Clock Winder - Anne Tyler [39]
“You are going to turn into a very objectionable old lady, Elizabeth. You know that. The opinionated kind. ‘I like this, I don’t like that,’ every other sentence—it’s fine now, but wait a while. See how it sits on people when you’ve lost your looks and you’re croaking it out.”
“That is something to think about,” said Elizabeth, glad to change the subject.
“Call up Matthew. Tell him I’m the one that needs to go.”
“Timothy, I’ve been up since six o’clock this morning and every single minute there’s been some Emerson dumping crisises on me.”
“Crises,” Timothy said into his beer can.
“Picking and bickering and arguing. Raking up all these disasters and piling them in front of me. Well, I’ve had my quota. I don’t want any more. I’m going to call your mother, and then I’m going off for an afternoon on my own and not coming back till supper.”
“Wait, Elizabeth—”
But she left. She went into the bedroom, sat down on the edge of the bed, and lifted the telephone from the table. Then she couldn’t remember Mrs. Emerson’s number. All this chaos was disrupting her mind. There were tatters of old arguments in the air around her, and she had a restless, hanging-back feeling as if there were something she had not done well. She listened to the dial tone droning in her ear and watched Timothy pace back and forth in the living room with his eyes averted, his face pink and rumpled-looking. Then Mrs. Emerson’s number flashed before her, and she leaned forward to dial.
The telephone rang four times. (Was Mrs. Emerson in some new frenzy, twirling through the house wringing her hands and far too upset to answer?) The fifth ring was cut off in the middle. “Hello!” Mrs. Emerson said.
“It’s Elizabeth.”
“Elizabeth, where are you? There’s a man here delivering big sacks of something.”
“Oh, that’ll be the lime.”
“What will I do with it? Where will I tell him to put it? I thought you were around the house somewhere.”
“The lime goes in the toolshed,” Elizabeth said. “I’m at lunch. I may be late getting back, I’m spending the afternoon downtown.”
“Downtown? What—and I can’t find Timothy. One minute he was here and the—now, don’t take all afternoon, Elizabeth.”
“Okay,” Elizabeth said. “Bye.”
She hung up. Timothy was leaning against the doorframe, watching her. “Now call Matthew,” he said.
“I’m through with that subject.”
“That’s what you think.”
He took a step back and slammed the door between them, with a noise that shook the room. She heard the key in the lock. “Call him!” he shouted from the other side.
“Oh, for—”
She stood up and went to try the door. It was firmly locked. Timothy was standing so close behind it that she heard his breath, which came in short puffs. “Timothy,” she said. He didn’t answer. She gave the door a kick and then turned an oval knob at eye level that locked it from inside—a useless move, but the final-sounding click was a satisfaction. Then she flung herself on the bed again and lay back to stare at the ceiling.
When she had been there a few minutes she began to see some humor in the situation. She got off the bed and circled the room, stopping to look out the window. “I’m stripping your bed, Timothy,” she called. “Now I’m tying the sheets together. Now I’m tying the blankets. I’m knotting them to the headboard, I’m hanging them out the window. Whee! Down I go.”
Timothy said nothing. She imagined him waiting aimlessly, feeling sillier by the minute but unable to back down.
She went over to the bureau, found two military brushes, and brushed her hair with both at once. She picked up a textbook and went back to the bed with it and looked at a diagram of the circulatory system. There seemed no point in memorizing it. She went through her pockets, hoping to find something time-consuming—a scrap of sandpaper, maybe. Timothy’s windowsill was scarred and peeling. But all she came up with was a rubber band, an unwrapped stick of chewing gum, six wooden matches and an envelope flap with a number on it. The rubber band she flipped into a light fixture on the ceiling, and the