Anne Tyler - The Clock Winder

“I just think it’s a nice idea. You can stop getting so wrought up about things once you know it’s not your last chance. Besides. It gives me something to say when old ladies tell me I shall pass this way but once. ‘Oh, well, or twice, or three times …’ I tell them.”

“How far do you carry this business?” Timothy asked. “Do you think you were once a high priestess in Egypt? Do you feel we knew each other in Atlantis?” He was hoping for her to give some crackpot answer, something that would disenchant him, but it wasn’t that easy. “Who knows?” was all she said. “What would it matter, anyway?”

“You just thought this up to irk your father,” Timothy told her.

“Well, maybe so,” she said cheerfully.

“And he wouldn’t have started a fight over a little thing like that.”

“Of course he would. Besides, he didn’t like this boy I was seeing.”

“Oh,” said Timothy. “What was wrong with him?”

“He just considers me a trial. Always has. You can’t really blame him.”

“No, I mean the boy.”

“Oh. Well, nothing, to the naked eye. He was just a State College student. Then he got arrested for robbing laundromats.”

Timothy swerved to avoid an abandoned car. “You certainly know some funny people,” he said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Did he tell you what he was doing? Did you know?”

“Oh, no, just that he was working. I wondered what at.”

“You could have guessed, if he wouldn’t say. I could have guessed. You could have been a little more curious, and maybe stopped him.”

“I would never change someone else’s affairs around,” Elizabeth said.

That kept him silent for a full five minutes; he couldn’t think of a thing to say. He concentrated on driving, which was growing more difficult. The road felt like cotton beneath his wheels. The few cars he met were barely creeping along, shapeless white igloos eerily glowing beneath a white sky. “How can you see? I can’t,” Elizabeth said, and Timothy said, “I don’t understand you. Fighting with your father! And here I thought you were Miss Easy-Going. Miss Fix-It. I wondered how your family was managing without you to patch the plaster.”

“At home I break things more than fix them,” said Elizabeth.

Then she rolled the window down with a jerk, which was unnecessary. Their breaths seemed likely to freeze in front of their faces. A new wave of mist fogged Timothy’s vision and he hunched forward, peering for the turnoff. “Can’t see a thing,” he said, but he found it, anyway — an overhead sign swinging and whipping in the wind — and turned blindly.

“I thought they had snowplows up north,” Elizabeth said.

“Well, this burglar,” said Timothy. “Are you supposed to be visiting him or anything? Waiting until he gets out?”

“Waiting for what?”

“Well, to get married, maybe.”

“He wasn’t going to be in that long, it was only laundromats.”

“The reason I’m asking all this,” Timothy said carefully, “is that you and I seem to be going out together a lot. I wanted to know if you were committed in any way.”

“Committed?”

“Not tied to this burglar or someone.”

“Why do you keep calling him a burglar?” Elizabeth said. “He was a chemistry major. We hardly even knew each other.”

Timothy gave up. “Would you like to go out to dinner tomorrow?” he asked.

“I can’t. I’m going to see Matthew’s house.”

“Matthew?” He turned to stare at her. “How did he get into this?”

“Why not? I like him.”

So this was where all the uneasiness had been going: Matthew. “Break it, can’t you?” he said.

“No,” said Elizabeth. “I want to see his house. Besides, I never turn down an invitation.”

“Do you have to keep telling me that?”

Then he slammed into the Schmidts’ driveway and cut the engine and piled out. He didn’t open the door for Elizabeth. She followed on her own, calmly swinging her handbag and shuffling up the narrow groove of cleared sidewalk. Timothy waited on the front porch with his back turned, ignoring her. She didn’t seem to notice.

It was Ian Schmidt who opened the door — a classmate of Timothy’s. He said, “Oho! We thought you weren’t coming. This is Elizabeth, isn’t it? We met one night at a play.”

“That’s right,” Elizabeth said.

He showed them into a living room papered with travel posters. Guests sat around in clumps, not yet at ease, and a small, square baby was being passed from lap to lap. “That’s Christopher Edward. Our son,” Ian said. “Today’s his six-month birthday.” He was so proud of that that he kept them standing in the doorway, fully wrapped and shedding snow-flakes, while he scooped the baby up and brought him over. “Say hello, Christopher, say hello.” The baby stared, poker-faced, at Elizabeth. She stared back. “Hmm,” she said finally, and began tugging her boots off. Lisa Schmidt appeared to show her where to put her jacket. As they passed each group of guests she stopped for introductions, and Elizabeth nodded gravely once the names were said. The profile view of her, with her chin-strap dangling and her stiff, cold hands clutching her purse, sent a sudden stab of love through Timothy that left him feeling tired and puzzled. He bent toward the baby politely and let him clutch an index finger.

The party was a small one, only five couples. Others had been kept away by the storm. People sat on floor cushions and canvas butterfly chairs, with spaces between them that seemed reserved for absent guests. There were spaces in the conversation, too. When Elizabeth had returned from a back room, stripped of her jacket and helmet, a silence had fallen. Timothy still stood in the doorway with Ian, carrying his coat draped over his arm. He ignored Elizabeth (let her manage for herself, if she was so independent) and she settled right away beside a boy with a mustache. “I rode down here with you last fall,” she said. “You gave me a ride from Philadelphia, remember?”

The boy brightened; up till now he had been glumly snapping his watchband. “Oh, Mike’s friend!” he said. “I didn’t know you with your hair up. How is Mike?”

“Fine, I guess.”

“Did you find a job all right?”

“The very first day,” Elizabeth said. “I miss Philadelphia, though.”

“Take it from me, there’s nothing to miss about Philadelphia.”

“I thought there was. I might never have left, if they hadn’t fired me.”

Timothy wanted to hear who had fired her, and for what, but now other people had pounced on the subject of Philadelphia. Conversation started darting around the room again, with Elizabeth at the center of it looking perfectly comfortable. She didn’t need Timothy at all. He went off to find a drink.

The Schmidts were serving hot mulled wine. They were on a budget. Timothy sniffed gloomily at the kettle on the kitchen stove, and then he filled two mugs. He would have preferred something stronger. He had what he thought of as the medical-student syndrome — overworking and overdrinking, alternately, studying all one night on Dexedrine and drinking all the next to rid his mind of that heavy feeling. Hot mulled wine wasn’t much good for getting drunk on. Standing by the stove he drank one of the mugs straight down, refilled it, and went back to the living room. The boy with the mustache had returned to the subject of Mike. Whoever Mike was. “If he would only put that Honda out to pasture,” he was saying. “It’s held together with paper clips. But you know Mike, he’s too soft-hearted.” Timothy handed Elizabeth a mug and passed on by.

He went to sit beside a blond girl whose turn it was to hold the baby. He was trying to think of her name; she had come to cook him dinner twice last spring. Now she had been passed on to another medical student, and probably at the next party she would come with still another. She turned the baby to face him and said, “Say hello, Chrissy, say hello.”