A Spool of Blue Thread (15 page)

“What are the Nelson kids up to?” Jeannie asked, her eyes on the Nelsons’ house across the street.

“I’m not sure,” Abby said. “Nowadays, you ask people about their children and you can see they wish you hadn’t. They say, ‘Well, our son just graduated from Yale but at the moment he’s, um …’ and then it turns out he’s bartending or brewing cappuccinos, and more often than not he’s moved back home again.”

“He’s lucky if he’s found a job at all,” Amanda’s Hugh said. “I’ve had to start laying off some of my wait staff.”

“Oh, dear, is the restaurant not doing well?”

“It seems nobody’s eating out anymore.”

“But now Hugh has this
better
idea,” Amanda said. “He’s thought up a whole new business, provided he can find backers.”

“Really,” Abby said. She frowned.

“Do Not Pass Go,” Hugh said.

“What?”

“That would be the name of my company. Catchy, right?”

“But what would it … do?”

“It’s a service for anxious travelers,” Hugh said. “Anxious to excess, I mean. You probably have no idea these people exist, since none of
you ever travel, but I’ve seen a few, believe me. My own cousin, for one; my cousin Darcy. She packs so far ahead of time she has nothing left to wear. She packs
everything
, for every possible eventuality. She thinks her house mysteriously senses that she’s about to leave it; she says that just hours before a trip it will spring a leak or develop a sewage backup or a malfunction in the burglar alarm. The instructions she writes for the dog sitter are practically novels. She starts to suspect her cat has diabetes. So what I’m thinking is, for people like Darcy we would do all the prep work.
Way
more than what travel agents do. She gives us the dates and the destination, and ‘Say no more,’ we tell her. We not only reserve her flight and her hotel; we pack her suitcases three days ahead and ship them off express; no checked baggage. We arrange for the trip to the airport and the driver at the other end, the museum tickets and the tour guides and the tables at all the best restaurants. But that’s only the beginning! We have the pet care covered, the house-maintenance service on call (I need to talk to Red about that), we’ve lined up an English-speaking doctor just blocks from her hotel, and we’ve scheduled a hair appointment for halfway through the trip. Three hours before her flight we ring her doorbell. ‘It’s time,’ we say. ‘Oh,’ she might tell us, ‘but the thing of it is, my mother has developed congestive heart failure and might go at any minute.’ ‘Yes,
this
,’ we say, and we whip out a cell phone, ‘this is your cell phone with European capabilities, and your mother has the number and so does her assisted-living facility, and we’ve purchased travel insurance that guarantees your immediate flight home in case of any medical emergency.’ ”

Denny laughed, but none of the others did.

“That would have to be a very rich traveler,” Jeannie’s Hugh said.

“Well, I admit it’s not going to be cheap.”

“Very rich and very crazy, both at once. Wrapped up in one single person. How many of those could be living here in Baltimore?”

“Sheesh, man! Way to encourage a guy!”

“Oh, but I love the
name
,” Abby said hastily. “Did you think it up yourself, Hugh?”

“I did.”

“And is it … When you say ‘Do Not Pass Go,’ do you mean …?”

“You don’t have to wade through all the usual planning and fuss at the start, is what I mean.”

“
I
see. So it’s got nothing to do with jail.”

“Jail! God, no.”

“And what about your restaurant?” Jeannie asked.

“I’m going to sell it.”

“Oh, will anyone want to buy it?”

“Sheesh, people!”

“I was only wondering,” Jeannie said.

Mrs. Angell said, “Have you all noticed that lately the birds have started sounding more conversational? It’s like they’re talking, these days, not singing. Can you hear?”

They took a moment to listen.

“Maybe on account of the heat,” Abby suggested.

“I worry they’ve given up music. Turned to prose.”

“Oh, I can’t believe they’d do
that
,” Abby said. “More likely they’re just tired. They’ve decided to let the crickets take over.”

“When my California grandchildren come every summer to visit,” Mrs. Angell said, “they always ask, ‘What is that
noise
?’ ‘What noise?’ I say. They say, ‘That chirping and that whirring, that scritch-scritch-scritching noise.’ ‘Oh,’ I say, ‘I believe you must be talking about the crickets or the locusts or whatever. Isn’t it funny? I don’t even hear them.’ ‘But they’re
deafening
!’ they say. ‘How can you not hear them?’ ”

And once she had spoken it seemed they all heard them, although no one had before—the steady racket of them. They made a rhythmic, jingling sound, like the chink-chink of old-fashioned sleigh bells.

Amanda said, “Well, I, for one, think Hugh’s idea is brilliant.”

“Thank you, hon,” Hugh told her. “I’m glad
you
believe in me.”

Mrs. Angell said, “Well, of course! We all do! And how about you, Denny?”

“Do I think Hugh is brilliant?”

“What are you working at, I meant.”

“Well, nothing,” Denny told her. “I’m down here helping my folks out.” He tipped his head back against the back of the swing and laced his fingers across his chest.

“It’s so nice having him home,” Abby told Mrs. Angell.

“Oh, I can imagine!”

“You still with that kitchen outfit?” Jeannie’s Hugh asked him.

“Not anymore,” Denny said. Then he said, “I’ve been substitute teaching.”

Abby said, “
What
?”

“Substitute teaching. Well, this past spring I was.”

“Don’t you need a college degree for that?”

“No, as a matter of fact. Although I have one.”

Everyone looked at Abby, waiting for her next question. It didn’t come. She sat staring across at the Nelsons’ house with something tense and set about her mouth. Finally, Jeannie asked it: “You’ve finished college?”

“Yes,” Denny said.

“How did you
do
that?”

“Same way anyone does it, I guess.”

They looked again at Abby. She stayed silent.

“Well, you never did much like building things,” Stem said after a moment. “I remember from back when you were working with Dad in the summers.”

“I’ve got nothing against building things; I just couldn’t stand the customers,” Denny said, sitting up straight again. “All those trendy homeowners wanting wine cellars in their basements.”

“Wine cellars! Ha!” Stem said. “And dog-washing stations in their garages.”

“Dog-washing stations?”

“Lady up in Ruxton.”

Denny snorted.

“Mother Whitshank?” Nora asked. “Can I get you anything? A little more iced tea?”

“No, thanks,” Abby said shortly.

The grandchildren were migrating now from the backyard to the front, and Sammy even invaded the porch, climbing the steps to throw himself in his mother’s lap and complain about his brothers. “
Some
body needs his nap,” Nora told him, but she sat on limply, gazing out over Sammy’s head to where the other children were debating the rules of their game. “The bushes by the house are safe, but not the ones in the side yard,” one was saying.

“But the ones in the side yard are the best places! You can hide underneath them.”

“So why would we use them as safes?”

“Oh.”

Jeannie’s son, Alexander, was It, which was painful to watch because he was the first Whitshank in known history to show a tendency toward pudginess. When he ran, he cast his legs out clumsily and paddled the air with both hands. Ironically, his sister, Deb, was the family’s best athlete—a wiry girl with muscular, mosquito-bitten legs—and she beat him to the biggest azalea bush and sang out, “Ha-ha! Safe!”

“Can somebody please call Heidi?” Alexander asked the grown-ups. “She keeps getting in my way.”

Heidi was nowhere near him—she was racing around the perimeter with her usual exuberance—but Stem whistled and she came bounding up the porch steps. “Down, girl,” he said. He tousled her mane affectionately, and she gave a resigned whimper and curled herself at his feet.

“Brenda must be getting old,” Denny told his sisters. “She’d have been out here chasing Heidi, once upon a time.”

Jeannie said, “It kills me to think she’s old. Can you imagine this house without a dog?”

“Easily,” Denny said. “Dogs are hell on houses.”

“Oh, Denny.”

“What? They scratch the woodwork, they scuff the floors …”

Amanda made a
tch-
ing sound of amusement.

“What’s so funny?” he asked her.

“Listen to you! You sound like Dad. You’re the only one of us who doesn’t have a dog, and Dad claims he wouldn’t have one, either, if it were up to him.”

“Oh, that’s just talk,” Abby told them. “Your dad loves Clarence as much as we do.”

Her four children exchanged glances.

In the hammock, Red groaned and sat up. “
What
are you saying?” he asked, rummaging through his hair.

“Just talking about how you love dogs, Dad,” Jeannie called.

“I do?”

Amanda tapped Denny’s wrist. “When will we be seeing Susan?” she asked him.

“Well, she can’t visit till we’ve got a room free to put her up in,” Denny said.

Till Stem and his family moved out, was his implication, but Amanda sidestepped that by saying, “She could always share the bunk room with the little boys. Would she mind?”

“Or wait for the beach trip,” Jeannie suggested. “That’s coming up very soon, and the beach house has tons of beds.”

Denny let the subject drop. His eyes followed the children playing in the yard—Petey tussling with Tommy, Elise pulling them apart and chiding them in her thin, bossy voice.

“Think I’m going to have to call the Petronelli brothers and have them repair the front walk again,” Red said, ambling down the porch to join them. On his way, he grabbed a rocker by one of its ears. He set it next to Abby.

“Every time I come here, you’re doing something to that walk,” Denny told him.

“The trouble goes back to your grandfather’s time. He wasn’t happy with how it was laid.”

“It did seem he was always fiddling with it,” Abby said.

“One of my first memories after we moved in was, he had all the mortar ripped out and the stones reset. But still he wasn’t satisfied. He claimed it was graded wrong.”

“What’s that got to do with
now
, though?” Stem asked. “It’s been graded several times over, since then. In order to fix that walk once and for all, you’d have to cut down all the poplars with their roots that burrow beneath it, and I don’t see you doing that.”

“Oh, you men, stop talking shop!” Abby said. “It’s too nice a day for that. Isn’t it, Lois?”

“Goodness, yes,” Mrs. Angell said. “It’s a
lovely
day. I believe I feel a bit of a breeze starting up.”

It was true that the leaves had begun rustling overhead, and Heidi’s petticoats of fur were stirring on her haunches.

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

The others smiled. They knew the story well; even Mrs. Angell knew it.

Sammy was sound asleep against his mother’s breast. Elise was spinning and spinning under a dogwood tree, with her head tipped back and her arms flung out.

“It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon …” Abby began. Which was the way she always began, exactly the same words, every single time. On the porch, everybody relaxed. Their faces grew smooth, and their hands loosened in their laps. It was so restful to be sitting here with family, with the birds talking in the trees and the crosscut-sawing of the crickets and the dog snoring at their feet and the children calling, “Safe! I’m safe!”

O
N MONDAY,
Denny slept till almost eleven. “Will you look at Mr. Sleepyhead!” Abby said when he finally came downstairs. “What time did you get to bed?”

He shrugged and took a box of cereal from the cupboard. “One thirty?” he said. “Two?”

“Oh, no wonder, then.”

“If I stay up late enough, I have some hope of sleeping through,” he said. “All those middle-of-the-night thoughts swarming in on me; I hate that.”

“Your dad gets up and reads when that happens,” Abby told him.

Denny didn’t bother answering her. The Whitshanks held two opposing opinions about what to do with their wakeful hours, and they had long ago argued the subject into the ground.

After breakfast, as if to make up for lost time, he became a whirlwind of activity. He vacuumed the whole downstairs, oiled the hinges on the backyard gate, and trimmed the backyard hedge. He skipped lunch to scrub the charcoal grill, and then he borrowed Abby’s car and drove to Eddie’s to buy steaks to barbecue for supper. Abby told him to charge the steaks to her account, and he didn’t argue.

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 time all day that they engaged in a real conversation was when Denny was at the grocery store. Nora, carrying Sammy upstairs for his afternoon nap, met Abby coming down the stairs with a stack of papers. “Oh, Mother Whitshank,” Nora said. “Is that something I can help you with?”

“No, thank you, dear,” Abby said. “I just thought while Denny was out of the house I’d collect the last of my things from his room. Though heaven knows where I’ll put them.”

“Couldn’t you pack them into a box and store them in the back of his closet?”

“Oh, no, I don’t think so.”

“I could bring up a box from the basement. I saw some near the washing machine.”

“I don’t think so,” Abby said more firmly, and then she sighed and patted the spiral-bound notebook on the top of her stack. “I never feel quite comfortable leaving my belongings where Denny can get at them,” she said.

“Oh,” Nora said. She hitched Sammy higher on her hip, but she didn’t continue up the stairs.