Anne Tyler - The Clock Winder

Melissa didn’t answer.

“Do you?”

“Oh, I don’t think they were all that serious anyway,” Melissa said.

“Well, maybe not.”

“Even so, I hope he hasn’t heard. Weddings do funny things to people.”

“I’ve hardly ever been to one,” Margaret said.

“Well, I have. Dozens. Always a bridesmaid, never a — especially when the minister says to show cause why they shouldn’t get married. You know. ‘Speak now, or forever hold your peace’ and sometimes the silence is so long, I start worrying I’ll jump up and say something silly just to fill it.”

In the back of her mind, Margaret’s second wedding was moved into a church and it was Jimmy Joe’s voice that broke the silence. “I can, I can show cause,” he would say. “I still love her.” “You should have thought of that twelve years ago,” Margaret would tell him, and she would turn her back and take a closer hold on Brady’s arm, shutting Jimmy Joe away forever.

In the afternoon they stopped at a restaurant Melissa approved of and ordered a late lunch. They sat across the table from each other, looking drained and frazzled, their ears humming in the sudden quiet. Melissa kept her sunglasses on. The tip of her nose poked out from beneath them, cool and white. “For someone you barely know,” she said, “you’re certainly going to a lot of trouble. A wedding? In this heat? Or was it just to get away a while.”

“Both, I guess,” Margaret said. “But I would like to see Elizabeth. I try to keep up a correspondence with her, not that she makes it all that easy.”

“Andrew goes into a mental state if he even hears her name. He says it was her fault what happened with Timothy.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Margaret said.

“I’m just saying what he told me.”

“Well, don’t.”

“Why take it so personally? You only saw her the once.”

“Whatever else she may have done,” Margaret said, “she kept Mother company that whole awful year after Daddy died. Which was more than we did, any of us. I knew I should have, but I just couldn’t. You should be thanking your stars she was around.”

“Well, it’s not as if there was nothing in it for her,” Melissa said.

“Oh, stop,” said Margaret.

After that, they ate in silence.

They entered North Carolina late in the afternoon. They seemed to have come during a dry spell; the red soil was baked, the pines were harsh and scrubby, the unpainted barns had a parched look. “KEEP NORTH CAROLINA GREEN,” Melissa read off. “Get it green, first.” She pulled out her compact and a zippered bag full of bottles and tubes. It took her half an hour to remove all her make-up and put on fresh — an intricate task which she performed without speaking. Margaret drove in a daze of exhaustion. She barely winced when Melissa snapped her compact shut.

In Raleigh, they found a hotel for Melissa and unloaded her suitcase. “Now, don’t forget,” said Melissa, standing on the curb. “The minute that wedding is over, I want to get out of here. Don’t hang around all day. I plan on seeing this woman tonight; after that I’ll just be twiddling my thumbs.”

“All right.”

“Don’t go to any receptions or anything.”

“All right,” Margaret said, and she slammed the door shut and zoomed off.

Elizabeth lived in a green, wooded area that reminded Margaret of Roland Park, on the top floor of someone’s garage. When Margaret climbed out of her car, twilight had just fallen and the lights in the garage windows were clicking on. She stood in the driveway, smoothing her rumpled dress, and then she pulled her suitcase from the trunk and headed for the wooden staircase that ran up the outside of the building. She felt large and pale and awkward, top-heavy on the rickety steps. As she climbed she wiped her damp forehead and ran her fingers through her hair, and when she reached the top she paused a moment to catch her breath. Through the screen door she could see a bright, cluttered room, pine-paneled, sparsely furnished. Elizabeth was just crossing toward her. “Come on in,” she said. “I heard you on the steps. Need a hand?”

She opened the door and reached out to take the suitcase. In two and a half years she had hardly changed at all. She wore jeans and a white shirt and moccasins; she might have been just about to go out and prune Mrs. Emerson’s poplar tree. Only her hair was short — hacked off raggedly, at ear level, making her look like a bushier version of Christopher Robin. A little sprig of a cowlick stood up on the back of her head, as precise as the stem on a beret. “I’m making you some supper,” she told Margaret.

“Oh, don’t do that.”

“Why not? I have to eat myself.”

She slid the suitcase onto the daybed, which was already heaped with unironed clothes and a dozen blocks of wood. It must have been the wood that gave the place its workshop smell. Sawdust and shavings sprinkled the grass rug, and a stack of sandpaper sat on the table. In one corner was a large, mysterious object that turned out later to be a potter’s wheel. “Sorry about the mess,” Elizabeth said. “I have to pack tonight.”

“Tonight? Don’t you have to rehearse?”

“It’s not going to be that complicated a wedding.” Elizabeth picked up a head of lettuce and took it over to the sink. “At least, I hope it isn’t,” she said. “This whole thing is getting out of my control. Well, they know how it goes, I’ll let them handle it. Want a beer?”

“Yes, thank you,” said Margaret.

Elizabeth got her one from the refrigerator and then hooked a chair with the toe of her moccasin and pulled it out from the table. “Sit and rest,” she said. “I hope you like hamburgers.”

“I do. It’s nice of you to put me up like this. I know how busy you must be.”

“Me?” she laughed. “No, I can use the lift to Ellington.”

“Is that where you’ll live? Ellington?”

“Mmhmm.” She was cutting the lettuce into a wooden bowl. Margaret watched her and took sips from her beer, which instantly started to numb her. If she had any sense, she would stop drinking right now. Instead she kept on, dreamily fixing her eyes on Elizabeth’s quick hands. Elizabeth poured dressing over the salad, slapped out some meat patties, dumped a can of beans into a saucepan. “I’m trying to use up most of the food,” she said. “Then I’ll give what’s left to a guy I work with.”

“Where do you work?” Margaret asked.

“In this handicrafts shop, over a tavern. I wait on customers and stuff. And they stock some of my carvings.”

“Do many people buy them?”

“No,” said Elizabeth. She looked toward the blocks on the daybed. “They keep coming in and picking them up, they say, ‘Oh, I like this type of thing, do you have any more?’ Then I show them more. They like that type, too, but they don’t often buy them.” She laughed. “I’m glad I’m quitting. I never did like waiting on customers.”

“It’s different from being a handyman,” Margaret said.

“Yes.”

“Did you like that job?”

“Oh, yes.”

But she didn’t say anything more about it. She hadn’t even asked how Margaret’s family was, and Margaret didn’t want to bring them up on her own.

The whole of that evening, as it turned out, was centered on packing. Elizabeth packed the strangest things. Five cardboard boxes were filled with broken odds and ends — cabinet knobs, empty spools, lengths of wire, wooden finials. “What are they for?” Margaret asked, and Elizabeth said, “I may want to make something out of them.” She dumped a handful of clock parts into a suitcase, and folded yards and yards of burlap down on top of them. Margaret watched in a beery haze. She was never able to remember much of her visit later — only in patches, out of chronological order. She remembered Elizabeth striding through a jumble of paint cans, munching on a hamburger. And her own trips from couch to refrigerator, and back to the couch with another beer. She sat in a slumped position, like something washed up on a beach and left to dry out and recover. Her shoes were abandoned on the rug; her dress became sprinkled with breadcrumbs and sawdust and bits of potato chips. “Oh, I feel so relaxed,” she said once, and Elizabeth stopped work to laugh at her. “You look it,” she said.