The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood Page A

played with or took a class with or went to school with Stella. Then they would sit for too long and talk about their amazing children.
    Since Stella died, Mary avoided the Coffee Exchange, where all those women still sat—that’s how she imagined it, all of them right where she’d left them the morning before Stella got sick.
    But this morning, Mary awoke and decided that she would go for coffee. Not to the Coffee Exchange; she would never go back there. But across town to Rouge, where the café au lait tasted the way it did in France and the croissants were rich with butter. Where, Mary thought, she might see Scarlet.
    It was a cold day. The pewter sky held the promise of snow. But inside Rouge was warm, from the ovens and the heat that hissed from old radiators and from all the people crowded at the small tables.
    “Aren’t you Mary?”
    Mary twisted her neck to see who was talking. Squeezed into the table right behind her sat a vaguely familiar woman. Her long dirty blonde hair was pushed off her face by a scrap of faded floral fabric. A half-eaten croissant on the white plate before her, ignored for the complicated handiwork the woman held in her hands.
    “I’m in the knitting circle,” the woman said in a soft southern accent. “Ellen.”
    “Size one needles, right?” Mary said, remembering her now.
    “Socks!” Ellen said, brightening. “I like them because you have to keep changing what you’re doing. Stockinette, then several inches of garter, then it’s time to turn the heel, which is absolutely crazy to do, and then more garter until you have to do the toe and the Kitchener stitch. Plus people love them. They’re so warm and beautiful.” She blushed, and shrugged.
    “I don’t think socks are for me,” Mary said.
    “I spend so much time waiting that they keep me busy, you know?” Ellen said, still red-cheeked.
    “What do you do?” Mary asked.
    “I teach music. Part-time, at the music school. I can’t do a full-time position.” She glanced away again. Then looked up and smiled, gathering her things as she rose to leave. “See how neatly they fold up,” she said. She collapsed the four thin needles and stuck them and her yarn into a Ziploc bag.
    “Off to teach now?” Mary asked.
    Ellen shook her head. “I’m cheating. I’ve had a dreadful few days and I’m sneaking off to the movies.”
    Mary surprised herself by blurting, “Maybe we could go together sometime.”
    Ellen looked surprised. “My schedule is tight,” she said awkwardly. “But I’ll see you Wednesday night, right?”
    “Of course,” Mary said. “I’m sorry.”
    But Ellen was already pushing her way through the crowded café, her head bent, her bag held close to her chest.
    Mary watched her as she walked across the parking lot to her car. From where she stood, it looked as if Ellen was crying. It must have been the glare from the bright winter sunlight on the tall window.
     
    WEDNESDAY NIGHT BROUGHT an icy snow and high winds. Dylan lit a fire in the living room fireplace and put the McGarrigle Sisters on the CD player.
    “Remember that trip to Nova Scotia?” he said, pouring himself a glass of merlot and settling onto the sofa.
    “That church hall,” Dylan was saying, “and the strawberry shortcake? The fiddle music?”
    “I got pregnant that night,” Mary said.
    That trip, driving together all the way to Nova Scotia and beyond, to Prince Edward Island and the small red house on top of a red cliff overlooking a rocky beach. Two weeks of sun and vistas of the Atlantic Ocean. It had seemed impossible that England lay on the other side. That anything did. For Mary and Dylan those two weeks were spent driving, buying homemade pies on the roadside and eating them with their fingers; sex in the morning, sleeping late, groggy sweet breakfasts; digging for clams in the afternoon; evening meals of briny chowders cooked in big pots; then evening stargazing or dancing to fiddle music in the church basements; then