Sweater Weather

Lizzy was thirty-two and she'd been in town exactly eleven days. Long enough to unpack the kitchen boxes, not long enough to know anyone. So when her new coworker mentioned the Harvest County Fair, she said yes without thinking about it.

The fair smelled like fried dough and hay. Kids ran everywhere. A man in overalls was judging pumpkins near the entrance, tapping one with his knuckles like a doctor. Lizzy bought a coffee she didn't want and walked the rows anyway.

She liked craft tents. She took the long way through them for that reason. Pottery, candles, a woman selling jams out of mason jars with gingham lids. Then she hit the row near the pumpkin patch and stopped walking.

Wood shavings. The smell hit her before the sign did. Hand-Carved Furniture and Woolen Goods, painted on a board, a little crooked.

And behind the table, sanding a cutting board, was Jack.

Jack, who was thirty-three now, who she'd dated for two years in grad school, from twenty-three to twenty-five. Jack, who she'd left when the firm in Chicago made an offer and he'd said, fine, go, and neither of them had called after that. Seven years ago. It felt like seven years ago, standing there with her coffee.

He looked up. He looked at her for maybe two seconds. Then he smiled.

"Lizzy," he said. He set the sandpaper down. "Holy hell."

"Hi, Jack."

"What are you... okay. You're here. In this town?"

"I moved here. Eleven days ago. New job. Architect, actually, at the firm over on Mill Street." She was talking too fast. She made herself stop. "Small world."

"Small world," he agreed. He came around the table and they did the awkward half-hug thing, patting backs, and it was somehow worse than no hug at all. He smelled like cedar. Of course he did.

"You look good," he said.

"You look... the same. That's not an insult. You aged well." She winced at herself. "I'm going to stop talking now."

"No, keep going, this is great!" He was grinning. He'd always grinned when she got flustered, and she'd always hated how much she liked it.

A young woman appeared from behind a curtain at the back of the booth. Late twenties, dark hair in a bun, holding a clipboard.

"Jack, the chartreuse blanket sold," she said. Then she saw Lizzy and went polite. "Oh. Hi!"

"Lizzy, this is Clara. Clara works with me. Clara, Lizzy is..." He stopped. He actually stopped, mid-sentence, and looked at Lizzy. "Lizzy is an old friend."

"Old friend," Lizzy said. "Sure."

"Nice to meet you," Clara said. "I'll go wrap the chartreuse." She retreated behind the curtain, and Lizzy noticed it was a curtain, not a door. A heavy canvas thing, floor to ceiling.

"Sit," Jack said, dragging a stool over. "Coffee's terrible here but you've already got some, so you're committed."

She sat. The booth was nice. Big oak table, wool blankets folded in stacks, carved bowls. A row of small wooden things she couldn't identify on a side shelf.

"What are those?"

"Scent blocks. Cedar and pine shavings, pressed with oil. You put them in a drawer or a closet. Keeps moths out, makes your clothes smell like a forest." He picked one up. It was the size of a soap bar, smooth on every face. "Made those myself."

"You always smelled like a forest," she said, and then heard it. "That came out weird. Forget I said that."

"Nope. Keeping it." He put the block down. "So. Chicago. How long were you there?"

"Seven years. Then the Mill Street firm called in August and I figured, why not. New start." She sipped her bad coffee. "You? How long have you been doing this?"

"Stall's been here four years. Before that I worked a shop in Dayton. Hated it. Quit, moved out here, learned to sell." He shrugged. "It's good work. I make things. People buy them. Not complicated."

"That sounds nice."

"It is nice. Mostly." He looked past her at the fair crowd. Families, strollers, a kid screaming about a corn dog. "It gets lonely, honestly. Small town. Everyone's married with three kids by thirty-five."

"Everyone?"

"Okay, Clara's not. But she's twenty-eight and has standards."

"I heard that," Clara called from behind the curtain.

Lizzy laughed, and it came out easy, and that surprised her. Talking to Jack was easy. That was the problem, it had always been the problem. Easy, and then not.

She stood and drifted along the table. There was a rack of sweaters near the front, thick ones, hand-knit by somebody, in grays and greens and one deep rust color.

"These are yours?"

"Clara's mom knits them. I sell them. I just..." He tapped the shelf of scent blocks. "Every sweater gets one of those in the drawer with it for a week before it goes out. So they smell right."

"So they smell like cedar."

"So they smell like the stall."

She picked the rust one. It was heavy, dense wool, soft inside. She held it against her chest.

"This one. How much?"

"You don't have to buy a sweater."

"I want the sweater, Jack."

"Then it's forty dollars and it's yours." He took it from her, wrapped it in brown paper, and refused to hear about the scent block until she'd paid. Then he dropped one in the bag anyway. "On me. House gift. Welcome to town."

"That's a sales tactic."

"It's absolutely a sales tactic. It's worked on half this county."

Clara came out with the wrapped blanket and said goodbye to Lizzy with a small nod. Lizzy said she'd see them around, and Jack said, "Tomorrow's the last day, booth's open till two," and she said, "Maybe," and walked off into the crowd feeling like a teenager with a paper bag pressed against her ribs.

She didn't open the bag in the car.

At home, her apartment was still half boxes. She ate leftover takeout standing at the counter, then took the sweater upstairs to the bedroom, because the bedroom was the only room that felt finished.

She unwrapped the brown paper. Folded the rust wool out flat on the bed. And the smell came up off it all at once. Cedar, sharp and dry. Pine oil, a little sweet. And under that, faint, warm, unmistakable. Jack. His sweat, worked into the wool from a week in a drawer, from a week of his hands.

Lizzy stood there with her hands on the bedspread for a good minute.

Then she picked the sweater up and pushed her face into it and breathed in like she'd been underwater for seven years. Cedar shavings and Jack. It was stupid. It was completely stupid and she did it again anyway, turning her head to get her nose deeper into the fold of the collar, where the smell was thickest.

She thought about the booth. The curtain. The shavings everywhere, on his forearms, probably in his hair. She thought about twenty-four years old, his apartment above the machine shop, the way he used to come home smelling exactly like this and she used to make a whole production of it, dragging him to the shower, and he used to say the shower defeats the purpose, Lizzy.

She sat down on the edge of the bed with the sweater in her lap.

Okay, she thought. Fine. She was thirty-two years old and she was sitting in a half-empty apartment getting wrecked by a smell. She'd had worse days. Not many.

She put the sweater on.

It fit. Of course it fit. She wore it the rest of the evening, made herself a drink, sat on the floor going through old boxes because it seemed like the right thing to do with that smell on her. Found a photo from graduation, Jack in a bad suit. Put it in a drawer fast.

She slept in the sweater. She'd deny that in any reasonable conversation, but she slept in it.

Wednesday morning she was up at seven for no reason. The fair didn't open till ten. She had work at nine. She drank coffee, showered, put on work clothes, then stood in the bedroom looking at the rust sweater folded on the bed.

The fair closed at two. She could leave at one. She could be there by ten past one.

"You have a job," she told the mirror.

She went to the job. She drew a stair detail for four hours and thought about cedar for three of them. At 12:40 she told her lead she had a personal errand, which was true in a way that would not survive questions, and drove over.

The fair on its last day was thinner. Rides were already half down. Vendors were packing boxes into vans. She walked the