Clock Winder - Anne Tyler [82]
She opened the door and reached out to take the suitcase. In two and a half years she had hardly changed at all. She wore jeans and a white shirt and moccasins; she might have been just about to go out and prune Mrs. Emerson’s poplar tree. Only her hair was short—hacked off raggedly, at ear level, making her look like a bushier version of Christopher Robin. A little sprig of a cowlick stood up on the back of her head, as precise as the stem on a beret. “I’m making you some supper,” she told Margaret.
“Oh, don’t do that.”
“Why not? I have to eat myself.”
She slid the suitcase onto the daybed, which was already heaped with unironed clothes and a dozen blocks of wood. It must have been the wood that gave the place its workshop smell. Sawdust and shavings sprinkled the grass rug, and a stack of sandpaper sat on the table. In one corner was a large, mysterious object that turned out later to be a potter’s wheel. “Sorry about the mess,” Elizabeth said. “I have to pack tonight.”
“Tonight? Don’t you have to rehearse?”
“It’s not going to be that complicated a wedding.” Elizabeth picked up a head of lettuce and took it over to the sink. “At least, I hope it isn’t,” she said. “This whole thing is getting out of my control. Well, they know how it goes, I’ll let them handle it. Want a beer?”
“Yes, thank you,” said Margaret.
Elizabeth got her one from the refrigerator and then hooked a chair with the toe of her moccasin and pulled it out from the table. “Sit and rest,” she said. “I hope you like hamburgers.”
“I do. It’s nice of you to put me up like this. I know how busy you must be.”
“Me?” she laughed. “No, I can use the lift to Ellington.”
“Is that where you’ll live? Ellington?”
“Mmhmm.” She was cutting the lettuce into a wooden bowl. Margaret watched her and took sips from her beer, which instantly started to numb her. If she had any sense, she would stop drinking right now. Instead she kept on, dreamily fixing her eyes on Elizabeth’s quick hands. Elizabeth poured dressing over the salad, slapped out some meat patties, dumped a can of beans into a saucepan. “I’m trying to use up most of the food,” she said. “Then I’ll give what’s left to a guy I work with.”
“Where do you work?” Margaret asked.
“In this handicrafts shop, over a tavern. I wait on customers and stuff. And they stock some of my carvings.”
“Do many people buy them?”
“No,” said Elizabeth. She looked toward the blocks on the daybed. “They keep coming in and picking them up, they say, ‘Oh, I like this type of thing, do you have any more?’ Then I show them more. They like that type, too, but they don’t often buy them.” She laughed. “I’m glad I’m quitting. I never did like waiting on customers.”
“It’s different from being a handyman,” Margaret said.
“Yes.”
“Did you like that job?”
“Oh, yes.”
But she didn’t say anything more about it. She hadn’t even asked how Margaret’s family was, and Margaret didn’t want to bring them up on her own.
The whole of that evening, as it turned out, was centered on packing. Elizabeth packed the strangest things. Five cardboard boxes were filled with broken odds and ends—cabinet knobs, empty spools, lengths of wire, wooden finials. “What are they for?” Margaret asked, and Elizabeth said, “I may want to make something out of them.” She dumped a handful of clock parts into a suitcase, and folded yards and yards of burlap down on top of them. Margaret watched in a beery haze. She was never able to remember much of her visit later—only in patches, out of chronological order. She remembered Elizabeth striding through a jumble of paint cans, munching on a hamburger.