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

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СКАЧАТЬ movies and restaurants and books. Every week since Stella had died, her boss Eddie called and offered her a small assignment. “Just one hundred words,” he’d say. “One hundred words about anything at all.” Holly, the office manager, came by with gooey cakes she had baked. Mary would glimpse her getting out of her vintage baby blue Bug, with her pale blond hair and big round blue eyes, unfolding her extralong legs and looking teary-eyed at the house, and she would pretend she wasn’t home. Holly would ring the doorbell a dozen times or more before giving up and leaving the sugary red velvet cake or the sweet white one with canned pineapple and maraschino cherries and too-sweet coconut on the front steps.

      Mary used to go out several times a week, with her husband Dylan or her girlfriends, or even with Stella, to try a new Thai restaurant or see the latest French film. Her hours were crammed with things to do, to see, to think about. Books, for example. She was always reading two or three at a time. One would be open on the coffee table and another by her bed, and a third, poetry or short stories, was tucked in her bag to read while Stella ran with her friends around the neighborhood playground.

      And Mary used to have ideas about all of these things. She used to believe firmly that Providence needed a good Mexican restaurant. She could pontificate on this for hours. She worried over the demise of the romantic comedy. She had started to prefer nonfiction to fiction. Why was this? she would wonder out loud frequently.

      How had she been so passionate about all of these senseless things? Now her brain could no longer organize material. She didn’t understand what she had read or watched or heard. Food tasted like nothing, like air. When she ate, she thought of Stella’s Goodnight Moon book, and of how Stella would say the words before Mary could read them out loud: Goodnight mush. Goodnight nothing. It was as if she could almost hear her daughter’s voice, but not quite, and she would strain to find it in the silent house.

      She imagined learning Italian. She imagined writing poetry about her grief. She imagined writing a novel, a novel in which a child is heroically saved. But words, the very things that had always rescued her, failed her.

      “How’s the knitting?” her mother asked her several weeks after suggesting Mary learn.

      It was July by then.

      “Haven’t gotten around to it yet,” Mary had mumbled.

      “Mary, you need a distraction,” her mother said. In the background Mary heard voices speaking in Spanish. Maybe she should learn Spanish instead of Italian.

      “Don’t tell me what I need,” she said. “Okay?”

      “Okay,” her mother said.

      In August, Dylan surprised her with a trip to Italy.

      He had gone back to work right away. The fact that he had a law firm and clients who depended on him made Mary envious. Her office at home, once a walk-in closet off the master bedroom, had slowly returned to its former closet self. Sympathy cards, CDs, copies of books and poems and inspirational plaques, all the things friends had sent them, got stacked up in her office. There was a whole box in there of porcelain angels, brown-haired angels that were supposed to represent Stella but looked fake and trivial to Mary. Stella’s kindergarten teacher had shown up with a shoe box of Stella’s work. Carefully written numbers and words, drawings and workbooks, all of it now in a box in her office.

      “I figured,” Dylan had said, clutching the plane tickets in his hands like his life depended on them, “if we’re going to sit and cry all the time, we might as well sit and cry in Italy. Plus, you said something about learning Italian?”

      His eyes were red-rimmed and he had lost weight, enough to show more lines in his face. He had one of those faces that wore lines well, and ever since she’d met him Mary had loved those creases. But now they made him look weary. His own eyes were changeable—brown with flecks of gold and green that could take on more color in certain weather or when he wore particular colors. But lately they had stayed flat brown, the bright green and gold almost gone completely.

      She couldn’t disappoint him by telling him that even English was hard to manage, that memorizing verb conjugations and vocabulary words would be impossible. The only language she could speak was grief. How could he not know that?

      Instead, she said, “I love you.” She did. She loved him. But even that didn’t feel like anything anymore.

      They spent a very peaceful two weeks in a large rented farmhouse, with a cook who came each morning with fresh rolls, who made them fresh espresso and greeted them with a sumptuous dinner when they returned at dusk. The time passed peacefully, though mournfully. The change of scene and change of routine was healing, however, and Mary hoped that they might return with a somewhat changed attitude. But, of course, home only brought back the reality of their loss, their sadness returning powerfully.

      That first night, as Mary stood unpacking olive oil and long strands of sun-dried tomatoes, the answering machine messages played into the kitchen.

      “My name is Alice. I own Big Alice’s Sit and Knit—”

      “The what?” Dylan said.

      “Ssshhh,” Mary said.

      “—if you come in early Tuesday morning I can teach you to knit myself. Any Tuesday really. Before eleven. See you then.”

      “Knitting?” Dylan said. “You can’t even sew on a button.”

      Mary rolled her eyes. “My mother.”

      The second time Mary showed up at the Sit and Knit, she had her week’s work in a shopping bag. After Alice had sent her on her way the week before, Mary had taken to carrying her knitting everywhere. She was reluctant to admit her mother had been right; knitting quieted her brain. As soon as Stella’s face appeared in front of her, Mary dropped a stitch or tied a knot. Once she even dropped an entire needle and watched in horror as the chain of stitches fell from it to the floor.

      It wasn’t that she didn’t want to think of Stella. She just didn’t want to lose her mind from that thinking. The hospital scenes played over and over, making her want to scream; sometimes she did scream. That was the kind of calming the knitting brought. Yesterday she walked into the supermarket and saw the season’s first Seckel pears, tiny and amber. Stella’s favorites. Mary used to pack two in her lunch every day in the fall. Seeing them, Mary felt the panic rising in her and she turned and walked out quickly, leaving her basket with the bananas and grated Parmesan behind. In the car, after she had cried good and hard, she picked up her knitting and did one full row right there in the parking lot before she drove home.

      Standing on the steps of the knitting shop that second morning, waiting for Alice to open for the day, Mary examined her work. She could tell that what she had worked on all week was a mess. In the middle a huge hole gaped at her, and the neat twenty-two stitches Alice had cast on for her had grown into at least twice that. One needle was clogged with yarn, wound so tight she could hardly fit the other needle into one of the loops.

      “That’s a mess,” Alice said from behind her. Mary noticed she had on the same outfit, but with a different sweater, this one a sage green. It made Mary aware of how she must look to Alice. She had gained weight since Stella died, a good ten pounds, and wore the same black pants every day because they had an elastic waist. And she was still wearing flip-flops despite the fall chill. But the idea of searching for other shoes exhausted her.

      She wiggled her naked toes and held out her knitting.

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