Anne Tyler - A Spool of Blue Thread

In the sunroom the evening news was on, but Red was the only one watching. “Where’s Stem?” Denny asked.

“Upstairs with the kids. I think somebody broke something.”

Denny went back out to the hall and climbed the stairs. Children’s voices were tumbling over each other in the bunk room. When he entered, the little boys were snaking that racetrack of theirs across the floor while Stem sat on a lower bunk, studying two parts of a bureau drawer.

“What have we here?” Denny asked him.

“Seems the guys mistook the bureau for a mountain.”

“It was Everest,” Petey told Denny.

“Ah.”

“Could you hand me that glue?” Stem said.

“You really want to use glue on it?”

Stem gave him a look.

Denny passed him the bottle of carpenter’s glue on the bureau. Then he leaned against the door frame, arms folded, one foot cocked across the other. “So,” he said. “Sounds like you’re moving out.”

Stem said, “Yep.” He squirted glue on a section of dovetailing.

“I guess you’re pretty set on it.”

Stem raised his head and glared at Denny. He said, “Don’t even think about telling me I owe him.”

“Huh?”

The little boys glanced up, but then they went back to their racetrack.

“I’ve done my bit,” Stem told Denny. “You stay on yourself, if you think somebody ought to.”

“Did I say that?” Denny asked him. “Why would anybody stay on? Dad’s moving.”

“You know perfectly well he’s just hoping we’ll talk him out of it.”

“I don’t know any such thing,” Denny said. “What is it with you, these days? You’ve been behaving like a brat. Don’t tell me it’s just about Mom.”

“ Your mom,” Stem said. He set the glue bottle on the floor. “She wasn’t mine.”

“Well, fine, if you want to put it that way.”

“ My mom was B. J. Autry, for your information.”

Denny said, “Oh.”

The little boys went on playing, oblivious. They were staging spectacular wrecks on an overpass.

“And all along, Abby knew that,” Stem said. “She knew and she didn’t tell me. She didn’t even tell Dad.”

“I still don’t see why you’re going around in a snit.”

“I’m in a snit, as you call it, because—”

Stem broke off and stared at him.

“You knew, too,” he said.

“Hmm?”

“This doesn’t surprise you a bit, does it? I should have guessed! All that snooping you used to do: of course! You’ve known for years!”

Denny shrugged. He said, “It’s immaterial to me who your mom was.”

“Just promise me this,” Stem said. “Promise you won’t tell the others.”

“Why would I tell the others?”

“I’ll kill you if you tell.”

“Ooh, scary,” Denny said.

By now the little boys were taking notice. They’d stopped playing, and they were gaping at Stem. Tommy said, “Dad?”

“Go downstairs,” Stem told him. “The three of you.”

“But, Dad—”

“Now!” Stem said.

They stumbled to their feet and left, looking back at him as they went. Sammy was still clutching a plastic tow truck. Denny winked at him when he walked past.

“Swear to it,” Stem told Denny.

“Okay! Okay!” Denny said, holding up both hands. “Uh, Stem, are you aware how fast that glue dries? You might want to fit those pieces together.”

“Swear on your life that you will never let on to a soul.”

“I swear on my life that I will never let on to a soul,” Denny repeated solemnly. “I don’t get it, though. Why do you care?”

“I just do, all right? I don’t have to give you a reason,” Stem said. But then he said, “I read someplace that even brand-new babies recognize their mothers’ voices. Did you know that? They learn them in the womb. From the moment they’re born, it’s their mothers’ voices they prefer. And I thought, ‘Gosh, I wonder what voice I preferred, back then.’ It seemed kind of sad to me that there was some voice I’d been craving all my life but never got to hear, at least not past the first little bit. And now look: it was B. J. Autry’s voice — that gravelly rasp of hers and that trashy way of talking. When you think of how Abby talks, I mean talked! I should have belonged to Abby.”

“So?” Denny said. “And eventually you did. Happy endings all around.”

“But you remember how the family mocked B. J. behind her back. They’d wince when she gave that laugh of hers; they’d make faces at each other when she was holding forth about something. ‘Oh, you know me; I just say it like it is,’ she’d say. ‘I tell it like I see it; I’m not one to mince my words.’ As if that were something to brag about! And then everybody would share these secret glances, all round the table. So now I think, ‘God, I’d die of shame if they found out she was my mother.’ But I’m ashamed of feeling ashamed of her, too. I start thinking that the family had no right to act so snooty about her. I don’t know what to think! Sometimes it’s like I’m mourning what I missed out on: my real mother was sitting right there at our dining-room table and I never had an inkling, and it makes me mad as hell at Abby for not telling me — for that stupid, stupid contract. She wouldn’t allow my own mother to tell me I was her son! And if B. J. had ever wanted me back, oh, Abby was happy to hand me over. ‘Here you are, then’—easy come, easy go. And Dad: can you believe him? He told me he would have handed me over from the outset.”

“You talked to Dad about this?”

“Well, guess what,” Stem said, not appearing to hear him. “B. J. never did want me back, as it turned out. She looked straight across the table at me and she didn’t want me. She hardly ever saw me. She could have seen me any time, as often as she cared to, but she only came around now and then, two or three times a year.”

“So what? You didn’t even like her. You just said you hated her voice.”

“Still, she was my mother. One woman in the world who thinks you’re special — doesn’t every kid deserve that?”

“You had that. You had Abby.”

“Well, sorry, but that wasn’t enough. Abby was your mom. I needed my own.”

“You don’t think Abby thought you were special?” Denny asked.

Stem was silent. He stared down at the drawer in his hands.

“Come on ,” Denny said. “She thought even the back of your neck was special. If she hadn’t, you’d have led a very different life, believe me. You’d have been shunted around who knows where, rootless, homeless, stuck in foster care someplace, and you’d probably have turned into one of those misfit guys who have trouble keeping a job, or staying married, or hanging on to their friends. You’d have felt out of place wherever you went; there’d be nowhere you belonged.”

He stopped. Something in his voice made Stem look up at him, but then Denny said, “Ha! You know what this proves.”

“What.”

“You’re just following the family tradition, is all, the wish-I-had-what-somebody-else-has tradition — till they do have it. Like old Junior with his dream house, or Merrick with her dream husband. Sure! This could be the family’s third story. ‘Once upon a time,’ ” Denny intoned theatrically, “ ‘one of us spent thirty years craving his real mother’s voice, but after he found it, he realized he didn’t like it half as much as his fake mother’s voice.’ ”

Stem gave a thin, unhappy smile.

“Damn. You’re more of a Whitshank than I am,” Denny said.

Then he said, “That glue’s bone-dry by now; didn’t I warn you? You’ll have to scrape it off and start over.”