Anne Tyler - The Clock Winder

Margaret couldn’t locate Ellington on any Esso map. She called Elizabeth at her Raleigh address to find out how to get there, and Elizabeth said, “Oh, you’re coming, are you?” Her voice was lower than Margaret had remembered it. And her face she could barely picture any more. After all, they didn’t really know each other. Uncertainty made Margaret clench the receiver more tightly. “If you still want me—” she said.

“Well, sure.”

“But I can’t find Ellington.”

“Just look for — no. Wait. This thing is taking place in the morning. If you’re coming from New York, you’d better get to Raleigh the night before. I can put you up at my apartment.”

“Won’t I be in the way?”

“No, you’ll solve the car problem. I can ride over with you in the morning.”

“Well, if you’re sure,” Margaret said.

That was on Wednesday, her day for lunch with Andrew and Melissa. She avoided mentioning Elizabeth in front of Andrew, but when she and Melissa were leaving together she said, “You’ll never guess who’s getting married.”

“Everyone but me already is married,” Melissa said.

“Elizabeth Abbott. Remember her?”

“No.”

“Elizabeth . Mother’s Elizabeth.”

“Oh, her,” Melissa said. She stopped in the middle of the block to peer into her compact. “Not to anyone in the family, I trust,” she said.

“No, someone named Whitehill.”

“Well, more power to her.” She snapped her compact shut and continued walking.

“I thought I might go to the wedding,” Margaret said. “It’s down in North Carolina.”

“Are you driving? You could give me a ride to Raleigh, if you’re going near there.”

“What for?”

“I need to see a woman in Raleigh who makes patchwork evening skirts. It’s for the boutique.”

“Oh, that,” Margaret said. The boutique was a vague, half-hearted plan that Melissa had first mentioned last April, on her twenty-sixth birthday. She had short bursts of enthusiasm, where she spilled swatches and drawings from her purse and talked about leather and velvet and Marimekko, but then her modeling engagements picked up again and she would forget all about it. This must be one of her slack periods. It was always a bad sign when she looked in her compact too often. “This woman in Raleigh,” she said, “sells her skirts for twenty dollars. We could get fifty, easily, if we could only pin her down. She hasn’t got a phone and she doesn’t answer letters. Just give me a lift there, will you?”

“I was thinking of going alone,” Margaret said.

“Well, go alone, I’m not crashing the wedding. Just take me as far as Raleigh.” She hailed a taxi, which coasted to a stop at the curb. “When was it?” she asked.

“Saturday after next,” said Margaret, giving up. “I’m going down that Friday.”

“Well, give me a ring beforehand, then.” And she slid into the cab, pulling her long, netted legs in last, and slammed the door. Margaret continued down the sidewalk with her handbag hugged to her chest. She was rearranging her vision of the trip to include Melissa. She pictured driving down hot southern highways with all the windows rolled up for the sake of Melissa’s hairdo. Passing up Howard Johnson’s (her favorite restaurant, with its peppermint ice cream) because Melissa would not be caught dead in such a place. Suffering through a hundred of those sharp, conclusive clicks Melissa’s florentined compact made when she shut it. Then she thought, I’ll just call her up and tell her I’m going alone, I don’t want anyone with me. But she kept putting the call off from day to day, until it was too late.

Which was lucky, as it turned out. Because as soon as they had set off, on a bright Friday morning, with Brady still solitary and desolate in the rear-view mirror, Margaret started crying. She drove on until the car was out of his sight, and then she parked by the curb. “You drive,” she told Melissa. “I can’t.”

“Margaret, what in the world?”

“Drive, will you?”

Melissa muttered something and got out of the car. When she was back in, behind the wheel, she said, “There’s something you’re not telling me. Have you had a fight with Brady? Is that why you’re going off like this?”

“No, of course not,” Margaret said. She blew her nose, but went on crying. Melissa, without a glance behind her, nosed the car into traffic again. Horns honked, brakes squealed. She fluttered a hand out the window. “You’re getting a divorce,” she said.

“Oh, don’t be silly.”

“Well, what , then?”

But Margaret only buried her face in a Kleenex. She cried until they were well into New Jersey; she cried her way through half the Kleenex box, building a pile of soggy tissues on the seat beside her. She topped all the records she had set in the last two months. “Margaret, would you mind?” Melissa said. “Is this what you have planned for our whole trip?” Margaret turned further toward the window. She should have gone by train. This car was Brady’s, and everything about it — the smudged radio dial, the leathery smell, the masculine-looking tangle of stray coins and matchbooks and tobacco flecks in the dashboard tray — made her wonder how she could have thought of leaving him. If she were alone, she would have turned the car around. (But then, when he opened the door and saw her, wouldn’t that patient look cross his face again? He would shepherd her into the room, saying, “There, now,” and making her wish she had just headed on south and never come back.)

In the middle of the New Jersey oilfields, she blew her nose a final time and blotted her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she told Melissa. Melissa pushed the gas pedal and sailed past a Porsche. “Think nothing of it,” she said.

“I just keep having these crying spells.”

“Oh well,” said Melissa, “so do we all.”

Margaret, glancing sideways at her face, believed her. Melissa’s mouth was a downward curve, dissatisfied-looking. Even behind her enormous sunglasses, fine lines showed at the corners of her eyes. “Everyone,” Melissa said, “should have one day a month for nothing but crying. We’d all be a lot better off. Crime would stop, wars would stop, generals would lay down their arms—”

“But not unreasonable crying,” Margaret said.

Melissa only shrugged and passed another car.

In Pennsylvania they changed seats. Margaret drove, and Melissa filed her fingernails and polished her sunglasses and yawned at the huge, tidy farms that slid past them. “I could never live in the country,” she said. “God, it’s hot. I wish your car was air-conditioned.”

“Roll down the windows,” Margaret told her.

“Never. We’re going to the sticks , there won’t be a decent beauty parlor in the state.”

Margaret didn’t press her. She wasn’t feeling the heat at all. She felt sealed in, immune. She was watching Jimmy Joe teach her how to drive, and he was laughing at her tense, forward-huddled posture behind the wheel until she lost her temper and they had their first and only argument. Jimmy Joe’s left hand corrected her steering. A frayed gray Band-Aid looped his thumb.

They bypassed Baltimore. The countryside around it — more farms, pastureland, clumps of trees — reminded her of Matthew’s place, and her mourning was extended to include him as well. He was the most loving of all her brothers. She might even have been able to tell him what was bothering her, except that it would just upset him. “Why can’t we stop off at Matthew’s?” she asked Melissa. “It isn’t that far.”

“He would be at work.”

“Do you suppose he knows about Elizabeth?”