Anne Tyler - The Clock Winder

Andrew said, “There, Jenny, there, Jenny,” although Jenny was happily gnawing his shirt collar without a care in the world.

“I will never get used to these creatures, never,” said Mrs. Emerson. “I haven’t stepped out of the house since they arrived. Gillespie? Why are you just standing there?”

“I’m waiting for him to come down,” Gillespie said.

“Down? Where is he? Oh, on my damask curtains, I’m sure of it.” She stepped back and sank into one of the dining room chairs. From the table behind her she took a bottle of vitamin C, uncapped it and gulped two pills, like a man downing a glass of whiskey. Her hands were shaking. “They’re everywhere,” she said. “Chattering all day, bombing into people, and at night it’s no better. They’re silent then but it’s a planning silence, they hang from all the leaves plotting how to get me in the morning.”

“It’s the oak trees,” Gillespie said. “They favor oaks.”

Her voice was calm and unemphatic, reducing monsters to mere scientific fact. But then the locust whirred up from the curtains and lit on the lampshade, and when George swung at it with the poker all he did was knock the lamp over. “Damn,” said Gillespie.

“We’re like in jail,” Andrew said. “Matthew and Gillespie and George are the trusties, they get to go out for mail and food. Mother and I stay inside.”

“I spend a summer in the house every seventeen years,” said Mrs. Emerson. She thought that over a minute. Then she said, “The next time they come, I’ll be dead.”

“Oh, Mrs. Emerson!” P.J. said.

But Mrs. Emerson only looked at her as if she wondered where P.J. had come from. She said, “Peter, do you remember when they were here before? You were, oh, twelve, I suppose. You were hopeless . You made a necklace out of the shells and wore it everywhere. You had bottles in your closet packed full of locusts. Black with them.”

“I did?” Peter said.

“You kept one on a string and took it for walks down Cold Spring Lane.”

He still couldn’t picture it. Like most youngest children, he had trouble remembering his own past. The older ones did it so well for him, why should he bother? They had built him a second-hand memory that included the years before he existed, even. He had a distinct recollection of Melissa’s running away from home with a peanut butter sandwich and a pomegranate, two years before he was born; but he himself, with his locust on a leash, had vanished.

There was another whir. George leaped straight up in the air, as if he were catching a fly ball, and came to earth with his hands cupped tightly around a rattling black shape. “Ha!” he said.

“Now, when I open the door,” Gillespie told him, “throw him outside. Far out, Georgie. Don’t let him fly back in or Grandma will have a fit.”

They all went to the hallway — even Mrs. Emerson, hanging back a little. Gillespie opened the door and stood ready with the magazine. When George tossed the locust up it seemed to hang in mid-air a minute, and then Gillespie reached out and batted it on its way so violently that she lost her balance. It was Matthew who caught her. He was just crossing the porch with a folded newspaper.

“Not another one,” he said, setting her on her feet.

“She says we’ll have to stop up the chimney. Look who’s come for a visit.”

Matthew looked over Gillespie’s head and said, “Peter! I wondered whose car that was.”

“I was just driving through,” Peter said.

“He brought a girlfriend, and we’re going to get him to stay a good long time.”

Peter said, “Oh, well, I don’t—”

“Come on, we’ve got plenty of room,” Matthew said. “Well! Looks like the Army’s changed you a little.”

But Matthew hadn’t changed. He was still black-haired and stooped and skinny, still continually readjusting his glasses on the bridge of his long narrow nose. Gillespie, sheltered under his arm, smiled up at him and said, “You look tired.”

“I am. Old Smodgett was drunk again.”

He kissed his mother, who had come to the doorway but not an inch beyond it. He clapped Andrew on the shoulder and ran a finger down the curve of the baby’s cheek. P.J. stood waiting, next in line. “Oh,” said Gillespie, “this is P.J. P.J. — what’s your last name, anyway?”

“What?” said P.J. “Emerson.”

“Oh, isn’t that funny.”

“What’s funny about it?”

Peter cleared his throat.

“It’s customary to have your husband’s last name,” P.J. said.

“Husband?” said Mrs. Emerson.

P.J. spun around and stared at Peter.

“Guess I forgot to mention it,” Peter said.

“Mention what?” asked Mrs. Emerson. “What’s going on here?”

“Well, P.J. and I got married last month.”

He had startled everyone, but P.J. most of all. “Oh, Peter,” she said. “Didn’t you tell them?”

Then his mother’s voice rose over hers to say, “I can’t believe it. I just can’t. Could this be happening to me again?”

“I thought they knew,” P.J. said.

“Peter, I assumed she was a friend . Someone you had picked up along the way somehow. Is it just a joke? Are you making this up just to tease me?”

“Well, why? What would be funny about it?” P.J. said. She looked ready to run, but there was nowhere she knew of to run to. Mrs. Emerson ignored her.

“Is she pregnant?” she asked.

“Well!” said P.J.

“Now, Mother,” Matthew said, “I believe the best thing might be to sit down and—”

But it was Gillespie who rescued P.J. “Well, that’s one problem solved,” she said cheerfully. “I didn’t have two extra beds made up anyway. Do you want to see your room, P.J.?”

“Yes, please,” said P.J. Her voice was thin and muffled. She followed Gillespie up the stairs without a backward glance at Peter.

“I never expected this of you, Peter,” his mother said.

“Now, let’s sit down,” Matthew told her. “What’s that on the coffee-table? Iced tea? We can all have a—”

“I have five married children now. Five. And six weddings between them. Do you know how many I was invited to? One, just one. Mary’s. Not Melissa’s, not Matthew’s, not Margaret’s two. Just secrets! Scandals! Elopements! I can’t understand it. Don’t girls dream of big church weddings any more?”

“Sit down, Mother,” Matthew said. “Do you want lemon?”

They grouped themselves around her on the edges of chairs, all uneasily aware of the footsteps over their heads. Matthew poured tea and passed out the glasses. Each time he crossed the rug he had to step over his mother’s soggy cigarette, afloat in a puddle of tea, but he didn’t seem to find it odd. “Well, now,” he said, and he settled himself on the couch and began chafing his bony wrists. “What have you been up to, Peter?”

“We were just discussing that,” said his mother.

“I meant—”

“I believe I’m going to be sick,” Andrew said.

“Oh, Andrew. Pass me the baby.”

But he only clutched her tighter, and Jenny squirmed in his arms and screwed her face up. She started crying, beginning with a little protesting sound and working toward a wail. Gillespie entered the room, scooped her up, and passed on through. “Supper will be ready in a minute,” she called back.

“None for me,” Andrew said.

She didn’t answer him.

Peter rose and went upstairs, with the feeling that everyone’s eyes were on his back. He found P.J. in Melissa’s old room. She was in front of a skirted vanity table. Tears were running down her cheeks in straight, fine lines.

“P.J., I was going to tell them,” he said.