Clock Winder - Anne Tyler [89]
“Boating?” Margaret asked. There was no water anywhere, but she couldn’t believe that Elizabeth would mention voting at a time like this.
“Voting. Voting,” said Elizabeth. “Polly’s husband said I ought to.” She sighed and trailed a hand out the window. “There were all these people lined up. Shopkeepers and housewives and people, just waiting and waiting. So responsible. I bet you anything they wait like that every voting day, and put in their single votes that hardly matter and go back to their jobs and do the same chores over and over. Just on and on. Just plodding along. Just getting through till they die. You have to admire that. Don’t you? Before then I never thought of it.”
“I admire you,” Margaret said.
“What for?” said Elizabeth, absently. “But when I was waiting to vote I thought, Wouldn’t you think I could do that much? Make some decisions? Get my life in order? Let my parents breathe easy for once? Well, I tried, and you see what happened. Just before the finish line I think no, what if I’m making a mistake? Sometimes I worry that everyone but me knows something I don’t know: they set out their lives without wondering, as if they had a few extras stashed away somewhere. Well, I’ve tried to believe it, but I can’t. Things are so permanent. There’s damage you can’t repair.”
“But it took a lot of courage, doing what you did today,” Margaret said.
“Flashes of courage are easy,” said Elizabeth, with her mind on something else. Then suddenly she spun around and said, “What’s the matter with you? What are you admiring so much? If I was so brave, how’d I get into that wedding in the first place? Oh, think about Dommie, he’s always so sweet and patient. And my family doing all that arranging, and people coming all that way for the wedding. But Dommie. He’s never said a mean thing in his life, or done anything but hope to be loved. What am I going to tell him now?”
From far back in Margaret’s mind, where she hadn’t even known it existed, came the picture of Dommie’s face as he watched Elizabeth leaving him. His eyes were blank and stricken; his mouth was closed, unprotesting. He hadn’t yet realized what was happening to him. He unfolded before her eyes as complete and as finely detailed as if the glance she had given him had taken whole minutes, as if she had known him for years and had memorized that picture of him line by line and dreamed of it every night. She blinked and widened her eyes, tightening her hands on the wheel as she drove.
“Well, shoot, Margaret,” said Elizabeth. “It’s weddings you cry at, not the escapes from them.”
“So,” said Melissa, settling herself in the car. “How’d the wedding go?” “It didn’t.”
“It didn’t? What happened?”
“She got to the altar and said, ‘I don’t,’ ” said Margaret. She laughed, surprising herself. “Well, it really wasn’t funny, of course.”
“Sounds funny to me,” Melissa said. She frowned, briefly interested. Then she said, “Well, anyway, this patchwork skirt woman. She’s a nut. I’m sorry I ever came down. Do you know what she said to me? I said, ‘Look, you’re getting twenty dollars for these things. I’ll give you twenty-five apiece,’ I said, ‘if you’ll supply me with a dozen now and all you can make from now on.’ ‘Twenty-five?’ she said. ‘Well, I don’t know, there’s something fishy about that.’ You’d think I was trying to sell her something. ‘Look,’ I told her …”
Margaret gazed through a traffic light. She was thinking of Jimmy Joe, who might be sauntering down the sidewalk just a block from here. His collar would be turned up, he would be whistling beneath his breath. When he saw her, he would stop and wait. She reached out and touched his wrist, which was frail and bony. “Jimmy Joe,” she said, “I’m sorry I left you the way I did.” He smiled down at her and nodded, and then he walked on. If he ever came back it would be dimly, for only a second, in the company of others whose parts in her life were finished.
“ ‘How do I know I