Anne Tyler - A Spool of Blue Thread

So he knocked off from work a tiny bit early, more like four thirty than five.

He found a parking spot just half a block past Mrs. Davies’s — one advantage of getting home at this hour. As he was maneuvering into it he chanced to look back toward the boardinghouse, and what should he see but that floppy old-fashioned felt hat and Linnie Mae beneath it, wrapped in a huge denim jacket, sitting on Mrs. Davies’s front steps as bold as brass. He didn’t know which was more upsetting: that she’d show herself in public like that or that she’d managed to get hold of her hat, which she had not been wearing that morning, and the jacket that hung in the back of his closet waiting for warmer weather. How had she done that? Had she gone back to the room? Had she picked his lock, or what?

He slammed the car door getting out, and she looked his way and her face lit up. “It’s you!” she called.

“What in hell, Linnie?”

She stood up, clutching the jacket tighter around her. She was wearing her coat underneath. “Now, Junie, don’t get mad,” she said as soon as he was closer.

“You were supposed to wait at the corner.”

“I tried to wait at the corner, but there isn’t any place to sit.”

Junior took hold of her elbow, not gently, and steered her away from the steps to stand in front of the house next door. “How come you’re wearing my jacket?” he asked her.

“Well,” she said, “it’s like this. First I went into the café to use the bathroom, but they said I couldn’t on account of I hadn’t bought anything. So I told them I’d be buying a hot chocolate after, and then I sat with that chocolate and sat with it; I’d take a little sip only every thirty minutes or so. But they were real inhospitable, Junior. After a time, they said they needed my stool. So I left, and I walked a long ways, and this one place I found a slat bench and I sat a while, and this old lady and me got to talking and she told me there was a breadline three streets over; I should come with her because she was going; you had to get in line early or they would run out of food. It was not but ten or ten thirty but she said we should go right then to hold our places. I said, ‘Breadline!’ I said, ‘Charity?’ But I went with her because I figured, well, anyhow it would be someplace warm to sit. So we stood in that line it seems like forever; all these people stood with us, and some of them were children, Junior, and I lost all feeling in my feet; they were like two blocks of ice. And then when time came for the place to open, you know what? They wouldn’t let us inside. They just came out on the stoop and handed each of us a sandwich wrapped in wax paper, two slices of bread with a hunk of cheese in between. I asked the old lady with me, I said, ‘Don’t they let us sit down anywhere?’ ‘Sit down!’ she said. ‘We’re lucky enough to have something to put in our stomachs. Beggars can’t be choosers,’ she said. And I thought, ‘Well, she’s right. We’re beggars.’ I thought, ‘I have just stood in a breadline to beg my lunch from strangers,’ and I started crying. I left the old lady and walked I-don’t-know-where-all eating my sandwich and crying, and I didn’t have a notion where I was anymore or where the café was that I was going to meet up with you in front of, and that sandwich was dry as sawdust, let me tell you, and I wanted a drink of water and my feet felt like knives. And then I looked up and what did I see? Mrs. Davies’s boardinghouse. It looked like home, after all I’d been through. And I thought, ‘Well, he told me the girl came to clean in the mornings. And it’s not morning anymore, so—’ ”

Junior groaned.

“—so I walked right in, and it was so warm and toasty in the foyer! I walked up the stairs with no one to see me and I went to your room and tried to open the door but it was locked.”

“You knew that,” Junior said. “You saw me lock it.”

“Did I? Well, I don’t know; I must have been distracted. You hurried me out of there so fast …‘Well,’ I thought, ‘okay, I’ll just sit in the hall and wait. At least it’s warm,’ I thought, and I sat right down on the floor in front of your bedroom door.”

He groaned again.

“And next thing I knew, it was ‘Awk!’ I think I must have fallen asleep. ‘Awk!’ I heard, and there was this colored girl standing over me, eyes as big as moons. ‘Miz Davies! Come quick! A burg-ular!’ she screeches. When she could clearly see I was dressed nicely. And Mrs. Davies heard and came running, came clattering up the stairs out of breath and ‘Explain yourself!’ she says. I was thinking since she was a woman, maybe she’d have a kind heart. I threw myself on her mercy. ‘Mrs. Davies,’ I said, ‘I’ll be straight with you: I’m up from down home to see Junior because the two of us are in love. And it’s so cold outside, you wouldn’t believe, so blessed cold and all I’ve had all day is a little hot chocolate and a breadline sandwich and one sip of milk from Junior’s windowsill and a slice of his store-bought bread—’ ”

“Lord God, Linnie,” Junior said in disgust.

“Well, what could I say? I figured since she was a woman … wouldn’t you think? I thought she might say, ‘Oh, you poor little thing. You must be chilled to the bone.’ But she was ugly to me, Junior. I should have guessed it, from that dyed hair. She said, ‘Out!’ She said, ‘You and him both, out! Here I was thinking Junior Whitshank was a decent hardworking man!’ she says. ‘Why, I could have got way higher rent from someone who’d take his meals here, but I let him stay on out of Christian spirit and this is the thanks I get? Out,’ she says. ‘I’m not running a brothel,’ and she flips up this ring of keys hanging on her belt and unlocks your door and says, ‘Pack all your things, yours and his both, and get out.’ ”

Junior gripped his forehead with one hand.

“Then she stood right there like I was some sort of criminal, Junior, watching every move while I packed. Colored girl standing next to her with eyes still big as moons. What did they think I would steal? What would I want to steal? I couldn’t find any suitcase for you and so I asked real polite, I said, ‘Mrs. Davies,’ I said, ‘do you think I might borrow a cardboard box if I promised to bring it back later?’ But she said, ‘Ha! As if I’d trust you!’ Like a little old cardboard box was something precious. I had to pack your things in a tied-up pair of your overalls, for lack of anything better.”

“You packed all I owned?” Junior asked.

“All in this big lumpy tied-up hobo bundle. And then I had to—”

“You packed my Prince Albert tin?”

“I packed every little thing, I tell you.”

“But did you pack my Prince Albert tin, Linnie.”

“ Yes , I packed your Prince Albert tin. Why’re you making such a fuss about it? I thought you smoked Camels.”

“I don’t smoke anything nowadays,” he said bitterly. “It costs too much.”

“Then why—?”

“Let me get this clear,” he told her. “I don’t have a place to live anymore, is that what you’re saying?”

“No, and me neither. Can you believe it? Would you ever think that she could act so ugly? And then I had to carry all those things down the street — my suitcase and that great knobby bundle and your canister with the bread inside and — oh! Junior! Your milk bottle! I forgot your milk bottle! I’m so sorry!”

“ That’s what you’re sorry about?”

“I’ll buy us another. Milk was ten cents at this store I went past. I’ve got ten cents, easy.”

“You are telling me I’m sleeping on the street tonight,” Junior said.

“No, wait; I’m getting to that. There I was, toting all our worldly goods, walking down the street and crying, and I was looking for a ROOM TO LET sign but I didn’t see nary a one so finally I just knocked on some lady’s door and said, ‘Please, my husband and I have lost our home and we’ve got no place to stay.’ ”