Knitting Under the Influence

matter what time you go in there?”

“A knitting junkie,” Lucy said. “When good girls go just a little bit bad.”

“Do you remember how the last time we saw her I said I thought she was pregnant?”

“No,” Kathleen said.

“You don't? I said her breasts had grown since the last time we'd seen her and either she was pregnant or had had a boob job and you guys voted for boob job.”

“Oh, yeah,” Lucy said. “I remember.”

“I still don't,” Kathleen said. “But I’m slightly disturbed to know you go around staring at women's breasts, Sari.”

“It's all about the envy,” said Sari, who was built like a twelve-year-old girl. She was small and slight, with cropped thick hair and enormous blue eyes-the kind of woman who would never get past being called “cute” her entire life. “Anyway,” she said, “the point is that I went in there the other day and we started talking and she is actually pregnant.”

“How old is she?” Lucy said.

“Twenty-eight,” Sari said.

“Twenty-eight?” Kathleen said. “That's way too young to start having kids.”

“No, it's not,” Sari said. “The majority of women in this country have babies by the time they're twenty-eight. Just because we're incapable of growing up-”

“Hey, hey. Speak for yourself,” Lucy said.

“Yeah,” Kathleen said. “I left home today.”

“Leaving home for the first time at the age of twenty-seven isn't grown-up,” Lucy said with a quick hard tug at a strand of yarn for emphasis. “It's pathetic.”

“It's not my first time-I went to college for four years.”

“And then moved right back in with mommy afterward. Face it-you've only ever lived off your family.”

“I wasn't living off of them,” Kathleen said. “I worked for them the entire time. Nine to five and all that.”

“Getting paid to sit at home and polish your toenails. It's a hard-knock life, isn't it?”

“I didn't say it was hard.” Kathleen leaned forward, putting a hand on each of the two front seats. She was so tall that her head barely cleared the top of Sari's small Toyota. “You sure knitting in the car is safe, Luce? Sari could hit the brake, and a needle could go right in your eye and-poof-no more hotshot research for you.”

“I’m willing to risk it,” Lucy said.

“So who was the guy you met last night?” Sari said. She was stopped at another light, so she tilted the rearview mirror to look at Kathleen. “The one with the real estate connections?”

Kathleen fell back with a thud against the car seat. “No one special.”

Sari knocked the mirror back in place. “I know that tone. There's definitely more to this story. Was he cute?”

“People would probably say he was handsome.”

“Our age?” Lucy asked.

“Twice that.”

“Too old then,” Sari said. “Why was he at the party?”

“Oh, for goodness sake,” Kathleen said. “It was my father.”

“Your father!” they both exclaimed. Sari turned to look at her. “You're kidding!” she said. The light changed, and the car behind them honked. Kathleen automatically raised her hand and gave them the finger without even looking. Sari lifted her own hand in an apologetic wave as she drove on.

“I thought your dad was completely out of the picture,” Lucy said.

“Oh, he resurfaces now and then when he needs money. He's such a jerk, it's unbelievable.” She wrinkled her nose. “And I had to be the one who looks like him.”

“You just said he was handsome.”

“Yeah, but who cares? What kind of a freak says to his wife right after she's given birth to triplets, ‘Sorry, babe, just realized I don't like kids,’ and takes off?”

“He came back,” Lucy said.

“Yeah, right-once the twins were rich.”

“Why was he invited to the birthday party?” Sari asked.

“He wasn't. He just found out about it somehow. He knows that if other people are around, the twins have to act like they're glad to see him or it'll be all over the tabloids that they hate their father.” She grinned. “But I’m not famous, so I don't.”“But you said you were talking to him at the party.”

“He was talking to me. He was going on about having met this real estate guy at a party some bimbo girlfriend of his took him to. I wasn't even paying attention. Oh-by the way-that's why my mother and sisters were so pissed at me. They said I told the Hollywood Reporter guy all about Lloyd-how he shows up asking for money and we're always bailing him out of trouble. And I guess at some point I also mentioned the twins’ real age.”

“Why'd you do that?” Sari asked.

“How should I know? I don't even remember doing it.”

“The first step is admitting you have a problem,” Lucy said.

“The second step is for you to fuck off.”

“Girls, girls,” Sari said. “Let's play nice.”

They dropped Lucy off at her place, and Kathleen hopped out and got into the front seat, folding up her long legs so she could cram them into the small space. “Let's go do something fun,” she said. “See a movie or something.”

“Can't,” Sari said. “I have like five thousand progress reports I’m behind on. I’ve got to work.”

“Okay,” Kathleen said. “I’ll just go for a run, then. Best way to get rid of a hangover.”

“You do that. And then-”

“What?”

“You'll make that call? To your father? To get the name of his friend?”

“Don't you love me anymore?” Kathleen asked, tilting sideways so she could rest her head on Sari's shoulder. “Don't you want me to live with you?”

“If you make me crash-”

“Fine. Be that way.” Kathleen righted herself. “Hey, I’m going to need a new job. You guys hiring at the clinic?”

“You wouldn't last an hour there,” Sari said.

“Why not? I like kids.”

“No, you don't.”

“No, I don't,” Kathleen agreed. “But kids with autism don't talk, right? I don't mind kids if they don't talk.”

“Some of them talk. And a lot of them hit people and bang their heads and scratch at your eyes and scream all the time.”

“Sounds like fun,” Kathleen said. “Think I’ll skip it.” She reached down for the lever that adjusted the seat and reclined the seat as far as it would go, so she was more lying down than sitting, then slipped her feet out of her flip-flops and shoved them against the dashboard, so her knees were way up in the air. She had a Chinese pictograph tattooed above her left ankle but always claimed to have forgotten what it meant. “So what kind of job can I get where you don't have to work all that hard but you make enough money to live in a nice house and hire people to do things like clean and pick up after you? I mean, I don't really want to give any of that up, just because the twins are acting like jerks.”

“There aren't jobs like that,” Sari said. “Not for someone at your level of expertise, which is none. The only thing you could do is marry someone who's already rich.”

“I love that idea,” Kathleen said. “I’ll marry someone rich. Rich and wonderful-I don't want a rich asshole. Know any wonderful rich guys?”

“Do you think I’d be driving this shitty car and living in that shitty apartment if I did?”

“Possibly,” Kathleen said, rolling her head to the side and studying Sari's profile. “The problem with you, my love, is that you raise self-sacrifice to an art. Look at you-you have the toughest job in the world, and you know