A Spool of Blue Thread

by Anne Tyler

But still, 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.

Patience, in fact, was what the Whitshanks imagined to be the theme of their two stories—patiently lying in wait for what they believed should come to them.

But somebody more critical might say that the theme was envy.

in the long run, both stories had led to disappointment.

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.

“Weather like this always takes me back to the day I fell in love with Red,”

“Independent? Bosh. That’s just another word for selfish. It’s stiff-backed people like you who end up being the biggest burdens.”

“It’s the … circularity,

He didn’t even consult me! Just took the very first offer he got, because he wants what he wants when he wants it.”

She had always assumed that when she was old, she would have total confidence, finally. But look at her: still uncertain.

One thing that parents of problem children never said aloud: it was a relief when the children turned out okay, but then what were the parents supposed to do with the anger they’d felt all those years?

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

“Socrates,”

You wake in the morning, you’re feeling fine, but all at once you think, “Something’s not right. Something’s off somewhere; what is it?” And then you remember that it’s your child—whichever one is unhappy.

She couldn’t bear to think that their family was just another muddled, discontented, ordinary family.

For years, she had been in mourning for the way she had let her life slip through her fingers. Given another chance, she’d told herself, she would take more care to experience it. But lately, she was finding that she had experienced it after all and just forgotten, and now it was returning to her.

Abby had specified a poem. An Emily Dickinson poem, “If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking,” which Amanda read aloud at the lectern,

“Brother James’s Air.”

it has occurred to me, on occasion, that our memories of our loved ones might not be the point. Maybe the point is their memories—all that they take away with them. What if heaven is just a vast consciousness that the dead return to? And their assignment is to report on the experiences they collected during their time on earth.

“It makes you wonder why we bother accumulating, accumulating, when we know from earliest childhood how it’s all going to end.”

The Wizard of Oz. Did you know that? They’re showing a revival downtown and I went to see it last night with Dane. The witch says, ‘I’m melting! Melting! Oh, what a world, what a world,’ she says.”

really believe that most people who seem scary are just sad.”

What a world, what a world. And then the line that came after that one: “Who would have thought,” the witch had asked, “that a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?”

The new Junior had a plan. He was going to be his own boss someday. His life was a straight, shining road now with a clear destination, and he supposed he ought to thank Linnie for setting his feet upon it.

In fact, where the paper met the sill it was actually curling up from the wall a tiny bit.

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the walk would be marked indelibly, engraved with Swedish blue for all time.

“The prodigal son,”

“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.” 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 shou...

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.”

“But in the split second before I realized that,” he said, “I almost imagined that she was handing it to me. Like some kind of, like, secret sign. Stupid,

“I 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.”