Anne Tyler: A Spool of Blue Thread

He opened his eyes and shifted onto his back. “Linnie Mae,” he said toward the ceiling. “Are you awake?”

“I’m awake.”

He turned so his body was cupping hers and he wrapped his arms around her from behind. She didn’t pull away, but she stayed rigid. He took a deep breath of her salty, smoky smell.

“I ask your pardon,” he said.

She was silent.

“I’m just trying so hard, Linnie. I guess I’m trying too hard. I’m just trying to pass muster. I just want to do things the right way, is all.”

“Why, Junior,” she said, and she turned toward him. “Junie, honey, of course you do. I know that. I know you, Junior Whitshank.” And she took his face between her hands.

In the dark he couldn’t see if she was looking at him or not, but he could feel her fingertips tracing his features before she put her lips to his.

Dodd McDowell and Hank Lothian and the new colored man were due to arrive at eight — Junior let his men start a little late when they worked on weekends — so at seven, he drove Linnie and the children to the house along with some boxes of kitchen things. The plan was that she would stay there unpacking while he went back to help load the furniture.

As they were pulling into the street, Doris Nivers from next door came out in her housecoat, carrying a potted plant. Linnie rolled down her window and called, “Morning, Doris!”

“I’m just trying not to bawl my eyes out,” Doris told her. “The neighborhood won’t feel the same! Now, this plant might not look to you like much, but it’s going to flower in a few weeks and give you lots of beautiful zinnias.”

“Zeenias,” she pronounced it, in the Baltimore way. She passed the plant through the window to Linnie, who took it in both hands and sank her nose into it as if it were blooming already. “I won’t say ‘Thank you,’ ” she told Doris, “because I don’t want to kill it off, but you know I’m going to think of you every time I look at it.”

“You just better had! Bye, kiddos. Bye, Junior,” Doris said, and she took a step backward and waved.

“So long, Doris,” Junior said. The children, who were still in a just-awakened stupor, merely stared, but Linnie waved and kept her head out the window till their truck had turned the corner and Doris was out of sight.

“Oh, I’m going to miss her so much!” Linnie told Junior, pulling her head in. She leaned past Redcliffe to set the plant on the floor between her feet. “I feel like I’ve lost my sister or something.”

“You haven’t lost her. You’re moving two miles away! You can invite her over any time you like.”

“No, I know how it will be,” Linnie said. She blotted the skin beneath her right eye and then her left eye with an index finger. “Suppose I ask her to lunch,” she said. “I ask her and Cora Lee and them. If I give them something fancy to eat they’ll say I’m getting above myself, but if I give them what I usually do they’ll say that I must not think they’re as high-class as my new neighbors. And they won’t invite me back; they’ll say their houses wouldn’t suit me anymore, and bit by bit they’ll stop accepting my invitations and that will be the end of it.”

“Linnie Mae. It is not a capital crime to move to a bigger place,” Junior said.

Linnie Mae reached into her pocket to pull out a handkerchief.

When he drew to a stop in front of the house, she asked, “Shouldn’t we park around back? What about all we’ve got to carry?”

“I thought we’d have a bite of breakfast first,” he said.

Which made no sense, really — they could eat breakfast just as well if he had parked in back — but he wanted to give their arrival the proper sense of occasion. And Linnie might have guessed that, because she just said, “Well. See there? Now you’re glad I brought that food over.”

While she was gathering herself together — hunting her purse on the floor and bending for her plant — he came around and opened the door for her. She looked surprised, but she passed Redcliffe to him, and then she stepped down from the truck. “Come on, kids,” Junior said, setting Redcliffe on the ground. “Let’s make our grand entrance.” And the four of them started up the walk.

Under the shelter of the trees the front of the house didn’t get the morning sun, but that just made the deep, shady porch seem homier. And the honey-gold of the swing, visible now through the balustrade, gladdened Junior’s heart. He had to stop himself from saying to Linnie, “See? See how right it looks?”

When his eyes caught a flash of something blue, he blamed it on the power of suggestion — a crazy kind of aftereffect of all that had happened before.

Then he looked again, and he froze.

A trail of blue paint traveled down the flagstones — a scattered explosion of blue starting directly in front of the steps and then collecting itself to proceed in a wide band down the walk, narrowing to a trickle as it approached his shoes. It was so thick that it almost seemed he could peel it up with his fingers; it was so shiny that he instinctively drew back his nearest foot, although on closer inspection he saw that it had dried. And anyone — or was it only Junior? — could tell from the briefest glance that it had been flung in anger.

Linnie, meanwhile, had disengaged her hand from his and gone ahead, calling, “Slow down, Merrick! Slow down, Redcliffe! Your daddy needs to unlock the door!”

It would take his men days to remove this. It would take abrasives and chemicals — offhand, he wasn’t even sure what kind — and scrubbing and scraping and grinding; and still, traces of blue would remain. Really the blue would never come off, not completely. There would be microscopic dots of blue in the mortar forever after, perhaps unnoticed by strangers but evident to Junior. He could see his future unreeling before him as clearly as a movie: how he would try one method, try another, consult the experts, lie awake nights, research different solutions like a man possessed, and no doubt end by having to dig the whole thing up and start over. Failing that, the walk would be marked indelibly, engraved with Swedish blue for all time.

And meanwhile Linnie Mae was heading up the walk with her spine very straight and her hat very level, all innocent and carefree. Not even a glance backward to find out how he was taking this.

Why had he worried for one second about abandoning her at the train station? She would have done just fine without him! She would do just fine anywhere.

She had set out to snag him and succeeded without half trying. She had weathered five years of public scorn entirely on her own. She’d ridden who knows how many trains on who knows how many branch lines and tracked him down without a hitch. He saw her craning her neck by the pickup lane; he saw her ringing strange ladies’ doorbells with her suitcase and her hobo bundle; he saw her laughing in the kitchen with Cora Lee. He saw her yanking his whole life around the way she would yank a damp sweater that she had pulled out of the washtub to block and reshape.

He supposed he should be glad of that last part.

Redcliffe stumbled but righted himself. Merrick was running ahead. “Wait,” Junior called, because they were nearing the steps now. They all stopped and turned toward him, and he walked faster to catch up. Birds were singing in the poplars above him. Small white butterflies were flitting in the one patch of sun. When he reached Linnie’s side he took hold of her hand, and the four of them climbed the steps. They crossed the porch. He unlocked the door. They walked into the house. Their lives began.