Clock Winder - Anne Tyler [96]
Margaret had come, but she had had to bring the baby. She only visited the hospital when Mary was home to babysit. And Andrew had arrived on the bus the day before, still pale and shocked over the news. “She’s fine, she’s going to be fine,” they told him. But he barely heard. In the hospital room he prowled nervously, stopping every now and then to lay a hand on his mother’s forehead, and finally they had sent him home in a cab. “But I want to be with her,” he kept saying. “Hush, now,” Mary told him, “you’ll only make her worse, going on like this.”
“Can I come back this evening?”
“She’ll be home day after tomorrow, Andrew.”
“Who will stay with her later on? Are you all going to leave her alone again?”
“No, no.”
“I’ll stay. I’ll come here to live, I’ve been meaning to for years.”
“No, Andrew.”
But who would stay with her? It was on all their minds. The girls had to go home soon. Matthew was planning to spend his nights there for a while, but his mother needed someone in the daytime. “Where is Alvareen?” Mary asked. No one had thought to wonder before. They looked at the house, which seemed stale and dusty. Not even Alvareen would have let it get that way. Had she quit? They asked Mrs. Emerson, who merely closed her eyes. “What’s her last name?” Mary said. “Do you have her phone number? We want her to come look after you.”
“No,” said Mrs. Emerson.
“No, what? You don’t have her number? Or you don’t want her to come.”
“I don’t want—”
“You don’t need a nurse, exactly,” Mary said.
“No.”
“Is there someone you can think of?”
Mrs. Emerson raised her good hand to her lips and frowned. She sighed, apparently about to give up, and then just as she was turning her head away she said, “Gillespie.”
Mary looked at Matthew, puzzled. “Gillespie?”
“Gil—” Mrs. Emerson struggled to a half-sitting position. She looked irritated. “Gillespie,” she said.
“Elizabeth,” Matthew said suddenly.
“Elizabeth? The handyman?”
Mrs. Emerson sank down again. Mary raised her eyebrows at Matthew.
“She’d be good if she’d do it,” Matthew said. “I saw her taking care of a sick old man once.”
“But you don’t think she’d do it,” Mary said.
“I don’t know.”
“You know better than anyone else.”
“What makes you say that?” Matthew asked. “Do you think I keep in touch with her or something?”
“Well, excuse me,” said Mary.
“Sorry,” Matthew said. “Well, give it a try, if you want. I don’t know what she’ll say.”
Mary tracked down Elizabeth’s parents right then, from the phone in the hospital room. She had the operator place the call person-to-person to Elizabeth. While she waited Matthew stood at the window with his back to the room, pretending to be looking at the view. He wound a venetian blind cord around his fist. “Lots of visitors today,” he told his mother. Mrs. Emerson made some small, impatient gesture that rustled the sheets. Then Mary tensed, listening. “I see,” she said. “Well, place the call there, then. Thank you.” She cupped the receiver and turned to Matthew. “They say she lives in Virginia now. They gave us the number to call her at work—some kind of children’s school.”
“School? Elizabeth?”
“They said—” She uncupped the receiver. “Yes? All right, I’ll hang on. They’re trying to reach her now,” she told Matthew.
But Matthew didn’t stay to hear. He had a sudden urge to get away, as far as he could from Elizabeth and even from the phone that connected her. “Think I’ll buy a cup of coffee,” he said, and he bolted from the room while Mary stared at him. Once he was outside he took several deep breaths. He pressed the elevator button, and then when it didn’t arrive immediately he pushed out the swinging door beside it and started down the stairs.
Elizabeth would never come. He didn’t even want her to. He had stopped thinking about her long ago. The hole she left, after the last time he saw her, had made him realize that he wasn’t happy living alone; and he had conscientiously taken out several other girls in that first empty year. One he had grown serious about. He had considered