A Farewell to Yarns

slithered down her leg. 'A man invented panty hose,' Shelley observed.

“Probably a grandson of the man who invented corsets!' Jane said, stripping off the ruined item and throwing it into the wastebasket. She hurriedly fed Willard, then ran upstairs while Shelley continued to tidy the kitchen.

When Jane returned, she was a new person. Her short, streaked blond hair was combed and sprayed into a tousled upswept style—Shelley had made her go to a hairdresser to learn how to create this miracle—and she had on navy knee-length boots that added a full two inches to her height. With makeup, she looked a good five years younger and a great deal less stressed. 'You do clean up good,' Shelley said approvingly.

Jane glanced around the spotless kitchen. 'Sodo you. If Paul ever goes bankrupt and you need a job, I'll hire you.'

“The sad thing is, I'd love it,' Shelley observed. 'I know it's shallow of me, but I really love to clean. It's not anything compulsive, it's just that you can see a difference when you're through. Not like raising kids or something that you're not sure how it's going to turn out for a couple of decades.”

Jane sat down and took another sip of the now-cold coffee. 'And I hate cleaning, because no matter how often or well you do it, it has to be done again—and again and again. How are we on time?'

“Plenty. Your friend's flight isn't due for an hour and a half, and it's only an hour to the airport.'

“Still, I'd like to get going. Do you mind?'

“Not a bit. Are you driving, or shall I?”

This question raised a good number of conflicting emotions in Jane. Though Shelley was normally the most calm, refined individual in the world, something about getting behind the steering wheel of a car brought out a savage, competitive streak in her. On the other hand, Jane didn't think her muffler would stick with her all the way to O'Hare, and she had an awful suspicion that the kids had left McDonald's wrappers and other trash in the backseat, where Phyllis would have to ride. Of course, Phyllis Wagner was so down-to-earth that she probably wouldn't think of a thing about it. The deciding factor was really the afghan

“Why don't you drive so I can crochet?' Jane said after a moment of consideration. 'I've lied to Fiona. I told her I've finished it already and have just forgotten to bring it over. I've got to get the damned thing done.'

“Can you crochet and ride?'

“With you? I'd rather crochet than watch.' Jane went into the living room and grabbed a big yellow plastic bag that contained the afghanin-progress.

Shelley followed her. 'Why don't you have a tree up yet?'

“I'll get one in a day or two. You could at least notice and appreciate all those boxes in the corner. Those are the Christmas decorations, fresh from the basement and ready to go up whenever I have a spare day or two.”

True to form, Shelley made a spectacularly belligerent entry onto the main road at the bottom of their street. Jane didn't even look up from the snarl of red, green, and white yarn in her lap. She just leaned with the motion of the minivan and went on muttering, 'Triple, triple, triple, single. Triple, triple, triple, single, single. Triple—'

“Hold it, Jane. You just did two singles,' Shelley said.

“I was turning a corner.'

“I suppose that makes sense. What I don't understand is why you have to walk your way through crocheting.'

“For the simple reason that I'm not very good at it. Saying the stitches out loud is the only way I can keep track of where I am and what I'm doing.”

Shelley made what she called a 'runningstop' at a stop sign and said, 'You must be a lot of fun around the fireside in the evenings.”

Jane stopped working for a moment. 'Firesides would be okay. It's the television that gets me in trouble. The kids won't let me in the same room when they're watching. I annoy them to a frenzy.'

“Of course you do. Just being their mother is enough for that.'

“I can't understand what went wrong with me. The women in my family were usually born knitting. You know those little hats babies wear home from the hospital ... ? My aunts made their own to wile away time in the bassinets. I swear it. Knitting and crocheting are in our genes. Even Katie can whip up a granny square. How could I pass the ability on to my daughter without any sticking to me? My mother can work an elaborate cable stitch in three colors without even looking at the needles and discuss the history of the Reformation at the same time. I must be missing some crucial part of my brain.'

“The part that connects with your hands probably. Or maybe the part that wants to discuss the Reformation. We're only a block from Fiona's. I've got all that stuff I have to drop off for the church bazaar. We have time before we have to be at the airport?'

“And have you speed all the way to make up lost time? I'd rather go to a dentist than let myself in for that. No, I'll help you unload it at Fiona's later. Fiona's another one—she could build a whole town with leftover scarps of yarn if she set her mind to it. Of course, she's English, so that helps explain it. Probably cut her teeth on the Bayeux Tapestry.'

“Isn't that in France?”

Jane cocked an eyebrow. 'If you're going to get literal on me, I won't be your friend anymore.'

“If you're not my friend, I won't drive you to the airport to pick up this long lost pal of yours and you'll never finish that afghan—which might be my ultimate contribution to the longterm benefit of mankind. Now, tell me about this friend of yours.”

Two  

'Phyllis Wagner was from somewhere back  East and had come to Chicago to live with an aunt when she was a teenager. When we were both newlyweds, we were neighbors,' Jane said, hanging onto the afghan and trying to work without consciously thinking about it. Surely it was possible. Surely a grown woman who could manage the rococo complexities of carpooling three kids could crochet without talking to herself.

“We lived in a ratty apartment building in the city. Mostly elderly people and students. You know the kind of place. Steve was still in school then, and I was working at one of his family's pharmacies.'

“Was Phyllis a student, too?'

“No, Phyllis wasn't the student type. And she didn't work either. Back in those days, if you recall, women weren't expected to, unless it was absolutely necessary. As far as I could tell, she spent her days visiting with other people in the building. She brightened a lot of lives. In the evenings she visited me or we went to movies or something. Steve was studying all the time and hardly noticed that I was gone.'

“And Phyllis's husband?'

“She'd only married Chet Wagner a few months before they moved into the apartment building. He was much older. Phyllis was only nineteen or so, and Chet must have been in his mid-thirties. That seemed downright ancient to me then. Chet was never home either. As I recall, he'd lost everything, including his sons and his business, in a divorce and was starting over. That's why they were slumming it with us. He was involved in starting a company that had something to do with computers.'

“Not a bad time to start in computers.'

“I'll say. He made an absolute fortune in no time. We all lived there for six months or so, then Steve graduated, and I discovered I was pregnant with Mike, and we started building the house. About the same time we moved out here, Phyllis and Chet moved into a little house in Evanston. The next thing I knew, she'd moved into a bigger house. I was there for lunch one day, and it was a gorgeous place. Phyllis and I kept in touch, but sort of loosely. She didn't have any children, except Chet's boys on vacations, and I think that was sort of difficult. I had Mike just after we moved here, and then Katie came along, and I was knee-deep in babies and diapers and sterilizers. I couldn't fit into my pre-pregnancy clothes and couldn't afford nice new ones to fit into her lifestyle. And you remember what it was like, being so absorbed in your babies that you lost touch with the rest of the world.”

Shelley bullied her way skillfully through a knot of cars and said, 'Boy, do I remember those days. It always took three people to cram me into the outfit I took to the hospital to wear home.'

“Actually, it wasn't that Phyllis would have cared if I'd turned up in baggy jeans and a sweatshirt. I'll say that for her. No matter how much money Chet made, she stayed Phyllis. Fortunately—or unfortunately. She always seemed to think the money was sort of nice but didn't quite know why they needed so much of it. Frankly, it made me jealous sometimes. There we were, struggling for nickels, and Phyllis sort of shed cash like water off a duck. It