The Clock Winder

  When she had stashed the casseroles away she bent to lift the cheesecloth from the canning kettle. Warm spicy smells rose up. Bubbles stung her nose. Matthew lifted his head and gave her a long, slow, puzzled look from behind his glasses.

  It was late afternoon before her father was finished with his sermon. He pushed away the papers on his desk when she came in. “Every week, the sermon gets harder,” he told her. “Now I wonder why that should be. I always reach a point where I think I’m beaten, I can’t go on, I have finally found a sermon that can’t be written.” He smiled and rubbed his eyes with a long angular hand. His face was made of straight lines; his skin was stretched over fine, narrow bones and his fair hair conformed exactly to his skull. When he opened his eyes they were like blue glass globes, but tired veins were traced across the whites. “I need a vacation,” he said. “I believe it’s showing in my sermons.”

  “Take one.”

  “Well, but there’s always someone needing me, you know.”

  “They’ll manage,” Elizabeth said.

  “Have a seat, will you? Just clear those things off the chair.”

  She handed him what she collected—mimeographed pages and a stack of manila folders—and sat down in the captain’s chair opposite his desk. He spent some time aligning the corners of the mimeographed pages. Then he cleared his throat and said, “Well now, Liz, it seems to me we were going to have a little talk.”

  “That’s what Mom said.”

  “Your mother, yes. Now last week you said, if I’m right—” He slumped in his seat and stared at a letter opener. It always took him some time to get started. In these preliminary stages, before he grew sure of himself, Elizabeth kept feeling she had to help him out. “I said I would look for a job,” she reminded him.

  “Yes. A job.”

  “And that—”

  “And that you were reapplying to Sandhill. I remember. My point is, do you?” He straightened his back suddenly, and stared at her so directly that his eyes seemed to grow square. “Are you planning to go on like this forever?” he asked. “The last thing I want to do is pressure you, Liz, but I never saw anyone live the way you do. Week after week you rise late and lie around the house all day, your appearance is disorderly and your habits are slovenly, you go nowhere, you see no friends, you stay up till all hours watching television so you can rise late the next day—and your mother says you are no help at all.”

  “Did Mom say that?”

  “She has enough to do as it is.”

  “How can she say that? I help out. I did the dishes the last four nights running. Why didn’t she come to me about it?”

  “It’s not only the dishes,” said her father. “It’s your general presence. You’re disrupting an entire household. Now I suggested, if you remember, that you find something to keep you busy until fall term. ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t want to remain idle all that time,’ I told you. Well, it seems I was mistaken. You do want to. Your mother says you’ve taken no steps whatever toward finding a job. You haven’t even left the house, except to walk Hilary. What kind of life do you call that?”

  “I can’t think of any job I’d be good at,” Elizabeth said. She drew a pack of Camels from her shirt pocket, causing her father to wince. “It’s not as if I could type, or take shorthand, or do anything specific,” she said, tamping a cigarette on the edge of his desk.

  “You know what smoke will do to my asthma,” her father said. “Liz, honey. I know all about young people. It’s part of my job. But you’re twenty-three years old. We’ve been waiting twenty-three years for you to straighten out a little. Isn’t it time you shaped up? Don’t you think you’re past the stage for teenage rebellion? It’s just not becoming. Why, I would expect you to be married and starting a family by now. Whatever happened to young Dommie?”

  “He’s engaged,” Elizabeth said. She slid the cigarette back into its pack and studied a double photograph frame on the desk—Polly at eleven, dimpling and looking upward through long lashes; Elizabeth at twelve, an awkward age, with her face sullen and self-conscious and her organdy dress too tight under the arms. “I bet you were a tomboy,” Timothy once said, but she never had been. She had dreamed of being rescued from fire or water by some young man; she had experimented with lipsticks from the five-and-dime until she realized she would never look anything but garish in make-up. She grimaced, and without thinking took the Camel out again and struck a kitchen match on the arm of her chair. Her father buried his face in his hands.

  “I wouldn’t worry,” Elizabeth told him cheerfully. “I’ll find something. And school begins in September.”

  “September!” her father said. “You’ll have rotted away by then.” He raised his head and stared at the photograph. Long deep lines pulled the corners of his mouth down. Was he thinking of when she had been twelve, when he still had some hope she might turn out differently? She suddenly felt sorry for him, and she leaned forward to pat his knee. “Look,” she said. “Maybe I could ask if they need help at the newspaper office.”

  “I already did.”

  “Oh. You did?”

  “I even asked my secretary if she needed an envelope-stuffer. She doesn’t. There is something at the hospital, though—a sort of nurse’s aide, working on the children’s ward—”

  “I wouldn’t like it,” Elizabeth said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Oh, well, seeing all those children with leukemia and things—”

  “There’s nobody in Ellington with leukemia.”

  “And there’s so many things you could cause there, I mean, giving out the wrong paper pill cup—”

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t do that.”

  “Someone did it to me once,” Elizabeth said darkly. “When I was there having my wisdom teeth cut out.”

  “That was only a vitamin, Liz.”

  “If I did it, it would be cyanide.”

  “Dear heart,” said her father, gathering himself together again, “I don’t know where you get all these thoughts, but if you keep on with them you’re going to render yourself immobile. Now, I gather something must have happened up there in Baltimore. All you say is there was a death in the family. Well, it must have been a mighty important death to make you come live here so suddenly, but if you don’t want to discuss it I surely won’t press you. You know, however, that my job has given me right much experience in—”

  “No!” said Elizabeth, surprising both of them.

  “Was the person who passed on very close to you?”

  Passing on made her think of Matthew, not Timothy. She blinked at Matthew’s face, which used to be so warm against her cheek and now made her feel merely cold and shut away.

  “Well, we won’t go into that if it bothers you,” her father said after a pause. “But do you know what I would tell you if you were a member of my church? ‘Young lady,’ I’d say, ‘you need to get outside yourself a little. Join a group. Do volunteer work. No man is an—’ ”

  “Maybe I could be a garbage collector,” Elizabeth said.

  “Please try to be serious a moment. Now, there is one opportunity I haven’t brought up yet. A sort of companion for old Mrs. Stimson’s father. I mention this as a last resort because, frankly, I consider the man beyond need of companionship. His mind is failing. Taking care of him would be a waste of your talents, and I recommend—”

  “Would I have to give him pills?”

  “Pills? No, I don’t—”

  “I’ll take it,” Elizabeth said.

  “Liz, honey—”

  “Why not?” She rose and stubbed out her cigarette in a paper clip tray. “When do I start work?”

  “Well, there is the matter of an interview,” her father said. “We’ll have to let you talk to Mrs. Stimson. But I wonder if you shouldn’t think this through a little more.”

  “Didn’t you tell me to get a job? I’m ready to go any time you are.”

  “All right,” her father said. He pulled a leather address bo
ok toward him and leafed through the pages. “I’ll just give her a ring. Meanwhile, could you change?”

  “Change?” Elizabeth stared at him.

  “Your clothes. Change your clothes, Liz. Put on a nice frilly dress.”

  “Oh,” said Elizabeth. “Okay.”

  When she left, her father was just reaching for the phone with that broad, sweeping gesture that meant he was back to being a minister again.

  She went to her room and changed into the wrinkled beige dress that she had worn home. She slipped her bare feet into ballerina flats and pulled her hair off her face with a rubber band. Then she went out to the living room, where her parents were waiting. They sat side by side on the couch, like a wedding picture. Her mother looked unhappy. “Elizabeth,” she said immediately, “I don’t think this is the job for you at all.”

  “Well, that’s what I’m going to find out,” Elizabeth said.

  “Honey, Mr. Cunningham needs a practical nurse. That’s what you’d be doing. Why, they say they can’t make sense out of half he says, you’d go out of your mind in a week.”

  “It’s only till September.”

  “John?” Her mother looked at her father, waiting for him to help out—a rare thing for her to do. (“Don’t tell your father,” she had once said, “but it’s a fact that from the day they’re born till the day they die, men are being protected by women. Here at least. I don’t know about other parts of the world. If you breathe a word of this,” she said, “I’ll deny it.”) Her father only frowned and smoothed his forehead. “It’s better than wasting away at home,” he said.

  “She’d be more wasted there. Here at least she could—oh, I don’t know—”

  “Walk the dog,” Elizabeth suggested.

  “Oh, Elizabeth.”

  Her mother went back to her mending, shaking her head. Elizabeth and her father left. Behind them, Hilary yelped anxiously and flung herself at a picture window.

  The Stimsons lived in town, in a narrow frame house whose sides were windowless. Wooden curlicues ran under the eaves of the porch. It was Mrs. Stimson who answered the door for them. “Oh, Elizabeth, honey,” she said, “isn’t it nice to see you again. Jerome, you remember—”

  “Yes indeed, yes indeed,” said Mr. Stimson from behind her. “And how are you, Reverend?”

  He stepped forward to shake hands. He and his wife could have been twins—both small and round, middle-aged. When he shook hands Elizabeth’s father laid his other hand on top of Mr. Stimson’s—a habit he had when greeting church members. “Good seeing you, Mr. Stimson,” he said. “How’s that lumbago doing?”

  “Oh, can’t complain. Just a twinge now and then, don’t you know, when the—”

  “Well, let them in, Jerome. Won’t you all come in?”

  Mrs. Stimson led the way into a tiny living room, which had heavily veiled windows and plush furniture with carved legs. Everything wore a settled look, as if it had been there for centuries. Even the seashells and gilt-framed photographs seemed immovable. “Sit down, won’t you?” Mrs. Stimson said. “Elizabeth, I declare, are you still growing? Why I remember when you were no bigger than a Coke bottle and now look. How tall are you, honey?”

  “Five-nine,” Elizabeth said glumly.

  “Hear that?” Mr. Stimson asked her father. “Kind of takes you by surprise, don’t it?”

  “Oh, yes, yes it does. All you have to do is turn your back a minute and—”

  “Now tell me about your boyfriends,” Mrs. Stimson said. “I just know you must have dozens.”

  “What I really came for was to talk about the job,” Elizabeth said.

  She had thrown the conversation out of rhythm. Everyone paused; then her father said, “Yes, honey, but first I just have to ask, I can’t believe my eyes. Mrs. Stimson, are those African violets? Why, you must have the greenest thumb in Ellington!”

  Mrs. Stimson smiled into her lap and made tiny pleats in her print dress. “Oh, pshaw, that’s not anything,” she said. “Well, I do have this love of flowers, I guess you might call it—”

  “Now, Ida, don’t go being modest,” Mr. Stimson said. “She could make an old stick bloom, Reverend, she’s got the damnedest—or, excuse me. But she does have a way with growing things.”

  “I can see that,” Elizabeth’s father said. “It’s a shame that more people don’t have your talent, Mrs. Stimson.”

  “Oh, nowadays, nowadays,” said her husband. “Who takes the time any more? Why, I remember back in ’48 or ’49, over Fayette Road way. Old Phil Harrow, remember him? No kin to Molly Harrow that runs the beauty parlor. He grew melons that could break the table legs, had squash and corn and his own asparagus bed. How many years it been since you see asparagus growing? I believe they make it out of nylon now. And beans. Down to the right, you see—say this rug is Fayette Road—to the right would be the corn, and then between the rows, two or maybe three rows of—”

  “Jerome, he don’t want to hear about that.”

  “Well, I say he does, Ida.”

  “This is all very interesting,” Elizabeth’s father said. His voice had grown deeper and more southern. His face, when he turned toward Mrs. Stimson, had a kindly, faraway smile, as if he were making a mental note to relay to God everything she said. “There is something truly healing about raising little green things,” he told her.

  In the bookcase behind Mrs. Stimson’s head was a line of pastel paperbacks. If she squinted, Elizabeth could just make out the titles. Nurse Sue in the Operating Room, she read. Nurse Sue in Pediatrics. The Girl in the White Cap. Nancy Mullen, Stewardess. Nurse Sue in Training. She veered to an enormous spiny conch shell, and was just deciphering what beach it commemorated when Mrs. Stimson leaned forward and said, in a whisper that stopped all conversation, “Elizabeth, I just know you want some Kool-Aid.”

  “No, thank you,” Elizabeth said.

  “You do, Reverend.”

  “Why, that would be very nice,” said Elizabeth’s father.

  “I’ll just have it ready in a jiffy, then. You want to come keep me company, honey? You don’t want to hear about farmland and all.”

  Elizabeth rose and followed her out to the kitchen. Everything there was spotless, but orange cats had taken over all the windowsills and counters and the linoleum-topped table. “I’m just a fool about cats,” Mrs. Stimson said. “I guess you can tell. Eleven, at last count, and Peaches here is expecting any minute.” She opened the refrigerator door, dislodging the cat sitting on top of it. “We never had the fortune to be parents, don’t you see. I guess the Lord just didn’t will it that way. Jerome says I pour all my love out on the cats, he says I would have made just a wonderful mother if you can judge by how I treat animals.”

  She went from cupboard to sink and then back again, mixing up a packet of grape Kool-Aid. Her small cushiony body was packed into some tight undergarment that she kept pulling down secretly at the thighs. Her dress was a church dress, flowers on a shiny black background, and she wore tiny round patent leather pumps. She must have dressed up as soon as she heard the minister was calling. Her husband, who was in a collarless shirt and work pants, would have grumbled over all the fuss and refused to change. Now Mrs. Stimson kept stopping work to listen for his voice, as if she worried that he would say something inappropriate. “Talk?” she said. “That man could talk the ears off a donkey. Oh, your poor father. Honey, your father is a magnificent human being, don’t you ever think otherwise. And when he called today about finding Daddy a companion I thought, Praise be, Reverend Abbott, if you aren’t—”

  “Well, about that job,” Elizabeth said.

  “Oh, it don’t pay much, I know, but the hours aren’t long and the work is easy, just so you don’t mind elderly men. He’s well-nigh bedridden, you see. Has to be helped to his chair by the window—that’s where he stays. Nice view of the street. I’m gone most of the day, I clerk at Patton’s. Ladies’ wear. I could get you a discount on your clothing. Jerome’s gone too, and now, well, I don’t
feel comfortable leaving Daddy up there alone all day. He’s getting on. I won’t mince words, his mind is failing. Times he’s clear as a bell, other times he thinks I’m Mama who’s been gone these twenty years. Or what’s worse, his own mama. He asks after these names I never hear of, never even knew were in the family. ‘Daddy,’ I say, ‘it’s me, it’s Ida.’ Then he’ll get right quiet. Then, ‘Ida,’ he’ll say, ‘I know I’m slipping. I feel it,’ he tells me. ‘Feels like my mind is flickering, feels like I’m a lightbulb just about to burn out. Ida,’ he says, ‘tell me straight, am I going to die now?’ Oh, it breaks my heart. I love him so. I’ve been looking into those eyes of his for sixty years, and now all of a sudden there’s nobody behind them. You know? Like all he left with me was their color, and he went somewhere else. Then when he clears he gets so scared. ‘Don’t let them take me away,’ he says, ‘when I am off like that.’ ‘You know I won’t,’ I tell him. I never would, I’d sooner they take me. I love him more than ever now that he’s so helpless.”

  She stirred the Kool-Aid endlessly, her little feet set apart on the floor and her face pouched with worry. In the other room her husband said, “We had what they call a railroad apartment, I’m sure you know. Say this coffee table was the hallway. To your left, now, just as you enter, was the living room. No, wait, the coat closet. Then the living room.” Mrs. Stimson sighed and set her spoon down. “I expect you’d like to see him,” she said.