The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society (14 page)

Merry clutched the knife handle. “You don’t mean that, Jeff.” She still kept her voice low.
Please, Lord, don’t let Courtney hear any of this
, she silently prayed.

“This family is out of control, Merry. I spent the whole day driving kids all over Sweetgum. How many activities do they need? Let them have a few friends over and play, for Pete’s sake.”

“You act like all of this happened while you were out of town on some extended business trip.” Merry wrenched the knife free from the chopping block. “You signed Jake up for soccer when he was four years old, not me. You cave in to Courtney’s demands every time she asks. And Sarah—” Her voice broke off. Her Sarah. Her own little princess. Jeff never seemed to have any time for her.

“You’ve had to deal with one day, Jeff. This is what I live every day.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand to keep from getting tomato juice in them. “I’m one person, Jeff. One. And I’m tired. And I’m lonely. And this just isn’t enough anymore.”

She hadn’t meant to say any of that, but the words tumbled out, spurred on no doubt by the hormones raging through her body.

“What are you saying? That you want a divorce?” Panic etched deep lines in his face.

“No. I don’t want a divorce.” She reached for a paper
towel to wipe up the remains of the tomato. “I want a marriage. And that may be the more difficult of the two options for you to deal with.” She wadded the soggy paper towel in her fist and threw it at Jeff’s chest. “Cook your own dinner. And the kids’ too.”

Merry spun around, grabbed her purse and keys from the little desk by the door, and walked out.

Camille looked out the window of the loft apartment. Over the rooftops of downtown Memphis, she could glimpse the Mississippi River in the distance. The streets below were surprisingly quiet, but then she’d never been in this area of town on a Sunday morning before.

She’d thought when she arrived last night that Alex would take her out for a nice dinner. She’d even surfed the Internet at the Sweetgum Public Library, carefully avoiding Eugenie’s shrewd eyes, to discover the names of some of the top restaurants. Instead Alex had produced a couple of steaks, which he’d grilled on the apartment’s miniscule balcony, accompanied by a bag of wilted lettuce. He just wanted to be alone with her, he said.

Camille might be only twenty-four, but she wasn’t stupid. Except apparently when it came to married men.

“Honey, you want more coffee?” Alex called from the kitchen on the other side of the living room.

“No. I’m fine.” She clutched the lapels of her robe closer
together. She should have been basking in triumph now that he had left his wife. She should have been standing on the little balcony, trumpeting her success. Instead, she felt hollow inside. She had never anticipated that it would feel like this, that regret would choke her throat so tightly she couldn’t swallow the first sip of coffee.

“Be careful what you ask for,”
her mother had always warned her.
“You just might get it.”

If only she had listened.

“Your cell phone’s ringing,” Alex called again, unseen. “Do you want me to answer it?”

“No!” She shot across the room and around the partial wall that divided the living area from the kitchen. “It’s probably my mom.”

Alex was standing in front of the sink filling the coffeepot with water. He chuckled. “You’re a grown woman, Camille.”

“And Sweetgum is a small town. She might recognize your voice. Besides …”

“What?”

She blushed, ashamed of her lack of sophistication. “It would upset her if a man answered my cell phone before eight o’clock in the morning.”

Alex reached over to chuck her under the chin. “You’re cute.” Then he swatted her rear. “Answer your phone.”

Camille scooped up her purse and hurried back to the living room. She sank onto the sleek leather sofa—if you could
call such a minimalist piece of furniture a sofa—and flipped open her phone.

“Hello?”

“I’m sorry to be a worrywart,” her mother said by way of greeting. “Just had to check on you.”

“I’m fine, Mom. Is everything okay there? Is Eulene taking good care of you?” Camille had finally found someone suitable to stay with her mother for the weekend, a retired woman who was a friend of Ruthie’s.

“Eulene is terrific. She’s going to help me with my bath this morning.”

Camille covered the phone’s mouthpiece to mask her sigh of relief. Her mother must like Eulene if she was letting her help with that particular chore.

“You left your knitting,” her mother said. “I thought you were going to take it with you.”

“That’s okay. I’ll be back tonight.”

“Are you having a good time?”

A hot rush of shame swamped her. She’d never lied to her mother like this before.

“Your book’s still here too. I hope you remembered your toothbrush,” her mother teased.

“I did.”

“Well, have a good time with Carmen. I’m sure you have a lot of catching up to do.”

Another lie. Her best friend from high school lived in
Memphis but was conveniently out of town this weekend. It had made for the perfect cover story.

“We stayed up way too late talking,” Camille said. How easily the falsehoods slid off her tongue.

And then Alex’s deep voice called from the kitchen, “Sure you won’t change your mind about the coffee?”

“Who’s that?” Camille’s mother asked.

“Just Carmen’s boyfriend. He came over early to take us out for breakfast.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, enjoy yourself, honey. You deserve it.”

“I will, Mom. Thanks. I’ll see you tonight.”

“Drive safe on the way home. Not too fast.”

“I won’t.”

How many times had they had a similar exchange? Camille said good-bye and snapped the phone shut.

Alex appeared around the corner from the kitchen. “Since you don’t want coffee …” He moved toward her, sliding onto the couch beside her and taking her in his arms. “What do you say we go back to bed?” His kiss was warm, practiced, and effective. Or maybe she just wanted it to be. She just wanted something to stop the pain and the panic and the frustration.

So she said nothing. Just kept kissing Alex, hoping that he really meant it when he said that his marriage was over, that he loved her, that she’d never be alone again.

The cold front arrived the first week of November and stayed well into the second week. As it turned out, Ruthie thought, it wasn’t a bad time to be knitting a shawl. She’d been using a lot of her free time at the church office to complete the project. The next meeting of the Knit Lit Society was only a few days away, and she was only halfway done. Perhaps that was because she spent as much time sitting behind her desk lost in thought, the knitting needles motionless in her hands, as she did stitching.

Knitting helped a broken heart to start healing. At least that’s what Ruthie’s mother had told her when she bought her that first set of needles and skein of yarn thirty-some-odd years ago. Ruthie had just returned from her time in the Peace Corps. She had returned, in fact, to the news that Esther had married Frank. No one had wanted to tell her while she was
an ocean away, herding goats or whatever it was she was doing in Africa. Ruthie wasn’t sure what they feared—whether it was worry for her mental health or physical safety. Or perhaps her parents and Esther had been more concerned that she might hop on a plane and come home in time for the wedding. In time to stop the wedding.

She would have if she’d known.

But no cable arrived, no telegram, no transatlantic phone call punctuated by static and abruptly disconnected. Instead, Ruthie’s parents had been waiting for her at the airport in Nashville on the appointed day. She’d been so excited to be back, although the culture shock proved even more severe than she’d expected despite the warnings of more seasoned Peace Corps veterans. The ease of American life, the bounty at even the smallest convenience store, Cokes in ice-cold bottles—she felt so out of place. How to reconcile the deprivation she’d witnessed in the last two years with the excess of her birthplace? She knew now how much she’d taken for granted. What a tremendous responsibility she bore. And none of her friends or family could even begin to comprehend what had happened to her.

Overwhelmed by the memories, Ruthie set her knitting down and gazed out the window. The sweetgum trees were almost bare. Winter couldn’t be far behind. She hadn’t spoken to Esther since the afternoon she’d shown up in the church office. She hadn’t spoken to Frank either. Every day she’d gotten
up, tended to her house and garden, gone to work, come home to a solitary supper, and gone to bed. A mindless routine, although her mind had certainly been busy of its own accord.

Frank kept calling. Thank heavens for caller ID. She let his calls, and her sister’s, go to voice mail. And she knitted, even though she kept ripping out most of what she’d done. She never should have chosen a complicated lacy stitch to begin with. But then she’d never anticipated Esther’s request and the havoc it would wreak on her state of mind.

Every day she waited brought Frank one day closer to death. Okay, perhaps that thought was a bit dramatic, but it contained enough of the truth to wake her up in the wee hours of the morning. There wasn’t enough warm milk in the world to soothe her back to sleep these days.

Ruthie reached out and fingered the brochure on the desk in front of her.
Namibia
. The word on the cover jumped out at her. She opened it again and reread the contents for the hundredth time.
Two-year commitment
. Her completed application lay underneath the glossy brochure. Beside that a stamped, addressed envelope waited.

Where would she find yarn, she wondered? Or books in English? She’d lived without creature comforts before, but she’d been much younger then. A child, really, in all the ways that counted.

With a sigh, she folded the application, tucked it into the
envelope and sealed it, and tossed it into the outgoing mail tray on her desk. Napoleon would pick up the pile of envelopes at the end of the day and take them to the post office.

Ruthie paused. She couldn’t sit there all day looking at that envelope, so instead she grabbed her coat from the rack in the corner and scooped up the outgoing mail herself. She needed a break anyway.

She peeked into the pastor’s study. “Rev. Carson? I’m going to run to the post office.”

“Okay, Ruthie.” He didn’t look up from the thick Bible commentary he was holding. The man certainly took writing sermons seriously. A refreshing change of pace from the previous pastor, who had downloaded most of his from the Internet. “I’ll answer the phone if it rings.”

She smiled, but it felt bittersweet on her lips. This trip to the post office might mean he’d have to find a new secretary in a few months.

Outside she pulled the lapels of her coat together at her throat and wished she’d remembered to loop a scarf around her neck before heading out the door that morning. The day was raw, but it was also alive, the stiff breeze challenging her every step as she headed into the wind. She opened the lapels of her coat long enough to tuck the mail into an inside pocket.

The walk to the post office was a good idea. It cleared her head. She passed by familiar landmarks as she made her way
around the town square—Kendall’s Department Store, the Rexall drugstore, the movie theater, where she’d seen scores of films. Tallulah’s Café, with its endless cups of coffee and black-bottom pie. How would she live somewhere that didn’t have those places? They were a part of her now. The first time she left home, she hadn’t known how dear it was. This time she would know utterly and completely.