A Spool of Blue Thread (27 page)

Stem broke off and stared at him.

“You knew, too,” he said.

“Hmm?”

“This doesn’t surprise you a bit, does it? I should have guessed! All that snooping you used to do: of course! You’ve known for years!”

Denny shrugged. He said, “It’s immaterial to
me
who your mom was.”

“Just promise me this,” Stem said. “Promise you won’t tell the others.”

“Why would I tell the others?”

“I’ll kill you if you tell.”

“Ooh, scary,” Denny said.

By now the little boys were taking notice. They’d stopped playing, and they were gaping at Stem. Tommy said, “Dad?”

“Go downstairs,” Stem told him. “The three of you.”

“But, Dad—”

“Now!” Stem said.

They stumbled to their feet and left, looking back at him as they went. Sammy was still clutching a plastic tow truck. Denny winked at him when he walked past.

“Swear to it,” Stem told Denny.

“Okay! Okay!” Denny said, holding up both hands. “Uh, Stem, are you aware how fast that glue dries? You might want to fit those pieces together.”

“Swear on your life that you will never let on to a soul.”

“I swear on my life that I will never let on to a soul,” Denny repeated solemnly. “I don’t get it, though. Why do you care?”

“I just do, all right? I don’t have to give you a reason,” Stem said. But then he said, “I read someplace that even brand-new babies recognize their mothers’ voices. Did you know that? They learn them in the womb. From the moment they’re born, it’s their mothers’ voices they prefer. And I thought, ‘Gosh, I wonder what voice
I
preferred, back then.’ It seemed kind of sad to me that there was some voice I’d been craving all my life but never got to hear, at least not past the first little bit. And now look: it was B. J. Autry’s voice—that gravelly rasp of hers and that trashy way of talking. When you think of how
Abby
talks, I mean talked! I should have belonged to Abby.”

“So?” Denny said. “And eventually you did. Happy endings all around.”

“But you remember how the family mocked B. J. behind her back. They’d wince when she gave that laugh of hers; they’d make faces at each other when she was holding forth about something. ‘Oh, you know me; I just say it like it is,’ she’d say. ‘I tell it like I see it; I’m not one to mince my words.’ As if that were something to brag about! And then everybody would share these secret glances, all round the table. So now I think, ‘God, I’d die of shame if they found out she
was my mother.’ But I’m ashamed of feeling ashamed of her, too. I start thinking that the family had no
right
to act so snooty about her. I don’t know what to think! Sometimes it’s like I’m mourning what I missed out on: my real mother was sitting right there at our dining-room table and I never had an inkling, and it makes me mad as hell at Abby for not telling me—for that stupid, stupid contract. She wouldn’t allow my own mother to tell me I was her son! And if B. J. had ever wanted me back, oh, Abby was happy to hand me over. ‘Here you are, then’—easy come, easy go. And Dad: can you believe him? He told me
he
would have handed me over from the outset.”

“You talked to Dad about this?”

“Well, guess what,” Stem said, not appearing to hear him. “B. J. never did want me back, as it turned out. She looked straight across the table at me and she didn’t want me. She hardly ever
saw
me. She could have seen me any time, as often as she cared to, but she only came around now and then, two or three times a year.”

“So what? You didn’t even like her. You just said you hated her voice.”

“Still, she was my mother. One woman in the world who thinks you’re special—doesn’t every kid deserve that?”

“You had that. You had Abby.”

“Well, sorry, but that wasn’t enough. Abby was
your
mom. I needed my own.”

“You don’t think Abby thought you were special?” Denny asked.

Stem was silent. He stared down at the drawer in his hands.

“Come
on
,” Denny said. “She thought even the back of your neck was special. If she hadn’t, you’d have led a very different life, believe me. You’d have been shunted around who knows where, rootless, homeless, stuck in foster care someplace, and you’d probably have turned into one of those misfit guys who have trouble keeping a job, or staying married, or hanging on to their friends. You’d
have felt out of place wherever you went; there’d be nowhere you belonged.”

He stopped. Something in his voice made Stem look up at him, but then Denny said, “Ha! You know what this proves.”

“What.”

“You’re just following the family tradition, is all, the wish-I-had-what-somebody-else-has tradition—till they
do
have it. Like old Junior with his dream house, or Merrick with her dream husband. Sure! This could be the family’s third story. ‘Once upon a time,’ ” Denny intoned theatrically, “ ‘one of us spent thirty years craving his real mother’s voice, but after he found it, he realized he didn’t like it half as much as his fake mother’s voice.’ ”

Stem gave a thin, unhappy smile.

“Damn. You’re more of a Whitshank than I am,” Denny said.

Then he said, “That glue’s bone-dry by now; didn’t I warn you? You’ll have to scrape it off and start over.”

And he straightened up from the door frame and went back downstairs.

The family’s real-estate friend dated from the days when Brenda had still been spry enough to be taken for a run now and then in Robert E. Lee Park. Helen Wylie used to walk her Irish setter there, and she and Abby had struck up a conversation. So when she arrived on Saturday morning—a breezy, sensible woman in corduroys and a barn jacket—no extensive instructions were needed. “I already know,” she told Red straight off. “What you want is something solidly built. Prewar, I’m thinking. You were crazy to even consider something in that new building! You want a place that you won’t be ashamed to show to your contractor buddies.”

“Well, you’re right,” Red said. Although he didn’t have any contractor buddies, at least none that would be paying social calls.

“Let’s go, then,” Helen told Amanda. Amanda was the one who had gotten in touch with her, and she would be coming along. Even Red had admitted that he could use some help on this.

The first apartment was near University Parkway—old but well kept, with gleaming hardwood floors. The landlord said the kitchen had been remodeled in 2010. “Who did your work?” Red asked. He screwed up his face when he heard the name.

The second place was a third-floor walk-up. Red was only slightly winded by the time he reached the top of the stairs, but he didn’t argue when Amanda pointed out that this wouldn’t be a good long-term proposition.

The third place did have an elevator, and it was of an acceptable age, but so many dribs and drabs of belongings were crammed inside that it was hard to get any real sense of it. “I’ll be honest,” the super said. “The previous tenant died. His kids will have his stuff moved out within the next two weeks, though, and I’m going to get it cleaned then and give it a fresh coat of paint.”

Amanda sent Helen a dispirited glance, and Helen turned the corners of her mouth down. A mole-colored cardigan sagged on the back of a rocker. A mug sat on the cluttered coffee table with a teabag tag trailing out of it. But Red seemed unfazed. He walked through the living room to the kitchen and said, “Look at this: he had everything arranged so he didn’t have to get up from the table once he’d sat down to breakfast.”

Sure enough, the rickety-looking card table held a toaster, an electric kettle, and a clock radio, all aligned against the wall, with a day-by-day pill organizer in the center where most people would have placed a vase of flowers. In the bedroom, Red said, “There’s a TV you can watch from the bed.” The TV was the heavy, old-fashioned kind, deeper than it was wide, and it stood on the low bureau across from the foot of the bed. “Watch the late news and then go straight to sleep,” Red noted approvingly, although no TV had ever been seen
in his bedroom on Bouton Road. But maybe that had been Abby’s choosing. “This seems like a real convenient place for a guy making do on his own,” Red said.

Amanda said, “Yes, but …” and she and Helen exchanged another glance.

“But picture it minus the furnishings,” Helen suggested. “The TV and such will be gone, remember.”

“I could put
my
set there, though,” Red said.

“Of course you could. But let’s focus on the apartment itself. Do you like the layout? Is it spacious enough? The rooms seem a little small to me. And what about the kitchen?”

“Kitchen is good. Reach across the table, grab your toast straight out of the toaster. Take your heart pills. Turn on the weather report.”

“Yes … The floor is linoleum, did you notice?”

“Hmm? Floor looks fine. I think my folks had a kitchen floor like that in our first house.”

And that settled it. As Amanda told the others later, it appeared to be a question of imagination. Red’s imagination: he had none. He just seemed glad that someone else had arranged things so he wouldn’t need to.

Well, it did make things easier for his children. And they could always do some refurbishing after he’d moved in.

Helen was going to handle the house sale as well. She came in with them after the apartment tour to discuss the arrangements for that, with Stem and Denny joining in. “Such a comfortable old place this is,” she said, looking around the living room. “And of course the porch is a huge draw. It’s going to be a pleasure to show.”

Everyone except Red looked encouraged. Red was gazing toward a nearby newspaper as if he wished he could be reading it.

“But it
is
still a sluggish market,” Helen said. “And what I’ve
learned is, buyers in these times expect perfection. We’ll want to spruce the place up some.”

“Spruce it up?” Red said. “What more could they possibly ask for? Every downstairs room but the kitchen’s got double pocket doors.”

“Oh, yes, I love the—”

“And it’s not often you see an entrance hall like ours, two-story. Or these open transoms with the handsawed fretwork.”

“But it isn’t air-conditioned,” Helen said.

Red said, “Oh, God,” and he slumped in his seat.

“These days—” Helen said.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“It won’t be so hard,” Denny told him. “They’ve got these mini-duct systems now where you won’t need to tear up the walls.”

Red said, “Who do you think you’re talking to? I know all about those systems.”

Denny shrugged.

“Also,” Helen said. She cleared her throat. She said, “This would be your choice entirely, but you might want to consider his-and-her master bathrooms.”

Red raised his head. He said, “Consider
what
?”

“I wouldn’t bring it up except you do own a contracting firm, so it wouldn’t be such an expense. That master bathroom you have now is gigantic. You could easily divide it in two, with a shower stall in between that’s accessible from both sides. I just saw the most dazzling shower stall, with river-pebble flooring and multiple rainmaker nozzles.”

Red said, “When my father built this house, it had only the one bathroom off the upstairs hall.”

“Well, that was back in the—”

“Then he added the downstairs powder room after we moved in, and we thought we were something special.”

“Yes, you certainly need a—”

“The master bathroom itself he didn’t put in till my sister and I were in high school. What he’d say if he heard about his-and-hers, I can’t even begin to imagine.”

“It’s customary, though, in the finer homes these days. As I’m sure you must have learned in your business.”

“He himself grew up with just a privy,” Red said. He turned to the others. “I bet you didn’t know that about your grandfather, did you?”

They did not. They knew next to nothing about their grandfather, in fact.

“Well, a privy,” Helen said with a laugh. “That would be a hard sell!”

“So we’ll forget about the his-and-hers,” Red told her. “Now, how long do you expect it will take to find a buyer?”

“Oh, once you’ve installed the air conditioning, and maybe upgraded your kitchen counters—”

“Kitchen counters!”

But then he clamped his lips tightly, as if reminding himself not to be difficult.

“It does seem the market’s started looking up,” Helen said. “There was a time there when places were languishing for a year or more, but lately I’ve been averaging, oh, just four to six months, with our more desirable properties.”

“In four to six months it will go to seed,” Red told her. “You know it’s not good for a house to sit empty. It will molder; it will get all forlorn; it will break my heart.”

Amanda said, “Oh, Dad, we would never let that happen. We’ll come and, I don’t know, throw family picnics here or something.”

Red just gazed at her miserably, his eyes so empty of light that he seemed almost sightless.

“Be honest,” Jeannie said to Amanda. “Does any little part of you feel relieved that Mom died so suddenly?”

“You mean on account of her lapses,” Amanda said.

“They would only have gotten worse; we can be pretty sure of that. Whatever they were. And Dad would be trying to look after her, and so would Nora; and Denny would have thought of some excuse to leave by then.”

“But maybe it was just, oh, a circulation problem or something, and the doctors could have fixed it.”

“That’s not very likely,” Jeannie said.

They were up in Red’s bedroom on a rainy Sunday afternoon, packing cartons while the others watched a baseball game downstairs. Both of them wore scruffy clothes, and Amanda’s chin was smudged with newspaper ink.

All week they had been packing, any free moment they could find. Separate islands of belongings had begun rising here and there in the house as people put in their requests: Abby’s crafts supplies and her sewing machine in the upstairs hall for Nora, the good china packed in a barrel in the dining room for Amanda. (Red would keep the everyday china, which they were leaving in the cupboard until just before moving day.) Color-coded stickers dotted the furniture—a few pieces for Red’s apartment, a few more for Stem and Jeannie and Amanda, and the vast majority for the Salvation Army.