The two hours ended too quickly. That was what Mary thought as she said goodbye to this circle of strangers. Somehow, in the course of the evening, their presence had soothed her. Unlike her friends— her “mommy friends,” Dylan called them—whose lives still revolved around their children, these women’s lives remained a mystery. All that mattered, sitting there with them, was knitting.
In the dark parking lot, she watched Harriet and Beth get into a car together and drive away. Briefly she wondered what their story was, what had brought the older woman to boast so possessively about Beth, what had brought them here tonight.
The lights in the shop went dark. But Mary still stood there.
“Mary?” Scarlet said from behind her. “Wishing on a star?”
“You know,” Mary said, “I don’t believe in that anymore.”
Scarlet leaned against the car beside Mary’s and lit a cigarette. “Fuck,” she said. “Neither do I.”
They both looked up at the sky. Clouds floated by, blocking the stars, then revealing them.
“You know something else?” Scarlet said. “I don’t believe in comets or meteor showers.”
“Those are scientific facts,” Mary said.
“Do you know how many times I’ve gotten my tired ass out of bed to go and see Hale-Bopp or the best meteor shower in a zillion years and it’s always a disappointment. I sit in a freezing car staring up at the sky waiting for this phenomenon. This once-in-a-lifetime incredible thing. But it never happens.”
It does, Mary thought, and Stella’s face took shape in the dark sky.
“It does happen,” Mary said. “It’s just fleeting.”
Scarlet took another drag on her cigarette, then put it out under her boot. From the depths of her oversized bag she pulled out a business card. “I’ll teach you how to purl,” she said. “When you finish that scarf, you’ll be ready.”
“Great,” Mary said. “So I’ll call you in what? A million years?”
“You’ll finish that thing in a couple of days,” Scarlet said. “That’s how it is at first,” she said, her voice low. “You knit to save your life,” she said like someone who knew. She touched Mary’s arm lightly, then got into her car. That was when Mary saw Lulu inside, slouched in the passenger seat. “Call me,” Scarlet said. “Anytime.”
Mary waved goodbye. She got into her own car and waited for Alice to come out. But she didn’t. When Mary finally backed away, her headlights illuminated the shop and she could see Alice inside, alone, knitting.
Once you are comfortable with the knit stitch, you should move on to the purl stitch. These two stitches are the foundation of knitting. From these two stitches, you can create everything you’ll ever want to knit. —NANCY J. THOMAS AND ILANA RABINOWITZ, A Passion for Knitting
In three days, Mary finished her second scarf. She draped it over a chair at the kitchen table for Dylan to see as soon as he got home. Her fingers followed the stripes of color down the length of the scarf. It would look good with tassels, she decided. If she went back to the knitting circle she would ask Alice how to make tassels, and how to attach them.
The phone rang and Mary let the machine pick up.
Her boss’s voice filled the room.
“Hey, Mary, it’s me, Eddie,” he said. “Just, you know, checking in.”
As Eddie talked, Mary set the table for dinner. Two plates, two napkins, two forks, two wineglasses. Even after all these months this simple act made her gut wrench. That third seat—Stella’s seat—empty.
“So there’s this truck driving around town selling tacos,” Eddie was saying. “Or empanadas. Something. And I was thinking, you could maybe find this truck and eat some tacos, or whatever, and write about the experience.”
“Shut up, Eddie,” Mary said to the answering machine.
“I don’t know, Mary,” Eddie said, his voice soft. “Maybe it would help a little.”
Her mouth filled with a sharp metallic taste and she swallowed hard a few times.
“The thing is,” Eddie continued, “I know you’re standing right there listening to me and I just wish you would pick up the phone or go and eat some empanadas or something.” He waited, as if she might really pick up the phone. “Okay,” he said finally. “Call me?”
At the sound of him hanging up, Mary said, “Bye, Eddie.”
The faces of the women in the knitting circle floated across her mind. She liked that they were strangers, that her story, her tragedy, was unknown to them. And, she realized, their stories were unknown to her. For all she knew, they each held their own secret; they each knit to … what had Scarlet said? To save their lives. To them, she was a knitter, a woman who could make something from a ball of yarn. Her friends would never believe this of her. Once, out of frustration, her friend Jodie had come over and sewn on all of Mary’s missing or loose buttons. “Hopeless,” Jodie had called her. It had been weeks since Jodie had even called. Like many of her friends, Jodie had run out of ways to offer comfort.
Mary heard Dylan’s key in the door and ran to meet him.
“What a welcome,” he whispered into her hair.
She held on to him hard. She hated being alone now, and she hated her neediness.
“Smells good,” Dylan said.
“Me?” Mary said, flirting. “Or dinner?”
“Both,” he said.
“Can you believe it?” she said, walking to the stove. “Eddie wants me to chase some food truck around town.”
“And?” Dylan said too hopefully.
“And write about it,” Mary snapped. “As if I could write about the importance of a taco,” she muttered.
She plucked a strand of spaghetti from the boiling water and bit into it, testing. She tried not to think of Stella standing at her side, her pasta tester, the way she would bite into a strand and wrinkle her nose with seriousness before pronouncing it was almost ready. “Two more hours,” she liked to say.
“It might be fun,” Dylan said, but she could tell his heart wasn’t into having this argument again. It had become a pattern with them, his frustrated urging for her to go back to work, her anger at him for being able to work at all. A few times it had grown into full-blown fighting, with Dylan yelling at her, “You have to try to help yourself!” and Mary accusing him of being callous. More often, though, it was this quiet disagreement, this sarcasm and misunderstanding, the hurt feelings that followed.
Mary sighed and drained the pasta, stirring in the sauce she’d made—onions, crushed tomatoes, pancetta. As she grated cheese over it, Dylan opened a bottle of wine.
“I can’t get used to it,”