Anne Tyler - A Spool of Blue Thread

Then Red took so long to eat them that he was still at it when Jeannie arrived. She had to wait, barely hiding her impatience, while he slowly and methodically forked up tiny mouthfuls, chewing in a contemplative way as he watched Stem and the two Hughs pass back and forth through the dining room with boxes for Jeannie’s car. “She’s always telling me she should have known what kind of person I was when she found out I didn’t recycle,” Amanda’s Hugh was telling Stem, “but how about what I should have seen, from the note she wrote to complain about it?”

Jeannie jingled her car keys and said, “Dad? Shall we hit the road?”

“Last night I dreamed the house burned down,” he told her.

“What, this house?”

“I could see all the beams and uprights that hadn’t been exposed since when my father built the place.”

“Oh, well …” Jeannie said, and she made a sad little secret face at Nora, who was rewrapping the skillet in newspaper. “That’s understandable, really,” she said. Then she asked, “Did Denny get off okay?”

“No,” Red said, “I think he’s still in bed.”

“In bed!”

Nora said, “I knocked on his door a while ago and he said he was getting up, but maybe he went back to sleep.”

“He was the one who couldn’t wait to leave!”

“Calm yourselves,” Denny said. “I’m up.”

He was standing in the doorway, already wearing his jacket, with a canvas duffel bag hanging from each shoulder and a third, much larger bag at his feet. “Morning, all,” he told them.

Jeannie said, “Well, finally!”

“I see we’ve beaten the rain, so far.”

“Only through pure blind luck,” she said. “I thought you were in such a hurry!”

“I overslept.”

“Have you missed your train?”

“Nah, I’ve still got time.” He looked over at his father, who was single-mindedly pursuing a stray bit of egg white with his fork. “How’re you feeling, Dad?” he asked.

“I’m okay.”

“Excited about your new place?”

“No.”

“There’s coffee,” Nora told Denny.

“That’s all right. I’ll get some at the station.” He waited a beat. “Should I call a cab?” he asked. “Or what?”

He was looking at Jeannie, but Nora was the one who answered. “I can take you,” she told him.

“Seems like you’ve got your hands full.”

He looked again at Jeannie. She flung back her ponytail with an angry snap and said, “Well, I can’t do it. My car’s packed to the gills.”

“It’s no trouble,” Nora said.

“Ready, Dad?” Jeannie asked.

Red set his fork down. He wiped his mouth with a paper towel. He said, “It seems wrong to just walk off and let other folks do the work.”

“But we’re going to work at the new place. You’re the only one who can tell me where you want your spatulas kept.”

“Oh, what do I care where my spatulas are kept?” Red asked too suddenly and too loudly.

But he heaved himself to his feet, and Nora stepped forward to press her cheek to his. “We’ll see you tomorrow evening,” she told him. “Don’t forget you promised to come to our house for supper.”

“I remember.”

He lifted his windbreaker from the back of his chair and started to put it on. Then he paused and looked at Denny. “Say,” he said. “That guy with the French horn, was that your doing?”

Denny said, “What?”

“Did you arrange it? I can just about picture it. Paying a guy good money, even, just so we’d all start missing you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Red gave a shake of his head and said, “Right.” He chuckled at himself. “That would be too crazy,” he said. He shrugged into his windbreaker and settled the collar. “Still, though,” he said. “How many guys in tank tops listen to classical music?”

Denny looked questioningly at Jeannie, but she was ignoring him. “Got everything, Dad?” she asked.

“Well, no,” he said. “But the others are going to bring it, I guess.” Then he walked over to Denny and set a palm on his back in a gesture that was halfway between a clap and a hug. “Have a good trip, son.”

“Thanks,” Denny said. “I hope the new apartment works out.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Red turned from Denny and left the dining room, with Jeannie and Nora trailing behind. Denny picked up the bag at his feet and followed.

“See you in a while,” Red told the two Hughs in the front hall. They were just coming in for another load, both of them slightly winded.

Jeannie’s Hugh asked Jeannie, “Are you leaving now? I think we can maybe fit one more box in.”

“Never mind that; just put it on the truck,” she said. “I want to get going.” And she shouldered past him and hurried to catch up with Red, as if she feared he might try to escape. They threaded between the tied-back swags of cheesecloth on the porch; Stem stood aside to let them pass. “We should be over there in an hour or so,” he told Red. Red didn’t answer.

At the bottom of the steps, Red paused and looked back at the house. “It wasn’t a dream per se, as a matter of fact,” he told Jeannie.

“What’s that, Dad?”

“When I had that dream the house burned down, it wasn’t an actual dream dream. It was more like one of those pictures you get in your head when you’re half asleep. I was lying in bed and it came to me, kind of — the burnt-out bones of the house. But then I thought, ‘No, no, no, put that out of your mind,’ I thought. ‘It will do okay without us.’ ”

“It will do just fine,” Jeannie said.

He turned and set off down the flagstone walk, then, but Jeannie waited for Denny and Nora, and when they had caught up she reached across Denny’s burden of bags to give him a hug. “Say goodbye to the house,” she told him.

“Bye, house,” he said.

“The last time I missed church, I was in the hospital having Petey,” Nora told Denny as she was driving.

“So, does this mean you’re going to hell?”

“No,” she said in all seriousness. “But it does feel odd.” She flicked on her turn signal. “Maybe I’ll try to make the evening prayer service, if we’re finished moving in by then.”

Denny was gazing out his side window, watching the houses slide past. His left hand, resting on his knee, kept tapping out some private rhythm.

“I guess you’ll be glad to get back to your teaching,” she said after a silence.

He said, “Hmm?” Then he said, “Sure.”

“Will you always just substitute, or do you want a permanent position someday?”

“Oh, for that I’d have to take more course work,” he said. He seemed to have his mind elsewhere.

“I can imagine you’d be really good with high-school kids.”

He swung his eyes toward her. “No,” he said, “the whole thing got me down, it turns out. It was kind of depressing. Everything you’re supposed to teach them, you know it’s only a drop in the bucket — and not all that useful for real life anyhow, most of the time. I’m thinking I might try something else now.”

“Like what?”

“Well, I was thinking of making furniture.”

“Furniture,” she said, as if testing the word.

“I mean, work that would give me something … visible, right? To show at the end of the day. And why fight it: I come from people who build things.”

Nora nodded, just to herself, and Denny returned to looking out his side window. “That thing about the French horn,” he said to a passing bus. “What was that, do you know?”

Nora said, “I have no idea.”

“I hope he’s not losing it.”

“He’ll be all right,” Nora said. “We’ll make sure to keep an eye on him.”