Anne Tyler - A Spool of Blue Thread

Red said, “What? Wait.”

“Well, isn’t that just like you,” Denny told Stem. “Spilling over with selflessness. Holier than God Almighty.”

Stem started to say something more; he drew in a breath and opened his mouth. Then he made a despairing noise that sounded like “Aarr!” and without even seeming to think about it, he wheeled toward Denny and gave him a violent shove.

It wasn’t an attack, exactly. It was more an act of blind frustration. But Denny was caught off balance. He staggered sideways, dropping the plate he held so that it shattered across the floor, and he tried to right himself but fell anyhow, his head grazing the edge of the table before he landed in a sitting position.

“Oh,” Stem said. “Gosh.”

Red stood up, slack-mouthed, with his magazine dangling from one hand. Hugh was hovering in front of the fridge and saying, “Guys. Hey, guys,” and gripping his washrag in a useless sort of way.

Denny began struggling to his feet. His left temple was bleeding. Stem bent to offer him a hand, but instead of accepting it, Denny lunged at him from a half-standing position and butted Stem in the sternum. Stem buckled and fell backwards, slamming against a cabinet. He sat up again, but he looked groggy, and he raised a hand tentatively to the back of his head.

All at once the kitchen was full of fluttering women and shocked, wide-eyed children. There seemed to be a multitude of them, way more than could be accounted for. Abby was saying, “What is this? What’s happened?” and Nora was leaning over Stem, trying to help him up. “Keep him sitting,” Jeannie told her. “Stem? Do you feel dizzy?” Stem went on holding his head, with an uncertain look on his face. Shards of the plate lay all around him.

Denny stood backed against the sink. He seemed bewildered, more than anything. “I don’t know what came over him!” he said. “He just went from zero to sixty!” Blood was traveling down the side of his face, darkening the olive green of his T-shirt.

“Look at you,” Jeannie told him. “We’ve got to get you to an emergency room. The two of you.”

“I don’t need an emergency room,” Denny said, at the same time that Stem said, “I’m okay. Let me up.”

“They both have to go,” Abby said. “Denny needs stitches and Stem might have a concussion.”

“I’m fine ,” Stem and Denny said in chorus.

“Let’s at least put you on the couch,” Nora told Stem. She didn’t seem all that perturbed. She helped him to his feet, this time without Jeannie’s objecting, and guided him out of the room. All the children followed dumbly except for Susan, who was standing very close to Denny and stroking his wrist. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. “What are you crying about?” Denny asked her. “This is nothing. It doesn’t even hurt.” She nodded and swallowed, tears still streaming. Abby put an arm around her and said, “He’s okay, honey. Head wounds always bleed a lot.”

“Out,” Jeannie said. “Everyone out of the kitchen while I check the damage. Get me the first-aid kit, Hugh. It’s in the downstairs bathroom. Susan, I need paper towels.”

Red had sunk back onto his chair at some point, but Abby touched his shoulder and said, “Let’s go to the living room.”

“I don’t understand what happened,” he told her.

“Me neither, but let’s leave Jeannie to take care of things.”

She helped him up, and they moved toward the door. Only Susan remained. She handed Jeannie a roll of paper towels. “Thanks,” Jeannie said. She tore off several sheets and dampened them under the faucet. “First we’re going to clean the wound and see if it needs stitches,” she told Denny. “Sit down.”

“I do not need stitches,” he said. He lowered himself to a chair. She leaned over him and pressed the wad of damp towels to his temple. Susan, meanwhile, sat down in the chair next to his and picked up one of his hands. “Hmm,” Jeannie said. She peered at Denny’s cut. She refolded the paper towels and dabbed again at his temple.

“Ouch,” he said.

“Hugh? Where’s that first-aid kit?”

“Coming right up,” Jeannie’s Hugh said as he entered the kitchen. He handed her what appeared to be a fisherman’s metal tackle box.

Jeannie said, “Go tell the others not to let Stem fall asleep, hear? Leave that,” because Hugh was stooping to pick up shards of the plate. “We need to make sure he doesn’t go into a coma.” She had always been the type who grew authoritative in a crisis. Her long black ponytail almost snapped as she flicked it out of her way.

Hugh left. As soon as he was gone, Denny said, “I swear this was not my fault.”

“Really,” Jeannie said.

“Honest. You’ve got to believe me.”

“Susan, find me the Neosporin.”

Susan raised her eyes to Jeannie’s face but went on sitting there.

“Ointment. In the first-aid kit,” Jeannie told her. She folded the paper towels yet again. They were almost completely red now. Susan let go of Denny’s hand to reach for the kit. Her blouse had a brushstroke of blood smeared across one shoulder.

“We were just doing the dishes,” Denny said, “peaceful as you please. Then Stem flies off the handle because I say he can move home now.”

“Yes, I can just imagine,” Jeannie said.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

She tossed the paper towels into the garbage bin and accepted the Neosporin from Susan. “Hold still,” she told Denny. She applied a dab of ointment. He held still, gazing up at her steadily. She said, “When are you going to drop all this, Denny? Get over it! Give it up!”

“Give what up? He was the one who started it!”

“Don’t you think everyone’s got some kind of … injury? Stem himself, for instance! Couldn’t I feel jealous too, if I put my mind to it? Dad favors Stem way over me, even though I’m a really good worker. He’s always talking about Stem taking charge of the business someday, as if I didn’t exist, as if I couldn’t do every single thing a man can do once somebody shows me how. But guess what, Denny: the fact is that nobody has to show Stem how. He was just, seems like, born knowing how. He can figure things out without being told. He honestly does deserve to be in charge.”

Denny made an impatient snorting noise that she ignored. “Butterfly bandages,” she told Susan. “If you can find me some of those, we’re in business.”

Susan rooted through the first-aid kit, which didn’t seem well organized. She tossed aside scissors, tweezers, rolls of gauze, a bottle of vinegar for jellyfish stings, and came up with a box of butterfly bandages.

“Great,” Jeannie said. She shook several out onto the table, then picked up one and tore open the wrapping. “A few of these should do the trick,” she told Denny. “Hold still, please.”

“It’s not his being in charge I mind,” Denny said. “I sure don’t want to be in charge. It’s that Dad isn’t satisfied with the rest of us. His own three children! You said it yourself: you should be the one taking over the business. You’re a Whitshank. But oh, no, Dad had to go hunting outside the family for someone.”

“He didn’t go hunting,” Jeannie said. She drew back to study the bandage she had applied, and then she reached for another. “He didn’t choose to have Stem join the family. It just happened.”

“All my life, Dad has made me feel I didn’t quite measure up,” Denny said. “Like I’m … lame; I’m lacking. Listen to this, Jeannie: when I was working in Minnesota one summer, I had a boss who thought I had a really good eye. We were putting in cabinets, and I would come up with these design plans that he said were fantastic. He asked if I’d ever considered going into furniture making. He thought I had real talent. Why doesn’t Dad ever feel that way?”