Excerpt: The Friday Night Knitting Club

"How do you feel knitting connects with your conceptions of femininity?" Darwin asked of one quiet M.D. who had popped by at the end of her shift. The doctor never entered the shop again.

"Does being an older knitter make you feel disconnected from the younger trendsetters?" she asked Anita.

"No, love, it makes me feel young," Anita replied. "Every time I cast on I feel the potential of making something beautiful."

At first, Georgia tolerated Darwin because she was amused by her earnestness and because she admired the seriousness with which Darwin approached her studies. Not to mention that she felt a certain sense of pride to have someone choose Walker and Daughter as a worthy place in which to do research. But in short order, Georgia put her foot down.

"You can't harass everyone who comes in here, Darwin," she explained. "You'll have to go if you can't stop interrogating everyone."

"Aren't you disturbed that the renewed popularity of knitting is an alarming throwback? Can women who fritter away time on old-fashioned activities such as knitting realize their full professional potential?" responded Darwin, clearly missing the point.

"Disturbed? No, encouraged is more like it. As in, I'm encouraged I can afford to send Dakota to Harvard." Georgia's mouth was a straight line. Knitting had done more than provide her with a living; it had soothed her soul through more struggles than she could count. "Sweetheart, I'm concerned you're preventing my shop from reaching its full professional potential!"

The two women stood glaring at each other for a long time. Darwin eventually turned on her heel and left.

And then she returned, two weeks later, watching Georgia warily as she arrived for club. Their eyes met, the agreement unspoken: You can stay, but don't upset the clients. Darwin nodded imperceptibly. She selected one of Dakota's muffins -- carrot spice -- and gave it a try. It was a first. "Hey, this is awesome!" She was genuinely surprised. Dakota was thrilled, told her she could request next week's flavor.

"I'm glad you're back," said Anita. Darwin looked up, expecting to see sarcasm but found only warmth and welcome in Anita's eyes. A wide grin spread over her face. She was embarrassed to admit it, even to herself, but Darwin was glad to be back. She had missed them.

Officially, Georgia was nonplussed by the presence of the club. "You all sit here and no one buys anything!" she would say to Anita during the day. Sometimes, when they had a lot of drop-ins, she hung back at the counter. It felt overwhelming to have this group here, laughing and chatting. Her entire adult life had centered on work and her little girl for so long that Georgia felt out of practice at just hanging out with women of her own age. She'd felt awkward unless she was helping them to calculate how many balls they needed for this pattern or that. But she loved that Anita had an activity for her mornings, getting revved up about whatever knitting topic she would discuss that week, and that Dakota was happy to stick around the store on a Friday night and not retreat to watch the TV upstairs.

Keeping Dakota safe, making her happy: That was what mattered most to Georgia. The store was truly theirs together, because it was Dakota who began it all. And savoring the end of each day that they were still in business -- and doing well, thank you very much! -- was a triumph for Georgia. She had been awash in panic when she discovered she was pregnant, barely out of college and working for poverty wages as an assistant at an amorphous publishing conglomerate. Her boyfriend, James, had dumped her the month before, saying he "just wasn't into exclusivity." The truth of it was that he had already started dating a woman in his office. And not just any woman: he was fucking his boss, the lead architect in a major Manhattan firm.

Georgia had wanted James the first time she saw him at Le Bar Bat, had felt a connection to this tall, handsome black man. She tugged at her curls, walked over to him, and popped the question: "I like my eggs scrambled for breakfast. You?" It was a gambit. James looked at her with cool authority; he liked what he saw, charmed her with his lopsided grin. First waiting at the bar to get drinks, then standing off to the side shout-talking until the middle of the night. They went home together, something she'd always been too cautious to do, Georgia feeling that she had been chosen, believing everyone looked at her with envy. And without even having a big discussion about it, they became a couple. Going to parties and to the movies and meeting for egg rolls after work. James was energetic and filled with big ideas, he loved to save up for more than a month so he could take them to luxurious restaurants like Le Cirque or wait in line to buy half-price tickets to Broadway shows. Other nights they stayed in, Georgia reading manuscripts in bed, James working at the battered old drafting table taking up most of his living room. They were young, often broke, and infused with the energy and passion that fills the New York air. The relationship was easy, comfortable, exciting. It was meant to be. For eight months, they shuttled back and forth between apartments, had late-night chats in which they discussed whose furniture they'd keep when they moved in together, walked hand-in-hand through the city streets fantasizing about where they should live. The Upper West Side, they decided. Georgia recalled nights in bed with James, her pale hand tracing lines on his dark chest as she would ask in a sing-song voice, "Will it reeealllly bother your family that I'm white?" and he'd laugh and say, "Hell, yes!" They fell to giggles and tickles, empowered by the intensity of their recent lovemaking and disbelieving their relationship would fall to any challenge.

She never did meet his parents. She only realized that after he was gone.

And then James had moved on, having let himself into her apartment during the day and gathered up his clothes. He returned her things from his home, left them piled on the couch.

Georgia's mind swirled. She called him, screamed, begged him to come back. She stopped eating, stopped sleeping, then began eating way too much. Snickers bars and Pringles and giant bagels with cream cheese, soda and ice cream and pizza and cookies. She ate anything she could get her hands on. Anything cheap and filling.

"If you keep eating like that, everyone will think you're preggers," observed her wafer-thin, pain-in-the-ass cubiclemate.

A pause. Georgia did the math: Her period was late. Way late. And then she knew.

Should she take it on the chin and go back home to small-town Pennsylvania? Could she endure the humiliation of moving back home to her parents, of being a single mom with a failed big-city career at twenty-four? Or should she call her doctor and then just pretend the pregnancy had never happened? Georgia fretted over her lack of appealing options, in between photocopying endless manuscripts and opening looming piles of other people's mail and running out to buy the oversized, fat-free muffins her boss never ate.

Her indecision was her decision, and it became clear that she and this baby were going to stick together. Then came the day when Georgia, visibly pregnant, made her final pilgrimage to Central Park. It was to be her last weekend in the city before she moved home to her parents; she'd dialed them when there was no going back and choked out the news, feeling brave and sorry for herself at the same time.

"We'd be happy to have you home with us," said her father with gusto, before being drowned out by his wife's sighs.

"You've made a stupid mistake by trusting this man, Georgia," said her mother. "It's clear he only wanted one thing. And you've set yourself up a hard road to hoe –- not everyone will be as welcoming to this child as we are."

Georgia could see her mother's tight-lipped expression in her mind; it was one she'd seen many times growing up. She could barely hear them discuss the details of which train she might take; she was too overwhelmed by emotional regret and physical nausea.

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