A Spool of Blue Thread (26 page)

“My Lord! That’s awful! But surely they’re going to investigate the cause of death,” Red said. He looked shattered. “These things don’t just come about for no reason.”

“They do if you’re old, Red.”

“Old! He wasn’t even in nursery school yet!”

“What?” Ree said.

Everyone stared at him.

“I remember when he was born! It wasn’t but two or three years ago!”

“What are you
talking
about?” Ree asked.

“Why, I’m … Didn’t you say Peter died? Your grandson?”

“
Jeeter
, I said,” Ree told him, raising her voice. “Jeeter, my cat. Good gracious!”

“Oh,” Red said. “Excuse me. My mistake.”

“I did wonder why you’d turned into such a cat person, all at once.”

“Ha! Yes,” he said, “and
I
wondered how you could act so offhand about your only grandchild passing.” He gave an embarrassed chuckle and picked up his fork again. Then he peered across the table at Nora. She had her napkin pressed to her mouth, and her shoulders were heaving and she was making a slight squeaking sound. It
seemed at first she might be choking, till it emerged that the tears streaming down her face were tears of laughter. Stem said, “Hon?” and the others stared at her. None of them had ever seen Nora get the giggles before.

“Sorry,” she said when she could speak, but then she clapped her napkin to her mouth again. “I’m
sorry
!” she said between gasps.

“Glad to know you find me so amusing,” Red said stiffly.

“I apologize, Father Whitshank.”

She lowered the napkin and sat up straighter. Her face was flushed and her cheeks were wet. “I think it must be stress,” she said.

“Of course it is,” Ree told her. “You’ve all been through a world of stress! I should have thought before I came traipsing over here with my piddly little news.”

“No, really, I—”

“Funny, I never noticed before how the two names rhymed,” Ree said thoughtfully. “Peter, Jeeter.”

Red said, “You were
nice
to come, Ree, and the crumble’s delicious, honest.” He didn’t seem to realize that he hadn’t taken a bite of it yet.

“I used Granny Smith apples,” Ree told him. “All the other kinds fall apart, I find.”

“These are not falling apart in the least.”

“Yes, they’re great,” Denny said, and Stem chimed in with a not-quite-intelligible murmur. His eyes were still on Nora, although she seemed to have composed herself.

“Well!” Ree said. “Now that we’ve got the fun and games out of the way, let’s talk about you all. What are your plans, everybody? Stem? Denny? Will you be staying on with your dad?”

It could have been an awkward moment—people were bracing for it around the table, clearly—except that Red said, “Nah, they’ll be moving out shortly. I’m going to get myself an apartment.”

“An apartment!” Ree said.

The others grew very still.

“Well, the kids have their regular lives, after all,” Red said. “And there’s no point in me rattling around alone here. I’m thinking I could just rent something, one of those streamlined efficiencies that wouldn’t need any upkeep. It could have an elevator, even, in case I get old and doddery.” He gave one of his chuckles, as if to imply how unlikely that was.

“Oh, Red, that’s so adventurous of you! And I know just the place, too. Remember Sissy Bailey? She’s moved into this new building in Charles Village, and she loves it. You remember she had that big house on St. John’s, but now, she says, she doesn’t have to give a thought to mowing the lawn, shoveling the snow, putting up the storm windows …”

“The boys were putting up our storm windows just this afternoon,” Red said. “Do you know how many times I’ve been through that, in my life? Put them up in the fall, take them down in the spring. Put them up, take them down. Put them up, take them down. Is there no
end
? you have to ask.”

“Very, very sensible to ditch all that,” Ree said. She sent a bright look around the table. “Don’t you all agree?”

After a brief hesitation, Denny and Stem and Nora nodded. None of them wore any expression whatsoever.

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 mean, it’s almost a letdown,” she said.

And Jeannie said, “Of course we want to take him off our worry list, but has he thought this through? Moving to some teeny modern place without crown moldings?”

“He’s acting too meek,” Amanda said. “This is too easy. We need to find out what’s behind it.”

“Yes, you have to wonder why he’s in such a hurry.”

They were talking to each other on their cell phones—Jeannie
against a background of electric drills and nail guns, Amanda in the quiet of her office. Shockingly, no one had let them know right away about Red’s announcement. They’d had to hear it the next morning. Stem happened to mention it at work, while he and Jeannie were dealing with a cabinetry issue.

“You did tell him we should talk this over,” Jeannie had said immediately.

“Why would I tell him that?”

“Well, Stem?”

“He’s a grown-up,” Stem said, “and he’s doing what you’ve hoped for all along. Anyhow: whatever he does, Nora and I are leaving.”

“You are?”

“We’re just waiting till her church can find a new home for our tenants.”

“But you never said! You never discussed this with us!”

“Why should I discuss it?” Stem asked. “I’m a grown-up, too.”

Then he rolled up his blueprints and walked out.

“It’s like Stem’s a different person lately,” Jeannie told Amanda on the phone. “He’s almost
surly
. He was never like this before.”

“It must have to do with Denny,” Amanda said.

“Denny?”

“Denny must have said something to hurt his feelings. You know Denny’s never gotten over Stem moving back home.”

“What could he have said to him, though?”

“What could he have said that he hasn’t
already
said, is the question. Whatever it was, it must have been a doozie.”

“I don’t believe that,” Jeannie said. “Denny’s been on fairly good behavior lately.”

But as soon as she hung up, she phoned him. (Wasn’t it typical that even now, when he was living on Bouton Road again, she had to call his cell phone if she wanted to talk to him?)

It was past ten in the morning, but he must not have been fully awake yet. He answered in a muffled-sounding voice: “What.”

“Stem says Dad is going to move to an apartment,” Jeannie told him.

“Yeah, seems like he is.”

“Where did
that
come from?”

“Beats me.”

“And Stem and Nora are just waiting till their tenants find a new place and then they’re leaving too.”

Denny yawned aloud and said, “Well, that makes sense.”

“Did you say anything to him?”

“To Stem?”

“Did you say anything that made him want to leave?”

“Dad’s moving, Jeannie. Why
wouldn’t
Stem leave?”

“But he was leaving in any case, he said. And he’s been acting so different these days, so grumpy and short-tempered.”

“He has?” Denny said.

“Something’s eating him, I tell you. It sounds like he didn’t even try to talk Dad out of this.”

“Nope. None of us did.”

“You mean you think it’s okay? Dad giving up on the house his own father built?”

“Sure.”

“You’ll be out of a home, you know,” Jeannie said. “We’ll have to sell. I don’t see you affording the taxes on an eight-room house on Bouton Road; you don’t even have a job.”

“Right,” Denny said, not appearing to take offense.

“So will you go back to New Jersey?”

“Most likely.”

Jeannie was quiet a moment.

“I don’t understand you,” she said finally.

“Okay …”

“You live here; you live there; you move around like it doesn’t matter
where
you live. You don’t seem to have any friends; you don’t have a real profession … Is there anyone you really care about? I’m
not counting Susan; our children are just … extensions of our own selves. But do you care how you worried Mom and Dad? Do you care about
us
? About me? Did you say something hurtful to Stem that’s made him mad at everyone?”

“I never said a word to Stem,” Denny said.

And he hung up.

“I feel awful,” Jeannie told Amanda. They were on the phone again, although this time Amanda had answered in a hurried, impatient tone. “What
now
?” she had asked, sounding more like Denny than she knew.

“I really let Denny have it,” Jeannie told her. “I accused him of being mean to Stem and giving grief to Mom and Dad and not working and not having any friends.”

“So? What part of that isn’t true?”

“I asked if he even cared about us. Well, specifically me.”

“A reasonable question, I’d say,” Amanda told her.

“I shouldn’t have asked that.”

“Get over it, Jeannie. He deserved every word.”

“But asking if he cared about me, when here he quit his job that time and fell behind on his rent so he could come and help out because I was afraid I was going to smash my baby’s head in!”

There was a silence.

“I didn’t know that,” Amanda said finally.

“You don’t remember that Denny came and stayed with me?”

“I didn’t know you were afraid you’d smash Alexander’s head in.”

“Oh. Well, forget that part.”

“You could have told
me
that. Or Mom. She was a social worker, for God’s sake!”

“Amanda, forget it. Please.”

There was another silence. Then Amanda said, “But anyhow. The rest of what you said, Denny had coming to him. He
was
mean to
Stem. And he did give Mom and Dad grief; he made their lives a living hell. And he
is
unemployed, and if he’s got any friends we certainly haven’t met them. And I’m not so sure he cares the least little bit about us! You told me yourself he sounded kind of unhappy when he telephoned that night before he came home. Maybe he was just looking for some
excuse
to come home.”

“I still feel awful,” Jeannie said.

“Listen, I hate to run, but I’m late for an appointment.”

“Go, then,” Jeannie said, and she stabbed her phone to end the call.

Denny and Nora were in the kitchen, cleaning up after supper. Or Nora was cleaning up, because Denny had done the cooking. But he was still hanging around, picking up random objects here and there on the counter and looking at the bottoms of them and setting them down.

Nora had been talking about Sissy Bailey’s apartment. She had taken Red to see it earlier that afternoon. But he had claimed he could poke a hole in the walls with his index finger, so on Saturday a friend of the family who was a real-estate agent …

Denny said, “Is Stem pissed off about something?”

“Excuse me?” Nora said.

“Jeannie says he’s in a bad mood.”

“Why don’t you ask him?” Nora said. She angled one last saucepan into a tiny space in the dishwasher.

“I thought maybe you could tell me.”

“Is it so hard to just go talk to him? Do you dislike him that much? ”

“I don’t dislike him! Geez.”

Nora closed the dishwasher and turned to look at him. Denny said, “What, you don’t believe me? We get along fine! We’ve always gotten along. I mean, it’s true he can be kind of a goody-goody, like ‘See how much nicer I am than anybody else,’ and he talks in this
super-patient way that always sounds so condescending, and legend has it he behaves so well when his life doesn’t work out perfectly although face it, how often has Stem’s life not worked out perfectly? But
I
have no problem with Stem.”

Nora smiled one of her mysterious smiles.

“Okay,” Denny said. “I’ll just ask him myself.”

“Thanks for making supper,” Nora told him. “It was delicious.”

He raised one arm and let it drop as he walked out.

In the sunroom the evening news was on, but Red was the only one watching. “Where’s Stem?” Denny asked.

“Upstairs with the kids. I think somebody broke something.”

Denny went back out to the hall and climbed the stairs. Children’s voices were tumbling over each other in the bunk room. When he entered, the little boys were snaking that racetrack of theirs across the floor while Stem sat on a lower bunk, studying two parts of a bureau drawer.

“What have we here?” Denny asked him.

“Seems the guys mistook the bureau for a mountain.”

“It was Everest,” Petey told Denny.

“Ah.”

“Could you hand me that glue?” Stem said.

“You really want to use glue on it?”

Stem gave him a look.

Denny passed him the bottle of carpenter’s glue on the bureau. Then he leaned against the door frame, arms folded, one foot cocked across the other. “So,” he said. “Sounds like you’re moving out.”

Stem said, “Yep.” He squirted glue on a section of dovetailing.

“I guess you’re pretty set on it.”

Stem raised his head and glared at Denny. He said, “Don’t even think about telling me I owe him.”

“Huh?”

The little boys glanced up, but then they went back to their racetrack.

“I’ve done my bit,” Stem told Denny. “You stay on yourself, if you think somebody ought to.”

“Did I say that?” Denny asked him. “Why would
anybody
stay on? Dad’s moving.”

“You know perfectly well he’s just hoping we’ll talk him out of it.”

“I don’t know any such thing,” Denny said. “What is it with you, these days? You’ve been behaving like a brat. Don’t tell me it’s just about Mom.”

“
Your
mom,” Stem said. He set the glue bottle on the floor. “She wasn’t mine.”

“Well, fine, if you want to put it that way.”

“
My
mom was B. J. Autry, for your information.”

Denny said, “Oh.”

The little boys went on playing, oblivious. They were staging spectacular wrecks on an overpass.

“And all along, Abby knew that,” Stem said. “She knew and she didn’t tell me. She didn’t even tell Dad.”

“I still don’t see why you’re going around in a snit.”

“I’m in a snit, as you call it, because—”