Needle and Thread (16 page)

Flora waited patiently, then, when the man had gone off in search of thread, she said, “Min, I was just wondering — that package on Mary's table — would you like me to take it to her house?”

Min looked at Flora in surprise, but all she said was, “Thank you, Flora. I'm sure Mary would appreciate that. If you take it to her now, she'll be able to work on it at home, get a head start.”

And so it was that ten minutes later, Flora Northrop was on her way to visit Mary Woolsey for the second time in her life. If anyone had asked her why, she wouldn't have known exactly what to say. She was simply aware that she frequently found herself thinking of her first visit with Mary — sitting in the little parlor with Daphne and Delilah, watching the cuckoo glide out of its painted house, listening to Mary talk about Flora's great-grandfather and the anonymous gifts of money. Flora knew there was much more to the story of Mary's life — and of Lyman Davis's and possibly her very own — and she wanted to hear it all.

Flora now made her way through Mary's gardens, which were even more stark and barren than when she had last visited. She paused at the top of the stone steps and gave the lion's head knocker three sharp raps.

The door opened a crack. “Who's there?” said Mary.

“It's me, Flora.”

The door opened all the way, and there stood Mary Woolsey. “This is a surprise,” she said.

Flora held out the bag. “Someone left this at the store and I thought you might like to have it today.”

“Well, that was very thoughtful of you.”

Mary took the bag, and for a moment Flora thought she was going to be sent on her way. She backed up a step.

“Would you like to come in?” asked Mary.

Flora shrugged. “Okay. Sure.”

They sat in the parlor again. Flora found Daphne and Delilah sleeping together in an armchair, and she squeezed in beside them. Mary settled herself on the couch.

“The last time I was here,” said Flora, eyeing the cuckoo clock to see when she could expect it to chime, “you said my great-grandfather had been helping you out and that it was a very long story. Could you tell me that story?”

“Now?” replied Mary.

Flora nodded. “If you want to. It sounds like a good story, and I don't know much about my great-grandfather. I mean, I know what Min tells me, but a lot of things happened to her father before Min was born.”

Mary leaned into the couch cushions and removed her glasses. “Well,” she said, “in order to tell it, I have to go all the way back to nineteen twenty-nine. That's when the story really begins.”

“Nineteen twenty-nine?” exclaimed Flora. “Really?”

Mary looked at her in surprise. “Yes. Why?”

Flora hesitated. “Remember the box I told you about? The one where I found the old photo of you and my mom?” (Mary nodded.) “There was a lot of other family stuff in there, too, including a whole bunch of letters that Min's mother had written. I don't know how they wound up back at our house, but anyway, they sort of tell this story about Min's father and something he did when there was that big stock market crash.”

“How interesting,” said Mary. “The stock market crash is part of my story, too. All right. Let me figure out how to start. I haven't told this story to anyone before.” She folded her hands in her lap, stared out the window, and then began to speak again.

“In nineteen twenty-nine, my mother, Leticia Woolsey, was just nineteen years old. She was employed as a maid at your house, Flora. She worked for your great-grandparents. Your grandmother and her sister hadn't been born yet, but their older brother had been. I believe he was about four in nineteen twenty-nine. My father, Ian, worked in an office in town, and he and my mother were expecting me. They didn't have a lot of money, but with two incomes, they weren't doing badly. My father was able to build this house and he even had a small savings.

“Then came the stock market crash. Your great-grandfather, as you may know, left his job shortly after that, and he also lost a lot of his own money. So he had to let my mother and two other maids and, of course, his office staff go. My mother had planned to stop working after I was born, so this wasn't much of a blow for her and my father. But something else was: Your great-grandfather had convinced my father to invest his savings in the stock market. In fact, your great-grandfather had done the investing himself. So when the market crashed, not only did my mother lose her job earlier than she had planned, but my parents lost their entire savings. Then my father was let go from his job, too. Now my parents had no jobs, no savings, and a baby on the way.”

“And it was all my great-grandfather's fault,” said Flora in a whisper.

“Well, not entirely,” replied Mary. “He couldn't have prevented the crash.”

“I know. But still, I wonder …”

“What?” asked Mary. “What do you wonder?”

Flora shook her head. “Tell me what happened next.”

“Well, a few months later, in nineteen thirty, I was born.” Mary smiled at Flora. “Now you can figure out exactly how old I am.”

Flora smiled back. “You're six years older than Min. That's not so old.”

“Someone taught you excellent manners,” said Mary, “and I suspect it was your parents.” She turned a determined gaze on Flora. “I'm not one to tiptoe around things,” she said. “Your parents must be mentioned.”

Flora stroked Daphne's ears and nodded her head.

“Anyway, by nineteen thirty, when I was born, my parents had nothing except this house. They were practically destitute. Eventually, my father found work again, this time in a factory — it was the only job he could find — but our lives were still precarious. It was, after all, the Great Depression. And then one day,” said Mary, “there was a fire at the factory. It was a horrible fire. The factory burned to the ground and many lives were lost. The families of the factory workers ran into town and waited there, hoping for news of their loved ones. My mother joined them. She waited and waited. At the end of the day, she went home and waited some more. My father didn't come back.”

“That's awful!” cried Flora.

“The fire was a tragedy that affected Camden Falls for years,” agreed Mary.

“What did your mother do?”

“She dug in and worked hard to support us. She was one of the hardest-working women I've ever known. She never married again, and she raised me to be independent. She said that in the end, the only person you can truly depend on is yourself. After the fire, my mother didn't reach out to others, and she taught me not to reach out to others, either. I'm afraid that what she created for us, finally, was a very insular life. Do you know what ‘insular' means?”

“I think so,” said Flora. “It means isolated, even when you aren't really isolated.” As she spoke these words, she found herself thinking of Nikki.

“That's a very interesting way of explaining it,” replied Mary. “You do have a way with words, Flora. So — our life went on. I grew older. Our days became predictable. Then one day, several years after the fire — I suppose I must have been about seven, but I didn't know about this until many years later — something unexpected arrived in the mail.”

“What was it?” asked Flora.

“An envelope. It was addressed to my mother, and inside she found an anonymous gift of money with a note that read simply, ‘For Mary.'”

“And it was from my great-grandfather?” asked Flora.

“Yes. But I didn't figure that out for a long time. In fact, my mother didn't even tell me about the money until I was eighteen. By then, there was quite a bit of it. The envelopes had kept arriving over the years, each containing cash and each with a note reading, ‘For Mary.'”

“Why did your mother wait so long to give you the money?”

“She wanted to be certain that I would handle it responsibly. It was quite a nest egg. My mother had deposited each gift in the bank, so the money had earned interest, too. The money was still arriving even after I turned eighteen, by the way. In fact, the gifts were still arriving — not as often, but every now and then — in the nineteen sixties. The last gift I received was in nineteen sixty-six. By then, the envelopes were addressed to me and not to my mother.”

“You said you figured out for yourself that the money was from my great-grandfather. Didn't your mother tell you that?”

Mary shook her head. “All she would say was that the gifts were from an anonymous benefactor. And I didn't know enough about her past to have any idea who that might be.”

“So how did you finally figure it out?” asked Flora, and she and both cats jumped when the cuckoo clock chimed. Flora turned to watch the bird, and she smiled when he retreated into his house.

“It was in nineteen seventy,” said Mary. “I was forty and my mother had just died. I decided to clear some things out of the house and, just like you, I came across old letters and papers. When I discovered that my mother had worked for your family, I began to wonder about your great-grandfather. I did a little research on him. The more I learned — about his wealth and also about his reputation as a philanthropist — the more certain I became that he was the source of the money. I reasoned that he might feel guilty about what had happened to my family.”

Flora said nothing.

“Flora?” asked Mary.

“Sorry. I was just thinking. This is so interesting. Do you realize that because of something my great-grandfather did almost eighty years ago, your life changed completely? If he hadn't fired your mother and lost your savings, well, for one thing, you might have grown up with your father, because he might not have been working at the factory.”

When Mary didn't say anything, Flora continued. “Just think of all the people whose lives he must have changed — the other people he fired, the other people whose money he lost. What happened to them? I bet they have stories to tell, too. If I could find some of those people, maybe I could write about them for the three hundred and fiftieth birthday celebration. It would be a great project. Do you think you could help me with it?” asked Flora.

“What would you like me to do?”

“Well, you've already done a lot, telling me your story. But if you could think of anyone else I could talk to, that would be helpful.”

“Descendants of the other people who knew your great-grandfather, that sort of thing?”

“Yes,” said Flora. “If you want to. Only if you want to.”

“Thank you,” replied Mary. “I'll be happy to help you. Digging through the past can be very exciting. Just keep one thing in mind.”

“Okay,” said Flora.

“Digging through the past can be painful, too,” said Mary.

“Min?” said Flora one evening. “Do you have a cable needle?” She held up a skein of off-white yarn and a pattern book. “I want to knit Nikki a pair of mittens for Christmas.”

Min looked at the book. “Ah. Aran knits, with all the cables and designs. Flora, you are a much more accomplished knitter than I was at your age. My land. Yes, I think I have a cable needle somewhere.” She fished through her knitting bag. “Here it is.”

“Thank you,” said Flora. “I might need just a little help with this pattern, but I think I can mostly make the mittens by myself.”

It was a chilly evening, and Min had made a fire. She and Flora and Ruby and Daisy Dear and King Comma had gathered in front of it. Min's hands were busy smocking the sleeves of a baby dress. (“My friends keep on having grandchildren,” she commented.) Ruby was lying on her back, one hand resting on Daisy Dear, whispering her lines from the school play.

Min looked over her reading glasses at Flora, who had begun to cast on the stitches for the first mitten. “Hard to believe it's already time to think about Christmas,” she said. When neither girl answered her, she added, “You know, Thanksgiving is just two weeks away now…. Girls?”

“I don't want to talk about it,” said Ruby.

“I'm afraid we must talk about it,” replied Min. “We can't ignore it. You're going to have two days off from school, and the store will be closed on Thursday. We can't just sit here and pretend it isn't Thanksgiving.”

“I could,” said Ruby, rolling over and staring into the fire.

“No, that's silly,” said Flora. “Min's right. We can't ignore Thanksgiving.”

“But what are we going to
do
?” asked Ruby. “Min, you said yourself that you've forgotten how to cook a turkey.”

“Well, that was a bit of an exaggeration.”

“But it would be so sad, just the three of us, here instead of at home — I mean, instead of at our old home, without Mom and Dad….” Flora set her knitting down and pulled King Comma into her lap.

“I agree,” said Min. “And that's why I was thinking that maybe we could do something different, something that wouldn't remind us so much of what we were missing. We could have dinner in a restaurant. The Fig Tree has a very fancy Thanksgiving dinner menu. Or maybe we could go away for a few days, after Ruby's performance. I could line up some extra help at the store.”