Anne Tyler - A Spool of Blue Thread

No one did, apparently. They hunkered lower over their plates.

“Program on the radio,” Mr. Whitshank said. “No kind of music but marches. ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’ and ‘The Washington Post’ march, my favorite. I like to had a fit when they took it off the air.”

Abby searched for any trace in him of the wild boy from Yancey County. She could see why some might call him good-looking, with that straight-edged face of his and not a sign of a paunch even in his fifties or maybe sixties. But his clothes were so proper, almost a caricature of properness (he had corrected the wayward lapel by now), and his eyes had a disenchanted droop at the outside corners. There were gnarly purple veins on the backs of his hands and distinct black dots of whiskers stippling his chin. Oh, let Abby not ever get old! She pressed her left ankle against Dane’s ankle and passed the biscuits on to Landis.

“My father thinks Billie Holiday’s the greatest,” Dane offered. He took a swig of his iced tea and then leaned back, clearly at ease. “He says Baltimore’s biggest claim to fame is, Billie Holiday used to scrub front stoops downtown for a quarter apiece.”

“Well, I and your father will have to agree to disagree,” Mr. Whitshank said. Then he gave a quick frown. “Who is your father?”

“Dick Quinn,” Dane said.

“Quinn as in Quinn Marketing?”

“None other.”

“Will you be going into the family business?”

“Nope,” Dane said.

Mr. Whitshank waited. Dane stared back at him pleasantly.

“I would think that would be a fine opportunity,” Mr. Whitshank said after a moment.

“Me and Pop tend not to see eye to eye,” Dane told him. “Besides, he’s ticked off because I got fired from my job.”

He seemed perfectly comfortable volunteering the information. Mr. Whitshank frowned again. “What’d they fire you for?” he asked.

“Just didn’t work out, I guess,” Dane said.

“Well, I tell Redcliffe, I say, ‘Whatever you do in life, do your best. I don’t care if it’s hauling trash, you do it the best it’s ever been done,’ I say. ‘Take pride in it.’ Getting fired? It’s a black mark on your record forever. It’ll hang around to haunt you.”

“This was at a savings and loan,” Dane said. “I have no plans to make my career in savings and loans, believe me.”

“The point is, what reputation you get. What opinion your community has of you. Now, you may not feel that a savings and loan is your be-all and your end-all …”

How could this man have been the hero of Mrs. Whitshank’s romance? Whether you found it dashing or tawdry, at least it had been a romance, complete with intrigue and scandal and a wrenching separation. But Junior Whitshank was dry as a bone, droning on relentlessly while the other diners ate their food in dogged silence. Only his wife was looking at him, her face alight with interest as he discussed the value of hard labor, then the deplorable lack of initiative in the younger generation, then the benefits conferred by having lived through the Great Depression. If young folks today had lived through a depression the way he had lived through a depression — but then he broke off to call, “Ah! Going out with your buddies?”

It was Merrick he was addressing. She was crossing the hall, heading toward the front door, but she stopped and turned to face him. “Yup,” she said. “Don’t wait supper.” Her hair had become a mass of bubbly black curls that bounced all over her head.

“Merrick’s fiancé, now; he’s gone into his family’s business,” Mr. Whitshank told the others. “Doing a fine job too, I gather. Course we couldn’t call him a practical fellow — doesn’t know how to change his own oil, even; can you believe it?”

“Well, toodle-oo,” Merrick said, and she trilled her fingers at the table and left. Her father blinked but then picked up his thread — the “spoiledness” of the rich and their complete inability to do for themselves — but Abby had stopped listening. She felt suddenly hopeless, defeated by his complacent, self-relishing drawl, his not-quite-right “I and your dad” and his trying-too-hard Northern i’s, his greedy attention to the details of class and privilege. But Mrs. Whitshank went on smiling at him, while Red just helped himself to another slice of tomato. Earl was stacking biscuits three high on the rim of his plate, as if he planned to take them home. Ward had a shred of chicken stuck to his lower lip.

“All of which,” Mr. Whitshank was saying, “shows why you would never. Ever. Under any circumstances. Knuckle under to these people. I’m talking to you , Redcliffe.”

Red stopped salting his tomato slice and looked up. He said, “Me?”

“Why you would not kowtow to them. Butter them up. Soft-soap them. Tell them, ‘Yes, Mr. Barkalow,’ and, ‘No, Mr. Barkalow,’ and, ‘Whatever you say, Mr. Barkalow. Oh, we wouldn’t want to discommode you, Mr. Barkalow.’ ”

Red was cutting into his tomato slice now, not meeting his father’s eyes or even appearing to hear him, but his cheekbones had a raw, scratched look as if they’d been raked by someone’s fingernails.

“ ‘Oh, Mr. Barkalow,’ ” Mr. Whitshank said in a simpering voice. “ ‘Is this mutually agreeable to you?’ ”

“We got that trunk down, boss,” Landis said. “Got her just about flat to the ground.”

Abby wanted to hug him.

Mr. Whitshank was preparing to say more, but he paused and looked over at Landis. “Oh,” he said. “Well, good. Now all’s we have to do is wait for Mitch to finish lunch at his durn mother-in-law’s.”

“I wouldn’t hold my breath, boss. You ever met his mother-in-law? Woman is a cooking fiend . Seven children, all of them married, all with children of their own, and every Sunday after church they all get together at her house and she serves three kinds of meat, two kinds of potato, salad, pickles, vegetables …”

Abby sat back in her chair. She hadn’t realized how tightly she had been clenching her muscles. She wasn’t hungry anymore, and when Mrs. Whitshank urged another piece of chicken on her she mutely shook her head.

“Another thing,” Red said.

He had paused next to Abby as the men were leaving the dining room. Abby, collecting a fistful of dirty silverware, turned to look at him.

“If you’re thinking you shouldn’t come to the wedding because it’s too short of a notice,” he said, “that wouldn’t be a problem, I promise. A lot of people Merrick invited are staying away. All those friends of Pookie Vanderlin’s, and their moms and dads too — they’ve mostly said no. We’re going to end up with way too much food at the reception, I bet.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Abby told him, and she gave him a quick pat on the arm as if to thank him, but what she really meant to convey was that she had already put his father’s tirade out of her mind and she hoped that he would do the same.

Dane, waiting for Red in the doorway, sent her a wink. He liked to poke fun at Red’s devotion sometimes, referring to him as “your feller.” Usually this made her smile, but today she just went back to her table clearing, and after a moment he and Red walked on out to join the others.

She set the silverware next to the kitchen sink where Mrs. Whitshank was washing glasses, and then she returned to the dining room. There stood Mr. Whitshank, scooping a gooey chunk of peach cobbler from the baking dish with his fingers. He froze when he saw Abby, but then he lifted his chin defiantly and popped the chunk into his mouth. With showy deliberation, he wiped his fingers on a napkin.

Abby said, “It must be hard to be you, Mr. Whitshank.”