was still a beginning knitter, and it didn’t come out the way I’d hoped: the rows were wavy on one side and straight on the other. But I’d measured right, and the hat fit snugly on his little head, which was still barely covered with shiny wisps of hair the exact color of my sister’s. He was six months old. Elise and Charlie had named him Miles, after Charlie’s father.
On Christmas morning, my hat sat on his head for maybe fifteen seconds before he yanked it off and started screaming.
“Don’t take it personally,” Elise said. Miles, still wailing in her lap, tried to grasp a blinking light hanging low on the tree. We were in our pajamas, sitting on the plush carpet of Elise and Charlie’s enormous living room, which, Elise liked to point out, cost a mere fraction of what an enormous living room would have cost them if they had stayed in San Diego. She mostly pointed this out when my mother was around, though my mother had told her, several times, that she didn’t have to justify anything.
“It’s a great hat.” Elise raised her voice so I could hear her over the crying. She held the hat up and smiled a little. The fuzzy ball on top was lopsided. “I like that you made it yourself. You gave him your time. That’s sweet.”
“You knit?” My father stood in the doorway to the kitchen, wearing the green turtleneck sweater that Susan O’Dell had given him for Christmas. He did not seem pleased or comfortable. My mother knew—we all knew—that my father hated turtlenecks. Susan O’Dell still did not. But Elise had invited Susan for brunch, and so my father was in the turtleneck, waiting. He looked at me over his coffee mug and frowned. “When did you start knitting?”
I stretched out my legs, leaning back on my elbows. “Since I realized I had no money for presents.”
“Get used to it, Ms. Liberal Arts.” He sipped his coffee and chuckled at his own joke. Elise looked at me and shook her head. Ignore ignore ignore. That was not impossible. I really didn’t care what my father thought of me knitting. I’d gotten myself a little stand that propped up any size book on a table, so I could read hands-free. In the last three months, I’d knit a hat for every member of my family—all while reading Moby Dick, The Turn of the Screw, and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. When I got tired of reading, I would look down, surprised by how much my hands had accomplished.
I didn’t always read while I knit. In October, I put up signs in the elevators, and I soon heard from seven freshmen who either wanted to learn to knit or who knew a lot more about knitting than I did. We met every Tuesday at eight in the lobby of my floor. I got programming credit. And it was nice, for one hour a week, just to sit around and talk and, at the same time, get something done.
“It’s a little…domestic, don’t you think?” My father walked into the room and stood next to the tree, looking down.
“No flies on you,” Elise said. “Knitting can only mean one thing.” She looked down at Miles and then at me. “Veronica got knocked up, too.”
She was making fun of him. I was not pregnant. I did not plan to get pregnant anytime soon. In January, I would take the GRE and apply to four graduate schools.
My father nodded and sipped his coffee. “That’s very funny, Elise. If you ever decide to go back to work, you could be a comedienne.”
Looking at her face, you wouldn’t think she had heard him. She leaned forward and tapped my knee. “Don’t knit yourself any socks, sweetie. If you’re going to be pregnant, you’ll want to be barefoot, too.”
He took another sip and gave her a weary look. “That’s right,” he said. “Laugh. Make fun of the guy who paid for college.”
She brought Miles back down to her lap and bounced him a little, cooing soothing words. She was different than she’d been before the baby. She no longer had to have the last word with our father. They would fight the way they always had, and then, right in the middle of it, she would stop as if suddenly bored; and whenever she did this, there was often something in her expression, and the way she tilted her head, that made me think of