The Knitting Circle: The uplifting and heartwarming novel you need to read this year

Mary scrawled a note to Dylan, Gone knittin’, and left it on the kitchen table. At ten after six, Scarlet pulled up in front of Mary’s house. A new friend, Mary thought as she carefully locked the front door. Just that day Jodie had finally called and said, “I don’t know what to say. Should I ask how you are? Should I mention Stella or not? God, Mary, I am so sorry to let you down.” And Mary had said, “No, no, I’m fine. Really.” The lie had burned in her throat for the rest of the afternoon.

Eddie had called and Mary had lied to him too. “You know,” she’d said, “I’m doing so much better. Really I am. Maybe I’m ready to come back to work.” “Uh-huh,” Eddie had said, knowing better.

As she approached Scarlet’s car, she saw that someone else was already in the front seat beside Scarlet.

“You remember Lulu?” Scarlet said after Mary slid into the backseat.

“Of course,” Mary said, trying to hide her disappointment.

Lulu’s platinum blonde hair was newly razor cut in uneven chunks, shiny from some expensive hair care product like wax or mud that kept it looking slightly dirty. She had on black again: a leather motorcycle jacket, turtleneck, skinny pants, and boots.

Mary settled back into the seat, wishing she hadn’t come.

“Lulu’s loft is right beneath mine,” Scarlet said. “She’s a glass sculptor.”

“Really?” Mary said.

“You moved here from where?” Lulu said. Her voice sounded like she’d been smoking and drinking whiskey her entire life.

“San Francisco,” Mary said.

“Have you noticed,” Lulu said, turning slightly, “that everyone in this city is from somewhere else?”

Despite herself, Mary relaxed. Lulu wasn’t so bad. It was Mary herself who couldn’t relate to anyone.

“A glass sculptor,” Mary said. “That seems so … I don’t know, to work with such a fragile material seems impossible.”

“The beauty of glass,” Lulu said almost dreamily, “is that it’s remained unchanged for hundreds of years.”

“She trained in Venice,” Scarlet said.

“Maybe you’ll show me your things sometime,” Mary said.

“Maybe,” Lulu said unconvincingly, looking straight ahead.

“Wait!” Beth said. “I brought pictures.”

She pulled a set of glossy photographs from a large envelope. Four children—two boys standing behind two girls—smiled stiffly out from them, all wearing matching red and green sweaters. Did she get her kids’ picture taken every fucking week? Mary thought.

“Have you ever seen such perfect children?” Harriet said softly.

Yes, Mary thought. Yes, I have.

Mary hated the way Harriet looked at Beth, as if she were the only person who’d ever had children. She watched Harriet watching Beth’s proud face. No, Mary decided, she looks at her as if she might disappear.

Scarlet glanced at the picture politely, then passed it on to Lulu. “Nice,” Scarlet said without much conviction.

“What a brood!” Lulu said.

Beth laughed. “I always wanted a lot of children.”

“She graduated magna cum laude, you know,” Harriet said.

Beth shrugged off the boasting. “In early childhood education. It wasn’t too challenging. It was just what I loved.”

“She loves kids,” Harriet said, her voice so tender that Beth flushed with embarrassment. “Of course, I worry about her,” Harriet added. “She does too much.”

Mary rolled her eyes and lost track of what she was doing.

“Did I just knit?” she said. “Or purl?”

Scarlet leaned over to help and locked her eyes with Mary’s. She wants to take that picture and tear it to shreds too, Mary thought.

“The knit stitches look like little Vs,” Scarlet said. “See? And the purls look like bumps.”

“Like pearls,” Harriet said.

“So I just purled?” Mary said.

Scarlet grinned. “No, you just knit.”

Mary settled back and concentrated. Purl two. Knit two. Beth’s voice swirled around her. Purl two. Knit two.

“Chris is my comedian. And Nate is my athlete. He plays three sports …”

Purl two. Knit two. Purl two.

“… Caroline is the scholar. She always has her nose in a book. I don’t know where she got that …”

Knit two. Purl two.

“… And what can I say? Stella’s my baby. We named her after my grandmother, you know, and believe me, she’s the only Stella in her nursery school.”

Mary stared at the yarn in her hands and gulped. It looked unfamiliar suddenly, and she wasn’t even sure what she should be doing with it.

“If I could only keep her four forever,” Beth said with a sigh.

Scarlet kneeled in front of Mary. “Do you need help?” she said softly.

“I, I don’t know what I’m doing here,” Mary said.

“You just purled two stitches,” Scarlet said, her voice calm and even. “Now you’re going to knit two stitches. Then purl two.” She didn’t move until Mary finally knit two stitches. “Now knit two,” Scarlet said softly. “Now purl two. Now knit.”

“Come with us for martinis,” Scarlet said as they drove back to Providence.

Exhausted, Mary said, “Maybe another time. I didn’t even tell my husband I was going out.”

“See?” Lulu said. “Husbands are a grand liability, Scarlet. They keep you away from martinis.” Lulu pointed out the window. “Look!”

The moon hung full and orange in the sky ahead.

“Blue moon,” Lulu said.

“Looks red to me,” Scarlet said.

“No, no,” Lulu laughed. “A blue moon is the second full moon in the same month.”

“Lulu knows more fun facts than anybody I know,” Scarlet said.

“Correction. More useless facts,” Lulu said, her gaze focused out the window.

Two hundred and twenty-eight thousand children and young adults die every year. Sixty thousand children a year under the age of six die. Two thousand children a year die from bacterial meningitis. The children who live often lose limbs or hearing or eyesight.

“You know,” Mary said, her voice quivering, “a martini sounds like a great idea.”

The bar was downtown, on a block of deserted buildings, tucked away without a sign or awning. Inside, it was crowded and smoky and the three women had to stand crushed close together at the bar.

Two oversized martinis later, a small table opened and Lulu pushed her way to claim it. Mary was starting to like Lulu. She reminded Mary of her old self, the one who had something to say about everything.

Sitting with a fresh round of drinks in front of them, Mary said to Lulu, “I can’t believe you ever left the city. It seems like a perfect fit for you.”

Lulu fished an olive out of her drink and popped it in her mouth. She ordered her martinis dirty, extra olives and their juice.

Mary frowned, wondering what she had said wrong.

“Beth can be a bit much,” Scarlet said, breaking the awkward silence. “The matching sweaters. The pictures.”

“Always with the fucking pictures,” Lulu said.

Mary’s stomach tumbled, remembering Beth’s voice. What can I say? Stella’s my baby …

“Mary?” Scarlet was saying, her hand resting tenderly on Mary’s arm. “Are you all right?”

“I should get home,” Mary managed.

“Sadie, Sadie, married lady,” Lulu said.

Later, standing in her bedroom doorway, dizzy and melancholy, Mary studied her husband’s sleeping face. It had become topographical from grief. Even in sleep he wore his sadness plainly. CNN blared from the television, talk of wars and distant tragedies. Mary walked over to the television and turned it off, sending the room into darkness except for the blue moon that lit up the sky.

PART THREE

Knit Two Together (K2tog)

Patterns are more specific about decreasing than increasing. Decreases done in certain ways slant the stitches to the right or left. For many patterns this is an important element; for others it doesn’t matter at all that much. —NANCY J. THOMAS AND ILANA RABINOWITZ, A Passion for Knitting

5

Lulu

On Halloween night, Mary stayed in bed and watched TV. Even as the doorbell rang and children’s voices chirped, “Trick or treat!” to Dylan, Mary stared at the television.

Downstairs, Dylan marveled at miniature Spider-Men and Harry Potters. He claimed each witch the scariest, each princess the loveliest. Mary did not think of the way that Stella always chose a winged creature for her Halloween costume: butterfly, bumblebee, fairy. She did not think of how meager that list was, how it should have grown over the years, adding bats and ladybugs, raptors and dragonflies.

Eventually Dylan came upstairs.

“What a crowd!” he said. “We never have such a crowd.”

“Usually we’re among them,” Mary said without looking at him. “We’re trick-or-treaters.”

He stood in front of the television, holding a pastry box tied with string.

“Someone got mixed up and gave us candy instead of the other way around?” she said, taking it from him.

She pulled the string from the box and opened it. Inside, nestled in a tight row, sat three cannelles.

“Scarlet brought them?” Mary said.

“I found them on the doorstep. No note.”

Dylan sat beside her on the bed.

“What a terrible night,” he said.

Mary handed him one of the pastries and took one for herself, letting its perfect sweetness fill her mouth.

“It might have been better if we’d done it together,” he said, not looking at her. “If we’d both been down there.”

Mary shook her head. “I told you I couldn’t,” she said. “You could have hidden up here with me.” She tried not to sound defensive.

But Dylan said, “I guess I can’t hide from everything like you can,” and she heard that too-familiar edge in his voice.

“I’m sorry,” Mary told him, though she wasn’t certain what she was sorry about: sorry that Stella had died and she couldn’t handle it? Sorry she couldn’t be more like him in the face of this?

“I’ll fight you for the third one,” Dylan said, changing the subject, letting their frustration lie there between them.

“One holiday down, and an infinite number to go,” Dylan said, licking crumbs from his fingers.

“And my mother’s threatening to come for Thanksgiving,” Mary said, her hands shaping the string into the Eiffel Tower.

Too early one morning her mother had called. “I’ve been invited to eat with Saul and his family,” she’d said, “but if you want me there, there I’ll be.”

“Saul?” Mary had said, cranky. She hated starting the day with a phone call from her mother. “Who’s Saul?”

“I’ve only mentioned him a few hundred times,” her mother said. “A neighbor. A friend. His children, all three of them, come down from Houston for Thanksgiving. With their spouses. And their children.”

“Lucky Saul,” Mary said.

“Eight grandchildren. He’ll have a full house, that’s for sure. I said I’d make my sweet potatoes. The ones I do so beautifully? The casserole? And of course help with the turkey.”

“It sounds like you should stay there then,” Mary said. Her first year without Stella, and didn’t all the books and groups and advice about grief warn that all the firsts were the worst? Couldn’t her mother figure that out when everyone else seemed to know it?

“That’s what I thought,” her mother was saying. “You and Dylan should get away. Go to Havana. That’s the place to forget everything.”

“What if I don’t want to forget?” Mary said, closing her eyes against her mother’s voice, against the sun that was beginning to show its bright face in her bedroom window, against the whole world beyond her bed.

“I understand,” her mother said. “But running away for a bit won’t erase anything. It will just take the edge off a little. I remember that trip your father and I took—” she began.

But Mary didn’t care about some long-ago vacation, or about her mother’s philosophies on loss.

“Mom, you don’t know anything about it,” Mary interrupted.

“This was a long time ago,” her mother continued. “Before you were born. We went to Key West. And we walked on those little streets with all the palm trees—”

Her mother sighed, then spoke again.

“Cuba. Havana, Cuba,” she said. “I hear it’s time to go to Cuba.”

“Thanks,” Mary said. “That’s really great advice.”

A few minutes after she’d hung up, the phone rang again.

“You can’t take your knitting on the airplane.”

“Mom?” Mary said.

“In case you go to Cuba. They don’t allow you to bring the needles on board anymore.”

“I’m not going to Cuba, Mom,” Mary said.

“Mrs. Earle said that they let you bring circular needles. But you’re not working on those yet, are you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Mary said. “I’m not flying anywhere.”

Lying in her bed Halloween night, Mary imagined flying somewhere. She thought of Stella last Halloween, a perfect fairy, all sparkles and tulle. And then she thought of herself, so earthbound, so stuck.

When her mother called again, Mary was lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling, willing herself to take off, to actually burst through the roof and into the sky.

“I’ve been thinking about Thanksgiving,” her mother said. “I don’t want to make it worse for you. It’s going to be bad. I know that. And for the life of me I know that I can’t make it any better. Stay with your husband. I’ll barge in on Saul and his family. Next year will be a whole other story.”

“That sounds great,” Mary said. “Have fun.”

She hung up the phone and stared hard at the ceiling, as if she could by sheer force break a hole in it and see all the way up to the sky.

On Thanksgiving morning they drove to Dylan’s sister’s house in Connecticut. The night before there was enough of a snowfall to leave a perfect dusting on the yards and trees of Sara’s neighborhood. The houses, set back from the street, emitted warm yellow light from inside, and lovely puffs of smoke from the chimneys. A few had already strung small white Christmas lights around their doors and windows, and these twinkled in the gray afternoon.

“It looks like a movie set,” Mary said, hating it here.

“Yeah,” Dylan muttered, “a horror movie.”

She thought of Beth from knitting. This was where she would live. She and her four matching children, her Stella.

They pulled into the driveway behind Sara’s Volvo wagon. One like it sat in every driveway here. Sara had an annoying habit of referring to her things by brand—the Volvo, the Saab. Her purse was the Kate Spade; her shoes were the Pradas, the Adidas, the Uggs.

Sara stood on the front steps, dressed head to toe in camel, ready to pounce on them.

“Hey, you two,” she said. “Can you believe it? Snow on Thanksgiving? I had to pull my Uggs out of the attic.”

She hugged them both in turn, firmly, the kind of hug Mary had come to learn was meant to express sympathy.

Fires roared in each fireplace of each room they walked through. So perfect was each fire that Mary concluded they must be gas, not real wood ones. But then a log crackled and sent blue sparks against the screen. Maybe the fires were the only real things here.

In one of the living rooms—Sara actually had three rooms that could be living rooms, all with carefully arranged sofas and love seats and overstuffed chairs, and small tables with magazines neatly lined up, or large books about amusement parks and Winslow Homer—stood Sara’s husband, Tim, and their two teenage sons, Timmy and Daniel, along with another family, who looked like carbon copies of them. Except Liz and Dave also had an unhappy-looking daughter, Sylvie, who stood alone sullenly eating miniature quiches.

“Ali’s with her roommate,” Sara told Mary conspiratorially. She said everything conspiratorially. “In Virgin Gorda. Poor thing, right?”

“Wow,” Mary said stupidly, which was how she said everything, she realized. “Virgin Gorda.”

“Get these two a Tanqueray and tonic,” Sara told Dave, after introductions.

“You bet,” Dave said in his overeager voice. He sold something Mary could never remember. Pharmaceuticals?

The boys all stared at their loafers, so Mary went to stand beside Sylvie.

“What grade are you in now?” Mary asked, finding comfort in the superfluous gesture. “Eighth?”

“Sixth,” Sylvie said between mini quiches. “I did junior kindergarten so I’m like a year older than everyone else.” She moved on to a platter of dates wrapped in bacon.

“Do you know about this?” Liz asked Mary. “It’s a wonderful way to build self-confidence and self-image. They do a year between kindergarten and first grade, working on social skills and reinforcing basic learning skills. Then they get into first grade and they are at the top of their class. Honestly, it’s the best idea ever.”

Mary nodded politely and gulped at her gin and tonic. Here was where she should feel smug at how self-confident Stella was. And smart. A kid who knew her own mind. A kid who sailed through kindergarten, printing her letters perfectly, writing her numbers just so, and coloring maps of South America and China in bright colors.

Tears stung Mary’s eyes and she turned, pretending to admire a painting that hung over the fireplace.

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