Anne Tyler - A Spool of Blue Thread

Nora was a beautiful woman who didn’t know she was beautiful. She had shoulder-length brown hair and a wide, placid, dreamy face, completely free of makeup. Generally she wore inexpensive cotton dresses that buttoned down the front, and when she walked her hem fluttered around her calves in a liquid, slow-motion way that made every man in sight stop dead in his tracks and stare. But Nora never noticed that.

She parked her car down on the street like a guest, and she and the boys and the dog started up the steps toward the house — the boys and Heidi leaping and cavorting and falling all over themselves, Nora drifting serenely behind them. Red and Abby stood side by side waiting for them on the porch, because this was quite a moment, really. Petey shouted, “Hi, Grandma! Hi, Grandpa!” and Tommy said, “We’re going to live here now!” They’d been very excited ever since they heard the news. Nobody knew how Nora felt about it. At least outwardly, she was like Stem: she seemed to take things as they came. When she reached the porch, Red said, “Welcome!” and Abby stepped forward and hugged her. “Hello, Nora,” she said. “We’re so grateful to you for doing this.” Nora just smiled her slow, secret smile, revealing the two deep dimples in her cheeks.

The boys would sleep in the bunk-bed room. They raced up the stairs ahead of the grown-ups and threw themselves on the beds they always claimed when they stayed over. Stem and Nora would occupy Stem’s old room, diagonally across the hall. “Now, I’ve taken down all the posters and such,” Abby told Nora. “You two should feel free to hang whatever you like on the walls. And I’ve emptied the closet and the bureau. Will that give you enough storage space, do you think?”

“Oh, yes,” Nora said in her low, musical voice. It was the first time she had spoken since she’d arrived.

“I’m sorry the bed’s not here yet,” Abby said. “They can’t deliver it till Tuesday, so I’m afraid you’re going to have to make do with the twin beds until then.”

Nora just smiled again and wandered over to the bureau, where she set down her pocketbook. “For supper I’m fixing fried chicken,” she said.

Red said, “What?” and Abby told him, “Fried chicken!” At a lower volume, she said, “We love fried chicken, but you really don’t have to cook for us.”

“I enjoy cooking,” Nora said.

“Would you like Red to go to the grocery store for you?”

“Douglas is bringing groceries in the truck.”

Douglas was what she called Stem. It was his real name, which nobody in the family had used since he was two. They always looked blank for a moment when they heard it, but they could see why Nora might want a more grown-up name for her husband.

When she and Stem had announced that they were getting married, Abby had said, “Excuse me for asking, but will you be expecting … Douglas to join your church?” Just about all they knew about Nora was that she belonged to a fundamentalist church that was evidently a big part of her life. But Nora had said, “Oh, no. I don’t believe in dative evangelizing.” Abby had repeated this later to the girls: “She doesn’t believe in ‘dative evangelizing.’ ” As a result, they had assumed for a long time that Nora must not be very bright. Although she did hold a responsible job — medical assistant in a doctor’s office — before her children were born. And on occasion she came up with unsettlingly perceptive observations. Or were those accidental? She mystified them, really. Maybe now that she was living with them, they could finally figure her out.

Red and Abby left her upstairs to deal with the boys, who were walloping each other with pillows while Heidi, a flibbertigibbet collie, danced around them, barking hysterically. They went down and sat in the living room. Neither of them had any chores to do. They just sat looking at each other with their hands folded in their laps. Abby said, “Do you think this is how it will be all the rest of our lives?”

Red said, “What?”

Abby said, “Nothing.”

Stem and Jeannie’s Hugh arrived at the back door with the truck, and everybody went to unload — even the little boys, even Abby — except for Nora. Nora took delivery of the first item Stem brought in, an ice chest full of groceries, and she drew from it an apron folded on the very top. It was the kind that Red and Abby’s mothers wore in the 1940s, flowered cotton with a bib that buttoned at the back of the neck. She put it on and started cooking.

Over supper, there was a great deal of talk about accommodations. Abby kept wondering if one of the boys shouldn’t be moved to her study. “Maybe Petey, because he’s the oldest?” she asked. “Or Sammy, because he’s the youngest?”

“Or me, because I’m in the middle!” Tommy shouted.

“That’s okay,” Stem told Abby. “They were sharing one room at home, after all. They’re used to it.”

“I don’t know why it is,” Abby said, “but these last few years the house has just always seemed the wrong size. When your father and I are alone it’s too big, and when you all come to visit it’s too small.”

“We’ll be fine,” Stem said.

“Are you two talking about the dog?” Red asked.

“Dog?”

“Because I just don’t see how two dogs can occupy the same territory.”

“Oh, Red, of course they can,” Abby said. “Clarence is a pussycat; you know that.”

“Come again?”

“Clarence is on my bed right this minute!” Petey said. “And Heidi is on Sammy’s bed.”

Red overrode Petey’s last sentence, perhaps not realizing Petey was speaking. “My father was opposed to letting a dog in the house,” he said. “Dogs are hard on houses. Bad for the woodwork. He’d have made both those animals stay out in the backyard, and he’d have wondered why we owned them anyways unless they had some job to do.”

The grown-ups had heard this too many times to bother commenting, but Petey said, “Heidi’s got a job! Her job is making us happy.”

“She’d be better off herding sheep,” Red said.

“Can we get some sheep, then, Grandpa? Can we?”

“This chicken is delicious,” Abby told Nora.

“Thank you.”

“Red, isn’t the chicken delicious?”

“I’ll say! I’ve had two pieces and I’m thinking about a third.”

“You can’t have a third! It’s full of cholesterol!”

The telephone rang in the kitchen.

“Now, who on earth can that be?” Abby asked.

“Only one way to find out,” Red told her.

“Well, I’m just not going to answer. Everyone who’s anyone knows it’s the supper hour,” Abby said. But at the same time, she was pushing back her chair and standing up. She had never lost the conviction that someone might be needing her. She made her way to the kitchen, forcing two of the little boys to scoot their chairs in as she passed behind them.

“Hello?” they heard. “Hi, Denny!”

Stem and Red glanced toward the kitchen. Nora placed a dollop of spinach on Sammy’s plate, although he squirmed in protest.

“Well, nobody thought … What? Oh, don’t be silly. Nobody thought—”

“What’s for dessert?” Tommy asked his mother.

Stem said, “Ssh. Grandma’s on the phone.”

“Blueberry pie,” Nora said.

“Goody!”

“Yes, of course we would have,” Abby said. A pause. “Now, that is not true , Denny! That is simply not … Hello?”

After a moment, they heard the latching sound of the receiver settling back into its wall mount. Abby reappeared in the kitchen doorway.

“Well, that was Denny,” she told them. “He’s coming in tonight on the twelve-thirty-eight train, but he says just to leave the door unlocked and he’ll catch a cab from the station.”