A Good Yarn

Her marriage was dead, and burying it had virtually obliterated her self-esteem. If not for her children, Bethanne didn’t know what she would’ve done. Andrew and Annie needed her more than ever, and only for them did she continue.

When she’d finally made an appointment with an attorney, the man had been straightforward and helpful; what seemed like a fair financial arrangement had been settled upon. Grant refinanced the house for the third time and paid off their cars and their credit card bills with whatever equity he could extract, so they were both essentially debt-free. He was instructed to pay alimony for two years, plus child support until the children were out of high school. They would share college expenses. He hadn’t been late with a check yet, but then the state made sure of that. Bethanne would have to find a job soon, but for a dozen different reasons, she delayed.

It was now six months after the divorce had been finalized, and the fog was only starting to clear. She told herself she had to live one day at a time as she learned to deal with what her family and friends called her “new reality.” The problem was, she preferred her old reality….

Bethanne sipped her tea, which had begun to cool. She was startled from her thoughts when the door off the kitchen banged open and sixteen-year-old Annie came in, red-faced and sweating. Tendrils of wet hair pressed against the sides of her face. She wore a halter top and spandex shorts, and had apparently been out for a lengthy run. Because Annie had always felt close to her father, she’d taken the divorce particularly hard. Soon after Grant moved out, Annie had started running and would often go five and even ten miles a day. Unfortunately, that hadn’t been the only change in her daughter’s behavior. The new friends she’d acquired were a bigger concern.

Bethanne worried endlessly about Annie and the company she kept. The girl’s anger was focused on Tiffany, and Bethanne suspected that Annie’s new friends encouraged her more outrageous acts. While Bethanne was no fan of the other woman, whom she’d discovered to be fifteen years younger than her ex, she was afraid Annie might do something stupid in her zeal to retaliate against Tiffany, something that would involve the police.

Andrew had talked to Bethanne several times about various things he’d learned Annie had done. These included signing Tiffany up for magazine subscriptions, leaving her name and number with sales staff and scheduling appointments, all in Tiffany’s name. However, Annie remained scornfully silent whenever Bethanne tried to bring up the subject.

“You didn’t leave me a note,” Bethanne chastised mildly as Annie walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a cold bottle of water.

“Sorry,” the girl mumbled unapologetically. She twisted off the lid, leaned back her head and gulped down half the contents. “I figured you’d know. I run every day.”

Bethanne did know, but that was beside the point.

“How’d it go at the employment agency?” her daughter asked.

Bethanne sighed, wishing Annie hadn’t mentioned it. “Not good.” She’d known this job search would be difficult, but she’d had no idea how truly painful the process would be. “When I told the interviewer about my baking skills, he didn’t seem overly impressed.”

“You should work in a bakery.”

Bethanne had already considered that, but being around food for eight hours a day didn’t appeal to her.

“Andrew and I were the envy of all our friends.” Annie sounded almost nostalgic. “We had the best birthday parties and birthday cakes of anyone.”

“I used to organize great scavenger hunts too, but there’s little call for that these days.”

“Oh, Mom.” She rolled her eyes as she spoke.

“I’ll look seriously once the summer is over.”

“You keep putting it off,” Annie chided.

Her daughter was right, but after all these years outside the job market, Bethanne didn’t think she possessed any saleable skills. She was terrified that she’d end up at a grocery store asking people if they wanted paper or plastic for the rest of her life.

“I was thinking of selling cosmetics,” she said tentatively, glancing at Annie for a reaction. “I could set my own hours and—”

“Mom!” Her daughter glared at her. “That’s pathetic.”

“Lots of women make a very nice income from it, and—”

“Selling cosmetics is fine for someone else, but not you. You’re great at lots of things, but you’d make a terrible salesperson and we both know it. There’s got to be something you can do. Where’s your pride?”

For the last sixteen months it’d been swirling in the bottom of a toilet bowl. “I’d hate an office job,” Bethanne said. She wasn’t convinced she could ever adjust to a nine-to-five routine.

“You should do something just for you,” Annie insisted. “I’m not even talking about a job.”

Everyone Bethanne knew, including the counsellor she’d briefly seen, had told her the same thing. “When did you get so smart?” she teased.

“Isn’t there anything you’d like to do just for fun?”

Bethanne shrugged. “You’ll laugh and tell me it’s pathetic.”

“What?”

She sighed, reluctant to say anything. “I saw a yarn store the other day and was thinking how much I’d like to knit again. It’s been years. I made you a baby blanket, remember?”

“Mom,” Annie cried, flinching as though Bethanne had embarrassed her. “Of course I remember it. I slept with that yellow blankie until I was ten.”

“I used to enjoy knitting, but that was years ago.”

The front door opened, then slammed shut. Andrew, coming home from his part-time job at the local Safeway. He entered the kitchen, shucking off his backpack, and without a word to either of them, opened the fridge and stared inside. Apparently nothing interested him more than a soda, which he removed. He closed the door, leaning against it, and frowned at them.

“What’s going on?” he asked, looking from Bethanne to his younger sister.

“Mom’s talking about wanting to knit again,” Annie said.

“It’s only something I’m thinking about,” Bethanne rushed to add.

“You can do it,” Annie told her firmly.

“Yeah,” Andrew agreed and popped the top of his soda.

But Bethanne wasn’t sure she could. It all seemed to require too much energy—finding a job, organizing her life, even knitting. “Maybe I will,” she murmured tentatively.

“You’re not putting this off the way you have everything else.” Annie opened the pantry door and pulled out the Yellow Pages. “Where was that yarn shop?”

Bethanne bit her lower lip. “Blossom Street.”

“Do you remember the name of it?” Andrew asked.

Annie flipped to the back of the massive directory.

“No, but listen—”

With her finger on the page, Annie looked up, eyes flashing with determination. “Found it.” She smiled triumphantly at her brother, scooped up the phone and punched out the number before Bethanne could protest. When she’d finished, Annie handed the receiver to her mother.

A woman answered. “A Good Yarn,” she said in a friendly voice. “How may I help you?”

“Ah, hello … my name is Bethanne Hamlin. I guess my name doesn’t matter, but, well, I was wondering if you still offer knitting classes.” She paused to take a breath. “I used to knit years ago,” she went on, “but it’s been a very long time. Perhaps it’d be better if I visited the store.” Bethanne’s gaze rose to meet her daughter’s.

“Give me the phone,” Annie demanded and without waiting for a response, grabbed it from her.

“Yes, that sounds great. Sign her up,” Annie ordered. She reached for a pad and paper and wrote down the details. “She’ll be there.” Half a minute later, Annie replaced the portable phone.

“You signed her up for a class?” Andrew asked.

“Yup.”

“I, ah …” Bethanne suddenly felt panicked about spending the money. “Listen, this might not be such a good idea, after all, because—”

Her daughter cut her off. “You’ll be learning to knit socks.”

“Socks?” Bethanne cried, vigorously shaking her head. “That’s far too complicated for me.”

“Mom,” Andrew said, “you used to knit all the time, remember?”

“Socks aren’t difficult, according to the shop owner,” Annie continued. “Her name’s Lydia Hoffman and she said they’re actually quite simple.”

“Yeah, right,” Bethanne muttered.

“You’re going, Mom, and I won’t take no for an answer.”

“You’re going,” Andrew echoed.

Apparently their roles had reversed, although this was news to Bethanne. It must’ve happened while she wasn’t paying attention.

4

CHAPTER

COURTNEY PULANSKI

In Courtney’s opinion, this entire plan of her father’s was ridiculous and unfair. Okay, so she’d gotten into some minor trouble talking back to her teachers and letting her grades drop. It could’ve been a whole lot worse—like if the police ever found out who’d started that Dumpster fire four years ago. Who could blame her, though? Her mother had just died and Courtney was lost, angry, confused. She was doing better—not that she was over it. She’d never get “over it,” despite what her more clueless friends suggested. But in time she’d straightened herself out and worked hard to salvage her high-school years and now this. This!

Her senior year of high school would be spent with her Grandma Pulanski in Seattle. While the kids she’d grown up with all her life graduated together, she’d be stuck halfway across the country. Courtney loved her grandmother, but she couldn’t imagine living with her for an entire year.

There was no one else. No other place for Courtney to go while her father was in Brazil working as an engineer on a bridge-building project. Where he was going wasn’t safe for a teenage girl, or so he insisted.

Jason, her oldest brother, was in graduate school and had a job teaching summer classes. Her sister, Julianna, was a college junior; she was working, too, at a vacation lodge in Alaska. Courtney was the youngest. College expenses for her brother and sister kept adding up. Plain and simple, her father needed the money; otherwise, he would’ve waited until Courtney had graduated from high school. Except that when she did, there wouldn’t be much likelihood of getting a scholarship. Unfortunately her grades weren’t the greatest and her chances of receiving an enter-college-free card were about the same as winning the lottery. In other words, her dad would be stuck paying for her, too. Spending the year in Seattle was the obvious solution.

Everything would’ve been different if her mother hadn’t died in that freak car accident. It’d happened four years ago and still felt like yesterday.

“Courtney,” her grandmother called from the foot of the stairs. “Are you awake?”

“Yes, Grandma.” There was no way she could sleep in with the television blaring at five o’clock in the morning. Her grandmother needed hearing aids but refused to believe it. Everyone mumbled, according to Vera Pulanski. Everyone in the whole world!

“I have breakfast cooking,” her grandmother shouted.

Courtney stared up at the ceiling and rolled her eyes. “I’m not hungry.”

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

She’d been with her grandmother for exactly a week and this was the seventh day in a row that they’d had this same conversation.

“I’ll eat something later,” Courtney promised. The thought of dry scrambled eggs made her want to gag, but that was how her grandmother cooked them. She had all these ideas from television about what was good for a teenager and what wasn’t. Apparently, the only way to prepare anything safely was to cook the hell out of it. As a result, her grandmother’s scrambled eggs tasted like rubber. Not that she’d ever eaten rubber, but she was convinced these would qualify.

“I hate to throw food away.”

“I’m sorry, Grandma.” With all the meals she’d skipped since she arrived, Courtney figured she should’ve lost weight. She hadn’t. The scale had glared accusingly up at her that very morning. Fresh from the shower and completely naked, she’d stepped onto the bathroom scale, a relic if there ever was one. She’d closed her eyes, then peered down at the numbers and those ridiculously tiny lines between them. Her grandmother didn’t seem to know about digital. Not only hadn’t Courtney lost weight, but it looked as if she’d gone up a pound. She wanted to weep. Starting a new school would be bad enough, but facing strangers while she was fat was even worse.

“Courtney?” Again her grandmother yelled at her from the bottom of the stairs.

“Yes, Grandma.” Vera obviously wasn’t backing off this morning.

“I’m going out for a while. I need to run a few errands.”

“Okay, Grandma.”

“I want you to come with me.”

Sighing heavily, Courtney sat up, thumped her feet onto the floor and let her shoulders slump forward. “Can I stay here?” she pleaded. After her shower, she’d put her pajamas back on, since she couldn’t think of a reason to get dressed. Not a good reason, anyway.

“I’d really like it if you joined me. You spend far too much time in your room.”

“All right, Grandma.”

“What did you say?”

Rising slowly, Courtney went over to the doorway and shouted, “I’ll be right down.”

Smiling, her grandmother nodded. “Good.”

Vera Pulanski was a wonderful woman and Courtney had always enjoyed her visits to Chicago. But this was different. She’d never had to live with someone this old before. Everything in the house would sell as an antique on eBay.

With a decided lack of enthusiasm, she pulled on her jeans and an oversize black T-shirt that had her dad’s company logo on the front. When she’d walked down the stairs Vera smiled sweetly and stopped her on the last step. Raising her arms, her grandmother cupped Courtney’s face as she studied her.

“You’re a beautiful girl.”

Courtney responded with a weak smile.

“You’re the apple of my eye, my youngest grandchild.”

“Yes, Grandma.”

“I’ve always regretted that Ralph didn’t live long enough to know you.”

Her grandfather had died when Courtney was a few months old. “Me, too.”

“Now, what I’m about to say is only because I love you.”

Courtney bristled, bracing herself for another lecture. “Grandma, please, I know I need to lose weight. You don’t have to say it, all right?” Courtney couldn’t keep the defensiveness out of her voice. It wasn’t as if she could avoid looking in mirrors. She was overweight and well aware of it. The weight gain had happened after her mother’s death; until then, she’d been a size ten and suddenly, poof—she’d blown up into a sixteen. The thing Courtney resented most was being reminded of it by all those well-meaning folks who assumed it was easy to drop thirty-five pounds.

“Actually, that wasn’t what I wanted to say.” Her grandmother released Courtney’s face. “I think you need friends.”

“So do I.” She missed Chicago so much, she could cry just remembering everything and everyone she’d left behind. Even her house, which had been rented out for the year.

“You aren’t going to meet anyone holed up in your room, sweetheart,” her grandmother said gently. “You need to get out more.”

Courtney didn’t have a single argument. She lowered her eyes. “I know.”

“Come with me and I’ll introduce you around.”

She opened her mouth to object, but knew it wouldn’t do any good. Her grandmother caught her by the hand and dragged Courtney toward the kitchen. The scrambled eggs were on the table and Courtney could’ve sworn they were the same eggs her grandmother had cooked the day before.

“I thought we’d go to the library and then the grocery store and after that, the yarn store.”

In other words, Courtney was being kidnapped.

“I’m ready now, dear, if that’s all right with you.”

“Me, too, Grandma.” The sooner she gave in, the sooner she could get back to her room.

“Let me check to make sure the lock on the front door is turned,” her grandmother said.

Actually, it was a full seven minutes before they left the house. After checking the front door, her grandmother went into the bathroom to refresh her lipstick. Then she decided she shouldn’t leave the eggs out, covered them with a piece of wrinkled plastic and set the plate in the refrigerator, which confirmed Courtney’s suspicions. Those were the same eggs as the day before.

“Are you ready now?” her grandmother asked, as if Courtney was the one holding up the process.

“Anytime you are.”

“Oh!” her grandmother cried. “I nearly forgot my purse,” she said, giggling. “My goodness, I might have locked us out of the house.”

Finally they were outside. The car, parked in the driveway, could’ve been in a museum. From what Courtney’s father had told her, the 1968 Ford Ranch station wagon was in prime condition. Well, it should be. The car was nearly forty years old and had only 72,000 miles on it. The door weighed a ton and creaked when Courtney opened it. Without another word, she slid onto the seat next to her grandmother.

Driving with Vera was not an experience one engaged in willingly. Once she’d started the engine, she turned to Courtney. “Look behind us. Is anyone coming?”

Courtney twisted around. “You’re fine, Grandma.” Then it occurred to her that her grandmother hadn’t asked this out of idle curiosity. “Grandma,” she said, “why didn’t you turn around and look?”

Her grandmother squared her shoulders. “Because I can’t.”

“You can’t?”

“Do you have a hearing problem, child? I can’t turn my head. I have this crick in my neck. It’s been there for twenty years—I never had such pain. The doctor said there’s nothing they can do. Nothing, and so I suffer. I don’t like to complain and I wouldn’t, but since you asked …”

Although the thought of being a passenger while her grandmother drove terrified Courtney, she didn’t say a word. What was the point? She’d managed to avoid car trips for the last few days, but she’d realized her luck couldn’t possibly hold.

Another question occurred to her. “Grandma, what would you do if I wasn’t with you?” Courtney suspected, fearfully, that her grandmother would just put the car in Reverse and gun it.

Tight-lipped, her grandmother adjusted the rearview mirror, using both hands to move it one way and then the other. “That’s what mirrors are for.”

“Oh.”

“Can we leave now?”

Her questions had clearly offended her grandmother. “Sure,” Courtney said with an enthusiasm born of guilt.

Her grandmother half turned to glance at her as they reached the first stoplight. “If you’re concerned about your weight, Courtney, I could help.”

Courtney eyed her suspiciously. “How?”

“Exercise. I swim in the mornings and you could join me and my friends.”

That didn’t sound like much fun, but then exercise wasn’t supposed to be. “I guess.”

“What do you guess?”

“It’s just an expression, Grandma. It means sure, I’d like that.” This was an exaggeration in the extreme, but her grandmother was making an effort to be helpful and Courtney felt she had to respond appropriately.

Their first stop after leaving Queen Anne Hill, the Seattle area where her grandmother lived, was the library, which seemed ultramodern, especially in comparison to Vera’s neighborhood. Her grandmother explained that it had only recently reopened after a renovation. While Vera picked up a reserved book—the latest hardcover romance by a local author—Courtney flipped through Vogue magazines, trying not to despair at all the thin, elegant models. And that was just the ads.

They drove to the grocery store next. Courtney didn’t have the latest census figures for the population of the Seattle Metro area—she was convinced it had to be in the millions—but her grandmother surely knew fifty percent of them. More times than she cared to count, they were waylaid by her grandmother’s friends, former neighbors, a dozen or more people from church, bridge club members…. Courtney must have been introduced to thirty people and she swore that not a single one was under seventy.

“Now Blossom Street,” her grandmother said as Courtney carried the groceries out to the car. “I won’t be long, I promise.”

Courtney bit her tongue to keep from reminding her grandmother that this was what she’d said at the last place. Seven conversations later, they’d driven off and now Vera was working her way into the angled parking space in front of the yarn shop. She rolled an inch or so, slammed on the brake, released it enough to roll another inch, then it was brake time again. Courtney should’ve predicted what would happen, but it blindsided her. Her grandmother’s bumper crashed against the parking meter hard enough to jolt her forward.

“Oh, darn,” her grandmother mumbled.

If darn was the best swear word Vera Pulanski knew, Courtney would be happy to broaden her vocabulary.

Climbing out of the car, she closed the heavy door and followed her grandmother inside. Courtney immediately walked over to the cat in the window and started petting him.

“Hello, Vera. How are you?” a young, petite woman said.

“Lydia, I’m glad to see you. This is my granddaughter Courtney. Courtney, Lydia.”

“Hi.” Courtney raised her hand in greeting.

“Do you knit?” Lydia asked.

Courtney shrugged. “A little.”

“I taught her one summer,” her grandmother boasted. “She took to it right off the bat.”

Courtney didn’t remember it that way, but she didn’t want to be rude.

“Courtney’s staying with me this year while her father’s in Brazil.”

Not wanting to listen to another lengthy explanation of her father’s important engineering role in South America, Courtney left the cat and wandered through the store. She’d had no idea there were so many different varieties of yarn. A display scarf knitted in variegated colors was gorgeous, and there was a felted hat and purse, a vest and a sweater.

“You could knit that scarf up in an evening,” Lydia said, lifting the end of it for Courtney to inspect.

“Really?”

“Yes.” She smiled widely. “It’s easy with size thirteen needles and one skein of yarn. You cast on fifteen stitches and knit every row. It’s that easy.”

“Wow.” Courtney had money with her, but hesitated. A twenty probably wasn’t enough to cover the cost of the needles and yarn, and she didn’t want to borrow from her grandmother.

Five minutes later, while Courtney was studying a display of patterned socks, Vera placed her purchases on the counter by the cash register. Courtney didn’t know what her grandmother was currently knitting, but she always seemed to have some project or other on the go. She hurried over.

“Did you see the socks?” her grandmother asked.

Courtney nodded. “Those new yarns are really amazing, aren’t they?”

“You could knit a pair of socks like that.”

“No way.”

“Would you like to?” Lydia asked.

Courtney considered the question. “I guess.”

“That means yes,” her grandmother translated. “Sign her up.”

“Sign me up for what?” Courtney wanted to know.

“The sock class,” her grandmother explained. “It’s time you met people, went out, got involved.”

“We’d love to have you,” Lydia assured her.

“My treat,” her grandmother added.

Courtney smiled, trying to show she was grateful. Actually, the idea was growing on her. She just hoped at least one other person in the sock class was under ninety years old.

5

CHAPTER

“Remember that you need two socks. How to achieve this feat? Knit both at the same time, and release the idea that they need to be identical!”

—Deborah Robson, knitter, writer, publisher of knitting books

www.nomad-press.com

LYDIA HOFFMAN

I try to spend at least part of every weekend with my mother. It’s been difficult for her since Dad died. Difficult for all of us. I so regret that Brad never had the opportunity to meet my father. I feel certain they would have liked each other. My dad was open and friendly, and he always found something positive in everyone he met. He had a kind word and usually a joke or two; even when I was at my sick-and-despairing worst, he could make me smile. No one told a story better than my father. I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever stop thinking about him, because it seems that he’s on my mind more and more instead of less.