A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler Page B

that?”
    “I’ll go,” Stem told her.
    “Oh, I think maybe your father, dear.”
    There was a silence.
    “What was his problem?” Red asked finally.
    “Problem?” Abby said. “Well, not a problem, exactly. He just doesn’t understand why we didn’t ask
him
to come stay.”
    Even Nora looked surprised.
    “Ask Denny!” Red said. “Would he have done it?”
    “He says he would have. He says he’s coming now, regardless.”
    Abby had been standing in the doorway all this time, but now she made her way back to her chair and fell into it heavily, as if the trip had exhausted her. “He found out from Jeannie that you were moving in,” she told Stem. “He thinks he should have been consulted. He says the house doesn’t have enough bedrooms for you all; it should have been him instead.”
    Nora started reaching for people’s plates and stacking them, not making a sound.
    “What wasn’t true?” Red asked Abby.
    “Excuse me?”
    “You said, ‘That’s not true, Denny.’ ”
    “See how he does?” Abby asked Stem. “Half the time he’s deaf as a post and then it turns out he’s heard something all the way off in the kitchen.”
    “What wasn’t true, Abby?” Red asked.
    “Oh,” Abby said airily, “
you
know. Just the usual.” She placed her silverware neatly across her plate and passed the plate to Nora. “He says he doesn’t know why we had Stem come when … 
you
know. He says Stem is not a Whitshank.”
    There was another silence, during which Nora rose in one fluid motion, still without a sound, and bore the stack of plates out to the kitchen.
    Actually, it
was
true that Stem was not a Whitshank. But only in the most literal sense.
    People tended to forget the fact, but Stem was the son of a tile layer known as Lonesome O’Brian. Lawrence O’Brian, really; but like most tilers he was sort of standoffish, fond of working by himself and keeping his own counsel, and so Lonesome was the name everybody called him. Red always said Lonesome was the best tile man going, although certainly not the fastest.
    The fact that Lonesome had a son seemed incongruous. People tended to look at the man—tall and cadaverously thin, that translucent kind of blond where you can see the plates of his skull—and picture him living like a hermit: no wife, no kids, no friends. Well, they were right about the wife and perhaps even the friends, but he did have this toddler named Douglas. Several times when his sitting arrangements fell through, he brought Douglas in to work with him. This was against the rules, but since the two of them never had any cause to be in a hard-hat area, Red let it pass. Lonesome would head straight to whatever kitchen or bathroom he was working on, and Douglas would scurry after him on his short little legs. Not once did Lonesome look back to see if Douglas was keeping up; nor did Douglas complain or ask him to slow down. They would settle in their chosen room, door tightly closed, not a peep from them all morning. At lunchtime they would emerge, Douglas scurrying behind as before, and eat their sandwiches with the other men, butsomewhat to the side. Douglas was so young that he still drank from a spouted cup. He was a waifish, homely child, lacking the dimpled cuteness that you would expect in someone that age. His hair was almost white, cut short and prickly all over his head, and his eyes were a very light blue, pinkish around the rims. All his clothes were too big for him. They seemed to be wearing
him
; he was only an afterthought. His trousers were folded up at the bottoms several times over. The shoulders of his red jacket jutted out from his spindly frame, the elastic cuffs hiding all but his miniature fingertips, which were slightly powdered-looking like his father’s—an occupational side effect.
    The other men did their best to engage him. “Hey, there, big fellow,” they’d offer, and “What you say, my man?” But Douglas only squinched himself up tighter against his