Anne Tyler - The Clock Winder

“Oh,” said P.J. She looked bewildered, but after a moment she smiled too.

“Now then,” Mrs. Emerson said. “Shall we go into the living room where it’s cool?”

She led the way, calming her skirt with her hands as if it were a long and stately gown. If the kitchen had become Gillespie’s, with its wood chips across the table and its scatter of tools beside the breadbox, the living room was still Mrs. Emerson’s. The same vases marched across the mantel; the same dusty gray smell rose from the upholstery. The red tin locomotive under the coffee-table could have been Peter’s own, back in the days when he was a child here anxiously studying the grownups’ faces.

His mother settled in her wing chair, across from Andrew, and Gillespie sat in the high-backed rocker with both children nestled against her. Peter chose the couch, beside P.J. He felt she needed some support. She was nervously twisting her purse strap, and the licorice bag rustled on her knees like something alive. “I just love old houses,” she said.

“How long can you stay?” his mother asked Peter. “And don’t say you’re just passing through. I want you to plan on a nice long visit this time.”

“I have a lot of work to get back to,” Peter said.

“In the summer? What kind of work would you do in the summer?”

But then, remembering her social duties, her face became all upward lines and she turned to P.J. “I hope you’re not tired from the trip, J.C.,” she said.

“P.J.,” said P.J. “No ma’am, I’m not a bit tired. I’m just so happy to finally meet you all. I feel like I know you already, Petey’s told me so much about you.”

A lie. Peter had told her next to nothing. And he hadn’t even mentioned her to his family, but Mrs. Emerson continued wearing her bright hostess look and leaning forward in that hovering posture she always assumed to show an open mind. “Where are you from, dear?” she asked.

“Well, New Jersey now. Before it was Georgia.”

“Isn’t that nice?”

P.J. shifted in her seat, deftly smoothing the backs of her thighs as if she wore a dress. “You look just like I thought you would,” she said — oh, always trying to get down to the personal, but she was no match for Mrs. Emerson.

“I suppose this heat is no trouble to you at all then,” Mrs. Emerson said.

“Ma’am?”

“Coming from Georgia.”

“Oh. No ma’am.”

“Peter darling,” Mrs. Emerson said, “I want you to tell me everything . What have you been up to, now?”

“Well, I—”

“Where are my cigarettes?” She slid her fingers between the arm of the chair and the cushion. Peter, who hadn’t been going to tell her anything anyway, felt irritated at being cut off. He kept a pointed silence, with his arms folded tightly across his chest. He thought his mother was like a hunter who set traps and coaxed and baited until the animal was safely caught, and then she forgot she had wanted him and went off to some new project. “Nothing is where it should be in this house,” she said. “Gillespie, I think we could do with some iced tea to drink.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Gillespie handed the baby to Andrew and went to the kitchen, with George tailing her. P.J. sat back and smiled around the room. The only sound to be heard was the clatter of locusts. Finally P.J. said, “Mrs. Emerson, have you got a family album?”

“Album?”

“I’d like to see pictures of Peter when he was a baby.”

“Oh, there are hundreds,” Mrs. Emerson said. She had filled more albums than any coffee-table could hold — rows upon rows of snapshots precisely dated — but she didn’t offer to bring them out. “Somewhere around,” she said vaguely, and she turned to stare out a window. What connection did this girl have with Emersons?

What connection did Peter have? He sat plucking the knees of his slacks, as empty of things to say as he had been in Georgia, as hopeful of acceptance as P.J. From the kitchen came the smells of supper cooking, roast beef and baked potatoes. There was nothing like cooking smells to make you feel out of place in someone else’s house. While he was on the open highway life here had been going on in a pattern he could only guess at — meat basted, knife sharpened, bustling hunts for misplaced spoons, systems and rituals and habits they never had to think about. Mrs. Emerson lit her cigarette and reached without looking for an ashtray, which was exactly where she had known it would be. A silvery strand of baby-spit spun down onto Andrew’s hand, and out of nowhere Andrew produced a folded diaper and neatly wiped Jenny’s chin. P.J. was telling Mrs. Emerson how she just loved this section of Baltimore. (She just loved everything . What was the matter with her?) At her first pause, Andrew turned to Peter. “How’s the job going?” he asked. Mrs. Emerson said, “Do you like New Jersey?” To counterbalance P.J., he was blunter than he should have been. “I hate it,” he said.

“Oh, Peter.”

“If there was another job open anywhere , I’d take it in a flash.”

“Why don’t you, then?”

He peered at his mother. She was perfectly serious. Jobs nowadays were scarce and money scarcer, and no one was interested in chemists any more, but what did she know about that? It was possible that she wasn’t even aware there was a war on. Since he first left home there had been upheavals of every kind — assassinations, riots, not once referred to in letters from his mother. Oh well, once: “Mrs. Bittern was just here collecting food for riot victims. I gave her a can of pitted black olives.…” “I had hoped you might teach in some university,” she told him now. “Well, times are hard,” was all he said. She frowned at him, distantly, secure in her sealed weightless bubble floating through time. While he was in Vietnam, she had kept writing to ask if he had visited any tourist sights. And could he bring home some sort of native craft to solve her Christmas problems?

“Petey’s school is just a real nice place,” P.J. said. “He couldn’t hope for a better job.”

“That’s all you know,” Andrew said.

“What?”

“Peter made straight A’s all through school. Are you qualified to say he should stay in some mediocrity in New Jersey?”

“Oh! Well!”

She looked at Peter to defend her, but he didn’t. He was irritated by the soft, hurt look on her face. It was his mother who stepped in. “Now, Andrew,” she said. “You mustn’t mind Andrew, J.C. He’s hard on outsiders. The second time he met Gillespie , he shot her.” She laughed, and so did Andrew — a contented, easy sound. Peter heard her without surprise, although he had never been told about any shooting, but P.J. gave a little gasp and drew closer to him. “With a gun?” she said.

“Oh, Mother, now—” said Andrew.

But he was saved by a noise from the fireplace — a rattle as steady and senseless as some wind-up toy. Mrs. Emerson screamed. Her cigarette flew out of her hand and landed on the rug, and when Peter leaped up to stamp it out he collided with P.J., who reached the spot before he did but then tripped over one of her long twisted sandal straps. “Gillespie!” Mrs. Emerson screamed. “Gillespie, a locust!”

Then out came Gillespie, skating along levelly with a brim-full pitcher. She poured a dollop of tea on the cigarette and set the pitcher down on the coffee-table. “Where?” she said.

“In the fireplace!” said Mrs. Emerson, already scuttling toward the dining room. “Oh, I told you you should stuff that chimney up! Anything, I said, could get down inside it and the flue handle came off in Matthew’s hands two years ago—” Andrew followed her out of the room, shielding the baby, and Peter rose but had nowhere to go. He didn’t feel up to helping out. He could imagine how cold and heavy a locust must be, slithering down the back of his neck, and he was relieved to see that Gillespie seemed to have the situation in control. She crouched before the fireplace with a rolled-up magazine. George stood by with the poker, scratching the front of his grimy T-shirt and looking bored. “Here, buddy,” Gillespie told the locust. She poked at the ashes. “Come on, come on.” The whirring grew louder. The magazine rattled as if a fan blade had hit it and then up swooped the locust, evading Gillespie, zooming toward the ceiling with an angry buzz. Mrs. Emerson screamed again. She ducked behind Andrew, clutching him by the sides. “Will I survive this summer?” she asked.