Anne Tyler - A Spool of Blue Thread

If Morning Ever Comes

The Tin Can Tree

A Slipping-Down Life

The Clock Winder

Celestial Navigation

Searching for Caleb

Earthly Possessions

Morgans Passing

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

The Accidental Tourist

Breathing Lessons

Saint Maybe

Ladder of Years

A Patchwork Planet

Back When We Were Grownups

The Amateur Marriage

Digging to America

Noahs Compass

The Beginners Goodbye

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright 2015 by Anne Tyler

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House company.
Simultaneously published in the UK by Chatto & Windus, an imprint of the Random House Group Ltd., London.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Alfred Publishing Co. Inc. for permission to reprint an excerpt from Chattanooga Choo Choo, music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Mack Gordon,
copyright 1941 (renewed) Twentieth Century Music Corporation.
All Rights Controlled by EMI Feist Catalog Inc. (publishing) and Alfred Music (print).
All Rights Reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tyler, Anne.
A spool of blue thread : a novel / Anne Tyler. First edition.
pages; cm
ISBN 978-1-101-87427-1 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-101-87428-8 (eBook)
. GrandparentsFiction. 2. StorytellingFiction. 3. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3570.Y45S68 2015
8 I 3.54dc23
2014045502

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Jacket design by Kelly Blair

v3.1

PART ONE

Cant Leave Till the Dog Dies

L ATE ONE JULY EVENING IN 1994, Red and Abby Whitshank had a phone call from their son Denny. They were getting ready for bed at the time. Abby was standing at the bureau in her slip, drawing hairpins one by one from her scattery sand-colored topknot. Red, a dark, gaunt man in striped pajama bottoms and a white T-shirt, had just sat down on the edge of the bed to take his socks off; so when the phone rang on the nightstand beside him, he was the one who answered. Whitshank residence, he said.

And then, Well, hey there.

Abby turned from the mirror, both arms still raised to her head.

Whats that, he said, without a question mark.

Huh? he said. Oh, what the hell, Denny!

Abby dropped her arms.

Hello? he said. Wait. Hello? Hello?

He was silent for a moment, and then he replaced the receiver.

What? Abby asked him.

Says hes gay.

What?

Said he needed to tell me something: hes gay.

And you hung up on him!

No, Abby. He hung up on me. All I said was What the hell, and he hung up on me. Click! Just like that.

Oh, Red, how could you? Abby wailed. She spun away to reach for her bathrobea no-color chenille that had once been pink. She wrapped it around her and tied the sash tightly. What possessed you to say that? she asked him.

I didnt mean anything by it! Somebody springs something on you, youre going to say What the hell, right?

Abby grabbed a handful of the hair that pouffed over her forehead.

All I meant was, Red said, What the hell next, Denny? What are you going to think up next to worry us with? And he knew I meant that. Believe me, he knew. But now he can make this all my fault, my narrow-mindedness or fuddy-duddiness or whatever he wants to call it. He was glad I said that to him. You could tell by how fast he hung up on me; hed been just hoping all along that I would say the wrong thing.

All right, Abby said, turning practical. Where was he calling from?

How would I know where he was calling from? He doesnt have a fixed address, hasnt been in touch all summer, already changed jobs twice that we know of and probably more that we dont know of A nineteen-year-old boy and we have no idea what part of the planet hes on! Youve got to wonder whats wrong, there.

Did it sound like it was long distance? Could you hear that kind of rushing sound? Think. Could he have been right here in Baltimore?

I dont know, Abby.

She sat down next to him. The mattress slanted in her direction; she was a wide, solid woman. We have to find him, she said. Then, We should have that whatsitcaller ID. She leaned forward and gazed fiercely at the phone. Oh, God, I want caller ID this instant!

What for? So you could phone him back and he could just let it ring?

He wouldnt do that. He would know it was me. He would answer, if he knew it was me.

She jumped up from the bed and started pacing back and forth, up and down the Persian runner that was worn nearly white in the middle from all the times she had paced it before. This was an attractive room, spacious and well designed, but it had the comfortably shabby air of a place whose inhabitants had long ago stopped seeing it.

What did his voice sound like? she asked. Was he nervous? Was he upset?

He was fine.

So you say. Had he been drinking, do you think?

I couldnt tell.

Were other people with him?

I couldnt tell, Abby.

Or maybe one other person?

He sent her a sharp look. You are not thinking he was serious, he said.

Of course he was serious! Why else would he say it?

The boy isnt gay, Abby.

How do you know that?

He just isnt. Mark my words. Youre going to feel silly, by and by, like, Shoot, I overreacted.

Well, naturally that is what you would want to believe.

Doesnt your female intuition tell you anything at all? This is a kid who got a girl in trouble before he was out of high school!

So? That doesnt mean a thing. It might even have been a symptom.

Come again?

We can never know with absolute certainty what another persons sex life is like.

No, thank God, Red said.

He bent over, with a grunt, and reached beneath the bed for his slippers. Abby, meanwhile, had stopped pacing and was staring once more at the phone. She set a hand on the receiver. She hesitated. Then she snatched up the receiver and pressed it to her ear for half a second before slamming it back down.

The thing about caller ID is, Red said, more or less to himself, it seems a little like cheating. A person should be willing to take his chances, answering the phone. Thats kind of the general