A Spool of Blue Thread

by Anne Tyler

of those enviable families that radiate clannishness and togetherness and just … specialness;

Abby did her best to find out, using her most neutral, non-offended tone.

Their leanness was the rawboned kind, not the lithe, elastic slenderness of people in magazine ads, and something a little too sharp in their faces suggested that while they themselves were eating just fine, perhaps their forefathers had not.

The disappointments seemed to escape the family’s notice, though. That was another of their quirks: they had a talent for pretending that everything was fine. Or maybe it wasn’t a quirk at all. Maybe it was just further proof that the Whitshanks were not remarkable in any way whatsoever.

She was so intrusive, so sure of her welcome, so utterly lacking in self-consciousness. She assumed she had the right to ask them any questions she liked. She held the wrongheaded notion that if they didn’t want to discuss some intimate personal problem, maybe they would change their minds if she turned the tables on them. (Was this something she’d learned in social work?) “Let’s put this the other way around,” she would say, hunching forward cozily. “Let’s say you advise me. Say I have a boyfriend who’s acting too possessive.” She would give a little laugh. “I’m at my wit’s end!” she would cry. “Tell me what I should do!”

She had always assumed that when she was old, she would have total confidence, finally. But look at her: still uncertain. In many ways she was more uncertain now than she had been as a girl.

like passengers on a steamship deck. Abby thought that summed up her role in this family. She had her notions, her ideas of how things ought to be, but everyone proceeded as he or she liked, regardless.