Anne Tyler - The Clock Winder

“Your mama and Elizabeth always did,” Alvareen said.

The others were filing out of the dining room. Mary bore a sagging, boneless Billy toward a rocking chair by the fireplace. Mrs. Emerson, composed again, mounted the stairs with Matthew close behind. “I’ll just turn down the spread for you,” he told her. “You’ll feel better when you’re not so tired.”

“It’s true I haven’t slept much,” said Mrs. Emerson.

But instead of going straight to bed, she stopped at the doorway of Margaret’s room. Elizabeth was wrapping pieces of wood in tissue paper and stuffing them into a knapsack. “Elizabeth,” Mrs. Emerson said, “was death instantaneous?”

Elizabeth didn’t even look up. “Oh, yes,” she said, without surprise, and she folded down the flap of the knapsack and buckled the canvas straps.

“Then he didn’t have any, say any last—”

“No.”

“Well, thank you. All I wanted was a clear cut answer.”

“You’re welcome,” said Elizabeth.

Matthew took his mother’s arm, thinking she would go now, but she didn’t. “You’re packing,” she said. “I never thought you would actually go through with this.”

“Well, there’s a lot I need to get done. I have to reapply at the college.”

“Can’t you do that by mail?”

“I believe it’d be better just going down there,” Elizabeth said.

She still hadn’t looked up. She had started folding shirts into squares and laying them in a suitcase. For once, there was nothing that could sidetrack or delay her. His mother must have seen that too. “Why, Elizabeth?” she said. “Do you blame me?”

“Blame you for what?”

“Oh, well — could you really just leave me like this? Are you going to let me live through these next few months all alone? The last time you didn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Elizabeth said.

Mrs. Emerson raised a hand and let it fall, giving up. She allowed herself to be led across the hall to her bedroom.

“I never did wholly trust that girl,” she said.

Then she lay down, and shielded her eyes with her forearm. Matthew drew the curtains and left her there.

When he crossed the hall again, Elizabeth’s door was closed. It was a message; it seemed meant for him alone. He stood there for a minute, slouched and empty-handed. When she didn’t come out he went on downstairs.

Melissa and Peter were playing poker. “He’s very successful,” Melissa was saying. “He owns his own company. But he nags at me, we fight a lot. You know? Sometimes when he invites me out he makes me change what I’m wearing, just to suit him. He goes charging into my closet and pushes all my dresses down the rod, figuring what he’d like better. What can you do with a person like that?” Peter frowned at his cards. He wasn’t even pretending to listen.

Margaret was talking about a man too, but in her own toneless way. She lay on a couch with her feet up, twining a limp lock of hair around her finger and telling Mary about someone named Brady. “I was planning to bring him home, before this happened,” she said.

“Oh, don’t,” said Mary, rocking Billy serenely. “Everything goes wrong in this house.”

“But he keeps asking me to marry him. Mother would have a fit if she didn’t meet him first.”

“Well, coming from someone who eloped—”

“Mother met him first.”

“Only if you count when he brought in the groceries,” Mary said. “She’s not much for heart-to-heart talks with stray delivery boys.”

“You don’t have to be so snide about it.”

“I’m not. Can’t we have a normal conversation? I don’t know why you want to get married anyway — you’re not the type.” She arranged Billy more comfortably, checking his sleep with her mouth tucked in and competent-looking. “Too disorganized. Any man would be climbing the walls. You must still think marriage is floating around in a white dress. Well, it isn’t.”

“I know that, I read the ladies’ magazines.”

“They expect you to take care of them , it’s not the other way around. Always asking you to pick up, put away, find things for them. Look at Morris — every morning I tell him the butter’s kept in the butter bin. He never listens. He opens the refrigerator and panics. ‘The butter, where’s the butter, we’ve run out of butter again.’ ‘It’s in the butter bin, dear.’ Oh, you’d never last through that. I often think of chucking it all myself.”

The telephone rang. Matthew crossed to the armchair and lifted the receiver. “Hello,” he said.

“Oh, Matthew,” said Andrew.

“Hello, Andrew.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. Why?”

“You aren’t glad to hear from me.”

“Of course I am,” said Matthew.

“I can tell from your voice.”

“Don’t be silly,” Matthew said. “Were you calling about anything in particular?”

There was a chipping sound at the other end of the line — Andrew doing something nervous with the phone. His hands were always busy, twisting or fidgeting or kneading his thumbs, while the rest of him was limp and motionless. Like a rag doll, he tended to remain where he was left — New York, in this case, after a try at college there. It took vast amounts of other people’s energy to change his life in any way, and lately no one had felt up to it. What was the use? In New York he lived in a pattern as unvarying as the tracks of a toy train — from rooming house to library to rooming house, lunch every Wednesday with Melissa in the only restaurant he approved of (the only one he had been in; someone had once taken him there) and home three or four times a year, shattered and white over the change in his schedule. He distrusted planes (a family trait) and panicked at the swaying of trains, and had never learned to drive. All he had left were buses. Buses, Matthew thought, and started. “Holy Moses,” he said. “You’re in Baltimore.”

“You forgot,” said Andrew.

“Oh no, I just—”

“You forgot I was coming. Would you rather I just went back again?”

“No, Andrew.”

“There are plenty of buses out of here.”

“I knew you were coming. I just never heard what time,” Matthew said. “I’ll be right down.”

“Oh, well—” “Wait there.”

“Well, if you’re sure you’re expecting me,” said Andrew.

“We are. Stay there, now. Bye.”

He hung up and started out of the room immediately. “I have to get Andrew,” he said.

“Oh, Lord,” said Melissa. “This is too much at once.”

“I’ll be back in a while.”

“Tell him in the car, Matthew. Get it over with.”

“Are you crazy?” Mary asked. “Why did we keep it from him, if we’re just going to dump it on him now? Don’t you say a word, Matthew. Bring him on home. Maybe we’ll wait till tomorrow.”

“I think I’m going to throw up,” Melissa said. “I have a nervous stomach.”

Matthew left. In the hallway he met Elizabeth, who was just coming down the stairs with her suitcase and knapsack. Her burdens made her look lopsided. She still wore her church dress, with pieces of damp bark down the front. When she saw him, she stopped on the bottom step. He had an urge to trap her there, under glass, complete with her baggage and her peeling handbag and her falling-down hairdo, until life was sorted out again and he could collect what he wanted to say to her. “Can’t you wait?” he asked. “Don’t go yet. Won’t you just wait till I get back from the bus station?”

“Oh, the bus station,” Elizabeth said. “That’s where I’m going.”

“What for?”

“Well, I’m catching a bus. You could give me a lift.”