Anne Tyler - The Clock Winder

“No fats, no butter,” Mrs. Emerson said. “That I could stand for, I’ve always been a picky eater. I cut the fat off my meat as a matter of course. But no eggs, he said! Stop eating eggs! What will I do for breakfast?”

Elizabeth glanced in the rear-view mirror and watched Mrs. Emerson straighten her hat, which was circled with spring flowers. They were returning from a heart specialist that old Dr. Felson had recommended. Ordinarily Mrs. Emerson drove herself, but today she must have been nervous over the appointment. She had risen at five-thirty, and collected her gloves and hat two hours early. Then at the last moment she had looked at the cloudless April sky and said, “Will it rain, do you think? You’d better drive me, Elizabeth.” So Elizabeth had put on the chauffeur’s cap, once black but now gray with mildew, which she had found on a rafter in the garage the month before. “Oh, must you?” Mrs. Emerson always said when she saw it. Elizabeth thought it was a wonderful cap. Whenever she wore it she made Mrs. Emerson sit in back. If there had been a lap-robe she would have tucked it in; if it hadn’t looked silly with jeans she would have liked a gold buttoned jacket and driving gloves. Only Mrs. Emerson would never have entered into the spirit of it. “Sometimes,” she said now, “I feel you are making fun of me, Elizabeth. Did you have to stand at attention when I came back to the car? Did you have to click your heels when you shut my door?”

“I thought that was what I was supposed to do,” Elizabeth said.

“All you’re supposed to do is be a help, and it would have helped much more if you’d come in with me as I asked. Taken off that silly hat and come been a comfort in the waiting room.”

“I tend to develop symptoms in waiting rooms,” Elizabeth said. She drove lazily, one arm resting on the hot metal frame of the open window. Her hair whipped around her neck in the breeze, and sometimes she had to reach up and steady her cap. “Isn’t it funny? If I go into a waiting room sick all my symptoms disappear. If I’m well it works the other way.”

“Thank goodness there were no real chauffeurs around,” said Mrs. Emerson. “I would have found you all playing poker, I’m sure. Discussing carburetors.” But she watched the scenery as she spoke, as if her mind were only half on what she was saying. During these last eight months, her life and Elizabeth’s had come to fit together as neatly as puzzle pieces. Even the tone of their voices was habit now — Mrs. Emerson’s scolding, Elizabeth’s flip and unperturbed. Outsiders wondered how they stood each other. But Mrs. Emerson, as she talked, kept dexterously erect in spite of Elizabeth’s peculiar driving, and Elizabeth went on smiling into the sunlight even when Mrs. Emerson’s voice grew creaky with complaints. “How will I manage breakfast now?” Mrs. Emerson asked.

“He say no eggs at all?”

“No more than two a week. A precautionary measure, he said. He kept comparing me to clocks and machines and worn-out cars, and the worst of it was that it all made sense. You keep hearing about the body being a machine, but have you ever given it any real thought? Here I am, just at the stage where if I were a car I’d be traded in. Repairs growing more expensive than my value. Things all breaking down at once, first that bursitis last winter and now my chest grabbing, only it’s worse than with a machine. All my parts are sealed in, airtight. No replacements are possible.”

“That’s true,” said Elizabeth.

She tried picturing Mrs Emerson as a machine. Sprung springs and stray bolts would be rattling around inside her. Her heart was a coiled metal band, about to pop loose with a twang. Why not? Everything else in that house had come apart. From the day that Elizabeth first climbed those porch steps, a born fumbler and crasher and dropper of precious objects, she had possessed miraculous repairing powers; and Mrs. Emerson (who had maybe never broken a thing in her life, for all Elizabeth knew) had obligingly presented her with a faster and faster stream of disasters in need of her attention. First shutters and faucets and doorknobs; now human beings. A wrist dangled suddenly over her shoulder. “See, how knobby?” Mrs. Emerson said. “Nobody ever told me to expect varicose bones.”

Elizabeth touched the wrist and returned it, unchanged.

“Could it be all those pregnancies?” said Mrs. Emerson, sitting back. “Eight of them, Elizabeth. One born dead. People are always asking if I’m Catholic, but the truth is I’m Episcopal and merely had a little trouble giving up the habit of a baby in the house. Could that harm my health?”

Elizabeth drove slowly, changing lanes in long arcs when the mood hit her. Buttery sunlight warmed her lap. The radio played something that reminded her of picnics.

“It doesn’t seem just that I should be getting old,” Mrs. Emerson said.

She removed her gloves and took a cigarette from a gold case — something she rarely did. Elizabeth, hearing the snap as she shut it, looked in the rear-view mirror. “Oh, don’t frown at me,” Mrs. Emerson said.

“I wasn’t.”

“I thought you were. The doctor told me not to smoke.”

“It’s all right with me if you smoke.”

“I plan to stop, of course, but not till I get over this nervous feeling.” She flicked a gold lighter which sputtered and sparked and finally rose up in a four-inch flame that blackened half the cigarette. She took a puff, not inhaling, and held it at an awkward angle with her elbow tight against her side. “What a beautiful day!” she said, just noticing. “It’s nice to be driven places.” And then, after a pause, she cleared her throat and said, “I don’t know if I ever mentioned this, Elizabeth, but I appreciate having you here.”

She had stepped far enough out of the pattern so that Elizabeth had to look at her again in the mirror. “That’s all right,” she said finally.

“No, I mean it. If I talked to my children this way they would get upset. Tell them I’m getting old, they’d feel forced to convince me I wasn’t.”

“Oh, well, getting old is one of the things I’m looking forward to,” Elizabeth said. “I’d like the insomnia.”

“The what?”

“The early-morning insomnia. I could have a lot more fun if I didn’t sleep so much.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Emerson. She took half a puff from her cigarette. “Now, a little worry wouldn’t hurt the other children at all, but don’t mention this new doctor to Andrew. He’s subject to anxiety as it is. Sometimes he calls long distance asking if I’m sure I’m all right, wondering about things so specific you know they must have come to him in a dream, either waking or sleeping: have I had any falls recently? am I careful around blades? Well, nowadays we all know what that means, but even so, I don’t want you giving him any grounds for concern.”

“I don’t even know Andrew,” Elizabeth said.

“Yes, but this weekend he’s coming for a visit.”

“No problem, then. I won’t be here.”

“Oh, but you have to be here!” Mrs. Emerson said.

“I’m going home.”

“What? Home?” Mrs. Emerson fumbled her cigarette, dropped it, and caught it in mid-air. “Not for good,” she said.

“No, I just promised my mother I’d visit.”

“Well, that’s impossible,” said Mrs. Emerson. “I mean it. Impossible. I won’t let you go.”

“I’ve put it off for months now. I can’t do it again.”

“You’ll have to.”

“I can’t,” said Elizabeth, and she crammed her cap down tight on her head and began driving with both hands.