someone else is going to find out and tell me and then it won't even be my fault that I know without her wanting me to know." With a sigh, she picked up her phone again.
Hey, she texted. One of my friends at knitting said I needed to send you some love and support but he wouldn't tell me why. I don't need to know why, but I want you to know you have my friendship and if you need me for anything, even if you just want to come over and break dishes in my back yard, I'm here for you.
There. Feeling much better, she arranged the next skein on the swift, dragging the end over to the skein winder to begin rewinding.
Danielle texted back: Thanks, Yarn Fairy. I really appreciate that. Looking forward to the next time I can help with club.
I could use help winding the spoonbill colorway, Clara responded.
I don’t teach tomorrow.
I'm off tomorrow, too! Want to come over after breakfast?
Danielle responded with a flurry of smiley faces and then a turtle.
As she lulled herself back into a trance of spinning pink yarn, Clara felt with satisfaction that it no longer mattered if Danielle told her what this was all about or not — she knew she'd done the right thing by not letting the accident of her uncle's celebrity take away Danielle's privacy, at least where the two of them were concerned.
❀
Clara clicked OK on the print screen again, then stared at her printer while gnawing at her lip with increasing irritation. This was the fourth time she'd sent the Spoonbills at Sunrise yarn label to the printer, and the fourth time absolutely diddly-fuck had happened. The printer made a small coughing noise, like the cartridge had moved an inch, but nothing came out.
She checked the connection again, which was tight at both ends just as it had been two minutes ago. The knock at the door came just after she restarted her laptop — again.
Danielle stood in the doorway, a fashion plate straight out of the 1940's in her red retro halter-dress covered in white polka dots. She was even wearing winged eyeliner and red lipstick, and her black locks cascaded in casual waves over her shoulders. She held up a white paper bag. "Rugelach?"
Clara needed a moment to take this vision in. "Come on in. You look amazing!"
"Thanks." Danielle walked in and set the bag down on the table. She moved deliberately, cautiously, a little stiff, a little like she was on stage. The eyeliner was too perfect; the fashion plate, plates of armor.
"I was just printing some labels, or trying to." Clara fiddled with the laptop again, hoping her house was cozy and safe and distracting. "See? I keep sending it to the printer but it doesn't print. I guess it'll only cut into my profit a little if I have to go to the copy shop; it's more about the annoyance of adding another step that I can't just do between yarn stuff."
"Can I see?"
Clara pushed the laptop over.
Danielle clicked and dragged and clicked again. Clara noticed the hands working on her keyboard had bright red nails to match the rest of the ensemble. "There."
The printer chugged into motion, sucked in a sheet of heavy bond paper, and dragged its cartridge back and forth. "Wow, thanks! What happened?"
Danielle pushed the computer back to her. "It was trying to send the job to another printer."
"That's the only printer in the house," said Clara, her brow furrowed.
"It says,” and then Danielle read off a string of of numbers and letters, ending with “and then another hyphen and TennisMama.”
"That's at my parents’ house." Clara rolled her eyes. "Oh, my God. It's not actually printing over there five times, right? I'd have to be on her internet?"
"Probably not," said Danielle, "but there is a way you can print to other people's printers if you're not there. I think you have to have a password, though."
"Wasn't there a case recently of someone sending anti-Semitic fliers to print out at college campuses?" Clara had woken up that morning with another thought—maybe Danielle's mystery trauma was something like that. Living in South Florida, Clara sometimes had the luxury of forgetting about neo-Nazis until the internet brought her back to reality.
"I think they were hackers," said Danielle, collecting her thick waves of hair in her hands and arranging them over one shoulder. She picked up a hank of Roseate Spoonbill yarn from the table and made a mock lasso with it. "So what are we wrangling today, cowgirl?"
Clara showed her how to use the umbrella swift and the skein winder, so that the already-dried pink loops of yarn could be reskeined into their final saleable form, and Danielle got to work right away.
"Man, my right arm's getting so much exercise!" she exclaimed as she pumped the crank. "I'm gonna come out of this looking like a fiddler crab."
Clara finished cutting labels once the printer finished with them, then retreated into the kitchen to mix more dye. She was incredibly careful not to sneeze over any open jars this time!
"Are you making more of the pink?"
"No, this is the mahi mahi one," Clara replied, stirring the water in the jar. She set it down and dove for a pile of yarn in the corner of the sofa, then tossed her quarry to Danielle. "Here."
Danielle looked it over beneath one admiringly arched eyebrow. "I'd totally wear this." It was electric blue with accents of yellow and green, like the fish.
"I can make you something with it." Clara checked the color saturation against her test swatch, then carefully added another quarter teaspoon of dye to the hot jar, stirring it until it finally dissolved.
"That'd be awesome! Like what?"
"I mean, there's always socks, but it's too hot down here most of the year to wear wool socks," Clara pointed out. "But a lacy scarf might be easier to deal with. Here, this is Jasmine's. I made it in a mystery knit-a-long and she fell in love with the way it turned
out so I let her keep it."
Danielle held the filmy plum gossamer up to the light. "I was right to call you the Yarn Fairy. This is like something out of a fairy-tale. What's a mystery knit-a-long?"
"Remember how the colors in a sock club are a surprise?" said Clara. "This is like that, only for patterns. They tell you how much yarn you need at the beginning so you know how much to buy, and then only reveal a little bit of the lace chart at a time."
"She must be a pretty good sister to deserve something like this." Danielle held it to her chest with both hands and looked pensively into space.
"Oh, she's great. Now that we're both adults. Look, she made me a quilt for my birthday—she doesn't knit, she sews." Clara dashed into her bedroom and came out shaking the cat hairs out of the 'old timey Broadway'-themed quilt. She held it up for Danielle proudly. "I think she had enough fun treasure-hunting for all the weird fabric as I do sleeping under it!"
Danielle's response was not at all what Clara had expected. She was standing in place as if frozen there, trembling slightly, her eyes closed and her fingertips resting on the table. Sure enough, between the lids of those closed eyes escaped a couple of fat tears that rolled in a mascara-tinted streak down her cheeks.
Clara threw the quilt over the back of the sofa and approached her. "I'm here," she said gently.
"I'm my own art today," Danielle began quietly. "I got up and I wanted to feel good, so I put on the dress, and the beads, and the heels, and the makeup—like I'm my own canvas. And I just kept going. If I did my face, maybe I wouldn't cry. I haven't been able to paint in months, Clara." Danielle's eyes popped open, tears streaming out.
Clara handed her a tissue. Danielle took it and dabbed at the sides of her eyes gingerly, but used it mostly to ball into a wad in her stressed-out hands.
"I'm in so much pain. My brother—" Danielle sighed like a wind before a thunderstorm. "He was my best friend. He's always been my best friend. We laugh at each other's stupid jokes. We were there for each other. I can't." She stopped again.
Clara just waited.
"He stole my identity," Danielle began again in a more deliberate, louder, angry tone. "My credit is fucked, my life savings are down to — never mind."
"Oh, my God," Clara breathed. "I'm so sorry."
"He kept getting suckered into real estate deals that were each supposed to be 'Ooh, this is gonna make me a millionaire' or whatever." She pierced the air with scarequote fingers. "Except somehow it never worked out that way, and he blew through his own money and then things got weird, and fuck, and fucking fuck."
"I'm so, so sorry."
"This fucking sucks," Danielle spewed. "For weeks I've been wanting to ask you out but I haven't because this is who I am right now and you don't deserve all this anger and pain."
"Oh, my gosh, you ridiculous person." Clara took both her hands in hers. "I know you feel like that inside but that's not how it comes out on the outside."
Danielle looked at her through tear-streaked eyelashes. "Are you willing to hang out and do stuff even if I don't smile the whole time except if we see a dog on a skateboard or something?"
"Yes!" Clara nodded enthusiastically.
Danielle squeezed her hands, and Clara knew that was what Danielle felt like doing instead of smiling. "I'm so glad we met."
"Me too. But I'm sorry about what you're going through."
"I feel like I've lost my whole life," said Danielle. "All our childhood memories together, our adult memories... so much of the way I'd spend my life had him in it. Now, I feel like I've been put against my will on an alien planet called New Reality, and I can't get back home. Maybe home never existed, maybe home's destroyed. I don't know."
She started to sob for real, and instinctively, Clara folded her head down against her shoulder and held her. Warm tears soaked into Clara's apron and against her collarbone, and she inhaled the clean gardenia scent of Danielle's hair for the first time.
"Thanks," Danielle murmured, her lips feeling startlingly intimate against Clara's skin. "Anyway, he got arrested last week, and the news found out because of my uncle being a TV star."
"This must be so hard for your family."
"They're dealing with it. I was the one he was closest with. Or so I thought. I don't know." Danielle picked herself up again and wiped a sniffly nose. "He stole from Mom, too."
"Oh, gosh." Clara rummaged in a kitchen drawer and emerged with a chocolate bar. "I know this is only a drop in the bucket, but will it help at all?"
Danielle half-smiled and held up her hand in polite refusal. "Thanks, though."
"Wait, no, I know." Clara flung open the refrigerator. "Pickle?"
Now Danielle was cry-laughing as she took the half-sour from Clara. "And I thought it was just the dye smell again!"
"So, I have no life right now, but if I can crank out enough of this yarn on schedule, you want to spend Sunday downtown with me doing random staycation shit?"
"Please," said Danielle. "I'm starting from scratch. I'd love to make some new memories."
"Have you really not been able to paint?"
Danielle shook her head.
"That sucks."
"Tell me about it," said Danielle. "It's like, oh, wow, my biggest form of self-expression and healing, and I can't use it to express myself and heal! Fantastic. It's hard to just be because if I sit there being I start brooding, and without 'be time' the paintings don't have any fuel." She sighed. "I want to go back to helping you wind yarn but I could use some winding down myself. Can you show me more pretty things? Crafts are art and art will make me feel better." She walked over to the quilt. "This quilt is amazing, by the way."
"Yeah, totally!" said Clara. "Ooh, I know. I never showed you the stuff I made from the first sock club."
Danielle perched on the sofa and waited as Clara went to her bedroom and fetched her finished objects.
"So, this is what the socks end up looking like." Clara passed them over. She was proud of the way the simple pattern she'd chosen showed off their varying intensities of rusty reddish-orange. "This is sort of... a lace snood, I guess? And this one's a shawl."
Danielle studied each one with both eyes and hands. "So soft." Her glance lingered over the shawl, a rich tapestry of silver-toned greens and blues with just a hint of pink. "Thank you for sharing all this with me."
"Should I put some music on while we work?" Clara suggested.
"Something loud," Danielle agreed.
❀
Clara sat perched on a low brick wall beside the Intercoastal, working on her knitting project as she waited for Danielle. A bright sun beamed overhead, and the early afternoon was punctuated by the sounds of cutlery clinking and murmurs of brunch conversation in nearby restaurants.
She heard footsteps drawing close from the right, and turned to see Danielle walking up the path of tribute bricks in a strappy white sundress. "Hi, I'm looking for my date—have you seen her?"
"Dates?" Clara pointed up at the date palm above her head, feeling the heat crank up in her face behind her mischievous smile. Oh, that one was awful.
Danielle narrowed her eyes. "I may just let you live."
Clara stuffed the unfinished sock back into her purse. "You look really cute!"
"You, too!"
"Thanks!" Clara was wearing a little dress Jasmine made her out of cartoon sheep fabric. She stopped herself saying so — maybe she'd tell Danielle later but she didn't want to remind her of what she'd lost. She hopped off the brick wall. "Have you ever been on the boat tour?"
Danielle shook her head. "Not from here. But I'm up for anything!"
"Mostly it's just rich people's homes," Clara explained as they walked, "but there's usually a lot of gorgeous architecture and landscaping, and a few minutes of open water."
"Ought to be fun!"
They bought their tickets, and then Clara looked at her watch. "So, we've got a couple of hours. How do you feel about going across the street to the science museum? I know there's not mu
ch time, but I have a family pass so we can go in and out whenever."
The light was green, but there was a momentary break in cars so they scuttled across to the huge breezeway at the museum's entrance.
Once inside, they drifted over to the wildlife exhibits. Clara peered into the touch tank, watching the hermit crabs crawl in gentle underwater slow-mo across the pebbled surface. Danielle drew one finger across the shell of a living conch, her movements artlessly sensual.
"It likes you because it knows you won't eat its friends." Clara flashed her an impish grin.
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