Anne Tyler - The Clock Winder

“We still going to the party?” she asked.

“If you want to. It’s still on. But you didn’t have to clear the walk for me, it’ll only get snowed under again.”

“Oh, snow-shoveling’s my favorite job,” she said.

So she would probably have done it anyway; it wasn’t for him at all.

They stepped inside, into a blast of hot air. While Elizabeth bent to take her boots off Mrs. Emerson came down the front stairs. She kept her head perfectly level, one hand weightless on the banister. “Timothy darling, I can’t imagine why you tried driving on a night like this,” she said. She came up to him and took one of his hands between her own, which were so warm they stung him. “Mercy! Where are your gloves?” she said. “Where are your boots?”

“I must’ve lost them.”

“You’re surely not going out again. Are you? Stay here at home.”

“Well, there’s this party I want to hit.”

“Fiddlesticks,” said his mother.

She drew him into the living room, skirt swirling as she turned. If anyone looked dressed for a party tonight, it was she. Surely not Elizabeth, who had taken off her jacket to expose a shirt that seemed to have mechanic’s grease down the front. “In a minute we’ll have the fire built up,” Mrs. Emerson said. “Matthew’s out getting more wood.”

“Oh, is Matthew here?”

“He got some time off.”

“From what? Did he change out of the dead-end job?”

His mother looked uncomfortable, but only for a minute. She picked up a poker and rearranged a pile of embers. “No,” she said, “but I had him come anyway. I hated to think of him out in that shack of his. He’s going to be working over Christmas, did you ever hear of such a thing? Well, no one else there could get a paper out.”

“Are any of the others spending Christmas here?”

“Andrew is, but not for long. Just two days.” She put the poker in its stand and began pacing in front of the couch, where Elizabeth was sitting now to slide her moccasins back on. “Mary will be with her in-laws. Margaret I haven’t heard from yet. Melissa,” she said, and frowned briefly but then shook it off, “is traveling with someone to Bermuda. It worries me who , I think I have some right to know these things, but in her last letter she ignored all my questions and she doesn’t answer her telephone. Peter’s going skiing with his roommate in Vermont.” She had ticked off the names on her fingers, like a hostess planning a dinner party. Now she looked over at Timothy, one last finger waiting to be tapped. “You will be here,” she said.

“I guess so.”

She settled herself in a wing chair. At the back of the house a door slammed, a log crashed to the floor and rolled with a splintery sound. Matthew appeared in the living room doorway with an armload of firewood. “Hello, Timothy,” he said, and crossed the room to shake hands. He was trailing clumps of wet snow, and had to reach awkwardly around a stack of logs that rose to his chin. Depend on Matthew to find the hardest way to do anything. When he dumped the wood beside the fireplace, bark and dead leaves flew across the rug. More bark clung to the front of his jacket, which was a plaid logger’s shirt whose sleeves did not cover his wristbones. No sleeves covered his wristbones. He was the longest, lankiest, knobbiest man Timothy had ever known. His face was bony and sad-looking, with clear-rimmed glasses forever slipping down his narrow nose. His straight black hair had last been cut months ago, probably by himself. If any jeans could be more faded than Elizabeth’s, his were, and when he hunkered down to build the fire Timothy saw that his ankles were bare, red and damp-looking above soggy gray sneakers. “Jeepers, Matthew,” he said. “It makes me uncomfortable just looking at you.”

Matthew only smiled and went on laying logs in the fireplace. He worked so deliberately that the others fell silent. They were willing sparks not to fly, logs not to slide, kindling not to sift through the grate. That was what Matthew’s way of moving did to people. In a family full of noise and confusion and minor accidents, he was the quiet one. He touched everything as gently and awkwardly as if he had broken some precious object years ago that he would never forget; yet he had always been that way. The only fuss he caused was the irritation his family felt when they watched him hold his fork too cautiously, smooth down too kindly a rug he had just stumbled over, stack each stick of wood so meticulously with his long, bony fingers when he was laying a fire.

“Why don’t you let Elizabeth do that?” Timothy asked.

“I didn’t want her out in the snow.”

“How come? She was just now shoveling the walk.”

Matthew lowered a stick of wood that he had almost set in place. He looked over at Elizabeth.

“It’s nice out there,” she told him.

He set the stick on top of the pile. It fell off again.

“In a few days,” Mrs. Emerson said, “Elizabeth goes off to New York for her vacation. I tell her it’s a mistake, especially if the snow sticks. I want her to spend Christmas with us.”

“Bus or train?” Timothy asked Elizabeth.

“Car,” she said. “Car? You’re driving?”

“A fellow named Miggs is. I got him off a bulletin board.”

“Elizabeth is so devoted to bulletin boards,” Mrs. Emerson said. “I never even knew they existed. She finds them everywhere — laundromats, thrift shops, university buildings. She always knows who is driving where and who has lost what and who is selling their old diamonds off.”

“In this weather a train would be safer,” Matthew said.

“I prefer cars,” said Elizabeth. “They give you the feeling you can get off whenever you like.”

“But why would you want to get off?” Timothy asked.

“Oh, I wouldn’t. I just like to know I can.”

Matthew said, “Did this man Miggs show you any references?”

Timothy stopped lighting his pipe and looked at him.

“He’s only a student,” said Elizabeth. “He goes to Hopkins. On the phone he sounded very nice.”

The fire had caught. It blazed up, spitting as it reached the snowy logs, and Matthew squatted back to watch it with his hands dangling between his knees. “My, isn’t that lovely,” Mrs. Emerson said. “Isn’t this pleasant. Why would anyone want to go out on such a terrible night?”

She was cuddled between the wings of her chair, with the firelight turning her face pink and soft. Timothy imagined that a struggle was going on within her: Should she be rejoicing that he was coming by so much lately, or should she be worrying over his choice of dates? (Such a shambling sort of girl, not at all like the ones he usually went out with.) “Aren’t you going to stay longer?” Mrs. Emerson would ask, and instead of his usual evasive answer Timothy could say, “No, but I’ll be back day after tomorrow. I’m taking your handyman to the movies”—choosing the word “handyman” on purpose, gleefully watching the two different reactions tangling her smooth face. (The handyman? But he did have to come home, after all, to get her.) Whenever she saw them off at the door she would fuss over Elizabeth, offering to retie her scarf or lend her a lipstick, “something to brighten your face just a little, a touch of color is always nice although of course you’re looking very pretty as it is.” Then Timothy, in the midst of enjoying himself, would shoot a glance at Elizabeth and suddenly wonder: did she have to wear that wristwatch everywhere , with its huge luminous dial and its paint-spattered leather band? Even on a date? Even dressed up? He was split between wanting to defeat his mother’s expectations and wanting to live up to them. He would rock on his heels, blank-faced, hoping for Elizabeth and his mother to settle things without him. “Maybe next time you could borrow my curlers,” Mrs. Emerson would say. “A tidy hairdo is always nice for special occasions.” Elizabeth never seemed bothered by her. Nothing bothered Elizabeth; that was part of her charm. It was also very irritating. He sighed and looked over at her, where she sat on the couch peacefully curling the red cellophane strip from a cigarette pack. Matthew had taken the seat beside her. The two of them looked something alike, both scruffy and ragged and lost in their separate trances. “We should be going,” Timothy said.