A Spool of Blue Thread (10 page)

“Not only that, but Mom left a kettle on the stove the other day, and when Nora stopped by, the kettle was whistling full-blast and Dad was writing checks at the dining-room table, totally unaware.”

“He didn’t hear the
kettle
?”

“Evidently not.”

“That kettle stabs my eardrums,” Amanda said. “It may have been what turned him deaf in the first place.”

“I’m beginning to think they shouldn’t be living alone,” Stem told her.

“Really. Shouldn’t they.”

And she walked past him into the house with a thoughtful look on her face.

The next evening, there was a family meeting. Stem, Jeannie, and Amanda just happened to drop in; no spouses and no children. Stem looked suspiciously spruced up, while Amanda was as perfectly coiffed and lipsticked as always in the tailored gray pantsuit she’d worn to the office. Only Jeannie had made no effort; she wore her usual T-shirt and rumpled khakis, and her horsetail of long black hair was straggling out of its scrunchie. Abby was thrilled. When she’d seated them all in the living room, she said, “Isn’t this nice? Just like the old days! Not that I don’t love to see your families too, of course—”

Red said, “What’s up?”

“Well,” Amanda said, “we’ve been thinking about the house.”

“What about it?”

“We’re thinking it’s a lot to look after, what with you and Mom getting older.”

“I could look after this house with one hand tied behind my back,” Red said.

You could tell from the pause that followed that his children were
considering whether to take issue with this. Surprisingly, it was Abby who came to their aid. “Well, of course you can, sweetie,” she said, “but don’t you think it’s time you gave yourself a rest?”

“A dress!”

His children half laughed, half groaned.

“You see what I have to put up with,” Abby told them. “He will not wear his hearing aids! And then when he tries to fake it, he makes the most unlikely guesses. He’s just … perverse! I tell him I want to go to the farmers’ market and he says, ‘You’re joining the
army
?’ ”

“It’s not my fault if you mumble,” Red said.

Abby gave an audible sigh.

“Let’s stick to the subject,” Amanda said briskly. “Mom, Dad: we’re thinking you might want to move.”

“Move!” Red and Abby cried together.

“What with Dad’s heart, and Mom not driving anymore … we’re thinking maybe a retirement community. Wouldn’t that be the answer?”

“Retirement community, huh,” Red said. “That’s for
old
people. That’s where all those snooty old ladies go when their husbands die. You think we’d be happy in a place like that? You think they’d be glad to see us?”

“Of course they’d be glad, Dad. You’ve probably remodeled all their houses for them.”

“Right,” Red said. “And besides: we’re too independent, your mom and me. We’re the type who manage for ourselves.”

His children didn’t seem to find this so very admirable.

“Okay,” Jeannie said, “
not
a retirement community. But how about a condo? A garden apartment, maybe, out in Baltimore County.”

“Those places are made of cardboard,” Red said.

“Not all of them, Dad. Some are very well built.”

“And what would we do with the house, if we moved?”

“Well, sell it, I suppose.”

“Sell it! Who to? Nothing has sold in this city since the crash. It would stay on the market forever. You think I’m going to vacate my family home and let it go to rack and ruin?”

“Oh, Dad, we’d never let it—”

“Houses need humans,” Red said. “
You
all should know that. Oh, sure, humans cause wear and tear—scuffed floors and stopped-up toilets and such—but that’s nothing compared to what happens when a house is left on its own. It’s like the heart goes out of it. It sags, it slumps, it starts to lean toward the ground. I swear I can look at just the ridgepole of a house and tell if nobody’s living there. You think I’d do that to this place?”

“Well, sooner or later
someone
will buy it,” Jeannie said. “And meanwhile, I’ll stop in and check on it every single day. I’ll run the faucets. I’ll walk through the rooms. I’ll open all the windows.”

“That’s not the same,” Red said. “The house would know the difference.”

Abby said, “Maybe one of you kids would want to take it over! You could buy it from us for a dollar, or whatever way it’s done.”

This was met with silence. Her children were happily settled in their own homes, and Abby knew it.

“It’s served us so well,” she said wistfully. “Remember all our good times? I remember coming here when I was a girl. And then all those hours we spent on the porch when your father and I were courting. Remember, Red?”

He made an impatient, brushing-away gesture with one hand.

“I remember bringing Jeannie here from the hospital,” Abby said, “when she was three days old. I had her wrapped like a little burrito in the popcorn-stitch blanket Grandma Dalton had crocheted for Mandy, and I walked in the door saying, ‘This is your home, Jean Ann. This is where you’ll live, and you’re going to be so happy here!’ ”

Her eyes filled with tears. Her children looked down at their laps.

“Oh, well,” she said, and she gave a shaky laugh. “Listen to me, nattering on like this about something that can’t happen for years. Not while Clarence is alive.”

Red said, “
Who
?”

“Brenda. She means Brenda,” Amanda told him.

“It would be cruel to make Clarence move during his final days,” Abby said.

No one seemed to have the energy to continue the discussion.

Amanda talked Red into hiring a housekeeper who would also be willing to drive. Abby had never had a housekeeper, not even when she worked, but Amanda told her she would soon get used to it. “You’ll be a lady of leisure!” she said. “And any time you want to go someplace, Mrs. Girt will take you.”

“I’d only want to go someplace to get away from Mrs. Girt,” Abby said.

Amanda just laughed as if Abby had been joking, which she hadn’t.

Mrs. Girt was sixty-eight years old, a heavyset, cheerful woman who’d been laid off her job as a lunch lady and needed the extra income. She arrived at nine every morning, puttered around the house awhile, ineffectually tidying and dusting, and then set up the ironing board in the sunroom and watched TV while she ironed. There was not a whole lot of ironing required for two elderly people living on their own, but Amanda had instructed her just to keep herself occupied. Meanwhile, Abby stayed at the other end of the house, showing none of her usual interest in hearing every detail of a new acquaintance’s life story. Any time Abby made the slightest sound, Mrs. Girt would pop out of the sunroom and ask, “You okay? You need something? You want I should drive you somewheres?” Abby said it was intolerable. She complained to Red that she didn’t feel the house was her own anymore.

Still, she never asked
why
, exactly, this woman was felt to be necessary.

Two weeks into the job, Mrs. Girt forcibly removed a skillet from Abby’s hands and insisted on making her an omelet, during which time the iron she had abandoned set fire to a dish towel in the sunroom. No serious harm was done except to the dish towel, which was plain terry cloth from Target and hadn’t needed ironing in the first place, but that was the end of Mrs. Girt. Amanda said the next person they hired would have to be under forty. She suggested too that they might consider hiring a man, although she didn’t say why.

But Abby said, “No.”

“No?” Amanda said. “Oh. Okay. So, a woman.”

“No man, no woman. Nothing.”

“But, Mom—”

“I can’t!” Abby said. “I can’t stand it!” She started crying. “I can’t have some stranger sharing my house! I know you think I’m old, I know you think I’m feeble-minded, but this is making me
miserable
! I’d rather just go ahead and die!”

Jeannie said, “Mom, stop. Mom, please don’t cry. Oh, Mom, honey, we would never want you to be miserable.” She was crying too, and Red was trying to move both girls out of the way so he could get to Abby and hug her, and Stem was walking around in circles rummaging through his hair, which was what he always did when he was upset.

So: no man, no woman, nothing. Red and Abby were on their own again.

Till the tail end of June, when Abby was discovered wandering Bouton Road in her nightgown and Red hadn’t even noticed she was missing.

That was when Stem announced that he and Nora were moving in with them.

Well, certainly Amanda couldn’t have done it. She and Hugh and their teenage daughter led such busy lives that their corgi had to go to doggie day care every morning. And Jeannie’s family lived in the house Jeannie’s Hugh had grown up in, with Jeannie’s Hugh’s mother relocated to the guest room. They’d have needed to uproot Mrs. Angell and bring her along—a ludicrous notion. While Denny, needless to say, was out of the question.

Really, Stem should have been out of the question, too. Not only did he and Nora have three very active and demanding boys, but they were devoted to their little Craftsman house over on Harford Road, which they spent every spare moment lovingly restoring. It would have been cruel to ask them to leave it.

But Nora, at least, was home all day. And Stem was that kind of person, that mild, accepting kind of person who just seemed to take it for granted that life wasn’t always going to go exactly as he’d planned it. In fact, he kept thinking up new advantages to his proposal. The boys would see more of their grandparents! They could join the neighborhood swimming pool!

His sisters barely argued, once they’d absorbed the idea. “Are you sure?” they asked weakly. His parents put up more resistance. Red said, “Son, we can’t expect you to do that,” and Abby grew teary again. But you could see the wistfulness in their faces. Wouldn’t it be the perfect solution! And Stem said, firmly, “We’re coming. That’s that.” So it was settled.

They moved on a Saturday afternoon in early August. Stem and Jeannie’s Hugh, along with Miguel and Luis from work, loaded Stem’s pickup with suitcases and toy chests and a tangle of bikes and trikes and pedal cars and scooters. (Stem and Nora’s furniture was left behind for the renters, a family of Iraqi refugees sponsored by Nora’s church.) Meanwhile, Nora drove the three boys and their dog over to Red and Abby’s.

Nora was a beautiful woman who didn’t know she was beautiful. She had shoulder-length brown hair and a wide, placid, dreamy face, completely free of makeup. Generally she wore inexpensive cotton dresses that buttoned down the front, and when she walked her hem fluttered around her calves in a liquid, slow-motion way that made every man in sight stop dead in his tracks and stare. But Nora never noticed that.

She parked her car down on the street like a guest, and she and the boys and the dog started up the steps toward the house—the boys and Heidi leaping and cavorting and falling all over themselves, Nora drifting serenely behind them. Red and Abby stood side by side waiting for them on the porch, because this was quite a moment, really. Petey shouted, “Hi, Grandma! Hi, Grandpa!” and Tommy said, “We’re going to live here now!” They’d been very excited ever since they heard the news. Nobody knew how Nora felt about it. At least outwardly, she was like Stem: she seemed to take things as they came. When she reached the porch, Red said, “Welcome!” and Abby stepped forward and hugged her. “Hello, Nora,” she said. “We’re so grateful to you for doing this.” Nora just smiled her slow, secret smile, revealing the two deep dimples in her cheeks.

The boys would sleep in the bunk-bed room. They raced up the stairs ahead of the grown-ups and threw themselves on the beds they always claimed when they stayed over. Stem and Nora would occupy Stem’s old room, diagonally across the hall. “Now, I’ve taken down all the posters and such,” Abby told Nora. “You two should feel free to hang whatever you like on the walls. And I’ve emptied the closet and the bureau. Will that give you enough storage space, do you think?”

“Oh, yes,” Nora said in her low, musical voice. It was the first time she had spoken since she’d arrived.

“I’m sorry the bed’s not here yet,” Abby said. “They can’t deliver it till Tuesday, so I’m afraid you’re going to have to make do with the twin beds until then.”

Nora just smiled again and wandered over to the bureau, where she set down her pocketbook. “For supper I’m fixing fried chicken,” she said.

Red said, “What?” and Abby told him, “Fried chicken!” At a lower volume, she said, “We love fried chicken, but you really don’t have to cook for us.”

“I enjoy cooking,” Nora said.

“Would you like Red to go to the grocery store for you?”

“Douglas is bringing groceries in the truck.”

Douglas was what she called Stem. It was his real name, which nobody in the family had used since he was two. They always looked blank for a moment when they heard it, but they could see why Nora might want a more grown-up name for her husband.

When she and Stem had announced that they were getting married, Abby had said, “Excuse me for asking, but will you be expecting … Douglas to join your church?” Just about all they knew about Nora was that she belonged to a fundamentalist church that was evidently a big part of her life. But Nora had said, “Oh, no. I don’t believe in dative evangelizing.” Abby had repeated this later to the girls: “She doesn’t believe in ‘dative evangelizing.’ ” As a result, they had assumed for a long time that Nora must not be very bright. Although she did hold a responsible job—medical assistant in a doctor’s office—before her children were born. And on occasion she came up with unsettlingly perceptive observations. Or were those accidental? She mystified them, really. Maybe now that she was living with them, they could finally figure her out.

Red and Abby left her upstairs to deal with the boys, who were walloping each other with pillows while Heidi, a flibbertigibbet collie, danced around them, barking hysterically. They went down and sat in the living room. Neither of them had any chores to do. They just sat looking at each other with their hands folded in their laps. Abby said, “Do you think this is how it will be all the rest of our lives?”