A Spool of Blue Thread

by Anne Tyler

but it had the comfortably shabby air of a place whose inhabitants had long ago stopped seeing it.

and by the way, those steps should be wooden. It was wrong to have anything else. 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.

The house seemed invisibly partitioned between Nora and Abby—Nora busying herself in the kitchen or tending her children, Abby up in her bedroom or reading in the living room. They were courteous to each other but wary, clearly trying not to get in each other’s way. The only

“Oh,” Abby said, “poor Hugh. Men don’t handle failure well at all.”

And the exact, clunky weight of those shears instantly came to her mind, along with the too-thick handle loop that pressed uncomfortably against the bone at the base of her thumb, and the initial balkiness as the heavy teeth began chewing into the fabric.

Oh, well, this was just roommate-itis, Abby told herself. It was rubbing elbows at too-close quarters; that was why she felt so irritable.

You could tell it was early in the school year because the children were so nicely dressed. Another month and they would be making less effort.

Denny had told her (offhandedly, when she marveled at Susan’s brown eyes) that Susan was not his. Nothing

Oh, people would have been amazed at all she knew and didn’t say!

Modern times! We’d sent men into space by then. Why, my folks lived long enough to see aluminum-frame window screens, and clip-on fake mullions and flush doors and fiberglass bathtubs.”

Amanda said it was sort of like when you’re playing tug of war and the other side drops the rope with no warning. “I

She had learned not to argue with Mrs. Whitshank, who was a force of nature when it came to cooking and would only find Abby a hindrance.

The witch says, ‘I’m melting! Melting! Oh, what a world, what a world,’ she says.”

Maddie just gave a little wave like a windshield wiper.

“it seems to me there’s just these certain types of people that come around and around in our lives, know what I mean? Easy types and hard types; we run into them over and over.

“I was thinking I would never find the right shade of blue, because it was such a bright blue. But I went to the linen closet where Mom always kept her sewing box, and I opened the door, and before I could even reach for the box this spool of bright-blue thread rolled out from the rear of the shelf. I just cupped my hand beneath the shelf and this spool of thread dropped into it.”

thought, ‘It’s like she’s telling me she forgives me,’ ” Denny said. “And then I took the dashiki to my room and I sat down on my bed to mend it, and out of nowhere this other thought came. I thought, ‘Or she’s

telling me she knows that I forgive her.’ And all at once I got this huge, like, feeling of relief.”

“I think you’ve figured it just right,” Nora told him.

Stuck in his family, trapped. Ingrown, like a toenail.