Clock Winder - Anne Tyler [118]
“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