Clock Winder - Anne Tyler [53]
“Mother, of course not,” Mary said.
“Then sometimes I think you were all in a turmoil from birth, nothing I did could have helped. Can you deny it?”
“Mother—”
“What about Andrew? What about Timothy? I was such a gentle person. Where did they get that from?”
Her face was blurring, crumpling, dissolving. And all the movements made toward her were bluffs. Some cleared their throats and some leaned suddenly in her direction, but nobody did anything. In the end, it was Matthew who stood up and said, “I guess you’d like to rest now, Mother.”
“Rest!” she said, with her mouth pressed to a napkin. But she allowed herself to be led away. The others scraped their chairs back and stood up. Alvareen, bearing a hot apple pie, stopped short in the doorway. “We won’t be needing dessert,” Mary told her. “Now, aren’t you an optimist. Have you ever known this family to make it through to the end of a meal?”
“Your mama and Elizabeth always did,” Alvareen said.
The others were filing out of the dining room. Mary bore a sagging, boneless Billy toward a rocking chair by the fireplace. Mrs. Emerson, composed again, mounted the stairs with Matthew close behind. “I’ll just turn down the spread for you,” he told her. “You’ll feel better when you’re not so tired.”
“It’s true I haven’t slept much,” said Mrs. Emerson.
But instead of going straight to bed, she stopped at the doorway of Margaret’s room. Elizabeth was wrapping pieces of wood in tissue paper and stuffing them into a knapsack. “Elizabeth,” Mrs. Emerson said, “was death instantaneous?”
Elizabeth didn’t even look up. “Oh, yes,” she said, without surprise, and she folded down the flap of the knapsack and buckled the canvas straps.
“Then he didn’t have any, say any last—”
“No.”
“Well, thank you. All I wanted was a clear cut answer.”
“You’re welcome,” said Elizabeth.
Matthew took his mother’s arm, thinking she would go now, but she didn’t. “You’re packing,” she said. “I never thought you would actually go through with this.”
“Well, there’s a lot I need to get done. I have to reapply at the college.”
“Can’t you do that by mail?”
“I believe it’d be better just going down there,” Elizabeth said.
She still hadn’t looked up. She had started folding shirts into squares and laying them in a suitcase. For once, there was nothing that could sidetrack or delay her. His mother must have seen that too. “Why, Elizabeth?” she said. “Do you blame me?”
“Blame you for what?”
“Oh, well—could you really just leave me like this? Are you going to let me live through these next few months all alone? The last time you didn’t.”
“I’m sorry,” Elizabeth said.
Mrs. Emerson raised a hand and let it fall, giving up. She allowed herself to be led across the hall to her bedroom.
“I never did wholly trust that girl,” she said.
Then she lay down, and shielded her eyes with her forearm. Matthew drew the curtains and left her there.
When he crossed the hall again, Elizabeth’s door was closed. It was a message; it seemed meant for him alone. He stood there for a minute, slouched and empty-handed. When she didn’t come out he went on downstairs.
Melissa and Peter were playing poker. “He’s very successful,” Melissa was saying. “He owns his own company. But he nags at me, we fight a lot. You know? Sometimes when he invites me out he makes me change what I’m wearing, just to suit him. He goes charging into my closet and pushes all my dresses down the rod, figuring what he’d like better. What can you do with a person like that?” Peter frowned at his cards. He wasn’t even pretending to listen.
Margaret was talking about a man too, but in her own toneless way. She lay on a couch with