Anne Tyler: A Spool of Blue Thread

He circled each spindle with his brush, smoothing varnish into each joint, tracing the crevices of the lathing with tender, caressing strokes.

Dinner in the diner ,

nothing could be finer

Than to have your ham ’n’ eggs in Carolina …

On Friday when he went back to hang the swing he took along more boxes from home and a few small pieces of furniture — the play table from the children’s room and the little chairs that went with it. Might as well haul as much as possible over ahead of time. He parked in the rear and carried everything in through the kitchen and up the stairs. While he was up there, he indulged himself in a survey of his new property. He stood at the hall railing to admire the gleaming entrance hall below, and he stepped into the main bedroom to gloat over its spaciousness. His and Linnie’s beds were already in place — twin beds, like those the Brills had had, delivered last week by Shofer’s. Linnie couldn’t understand why they didn’t keep on sharing their old double, but Junior said, “It just makes more sense, when you think about it. You know how I’m always tossing and turning in the middle of the night.”

“I don’t mind you tossing and turning,” Linnie said.

“Well, we’ll just try this out, why don’t we. We’re not throwing the double away, after all. If we change our minds we can always move it back in from the guest room.”

Although privately, he had no intention of moving it back. He liked the idea of twin beds — their Hollywood-style glamour. Besides, he’d spent enough of his childhood sharing a bed with various brothers.

In the far corner of the bedroom stood the Brills’ armoire, which he also considered glamorous. It made his cheeks burn, though, to remember that he had first understood it to be called a “more.” “Mrs. Brill,” he had said, “I hear you’re not taking your more to the new place. You think I could buy it off you?”

Mrs. Brill’s eyebrows had knotted. “My—?” she said.

“Your more in the bedroom. Your boy said it was too big.”

“Oh! Why, certainly. Jim? Junior was just wondering if he could buy our armoire.”

It wasn’t till then that Junior had realized his mistake. He was furious at Mrs. Brill for witnessing it, even though he had to admit that she had behaved very tactfully.

In a way, it was her tact he was furious at.

Oh, always, always it was us-and-them. Whether it was the town kids in high school or the rich people in Roland Park, always someone to point out that he wasn’t quite measuring up, he didn’t quite make the grade. And it was assumed to be his own fault, because he lived in a nation where theoretically, he could make the grade. There was nothing to hold him back. Except that there was something; he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. There was always some little tiny trick of dress or of speech that kept him on the outside looking in.

Nonsense. Enough. He owned a giant cedar-lined closet now that was meant for storing nothing but woolens. The wallpaper in this bedroom came all the way from France. The windows were so tall that when he stood at one, a person down on the street could see from the top of Junior’s head almost to his knees.

But then he noticed a patch of blistered paint at the corner of one sill. The Brills must have left that window open during a rainstorm. Or else it was the result of condensation; that would not be good.

Also, the wallpaper underneath it was showing its seam too distinctly. In fact, the seam was separating. In fact, where the paper met the sill it was actually curling up from the wall a tiny bit.

Saturday was the day he went around giving estimates; that was when the husbands were home. So he didn’t stop by the new house. He wrapped up his appointments early, because tomorrow they were moving and there was still some packing to do. He got home about three o’clock and walked on through to the kitchen, where he found Linnie pulling cleaning supplies from the orange crate under the sink. She was kneeling on the floor, and the soles of her bare feet, which were facing him, were gray with dirt. “I’m home,” he told her.

“Oh, good. Could you reach down that platter from up top of the icebox? I clean forgot about it! I like to walked off and left it.”

He reached for the platter on the refrigerator and placed it on the counter. “I’ve half a mind to take another load to the house before it gets dark,” he told her. “It would make things that much easier in the morning.”

“Oh, don’t do that. You’ll wear yourself out. Wait for tomorrow when Dodd and them get here.”

“I wouldn’t take the heavy stuff. Just a few boxes and such.”

She didn’t answer. He wished she would get her head out of the orange crate and look at him, but she was all hustle-bustle, so after a minute he left her.

In the living room, the children were piling up empty cartons to build something. Or Merrick was. Redcliffe was still too little to have any plan in mind, but he was thrilled that Merrick was playing with him and he staggered around happily, dragging boxes wherever she told him to. The rug had been rolled up for the move and it gave them an expanse of bare floorboards. “Look at our castle, Daddy,” Merrick said, and Junior said, “Very nice,” and went on back to the bedroom to change out of his good clothes. He always wore his suit when he was giving estimates.

When he returned to the kitchen, Linnie was packing the cleaning supplies in a Duz carton. “Mrs. Abbott’s husband said no to half the features she was wanting,” Junior said. “He went straight down the list: ‘Why’s this cost so much? Why’s this?’ I wished I had known he would do that way before I went to all that trouble with my figures.”

“That’s a shame,” Linnie Mae said. “Maybe she’ll talk to him later and get him to change his mind.”

“No, she was just going along with it. ‘Oh,’ she said, all sad and mournful, each time he crossed something off.”

He waited for Linnie to comment, but she didn’t. She was wrapping a bottle of ammonia in a dish towel. He wished she would look at him. He was starting to feel uneasy.

Linnie Mae wasn’t the type to shout or sulk or throw things when she was mad about something; she would just stop looking at him. Well, she would look if she had some cause to, but she wouldn’t study him. She would speak pleasantly enough, she would smile, she would act the same as ever, and yet always there seemed to be something else claiming her attention. At such times, he surprised himself by his urgent need of her gaze. All at once he would realize how often she did look at him, how her eyes would linger on him as if she just purely enjoyed the sight of him.

He couldn’t think of any reason she would be mad at this moment, though. He was the one who should be mad — and was mad. Still, he hated this feeling of uncertainty. He walked over to stand squarely in front of her, with only the Duz carton between them, and he said, “Would you like to eat at the diner tonight?”

They seldom ate at the diner. It had to be a special occasion. But Linnie didn’t look at him, even so. She said, “I reckon we’ll have to, because I took everything in the icebox over to the house today.”

“You did?” he said. “How come?”

“Oh, Doris was keeping the children so I could get some packing done, and I just thought, ‘Why don’t I visit the new house on my own?’ You know I’ve never done that. So I packed up two bags of food and I caught the streetcar over.”

“We could have put the food on the truck tomorrow,” Junior said. His mind was racing. Had she seen the revarnished swing? She must have. He said, “I don’t know why you thought you had to lug all that by yourself.”