Anne Tyler - The Clock Winder

“Oh, I thought — I had pictured you getting a ride.”

“Not at such short notice,” Elizabeth said.

She handed him the suitcase. Of all the sad things going on today, it seemed to him that the saddest was that single motion — Elizabeth flashing the luminous inner side of her wrist, with its bulky leather watchstrap, as she passed him her suitcase. Where were her bulletin board drivers, those laughable old cars full of Hopkins students that used to draw up at the door? Where were her blue jeans, and her moccasins with the chewed-looking tassels, and her impatient, brushing-away motion when he tried to help her with loads that looked too heavy?

“Are you waiting for something?” Elizabeth said.

“No.”

“Let’s go, then.”

“But — so fast? You haven’t said goodbye yet. Mother’s still in her room.”

“I’ll write her a bread-and-butter letter.”

“Well, if that’s the way you want to do it,” Matthew said.

They hurried down the sidewalk, with Elizabeth’s turned-up pumps making clopping sounds and her knapsack swinging over one shoulder. “Hop in,” Matthew said. “We have to get to Andrew before he takes the next bus out again.”

“Oh, Andrew,” said Elizabeth, but her voice was dull and tired. It sounded as if she had had enough of Emersons.

All the way downtown, Matthew kept choosing words and then discarding them, choosing more, trying to make some contact with Elizabeth’s cold, still profile. He drove absentmindedly, and had to be honked into motion at several traffic lights. “You won’t get to see how those new shrubs make out,” he told her once. Then, later, “Will August be a good time for me to visit you?” She didn’t answer. “I get my vacation then,” he said. Elizabeth only drew a billfold from her handbag and started counting money. “Do you have enough?” he asked her.

“Sure.”

“Did Mother ever pay you for this past week?”

“Pay me?”

When Elizabeth answered questions with questions, it was no use trying to talk to her.

They passed dark narrow buildings that had suddenly brightened in the spring sunlight, old ladies sitting on crumbling front stoops taking the air, children roller-skating. In the heart of the city, in a tangle of taverns and pawnshops and cut-rate jewelers, black-jacketed men stood on the sidewalks selling paper cones of daffodils. Matthew drew up in front of the bus station, where he parked illegally because he was afraid of losing both of them, Andrew and Elizabeth, if he took more time. “Don’t get away from me,” he told Elizabeth. “Wait till I find Andrew. Don’t leave.”

“How could I? You’re carrying my suitcase.”

“Oh.”

They went through the doors and toward the ticket counter. Only two people were waiting in line there, and the first was Andrew. “Andrew!” Matthew called. He ran, but he had sense enough to keep hold of Elizabeth’s suitcase. Andrew turned, still offering a sheaf of bills to the man behind the counter. He was nearly as tall as Matthew, but blond and pale and fragile-looking. His suit hung from him in loose folds. His face was long and pinched. “I’m arranging to go back,” he said.

“You can’t do that.”

“I can if I want to.”

“This is all a misunderstanding,” Matthew said. He took hold of Andrew’s sleeve, and the ticket agent folded his arms on the counter and settled down to watch. “They’re waiting for you at home,” Matthew said. “They expect you any time now.” Then, to the ticket agent, “He won’t be going.” He pulled Andrew out of the line, and the fat lady behind him moved up to the counter with a huffy twitch of her shoulders.

“Now you’ve lost my place,” Andrew said.

“You know yourself you’re acting like a fool.”

“Oh, am I?” Andrew said. “Why didn’t she think to tell you, then? Did she forget I was coming? Or did she remember and you forgot. Did you decide just not to bother?”

His eyes seemed deeper in their sockets than usual, and closer together. His arm, still in Matthew’s grasp, was struggling away, and he was moving by fractions of inches back to the counter. Yet if he had really wanted to, he could have shaken Matthew off entirely. Returning to New York was another of his passing impulses, already deserting him, leaving him to fumble on in his course out of sheer inability to back down. All he needed now was some dignified alternative. “Look,” Matthew said, but Andrew’s arm, which was bare and skinny beneath his coat sleeve, seemed to infect him with some of Andrew’s shaky tension. He couldn’t get his words out. “You could, could—”

And to make it worse, the fat lady at the counter moved away and the person behind her stepped up: Elizabeth. Composed and distant, she unsnapped the clasp of her billfold. “Ellington, North Carolina,” she said.

“Elizabeth!”

But she wasn’t so easily pulled from the line. She went on counting out bills, and the ticket agent gave Matthew a peculiar look from under his eyebrows.

“Elizabeth, too much is going on right now,” Matthew said. “Will you wait? Will you come back with me, and take a later bus? There are things I want to get settled with you.”

“May I have my ticket, please?” Elizabeth said. The agent shrugged his shoulders and moved off to the ticket rack. Elizabeth spread her money in a fan on the counter. “I’m in luck, there’s a bus leaving right away,” she said. “I want to get on it.”

“I know you do. I don’t blame you at all, but I can’t let you go yet. I haven’t said anything to you.”

“There’s nothing to say,” Elizabeth said.

There was, but it was difficult with Andrew there. He was standing between them, teetering on his heels and looking curiously from one to the other. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” he said.

“Elizabeth,” Matthew said, “I love you. I think we should get married.”

“Married ?” said Andrew.

“I’m not interested,” Elizabeth said.

“Why not?”

“I just want to get out of here. I’m sick of Emersons. Thank you,” she told the agent, and stuffed the ticket into her bag.

Andrew said, “How do you know the Emersons aren’t sick of you too, whoever you are?”

“Andrew, keep out of this,” Matthew told him.

Andrew turned on his heel and went up to the counter.

“Andrew!” Matthew said. “Will you come back here?”

“See what I mean?” said Elizabeth.

“Look, you can’t refuse to marry me just because I’ve got a crazy brother. Andrew! Elizabeth, listen to me.”

“It isn’t only Andrew that’s crazy,” Elizabeth said. “It’s all of you. Oh, I knew I should have left before. How could I make so many mistakes? Give me my suitcase, please.”

“No,” said Matthew. He held onto it. “Elizabeth—”

She turned and left, walking fast and swinging her knapsack. She was heading out toward the buses, but he couldn’t believe she would really go. He still had the suitcase, after all. He was holding it tightly. When Andrew reappeared, waving a ticket, Matthew said, “Here, take this suitcase. Don’t let it go. I’ll be back in a minute.” Then he pushed through a crowd of ladies in hats, past a girl with a French horn case and a tiny old black woman with a caged parakeet. He thought he saw Elizabeth, but he was mistaken; the beige he had his eyes fixed on was a soldier’s uniform. He pushed through the doors and outside, where rows of buses were revving their motors and men were rushing by with baggage carts. One bus, already backing out, had stopped to unfold its doors to Elizabeth. “Wait!” he called. “I have your suitcase!” If she heard, she didn’t care. She scrambled up the bus steps, hoisting her knapsack higher on her shoulder. The last he saw of her was one upturned shoe sole with a wad of pink bubble gum stuck to the toe. Then the doors folded shut again.