Clock Winder - Anne Tyler [79]
“Are you saying you’re going alone?”
“Well, I thought, you know—”
“Maybe you should,” he said. “Do you good to get away a while.”
She didn’t know whether to feel relieved or worried, now that he had let her leave so easily.
The wedding was the second week in August. It was to be held in a Baptist church in Ellington. On the invitation, Elizabeth appeared as Elizabeth Priscilla—a middle name so unsuitable that Margaret had trouble making the connection. The groom’s name was Dominick Benjamin Whitehill. Margaret had never heard of him, but then there was no reason why she should have. Elizabeth’s letters weren’t that informative. She wrote only two or three times a year—always briefly, in direct answer to letters from Margaret. Mainly she just asked how Margaret was and said that she was fine. She gave no more details than a fifth-grader might. She was working in a shop, her last letter had said. But what kind of shop, what was she doing there? She was living in Raleigh. She was getting along okay. And then, out of the blue, this invitation, with one handwritten sentence scrawled on the bottom margin: “Come if you want to—E.” As if she placed no real faith in all that copperplate engraving cordially inviting Margaret to attend.
Margaret couldn’t locate Ellington on any Esso map. She called Elizabeth at her Raleigh address to find out how to get there, and Elizabeth said, “Oh, you’re coming, are you?” Her voice was lower than Margaret had remembered it. And her face she could barely picture any more. After all, they didn’t really know each other. Uncertainty made Margaret clench the receiver more tightly. “If you still want me—” she said.
“Well, sure.”
“But I can’t find Ellington.”
“Just look for—no. Wait. This thing is taking place in the morning. If you’re coming from New York, you’d better get to Raleigh the night before. I can put you up at my apartment.”
“Won’t I be in the way?”
“No, you’ll solve the car problem. I can ride over with you in the morning.”
“Well, if you’re sure,” Margaret said.
That was on Wednesday, her day for lunch with Andrew and Melissa. She avoided mentioning Elizabeth in front of Andrew, but when she and Melissa were leaving together she said, “You’ll never guess who’s getting married.”
“Everyone but me already is married,” Melissa said.
“Elizabeth Abbott. Remember her?”
“No.”
“Elizabeth. Mother’s Elizabeth.”
“Oh, her,” Melissa said. She stopped in the middle of the block to peer into her compact. “Not to anyone in the family, I trust,” she said.
“No, someone named Whitehill.”
“Well, more power to her.” She snapped her compact shut and continued walking.
“I thought I might go to the wedding,” Margaret said. “It’s down in North Carolina.”
“Are you driving? You could give me a ride to Raleigh, if you’re going near there.”
“What for?”
“I need to see a woman in Raleigh who makes patchwork evening skirts. It’s for the boutique.”
“Oh, that,” Margaret said. The boutique was a vague, half-hearted plan that Melissa had first mentioned last April, on her twenty-sixth birthday. She had short bursts of enthusiasm, where she spilled swatches and drawings from her purse and talked about leather and velvet and Marimekko, but then her modeling engagements picked up again and she would forget all about it. This must be one of her slack periods. It was always a bad sign when she looked in her compact too often. “This woman in Raleigh,” she said, “sells her skirts for twenty dollars. We could get fifty, easily, if we could only pin her down. She hasn’t got a phone and she doesn’t answer letters. Just give me a lift there, will you?”
“I was thinking of going alone,” Margaret said.
“Well, go alone, I’m not crashing the wedding. Just take me as far as Raleigh.” She hailed a taxi, which coasted to a stop at the curb. “When was it?” she asked.
“Saturday after next,” said Margaret, giving up. “I’m going down that