Anne Tyler - A Spool of Blue Thread

“Red is not so quick to take offense,” Mrs. Whitshank said. She drew a large bowl from the refrigerator and removed the dish towel that covered it. “I think it’s because he grew up here. He’s used to people like the Barkalows.”

The bowl contained pieces of chicken in a liquid white batter. Mrs. Whitshank lifted them out one by one with canning tongs and laid them on a platter to drain. “It’s like he’s comfortable with both sorts,” she said. “With the neighbors and with the work crew. I know if he had his way, though, he’d quit college right this minute and go on the work crew full-time. It’s only on account of Junior that he’s sticking it out till graduation.”

“Well, it never hurts to have a diploma,” Abby said.

“That’s what Junior tells him. He says, ‘You want the option of something better. You don’t want to end up like me,’ he says. Red says, ‘What’s wrong with ending up like you?’ He says the trouble with college is, it’s not practical. The people there aren’t practical. ‘Sometimes they strike me as silly,’ he says.”

Abby had never heard Red talk about college. He was two years ahead of her and they seldom ran into each other on campus. “What are his grades like?” she asked Mrs. Whitshank.

Mrs. Whitshank said, “They’re okay. Well, so-so. That’s just not how his mind works, you know? He’s the kind that, you show him some gadget he’s never laid eyes on before and he says, ‘Oh, I see; yes, this part goes into that part and then it connects with this other part …’ Just like his daddy, but his daddy wants Red to be different from him. Isn’t that always how it is?”

“I bet Red was one of those little boys who take the kitchen clock apart,” Abby said.

“Yes, except he could put it back together again, too, which most other little boys can’t. Oops, watch what you’re doing, Abby. I see how you’re twisting that glass!”

She meant the glass that Abby was using to cut out the biscuits. “Clamp it straight down on the dough, remember?” she said.

“Sorry.”

“Let me fetch you the skillet.”

Abby wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. The kitchen was heating up, and she was swathed in one of Mrs. Whitshank’s bib aprons.

If it was true, Abby thought, that she represented a recurring figure in Mrs. Whitshank’s life — the “sympathizer”—it was equally true that Mrs. Whitshank’s type had shown up before in Abby’s life: the instructive older woman. The grandmother who had taught her to knit, the English teacher who had stayed late to help her with her poems. More patient and softer-spoken than Abby’s brisk, efficient mother, they had guided and encouraged her, like Mrs. Whitshank saying now, “Oh, those are looking good! Good as any I could have made.”

“Maybe Red could join his dad’s company full-time after college,” Abby said. “Then it could be Whitshank and Son Construction. Wouldn’t Mr. Whitshank like that?”

“I don’t think so,” Mrs. Whitshank said. “He’s hoping the law for Red. Law or business, one. Red’s got a fine head for business.”

“But if he wouldn’t be happy …” Abby said.

“Junior says happiness is neither here nor there,” Mrs. Whitshank told her. “He says Red should just make up his mind to be happy.”

Then she stopped hunting through the utensil drawer and said, “I’m not trying to make him sound mean.”

“Of course not,” Abby said.

“He only wants what’s best for his family, you know? We’re all he’s got.”

“Well, of course.”

“Neither one of us has to do with our own families, anymore.”

“Why is that?” Abby asked.

“Oh, just, you know. Circumstances. We kind of fell out of touch with them,” Mrs. Whitshank said. “They’re clear down in North Carolina, and besides, my side were never in favor of us being together.”

“You mean you and Mr. Whitshank?”

“Just like Romeo and Juliet,” Mrs. Whitshank said. She laughed, but then she sobered and said, “Now, here is something you might not know. Guess how old Juliet was when she fell in love with Romeo.”

“Thirteen,” Abby said promptly.

“Oh.”

“They taught us that in school.”

“They taught Merrick that, too, in tenth grade,” Mrs. Whitshank said. “She came home and told me. She said, ‘Isn’t that ridiculous?’ She said that after she heard that, she couldn’t take Shakespeare seriously.”

“Well, I don’t know why not,” Abby said. “A person can fall in love at thirteen.”

“Yes! A person can! Like me.”

“You?”

“I was thirteen when I fell in love with Junior,” Mrs. Whitshank said. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

“Oh, goodness, and here you are now, married to him!” Abby said. “That’s amazing! How old was Mr. Whitshank?”

“Twenty-six.”

Abby took a moment to absorb this. “He was twenty-six when you were thirteen?”

“Twenty-six years old,” Mrs. Whitshank said.

Abby said, “Oh.”

“Isn’t that something?”

“Yes, it is,” Abby said.

“He was this real good-looking guy, a little bit wild, worked at the lumberyard but only just sometimes. Rest of the time he was off hunting and fishing and trapping and getting himself into trouble. Well, you see the attraction. Who could resist a boy like that? Especially when you’re thirteen. And I was a kind of developed thirteen; I developed real early. I met him at a church picnic when he came with another girl, and it was love at first sight for both of us. He started up with me right then and there. After that, we would sneak off together every chance we got. Oh, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other! But one night my daddy found us.”

“Found you where?” Abby asked.

“Well, in the hay barn. But he found us … you know.” Mrs. Whitshank fluttered a hand in the air. “Oh, it was awful!” she said merrily. “It was like something out of a movie. My daddy held a gun to his neck. Then Daddy and my brothers ran him out of Yancey County. Can you believe it? Law, I think back on that now and it feels like it happened to somebody else. ‘Was that me ?’ I say to myself. I didn’t lay eyes on him again for close onto five years.”

Abby had slacked off on the biscuit cutting. She was just standing there staring at Mrs. Whitshank, so Mrs. Whitshank took the glass from her and stepped in to finish up, making short work of it: clamp-clamp.

“But you kept in touch,” Abby said.

“Oh, no! I had no idea where he was.” Mrs. Whitshank was laying the biscuits in the greased skillet, edge to edge in concentric circles. “I stayed faithful to him, though. I never forgot him for one minute. Oh, we had one of the world’s great love stories, in our little way! And once we got back together again, it was like we’d never parted. You know how that happens, sometimes. We took up right where we left off, the same as ever.”

Abby said, “But—”

Had it never crossed Mrs. Whitshank’s mind that what she was describing was … well, a crime?

Mrs. Whitshank said, “I don’t know why I’m telling you, though. It’s supposed to be a secret. I’ve never even told my own children! Oh, especially my own children. Merrick would make fun of me. Promise you won’t tell them, Abby. Swear it on your life.”

“I won’t tell a soul,” Abby said.

She wouldn’t have known what words to use, even. It was all too extreme and disturbing.

Mr. and Mrs. Whitshank and Red, Earl and Landis, Ward, Dane and Abby: eight people for lunch. (Merrick would not be eating with them, Mrs. Whitshank said.) Abby traveled around the table doling out knives and forks. The Whitshanks’ silverware was real sterling, embossed with an Old English W . She wondered when they had acquired it. Not at the time of their wedding, presumably.