Knitting Under the Influence

cup in each hand, she walked back to her building, then took the elevator straight up to the penthouse. She kicked at the door and Sam answered it dressed for work.

“You have time for a cup of coffee?” she asked.

“A quick one.” He took one of the cups from her. “Come into the kitchen. Last time I let you drink coffee in here, you spilled some on the rug.”

“How'd you know that?” she said. He hadn't been in the room when it happened.

“I saw you wiping at it later, when you thought I wasn't looking. It left a stain.”

“Jeez,” she said. “You can't get away with anything around here.”

“No,” he said. “You can't.” A point further proven when they were sitting down at the kitchen table and he said, “That was a lovely choice you made-to publicly rub Kevin's nose in the fact his father's cheating on his mother. What son wouldn't enjoy that?”

“Shut up,” Kathleen said. She had insisted on keeping her coffee in its takeout cup for no reason other than because Sam preferred her to put it in a mug. She played now with the cardboard sleeve, pushing it up and down the bottom half of the cup. “I wouldn't be so obnoxious about it if he would just for once admit what everyone knows.”

“Jackson's been cheating on Caro since the day they got married,” Sam said. “Literally. He invited his girlfriend at the time to the wedding. So he wouldn't get bored if dinner went on too long, I assume.”

“You're kidding.”

“The person who told me that is usually reliable, and I don't see any reason not to believe it, all things considered.” He shrugged. “That's just the way it is with Jackson. He's a short ugly man with a lot of money and power who still can't believe that attractive women are willing to sleep with him. Caro must have made her peace with it years ago.”

“Or is just so stoned she doesn't care anymore.”

“I first met Caro twenty years ago,” Sam said. “She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.”

“Prettier than Patricia?”

“Yes, Kathleen, prettier than Patricia. And there aren't many women I’d say that about.” He took a careful sip from his pristine white coffee mug. “But she made her deal with the devil. She knew what she was getting herself into.”

“Then maybe she should let her sons in on the secret.”

He studied her from under his dark eyebrows. “You really think Kevin doesn't know?”

“No,” she said. “I totally think he knows. That's why it drives me so crazy that he won't admit it.”

“How angry was he last night?” Sam asked.

“He wasn't mad at all,” Kathleen said, jerking her chin up. “He didn't say a single word about it.”

“Well, that must have been frustrating for you,” Sam said. “Working so hard to get a reaction out of him and then not getting it.”

“I didn't want to make him angry,” she said. “I just wanted him to admit the truth for once. For his own mental health.”

“Oh, come on,” Sam said. “You don't point out to a guy that one of his parents is unfaithful and a liar unless your goal is to infuriate him.”

She opened her mouth to argue but had to close it again. He was right, of course. She had known that what she was saying to Kevin would make anyone furious-anyone except, apparently, Kevin. The truth was she had found his lack of a reaction anticlimactic. “Well, why won't he just admit it?” she said. “If I know it and he knows it and the whole world knows it. Why not just admit it's true?”

“If the Porters started acknowledging everything that's sick or wrong with their lives…” Sam didn't bother to finish the sentence. “They've found some kind of status quo in just ignoring everything. That's what works for them, I guess. And if you're going to marry into that family, Kathleen, you're going to have to learn to be as blind as the rest of them.”

“I don't think I could,” she said. “I mean, to sit around all the time pretending you don't know things you know-”

“It probably just takes a little practice, that's all.”

“I guess.” She twisted her mouth sideways, thinking. “So what else do you know about them?”

“Who? The Porters?”

“You said there's lots of dirt there.”

“There is,” he said. “But you're not going to hear it from me. Ask your husband-to-be.”

“He won't tell me anything.”

“No,” Sam said. “He probably won't.”

V

During the weeks following Halloween, Sari felt like she had a devil sitting on one shoulder and an angel on the other. The devil looked and sounded a lot like Lucy, and it said, “Keep things going with the guy, have some fun, make him fall in love with you, and then shatter his heart and his life into a million pieces.” And the angel, who looked a little like Ellen, but was dressed for some reason in Kathleen's responsible clothes, said, “Don't do it, Sari. For your own sake.”

She knew the angel was right, but it was the devil who intrigued her. Sometimes, when she said goodbye to Jason at the end of a session, she'd meet his eyes and see the pleading there and wonder what it would be like to give in to it and go out with him and follow the whole tangle through to the end-and then crush him. And sometimes she'd wonder what it would be like to follow it through to the end and not crush him. And that's when she would give herself a good mental shake and listen to the angel and keep herself well out of it.

There was one day when Jason was wearing a blue shirt that lightened the color of his eyes until you just wanted to stare at them forever. At the end of the session, he asked Sari if she had time to have a drink with him, and she had to struggle to say no.

That night, she ran home and got down her high school yearbook and made herself study it.

The page devoted to the Resource Room, a page on which Charlie appeared three times-once with a chef's hat on and a big smile, because they had been making cookies in class that day and Charlie loved cookies more than anything else in the world-left her throat and eyes aching with tears that wouldn't come all the way out.

After that, the pictures-page after page after page-of Jason Smith on every sports team, a smirk of athletic superiority and social dominance always on his face, successfully rekindled her anger and her determination not to be swayed by a pair of blue eyes.

Back at the clinic, it was once again easy to tell him no when he asked her out and it stayed easy-no, she didn't want to have coffee, no, she wasn't interested in seeing a movie, no, she was rushing off after this session, no, she was busy, no, she had work to do, no, she had other plans…

At some point, he'd have to give up, she figured. But she also knew that the one blue-eyed day she had hesitated before saying no had given Jason Smith reason to think that maybe there was hope. He took her reluctance as a challenge, and, instead of giving up, he tried harder.

She couldn't have strung him along any better if she'd been trying.

She could guess what he thought-that it was their professional relationship that made her pull back, that she was worried she was breaking some kind of unwritten (or maybe even written) clinic law. He probably assumed things would have been different if they'd met at a party instead of as client and professional. He probably told himself stories of people who overcame an awkward business situation to find love and romance together. The thrill of the chase probably made it all the more interesting to him. He was that kind of guy.

And meanwhile there was Zack, who was improving almost daily; Zack with the crooked grin who would one day stare at Sari uncomprehendingly when she tried to teach him to say, “I want a cookie,” and who would two days later come walking up to her and point to the cookie jar and say, “Want cookie,” as if he had always said it, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to utter a two-word sentence; Zack, who now crawled into her lap the second she picked out a book to show him, who grabbed her hand when she arrived at his house and