Clock Winder - Anne Tyler [0]
“One of the most beguiling and mesmerizing writers in America.”
—The Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Not merely good … She is wickedly good!”
—John Updike
“A novelist who knows what a proper story is … A very funny writer … Not only a good and artful writer, but a wise one as well.”
—Newsweek
“Tyler’s characters have character: quirks, odd angles of vision, colorful mean streaks, and harmonic longings.”
—Time
“Her people are triumphantly alive.”
—The New York Times
By Anne Tyler
IF MORNING EVER COMES
THE TIN CAN TREE
A SLIPPING-DOWN LIFE
THE CLOCK WINDER
CELESTIAL NAVIGATION
SEARCHING FOR CALEB
EARTHLY POSSESSIONS
MORGAN’S PASSING
DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT
THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST
BREATHING LESSONS
SAINT MAYBE
LADDER OF YEARS
A PATCHWORK PLANET
BACK WHEN WE WERE GROWNUPS
THE AMATEUR MARRIAGE
DIGGING TO AMERICA
A Fawcett Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1972 by Anne Tyler Modarressi
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Fawcett Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Fawcett Books and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-96706
eISBN: 978-0-307-78844-3
This edition published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
About the Author
1
1960
The house had outlived its usefulness. It sat hooded and silent, a brown shingleboard monstrosity close to the road but backed by woods, far enough from downtown Baltimore to escape the ashy smell of the factories. The uppermost windows were shuttered: the wrap-around veranda, with its shiny gray floorboards and sky-blue ceiling, remained empty even when neighbors’ porches filled up with children and dogs and drop-in visitors. Yet clearly someone still lived there. A pile of raked leaves sat by the walk. A loaded bird-feeder hung in the dogwood tree. And in the side yard, Richard the handyman stood peeing against a rosebush with his profile to the house and his long black face dreamy and distant.
Now out popped Mrs. Emerson, skin and bones in a shimmery gray dress that matched the floorboards. Her face was carefully made up, although it was not yet ten in the morning. Whatever she planned to say was already stirring her pink, pursed lips. She crossed the veranda rapidly on clicking heels. She descended the steps gingerly, sideways, holding tight to the railing. “Richard?” she said. “What is that I see you doing?”
“Just cutting back the roses is all,” Richard said. His back was turned to her. He waved a pair of pruning shears behind him, hip-high.
“I meant what you’re doing at this moment, Richard.”
“Oh, why, nothing,” Richard said.
It was true. He was zipped up by now, free to turn and beam and click his shears on thin air. Mrs. Emerson stopped in front of him and folded her arms.
“Don’t try to get around me, Richard. I looked out my window and saw you. I thought, Richard? Is that Richard?”
“I was preparing to cut back the roses,” Richard said.
“Is that what you call it?”
Richard had a special set of gestures he made when embarrassed—pivoting on his heels with his head hanging down, working something over in his hands. He twisted the rubber grips on his shears and said, “It’s getting time, now. Fall is coming on.”
“That house you are standing by is Mrs. Walter Bell’s,” said Mrs. Emerson. “In full clear view of her dining room window. Don’t think that I won’t hear about this.”
“I wasn’t doing nothing, Mrs. Emerson.”
“Oh, hush.”
“I was only cutting back the roses.”
“Just hush. I don’t know, I really don’t know,” said Mrs. Emerson.
“You’re just distraught nowadays, that’s all.”
“Distraught? Why would