Anne Tyler - A Spool of Blue Thread

“Huh! He’d damn well better,” Red said, “because I won’t be up that late.”

“Well, maybe you should meet him, Red.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’ll go,” Stem told her.

“Oh, I think maybe your father, dear.”

There was a silence.

“What was his problem?” Red asked finally.

“Problem?” Abby said. “Well, not a problem, exactly. He just doesn’t understand why we didn’t ask him to come stay.”

Even Nora looked surprised.

“Ask Denny!” Red said. “Would he have done it?”

“He says he would have. He says he’s coming now, regardless.”

Abby had been standing in the doorway all this time, but now she made her way back to her chair and fell into it heavily, as if the trip had exhausted her. “He found out from Jeannie that you were moving in,” she told Stem. “He thinks he should have been consulted. He says the house doesn’t have enough bedrooms for you all; it should have been him instead.”

Nora started reaching for people’s plates and stacking them, not making a sound.

“What wasn’t true?” Red asked Abby.

“Excuse me?”

“You said, ‘That’s not true, Denny.’ ”

“See how he does?” Abby asked Stem. “Half the time he’s deaf as a post and then it turns out he’s heard something all the way off in the kitchen.”

“What wasn’t true, Abby?” Red asked.

“Oh,” Abby said airily, “ you know. Just the usual.” She placed her silverware neatly across her plate and passed the plate to Nora. “He says he doesn’t know why we had Stem come when … you know. He says Stem is not a Whitshank.”

There was another silence, during which Nora rose in one fluid motion, still without a sound, and bore the stack of plates out to the kitchen.

Actually, it was true that Stem was not a Whitshank. But only in the most literal sense.

People tended to forget the fact, but Stem was the son of a tile layer known as Lonesome O’Brian. Lawrence O’Brian, really; but like most tilers he was sort of standoffish, fond of working by himself and keeping his own counsel, and so Lonesome was the name everybody called him. Red always said Lonesome was the best tile man going, although certainly not the fastest.

The fact that Lonesome had a son seemed incongruous. People tended to look at the man — tall and cadaverously thin, that translucent kind of blond where you can see the plates of his skull — and picture him living like a hermit: no wife, no kids, no friends. Well, they were right about the wife and perhaps even the friends, but he did have this toddler named Douglas. Several times when his sitting arrangements fell through, he brought Douglas in to work with him. This was against the rules, but since the two of them never had any cause to be in a hard-hat area, Red let it pass. Lonesome would head straight to whatever kitchen or bathroom he was working on, and Douglas would scurry after him on his short little legs. Not once did Lonesome look back to see if Douglas was keeping up; nor did Douglas complain or ask him to slow down. They would settle in their chosen room, door tightly closed, not a peep from them all morning. At lunchtime they would emerge, Douglas scurrying behind as before, and eat their sandwiches with the other men, but somewhat to the side. Douglas was so young that he still drank from a spouted cup. He was a waifish, homely child, lacking the dimpled cuteness that you would expect in someone that age. His hair was almost white, cut short and prickly all over his head, and his eyes were a very light blue, pinkish around the rims. All his clothes were too big for him. They seemed to be wearing him ; he was only an afterthought. His trousers were folded up at the bottoms several times over. The shoulders of his red jacket jutted out from his spindly frame, the elastic cuffs hiding all but his miniature fingertips, which were slightly powdered-looking like his father’s — an occupational side effect.

The other men did their best to engage him. “Hey, there, big fellow,” they’d offer, and “What you say, my man?” But Douglas only squinched himself up tighter against his father and stared. Lonesome didn’t try to ease the situation the way most fathers would have — answering on his child’s behalf or cajoling him into showing some manners. He would just go on eating his sandwich, a pathetic, slapped-together sandwich on squashed-looking Wonder Bread.

“Where’s his mom?” someone new might ask. “She sick today?”

“Traveling,” Lonesome would say, not bothering to raise his eyes.

The new man would send a questioning look toward the others, and they would glance off to the side in a way that meant “Tell you later.” Then later one of them would fill him in. (There was no lack of volunteers; construction workers are notorious gossips.) “The kid there, his mom ran off when he was just a baby. Left Lonesome holding the bag, can you believe it? But any time anyone wants to know, Lonesome says she’s just taking a trip. He acts like she’s coming back someday.”

Abby had heard about Douglas, of course. She pumped Red for his men’s stories every night; it was the social worker in her. And when she heard that Lonesome claimed Douglas’s mother was coming back, she said flatly, “Is that a fact.” She knew all about such mothers.

“Well, apparently she has come back at least twice that people know of,” Red said. “Stayed just a week or so each time, and Lonesome got all happy and fired the babysitter.”

Abby said, “Mm-hmm.”

In April of 1979, a crisp, early-spring afternoon, Red phoned Abby from his office and said, “You know Lonesome O’Brian? That guy who brings his kid in?”

“I remember.”

“Well, he brought him in again today and now he’s in the hospital.”

“The child’s in the hospital?”

“No, Lonesome is. He had some kind of collapse and they had to call an ambulance.”

“Oh, the poor—”

“So do you think you could come by my office and pick up the kid?”

“Oh!”

“I don’t know what else to do with him. One of the fellows brought him here and he’s sitting on a chair.”

“Well—”

“I can’t talk long; I’m supposed to be meeting with an inspector. Could you just come?”

“Okay.”

She hurried Denny into the car (he was four at the time, still on half-days at nursery school) and drove up Falls Road to Red’s office, a little clapboard shack out past the county line. She parked on the gravel lot, but before she could step out of the car Red emerged from the building with a very small boy on one arm. You could see that the child felt anxious. He was keeping himself upright, tightly separate. It was the first time Abby had laid eyes on him, and although he matched Red’s description right down to the oversized jacket, she was unprepared for his stony expression. “Why, hello there!” she said brightly when Red leaned into the rear of the car to set him down. “How are you, Douglas? I’m Abby! And this is Denny!”

Douglas scrunched back in his seat and gazed down at his corduroy knees. Denny, on his left, bent forward to eye him curiously, but Douglas gave no sign of noticing him.

“After my meeting I’m going to stop by Sinai,” Red said. “See what’s doing with Lonesome, and ask him how to get ahold of his sitter. So could you just — I appreciate this, Ab. I promise it won’t be for long.”

“Oh, we’ll have a good time. Won’t we?” Abby asked Douglas.

Douglas kept his eyes on his knees. Red shut the car door and stood back, holding one palm up in a motionless goodbye, and Abby drove off with the two little boys sitting silent in the rear.

At home, she freed Douglas from his jacket and fixed both boys a snack of sliced bananas and animal crackers. They sat at the child-size table she kept in one corner of the kitchen — Denny munching away busily, Douglas picking up each animal cracker and studying it, turning it over, looking at it from different angles before delicately biting off a head or a leg. He didn’t touch the bananas. Abby said, “Douglas, would you like some juice?” After a pause, he shook his head. So far, she hadn’t heard him speak a word.