Clock Winder - Anne Tyler [99]
“Mary,” said Margaret, “what did you say to her?”
“Just asked if she could help out with Mother a while. She said no.”
“Did you say it would only be for a short time? Did you tell her we’d just need her till Mother’s herself again?” “She didn’t give me a—”
“Did you say all we wanted was a nurse, pure and simple? No other problems dumped on her? Did you tell her we’d let her go back afterward to her old life?”
“Well, of course we’d let her go back,” said Mary. “Why should I bother telling her that?”
“You did it all wrong, then,” Margaret told her.
“I did the best I knew how.”
“We should call her again and give her a limit. Six weeks, say. Tell her six weeks is all she’d—”
“Margaret,” said Andrew, very quietly, “I’d like to state a preference, please.”
“You get sick and you can state your preferences,” Margaret told him. “This time it’s Mother that’s sick. Shall I call Elizabeth now? Matthew?”
“Babcock,” said Matthew.
They stared at him.
“I just remembered Emmeline’s last name. Babcock.”
“You’re right,” Mary said.
But Margaret said, “Emmeline’s not the one Mother asked for.”
“She’s much superior, though,” Andrew said.
“Emmeline wouldn’t even come! I’m sure of it! She never forgave Mother for firing her like that. Can’t I call Elizabeth?”
It was Matthew who settled it. “No,” he said. “I’m too tired. I don’t feel like any more complications.”
They finished their supper in silence. Even Andrew wore a defeated look.
At night they watched television. Mrs. Emerson had awakened but refused to eat. She stared at the ceiling while her children watched westerns they had no interest in, and when the picture grew poor no one had the strength to do anything about it. The frames rolled vertically; their eyes rolled too, following the bar that sliced the screen. “I’m sorry,” Mary said finally. “I seem to be sleepy. I don’t know why.” She kissed her mother good night. “Well, Susan will be up so early in the morning—” Margaret said, and she left too. Matthew followed shortly afterward. Andrew stayed behind, gazing at them reproachfully, but before Matthew was even in his pajamas he heard Andrew’s feet on the stairs.
Matthew slept in his old room on the second floor. He associated the room only with his early childhood; in his teens he had moved to the third floor with the others. The fingerprints on the walls here reached no higher than his waist, and the scars were from years and years ago—crayon marks, dart punctures, red slashes of modeling clay rubbed into the screens. Even the bed, which was full size, seemed hollowed to fit a much smaller body. He sank down on it and stretched out, without bothering to turn down the blankets.
There was some disappointment far in the back of his mind, a dull ache. Elizabeth. Had he really wanted her to come, then? But even thinking of her name deepened his tiredness. He pictured all the strains she would have brought—his own love and anger, knotted together, and Andrew’s bitterness. “I hate her,” Andrew had once told him. “She killed my twin brother.” “That’s ridiculous,” Matthew had said, but he had had no proof of it. He had spent years wondering exactly how Timothy’s death had happened; yet the one time Elizabeth seemed likely to tell him, down in Mr. Cunningham’s kitchen, he had been afraid to hear. Now he felt grateful to her for keeping it to herself. The worst strain, if she came, he thought, would be Elizabeth’s own. At least she had been spared that. Then he relaxed and slept.
When he woke it was still dark, but he heard noises downstairs. He switched on a lamp and checked his watch. One-thirty. Someone was running water. After a moment of struggling against sleep he rose, felt for his glasses, and made his way down the stairs. It was Mary in the kitchen, heating something in a saucepan. She looked blowsy and plump in a terrycloth bathrobe, with metal curlers bobbing on her head. “What are you doing here?” he asked her.
“Mother wants hot milk.”
“Have you been up long?”
“All night, off and on,