Anne Tyler - The Clock Winder

“I’d rather you saved us,” Timothy said, but he loosened his grip on the dashboard. Then they hit Roland Avenue, and he settled back in his seat. “I don’t suppose you know if Andrew’s coming,” he said.

“He’s not.”

“I was afraid to ask Mother on the phone. She can go on and on about things like that. But Matthew will be there.”

“Nope.”

“What, no Matthew? He practically lives there.”

“He used to,” said Elizabeth. “Then your mother said he was wasting his life on a dead-end job. Running a dinky country newspaper and getting all of the work but none of the credit. I don’t know why.”

“The owner drinks,” Timothy said.

“She said for him to come back when he got a decent job. He never did. It’s been three weeks now.”

“Matthew is the crazy one in the family,” Timothy said.

“Oh, I thought that was Andrew.”

“Well, him too. But Matthew is downright peculiar: I don’t believe he hears a word Mother says to him. He visits her every week, no matter what she’s up to. Brings tomatoes he’s grown himself, stays an hour or two.”

“Not any more he doesn’t,” Elizabeth said. “Will he get another job, do you think?”

“No.”

“Well, what then? Won’t he ever come home again?”

“Oh, sooner or later Mother will give up. Then he’ll wander in again and that’ll be the end of it.”

“I doubt if he’s crazy at all,” Elizabeth said.

She parked haphazardly in a space barely longer than the car, and they climbed out. Standing on the curb she peeled her paint-shirt off, shut it in the car, and brought a curling vinyl wallet from her jacket pocket. “I wonder how much turkeys cost,” she said.

“Let me pay. It was my idea.”

“No, I have enough.”

“Aren’t you saving up for college or something?” “Not really,” Elizabeth said.

The grocery store was vast and gloomy, even under the fluorescent ice-cube trays that hung from the ceiling. There was a smell of damp wood, cardboard, cracker crumbs. They had barely stepped inside when someone said, “Timothy Emerson!”—a sharp-edged woman in a fur stole, one of Mrs. Emerson’s tea guests. “Don’t tell me you’re honoring your mother with a visit,” she said. “Did she recognize you?” She flung out a little peal of laughter. Elizabeth slid past her and went over to the meat counter. “I’d like a turkey,” she told the butcher. “Kind of fat.”

“Fifteen pounds? Twenty?”

“I wouldn’t know. Could you let me hold one?”

He disappeared into a back room. Mrs. Emerson’s friend could be heard all over the store. “… never known a braver woman, just so sweet and brave. Disappointments never faze her. I said, ‘Pamela,’ I said, ‘why don’t you sell that big old house and find yourself an apartment now that—’ ‘Oh no, my dear,’ she told me, ‘I’ll need all that space for my children, if ever they choose to come home.’ “

The butcher reappeared, carrying three turkeys. “This one?” he said. “This one?” He held them up one by one, while Elizabeth frowned and twirled her car keys. “Let me try that last one,” she said finally. She reached across the counter for it and weighed it in her hands. “Wait a minute. I’ll be back.”

“How is your twin brother, dear?” the friend was saying. “I understand he’s in the care of a doctor again. Now, wouldn’t you think he should be in his own home? New York is no place for a, for someone who’s …”

“Try this,” Elizabeth told Timothy. “Add intestines and such. Feathers. Feet. Do you think he’s about the right size?”

Timothy, who had lit a pipe, stuck the pipe between his teeth and took hold of the turkey. “Feels okay to me,” he said.

Mrs. Emerson’s friend said, “It’s Elizabeth, isn’t it? How are you this fine day? Planning for a great many dinner guests?”

“Well, not exactly,” Elizabeth said. “Forget you saw me buying this.” She left the woman staring after her and went back to the butcher. “I like it,” she told him, “but I could do without that piece of metal in his tail.”

“That’s to pin his legs down.”

“I’d prefer it without, anyway,” Elizabeth said.

While he was wrapping the turkey she went off in search of stuffing mix. Timothy by now was coasting down the aisle on the back of a shopping cart. He took several long strides and then hopped on the rear axle, leaning far forward to keep his balance. The pipe in his round face looked comical, like a snowman’s corncob. “This is something I’ve always wanted to do,” he told her when he had coasted to a stop. “Mother never took us to grocery stores; she telephoned. Up until Margaret ran away with the delivery boy.”

“Telephoned!” Elizabeth said. “Didn’t it cost more that way?”

“Why not? We’re rich.”

He wheeled the cart over to the meat counter, where they collected the turkey. Then Elizabeth went off to find snacks for Alvareen’s sick-days. Timothy followed, pretending the turkey was a baby in a carriage. “Who do you think he favors?” he asked, and he lovingly rearranged a patch of butcher’s tape. Then he hopped on the cart and coasted off again. “I must find Mrs. Hewlett,” he called back. “She has such a consuming interest in little Emersons.” Periodically, in her trips down the aisles, Elizabeth caught sight of him. He whizzed past sober ladies and grim-faced clerks, a flash of yellow hair topped with a red feather. When she met him at the check-out counter he had parked the cart and was carrying a gigantic sack of dog food that hid his face and reached to his knees. All she saw were his hands clutching the sides of it. “I know we don’t have a dog,” he said, poking his head around the sack, “but I can never resist a bargain, can you?” And he turned to put it back again, his knees buckling, staggering beneath its weight, all to make her smile.

But when they were back in the car his mood had changed completely. He sat hunched in his seat, staring out the side window and fiddling with his pipe but not smoking it. “I’d have liked to find a turkey with a couple of feathers left,” Elizabeth told him. Timothy didn’t answer. Then when they stopped for a light he said, “Maybe we could just drive around for a while.”

“Where would you like to go?” said Elizabeth.

“I don’t know. Nowhere. Home,” he said, and he slouched down in his seat and tapped his dead pipe on his knee all the rest of the ride.

Elizabeth parked in front of the house. The minute the car doors slammed Mrs. Emerson appeared on the veranda, stepping forward and then back on the welcome mat with both hands clasped in front of her. “Timothy!” she said. “What are you — why—?”

“My car is down back,” Timothy said. He climbed the steps and bent to kiss her on one cheek. Mrs. Emerson’s face was tilted up to him, her eyes half closed by the frown she wore, and she kept her hands pressed tightly together. “I still don’t understand,” she said.

“How are you, Mother?”

“Oh, just fine. I’m doing beautifully. I’m managing very well.”

“You look well.”

Elizabeth passed them and went into the house, carrying the groceries. As soon as she reached the kitchen she dumped the whole bag in one swoop, stripped the turkey of its wrappings and set it on the counter. Then she put the other items away more slowly and folded the paper bag. Alvareen came in with a scrub pail full of gray water. “Is that him?” she asked, looking at the turkey.

“Pretty neat job, wouldn’t you say?”

“Then what’s that other feller doing, running around out back?”

“Oh, Lord.”