Authors: Monica Ferris
“Or CATS,” said Godwin. “Hey, they’re coming to
Minneapolis in October this year, so you could enter it in both.” CATS was the Creative Arts and Textile Show, which featured needlework designers, classes, and booths selling the latest patterns and fibers. It had a prestigious competition for needlework.
“This is so different from anything I’ve done before,” said Irene, who had in fact never attempted more than slight changes in someone else’s pattern, and who had always selected very literal patterns. “But it felt good doing it. It felt better than almost anything I’ve done before.” She reached for the canvas and began to roll it up.
“Don’t you want it finished?” asked Betsy.
“No, not yet,” said Irene. “Maybe later. I’ve got to get back to work.” She turned and hurried out.
“Probably can’t afford to have it finished,” said Godwin. “She came in here on Saturday and bought nine colors of wool, two skeins of metallics, and a fat quarter of twenty-eight Cashel. She counted out the last two dollars in change. Poor thing.”
Betsy said, “There are a lot of hobbies that pay enough so the hobbyist can at least break even, but this isn’t one of them. Needleworkers can’t sell their work for even what the materials cost, much less the hours spent stitching it. That piece she just took out, she’ll probably end up giving away rather than be insulted by an offer of forty dollars for it. I just don’t understand why fabulously talented people who work with needles and fibers don’t get the recognition that people who work in oil or metal do. It isn’t fair.”
“Would you buy it?” asked Godwin.
Betsy half closed her eyes, picturing it on her living room wall, in a smooth, dark frame . . . “Gosh, yes.”
“What would you pay for it? I mean, if it was an auction, and you were bidding on it. How high would you go?”
Again Betsy half closed her eyes, imagining raising her hand with a numbered paddle in it. Fifty dollars, a hundred dollars, two hundred dollars. “Who’s bidding against me?” she asked.
“The Getty.”
Betsy giggled. “Then I haven’t got a chance, have I? But I’d go as high as five hundred, I guess.”
Godwin smacked his hand down on the desk. “Sold! Would you really go that high?”
Betsy hesitated, then recalled that figure in the foreground so realistically bent under the wind’s constant shove, and the way the snow swirled around the plinth and softened the vertical lines of the buildings. She had worked not far from Columbus Circle many years ago, and had once been out in a city blizzard . . . “Actually, yes, I think I would. But I’d also like to hang it down here as a model for a while, and sell lots of patterns. Oh, darn, I let Irene get away without asking if she’d do that Terry Nolan model for me. Remind me when we’re closing up, I need to call her at home.”
It was a little after one when the door’s
Bing!
brought Alice and Martha in, project bags in hand. It was nearly time for the Monday Bunch to meet. The two went to the library table in the middle of the room, but hesitated when they saw the Dazor light.
“What’s this?” asked Alice, a tall woman with mannish shoulders and chin.
“It’s a magnifying light, silly,” said Martha, who was short and plump, with silver hair.
“I know that. What I meant was, what’s it doing here?”
Betsy said, “I’ve set up a sample basket so people can try out fabrics and fibers and stitches, and I’m going to let them do it under the Dazor if they like, so they can see better.”
Alice, who was inclined to blurt out whatever was on her mind, said, “And maybe somehow they’ll get the notion they need the lamp, too?”
“Alice!” scolded Martha. A brisk-mannered widow in her late seventies, she was an ardent practitioner of Minnesota Nice.
“That’s the idea, certainly,” agreed Betsy cheerfully.
The women had barely taken their places at the library table when the door opened again. This time it was Jill Cross, a tall, ash-blond woman with a Gibson girl face. She nodded at Betsy and Godwin and took a seat at the table.
“Not on duty today?” asked Alice in her deep voice.
“No,” said Jill, opening her drawstring bag and taking out a needlepoint canvas pinned to a wooden frame. It was a Peter Ashe painting of a Russian church liberally ornamented with fanciful domes. She was using a gold metallic on the one swirled like a Dairy Queen cone.
“That’s coming along real nice,” noted Alice.
“Uh-huh.” Jill was normally taciturn, but this shortness bordered on rudeness.
Betsy said, “Something bothering you?”
“Huh? Oh.” She sighed. “All right, yes. I think I told at least some of you that Lars was going to sell his hobby farm.”
“You told me,” said Martha. “I thought you were
pleased. I know you’ve been wanting him to cut back on the time he spends trying to make a go of that place.”
“Yes, that’s true. Actually, he’s had it for sale for a month now.”
“What, you’re afraid he isn’t going to get his price for it?” asked Alice.
“No, he got his price last week.”
“Then what’s the problem?” asked Martha.
“I think he’s already spent the money.”
“On what?” asked Betsy. She knew Lars and Jill had been dating for a long time—two or even three years. They weren’t living together, or even officially engaged, but neither dated anyone else so far as Betsy knew.
“That’s just it, I don’t know. He’s been making long-distance calls and reading books about—something. You know Lars, working fifty hours a week isn’t enough to keep that man occupied. First it was boats, then it was the hobby farm. I don’t know what’s next, flying lessons or do-it-yourself dentistry. That’s what’s bothering me—he never talks to me before he decides what he’s going to do.”
Godwin said, “Some men are just terrible at sharing their plans. Afraid they’ll start an argument, I guess.”
“Are you having trouble with John again?” asked Alice, sometimes as perceptive as she was tactless.
“No, not exactly. Well, actually, it’s me who doesn’t want to start the argument.” Godwin lived with a wealthy attorney, an older man who, by Godwin’s telling, was kind, generous, and very possessive.
Alice, who had sat down next to the Dazor, made a sudden exclamation.
“What?” asked Betsy.
Alice had casually turned the light on and, instead of using it to light her crochet project, had taken a scrap of twenty-count Jobelan from the basket to look at it through the big magnifying glass. “I can
see
this!” she said.
“So can I,” said Godwin, who was at the other end of the table from her.
“No, I mean, I can see the weave, I can actually see the weave!”
Betsy and Godwin exchanged smiles. While Alice was not in a position to afford a Dazor, her reaction was exactly what they’d hoped for. Other customers would sit there and hold a piece of high-count linen under that magnifying light, and the cash register would ring merrily.
Two more Monday Bunch members came in to sit down with projects and soon the table was alive with helpful hints and gossip. Betsy kept the coffee cups filled, served the occasional customer, and brought patterns, fabrics, and fibers to the table to be examined and, often enough, set aside by the cash register.
She came from the back with the newest Mirabilia pattern to hear Martha saying in an amused voice, “Honestly, Emily acts as if hers is the first baby ever born! All she ever talks about anymore is the joy and burden of staying home with an infant.”
“All first-time mothers are like that,” said Kate McMahon with a little sigh. “My Susan certainly is, and I expect I was, too.”
“Have any of you talked to Irene lately?” asked Betsy, anxious on behalf of Alice to change the subject. Alice’s only child had died young of a heart ailment.
“No, why?” asked Phil Galvin, a retired railroad
engineer. He was working on a counted cross stitch pattern of a mountain goat.
“She has made the most amazing—”
The door to the shop made its annoying
Bing!
sound, and a very big police officer came in. He was about twenty-five, golden blond, and excited. “Found you at last, Jill!” he exclaimed, his voice as loud as he was big.
“Hi, Lars!” said Jill, getting up and heading toward him. “What’s up?”
“Look at this, look what I found!” He had a sheaf of papers in his hand and thrust it at her.
Jill took the papers, glanced at the top one, then more slowly looked at two or three sheets under it. “What is this? Some kind of old car—what, reported stolen?” she asked. “Where’d it turn up?”
“No, no! I finally found this for sale. I can’t believe the price. Wait till you see it!”
“See it?” asked Jill, handing back the papers. “What do you mean, what have you bought?”
Lars thrust the papers back at her. “In there, look at the picture of it!”
Betsy, curious, came to look around Jill’s shoulder.
“You want to
buy
this?” said Jill, having sifted through the papers until she found the eight-by-ten color photo again. “Why?”
But Betsy, glancing at the printing on the margin of the photo, said, “Oh, my God, it’s a Stanley Steamer! Is it for real? Does it run? Where is it?”
“Yes, it’s real, a 1911 touring car. It’s in Albuquerque. And yes, it runs, or he’s pretty sure it will, after it has a little work done on it. He had an accident with it a few years ago and it’s been just sitting under a tarp
in his back yard. But he says they’re harder to kill than a rattlesnake. What I can’t believe is the price. Only wants seventeen thousand for it!”
“Dollars?”
said Jill. “For an old,
old
car that’s been in a
wreck
and it will
maybe
run after you’ve done, oh yeah, a
little
work on it?”
“You’re really going to bring it up here?” asked Betsy eagerly.
“Of course he isn’t!” barked Jill. “Steam?” she said to Lars. “Like a locomotive?”
“Yeah, just like a locomotive, except it’s a car. Isn’t that great? It’s got the original boiler in it!”
“From
1911
? A ninety-year-old boiler sounds dangerous to me.”
“The boiler on a Stanley never blows. Ever. And there are lots of them still out there on the road. There’s a whole organization of people who drive them. And there’s all kinds of places that make parts for it, tires and windshields and all. The owner is an old guy, a doctor, who can’t work on it himself anymore, he’s got heart problems.” He shifted his ardent gaze to Betsy, whose expression was much more receptive than his girlfriend’s. “I found this old book by a guy who got a hold of a Stanley and got it running. He tells some stories in that book that about had me rolling on the floor.” Thinking about the stories in the book made his blue eyes twinkle and the corners of his mouth turn up. Lars was a good-looking man, and when amused and enthusiastic, he was irresistible.
Betsy said, “Will you take me for a ride in your Stanley Steamer, Lars?”
Jill turned away and walked back to the table, where
she put a great deal of meaning into the way she sat down.
Lars didn’t notice. He continued eagerly to Betsy, “Nobody knows how fast the Stanley Steamer can go, ’cause as long as you hold the throttle open, it just keeps on accelerating. In 1906 it set the world land speed record of a hundred and twenty-seven miles an hour. There’s a picture of it in this guy’s book of the special chassis they put on it, like a canoe. In 1907 they tried again—it was on Daytona Beach in Florida—and this time, at over a hundred and fifty, it hit a bump and the air got under it, and it actually took off, like an airplane!” Lars’s hand described a shallow arc. “Of course, it crashed after a few dozen yards, but just think, over hundred and fifty, and that
still
wasn’t its top speed!”
“In 1907? That’s amazing!”
Lars continued, “Most cars back then could manage about twenty-five miles an hour going downhill with a tail wind, so it isn’t amazing, it’s
fantastic
! I wonder if my car can go that fast.” His blue eyes turned dreamy.
“But then it crashed,” murmured Jill, bowing her head. “Lord, help us not to forget that little part, amen.”
Several other members of the Monday Bunch snickered softly.
Lars, aware at last that he had lost Jill, went to her to show her the color photo again. He said in a wheedling voice, “Just look at it. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Look at the shape, so beautiful and old and classy. It’s got brass trim and wooden wheels, and look at those big old lamps for headlights. Plus, it doesn’t have a horn like other cars, but a whistle!” Lars shrilled a creditable imitation of a steam train whistle.
“Wheee-owwwwww!
And it doesn’t go brrum, brrum like gasoline engines. It goes
chuff, chuff, chuff, chuff
!” He began to circle the library table, elbows bent and arms working.
“Chuff, chuff, chuff—whee, whee-owwwwwww!”
Phil and the women laughed.
Jill, her voice sounding strained from her attempt to be reasonable, said, “Listen to me, Lars. This car has got to be dangerous. It’s more than ninety years old, and it’s been in a wreck. And it’s a steam-powered automobile. That’s something they tried and gave up on, or why isn’t every car on the road today powered by steam? And look at this thing, it hasn’t even got a roof! What are you going to do when winter comes?”