Clock Winder - Anne Tyler [120]
“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