Excerpt: Unraveling Ruby

Prologue: The Sweater Curse

The Sweater Curse is a surprisingly common superstition among knitters. It states that a woman should not knit a sweater for her boyfriend. Doing so will inevitably condemn the relationship to failure. Once there is a promise of marriage, some feel that the curse no longer applies, while others warn that you should hold out until there is a legal binding ceremony committing you to each other.

There are a few reasons that knitters give for abiding by the myth. The first is a sort of a Murphy’s law explanation. You will spend an enormous amount of time knitting this lovely gift, and chances are your relationship will break up, for whatever reason, before the sweater is finished. This leaves you with a half finished sweater that will be a constant reminder of the failed relationship. In this case, the sweater is not to blame for the break up, but it is an unfortunate leftover.

The second scenario is that the sweater will somehow be the cause of the break up. Perhaps the wearer doesn’t fully appreciate the work that goes into a hand-knit garment, and does not show it the appropriate reverence. Or perhaps the knitter didn’t measure carefully, or picked a scratchy yarn, so the sweater is not comfortable, and therefore not worn. The girlfriend feels like her hard work is being slighted, which causes resentment and anger. This sort of problem wouldn’t occur if couples would just sit down and talk to each other about the issue. It’s not an excuse to end a relationship, and usually it’s more of a ‘last straw’ type of situation.

Now, I consider myself a fairly liberated woman, and I’m also not the least bit superstitious. My boyfriend Timothy and I have lived together for almost 2 years, and have been dating for over 4. I love knitting, and I am a process knitter, and a generous one at that. I find great pleasure in knitting things just to give them away (I think almost every one of my friends has a pair of hand-knit socks). It was shortly after I’d moved into Tim’s apartment when I decided I would laugh in the face of superstition. I bought eight large skeins of charcoal grey, aran weight superwash merino, essentially, the perfect boyfriend yarn: dark coloured, chunky, soft and machine washable. I found a very classic pattern for an Irish Fisherman’s Sweater. I cast on one night at my weekly Stitch and Bitch, and I got several earfuls about ‘The Curse’. Most were just friendly teasing, but there was one woman there who swore she was a cautionary tale, and that her boyfriend simply left her, with no explanation, the day after she gave him an elaborate Fair Isle sweater for his birthday.

I knit the sweater in secret. I took it out to coffee shops, I knit it on the subway. When it got too big to carry around easily, I stuffed it into a large backpack which I took with me whenever I thought I might have some spare knitting time. I worked as a full time nanny for two preschool aged boys, and in the evenings, once they were fed and bathed, they would snuggle up beside me and watch cartoons while I knit away on Tim’s sweater. I finished it in mid-September, and decided I wouldn’t wait for any special occasion to give it to him. His birthday wasn’t until April, and even if I waited until Christmas, he would miss out on prime sweater weather (which was essentially the time between the first leaves falling off the trees and the first sign of snow). He loved it, and he put it on right away, and marvelled at the softness, and at the detailed cables, and at how it fit just perfectly. He was appropriately thankful, and then he was a little inappropriately thankful, which was just fine with me. I felt proud and talented, and maybe even a little smug. It was a beautiful project, well executed, and our relationship was as strong as ever. Phooey on the so-called sweater curse.

***
Excerpt:

I stared at the woman, utterly speechless. She was tall and leggy, and she was wearing a charcoal grey cabled sweater that looked better on her than it had any right to. It was too big for her, and it hung off of one shoulder, accentuating her long thin neck, and revealing one pointy collarbone. It came down to just the very top of her thighs, which were also thin and sort of disgustingly perfect. It was just long enough that I couldn’t be certain, but I would have bet money that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath it.

I was so fixated on her that it didn’t even occur to me until I took a second look that she was wearing the charcoal grey cabled sweater. Tim’s sweater. And at this point, the little bits and pieces that my brain had started to pick up were piecing themselves together into something I really didn’t want to consider.

I looked up at her face - and I did have to look up, because she was quite a bit taller than me. I didn’t recognize her, but she had a very stereotypically beautiful look about her. Plump lips, bright blue eyes, short, tousled blonde hair. Her hair wasn’t messy in an intentional, styled way, and it wasn’t just slept-in hair, either. It looked like it was messy from thrashing around against a pillow, from fingers running through it carelessly, from hands grabbing her head to kiss her.

She didn’t have bed head. She had sex head.

I thought I was going to throw up.

‘Who are you?’ she asked, interrupting my evaluation of her.

In my head, I shot back a snarky response: ‘I should be asking you the same question.’ In reality, I said, ‘I’m Tim’s girlfriend,’ in a voice barely above a whisper.

The girl at least had the decency to look shocked, though I suspected it was at my presence, and not my existence. I’d lived in the apartment long enough to leave a fair bit of evidence that Tim was not a bachelor.

I had a brief moment where I considered the alternatives to the obvious. Was it possible that I was reading this situation wrong? Isn’t this the scenario you see in sitcoms and bad romantic comedies where the girlfriend overreacts and assumes that her boyfriend is cheating, when it’s actually his visiting cousin standing in their kitchen. With no pants on.

‘Who are you?’ I asked.

‘Layla.’

I was going to need a bit more information than that. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I tried and failed to raise my voice. I didn’t like this at all. I was stronger than this.

Layla seemed to be having trouble framing her response. She started to speak, then seemed to reconsider, shook her head, tried to start again. This was ridiculous. I didn’t have the energy to tiptoe around the issue.

‘Are you sleeping with Tim?’ I finally managed to put some force behind the words, but as soon as I said them, they rang in my ears and I found I still didn’t really believe this was happening. Of course she’s not sleeping with Tim. I’m sleeping with Tim. I’m the only one sleeping with Tim.

A flush crept up her neck and reddened her cheeks. She carefully averted my gaze. She didn’t quite look embarrassed, or guilty. She looked like a cat with an empty birdcage and a mouth full of feathers. Definitely caught, but not regretful. Suddenly, I knew I didn’t want to hear her say it. Her reaction was evidence enough.

I heard Tim’s footsteps pad down the hall from the bedroom. I had a sudden mental flash of the two of them in the bedroom - our bedroom - and I had to lean against the wall to steady myself. He looked at me, made direct eye contact, but I didn’t see any emotion in his eyes. He didn’t look sad, or sorry, or guilty. He maybe looked a little tired. I felt rage bubble up inside me, jockeying for position with hurt and betrayal.

Hurt won out. I felt tears stinging my eyes, but I knew that I could not cry in front of them. Especially not in front of him. I needed to maintain some small shred of dignity in the situation. She wasn’t even wearing underpants, so I had the upper hand on her at least. I opened my mouth to speak, and found there were no words left. So I turned around, picked up my bags, and walked out. He didn’t try to stop me.

New excerpt (aka: what happened to the sweater...)

I walked across the threshold with my suitcase, just as I had a few nights before. I had a sort of a flashback and I stared at the spot in the kitchen, half expecting to see Layla standing there again. I felt suddenly quite sick. I groaned and sank to the floor and hung my head between my knees, trying to catch my breath.

‘I can’t do this Sara,’ I said.

Sara put a hand on my shoulder, ‘Yes you can. Tell me how to help.’

I gestured to a bookshelf next to the television, ‘The second shelf of books are all mine,’ I said, ‘and then there’s the yarn closet, and my clothes and the bathroom stuff.’

‘You can toss the bathroom stuff. I’ll buy you new bathroom stuff,’ she rubbed my back softly. ‘Why don’t you do the clothes, so you can sort everything out. I can just put the whole yarn closet in one bag, right?’ Sara said.

I smiled in spite of myself, ‘One really big bag. Maybe.’

I started to feel a little more steady, and I headed into the bedroom to deal with my clothes. I wasn’t really thinking about the bedroom itself, or the memories that would flood me when I entered it. It was a small room, with one tightly packed closet and a set of dresser drawers. And a bed. Our bed, with the still-rumpled sheets, where we had slept together almost every night for the past two years. Where we had more-than-slept together more times than I can count. And where he had presumably more-than-slept with Layla. I tried to shake the thought from my head. On the top of the laundry basket by the foot of the bed, I saw his sweater. I picked it up, noticed the familiar smell of Tim’s deodorant, and also an unfamiliar smell of perfume on it, and immediately felt sick again. This time, I didn’t recover quite as gracefully. Thankfully, the bathroom was close. Sara knocked on the bathroom door, asking if I was okay. I grunted miserably to tell her to stay away. I knew she meant well, but there are times, like when you’re vomiting, when you really don’t want company.

When I thought I could stand again, I splashed water on my face and brushed my teeth. Then I decided to take the good electric toothbrush with me. I also took a pair of tweezers, my favourite nail polish and a bottle of really expensive perfume (that I had bought for myself in the first place).

I went back to try to tackle the bedroom one more time. I yanked my sweaters and dresses and pants off the hangers, and I dumped my whole underwear and sock drawer into the suitcase. When I was finished, almost exactly half of our closet and drawers were empty. I had to sit on the suitcase to close it, but it all just barely fit.

I took one last look around the room before I left, and my eyes fell on the cabled sweater one more time. This time, I didn’t feel sick when I looked at it. Instead, I was furious.

I remembered cozying up to him, leaning against his chest, and how the soft wool brushed my cheek. I remembered how he had told me he loved it, and he’d told me he loved me, and I remembered how smug I had felt about the stupid sweater curse.

Suddenly I realized why I was so fixated on the sweater. This was my anti-sweater-curse sweater. I had proved that the curse was bullshit, and that nothing bad would happen because of it, and I felt like I this sweater was mocking me, punishing me for being so confident, so proud.

It suddenly became absolutely clear to me that I couldn’t leave the sweater there. I knew that it was his, technically, since I’d given it to him. I had told myself I wouldn’t do anything stupid or childish like damaging his property. But I’d knit the damn thing. I worked on it for months. I had put time and thought and love into this sweater, and I needed a way to reclaim some of it, somehow.

I went to my yarn closet and retrieved my sharpest pair of scissors. I laid the sweater out on the bed, and proceeded to work backwards, deconstructing the sweater. I started by snipping the seams up the sides, and up the arms. I detached the arms from the body and separated the two pieces of the body at the shoulders. I cut the folded hem at the neck, gave it a good pull, and pretty soon I was ripping the sweater as fast as I could, winding the yarn into a ball as I went. The process of ripping back your knitting is often called ‘frogging’ (as in, rip-it, rip-it). Well, I frogged that damn sweater down in record time. The yarn was crimped and curled, and looked like a pile ramen noodles, and the air around me was full of bits of fluff that came off as I pulled and wound.
Sara came into the room just as I finished frogging the second arm. I still had the whole back left. She stood in the doorway, gaping at me.

‘It’s my yarn,’ I said plainly, ‘it may be his sweater, but it’s my yarn!’

Sara saw no reason to argue with me, or if she did, she knew better than to try.