Clock Dance

by Anne Tyler

  Elaine just shook her head.

  Willa made up her mind to ignore her. She drew out her math assignment and set to work, but she was conscious all the while of her sister’s eyes on her. Every now and then she heard a mousy crunching sound as Elaine took a nibble from an Oreo.

  By the time Willa started on her history questions, Elaine had finished both cookies and was just sitting there, every now and then heaving loud sighs that Willa pretended not to notice. Then the telephone rang. “I’ll get it!” Elaine said, but Willa beat her into the kitchen and grabbed the receiver first. “Hello?” she said.

  “Hi, sweetheart,” her father said.

  “Hi, Pop.”

  “Everything okay there?”

  She knew what he was really asking, but all she said was “Yup. I’m doing my homework and Elaine’s just had her snack.”

  There was a pause. Then he said, “Well, I ought to be there before long. I’m just waiting for Doug Law to finish meeting with a student.”

  He was riding with Mr. Law, then. That was better than Mrs. Bellows, who sometimes stayed in her office as late as six or seven. Willa said, “Okay, Pop.”

  “Get ready for the world’s best grilled cheese sandwiches!”

  “Okay.”

  She hung up and turned to Elaine, who was watching her closely. “He says he’ll be home before long,” Willa told her.

  Elaine heaved another sigh.

  Willa looked around the kitchen at the counter crowded with dirty dishes, more dishes in the sink, Elaine’s untouched glass of milk sitting on the table along with the clutter from yesterday. “We should clean up,” she said. “Want to help me do the dishes? Me washing and you drying?”

  “Yes!” Elaine said. She sounded excited about it; ordinarily it was their mother who washed and Willa who dried. “Do I get to wear an apron?” she asked.

  “Well, sure.”

  Willa tied one of their mother’s aprons just under Elaine’s armpits, to keep it from dragging on the floor. Then she filled both sides of the sink with hot water, and Elaine hauled the step stool over so she could reach the counter. After Willa had washed the first plate and dipped it into the rinse water, she set it in the dish rack and Elaine picked it up carefully and dried every little crevice with a towel. She took ages at it, but that was all for the better, Willa figured. She started moving more slowly herself, drawing out the process, and when she’d finished washing the dishes she wiped down every surface, including the stovetop, and she cleared the clutter from the table and returned Elaine’s milk to the fridge.

  “I did good, don’t you think?” Elaine asked when she’d dried the last dish.

  “Yes, you did, Lainey,” Willa said.

  It wasn’t so bad, really, being in charge. She began to imagine it as a permanent situation—just the three of them forever, coping on their own. Why, she and her father between them could keep things going just fine! They both liked systems, and methods. If her mother ever came back, she’d say, “Oh.” She’d look around her and say, “Oh. I see you’re doing better than I ever did.”

  “Know what?” Willa asked Elaine. “I vote we make a dessert.”

  “Dessert!” Elaine said. She started smiling hugely, showing the gap in her teeth. She smoothed her apron down her front. “What kind of dessert?”

  “A cake, maybe, or a pudding. Chocolate pudding.”

  “Yes! Do you know how to do that?”

  “I’m sure we can find a recipe,” Willa said. She was warming to the idea now. As a rule they didn’t have dessert. She had always envied Sonya, whose mother served dessert every night of the week. And chocolate pudding was their father’s favorite—that and chocolate silk pie, but Willa thought a piecrust might be complicated.

  “We’ll keep it a secret from Pop till after supper,” she told Elaine, “and then we’ll bring it out. He’s going to be amazed.” She was moving the step stool as she spoke, climbing up on it to look through the books on their mother’s cookbook shelf. “The Bride’s Kitchen,” she read. “That would have the easiest recipe, I bet.” She brought it down with her and opened it on the counter. Elaine came to stand at her elbow, her eyes on Willa’s finger as it traveled down a column. “Chocolate cake, chocolate milk…” Willa read out. “Chocolate pudding. Two sixty-one.” She flipped to page 261. “Sugar, cocoa powder, salt. Half-and-half, vanilla…uh-oh. Cornstarch.” She didn’t even know what cornstarch looked like, but she went over to check the cupboard where their mother kept the flour and such, and there it was. She set the box on the counter and Elaine said, “Can I stir, Willa? Can I?”

  “Sure,” Willa told her.

  Elaine wasn’t allowed to do anything on the stove yet, so Willa put a saucepan on the kitchen table and had her mix everything there. Of course Elaine made a mess of it, splashing enthusiastically over the rim of the pan, and the cornstarch and cocoa powder sat there in lumps instead of blending in, but Willa said, “Good job, Lainey,” and then she moved the pan to the stove and stirred it herself, more gently, while it was heating.

  But she had no better luck than Elaine had. The lumps remained, even after the mixture began bubbling around the edges. It looked like plain milk with brown-and-white gravel in it. “What’s happening? Is it turning to pudding?” Elaine asked, because she wasn’t tall enough to see for herself. Willa didn’t answer. She raised the heat even higher, and the pan would have boiled over if she hadn’t snatched it up and moved it to a cool burner, but still the gravel remained. “I don’t understand,” she told Elaine. She snapped off the right-hand burner, which was glowing a deep, dark red, and then she stared down into the saucepan.

  “What? What?” Elaine asked.

  “I don’t—”

  Out in the living room, their father called, “Hello?”

  Willa and Elaine looked at each other.

  “Anyone home?”

  “Hide it!” Elaine whispered. “Put it in the fridge.”

  “I can’t! It’s not pudding yet!”

  “What is it?”

  “Whatcha up to, ladies?” their father asked from the kitchen doorway.

  Willa turned to face him, trying to block his view of the saucepan, but he came closer and looked over her shoulder. He was still in his wool jacket and he smelled of winter air. “Cocoa?” he asked her.

  “It’s chocolate pudding,” Willa told her shoes.

  “It’s what?”

  “It’s chocolate pudding, Papa!” Elaine shouted happily. “We made it for your dessert! It was going to be a surprise!”

  “Well, gosh. I am surprised,” he said. “I didn’t know you two could cook. Why, this is really something!”

  “We ruined it,” Willa said.

  “Say what?”

  “It’s all lumpy!” she burst out. “It won’t mix in, and we’ve been stirring and stirring.”

  “Oh, now. Let’s have a look,” he said.

  She moved aside, unwillingly, and he stepped up next to the stove and took hold of the spoon that slanted inside the saucepan. In a testing sort of way, he gave the mixture a stir. “Hmm,” he said. “I see.”

  “It’s a mess!” she told him.

  “Well, not a mess, exactly; it’s just a little…Where’s your recipe?”

  She poked her chin toward the cookbook lying open on the counter, and he went over to check it. “So,” he said, “you mixed the sugar and the cocoa and the salt. Then you stirred in all but a quarter-cup of the half-and-half over very low heat.”

  “Well…”

  “Then in a separate bowl you made a paste of the cornstarch and the remaining quarter-cup of half-and-half—”

  “What? No. We just stirred everything together all at once.”

  “Ah,” he said.

  “Is that why it’s doing this way?”

  “Why, yes, I
believe so, honey.”

  “But I didn’t know!”

  “When you’re trying out a recipe, you’ll find it pays to read all the instructions before you set to work.”

  She went back to staring at her shoes, because she didn’t want him to see the tears in her eyes.

  “First you check the list of ingredients, to make sure you have everything—”

  “I did that.”

  “Well, good, honey. Then you assemble them on the counter—”

  “I did! I was being so careful!”

  “Then you read through the whole process, you see. It’s kind of like what I tell my students when they’re working on a carpentry project. You figure out what to do right away and what to do later, which step ought to come first and which step—”

  She couldn’t stand the way he drilled at her, pushing on so persistently no matter what she said back. She said, “I get it! Good grief. I’m not some dummy.”

  “Well, of course you’re not, sweetheart. This is a learning experience, that’s all. Next time, you’ll know better.”

  “But I knew this time! I lined up all my ingredients…And now look. I wanted to surprise you!”

  “Honey. It doesn’t matter. Believe me.”

  “Doesn’t matter?”

  She raised her eyes and stared at him. She didn’t care now if he saw that she was crying. She hoped he did see. “How can you say it doesn’t matter,” she asked him, “when I went to all this trouble?”

  “No, I just meant—”

  “Oh, forget it,” she said, and she spun on her heel and left the kitchen. She went back out to the dining room and sat down in her chair and picked up her pencil.

  Her father followed, with Elaine a shadow behind him. “Willa, honey,” he said.

  “I’m studying.”

  “Willa, don’t be this way.”

  “Will you let me do my homework, please?” she asked him.

  He waited a while, but she kept her head lowered, frowning steadily at her notebook, and finally he went back to the kitchen. Elaine stayed there a moment longer, watching her, but then she turned and left too.

  Willa drew a fierce black line through her last history answer.

  * * *

  —

  For supper they had grilled cheese sandwiches with peas. Willa ate silently, keeping her eyes on her plate, but Elaine and their father talked all through the meal in way-too-bright voices. Elaine told their father about the rabbit that Dommie Marconi had brought in for show-and-tell, and their father said, “Speaking of which, eat your peas, little rabbit,” and Elaine popped a single pea in her mouth and tried to wriggle her nose up and down as she chewed, which made their father laugh. It was disgusting.

  Willa said, “May I please be excused?”

  “You didn’t like your sandwich, honey?” her father asked, because she’d left half of it on her plate.

  She said, “I’m not hungry,” and stood up and pushed her chair back.

  Her father and Elaine were the ones who cleared the table. Willa heard the chinking and scraping from where she sat in the dining room, and then she heard water running. So they must be washing the dishes, too.

  Her father had not said one word of thanks for how she’d washed the dishes from earlier.

  By now she had finished her homework, but she went on sitting over her books because they were her excuse for not helping out in the kitchen. Then her father came to the doorway and said, “Care for a game of Parcheesi?”

  “It’s my bath night,” she said stiffly.

  “What, so early?”

  She didn’t answer. Keeping her face turned away from him, she stood up and left the dining room and climbed the stairs to her room.

  In the mirror on the closet door she looked streaky-faced and rumpled. Her frizzes were sticking out crazily all over her head, and her eyelashes were spiky from tears.

  She yanked the closet door open and her reflection vanished. She took her pajamas from their hook and went to the bathroom to run a bath.

  Sitting up to her armpits in hot water, watching her fingers turn smocked-looking, she started wondering if something terrible had happened to her mother. Maybe she had left intending to come right back but then had wrecked the car. Would anyone know to call them? She might be lying in the hospital unconscious.

  Or dead.

  Why hadn’t that thought occurred to her father? Oh, there was just something wrong with this family! Willa was the only one who was normal.

  When she’d finished her bath she went straight to bed, although it wasn’t even eight o’clock and she didn’t feel the least bit sleepy. She lay in the dark with her arms straight by her sides and stared up at the ceiling. Downstairs she heard her father talking and her sister giggling. A bit later she heard her sister climbing the stairs and she closed her eyes. Elaine hesitated in the doorway and then crossed to her bed and undressed by the light from the hall. Willa could make out the shape of her through her squinched eyelids; she saw Elaine hopping about as she put one foot and then the other into her pajama bottoms. When she was done she picked up her Little House book from the nightstand and went back downstairs, and then Willa heard their father’s voice rumbling indistinctly as he read aloud.

  He came upstairs with Elaine when they’d finished their chapter. Willa had just enough time to turn on her side with her face to the wall before he walked in, and she listened to him tuck Elaine into bed and wish her a good night. Then he came over to Willa’s side of the room and whispered, “Willie? Wills? You awake?” But she didn’t answer, and finally he went away.

  His footsteps thudding down the stairs sounded so humble and disappointed that Willa had the feeling something was tearing apart in her chest.

  * * *

  —

  When she woke, the morning sun was slanting across her quilt, and the house smelled of bacon and toast, and she heard quick, light footsteps tripping up the stairs. “Rise and shine, duckies!” their mother said as she arrived in the doorway.

  “Duckies” was what she called them when she was in a good mood, and to Willa it always seemed that she said it in a ducklike voice—fat-sounding and happy, like the voice women used on the radio when they wanted to show they were smiling. Willa couldn’t help feeling cheered any time she heard it, but this morning she stayed flat on her back even so.

  Elaine, though, sat up and cried, “Mommy!”

  This was really annoying, because ordinarily she said “Mom.” But “I’ve missed you so much, Mommy!” she cried, and she jumped out of bed, and when Willa sat up herself Elaine was wrapping her arms around their mother’s waist and beaming up at her, and their mother was smiling and hugging her. She was wearing her rosebud housecoat, so she must have come home at some point during the night. “Where were you, Mommy? Where’d you go?” Elaine asked, but their mother just said, “Oh, hither and yon,” in an airy tone, and then she flashed a smile at Willa and said, “Good morning, sleepyhead.”

  “Morning,” Willa said in a low voice.

  “I can fry your eggs, or scramble them, or poach them. What’s Your Highness’s preference?”

  Which was how she often did after flare-ups—pretending nothing had happened. Never mind that she’d walked out on them without a thought; it didn’t mean anything, she seemed to be saying. Heavens, just get over it! She could come back to find them dead in their beds, Willa thought, and all she’d say would be “Goodness! What’s all this about?”

  Although a few times, the really awful times (the time she slammed a serving spoon across Willa’s cheekbone and gave her a black eye, the time she threw Elaine’s lovey doll in the fire), she apologized like a heroine in a movie, sweeping them into her arms and crying, “Dear hearts, can you ever forgive me?” and burying her face in their necks and weeping hot tears. In the old days that had made Will
a weep too, and cling to her and blurt out how scared she’d been and how of course she forgave her; but now it embarrassed her to remember that. Now she stayed stiff in her mother’s arms on such occasions and turned her face to one side, and eventually her mother would draw back and say, “Oh, you’re a cold one, Willa Drake.”

  Still, this morning her mother was looking so fresh and attractive, with the rosebuds bringing out the pink-and-white of her skin, and the house was smelling so cozy, and the world was back to how it should be. So Willa said, finally, “Scrambled, I guess.”

  “Scrambled it is! Lainey? For you?”

  “Scrambled too, Mommy,” Elaine said in her stupid baby voice, and when their mother caroled “Coming right up!” and turned to leave, Elaine went with her, even though she was still in pajamas.

  Then Willa climbed out of bed and spent a long while washing and dressing, and clamping her hair down with two barrettes, and staring at her own serious face in the bathroom mirror.

  By the time she got downstairs, the others were halfway through breakfast—the three of them in the dining room, as if it were Sunday. The table was set with the good china and they were even using the toast rack, with the toast standing up in a row like the teeth of a comb. “Morning, honey,” her father said.

  “Morning,” Willa said, not looking at him. She slid into her seat.

  “Somebody took her time,” her mother said. Which made Willa send her a sideways glance, checking the set of her mouth. Was it held a little bit crooked, the top lip not quite aligned with the bottom lip because she was gritting her teeth? But no, her lips were soft and curved, and when she rose to pour Willa’s father more coffee she touched him lightly on the shoulder before she sat down again.

  The scrambled eggs were lukewarm by now but they still tasted good, with a little cheese stirred in just the way Willa liked, and the bacon was nice and crisp with no fatty white spots. She helped herself to three strips.

  “I guess I should let Doug Law know I won’t be needing a ride,” her father was saying, and her mother said, “Oh, I meant to tell you. I think the car seems to be having this teensy little problem.”