Anne Tyler - The Clock Winder

Mrs. Emerson didn’t open her eyes.

Pianists, Matthew thought, are the ones that get arthritis, and artists go blind and composers go deaf. And his mother, who pulled all the family strings by words alone, was reduced to stammering and to letting others finish her sentences. All morning they supplied her words for her — never exactly the right ones, never in the proper tone. Tears of frustration kept slipping out of the corners of her eyes and forming gray discs on the pillow. Her chin trembled and her mouth turned downward. She gave her children the feeling that it was they who had failed.

They found her a memo pad, and closed her fingers around a ballpoint pen. But what good was that? Even writing letters to her children, she had preferred using a dictaphone first to try out the words on her tongue. She threw the pen away, with such a jerky movement that it landed in the bedclothes. Then she shook her head, over and over again. “Sorry,” she told them.

“It’s all right,” said Mary. “Nobody blames you at all. Do we? We know how hard it must be.”

Lunch was eaten in the sunporch, with Mary beside the bed helping her mother and the others in the lined-up chairs. Susan was put on the windowseat, where she popped all her peas with one finger and babbled to herself. Everyone was grateful to have her there. During breaks in the conversation they watched her intently, implying that there was much more they could be saying if only she hadn’t distracted them.

Supper was easier; their mother was asleep. But by then they were all exhausted. They ate sandwiches by a dim light in the dining room, on a table cluttered with bills and playing cards which no one had the energy to move. “How do nurses do it?” Margaret asked. “There are four of us. Wouldn’t you think we could manage better than this?”

Mary raised her chin from her hand and said, “Margaret, do you know Emmeline’s last name?”

“Emmeline. Emmeline — it will come to me. Why?”

“We figured she might take care of Mother after we leave.”

“Well, that’s a thought,” Margaret said.

“Mother knows her name, I’m sure of it, but she pretends she doesn’t. She’s latched onto the idea of Elizabeth.”

Andrew lowered his sandwich carefully to his plate, and Margaret shot a glance at him. “Then why not Elizabeth?” she asked.

“Margaret?” Andrew said.

“She won’t come,” said Mary, ignoring him.

“Did you try her?” Margaret asked.

“We called her this morning.”

“Really? Where’s she at?”

“Virginia,” said Mary. “I thought you kept in touch with her.”

“Oh, no. Not since, not for years. I wrote but she never answered. What’d you say to her?”

“This conversation is pointless,” Andrew said. “I would never allow her to come back here.”

“Well, she isn’t, so don’t go into a stew over it,” Mary said.

“Stew? Who’s stewing? I merely feel—”

“She isn’t coming , Andrew.”

“Can you guarantee that?” Andrew said. “She’s packing her bags right now, I can feel it. Wild horses couldn’t keep her away. Well, if necessary I’ll bar all the doors and lock the windows. I won’t allow it. Mother wouldn’t allow it.”

“Mother’s the one who asked for her,” Matthew said.

“There are other people she likes in this world.”

“But not that she asked for.”

“I’m surprised at her. I don’t understand her, she used to not even want to hear her name. Are you sure she said Elizabeth? Does she remember?”

“Mary,” said Margaret, “what did you say to her?”

“Just asked if she could help out with Mother a while. She said no.”

“Did you say it would only be for a short time? Did you tell her we’d just need her till Mother’s herself again?” “She didn’t give me a—”

“Did you say all we wanted was a nurse, pure and simple? No other problems dumped on her? Did you tell her we’d let her go back afterward to her old life?”

“Well, of course we’d let her go back,” said Mary. “Why should I bother telling her that?”

“You did it all wrong, then,” Margaret told her.

“I did the best I knew how.”

“We should call her again and give her a limit. Six weeks, say. Tell her six weeks is all she’d—”

“Margaret,” said Andrew, very quietly, “I’d like to state a preference, please.”

“You get sick and you can state your preferences,” Margaret told him. “This time it’s Mother that’s sick. Shall I call Elizabeth now? Matthew?”

“Babcock,” said Matthew.

They stared at him.

“I just remembered Emmeline’s last name. Babcock.”

“You’re right,” Mary said.

But Margaret said, “Emmeline’s not the one Mother asked for.”

“She’s much superior, though,” Andrew said.

“Emmeline wouldn’t even come! I’m sure of it! She never forgave Mother for firing her like that. Can’t I call Elizabeth?”

It was Matthew who settled it. “No,” he said. “I’m too tired. I don’t feel like any more complications.”

They finished their supper in silence. Even Andrew wore a defeated look.

At night they watched television. Mrs. Emerson had awakened but refused to eat. She stared at the ceiling while her children watched westerns they had no interest in, and when the picture grew poor no one had the strength to do anything about it. The frames rolled vertically; their eyes rolled too, following the bar that sliced the screen. “I’m sorry,” Mary said finally. “I seem to be sleepy. I don’t know why.” She kissed her mother good night. “Well, Susan will be up so early in the morning—” Margaret said, and she left too. Matthew followed shortly afterward. Andrew stayed behind, gazing at them reproachfully, but before Matthew was even in his pajamas he heard Andrew’s feet on the stairs.

Matthew slept in his old room on the second floor. He associated the room only with his early childhood; in his teens he had moved to the third floor with the others. The fingerprints on the walls here reached no higher than his waist, and the scars were from years and years ago — crayon marks, dart punctures, red slashes of modeling clay rubbed into the screens. Even the bed, which was full size, seemed hollowed to fit a much smaller body. He sank down on it and stretched out, without bothering to turn down the blankets.

There was some disappointment far in the back of his mind, a dull ache. Elizabeth. Had he really wanted her to come, then? But even thinking of her name deepened his tiredness. He pictured all the strains she would have brought — his own love and anger, knotted together, and Andrew’s bitterness. “I hate her,” Andrew had once told him. “She killed my twin brother.” “That’s ridiculous,” Matthew had said, but he had had no proof of it. He had spent years wondering exactly how Timothy’s death had happened; yet the one time Elizabeth seemed likely to tell him, down in Mr. Cunningham’s kitchen, he had been afraid to hear. Now he felt grateful to her for keeping it to herself. The worst strain, if she came, he thought, would be Elizabeth’s own. At least she had been spared that. Then he relaxed and slept.

When he woke it was still dark, but he heard noises downstairs. He switched on a lamp and checked his watch. One-thirty. Someone was running water. After a moment of struggling against sleep he rose, felt for his glasses, and made his way down the stairs. It was Mary in the kitchen, heating something in a saucepan. She looked blowsy and plump in a terrycloth bathrobe, with metal curlers bobbing on her head. “What are you doing here?” he asked her.