Текст книги "A Spool of Blue Thread"

Автор книги: Anne Tyler

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

“Doing what?” Abby asked. “Honestly, if you all can’t show a little hospitality toward a stranger …”

“This was supposed to be just family! You’re never satisfied with just family! Aren’t we ever enough for you?”

By now, though, things had settled down to a simmer. Amanda’s Hugh was making his usual production of the carving (he had taken a special course, after which he always insisted on doing the honors), although Red kept muttering, “It’s boneless, for God’s sake; what’s the big deal?” Nora glided in and out of the kitchen, quieting the children and mopping up spills, while Mrs. Angell, a sweet-faced woman with a puff of blue-white hair, did her best to draw Atta into conversation. She inquired about Atta’s work, her native foods, and her country’s health-care system, but Atta slammed each question to the ground and let it lie there like a dead shuttlecock. “Will you be applying for American citizenship?” Mrs. Angell asked at one point. “Decidedly not,” Atta said.

“Oh.”

“Atta has been finding Americans unfriendly,” Abby told Mrs. Angell.

“My heavens! I never heard that before!”

“Oh, they pretend to be friendly,” Atta said. “My colleagues ask, ‘How are you, Atta?’ They say, ‘Good to see you, Atta.’ But do they invite me home with them? No.”

“That’s shocking.”

“They are, how do you say? Two-faced,” Atta said.

Jeannie leaned across the table to ask Denny, “Remember B. J. Autry?”

Denny said, “Mm-hmm.”

“I just suddenly thought of her; I don’t know why.”

Amanda snickered, and Stem gave a groan. They knew why. (B. J., with her strident voice and her grating laugh, had been one of their mother’s more irksome orphans.) Denny, though, studied Jeannie for a moment without smiling, and then he turned to Atta and said, “I think you’ve made a mistake.”

“Oh?” she said. “ ‘Two-faced’ is an incorrect term?”

“In this situation, yes. ‘Polite’ would more accurate. They’re trying to be polite. They don’t much like you, so they don’t invite you to their homes, but they’re doing their best to be nice to you, and so that’s why they ask how you are and tell you it’s good to see you.”

Abby said, “Oh! Denny!”

“What.”

“And also,” Atta told him, apparently unfazed, “they say, ‘Have a nice weekend, Atta.’ How should I do that? This is what I should ask them.”

“Right,” Denny said. He smiled at his mother. She sat back in her chair and gave a sigh.

“Behold!” Amanda’s Hugh crowed, spearing a slice of beef with his carving fork. “See this, Red?”

“Eh?”

“This slice has your name on it. Observe the paper-thinness.”

“Oh, okay, thank you, Hugh,” Red said.

Amanda’s Hugh was famous in the family for asking, once, why there seemed to be a diploma under the azalea bushes. He’d been referring to the white PVC drainage pipe leading from the basement sump pump. The family never got over it. (“Seen any diplomas out in the shrubbery lately, Hugh?”) They liked him well enough, but they marveled at how astonishingly impractical he was, how out of touch with matters they considered essential. He couldn’t even replace a wall switch! He was trim and model-handsome and accustomed to admiration, and he kept seizing on new careers and then abandoning them in a fit of impatience. Currently, he owned a restaurant called Thanksgiving that served only turkey dinners.

Jeannie’s Hugh, by contrast, was a handyman who worked at the college Jeannie’d gone to. The other girls had had their hearts set on pre-med students, but evidently one look at unassuming Hugh, with his sawdust-colored beard and his tool belt slung low around his hips, had made Jeannie feel instantly at home. Now, here was someone she could relate to! They married during her senior year, causing some discomfort among the college administrators.

At the moment, he was asking Elise all about her ballet, which was considerate of him. (She’d been left out of the conversation up till then.) “Is it on account of ballet that you’re wearing your hair so tight?” he asked, and Elise said, “Yes, Madame O’Leary requires it,” and sat up taller – a reed-thin, ostentatiously poised child – and touched the little doughnut on the tippy-top of her head.

“But what if you were frizzy-haired and couldn’t make it stay in place?” he asked. “Or what if you were one of those people whose hair will only grow so long?”

“No exceptions are made,” Elise told him severely. “We have to have a chignon.”

“Well, shoot!”

“And also these flowing skirts,” Amanda told him. “They tie them on over their leotards. Everyone expects tutus, but tutus are just for performances.”

Abby said, “Oh, Jeannie, remember when Elise was just born and we dressed her in a tutu?”

“Do I!” Jeannie said. She laughed. “She had three of them, remember? We dressed her in one tutu after the other.”

“Your mom had asked us to babysit,” Abby told Elise. “It was the first time she was leaving you and she felt safer starting with family. So we told her, ‘Go on! Go!’ and the instant she was gone we stripped you down to your diaper and started trying clothes on you. Every single piece of clothing you’d gotten at your baby shower.”

“I never knew that,” Amanda said, while Elise looked pleased and self-conscious.

“Oh, we’d been dying to get our hands on all those cunning outfits. Not just the tutus but a darling little sailor dress and a bikini swimsuit and then – remember, Jeannie? – navy-ticking coveralls with a hammer loop.”

“Of course I remember,” Jeannie said. “I was the one who gave them to her.”

“Well, we were sort of punch-drunk,” Abby explained to Atta. “Elise was the first grandchild.”

“Or else not,” Denny said.

“What, sweetie?”

“You seem to be forgetting that Susan was the first grandchild.”

“Oh! Well, of course. Yes, I just meant the first grandchild who was close; I mean geographically close. I wouldn’t forget Susan for the world!”

“How is Susan?” Jeannie asked.

“She’s good,” Denny said.

He ladled gravy over his meat and passed the tureen to Atta, who squinted into it and passed it on.

“What’s she doing with her summer?” Abby asked.

“She’s in some kind of music program.”

“Music, how nice! Is she musical?”

“I guess she must be.”

“Which instrument?”

“Clarinet?” Denny said. “Clarinet.”

“Oh, I figured maybe French horn.”

“Why would you figure that?”

“Well, you used to play French horn.”

Denny sliced into his meat.

“What’s Susan doing over the summer?” Red asked.

Everyone looked at him.

“Clarinet, Red,” Abby said finally.

“Eh?”

“Clarinet!”

“My grandson in Milwaukee plays the clarinet,” Mrs. Angell said. “It’s hard to listen to him without giggling, though. Every third or fourth note comes out as this terrible squawk.” She turned to Atta and said, “I have thirteen grandchildren, can you believe it? Do you have grandchildren, Atta?”

“How would that be possible?” Atta demanded.

Another silence fell, this one heavy and muffling, like a blanket, and they all turned their attention to the food.

After lunch Atta took her leave, carrying with her the remains of the store-bought sheet cake they’d served for dessert. (She’d barely touched the tuna salad—“Mercury,” she had announced – but it seemed she had quite a sweet tooth.) Elise joined the other children in the backyard, but everyone else went out onto the porch. Even Nora had been persuaded to leave the kitchen cleanup till later, and Red chose to nap in the mildew-smelling hammock at the south end of the porch rather than up in his room.

“Why are Dad’s arms so splotchy?” Denny asked his sisters in a low voice. The three of them were sharing the porch swing.

But it was Abby who answered, sharp-eared as always. She broke off a conversation with Mrs. Angell to call, “It’s the blood thinner he’s on. It makes him subject to bruising.”

“And since when has he started napping?”

“The doctors ordered him to do that. He’s supposed to nap even on weekdays, but he doesn’t.”

Denny was quiet a moment, absently kicking the swing back and forth and watching a gray squirrel skitter beneath a bush. “Interesting how nobody told me about his heart attack,” he said. “I didn’t know a thing till last night. If I hadn’t happened to phone Jeannie, I might not ever have known.”

“Well, it’s not as if you could have made any difference,” Amanda said.

“Thanks heaps, Amanda.”

Abby stirred protestingly in her rocker.

“Hasn’t it been just the loveliest summer?” Mrs. Angell asked in a lilting voice.

Since in fact it had been a very hot summer, wracked by violent storms, it was obvious that she was merely trying to change the subject. Abby reached over to pat her hand. “Oh, Lois,” she said, “you always look on the bright side.”

“But I enjoy the heat, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Abby said, “but I can’t help thinking of those poor souls down in the inner city with no means of keeping cool.”

The Whitshanks themselves kept cool only with ceiling fans and a cleverly rigged attic fan and high, old-fashioned ceilings. Every now and then Red talked about installing air conditioning, but he said it didn’t sit right with him to disturb the bones of the house. Even the porch had ceiling fans, three of them, spaced out along its length – beautiful old fans with varnished wooden blades that matched the varnished porch ceiling and floor and the honey-colored porch swing and the wide front steps. (Junior’s choices, all of them, and Junior’s decision to set the lacy windowless transoms above every ground-floor doorway to let the breezes flow through.) And then the tulip poplars, of course: they provided shade, although Abby often complained about too much shade. Nothing would grow beneath them; the lawn was mostly packed earth with a few hardy sprigs of crabgrass poking forth, and the only plants that bloomed along the north edge of the lot were the hostas, with their miserly buds and their giant, monstrous leaves.

“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. “Somebody 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!”