Before it became an argument, Peter escaped. He went out to the kitchen, where he found George playing with a locust on the floor and Gillespie nursing the baby, sitting peacefully with her blouse unbuttoned like a broad golden madonna. The roast was cooling on the counter, but she didn’t seem in any hurry. “Where’s P.J.?” she asked.
“Gone out.”
“Well, I wish you’d go get her. Supper will be on as soon as I’m through here.”
“Maybe we could start without her,” Peter said. A picture of never finding P.J. at all flashed through his head. He might jump in his car now and leave alone, light-hearted and full of a pure, free joy. Then hours later P.J. would come straggling in, with grass stains on the back of her shorts. “Where’s Petey?” “He’s gone.” “Well,” she would say, trying to remain dignified, acting as if this were all according to plan—“I believe I’ll be getting along too now. I just loved meeting you all.” He imagined her out on the street thumbing rides, with her purse hitched over her shoulder and her bare legs flashing like knife blades in the darkness. Yet how could he be sure that, halfway to New Jersey, he wouldn’t start feeling lonely and remorseful? Then too, he could stay here. This house could expand like an accordion, with its children safe and happy inside and Gillespie to take care of them. Why not?
Gillespie hoisted the baby on her shoulder and went to the refrigerator for a carton of milk. She poured a saucer full and set it out on the back porch. “Kitty kitty?” she called. Then she returned and checked the biscuits in the oven, and after that she placed the baby on the other breast. Jenny screwed her face sideways, searching for the nipple. Gillespie hummed beneath her breath—a juggler of supplies, obtaining and distributing all her family needed. But when she caught Peter watching her, she said, “I’d wish you’d go find P.J., Peter.”
“I’d rather not,” he said.
“Emersons,” said Gillespie, but without much force. She brushed back a wisp of Jenny’s hair. In this position, with her eyes lowered, with her mouth curved for the baby, she looked younger than he had expected. He had pictured her as some kind of family retainer, ageless, faceless, present for as long as he could remember, although in fact she hadn’t arrived till he was in college and she was only a few years older than he was. Now she stuck out a moccasin to stop the locust’s progress across the floor, and when she grinned at George she looked like another child. “You better not let that in where Grandma is,” she told him.
“I’m going to teach him how to fly,” George said.
“Don’t you think he already knows?”
But George was wandering out of the kitchen now, toward the front door. Peter frowned after him.
“They think I’ve made a mistake,” he told Gillespie.
Gillespie stayed quiet. The baby, intent on nursing, rolled her eyes up to study him.
“Maybe they’re right,” he said. “You shouldn’t hope for anything from someone that much different from your family.”
“You should if your family doesn’t have it,” said Gillespie.
Then she rose, with the baby clinging like a barnacle, and went to check the oven again.
Peter stood still a moment, watching her, but she seemed to have nothing more to say to him. Finally he went out of the kitchen, down the hallway, avoiding the rest of the family. He passed so close that he could hear his mother in the living room. “Why are my children always leaving?” she asked. Peter stopped, afraid for an instant that it was him she was speaking to. “Why are they always coming back?” Andrew asked her. “Scratching their heads and saying, ‘What was it you wanted me to do?’ ” Mrs. Emerson murmured something Peter couldn’t understand. Then a newspaper crackled, drowning out their voices, and under the cover of its noise he went out the front door and eased it shut behind him.
The dry, bitter smell of locusts hung in the dark, but they were silent now. The only locust to be seen was the one on the porch which George flung out, caught, and flung once again, never causing more than a buzzing sound and a dazed whirring of wings. “Bye, fellow,” Peter said. He rumpled George’s hair.
“Bye,” said George, without surprise. He caught the locust again and looked at Peter absently, as if, every day of his life, he saw people arriving and leaving and getting sidetracked from their travels.
Peter went out to his car, looked up and down the dark street, and then got in and started the engine. He rolled slowly and almost soundlessly, peering at everything his headlights touched. After a few hundred feet he stopped and leaned over to open the door. “Want a ride?” he asked.
“Might as well,” said P.J.
She climbed in. When she slid over next to him her skin felt cooler than the night air, but the hand she laid on his knee was warm and she warmed the length of his side. By the time they had reached the main road again, she was asleep with her head in his lap.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ANNE TYLER was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941, but grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She graduated at nineteen from Duke University and went on to do graduate work in Russian Studies at Columbia University. Anne Tyer has written numerous novels. Breathing Lessons was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. She is a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. She and her husband, Taghi Modarressi, live in Baltimore, Maryland.
Anne Tyler, The Clock Winder
(Series: # )
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