Chapter 4
Having ice cream for dinner is not to heal my soul, despite what Grandee says.
It’s an excuse to eat dessert first, which has always been her favorite way to eat any meal. What if we die before the last course?
We have her favorite, Rocky Road, out of large crystal sundae bowls and topped with fruit she canned earlier in the summer. It’s sweet and cold and makes us both forget about dinner. When we’re done, she doesn’t even suggest eating something more nutritious before she sends me up to bed.
This must be the rest part.
But I don’t sleep. I spend the entire night staring at the blank canvas of the ceiling and replaying those last moments in the water. Fragmented things filtered in by light and chaos. There are so many I can’t even tell what’s real and what I’ve imagined.
Did I really lock eyes with Carter before the water pulled him away? Was his hand really in mine? How dark was the water?
When morning comes, I hear Grandee’s rooster, Christopher, only moments before she’s at my door. Her knock is loud before she barrels into my room without waiting for a response. I pull my covers over my head right before she shouts, “Rise and shine! Time to start the day.”
I groan. “I didn’t sleep well last night.” I didn’t sleep at all.
“Well, getting up and moving will make you tired, and then maybe you’ll be able to sleep tonight.” She says it as if she’s just suggested the most wonderful thing.
I should have known she wouldn’t care that I’m tired. She throws open the curtains and looks back at me seriously. “Your mama’s downstairs.”
Fuck.
My mother. The exact opposite of my grandmother.
All business and goals. She’s never agreed with my going to Suttleton.
There was a time when she was hopeful that I would be the first Monroe to break the mold and do accounting or something.
She’s never happy. She never liked Carter, and she barely tolerated his inability to make plans for his future.
I do not want to see her right now.
“Don’t make that face. You know how she’ll get, and then we’ll be stuck with her for dinner.”
I nod and throw aside my blanket. This is a dance we’ve played my whole life.
My mother making judgments against Grandee for not being the kind of adult that she agrees with, never mind that she left her only child to be raised by her.
And Grandee telling my mother what she wants to hear until she finally leaves Grandee to her wool.
A weird reversal of roles, laced with disapproval.
Downstairs, my mother sits at the table in the breakfast nook. Sunlight shines in through the giant windows that surround her, and the colored glass hanging in front of them paints the wood in a rainbow.
“Nieve.” My mother looks relieved to see me.
Sort of. Her shoulders slump slightly in her black blazer, and her hair is pulled into a stunning yet severe ponytail.
She’s the very picture of an art historian and curator for one of the top museums in the country.
Somehow, she took her unconventional upbringing and made it work for her.
“Mom.”
“So, no school?” She doesn’t look upset. For years, she’s been telling me there is no money in being an artist, but her Louboutins say differently.
“Just for now,” Grandee says for me. “Tea? Almond cake?”
My mother makes a face and dismisses the cake with a wave of her hand. “No one likes those cakes. Why do you still buy them?”
“June likes them. Has them every morning with her tea.”
My mom’s eyes close for a moment, like she’s gathering her patience. “June has been dead for ten years.”
But Grandee only shrugs. Two years ago, my mother had her checked for dementia, but Grandee passed with what the doctor called “a better memory than most young people.”
I pull out the wooden chair that’s been painted teal. One summer day when Linden and I were too young to be teens and too old to be kids, Grandee had us paint the kitchen chairs the color of our hearts. Mine was orange, but my mother is sitting in that chair, so I sit in Linden’s.
Grandee takes two plates of mostly eaten almond cake and places them in the sink before pouring two cups of coffee. She sets them on the table and looks over at her daughter. “And what are you doing here?”
“I’m here to check on Nieve.” She purses her lips when she says it and looks at me. “You know, the person I gave life to?”
Grandee doesn’t make a face, but I can tell she wants to.
Like trying to hold back the tide. “Well, the person you gave life to almost drowned, and her boyfriend did. She has terrible nightmares if she even sleeps at all, and she blames herself.” Grandee looks at my mother in the silence.
“So, if that’s all, Nieve and I have some wool to treat today. ”
My mother’s voice sounds tired. “I know what happened.”
“We’re doing just fine here, so unless there’s something else you need—”
“Yeah, it looks like it.” My mother scoffs and crosses her arms over her chest. Like a child. Like Grandee’s child.
“Kerrie Maeve,” my grandmother starts. “You have checked on your daughter. What else can we do for you?”
My mother looks like she has more to say, but Grandee is right to want her to leave. She’s only here now because it’s convenient for her schedule. Mom stands and runs her hands down the front of her suit and takes a deep breath before shrugging off her jacket.
“You’re treating wool?” She gives her mother a stern look. “Let’s go.”
Grandee rolls her eyes and motions for me to stand up. “Can you even remember how to do it?” She throws the question over her shoulder at my mom as she walks out of the kitchen.
Now my mother smiles. “I know you think I’m just some sad person who has no joy because I broke your heart and own a black suit, but I was raised in this house, and I know how to card wool.”
Grandee shakes her head as she walks out the door.
I throw on a pair of clogs as I follow her and my mother toward the shed. The sheep follow Grandee, like they always do, baaing and bleating softly. She reaches down and gently pats the tops of their heads as she works the lock on the door free. As if anyone would want what’s inside.
Raw, untreated, dirty wool.
The smell attacks me as the door opens. “Grandee, do we have to—”
But before I can finish, she’s thrown a bundle at me. Some of it gets in my mouth, and I gag a little.
“Such a baby.”
Grandee tosses an especially dirty bundle at my mother. I expect her to admit defeat and run off, but she just catches it and turns back to the house. Her blush-colored silk blouse must be ruined.
We spend the entire morning cleaning the wool. The creases on my knuckles start to crack painfully from picking dirt and shit from the fleece and submerging it in warm water.
My mother looks like a professional as she pulls wool apart and dunks it as the sun beats down on us.
I guess there are some things you never forget.
While the fleece dries in the dehydrator, my mother makes a call on the front porch.
She paces anxiously, so different from the woman who was working outside.
She seemed calm and easy; here she’s determined and brisk.
When it’s done, we card the wool with a drum and turn the wheel slowly. The rhythmic sound is soothing, and for the first time in a while, the only thing I focus on is what is in front of me.
But then Grandee tells me it’s time to dye the wool.
The yarn room is a holy place—Grandee’s sanctuary.
An old greenhouse that was converted into a studio with tables and racks of different bottled dyes and metal bins.
Several of the large windows are covered by plants and trees growing outside, and they dapple the weak light that makes its way through the foggy glass.
The floor that was once dirt is covered in thick woven rugs that are from the sheep Grandee had before.
And that her mother had, and that her grandmother had.
I take my roving and place it in a large tin tray and set it on the table in front of the bottles of color.
“Pick the ones that speak to you.”
The rows of dark green bottles have ink rubbed onto white labels, like smears of color instead of names.
They tinkle against each other as my mother looks through the shallow rows, and the light catches on different gemstones embedded in the cork stoppers.
It feels like a ritual. Like our version of bells and incense, but it’s bottles and crystals.
I reach for an indigo blue.
Grandee’s hand moves to stop me. “Not what you want. What the wool wants.” Grandee walks over to me. “Close your eyes and ask.”
“Mom,” my mother says with irritation, but I saw the green yarn tied to her wrist when she reached out to grab her color. Orange.
“Hush,” Grandee tells my mother before turning back to me. “Close your eyes, Nieve.”
I hate pretending. I hate acting like I find Grandee’s silliness normal. But if I’m doing this—if I’m here playing along—I can’t be thinking about Carter. I can’t focus on how every breath I take is one he doesn’t.
So I stop. And I close my eyes. “What color should I dye you?”
My mom laughs, and Grandee says, “You don’t have to ask it out loud. It’s not gonna answer you.”
She acts like I haven’t been doing this my whole life. I look at the colors, and the bright blue keeps catching my eye. I grab it.
“A new start,” Grandee tells me as she dumps hot pink on her wool.
I take the rose color and splash a bit on one side and then the other.
“Deep love.”
Purple, brown, and a shade of gray.
“Truth, earth, and growth.”
Unable to stop myself, I reach for the black, just as my mother knocks an entire bottle of yellow onto my roving.
It spills across the wool, seeping into almost every fiber.
“Oh no,” she says but makes no move to pick it up.
Grandee only frowns. “Yellow. Second chances.”
My mom nods. “Everyone should get a second chance.”
Except there are no second chances for this wool, or for me. Carter is gone, and the wool is ruined.