Kate Jacobs - Knit Two

Table of Contents

also by kate Jacobs

beginner

Seeing a pattern doesnt mean you know how to put it all together. Take baby steps: dont focus on the folks whose skills are far beyond your own. When youre new to somethingor you havent tried it in a whileit can feel impossibly hard to get it right. Every misstep feels like a reason to quit. You envy everyone else who seems to know what theyre doing. What keeps you going? The belief that one day youll also be like that: Elegant. Capable. Confident. Experienced. And you can be. All you need now is enthusiasm. A little bravery. Andalwaysa sense of humor.

one

It was after hours at Walker and Daughter: Knitters, and Dakota stood in the center of the Manhattan yarn shop and wrestled with the cellophane tape. She had spent more than twenty minutes trying to surround a canvas Peg Perego double stroller in shimmery yellow wrapping paper, the cardboard roll repeatedly flopping out of the paper onto the floor of the shop and the seeming miles of gift wrap crinkling and tearing with each move. What a disaster! The simpler move would be to just tie a balloon on the thing, she thought, but Peri had been quite insistent that all the items be wrapped and ribboned.

Gifts, smothered in bunny paper or decorated with cartoonish jungle animals, were piled in a mound atop the sturdy wooden table that was the focal point of the knitting store. The wall of yarn had been tidied so not one shelffrom the raspberry reds to the celery greenswas out of hue. Peri had also planned out a series of cringe-inducing guessing games (Guess how much the baby will weigh! Eat different baby foods and try to determine the flavor! Estimate the size of the mothers stomach!) that would have caused Dakotas mother to shake her head. Georgia Walker had never been a fan of silly games.

Itll be fun, said Peri when Dakota protested. We havent had a Friday Night baby since Lucie had Ginger five years ago. Besides, who doesnt like baby showers? All those tiny little footie pajamas and those cute towels-with-animal-ears. I mean, it just gives you goose bumps. Dont you love it?

Uh, no, said Dakota. And double no. My friends and I are a little busy with college. Her hands rested on the waist of her deep indigo jeans as she watched Peri pretend not to fuss over the job shed done. The stroller looked like a giant yellow banana. A wrinkled, torn banana. She sighed. Dakota was a striking young woman, with her creamy mocha skin and her mothers height and long, curly dark hair. But she retained an element of gangliness, gave the impression that she was not quite comfortable with the transformation of her figure. At eighteen, she was still growing into herself.

Thank God for that, replied Peri, discreetly trying to peel the tape off the yellow paper so she could redo the edges. Whether it was operating the store or designing the handbags in her side business, she approached everything with precision now. Working with Georgia had been the best training she could ever have received for running a businesstwo businesses, really. Her own handbag company, Peri Pocketbook, as well as Georgias store. Still, Peri felt she had done a lot to keep things going since Georgia passed away, and now that she was pushing thirty, she was beginning to feel a desire to move. In what direction, she wasnt sure. But there would be no more Walker and Daughter without her. Of that she was certain.

Sometimes it wasnt very satisfying to work so hard for something that essentially belonged to someone else. It was hers but not really hers at all.

For one thing, Dakota had seemed less and less interested in the store during the last year or so, grumbling on the Saturdays when she came in to work, typically late and sometimes appearing to simply roll out of bed and throw on whatever clothes she could find. It was quite a change from her early teens, when she seemed to relish her time at the shop. And yet there were brief moments when her world-weary attitude would disappear and Peri could see the whispers of the bright-eyed, wisecracking little kid who loved to bake and could spend hours knitting with her mother in the stores back office or the apartment they had shared one floor above the yarn shop.

The shop was located on Seventy-seventh and Broadway, just above Martys deli, amid boutiques and restaurants in Manhattans Upper West Side. Only a few blocks from the green of Central Park, and the cool of the Hudson River in the opposite direction, it was a lovely part of the city. Oh, certainly there was lots of noisehonking taxis, the rumble of the subway underneath the streets, the sound of heels on the sidewalk and cell phone conversations swirling all aroundbut that was the type of commotion that had appealed to Georgia Walker when she moved in. She didnt mind the beeping of the Coke truck at five a.m. bringing supplies to the deli on the street level. Not if it meant she got to live right inside the action, showing her daughter the world she had barely imagined herself growing up on a farm in Pennsylvania.

Of course, now Peri lived in the upstairs apartment that had been Georgias and the back office was no more. The wall had recently been blown out to make a separate showcase for the handbags she designed and sold; each purse was individually displayed on a clear acrylic shelf mounted onto a wall painted a deep gray.

The change to the store had come together after much discussion with Anita and with Dakota, and theyd consulted Dakotas father, James, too, of course, though mostly for his architectural expertise. But it made financial sense: Peri had turned Dakotas childhood bedroom in the apartment into an office so there was no need to tally up receipts in the shop anymore. Why waste the stores valuable real estate? And there had always been the understandingwith Georgia and with James and Anita after Georgia diedthat her handbag business would have the chance to flourish. She had reminded them of that while purposefully avoiding the one ultimatum she knew everyone most feared: She would leave the store if she wasnt able to remodel. The concern hung in the air, and she saved voicing it unless it was absolutely necessary.

After all, what would happen to the store if Peri left? Anita, who had turned seventy-eight on her last birthday though she still looked just barely old enough to collect Social Security, certainly wouldnt be about to take over. Though she continued to arrive two days a week to help out and keep busy, as she said, Anita and Marty spent a lot of their time going on quick trips, by train or car, to wonderful country inns in New England and in Canada. Those two were on a perpetual vacation, and Peri was happy for them. Envious, a little bit. Definitely. Hopeful that shed have the same thing someday. And if that legal department coworker her pal KC kept mentioning was half as cute as hed been described, who knew what could happen?

And then there was Dakota, who had nearly finished up her first year at NYU. It wasnt as though she could step in to run the storeor that she even seemed to want to do so anymore.

Not everyone wants to go into the family business.

Peris decision to work at the yarn shop, and create her own designs, had not been popular within her own family. Her parents had wanted her to become a lawyer, and shed dutifully taken her LSAT and earned a place at law school, only to turn it down and leave everyone guessing. Georgia hadnt been cowed by her mother, who flew in from Chicago to pressure Georgia into firing her, and Peri had never forgotten that fact. Even when difficulties arose over the shop, Peri reflected on how Georgia had helped her and she stuck it out. Still, the work of two businesses took up all of her days and many of her evenings, and the past five years seemed to have moved quickly. It was as though one day Peri woke up and realized she was almost thirty, still single, and not happy with the situation. It was hard to meet guys in New York, she thought. No, not guys. Men. Men like James Foster. Peri had had a mild crush on the man ever since hed come back for Georgia, and he remained, for her, the very epitome of the successful, confident partner she longed for.