Anne Tyler - The Clock Winder

She twirled the spoon dreamily, resting her head against a shelf, listening to the fizz of the bubbles. Up in one corner a spider spun a web between two waterpipes, but the strands looked like another slant of sunlight. Leaves that had sifted through the grate rustled in the window-well, as dry and distant as all the past autumns that had dropped them there.

Footsteps crossed the kitchen. “Elizabeth?” Timothy called.

“Down here.”

He came to the doorway above the basement steps; she saw the darkening of the patch of light on the floor. Then he snapped a switch on, paling the sunbeams. “Where?” he said.

“Here by the tubs.”

While he descended the stairs she uncovered the second kettle and began stirring it. It had a burned, toasty smell. She was afraid they might have overbaked the wheat. She lowered her head and breathed deeply, inches from the wine. “Ah,” said Timothy. “Eye of newt. Toe of frog.” But the scene upstairs must still be hanging over him; his voice was as heavy as the hand he laid on her shoulder. “What is it, anyway?” he asked.

“Just wine.”

“You handymen certainly have some odd chores.” He moved toward the window, and peered up at the spider in its web. “I came to see if you wanted to take a drive. Have lunch at my place or something.” He poked at the web and the spider scuttled higher, a fat brown ball with wheeling legs. “Are you scared of spiders?”

“Nope.”

He turned away, hands back in his pockets. “I hear you’re going home,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“But just for the weekend.”

“That’s right.”

Elizabeth straightened up. She hung the spoon on its nail, pulled the cheesecloth back over the kettles and knotted the strings that held it there. When she turned to go, she found Timothy just taking something from one pocket: a pistol, bluish-black and filmed with grease. “What on earth,” she said. He shifted it in his hands, as carelessly as if it were a toy.

“Evil-looking, isn’t it?” he said. “I found it in Andrew’s room.”

“Is it real?”

“Well, probably. How can you tell? I would break it open but I’m scared of the thing.”

“Put it down, then,” Elizabeth said. “Stop tossing it around like that, will you?”

“Me? Two-Gun Tim?” He set his feet apart like someone in a western, one thumb hooked in the pocket of his slacks, and tried to twirl the pistol by its loop but failed. When it dropped they both sprang away and stared at it, as if it might explode spontaneously. Nothing happened. Timothy bent to pick it up, holding it this time by the barrel, firmly, the way his mother must have taught him to hold scissors. “Ah, well,” he said.

“What would Andrew want with a gun?”

“He collects them.”

“Well, that’s a very silly hobby,” said Elizabeth, and she led the way to the stairs, making sure to keep out of the pistol’s aim.

“Oh, I don’t mean collects . I don’t mean as a hobby. I mean he collects them like a boat collects barnacles; they flock to him. What are you laughing at? I’m serious. When Andrew takes a walk he finds guns under bushes, when he goes to the attic he stumbles over them, when he answers the doorbell it’s a mailman with the wrong package, and what’s in the package? Guess. He’s never bought a gun in his life, he wouldn’t think of it. He’s the gentlest soul you can imagine. He spends all his days in the New York Public Library doing research for professors, but when he comes out to go home what does he find in the litter basket? A gun among the orange peels, handle up. It’s crazy.”

“He wouldn’t have to accept them,” Elizabeth said.

“Why not? It’s fate.”

“Then what does he do with them?”

“Oh, stows them away.”

They were in the kitchen now. Timothy had forgotten all his caution; he dropped the gun in his pocket, carelessly, and then gave the pocket a pat. “We don’t mention this to Mother, you understand,” he said. “I come pistol-hunting before every visit, just to be on the safe side. Not that he would do anything. I don’t want you thinking — oh, there was a sort of accident once, someone got shot through the foot. But you’re an outsider here. You don’t know what Andrew’s really like. He felt terrible about it. He was just—”

“Oh, stop, I’m not interested,” Elizabeth said, although up till then she had been. She had the sudden feeling that troubles were being piled in front of her, huge untidy heaps laid at her feet, Emersons stepping back waiting for her to exclaim over the heaps and admire them. She headed out the back door, toward the toolshed. Timothy followed. When he came up beside her she saw that one of his pockets hung heavier than the other. She thought of an old Sunday comic strip: Dick Tracy’s crimestopper’s textbook, warning against men with lopsided overcoats. “You be careful you don’t get yourself arrested,” she told him. Then she reached inside the toolshed for a hoop of hose, closing the subject.

But Timothy said, “The worst is getting rid of the damn things. You’d never believe how hard it is. The last one I sent out with the garbage, under the coffee grounds. Elizabeth?”

“What,” said Elizabeth. She backed across the lawn, feeding out coils of hose.

“I cheated on a test.”

Another trouble, added to the heap. “Did you?” she said.

“This is serious, Elizabeth.”

“Well, why tell me about it?” she said. “It’s always something. Tomorrow it’ll be something else. Go tell a professor, if it bothers you so much.”

“I can’t,” Timothy said. “I’ve already been caught.”

Elizabeth looked over at him.

“I was just walking past his desk, after it was over. He said, ‘Emerson, I’d like to have a word with you,’ and I knew, right then. I knew what he would say. It felt as if my stomach had dropped out.”

“What will happen?” Elizabeth said.

“I’ll be expelled.”

“Well, maybe not.”

“Of course I will. Those guys are tough as nails. And you know something? I knew that answer I cheated on. I didn’t have a shadow of a doubt about it. I wrote it down, and I turned to my left, and I read off the other guy’s answer just as cool as you please. It was like I forgot where I was, suddenly. I forgot the customs of the country. I just wanted to see if Joe Barrett knew the answer too.”

“Maybe if you told them that,” Elizabeth said.

“Not a chance. It wouldn’t help.” He kicked at the hose. “Come on, will you? It’s getting to be lunchtime.”

“The grass is drying up. If I don’t—”

“Look,” said Timothy. “I’ve been walking around by myself ever since this happened. Can’t you just drop everything and come with me?”

“Oh well. All right. Let me go and tell your mother.”

“Call from my place. Don’t go back in, she already knows something is wrong. Oh Lord, this is going to kill her.”

“I doubt it,” said Elizabeth.

But she didn’t go back in, even so.

Timothy’s apartment was downtown, in a dingy building with a wrought-iron elevator. All the way up to his floor, with the cables creaking and jerking above them, Timothy stood in the corner staring at his shoes. His face reflected the bluish light, giving him a pale, sweaty look. His silence was heavy and brooding. But once they entered his apartment, where tall windows let the sun in, he seemed to change. “Well now,” he said. “What shall we eat?” And he went off to the little Pullman kitchen while Elizabeth settled herself on the couch. His apartment had a smothered look. It was curtained, carpeted, and upholstered until there were no sharp corners left, and in the evenings carefully arranged lamps threw soft, closed circles on the tabletops. Elizabeth felt out of place in it. She shucked off her moccasins and curled her legs beneath her, but everything she looked at was so padded and textured that she couldn’t keep her eyes on it long. Finally she closed them, and tipped her head back against the couch.