Clock Winder - Anne Tyler [37]
“Oh, stop, I’m not interested,” Elizabeth said, although up till then she had been. She had the sudden feeling that troubles were being piled in front of her, huge untidy heaps laid at her feet, Emersons stepping back waiting for her to exclaim over the heaps and admire them. She headed out the back door, toward the toolshed. Timothy followed. When he came up beside her she saw that one of his pockets hung heavier than the other. She thought of an old Sunday comic strip: Dick Tracy’s crimestopper’s textbook, warning against men with lopsided overcoats. “You be careful you don’t get yourself arrested,” she told him. Then she reached inside the toolshed for a hoop of hose, closing the subject.
But Timothy said, “The worst is getting rid of the damn things. You’d never believe how hard it is. The last one I sent out with the garbage, under the coffee grounds. Elizabeth?”
“What,” said Elizabeth. She backed across the lawn, feeding out coils of hose.
“I cheated on a test.”
Another trouble, added to the heap. “Did you?” she said.
“This is serious, Elizabeth.”
“Well, why tell me about it?” she said. “It’s always something. Tomorrow it’ll be something else. Go tell a professor, if it bothers you so much.”
“I can’t,” Timothy said. “I’ve already been caught.”
Elizabeth looked over at him.
“I was just walking past his desk, after it was over. He said, ‘Emerson, I’d like to have a word with you,’ and I knew, right then. I knew what he would say. It felt as if my stomach had dropped out.”
“What will happen?” Elizabeth said.
“I’ll be expelled.”
“Well, maybe not.”
“Of course I will. Those guys are tough as nails. And you know something? I knew that answer I cheated on. I didn’t have a shadow of a doubt about it. I wrote it down, and I turned to my left, and I read off the other guy’s answer just as cool as you please. It was like I forgot where I was, suddenly. I forgot the customs of the country. I just wanted to see if Joe Barrett knew the answer too.”
“Maybe if you told them that,” Elizabeth said.
“Not a chance. It wouldn’t help.” He kicked at the hose. “Come on, will you? It’s getting to be lunchtime.”
“The grass is drying up. If I don’t—”
“Look,” said Timothy. “I’ve been walking around by myself ever since this happened. Can’t you just drop everything and come with me?”
“Oh well. All right. Let me go and tell your mother.”
“Call from my place. Don’t go back in, she already knows something is wrong. Oh Lord, this is going to kill her.”
“I doubt it,” said Elizabeth.
But she didn’t go back in, even so.
Timothy’s apartment was downtown, in a dingy building with a wrought-iron elevator. All the way up to his floor, with the cables creaking and jerking above them, Timothy stood in the corner staring at his shoes. His face reflected the bluish light, giving him a pale, sweaty look. His silence was heavy and brooding. But once they entered his apartment, where tall windows let the sun in, he seemed to change. “Well now,” he said. “What shall we eat?” And he went off to the little Pullman kitchen while Elizabeth settled herself on the couch. His apartment had a smothered look. It was curtained, carpeted, and upholstered until there were no sharp corners left, and in the evenings carefully arranged lamps threw soft, closed circles on the tabletops. Elizabeth felt out of place in it. She shucked off her moccasins and curled her legs beneath her, but everything she looked at was so padded and textured that she couldn’t keep her eyes on it long. Finally she closed them, and tipped her head back against the couch.
“Here,” said Timothy. “Corned beef on rye. That all right? Cold beer.”
“Well, thanks,” said Elizabeth, sitting up. She took the plate and peered between the slices of bread. “Corned beef is what we had two weeks ago. Is this the selfsame can?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you get food-poisoning from canned corned beef?”
But Timothy, in a chair opposite her with his sandwich halfway to his mouth, stared