Anne Tyler: A Spool of Blue Thread

“From the time he was five or six years old, he wouldn’t let you into his room. Kid preferred to change his own sheets rather than let you in to do it for him! Hardly ever brought his friends home, wouldn’t say what their names were, wouldn’t even tell you what he did in school all day. ‘Get out of my life, Mom,’ he was saying. ‘Stop meddling, stop prying, stop breathing down my neck.’ His least favorite picture book — the one he hated so much he tore out all the pages, remember? — had that baby rabbit that wants to change into a fish and a cloud and such so he can get away, and the mama rabbit keeps saying how she will change too and come after him. Denny ripped out every single everlasting page!”

“That had nothing to do with—”

“You wonder why he’s turned gay? Not that he has turned gay, but if he had, if it’s crossed his mind just to bug us with that, you want to know why? I’ll tell you why: it’s the mother. It is always the smothering mother.”

“Oh!” Abby said. “That is just so outdated and benighted and so … wrong , I’m not even going to dignify it with an answer.”

“You’re certainly using a lot of words to tell me so.”

“And how about the father, if you want to go back to the Dark Ages for your theories? How about the macho, construction-guy father who tells his son to buck up, show some spunk, quit whining about the small stuff, climb the darn roof and hammer the slates in?”

“You don’t hammer slates in, Abby.”

“How about him?” she asked.

“Okay, fine! I did that. I was the world’s worst parent. It’s done.”

There was a moment of quiet. The only sound came from outside — the whisper of a car slipping past.

“I didn’t say you were the worst ,” Abby said.

“Well,” Red said.

Another moment of quiet.

Abby asked, “Isn’t there a number you can punch that will dial the last person who called?”

“Star sixty-nine,” Red said instantly. He cleared his throat. “But you are surely not going to do that.”

“Why not?”

“Denny was the one who chose to end the conversation, might I point out.”

“His feelings were hurt, was why,” Abby said.

“If his feelings were hurt, he’d have taken his time hanging up. He wouldn’t have been so quick to cut me off. But he hung up like he was just waiting to hang up. Oh, he was practically rubbing his hands together, giving me that news! He starts right in. ‘I’d like to tell you something,’ he says.”

“Before, you said it was ‘I need to tell you something.’ ”

“Well, one or the other,” Red said.

“Which was it?”

“Does it matter?”

“ Yes , it matters.”

He thought a moment. Then he tried it out under his breath. “ ‘I need to tell you something,’ ” he tried. “ ‘I’d like to tell you something.’ ‘Dad, I’d like to—’ ” He broke off. “I honestly don’t remember,” he said.

“Could you dial star sixty-nine, please?”

“I can’t figure out his reasoning. He knows I’m not anti-gay. I’ve got a gay guy in charge of our drywall, for Lord’s sake. Denny knows that. I can’t figure out why he thought this would bug me. I mean, of course I’m not going to be thrilled. You always want your kid to have it as easy in life as he can. But—”

“Hand me the phone,” Abby said.

The phone rang.

Red grabbed the receiver at the very same instant that Abby flung herself across him to grab it herself. He had it first, but there was a little tussle and somehow she was the one who ended up with it. She sat up straight and said, “Denny?”

Then she said, “Oh. Jeannie.”

Red lay flat again.

“No, no, we’re not in bed yet,” she said. There was a pause. “Certainly. What’s wrong with yours?” Another pause. “It’s no trouble at all. I’ll see you at eight tomorrow. Bye.”

She held the receiver toward Red, and he took it from her and reached over to replace it in its cradle.

“She wants to borrow my car,” she told him. She sank back onto her side of the bed.

Then she said, in a thin, lonesome-sounding voice, “I guess star sixty-nine won’t work now, will it.”

“No,” Red said, “I guess not.”

“Oh, Red. Oh, what are we going to do? We’ll never, ever hear from him again! He’s not going to give us another chance!”

“Now, hon,” he told her. “We’ll hear from him. I promise.” And he reached for her and drew her close, settling her head on his shoulder.

They lay like that for some time, until gradually Abby stopped fidgeting and her breaths grew slow and even. Red, though, went on staring up into the dark. At one point, he mouthed some words to himself in an experimental way. “ ‘… need to tell you something,’ ” he mouthed, not even quite whispering it. Then, “ ‘… like to tell you something.’ ” Then, “ ‘Dad, I’d like to …’ ‘Dad, I need to …’ ” He tossed his head impatiently on his pillow. He started over. “ ‘… tell you something: I’m gay.’ ‘… tell you something: I think I’m gay.’ ‘I’m gay.’ ‘I think I’m gay.’ ‘I think I may be gay.’ ‘I’m gay.’ ”

But eventually he grew silent, and at last he fell asleep too.

Well, of course they did hear from him again. The Whitshanks weren’t a melodramatic family. Not even Denny was the type to disappear off the face of the earth, or sever all contact, or stop speaking — or not permanently, at least. It was true that he skipped the beach trip that summer, but he might have skipped it anyhow; he had to make his pocket money for the following school year. (He was attending St. Eskil College, in Pronghorn, Minnesota.) And he did telephone in September. He needed money for textbooks, he said. Unfortunately, Red was the only one home at the time, so it wasn’t a very revealing conversation. “What did you talk about?” Abby demanded, and Red said, “I told him his textbooks had to come out of his earnings.”

“I mean, did you talk about that last phone call? Did you apologize? Did you explain? Did you ask him any questions?”

“We didn’t really get into it.”

“Red!” Abby said. “This is classic! This is such a classic reaction: a young person announces he’s gay and his family just carries on like before, pretending they didn’t hear.”

“Well, fine,” Red said. “Call him back. Get in touch with his dorm.”

Abby looked uncertain. “What reason should I give him for calling?” she asked.

“Say you want to grill him.”

“I’ll just wait till he phones again,” she decided.

But when he phoned again — which he did a month or so later, when Abby was there to answer — it was to talk about his plane reservations for Christmas vacation. He wanted to change his arrival date, because first he was going to Hibbing to visit his girlfriend. His girlfriend! “What could I say?” Abby asked Red later. “I had to say, ‘Okay, fine.’ ”

“What could you say,” Red agreed.

He didn’t refer to the subject again, but Abby herself sort of simmered and percolated all those weeks before Christmas. You could tell she was just itching to get things out in the open. The rest of the family edged around her warily. They knew nothing about the gay announcement — Red and Abby had concurred on that much, not to tell them without Denny’s say-so — but they could sense that something was up.

It was Abby’s plan (though not Red’s) to sit Denny down and have a nice heart-to-heart as soon as he got home. But on the morning of the day that his plane was due in, they had a letter from St. Eskil reminding them of the terms of their contract: the Whitshanks would be responsible for the next semester’s tuition even though Denny had withdrawn.