Castoff
by Janet Berliner
I thought this story would be appropriate for the season. Next month I’ll be back with that promised scoop on my work with Michael Crichton. I hope you enjoy. –J.
———-
Knit one, purl one.
Castoff.
The sweater was finished.
Stretching, Bethany rubbed the small of her back and stared at the empty street outside her window, her ears tuned for the crunch of his footsteps in the snow that had been falling all night. “Comeback to me, Nicholas,” she whispered, swearing that if he had not returned by morning she would unravel the last row of the right sleeve and go on knitting him, this time weaving one of her Cajun grandmother’s curses into each tiny woolen loop. She would punish him for the broken dreams and the worthless promises. He had been strong once, in body and spirit. That was before he had decided to come to New York; dragging her here from the bayou; telling her that if she did not come she would lose him. Now the bottle had claimed his soul and she had lost him any way. She had nothing left to cling to, nothing except the knitting and the waiting and the knowledge that her curses would reach out and touch him, no matter where he had gone.
Knit one, purl one.
Bethany watched the sleeve grow, counting one extra inch, then a second and third, pushing the stitches across the needle like rosary beads sending prayers to the ears of God. Only Bethany’s god was a different one; it was guided by her need for vengeance.
When her knitting was done, Bethany went out into the Bowery. From dawn until dusk and through the night, pausing neither for food nor rest, she haunted the alleys, searching for Nicholas in the unshaven faces of every broken down bum she could find. She did not give up until that moment of greatest darkness, that instant shortly before the dawn when the night seemed to take a deep breath and briefly renew its losing battle against the encroachment of daylight.
Tired and hungry and cold, her eyes raw from the debris being whipped up by the wind and her jacket gaping open over Nick’s bulky sweater, it’s right sleeve so long that it had to be doubled up into her armpit, she started for home.
But picturing the dingy room she had shared first with Nicholas then with her loneliness and her knitting, Bethany stood still. That wasn’t home. She couldn’t go back there, not now, not without even the knitting to sustain her. There was nothing in that room she could not live without and she had enough money in her pocket to take a bus to her real home. She was going back to the bayou where she belonged. Now, before she had time to change her mind.
“I’m leaving, Nicholas.”
She had not meant to say the words aloud, to yell them and let the echo against the buildings and flow into the sour-smelling doorways. She had meant only to weave the last of her curses into each syllable of his name.
Angrily she removed her jacket and drew Nick’s sweater over her head. Holding it with the tips of her fingers as if it were a dead roach, she headed for the nearest garbage can. Almost without breaking her stride, she lifted the lid and dropped the sweater inside. She would leave it for one of the unwashed creatures hovering in the shadows, a vulture whose only raison d’etre was the anticipation of disemboweling the Bowery’s refuse. She and her gods had done their work; that she would never see what she had rocked, she was going home.
Half listening for the rattle of aluminum behind her, Bethany walked on. The scavenger moved quickly; she had hardly taken a dozen steps before she heard the sounds of his rummaging in the trash. She hesitated; stopped; shivered in the damp chill.
Turning around, she watched the man who listed into the glare of the streetlight, his gait singular, lopsided, pushed askew by the disproportionate length of his right arm. Balancing himself with difficulty, he pushed his arms through the sleeves of the sweater and pulled it over his head. When it was on he stroked it, as if he could not quite believe his new good fortune.
Suddenly, he felt her there. Knew it was she who had done this to him. He raised his head and she saw his eyes. They were filled with questions and pleading with terror.
Slowly, lurching, Nicholas moved toward her.
Smiling, she let him advance. Allowed him to hope. Watched the long fingers of his right hand brush the wine-spattered sidewalk. When he was close enough to touch her, he lifted his elongated right arm and held it out to her in a gesture of supplication.
“You really should have come back to me, Nicholas,” she said, admiring the perfect fit of the sleeve and the stitches on the cuff that encircled his distended wrist. “You really should have come home.”
