Anne Tyler: A Spool of Blue Thread

YEARS AGO, when the children were small, Abby had started a tradition of hanging a row of ghosts down the length of the front porch every October. There were six of them. Their heads were made of white rubber balls tied up in gauzy white cheesecloth, which trailed nearly to the floor and wafted in the slightest breeze. The whole front of the house took on a misty, floating look. On Halloween the trick-or-treaters would have to bat their way through diaphanous veils, the older ones laughing but the younger ones on the edge of panic, particularly if the night was windy and the cheesecloth was lifting and writhing and wrapping itself around them.

Stem’s three little boys clamored to have the ghosts put up this year the same as always, but Nora said it couldn’t be done. “Halloween isn’t till Wednesday,” she told them. “We’ll be gone by then.” They were vacating the house on Sunday — the earliest date that Red was allowed into his apartment. The plan was for all of them to be resettled by the start of the work week.

But Red overheard, and he said, “Oh, let them have their ghosts, why don’t you? It’ll be their last chance. Then our men can haul them down for us when they come in on Monday morning.”

“Yes!” the little boys shouted, and Nora laughed and flung out her hands in defeat.

So the ghosts were brought forth from their paper-towel carton in the attic, and Stem climbed up on a ladder to hang them from the row of brass hooks screwed into the porch ceiling. Up close, the ghosts looked bedraggled. They were due for one of their periodic costume renewals, but nobody had the time for that with everything else that was going on.

Jeannie and Amanda’s chosen items had already been moved out by the two Hughs in Red’s pickup. Stem’s items were consolidated in a corner of the dining room. Denny’s one box was in his room, but he said he couldn’t take it with him on the train. “We’ll UPS it,” Jeannie decided.

“Or just, maybe, one of you keep it,” he said. And that was how it was left, for the moment.

There were still a few things in the attic, still a few things in the basement — most of them to be discarded. The rest of the house was so empty it echoed. One couch and one armchair stood on the bare floor in the living room, waiting to go to Red’s apartment. The dining-room table had been sent to a consignment shop and the kitchen table stood in its place, ridiculously small and homely, also to go with Red. The larger pieces of furniture had had to be carried out through the front door, because maneuvering them through the kitchen was too difficult; and each time that happened, someone had to scoop up the long trains of the two center ghosts on the porch and anchor them to either side with bungee cords. Even so, Stem and Denny — or whoever was doing the carrying — would be snared from time to time in swags of cheesecloth, and they would duck and curse and struggle to free themselves. “Why on earth these damn things had to be strung up now …” one would say. But nobody went so far as to suggest taking them down.

The whole family had been commenting on how helpful Denny had been lately, but then what did he do? He announced on Saturday evening that he’d be leaving in the morning. “Morning?” Jeannie said. The Bouton Road contingent was eating supper at her house, now that their pots and dishes were packed, and she had just set a pork roast in front of Amanda’s Hugh for carving. She plunked herself down in her chair, still wearing her oven mitts, and said, “But Dad’s moving in the morning!”

“Yeah, I feel bad about that,” Denny said.

“And Stem in the afternoon!”

“What can I do, though?” Denny asked the table in general. “There’s supposed to be a hurricane coming. This changes everything.”

His family looked puzzled. (The hurricane was all over the news, but it was predicted to strike just north of them.) Jeannie’s Hugh said, “Usually people head away from a hurricane, not toward it.”

“Well, but I need to make sure things are battened down at home,” Denny said. There was a pause — a stunned little snag in the atmosphere. “Home” was not a word the family connected with New Jersey. Not even Denny, as far as anyone had known until this moment. Jeannie blinked and opened her mouth to speak. Red looked around the table with a questioning expression; it wasn’t clear that he had heard. Deb was the first to find her voice. She said, “I thought your things were all packed up in a garage, Uncle Denny.”

“They are,” Denny said. “They’re in my landlady’s garage. But my landlady’s on her own; I can’t just tell her to fend for herself, can I?”

Stem asked, “Couldn’t you at least stay till we get Dad moved?”

“The Weather Channel is saying Amtrak might stop the trains by tomorrow afternoon, though. Then I’d be stuck here.”

“Stuck!” Jeannie said, looking offended.

“They’re talking about cutting service to the whole Northeast Corridor.”

“So …” Red said. He drew a deep breath. “So, let’s see if I’ve got this straight. You plan on leaving in the morning.”

“Right.”

“Before I’m in my new place.”

“ ’Fraid so.”

“The thing of it is, though,” Red said, “what about my computer?”

Denny said, “What about it?”

“I was counting on you to set up my Wi-Fi. You know I’m not good at that stuff! What if I can’t connect? What if my laptop goes all temperamental on account of being relocated? What if I try to log on and get nothing, just one of those damn ‘You are not connected to the Internet’ screens? What if I get a whirling beach ball that goes on and on and on, and I can’t get out of it, can’t make contact, can’t hook up anywhere?”

He was asking not only Denny but all of them, sending a wild, scattered gaze around the table. Denny said, “Dad. Amanda’s Hugh knows way more about computers than I do.”

But Amanda’s Hugh said, “Who, me?” And Red just kept staring into one face and then another. Finally Nora, who was seated next to him, set a hand on top of his. “We will take care of all that, I promise, Father Whitshank,” she said.

Red peered at her for a moment, and then he relaxed. No one pointed out that Nora didn’t even have her own e-mail address.

“Well, this is just great,” Jeannie told Denny. She stripped off her oven mitts and slammed them down next to her plate. “You waltz on out whenever you like; everything stops for Lord Denny. Everyone’s just thankful you stayed as long as you did; everyone’s falling all over themselves because it’s such a rare and exalted privilege when you honor us with your presence.”

“The prodigal son,” Nora said contentedly, and she smiled across the table at Petey. “Isn’t it?” she asked him.

But Petey had his mind on the hurricane. He said, “What if you get picked up in the air, Uncle Denny, like the mean neighbor lady in The Wizard of Oz ? Do you think that might could happen?”

“You never know,” Denny said, and he chose a roll from the bread basket and gave it a jaunty upward toss before setting it on his plate.

Sunday dawned cloudy and ominous, which was no surprise. Even without a direct hit, the hurricane was bound to spread a swath of wind and rain and electrical glitches throughout the city. Before things could get any worse, therefore, Jeannie and Amanda dropped off their husbands to help with the heavy lifting, and then Amanda collected the three little boys and the dog and took them back to her house so they would be out from underfoot. Jeannie’s assignment was to drive Red to his apartment, along with a small load of kitchen items, and start settling him in. No point making him witness the final dismantling of the house, was everybody’s reasoning. But he kept dragging his heels. Ordinarily a man who hated to impose, he had peevishly refused Nora’s offer of cold cereal for breakfast and requested eggs, although the eggs were packed in a cooler by then and the skillet was in the bottom of a carton. “Dad—” Stem had begun, but Nora had said, “That’s all right. I can fix him eggs in a jiffy.”