There were once seven Knit-Wits. Now there are four. Every few years brings another empty place at the table.
“My word, Tova!” Mary Ann Minetti lowers a teapot onto her dining table, staring at Tova’s arm. The pot is swaddled in a crocheted yellow cozy, probably a project someone knitted once, back when knitting was something the Knit- Wits actually did at their weekly luncheons. The teapot cozy matches the yellow jeweled barrette at Mary Ann’s temple, the clip holding back tawny curls.
Janice Kim eyes Tova’s arm as she fills her mug. “An allergy, maybe?” A swirl of oolong steam fogs her round spectacles, and she takes them off and wipes them on the hem of her T-shirt, which Tova suspects must belong to Janice’s son, Timothy, because it’s at least three sizes too large and emblazoned with the logo of the Korean shopping center down in Seattle where Timothy invested in a restaurant some years back.
“That mark?” Tova says, tugging the sleeve of her sweater down. “It’s nothing.”
“You should get it checked out.” Barb Vanderhoof plops a third sugar cube into her tea. Her cropped gray hair has been combed into gel-set spikes, which is one of her favored styles lately. When she first debuted this look, she joked that it was only fitting for a Barb to have barbs, which made the Knit-Wits laugh. Not for the first time, Tova imagines poking her finger down on one of the thorns on her friend’s head.
Would it prick her, like one of the sea urchins down at the aquarium, or would it crumple under her touch?
“It’s nothing,” Tova repeats. Heat seeps into the tips of her ears.
“Well, let me tell you.” Barb takes a slurp of her tea and goes on. “You know my Andie? She had this rash last year when she came up for Easter. Mind you, I never saw it myself—it was in sort of an indelicate place, if you catch my drift, but not the sort of rash one gets from indecent behavior, mind you. No, it was just a rash. Anyway, I told her she should see my dermatologist. He’s wonderful. But my Andie is beyond stubborn, you know. And that rash kept getting worse, and—”
Janice cuts off Barb. “Tova, do you want Peter to recommend someone?” Janice’s husband, Dr. Peter Kim, is retired but well-connected in the medical community.
“I don’t need a doctor.” Tova forces a weak smile. “It was a minor incident at work.”
“At work!” “An incident!”
“What happened?”
Tova draws in a breath. She can still feel the tentacle wrapped around her wrist. The spots had faded overnight, but they remained dark enough to see plainly. She tugs her sleeve down again.
Should she tell them?
“A mishap with some of the cleaning equipment,” she finally says.
Around the table, three pairs of eyes narrow at her.
Mary Ann wipes an imaginary spot from the tabletop with one of her tea towels. “That job of yours, Tova. Last time I was down at the aquarium, I nearly lost my lunch from the smell. How do you manage?”
Tova takes a chocolate chip cookie from the platter Mary Ann set out earlier. Mary Ann warms the cookies in the oven before the ladies arrive. One can’t have tea, she always
comments, without something homemade to nibble on. The cookies came from a package Mary Ann bought at Shop- Way. All of the Knit-Wits know this.
“That old dump. Of course it smells,” Janice says. “But really, Tova, are you okay? Manual labor, at our age. Why must you work?”
Barb crosses her arms. “I worked down at St. Ann’s for a while after Rick died. To pass the time. They asked me to run the whole office, you know.”
“Filing,” Mary Ann mutters. “You did filing.”
“And you quit because they couldn’t keep it organized the way you liked,” Janice says, her voice dry. “But the point is, you weren’t down on your hands and knees washing floors.”
Mary Ann leans in. “Tova, I hope you realize, if you need help . . .”
“Help?”
“Yes, help. I don’t know how Will arranged your finances.” Tova stiffens. “Thank you, but I have no such need.”
“But if you did.” Mary Ann’s lips knit together.
“I do not,” Tova replies quietly. And this is true. Tova’s bank account would cover her modest needs several times over. She does not need charity: not from Mary Ann, not from anyone else. And further, what a thing to bring up, and all because of a little set of marks on her arm.
After rising from the table, Tova sets her teacup down and leans on the counter. The window over the kitchen sink overlooks Mary Ann’s garden, where her rhododendron bushes cower under the low gray sky. The tender magenta petals seem to shiver as a breeze ruffles the branches, and Tova wishes she could tuck them back into their buds. The chill in the air is unseasonable for mid-June. Summer is certainly dragging its feet this year.
On the windowsill, Mary Ann has arranged a collection of religious paraphernalia: little glass angels with cherub faces, candles, a small army of shiny silver crosses in various
sizes, lined up like soldiers. Mary Ann must polish them daily to keep them gleaming.
Janice cups her shoulder. “Tova? Earth to Tova?”
Tova can’t help but smile. The lilt in Janice’s voice makes Tova think Janice has been watching sitcoms again.
“Please don’t be upset. Mary Ann didn’t mean anything by it. We’re just worried.”
“Thank you, but I am fine.” Tova pats Janice’s hand.
Janice raises one of her neatly groomed eyebrows, steering Tova back toward the table. It’s clear Janice understands how deeply Tova wishes to change the subject, because she goes for low-hanging conversational fruit.
“So, Barb, what’s new with the girls?”
“Oh, did I tell you?” Barb draws in a dramatic breath. No one has ever needed to ask Barb twice to muse on the lives of her daughters and grandchildren. “Andie was supposed to bring the girls up for their summer break. But they had a hitch in their plans. That’s exactly what she said: a hitch.”
Janice wipes her glasses with one of Mary Ann’s embroidered napkins. “Is that right, Barb?”
“They haven’t been up since last Thanksgiving! She and Mark took the kids to Las Vegas for Christmas. If you can believe that. Who spends a holiday in Las Vegas?” Barb pronounces both words, Las and Vegas, with equal weight and contempt, the way someone might say spoiled milk.
Janice and Mary Ann both shake their heads, and Tova takes another cookie. All three women nod along as Barb launches into a story about her daughter’s family, who live two hours away in Seattle, which one might conclude was in another hemisphere for how infrequently Barb purports to see them.
“I told them, I sure hope to hug those grandbabies soon.
Lord only knows how long I’ll be around!” Janice sighs. “Enough, Barb.”
“Excuse me a moment.” Tova’s chair scrapes on the linoleum.
AS ONE WOULD gather from the name, the Knit-Wits began as a knitting club. Twenty-five years ago, a handful of Sowell Bay women met to swap yarn. Eventually, it became a refuge for them to escape empty homes, bittersweet voids left by children grown and moved on. For this reason, among others, Tova had initially resisted joining. Her void held no sweetness, only bitterness; at the time, Erik had been gone five years. How delicate those wounds were back then, how little it took to nudge the scabs out of place and start the bleeding anew.
The faucet in Mary Ann’s powder room lets out a squeak as Tova turns on the tap. Their complaints haven’t changed much over the years. First, it was what a pity the university is such a long drive, and what a shame we only get phone calls on Sunday afternoons. Now it’s grandbabies and great- grandbabies. These women have always worn motherhood big and loud on their chests, but Tova keeps hers inside, sunk deep in her guts like an old bullet. Private.
A few days before Erik disappeared, Tova had made an almond cake for his eighteenth birthday. The house carried that marzipan smell for days after. She still remembers how it lingered in her kitchen like a clueless houseguest who didn’t know when to leave.
At first, Erik’s disappearance was considered a runaway case. The last person who saw him was one of the deckhands working the eleven-o’clock southbound ferry, the last boat of the night, and the deckhand reported nothing unusual. Erik was meant to lock up the ticket booth afterward, which he always did, dutifully. Erik was so pleased they trusted him with the key; it was only a summer job, after all. The sheriff said they found the ticket booth unlocked, with the register cash fully accounted for. Erik’s backpack was stashed under the chair, along with his portable cassette player and headphones, even his wallet. Before they ruled out the possibility of foul play, the sheriff
speculated that perhaps Erik had stepped away for a short time, planning to come back.
Why would he leave his booth alone when on duty? Tova has never understood. Will always had a theory there was a girl involved, but no trace of any girl—or any boy, for that matter—was ever found. His friends insisted that he wasn’t seeing anyone at the time. If Erik had been seeing someone, the world would’ve known about it. Erik was a popular kid.
One week later, they found the boat: a rusty old Sun Cat no one had noticed was missing from the tiny marina that used to be next to the ferry dock. It washed ashore with its anchor rope cut off clean. Erik’s prints were on the rudder. Evidence was thin, but it all pointed to the boy taking his own life, the sheriff said.
The neighbors said.
The newspapers said. Everyone said.
Tova has never believed that. Not for one minute.
She pats her face dry, blinking at the reflection in the powder room mirror. The Knit-Wits have been her friends for years, and sometimes she still feels as if she’s a mistaken jigsaw piece who found her way into the wrong puzzle.
TOVA RETRIEVES HER cup from the sink, pours herself some fresh oolong, and slips back into her chair and the conversation. It’s a discussion of Mary Ann’s neighbor who is suing his orthopedist after a poorly done surgery. The ladies agree the physician ought to be held responsible. Then there’s a round of cooing over photos of Janice’s little Yorkie, Rolo, who often comes along to Knit-Wits in Janice’s handbag. Today, Rolo is home with a sour stomach.
“Poor Rolo,” Mary Ann says. “Do you think he ate something bad?”
“You should stop feeding him human food,” Barb says. “Rick used to give our Sully plate scraps behind my back. But I could tell every time. Oh, the smelly shit!”
“Barbara!” Mary Ann says, eyes wide. Janice and Tova laugh.
“Well, pardon my language, but that dog could stink up a whole room. May she rest in peace.” Barb presses her hands together, prayer-like.
Tova knows how dearly Barb had loved her golden retriever, Sully. Perhaps more than she’d loved her late husband, Rick. And in the space of a few months, last year, she lost both. Tova wonders sometimes if it’s better that way, to have one’s tragedies clustered together, to make good use of the existing rawness. Get it over with in one shot. Tova knew there was a bottom to those depths of despair. Once your soul was soaked though with grief, any more simply ran off, overflowed, the way maple syrup on Saturday-morning pancakes always cascaded onto the table whenever Erik was allowed to pour it himself.
At three in the afternoon, the Knit-Wits are gathering their jackets and pocketbooks from the backs of their chairs when Mary Ann pulls Tova aside.
“Please do let us know if you need help.” Mary Ann clasps Tova’s hand, the other woman’s olive Italian skin young-looking and smooth, comparatively. Tova’s Scandinavian genes, so kind in her youth, had turned on her as she aged. By forty, her corn-silk hair was gray. By fifty, the lines on her face seemed etched in clay. Now she sometimes catches a glimpse of her profile reflected in a shop window, the way her shoulders have begun to stoop. She wonders how this body can possibly be hers.
“I assure you, I don’t need help.”
“If that job becomes too much, you’ll quit. Won’t you?” “Certainly.”
“All right.” Mary Ann doesn’t look convinced.
“Thank you for the tea, Mary Ann.” Tova slips into her jacket and smiles at the group of them. “Lovely afternoon, as always.”
TOVA PATS THE dashboard and steps on the accelerator, coaxing another downshift from the hatchback. The car groans as it climbs.
Mary Ann’s house sits in the bottom of a wide valley that once was nothing but daffodil fields. Tova remembers riding through them when she was a little girl, next to her older brother, Lars, in the back seat of the family’s Packard. Papa at the steering wheel, Mama next to him with her window down, clutching her scarf under her chin so it wouldn’t fly off. Tova would roll her window down, too, and crane her neck as far out as she dared. The valley smelled of sweet manure. Millions of yellow bonnetheads blurred together into a sea of sunshine.
Nowadays, the valley floor is a suburban grid. Every couple of years, the county has a big to-do about reworking the road snaking up the hillside. Mary Ann is always writing letters to the council about it. Too steep, she argues, too prone to mudslides.
“Not too steep for us,” Tova says, as the hatchback pulls over the crest.
On the other side, a spot of sun glows on the water, squeezing through a crack in the clouds. Then, as if pulled by puppet strings, the crack opens, bathing Puget Sound in clear light.
“Well, how about that,” Tova says, flipping down the visor. Squinting, she turns right onto Sound View Drive, which runs along the ridgeline above the water. Toward home.
Sun, at last! Her asters need deadheading, and for weeks the chilly, wet weather, unseasonable even by Pacific Northwest standards, has dampened her enthusiasm for yard work. At the thought of doing something productive, she presses the gas harder. Perhaps she can finish the entire flower bed before supper.
She breezes through the house for a glass of water on her way to the back garden, pausing to press the blinking
red button on her answering machine. That machine is perpetually full of nonsense, people trying to sell her stuff, but she always clears out her messages first thing. How can anyone function with a red light blinking in the background?
The first recording is someone soliciting donations.
Delete.
The second message is clearly a scam. Who would be foolish enough to call back and give a bank account number? Delete.
The third message is an error. Muffled voices, then a click. A butt dial, as Janice Kim refers to them. A hazard of the ridiculous practice of keeping phones in pockets. Delete. The fourth message begins with a stretch of silence.
Tova’s finger is about to punch the delete button when a woman’s voice comes on. “Tova Sullivan?” She clears her throat. “This is Maureen Cochran? From the Charter Village Long-Term Care Center?”
Tova’s water glass clinks as it hits the counter. “I’m afraid I have some bad news . . .”
With a sharp click, Tova punches the button to hush the machine. She doesn’t need to hear any more. It’s a message she’s been expecting for quite some time.
Her brother, Lars.
