Clock Winder - Anne Tyler [109]
“No, thanks. It’s time for you to be going.”
But Matthew didn’t move. “My father bought this house when they were married,” he said. “Before they even had children. They moved in with nothing more than Grandmother Carter’s parlor furniture, in all this space. He said they were going to live here till they died. He expected to have a long life, I guess. They were going to celebrate their golden anniversary here, all white-haired and settled with the third floor closed off except when children and grandchildren came to spend their summer vacations.”
“Vacations in Baltimore?”
“If you were to marry me,” Matthew said, “we could stay in this house, if you liked.”
Which surprised her no more than his hand had. Why should it? Life seemed to be a constant collision and recollision of bodies on the move in the universe; everything recurred. She would keep running into Emersons until the day she died; and she and Matthew would keep falling in love and out again. If it snowed, wouldn’t Timothy be waiting for her to shovel him a path? Wouldn’t he emerge from those bushes if she took it in her head to walk another turkey?
“When I picture our golden anniversary,” Matthew said, “I think of us in a supermarket. One of those cozy old couples you see telling each other what food they like. ‘Here’s some nice plums, Mother,’ I’d say, and you’d say, ‘Now, Pa, you know what plums do to your digestion. Remember back in ’82,’ you’d say, ‘I fixed stewed plums for supper and you never got a wink of sleep. Remember?’ ” He made his voice old and crotchety, but Elizabeth didn’t laugh.
“It’s funny,” she said. “I picture us with your family tangled up in everything you do, and me brought in to watch. Your mother living with us, and long distance phone calls from sisters divorcing and brothers having breakdowns, and quarrels among the lot of you every evening over the supper table. And me on the outside, wondering what next. Putting on the Band-Aids. Someone to impress.”
“Is that how you see yourself?” Matthew asked. “On the outside?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then what are you doing here now?”
“Putting on the Band-Aids,” Elizabeth said.
“But who asked you to do it? Mother. She didn’t want anyone else. She thinks of you as family. They all do.”
“Mighty strange family,” Elizabeth said. “She didn’t write for four years, I never once got one of those little letters of hers all rehearsed on the dictaphone. What do you say to that? I used to think of them as family too, I always did want a little more sinful family than the one I’ve got. But then I caused all that trouble with Timothy, and your mother didn’t write and we all went our separate ways. Now I’m back for six weeks. Period.”
“You and I don’t see things the same,” Matthew said. “Do you think you’re just standing off aloof from us?”
“Well, I’m surely not collecting guns,” Elizabeth said, “or eloping, or having spells of insanity or shouting quarrels.”
“We’re having a shouting quarrel right now,” said Matthew.
“Matthew, will you go? Your sisters are going to miss their planes.”
“There’s plenty of time.” But even as he spoke, the back door slammed and Mary called, “Matthew? Are you coming?”
“Go on, Matthew,” Elizabeth said.
“In a minute. We haven’t—”
“Matthew!” Mary called.
“Oh, all right,” he said. He slid off the rail and stood there a minute, scratching his head. “Tomorrow I go back to work,” he told Elizabeth.
“All right.”
“I can only come here in the evenings. Will you be here?”
“Where else?” Elizabeth said.
She watched his loose-boned figure shambling up the hill toward Mary, with his awkward suit that looked too short and his hair shaggy