Anne Tyler - A Spool of Blue Thread

Dane, who was lighting a cigarette, shook out his match and said, “Now, how would I ever have gotten my hands on an axe?”

“I’ll fetch another from the basement,” Red said. He propped his own axe against a dogwood. “Come on, Ab, I’ll take you up to the house.”

“You’re sure I can’t do something here?” she asked. It seemed a shame to go off and leave Dane.

But Red said, “You can help my mom fix lunch, if you like.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Dane cocked an eyebrow at her in a silent goodbye, and then she and Red turned to climb the flagstone walk. Leaving behind the din of the chainsaw, she felt as if her ears had gone numb. “You really think this will take until lunchtime?” she asked Red.

“Oh, longer than that,” he said. “We’re lucky if we’re done before dark.”

She supposed that was just as well. She would have more time to reassemble her composure in front of Dane. By evening she’d be a whole different person, self-possessed and mature.

They arrived at the porch steps, but instead of leaving her there, Red came to a stop. “Say,” he said. “I was wondering. You want a ride to the wedding?”

“I’m not sure I’m going to the wedding,” Abby said.

She had about decided not to, in fact. The invitation (on paper so thick it had required two postage stamps) had come as a surprise; she and Merrick weren’t close. Besides, Dane wasn’t invited. Merrick barely knew Dane. So Abby had been meaning for weeks now to send her regrets.

But Red said, “You aren’t going? Mom was counting on it.”

Abby wrinkled her forehead.

“I was, too,” he told her. “Because who else will I know in that crowd?”

She said, “Don’t you have to be an usher or something?”

“It never even came up,” he said.

“Well, thank you, Red. You’re nice to offer. I’ll let you know if I decide to go, okay?”

He hesitated a moment, as if there were more he wanted to say, but then he smiled at her and split off toward the rear of the house.

Crossing the porch in three long strides, tall and craggy as Abraham Lincoln and dressed not all that differently from Lincoln, Junior Whitshank inclined his head a quarter-inch in Abby’s direction and then swiftly descended the steps. “Morning, young lady,” he said.

“Good morning, Mr. Whitshank.”

“Merrick’s not up yet, I don’t believe.”

“Well, I was looking for Mrs. Whitshank.”

“Mrs. Whitshank is in the kitchen.”

“Thanks.”

Mr. Whitshank veered off the flagstone walk toward where the men were working. Abby, gazing after him, wondered where on earth he bought his shirts. They were white, always, and unfashionably high in the collar, so that a tall band of white encased his skinny neck. She often had the feeling that he might be modeling himself after some ideal — some illustrious figure from his past that he had admired. But his narrow black trousers looked empty in the seat, and the Y of his suspenders accentuated the weary, burdened posture of an ordinary laboring man.

“Mitch here yet?” she heard him call, and a murmur of answers rose above the buzz of the chainsaw like bees humming in a log.

Abby climbed the steps, crossed the porch, opened the screen door, and tootled, “Yoo-hoo!” It was something Linnie Whitshank would have done. Automatically, Abby seemed to have switched to Mrs. Whitshank’s language and to her tone of voice — thin and fluty.

“Back here!” Mrs. Whitshank called from the kitchen.

Abby loved the Whitshanks’ house. Even on a hot July day it was cool and dim, with the ceiling fan revolving high above the center hall and another fan gently stirring in the dining room. A folded tablecloth had been placed at one end of the table with a clutch of silverware resting on top, waiting to be distributed. She continued through to the kitchen, where Mrs. Whitshank stood at the sink rinsing okra pods. Mrs. Whitshank was slight and frail-looking, but an incongruously deep, low bosom filled out the top of her gingham housedress. Her pale hair hung limply almost to her shoulders. It was a young girl’s hairstyle, and her face when she turned to Abby seemed young as well — unlined and plain and guileless. “Hey, there!” she said, and Abby said, “Hi.”

“Don’t you look pretty today!”

“I came to see how I could help,” Abby said.

“Oh, honey, you don’t want to spoil those nice clothes. Just sit and keep me company.”

Abby pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and settled on it. She had learned not to argue with Mrs. Whitshank, who was a force of nature when it came to cooking and would only find Abby a hindrance.

“How’s that tree coming along?” Mrs. Whitshank asked her.

“They’re starting to cut up the branches now.”

“Did you ever hear of such a thing? Bringing down a whole poplar for the sake of a photograph.”

“Photy-graph,” she pronounced it. She had a country way of talking, and unlike her husband, she made no attempt to alter it.

“Dane says the tree was already dying, according to Mr. Whitshank,” Abby said.

“Oh, sometimes Junior will just get this sort of vision about how he wants things to be,” Mrs. Whitshank told her. She shut off the faucet and wiped her hands on her apron. “He’s already bought frames for the photos, isn’t that something? Two big frames, wooden. I asked him, I said, ‘You going to hang those over the mantel?’ He said, ‘Linnie Mae.’ ” She made her voice go deep and gruff. “Said, ‘People don’t hang family photos in their living rooms.’ I said, ‘I didn’t know that.’ Did you know that?”

“My mom’s got photos all over the living room,” Abby said.

“Well, then. See there?”

Mrs. Whitshank took a bottle of milk from the refrigerator and poured some into a bowl. “I’m fixing okra and sliced tomatoes,” she told Abby. “And fried chicken, with some of my biscuits. Oh, later on you might help with the biscuits, now that you know how. And peach cobbler for dessert.”

“That sounds delicious.”

“Did Red tell you he would give you a ride to the wedding?”

“He did,” Abby said, “but I’m not sure yet if I’m going.”

She felt embarrassed now about waiting so long to make up her mind. If her mother had known, she would have been horrified. But all Mrs. Whitshank said was, “Oh, I wish you would! I need someone to prop me up.”

Abby laughed.

“Merrick had me buy this yellow dress at Hutzler’s,” Mrs. Whitshank said. “It makes me look like I’ve got the jaundice, but Merrick was real set on it. She’s like her daddy; she takes these notions.” She was spooning cornmeal into a second bowl.

Abby said, “I’m just afraid I wouldn’t know anybody. Merrick’s crowd is all older than me.”

“Well, I won’t know them, either,” Mrs. Whitshank said. “It’ll be her college friends, mostly — not many from around here.”

“Who all in your family is coming?” Abby asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, grandparents? Aunts and uncles?”

“Oh, we don’t have any of those,” Mrs. Whitshank said.

She didn’t sound very regretful about it. Abby waited for her to elaborate, but she was measuring out salt now.

“Well, I told Red I appreciate the offer,” Abby said finally. “It’s good to know I’ve got a ride if I need one.”

Really she should just say yes and be done with it. She wasn’t sure what was stopping her. It was only half a Saturday, a tiny chunk of her life.

The Saturday after she spent the night with Dane. If she spent the night.

She imagined how he might say, “Aw, you don’t want to leave me all by myself, the morning after we …”