A Spool of Blue Thread

by Anne Tyler

you know how it is when you’re missing a loved one. You try to turn every stranger into the person you were hoping for. You hear a certain piece of music and right away you tell yourself that he could have changed his clothing style, could have gained a ton of weight, could have acquired a car and then parked that car in front of another family’s house. “It’s him!” you say. “He came! We knew he would; we always …” But then you hear how pathetic you sound, and your words trail off into silence, and your heart breaks.

Junior’s true name was Jurvis Roy, shortened at some point to J. R. and then re-expanded, accordion-like, to Junior.

In the middle of his country-sounding drawl, Abby said, a distinct, sharp i would poke forth here and there like a brier.

He built better than he’d ever built anything in his life. He niggled over every pantry shelf and cabinet knob. He argued against any request that struck him as cutting corners or lacking in good taste.

People thought of wooden steps as buckling or peeling, but when they were properly cared for there was nothing handsomer than a wide set of varnished treads (a bit of fine sand mixed into the varnish for traction) rising to a wooden porch floor as solid as a ship’s deck.

So “this house” really meant “this family,” it seemed. The two were one and the same.

studying how to rise above her origins.

All of them had inherited Junior’s allergy to ostentation, and all of them were convinced that they had better taste than the rest of the world.

It was going to be a while, evidently, before the two women settled just who was in charge of what. This morning Abby had put out toast and cereal as usual, and then Nora had come down and scrambled an entire carton of eggs without so much as a by-your-leave.

and people kept saying, “I’m sorry; is this your glass or mine?

He vacuumed all the bedrooms and folded a load of laundry that Nora had put in the dryer, completely mixing up which clothes belonged to which person.

“I love that feeling,” he said. “You don’t know your place in the world; you’re not pegged; you’re not nailed into this one single same old never-ending spot.”

But by the end of their vacation they say, ‘Oh, one week is enough, really.’

Oh, he just took an active pleasure in going against the grain! No, the current, she meant. Going against the current. It was like a hobby for him.

people once again sat in a straight line gazing outward, not at each other, like passengers on a steamship deck.

“Who said, ‘You’re only ever as happy as your least happy child?’

Elise who was just so different from Abby, so completely other, that Abby felt privileged to be granted this close-up view of her.

“I would wish wonderful lives for our children,” Abby said.

‘Whatever you do in life, do your best. I don’t care if it’s hauling trash, you do it the best it’s ever been done,’ I say. ‘Take pride in it.’

It was the prettiest afternoon, all breezy and yellow-green with a sky the unreal blue of a Noxzema jar, and

in a minute she was going to tell Red she’d like to ride with him to the wedding. For now, though, she was saving that up—hugging it close to her heart.

But Abby stood up from the swing, even so, and started walking toward Red, and with every step she felt herself growing happier and more certain.

(He failed to disclose that for another client, he had once designed an ingenious cable-and-winch lift system to raise and lower a chandelier at will.)

This was the house of his life, after all (the way a different type of man would have a love of his life), and against any sort of logic he clung to the conviction that he would someday be living here.

meanwhile staring up at the house and trying to see it through her eyes.