“I thought that was what I was supposed to do,” Elizabeth said.
“All you’re supposed to do is be a help, and it would have helped much more if you’d come in with me as I asked. Taken off that silly hat and come been a comfort in the waiting room.”
“I tend to develop symptoms in waiting rooms,” Elizabeth said. She drove lazily, one arm resting on the hot metal frame of the open window. Her hair whipped around her neck in the breeze, and sometimes she had to reach up and steady her cap. “Isn’t it funny? If I go into a waiting room sick all my symptoms disappear. If I’m well it works the other way.”
“Thank goodness there were no real chauffeurs around,” said Mrs. Emerson. “I would have found you all playing poker, I’m sure. Discussing carburetors.” But she watched the scenery as she spoke, as if her mind were only half on what she was saying. During these last eight months, her life and Elizabeth’s had come to fit together as neatly as puzzle pieces. Even the tone of their voices was habit now—Mrs. Emerson’s scolding, Elizabeth’s flip and unperturbed. Outsiders wondered how they stood each other. But Mrs. Emerson, as she talked, kept dexterously erect in spite of Elizabeth’s peculiar driving, and Elizabeth went on smiling into the sunlight even when Mrs. Emerson’s voice grew creaky with complaints. “How will I manage breakfast now?” Mrs. Emerson asked.
“He say no eggs at all?”
“No more than two a week. A precautionary measure, he said. He kept comparing me to clocks and machines and worn-out cars, and the worst of it was that it all made sense. You keep hearing about the body being a machine, but have you ever given it any real thought? Here I am, just at the stage where if I were a car I’d be traded in. Repairs growing more expensive than my value. Things all breaking down at once, first that bursitis last winter and now my chest grabbing, only it’s worse than with a machine. All my parts are sealed in, airtight. No replacements are possible.”
“That’s true,” said Elizabeth.
She tried picturing Mrs Emerson as a machine. Sprung springs and stray bolts would be rattling around inside her. Her heart was a coiled metal band, about to pop loose with a twang. Why not? Everything else in that house had come apart. From the day that Elizabeth first climbed those porch steps, a born fumbler and crasher and dropper of precious objects, she had possessed miraculous repairing powers; and Mrs. Emerson (who had maybe never broken a thing in her life, for all Elizabeth knew) had obligingly presented her with a faster and faster stream of disasters in need of her attention. First shutters and faucets and doorknobs; now human beings. A wrist dangled suddenly over her shoulder. “See, how knobby?” Mrs. Emerson said. “Nobody ever told me to expect varicose bones.”
Elizabeth touched the wrist and returned it, unchanged.
“Could it be all those pregnancies?” said Mrs. Emerson, sitting back. “Eight of them, Elizabeth. One born dead. People are always asking if I’m Catholic, but the truth is I’m Episcopal and merely had a little trouble giving up the habit of a baby in the house. Could that harm my health?”
Elizabeth drove slowly, changing lanes in long arcs when the mood hit her. Buttery sunlight warmed her lap. The radio played something that reminded her of picnics.
“It doesn’t seem just that I should be getting old,” Mrs. Emerson said.
She removed her gloves and took a cigarette from a gold case—something she rarely did. Elizabeth, hearing the snap as she shut it, looked in the rear-view mirror. “Oh, don’t frown at me,” Mrs. Emerson said.
“I wasn’t.”
“I thought you were. The doctor told me not to smoke.”
“It’s all right with me if you smoke.”
“I plan to stop, of course, but not till I get over this nervous feeling.” She flicked a gold lighter which sputtered and sparked and finally rose up in a four-inch flame that blackened half the cigarette. She took a puff, not inhaling, and held it at an awkward angle with her elbow tight against her side. “What a beautiful day!” she said, just noticing. “It’s nice to be driven places.” And then, after a pause, she cleared her throat and said, “I don’t know if I ever mentioned this, Elizabeth, but I appreciate having you here.”
She had stepped far enough out of the pattern so that Elizabeth had to look at her again in the mirror. “That’s all right,” she said finally.
“No, I mean it. If I talked to my children this way they would get upset. Tell them I’m getting old, they’d feel forced to convince me I wasn’t.”
“Oh, well, getting old is one of the things I’m looking forward to,” Elizabeth said. “I’d like the insomnia.”
“The what?”
“The early-morning insomnia. I could have a lot more fun if I didn’t sleep so much.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Emerson. She took half a puff from her cigarette. “Now, a little worry wouldn’t hurt the other children at all, but don’t mention this new doctor to Andrew. He’s subject to anxiety as it is. Sometimes he calls long distance asking if I’m sure I’m all right, wondering about things so specific you know they must have come to him in a dream, either waking or sleeping: have I had any falls recently? am I careful around blades? Well, nowadays we all know what that means, but even so, I don’t want you giving him any grounds for concern.”
“I don’t even know Andrew,” Elizabeth said.
“Yes, but this weekend he’s coming for a visit.”
“No problem, then. I won’t be here.”
“Oh, but you have to be here!” Mrs. Emerson said.
“I’m going home.”
“What? Home?” Mrs. Emerson fumbled her cigarette, dropped it, and caught it in mid-air. “Not for good,” she said.
“No, I just promised my mother I’d visit.”
“Well, that’s impossible,” said Mrs. Emerson. “I mean it. Impossible. I won’t let you go.”
“I’ve put it off for months now. I can’t do it again.”
“You’ll have to.”
“I can’t,” said Elizabeth, and she crammed her cap down tight on her head and began driving with both hands.
“You never asked me about this. I never heard a word.”
“My weekends are my own,” Elizabeth said.
“Oh, listen to you. You’re as set in your ways as an old maid,” said Mrs. Emerson. She ground out her cigarette and then braced herself as they zoomed away from a traffic light. “I should have known better than to rely on you. You or anyone. I should have let Billy buy me a lingerie shop on Roland Avenue, sat there all day the way my friends are doing, drinking gin and writing up the losses for income tax. Much too busy to see my children. Then they’d come home every week; just watch. They only take flight if you show any signs of caring.”
Elizabeth coasted past little Japanese trees that flowered pink and white on the grassy divide. She kept time in her head to faint music from the radio.
“This is all taking place because I mentioned something about appreciating you,” said Mrs. Emerson. “I am cursed with honesty. And where does it get me?”
“What would you want me for anyway?” Elizabeth asked. “I’ve kept even with all my work.”
“No, you don’t understand. I need a—Andrew and I manage better when there’s a buffer, so to speak. Somebody neutral. His brothers are no help at all. Matthew is always in a daze anyway, and Timothy just flies off somewhere. These two weeks he’s having a run of tests, isn’t that typical? I believe he arranged it that way, so that I’d be left alone with—oh, nothing that I say is what I mean. I love Andrew, sometimes I think I might love him best of all. And he’s so much better now. He’s not nearly so—he doesn’t have that—nothing’s really wrong with him, you know.”
Elizabeth peered into her side mirror.
“Why don’t you say something?”
“Just trying to change lanes,” Elizabeth said, and she leaned out the window. “How come this mirror is at such a funny angle?”
“I can’t put the visit off,” said Mrs. Emerson, “because he likes to come when th
ings are in bloom. He’s already missed most of it. I wonder why Timothy can’t study at home? Talk to him, Elizabeth. Make him change his mind.”
“I’m against things like that,” Elizabeth said. “What if I changed his mind and he stayed home and got run over by a truck? What if the house burned down?”
“What?” Mrs. Emerson passed a hand across her forehead. “I’m not in the mood for an outline of your philosophy, Elizabeth. I’m worried. Oh, wouldn’t you think my children could be a little happier?” She waited, as if she really expected an answer. Then she said, “I suppose you’re going home with someone from a bulletin board.”
“Well, no.”
“You’re taking the train?”
“I’m going with Matthew,” Elizabeth said.
“Matthew?”
“That’s right.”
“Matthew Emerson?”
Elizabeth laughed.
“Well, I don’t know all the Matthews you might know,” Mrs. Emerson said. “I don’t understand. What would Matthew be going to North Carolina for?”
“To take me home.”
“You mean he’s going especially for you?”
“I invited him.”
“Oh. You’re taking him to meet your family.”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth, and flicked her turn signal.
“Does that have any significance?”
“No.”
“This is so confusing,” Mrs. Emerson said.
Which made Elizabeth laugh again. The spring air gave her a light-headed feeling, and she was enjoying the drive and the thought of taking a trip with Matthew. She didn’t care where the trip was to. But Mrs. Emerson, who misinterpreted the laugh, sat straighter in her seat.
“I am his mother,” she said.
“Well, yes.”
“I believe I have some right to know these things.”
Elizabeth braked at a stop sign.
“That would explain Timothy’s strange mood,” Mrs. Emerson said.
“He doesn’t know about it yet.”
“Well, what are you doing? Are you playing off one brother against another? Lately you’ve seen so much of Matthew, but you still go out with Timothy. Why is that?”
“Timothy invites me,” Elizabeth said.
“If you tell me again that you accept all invitations, I’m going to scream.”
“All right.”
“I didn’t want to mention this, Elizabeth, because it’s certainly none of my business, but lately I’ve worried that people might think there’s something easy about you. You can never be too careful of your reputation. Out at all hours, dressed any way, with any poor soul who happens along—and I can’t help noticing how Timothy always seems to have his hand at the back of your neck whenever he’s with you. That gives me such a queasy feeling. There’s something so—and now Matthew! Taking Matthew home to your parents! Are you thinking of marrying him?”
“He never asked,” Elizabeth said.
“Don’t tell me you accept all invitations to marry, too.”
“No,” said Elizabeth. She wasn’t laughing any more. She drove with her hands low on the wheel, white at the knuckles.
“Then why are you taking him home?”
Elizabeth turned sharply into the garage, flinging Mrs. Emerson sideways.
“Elizabeth?”
“I said it had no significance,” Elizabeth said.
Then she cut the motor and slammed out of the car. She didn’t open the door for Mrs. Emerson. She snatched her cap off her head and threw it in a high arc, landing it accidentally on the same rafter where she had found it. Was that how it got there in the first place? She stopped and stared up at the rafter, amused. Behind her Mrs. Emerson’s door opened and closed again, hesitantly, not quite latching.
“Elizabeth?” Mrs. Emerson said.
Elizabeth turned and went out the side door, with Mrs. Emerson close behind.
“Elizabeth, in a way I think of you as another daughter.”
“I’m already somebody’s daughter,” Elizabeth said. “Once is enough.”
“Yes. I didn’t mean—I meant that I feel the same concern, you see. I only want you to be happy. I hate to see you wasting yourself. I mentioned what I did for your own good, don’t you know that?”
Elizabeth didn’t answer. She was climbing the hill so fast that Mrs. Emerson had to run to keep up with her. “Please slow down,” Mrs. Emerson said. “This isn’t good for my chest. If you must play chauffeur, couldn’t you have dropped me at the front door?”
“Oh, is that what they do?”
“It’s just that you seem so—aimless. You don’t make any distinctions in your life. How do I know that you won’t go wandering off with someone tomorrow and leave me to cope on my own?”
“You don’t,” said Elizabeth. But she had slowed down by now, and when they reached the back door she held it open for Mrs. Emerson before she entered herself.
It was one of Alvareen’s sick-days, and she had left the kitchen a clutter of dirty dishes and garbage bags that they had to pick their way through gingerly. Then when they reached the front hall they heard someone upstairs. Slow footsteps crossed a room above them. Mrs. Emerson clutched Elizabeth’s arm and said, “Did you hear that?”
“Someone upstairs,” Elizabeth said.
“Well, do you—should we—could you find out who it is?”
Elizabeth tilted her head back. “Who is it?” she shouted.
“I could have done that,” Mrs. Emerson said.
Then Timothy appeared in the upstairs hall, stuffing something into his suit pocket. “Hi there,” he said.
“Timothy!” said his mother. “What are you doing here?”
“I was in my room.”
“We thought you were a burglar. Well, it’s fortunate you’ve come, I have a favor to ask you.”
She climbed the stairs with both hands to her hat, removing it as levelly as if it were full of water. “Now, about this weekend—” she said.
“I thought we’d been through all that.”
“Will you let me finish? Come with me while I put my things up.”
Mrs. Emerson crossed the hall and entered her bedroom, but Timothy stayed where he was. When Elizabeth reached the top of the stairs he opened his mouth, as if he were about to tell her something. Then his mother said, “Timothy?” He gave one helpless flap of his arms and followed his mother.
Elizabeth went into her own room. She was fitting together a rocking horse that had arrived unassembled, a present for Mrs. Emerson’s grandchild. He might be visiting in July. “Fix it up and put it in Mary’s room,” Mrs. Emerson had said. “I plan to be a grandmother well-stocked with toys, so that he looks forward to coming. In time maybe he can visit alone, they say it’s quite simple by air. You tag the child like luggage and tip the stewardess.” The rocking horse had been packed with the wrong number of everything—too many screws, too many springs, not enough nuts. Elizabeth had spread it on the floor of her room, and now she sat down on the rug to look at the diagram. Across the hall, behind a closed door, Mrs. Emerson murmured endlessly on. When the words were unintelligible she always sounded as if she were reading aloud. It was the positive way in which she put things, without breaks or fumbles. From time to time Timothy’s voice rode over hers, but it never slowed her down.
Elizabeth emptied out a mayonnaise jar full of stray nuts from the basement. She picked up one after another, trying to fit them to the extra screws. “Now, this for this one,” she said under her breath. “This for this. No.”
“I already told you—” Timothy said.
Mrs. Emerson went on murmuring.
“Don’t you ever take no for an answer?”
Elizabeth shoved the nuts aside and went back to the diagram. She already knew it by heart, but there was something steady and comforting about printed instructions. “First assemble all parts, leaving screws loose. Do not tighten screws until entire toy has been assembled.” The author’s voice was absolutely d
efinite. Timothy’s was frazzled at the ends. What was she doing here, still in Baltimore? She should have left long ago. She awoke almost nightly to hear the tape-recorder voice—“Why don’t you write? It’s not that I care for my own sake, I just think you’d wonder if I were dead or alive”—and she lay in bed raging at Mrs. Emerson and her children too, all those imagined ears putting up with such a loss of dignity. She kept promising herself she would leave. But never see Matthew again? Never play chess with Timothy? Lose the one person who leaned on her and go back to being a bumbler? She set a deadline: at the first mistake, the first putty knife through a windowpane, she would move on. That shouldn’t take long. But her magic continued to hold. What she couldn’t solve the hardware man down on Wyndhurst could, and there was always The Complete Home Repairman in her bureau drawer. All she had to do was disappear for a moment and refer to it, like a doctor keeping his patient waiting while he thumbed through textbooks in some hidden room. At this rate she would stay here forever. And always knowing, to the end of her days, that she should be out in the world again.
“You mistake the kind of twins we are,” Timothy said. “Did you think we were Siamese?”