The Clock Winder

  “Fit tab A into slot B, making sure that …”

  “We’re not even identical. Not even close to identical. We were an accident of birth!”

  Elizabeth sighed and dropped the diagram. She rose to circle her room, twice, and then she padded out the door and down the stairs. In the kitchen, where she had meant to stop for milk, the clutter seemed like an extension of the argument above. She went through without slowing and continued on down to the basement. There everything was dim and silent, flickering like a pool of water in the sunlight that sifted through dusty windows. Dark, battered doors closed off the old servants’ rooms, with transoms above them that reminded her of school corridors and church fellowship halls. In the central part were tangled metal cast-offs, bicycles, a workbench, hunks of monster household appliances. There was a cabinet door laid across the zinc laundry tubs, with two huge canning kettles on top of it. Elizabeth and Matthew were making wine together. They had split the cost of the ingredients and shared the work, but it was up to Elizabeth to stir up the dregs once a day. She took a long-handled spoon from a nail, rolled the cheesecloth off the first kettle and dipped the spoon deep inside. A yeasty, spicy smell rose up, with bubbles that churned and snapped in a film across the surface.

  “Where will we get the grapes?” Matthew had asked, and Elizabeth said, “Oh, grape wine we can buy. Just look in this recipe book—tomato wine, dandelion wine. Let’s make something different. Is there such a thing as mushroom wine?” And she had laughed at his expression. He was slow, thorough, too serious; she provided the lightness for him. What answering glimmers she found in him she nourished along, and then he would surprise her by laughing too and losing that dark, baffled look on his face. He was the only Emerson she knew of who was short of money. She seized on that as a base for all the flights she took him on—painting, wine-making, installing a shower in his cracked old bathtub. Once they mixed up a week’s supply of something called sludge that they found in a cookbook for the poverty-stricken. With Timothy it would have ended in silliness; sludge might have been rolled into balls and flung all over the kitchen. Well, that was fun too, of course. But Matthew enjoyed it in his own way, following a plan systematically with that knotted gaze he turned on everything, giving his slow smile when it was done.

  They had made a batch of orange wine and another of wheat. They had chopped oranges, lemons, and raisins endlessly, baked wheat on cookie sheets in the oven until a musty golden smell filled the kitchen, all while Mrs. Emerson was out at a meeting. (She might not take to having a brewery in her basement, and they had never bothered about a government permit. Matthew was all for sending off for one but Elizabeth was too impatient to begin.) They had lugged the kettles down the stairs and filled them with buckets of water and sacks of sugar. “It may turn out too sweet,” Matthew said gravely. “It may,” said Elizabeth. They never talked much. When he found out she was planning a visit home he said, “I’ll miss you,” and Elizabeth, instead of answering as she would to someone else (“Miss me, what for? I’m only going for the weekend”), said, “I’ll miss you too. Want to come with me?” “That would be better,” he said, “and you won’t have to ride with strangers.” He was forever protecting her, but not in that fretful way that wore on her nerves. He lent her his rain-hat, and scooped her hair out of the way when she shrugged herself into her jacket. On walks through the woods to his house he would let her go single-file, unhampered by hand-holding or the troublesome etiquette of briars held back for her and roots pointed out; but once inside, in a living room splintery with cold, he might come up behind her to stand motionless and silent, his arms folded around her and his chin resting on her head, warming the length of her back.

  “Any time the basement door is open there’s the strangest smell coming up,” Mrs. Emerson once said. “Have you noticed?” She thought it was a new kind of detergent Alvareen was putting in the washing machine. Elizabeth never told her anything different.

  She twirled the spoon dreamily, resting her head against a shelf, listening to the fizz of the bubbles. Up in one corner a spider spun a web between two waterpipes, but the strands looked like another slant of sunlight. Leaves that had sifted through the grate rustled in the window-well, as dry and distant as all the past autumns that had dropped them there.

  Footsteps crossed the kitchen. “Elizabeth?” Timothy called.

  “Down here.”

  He came to the doorway above the basement steps; she saw the darkening of the patch of light on the floor. Then he snapped a switch on, paling the sunbeams. “Where?” he said.

  “Here by the tubs.”

  While he descended the stairs she uncovered the second kettle and began stirring it. It had a burned, toasty smell. She was afraid they might have overbaked the wheat. She lowered her head and breathed deeply, inches from the wine. “Ah,” said Timothy. “Eye of newt. Toe of frog.” But the scene upstairs must still be hanging over him; his voice was as heavy as the hand he laid on her shoulder. “What is it, anyway?” he asked.

  “Just wine.”

  “You handymen certainly have some odd chores.” He moved toward the window, and peered up at the spider in its web. “I came to see if you wanted to take a drive. Have lunch at my place or something.” He poked at the web and the spider scuttled higher, a fat brown ball with wheeling legs. “Are you scared of spiders?”

  “Nope.”

  He turned away, hands back in his pockets. “I hear you’re going home,” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  “But just for the weekend.”

  “That’s right.”

  Elizabeth straightened up. She hung the spoon on its nail, pulled the cheesecloth back over the kettles and knotted the strings that held it there. When she turned to go, she found Timothy just taking something from one pocket: a pistol, bluish-black and filmed with grease. “What on earth,” she said. He shifted it in his hands, as carelessly as if it were a toy.

  “Evil-looking, isn’t it?” he said. “I found it in Andrew’s room.”

  “Is it real?”

  “Well, probably. How can you tell? I would break it open but I’m scared of the thing.”

  “Put it down, then,” Elizabeth said. “Stop tossing it around like that, will you?”

  “Me? Two-Gun Tim?” He set his feet apart like someone in a western, one thumb hooked in the pocket of his slacks, and tried to twirl the pistol by its loop but failed. When it dropped they both sprang away and stared at it, as if it might explode spontaneously. Nothing happened. Timothy bent to pick it up, holding it this time by the barrel, firmly, the way his mother must have taught him to hold scissors. “Ah, well,” he said.

  “What would Andrew want with a gun?”

  “He collects them.”

  “Well, that’s a very silly hobby,” said Elizabeth, and she led the way to the stairs, making sure to keep out of the pistol’s aim.

  “Oh, I don’t mean collects. I don’t mean as a hobby. I mean he collects them like a boat collects barnacles; they flock to him. What are you laughing at? I’m serious. When Andrew takes a walk he finds guns under bushes, when he goes to the attic he stumbles over them, when he answers the doorbell it’s a mailman with the wrong package, and what’s in the package? Guess. He’s never bought a gun in his life, he wouldn’t think of it. He’s the gentlest soul you can imagine. He spends all his days in the New York Public Library doing research for professors, but when he comes out to go home what does he find in the litter basket? A gun among the orange peels, handle up. It’s crazy.”

  “He wouldn’t have to accept them,” Elizabeth said.

  “Why not? It’s fate.”

  “Then what does he do with them?”

  “Oh, stows them away.”

  They were in the kitchen now. Timothy had forgotten all his caution; he dropped the gun in his pocket, carelessly, and then gave the pocket a pat. “We don’t mention this to Mother, you understand,” he said. “I come pistol-hunting before every visit, just to be on
the safe side. Not that he would do anything. I don’t want you thinking—oh, there was a sort of accident once, someone got shot through the foot. But you’re an outsider here. You don’t know what Andrew’s really like. He felt terrible about it. He was just—”

  “Oh, stop, I’m not interested,” Elizabeth said, although up till then she had been. She had the sudden feeling that troubles were being piled in front of her, huge untidy heaps laid at her feet, Emersons stepping back waiting for her to exclaim over the heaps and admire them. She headed out the back door, toward the toolshed. Timothy followed. When he came up beside her she saw that one of his pockets hung heavier than the other. She thought of an old Sunday comic strip: Dick Tracy’s crimestopper’s textbook, warning against men with lopsided overcoats. “You be careful you don’t get yourself arrested,” she told him. Then she reached inside the toolshed for a hoop of hose, closing the subject.

  But Timothy said, “The worst is getting rid of the damn things. You’d never believe how hard it is. The last one I sent out with the garbage, under the coffee grounds. Elizabeth?”

  “What,” said Elizabeth. She backed across the lawn, feeding out coils of hose.

  “I cheated on a test.”

  Another trouble, added to the heap. “Did you?” she said.

  “This is serious, Elizabeth.”

  “Well, why tell me about it?” she said. “It’s always something. Tomorrow it’ll be something else. Go tell a professor, if it bothers you so much.”

  “I can’t,” Timothy said. “I’ve already been caught.”

  Elizabeth looked over at him.

  “I was just walking past his desk, after it was over. He said, ‘Emerson, I’d like to have a word with you,’ and I knew, right then. I knew what he would say. It felt as if my stomach had dropped out.”

  “What will happen?” Elizabeth said.

  “I’ll be expelled.”

  “Well, maybe not.”

  “Of course I will. Those guys are tough as nails. And you know something? I knew that answer I cheated on. I didn’t have a shadow of a doubt about it. I wrote it down, and I turned to my left, and I read off the other guy’s answer just as cool as you please. It was like I forgot where I was, suddenly. I forgot the customs of the country. I just wanted to see if Joe Barrett knew the answer too.”

  “Maybe if you told them that,” Elizabeth said.

  “Not a chance. It wouldn’t help.” He kicked at the hose. “Come on, will you? It’s getting to be lunchtime.”

  “The grass is drying up. If I don’t—”

  “Look,” said Timothy. “I’ve been walking around by myself ever since this happened. Can’t you just drop everything and come with me?”

  “Oh well. All right. Let me go and tell your mother.”

  “Call from my place. Don’t go back in, she already knows something is wrong. Oh Lord, this is going to kill her.”

  “I doubt it,” said Elizabeth.

  But she didn’t go back in, even so.

  Timothy’s apartment was downtown, in a dingy building with a wrought-iron elevator. All the way up to his floor, with the cables creaking and jerking above them, Timothy stood in the corner staring at his shoes. His face reflected the bluish light, giving him a pale, sweaty look. His silence was heavy and brooding. But once they entered his apartment, where tall windows let the sun in, he seemed to change. “Well now,” he said. “What shall we eat?” And he went off to the little Pullman kitchen while Elizabeth settled herself on the couch. His apartment had a smothered look. It was curtained, carpeted, and upholstered until there were no sharp corners left, and in the evenings carefully arranged lamps threw soft, closed circles on the tabletops. Elizabeth felt out of place in it. She shucked off her moccasins and curled her legs beneath her, but everything she looked at was so padded and textured that she couldn’t keep her eyes on it long. Finally she closed them, and tipped her head back against the couch.

  “Here,” said Timothy. “Corned beef on rye. That all right? Cold beer.”

  “Well, thanks,” said Elizabeth, sitting up. She took the plate and peered between the slices of bread. “Corned beef is what we had two weeks ago. Is this the selfsame can?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Can you get food-poisoning from canned corned beef?”

  But Timothy, in a chair opposite her with his sandwich halfway to his mouth, stared into space.

  “Timothy.”

  “What.”

  “Look, it’s not so bad. Find something else to do.”

  “Like what, for instance,” he said.

  “Well, I can’t tell you that.”

  “Why not? Say something, can’t you? Give me a treatise on reincarnation, convince me I’m full of lives and can afford to throw one away. Convince my mother too, while you’re at it.”

  “Well, it is a point,” Elizabeth said.

  “Ha.” He took a swig from his beer can. “Women have it easy,” he said. “You can work or not, nobody minds. Men are expected to be responsible. There’s no room for variation.”

  “Maybe you should make a big switch. Lumberjack? Fur-trapper? Deck-swabber?”

  “I could answer one of those DRAW ME ads on the matchbooks,” Timothy said. He laughed.

  “You could be a state hog inspector.”

  But then he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his sandwich still untasted. “I can’t seem to picture a future any more,” he told her. “There’s nothing I hope for. No one I want to be. Yet I started out so promising, would you believe it? In grade school they thought I was a genius. No one but Andrew even knew what I was talking about. I invented weird gadgets, I played chess tournaments, I monitored Stravinsky on an oscilloscope that I rebuilt myself. Did you know that?”

  “No,” said Elizabeth. “I don’t even know what an oscilloscope is.”

  “Why is everything you say so inconsequential? Can’t you understand when something serious is going on?”

  But it was hard to take him seriously when he looked so much like the child he had been talking about. There was one of him in every classroom Elizabeth had ever sat in—chubby and too clever, pale and scowling, wearing an old man’s suit and cracking elderly jokes that made his classmates uneasy. She could picture him scuffing around the playground with his hands in his pockets while the others chose up softball teams; his name would come up by default, at the end, and he would play miserably and dodge the ball when it crossed the plate and then hit some pathetic, ticked-off foul and fling his bat in a panic and run toward first base anyway, hunched and desperate, until the hoots and curses called him back. “Oh, aren’t you glad you’re not still there?” she asked suddenly, for in spite of the traces of that child on his face he had at least grown into his suit and his friends had grown into his jokes. He had passed the age for softball and learned when not to sling long words around. But Timothy, off on some track of his own, merely blinked.

  “Elizabeth,” he said. “Don’t go home this weekend. Let’s take a trip together.”

  “Oh, well, no.”

  “We could start off for anywhere! Drive without a plan. Stop when we felt like it.” He paused, having just then heard her answer. “What’s the matter with you? You love sudden trips. Are you worried what people might think?”

  “I just—”

  “I never thought you would be, somehow.” He looked down at his sandwich, and began tearing pieces out of it and dropping them on his plate. “We would have separate rooms, of course,” he said.

  “No, you see—”

  “If that’s what’s bothering you.”

  “No.”

  The sandwich had turned into a pile of shreds. “Maybe you think—we wouldn’t have to have separate rooms,” he said. “I just meant—I don’t know what you expect of me. What do you want, anyway? What am I supposed to be doing? Just tell me, can’t you? I don’t know why I should be making such a mess of saying this.”

  “Oh well, that’s all right,” Elizabeth said hel
plessly. What she wanted to say was, “Of course I’ll come.” When would she learn not to plan ahead, when always at the last minute she felt tugged by something different? “I’m sorry,” she said. “I really would like to.”

  “Or take me home with you.”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  “Why not? If you want I could stay in a hotel, I wouldn’t be bothering your family then. Would that be better?”

  “You see, Matthew is coming,” Elizabeth said.

  He stared at her.

  “I invited him.”

  “But why Matthew? Why does he always keep popping up like this?”

  “I like him,” she said. And she decided she’d better go on with what she had planned to tell him earlier: “While we’re on Matthew, Timothy, I thought I should say something about—”

  “You are going to turn into a very objectionable old lady, Elizabeth. You know that. The opinionated kind. ‘I like this, I don’t like that,’ every other sentence—it’s fine now, but wait a while. See how it sits on people when you’ve lost your looks and you’re croaking it out.”

  “That is something to think about,” said Elizabeth, glad to change the subject.

  “Call up Matthew. Tell him I’m the one that needs to go.”

  “Timothy, I’ve been up since six o’clock this morning and every single minute there’s been some Emerson dumping crisises on me.”

  “Crises,” Timothy said into his beer can.

  “Picking and bickering and arguing. Raking up all these disasters and piling them in front of me. Well, I’ve had my quota. I don’t want any more. I’m going to call your mother, and then I’m going off for an afternoon on my own and not coming back till supper.”

  “Wait, Elizabeth—”

  But she left. She went into the bedroom, sat down on the edge of the bed, and lifted the telephone from the table. Then she couldn’t remember Mrs. Emerson’s number. All this chaos was disrupting her mind. There were tatters of old arguments in the air around her, and she had a restless, hanging-back feeling as if there were something she had not done well. She listened to the dial tone droning in her ear and watched Timothy pace back and forth in the living room with his eyes averted, his face pink and rumpled-looking. Then Mrs. Emerson’s number flashed before her, and she leaned forward to dial.