Clock Winder - Anne Tyler [76]
“Oh, well, don’t let it bother you,” Elizabeth said. “Other people have told me that.”
What she liked best about him was that slow, careful way of doing things—tracing the rim of a plate, now, stilling his hand when she laid the toast down. He had treated people just as carefully. He had never crowded her in any way. Watching her once in an argument with his mother, he had held back from protecting either one of them, although she had seen him lean forward slightly and start to speak before he caught himself. She could remember that moment clearly, along with the sudden ache of love that had made her stop in mid-sentence to turn to him, open-mouthed. Now the only feeling she had was tiredness. She sat down in the chair opposite him and set her hands on the table.
“I know I should have written again,” she said.
“Then why didn’t you?”
“It wasn’t on purpose. I just seemed to be going through some laziness of mind.”
“Try now, then,” Matthew said. “Tell me why you left.”
She didn’t look at him. She waited till the words had formed themselves, and then she said, “That day with Timothy—” Then she raised her eyes, and she saw the fear that jumped into his face. What she had planned to tell him, relieving herself of a burden, was going to weigh him down. She changed directions, without seeming to. “That day after Timothy died,” she said, “I stopped feeling comfortable there. I felt just bruised, as if I’d made a mess of things.” She kept her eyes on his, to see if he understood. “Everything I’d been happy about before,” she said, “seemed silly and pathetic.”
“Do you mean me?”
“Well, yes.”
“Did you stop loving me?”
“Yes.”
“And you aren’t the type who’d just say that. Just as some kind of sacrifice to make up for, for anything that might have happened.”
“No, I’m not,” Elizabeth said.
Matthew sat back.
“I should have said it in that letter, I know,” she said. “Only I was trying to do it roundabout, and ended up making a bigger mess than ever.”
“Don’t you think you could change?” Matthew said.
“I know I won’t,” she said. “It’s permanent. I’m sorry.”
Then she was just anxious to have him go, to get the last little dangling threads tucked away. She watched him gather himself together too slowly, rise too slowly, scratch his head. There were things she wanted to ask him—Would he drive all the way back now? Was he angry? Was he all right? Even when she didn’t love him, he could still cause a stab of worry and concern. But questions would prolong his going; she didn’t want that. “I’ll see you to the door,” she said, and she walked very fast out to the hallway.
“I can find my way.”
“No, I want to.”
When they reached the screen door she went out first and held it wide open for him. He stopped on the braided mat to shake her hand. He held it formally, as if they were just meeting, but she couldn’t see his expression because the light was reflected off his glasses. They shone like liquid, the plastic rims pinkish and dulled with fingerprints. “Well,” he said, “I hope school goes all right.”
“Thank you.”
“Are you really going to school?”
“Well, of course.”
“I can picture you not ever getting out of here,” he said, and he gave her another long, stunned look so that she was suddenly conscious of her wrinkled denim skirt and the prison pallor of her skin. “Maybe I’ll see you again sometime. Do you think so?”
“Maybe.”
“And if you ever change your mind,” he said, “or see things in a new light—”
“Okay.”
“I won’t have married anyone else.”
She smiled, and nodded, and waved him down the walk, but she could picture him married to someone else as clearly as if it had already happened. She saw his life as a piece of strong twine, with his mother and his brothers and sisters knotting their tangled threads into every twist of it and his wife another thread, linked to him and to all his family by long, frayed ropes.
Elizabeth never did go back to school. By September Mr. Cunningham was much worse,