A Spool of Blue Thread

“Happy New Year to you.”

“How was the party?”

“It was good. Where’s Mom?”

“Oh, somewhere around. Want some coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

“I just made it.”

“I’m okay.”

Stem walked over to the back door and looked out. A lone cardinal sat in the nearest dogwood, bright as a leftover leaf, but otherwise the yard was empty. He turned away. “I’m thinking we’ll have to fire Guillermo,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“Guillermo. We should get rid of him. De’Ontay said he showed up hungover again on Friday.”

Red made a clucking sound and folded his newspaper. “Well, it’s not like there aren’t plenty of other guys out there nowadays,” he said.

“Kids behave okay?”

“Yes, fine.”

“Thanks for looking after them. I’ll go get their stuff together.”

Stem went back into the hall, climbed the stairs, and headed toward the bedroom that used to be his sisters’. It was full of bunk beds now, and the floor was a welter of tossed-off pajamas and comic books and backpacks. He began stuffing any clothing he found into the backpacks, taking no particular notice of what belonged to which child. Then, with the backpacks slung over one shoulder, he stepped into the hall again. He called, “Mom?”

He looked into his parents’ bedroom. No Abby. The bed was neatly made and the bathroom door stood open, as did the doors of all the rooms lining the U-shaped hall — De

In the sunroom, he told the boys, “Okay, guys, get a move on. You need to find your jackets. Sammy, where are your shoes?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, look for them,” he said.

He went back to the kitchen. Red was standing at the counter, pouring another cup of coffee. “We’re off, Dad,” Stem told him. His father gave no sign he had heard him. “Dad?” Stem said.

Red turned.

“We’re leaving now,” Stem said.

“Oh! Well, tell Nora Happy New Year.”

“And you thank Mom for us, okay? Do you think she’s ru

“Married?”

“Errand. Could she be out ru

“Oh, no. She doesn’t drive anymore.”

“She doesn’t?” Stem stared at him. “But she was driving just last week,” he said.

“No, she wasn’t.”

“She drove Petey to his play date.”

“That was a month ago, at least. Now she doesn’t drive anymore.”

“Why not?” Stem asked.

Red shrugged.

“Did something happen?”

“I think something happened,” Red said.

Stem set the boys’ backpacks on the breakfast table. “Like what?” he asked.

“She wouldn’t say. Well, not like an accident or anything. The car looked fine. But she came home and said she’d given up driving.”

“Came home from where?” Stem asked.

“From driving Petey to his play date.”

“Jeez,” Stem said.

He and Red looked at each other for a moment.

“I was thinking we ought to sell her car,” Red said, “but that would leave us with just my pickup. Besides, what if she changes her mind, you know?”

“Better she doesn’t change her mind, if something happened,” Stem said.

“Well, it’s not as if she’s old. Just seventy-two next week! How’s she going to get around all the rest of her life?”

Stem crossed the kitchen and opened the door to the basement. It was obvious no one was down there — the lights were off — but still he called, “Mom?”

Silence.

He closed the door and headed back to the sunroom, with Red following close behind. “Guys,” Stem said. “I need to know where your grandma is.”

The boys were just as he’d left them — sprawled around the Parcheesi board, jackets not on, Sammy still in his socks. They looked up at him blankly.

“She was here when you came downstairs, right?” Stem asked. “She fixed you breakfast.”

“We haven’t had any breakfast,” Tommy told him.

“She didn’t fix you breakfast?”

“She asked did we want cereal or toast and then she went away to the kitchen.”

Sammy said, “I never, ever get the Froot Loops. There is only two in the pack and Petey and Tommy always get them.”

“That’s because me and Tommy are the oldest,” Petey said.

“It’s not fair, Daddy.”

Stem turned to Red and found him staring at him intently, as if waiting for a translation. “She wasn’t here for breakfast,” Stem told him.

“Let’s check upstairs.”

“I did check upstairs.”

But they headed for the stairs anyway, like people hunting their keys in the same place over and over because they can’t believe that isn’t where they are. At the top of the stairs, they walked into the children’s bathroom — a chaotic scene of crumpled towels, toothpaste squiggles, plastic boats on their sides in the bottom of the tub. They walked out again and into Abby’s study. They found her sitting on the daybed, fully dressed and wearing an apron. She wasn’t visible from the hall, but she surely must have heard Stem calling. The dog was stretched out on the rug at her feet. When the men walked in, both Abby and the dog glanced up and Abby said, “Oh, hello there.”

“Mom? We’ve been looking for you everywhere,” Stem said.

“I’m sorry. How was the party?”

“The party was fine,” Stem said. “Didn’t you hear us calling?”

“No, I guess I didn’t. I’m so sorry!”

Red was breathing heavily. Stem turned and looked at him. Red passed a hand over his face and said, “Hon.”

“What,” Abby said, and there was something a little too bright in her voice.

“You had us worried there, hon.”

“Oh, how ridiculous!” Abby said. She smoothed her apron across her lap.

This room had become her work space as soon as De

Ordinarily she sat at the desk beneath the window. No one had ever known her to sit on the daybed, which was intended merely to accommodate any excess of overnight guests. There was something contrived and stagey in her posture, as if she had hastily scrambled into place when she heard their steps on the stairs. She gazed up at them with a bland, opaque smile, her face oddly free of smile lines.

“Well,” Stem said, and he exchanged a look with his father, and the subject was dropped.

What you do on New Year’s you’ll be doing all year long, people claim, and certainly Abby’s disappearance set the theme for 2012. She began to go away, somehow, even when she was present. She seemed to be partly missing from many of the conversations taking place around her. Amanda said she acted like a woman who’d fallen in love, but quite apart from the fact that Abby had always and forever loved only Red, so far as they knew, she lacked that air of giddy happiness that comes with falling in love. She actually seemed unhappy, which wasn’t like her in the least. She took on a fretful expression, and her hair — gray now and chopped level with her jaw, as thick and bushy as the wig on an old china doll — developed a frazzled look, as if she had just emerged from some distressing misadventure.

Stem and Nora asked Petey what had happened on the ride to his play date, but first he didn’t know what play date they were talking about and then he said the ride had gone fine. So Amanda confronted Abby straight on; said, “I hear you’re not driving these days.” Yes, Abby said, that was her little gift to herself: never to have to drive anyplace ever again. And she gave Amanda one of her new, bland smiles. “Back off,” that smile said. And “Wrong? Why would you think anything was wrong?”