Heather Barbieri - The Lace Makers of Glenmara

That Irish Rain

William the Traveler

A Village at the End of the World

The American Girl

Absences and Visitations

Cliff Walk

Holy Orders

A Cup of Tea & Jealousy

Dirty Laundry & Contraception

The Lace Society

Kates Idea

Father Byrne on Patrol

Imaginary Breasts

Sullivan Deane

Held So Close

Craic

Singing to the Sea

Hail the Long-Lost Mariner

All Ye Sinners Bow Your Heads and Pray

Another Life

Of Bobbins and Pins

A Hundred Little Bruises

Wear It Well

Famine Ghosts

Lost and Found

The Things That Shape Us

A Turn in the Road

A Soul of the Sea

A Word, Please

On the Mend

Market Day

Fame & Fortune

Finishing Work

What you need:

A sewing machine, your mothers, yes, the sky blue Singer, its hum a lullaby from infancy, you in a Moses basket at her feet, grabbing bright threads

Notions (tools and thoughts in equal measure), such as

Scissors, three to six inches long, sharp pointed, pinking shears, thread clips, buttonholers, seam rippersthere will be edges to neaten, material to cut

Tissue (dressmakers and Kleenex)

Tailors chalk and tracing wheel, for dots, dashes, cutaway marks, arcs, outlines, traces, what has been and what will be

Pins, for forming attachments

Needles sharps, betweens, milliners, darners, tapestry, embroidery, beading, for all that must be pierced and adorned and joined together

Pin cushion, apple-shaped, with a felt stem, to keep pins from getting lost

Thimble, your mothers, gold, on a chain, a tiny loop soldered to the top; wear it on your index finger so you wont prick yourself, or around your neck, to remember

Measuring tape, for determining shape and size, yards, inches, centimeters, the distance from here to there

Thread mercerized, nylon silk, textured, floss

Fabric, swatches and yards and bolts, wool, silk, linen, net, whatever will come next, whatever will be made

The pattern?

Will it come from a drawer at the fabric storeMcCalls, Butterick, Simplicity, names from your childhood, the instructions in an envelope, the outcome preordained? Or will you make it up as you go, letting the spirit guide you, trying to pick up the loose threads, fix the holes, make something new? Each step, each diagram, fig. 1, fig. 2, fig. 3, revealing itself in time?

You hesitate, thinking of past mistakes, when you threw the pieces across the room in a fit of anger because nothing was coming together the way it should, and you cried over a misshapen collar or sleeve, lying prone in your lap as an injured child.

And yet you must press your lips together, pick up the thread. Dont be afraid. Youll find your way.

This is a place to start.

Kate had been traveling the road for hours, the rain her sole companion. It was an entertainer, that Irish rain, performing an endless variety of tricks for her amusement. It blew sideways, pounded and sighed and dripped. It hailed neat little balls of ice that melted off her hood and shoulders. She did her best to ignore it. She knew the type. She was from Seattle, after all, the city of her birth, life, and heartbreak. Shed left a few days after the separation on a day much like this nearly a month ago. She didnt know if shed ever return, but the rain, or its cousin, followed, along with the memories that had driven her from that place.

The story was simple enough, or seemed to be, on the surface, as stories often are. She adopted a deadpan delivery in the telling, an amusing shtick, as if she were a warm-up act at a comedy club. Shed told the story on so many occasions, drawing laughs and knowing nods and sympathy, that she had the timing down pat. Three minutes. Three minutes was all it took to dissect the end of a five-year relationship.

It came down to this, she said: Ethan ran off with a model. A girl with black hair and pale skin and aquamarine eyes and a sizable trust fund. A girl who would have been courted by princes and lords if she lived in another time and place. A girl thin and angular as a praying mantis, who wore Kates designs at her failure of a fashion show and claimed to be her friend.

The model spoke five languages, was a champion fencer and violin virtuoso. Kate lacked such impressive qualifications. She knew enough French to order three courses in a caf or ask directions to the train or toilet, so long as accents and dialects werent too strong. She could run a seven-minute mile. She thought of herself as pretty, not beautiful. Petite, not tall. She tended to be lucky at cards, though little else relating to games of chance. She loved Fellini movies and popcorn and chocolate cake. And she loved Ethan, still, after everything that had happened.

She couldnt stop thinking about him, imagined making arguments far more winning than she was capable of in real life. Real life was empty rooms. Real life was eating and cooking for one. Real life was less laundry and a cleaner apartment. (He was a pack rat and a pilerhe should have come with a warning.) Real life was waking up alone. Which was all right, because she was furious about the betrayal. Furious, yes, though still in danger of succumbing to the impulse of forgiveness, as she had before. No more. She was resolute, intent on enjoying this sojourn as much as possible, keeping sorrow at bay. The road lay before her, plain and simple, offering two ways to go, forward or back, no forks or splits or detours, just wide-open fields of lumpy, foxglove-strewn green. The road made no excuses or apologies. It didnt have to. It was what it was. It went on, walls of moss-bearded stone hemming in the narrow lane, past ruined farmhouses with half-collapsed roofs and blackened eyes. Shed been walking and hitching for nearly a month, in the far western part of the country now, one of the few areas in which signs of civilization were slim to nil. She liked it that way. Shed toured Dublin in four days. Dublin, both grand and gritty: the halls of Trinity, the Book of Kells, the Georgian streets, the museums, with glass-encased mannequins and mummies with tattered clothes and bad teeth and marble eyes; heroin addicts stealing her backpack (she gave chase, recovered the bag, she could be swift and fierce when she wanted to be); housing estates and suffocating smog. There were two sides to everything. Two sides, if not more. Shed taken one bus, then another, heading for the mythical west, buses that didnt take her as far as they were supposed to, missing connections, finally breaking down entirely, the station agents saying new vehicles would arrive within the hour, then two, then three, claims that took on the air of fairy tales. In the end, she grew tired of waiting and set off on foot, eventually winding up here, exhaustion making the scene all the more surreal.

Each step she took left a mark, some visible, some not, marks that said, I was here, I exist . That was one of the reasons people went away, wasnt it, to forget, to reinvent themselves?

Shed been a quiet person at home, had let the gregarious people in her lifeEthan, her friend Ella, even her mothertake the lead, happy to be the soft-spoken sidekick who offered the occasional sage remark, witty aside.

She was on her own now. It felt strange, yes, but she was ready for something new, to be someone new.