Anne Tyler - The Clock Winder

“No,” said Mrs. Emerson.

“No, what? You don’t have her number? Or you don’t want her to come.”

“I don’t want—”

“You don’t need a nurse, exactly,” Mary said.

“No.”

“Is there someone you can think of?”

Mrs. Emerson raised her good hand to her lips and frowned. She sighed, apparently about to give up, and then just as she was turning her head away she said, “Gillespie.”

Mary looked at Matthew, puzzled. “Gillespie?”

“Gil—” Mrs. Emerson struggled to a half-sitting position. She looked irritated. “Gillespie,” she said.

“Elizabeth,” Matthew said suddenly.

“Elizabeth? The handyman?”

Mrs. Emerson sank down again. Mary raised her eyebrows at Matthew.

“She’d be good if she’d do it,” Matthew said. “I saw her taking care of a sick old man once.”

“But you don’t think she’d do it,” Mary said.

“I don’t know.”

“You know better than anyone else.”

“What makes you say that?” Matthew asked. “Do you think I keep in touch with her or something?”

“Well, excuse me,” said Mary.

“Sorry,” Matthew said. “Well, give it a try, if you want. I don’t know what she’ll say.”

Mary tracked down Elizabeth’s parents right then, from the phone in the hospital room. She had the operator place the call person-to-person to Elizabeth. While she waited Matthew stood at the window with his back to the room, pretending to be looking at the view. He wound a venetian blind cord around his fist. “Lots of visitors today,” he told his mother. Mrs. Emerson made some small, impatient gesture that rustled the sheets. Then Mary tensed, listening. “I see,” she said. “Well, place the call there, then. Thank you.” She cupped the receiver and turned to Matthew. “They say she lives in Virginia now. They gave us the number to call her at work — some kind of children’s school.”

“School? Elizabeth?”

“They said—” She uncupped the receiver. “Yes? All right, I’ll hang on. They’re trying to reach her now,” she told Matthew.

But Matthew didn’t stay to hear. He had a sudden urge to get away, as far as he could from Elizabeth and even from the phone that connected her. “Think I’ll buy a cup of coffee,” he said, and he bolted from the room while Mary stared at him. Once he was outside he took several deep breaths. He pressed the elevator button, and then when it didn’t arrive immediately he pushed out the swinging door beside it and started down the stairs.

Elizabeth would never come. He didn’t even want her to. He had stopped thinking about her long ago. The hole she left, after the last time he saw her, had made him realize that he wasn’t happy living alone; and he had conscientiously taken out several other girls in that first empty year. One he had grown serious about. He had considered asking her to marry him. Then Elizabeth had unfolded herself from a dim corner in the back of his mind, shaken the dust off her jeans and stretched her legs. Her face was bright, threaded across with wisps of blond hair blowing in the wind. She was laughing with a careless kind of joy that took itself for granted. But once he had made his decision — broken off with the other girl, although he sometimes regretted it — he was no longer troubled by Elizabeth. His life had solidified. He was a man in his thirties who lived by himself, encased in a comfortable set of habits and a plodding, easy-going job. He liked things the way they were. Change of any kind he carefully avoided.

He bought a cup of coffee from a vending machine and drank it very slowly. Then he returned to his mother’s floor, using the stairs again, and when he got back Mary was peacefully knitting in her armchair. “Sssh,” she told him. “Mother’s asleep.”

He went over to the window. “Sun’s out,” he said.

“Is it?”

“The forecast was rain.”

“I talked to Elizabeth,” Mary told him. He stayed quiet. Mary untwined another length from her ball of yarn.

“I asked if she could come, but she said no. She’s not interested.”

“Oh. Well, then,” Matthew said.

“Then I thought of Emmeline. Remember her? Do you happen to know what her last name might have been?”

“Why are you asking me all these things?” Matthew said. “Ask Mother, she’s the one who keeps using people up and throwing them out. Wouldn’t you think she could just once keep someone?”

“There, now,” Mary said. “Keep your voice down, Matthew.” And she went on serenely knitting that endless sweater.

Mrs. Emerson came home in an ambulance, pale and mysterious on a wheeled stretcher. Mary rode with her; the others stayed at the house to meet her. As soon as the ambulance drew up to the curb Mary leaped out, all energy and efficiency. “Coming through! Coming through!” she called, and chased Matthew from the front door so that she could open it wider. “Is the room ready? Are the sheets turned down?” The men bore the stretcher up the steps. Mrs. Emerson stared straight into the sunlight with the corners of her mouth slightly curled. “Where is the doorstop?” Mary asked. Beside her, the others seemed drab and subdued. Margaret stood next to Matthew, with little Susan over her shoulder. Andrew waited just inside. His face loomed out of the dimness like a sliver of moon on a cloudy night. “Out of the way , Andrew,” Mary told him, but he paid no attention. “Should you be so loud?” he asked. “Mother? Are they going too fast?” The men navigated the stretcher through the house, calling out warnings and cursing newel posts and doorframes. Mrs. Emerson’s smile seemed to be apologizing for her sudden awkwardness. She had been so small, all her life. Now she had grown to the size of a bed, with four square corners to catch on furniture.

She was taken to the sunporch, which Mary had converted to a sickroom. Her twin bed filled one wall, with a table beside it already bearing a tumbler and a water pitcher, flowers in a vase, a pile of slick new magazines. At the other end were all the chairs that had once been scattered through the room. They were placed in a double row, as if Mary had planned on the family’s sitting there as rigid and watchful as an audience. Beneath one window was the television, its face newly Windexed, waiting to be depended upon.

“Easy, easy now,” one of the men said, and they lifted Mrs. Emerson from the stretcher. She held her neck stiff and clutched at her bathrobe. Matthew, watching her face, could tell when she tried to move her paralyzed hand and failed. There was a shift in her expression, a momentary distance in her eyes, as if she were surprised all over again at the failure and was just recollecting how it had come about. Then she was settled. Her lips moved, and firmed themselves, but instead of speaking she merely nodded to the men. They backed out of the room with the stretcher between them.

For the first hour, there was a concentrated flurry centered in the sunporch. A servant’s bell was brought in, and a reading lamp. Andrew put ice in the water. Susan was set on the bed but she cried and had to be taken away again. And everyone, without intending to, kept speaking for Mrs. Emerson. “How nice to be home!” Mary said. Then she caught herself, and laughed. Mrs. Emerson raised her head. “It fools—” she said. “Feels? Feels too hot?” said Matthew.

“Too cold,” said Mary.

“Strange,” said Andrew.

Mrs. Emerson brushed them all away. “Summery,” she said. Then she closed her eyes, as if she were disappointed at such a pointless remark after all that effort. Everyone rushed to make a fuss over it. “It does,” Mary said, and Andrew said, “It’s June now, you know. Good time to be on the sunporch.” They fell silent and looked at the slant of yellow light. “Tomorrow,” said Mary, “I’ll get the window washers in.”