A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler Read Free Book Online

some sort of postpartum depression. So, had she phoned Denny and asked him to come down and take care of her? Asked Denny and not Abby? Abby did her best to find out, using her most neutral, non-offended tone. Well, Jeannie said, it was true that she had phoned him, but just to talk. And maybe he had heard something in her voice—well, of course he had, because she’d grown a little teary, she was ashamed to say—and he had told her he would be coming in on the next train.
    This was both touching and distressing. Had Jeannie not realized she could call her own mother?
    Well, but Abby had her job to go to, Jeannie said.
    As if Denny himself didn’t have a job.
    Or, who knows? Maybe he didn’t.
    Red told Abby they should just be grateful that Denny had come to the rescue.
    Abby said, “Oh, yes. Yes, I know that.”
    Things fell into more or less of a pattern. Denny never became particularly good at keeping in touch, but then, that was true of a lot of sons. The point was that he did keep in touch, and they did have that phone number for him, if not always his current address.
    How shocking, Abby told Red, that they were willing to settle for so little. She said, “Would you have believed it? Sometimes whole days go by when I don’t give him a thought. This is just not natural!”
    Red said, “It’s
perfectly
natural. Like a mother cat when her kittens are grown. You’re showing very good sense.”
    “It’s not supposed to work that way with humans,” Abby told him.
    At least they could be sure that Denny would never live far from New York City. Not as long as Susan lived there. Although he did travel now and then, because once he sent Alexander a birthday card from San Francisco. And another time, he shortened his Christmas visit because he was taking a trip to Canada with his girlfriend. This was the first they’d heard of the girlfriend, and the last. Susan stayed on alone that year. She was old enough—seven, but she seemed older. Her head was slightly big for her body, and her face was beautiful in the way that a grown woman’s face is beautiful, her brown eyes large and weary, her lips full and soft and complicated. She showed no sign of homesickness, and when Denny came to collect her she greeted him equably. “How was Canada?” Abby dared to ask him.
    He said, “Pretty good.”
    It was really very hard to visualize Denny’s personal life.
    Nor were they always entirely clear about his occupation. They did know that at one point, he had a job installing sound systems, because he volunteered his expertise when Jeannie’s Hugh was wiring their den. Another time, he showed up wearing a hoodie with KOMPUTER KLINIK stitched on the pocket, and at Abby’s request he offhandedly fixed her Mac, which had been acting a bit sluggish. But he always seemed free to come and go, and to stay as long as he liked. How do you reconcile that with a full-time job? When Stem got married, for instance, Denny came for a solid week to fulfill his best-man duties, and although Abby was thrilled about that (she fretted about her boys’ not being close), she kept asking if he was sure this wouldn’t cause him trouble at work. “Work?” he said. “No.”
    On one occasion, he visited for nearly a month with no explanation whatsoever. Everybody suspected that it involved some private crisis, since he arrived looking very seedy and not in the best of health. For the first time, they noticed faint lines at the corners of hiseyes. His hair straggled unevenly over the back of his collar. But he didn’t refer to any problems, and not even Jeannie dared ask. It was as if he had his family trained. They had become almost as oblique as Denny himself.
    This stirred some resentment in them, from time to time. Why should they tiptoe around him? Why should they have to deflect the neighbors’ questions about him? “Oh,” Abby would say, “Denny is fine, thank you. Really fine! Right now he’s working at … Well, I’m not sure