Anne Tyler - The Clock Winder

“Uh, fine.”

“She should take better care of herself,” Mr. Cunningham said.

“I’ll tell her that.”

“Summer or no summer. Those skimpy little bathing suits are ruining the nation’s health. You can get pneumonia in August, did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t,” Matthew said.

“Quick summer pneumonia, they call it. Now who did I—? Yes. Took my little brother when he was two. Not a thing they knew could save him. How old would he be today, I wonder? What was his name?”

He was about to start fretting over his memory again, Elizabeth thought. She leaned forward, but before she could change the subject he shook his head. “It don’t matter anyway,” he said. “He’d be an old man. What’s the difference? I want a piece of whole-wheat toast, Elizabeth.”

She had been hoping he would go on forever, wearing Matthew down till he left without saying what he had come for. So she tried not answering (he might forget) but Mr. Cunningham gave her a sharp look from beneath his pleated lids. “Toast,” he said.

“Buttered?”

“Dry, just dry. I want things back to simple.”

She nodded and left, and Matthew followed just as she had known he would. “You could stay here, if you like,” she told him.

He didn’t bothering answering that.

. . .

In the kitchen he said, “Where are your blue jeans?”

“Mr. Cunningham doesn’t like women in pants,” she told him. She heaved a cat off the breadbox.

“You look so different.”

She concentrated on making toast, plugging the toaster in and emptying its crumb tray and carefully rolling the cellophane bag after she had taken out a slice of bread. Matthew sat down in a kitchen chair. “Would you like something to eat?” she asked him.

“Everything about you has changed. I don’t understand it. There’s something muffled about you.”

“Oh well, I’m taking care of a very old man,” she said.

“Elizabeth.”

She jammed the toaster lever down.

“Look, this is such a waste,” Matthew said. “What are you doing in this hot little house?”

“I like being here,” Elizabeth said. “I like Mr. Cunningham. I’m going to miss him when I leave for school.”

“For school. You’re not coming back with me, then.”

“No,” said Elizabeth.

“Well, I knew that when I came, I guess. But I thought — and I never expected to see you like this.”

“Like what?”

“You’re so changed.”

“You said that,” Elizabeth told him.

He was quiet a moment, looking down at his hands. “Well, I didn’t want to fight about it,” he said finally.

“Who’s fighting?”

“I came to get things straightened out. I didn’t know what to think, way off in Baltimore. You weren’t much help. You don’t say what you feel, you never say what you feel.” He looked up, sending her one sudden spark of anger. “Why is it that sometimes the things I like most about you make me dislike you?”

“Oh, well, don’t let it bother you,” Elizabeth said. “Other people have told me that.”

What she liked best about him was that slow, careful way of doing things — tracing the rim of a plate, now, stilling his hand when she laid the toast down. He had treated people just as carefully. He had never crowded her in any way. Watching her once in an argument with his mother, he had held back from protecting either one of them, although she had seen him lean forward slightly and start to speak before he caught himself. She could remember that moment clearly, along with the sudden ache of love that had made her stop in mid-sentence to turn to him, open-mouthed. Now the only feeling she had was tiredness. She sat down in the chair opposite him and set her hands on the table.

“I know I should have written again,” she said.

“Then why didn’t you?”

“It wasn’t on purpose. I just seemed to be going through some laziness of mind.”

“Try now, then,” Matthew said. “Tell me why you left.”

She didn’t look at him. She waited till the words had formed themselves, and then she said, “That day with Timothy—” Then she raised her eyes, and she saw the fear that jumped into his face. What she had planned to tell him, relieving herself of a burden, was going to weigh him down. She changed directions, without seeming to. “That day after Timothy died,” she said, “I stopped feeling comfortable there. I felt just bruised, as if I’d made a mess of things.” She kept her eyes on his, to see if he understood. “Everything I’d been happy about before,” she said, “seemed silly and pathetic.”

“Do you mean me?”

“Well, yes.”

“Did you stop loving me?”

“Yes.”

“And you aren’t the type who’d just say that. Just as some kind of sacrifice to make up for, for anything that might have happened.”

“No, I’m not,” Elizabeth said.

Matthew sat back.

“I should have said it in that letter, I know,” she said. “Only I was trying to do it roundabout, and ended up making a bigger mess than ever.”

“Don’t you think you could change?” Matthew said.

“I know I won’t,” she said. “It’s permanent. I’m sorry.”

Then she was just anxious to have him go, to get the last little dangling threads tucked away. She watched him gather himself together too slowly, rise too slowly, scratch his head. There were things she wanted to ask him — Would he drive all the way back now? Was he angry? Was he all right? Even when she didn’t love him, he could still cause a stab of worry and concern. But questions would prolong his going; she didn’t want that. “I’ll see you to the door,” she said, and she walked very fast out to the hallway.

“I can find my way.”

“No, I want to.”

When they reached the screen door she went out first and held it wide open for him. He stopped on the braided mat to shake her hand. He held it formally, as if they were just meeting, but she couldn’t see his expression because the light was reflected off his glasses. They shone like liquid, the plastic rims pinkish and dulled with fingerprints. “Well,” he said, “I hope school goes all right.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you really going to school?”

“Well, of course.”

“I can picture you not ever getting out of here,” he said, and he gave her another long, stunned look so that she was suddenly conscious of her wrinkled denim skirt and the prison pallor of her skin. “Maybe I’ll see you again sometime. Do you think so?”

“Maybe.”

“And if you ever change your mind,” he said, “or see things in a new light—”

“Okay.”

“I won’t have married anyone else.”

She smiled, and nodded, and waved him down the walk, but she could picture him married to someone else as clearly as if it had already happened. She saw his life as a piece of strong twine, with his mother and his brothers and sisters knotting their tangled threads into every twist of it and his wife another thread, linked to him and to all his family by long, frayed ropes.

Elizabeth never did go back to school. By September Mr. Cunningham was much worse, and he cried when he heard she was leaving and clung to her hands. She stayed on. She failed him more every day in their battle against the enemy. Then a year and a half later he died, on a weekend so that she wasn’t even with him. The last thing he asked, Mrs. Stimson said, was where Elizabeth was.

But she heard no more from Matthew. He never wrote her again.

The trouble began on a Sunday morning in June. Margaret woke early, before her husband. She lay in bed feeling pleasantly hungry but too lazy to do anything about it, and she spent some time making pictures out of a complicated crack in the ceiling while she tried to remember a dream she had had. None of it came back to her. Only vague sensations — the smell of parsley in a brown paper bag, the feel of some rough fabric against her cheek. Then the crack in the ceiling dimmed, and she found herself looking directly into the face of her first husband. He was laughing at something she had just said. His black eyes were narrowed and sparkling; his mouth was open, lengthening his pointed chin. He had the carelessly put together look that is often found in very young boys. While she watched he stopped laughing and grew serious, but deliberately, exaggerating the effort, making a mockery of it, as if the laughter were still bubbling within him. He pretended to frown. All she saw in his eyes was love.