Free The Clock Winder by Anne Tyler Page B

didn’t seem to notice.
    It was Ian Schmidt who opened the door—a classmate of Timothy’s. He said, “Oho! We thought you weren’t coming. This is Elizabeth, isn’t it? We met one night at a play.”
    “That’s right,” Elizabeth said.
    He showed them into a living room papered with travel posters. Guests sat around in clumps, not yet at ease, and a small, square baby was being passed from lap to lap. “That’s Christopher Edward. Our son,” Ian said. “Today’s his six-month birthday.” He was so proud of that that he kept them standing in the doorway, fully wrapped and shedding snow-flakes, while he scooped the baby up and brought him over. “Say hello, Christopher, say hello.” The baby stared, poker-faced, at Elizabeth. She stared back. “Hmm,” she said finally, and began tugging her boots off. Lisa Schmidt appeared to show her where to put her jacket. As they passed each group of guests she stopped for introductions, and Elizabeth noddedgravely once the names were said. The profile view of her, with her chin-strap dangling and her stiff, cold hands clutching her purse, sent a sudden stab of love through Timothy that left him feeling tired and puzzled. He bent toward the baby politely and let him clutch an index finger.
    The party was a small one, only five couples. Others had been kept away by the storm. People sat on floor cushions and canvas butterfly chairs, with spaces between them that seemed reserved for absent guests. There were spaces in the conversation, too. When Elizabeth had returned from a back room, stripped of her jacket and helmet, a silence had fallen. Timothy still stood in the doorway with Ian, carrying his coat draped over his arm. He ignored Elizabeth (let her manage for herself, if she was so independent) and she settled right away beside a boy with a mustache. “I rode down here with you last fall,” she said. “You gave me a ride from Philadelphia, remember?”
    The boy brightened; up till now he had been glumly snapping his watchband. “Oh, Mike’s friend!” he said. “I didn’t know you with your hair up. How is Mike?”
    “Fine, I guess.”
    “Did you find a job all right?”
    “The very first day,” Elizabeth said. “I miss Philadelphia, though.”
    “Take it from me, there’s nothing to miss about Philadelphia.”
    “I thought there was. I might never have left, if they hadn’t fired me.”
    Timothy wanted to hear who had fired her, and for what, but now other people had pounced on the subject of Philadelphia. Conversation started darting around the room again, with Elizabeth at the center of it looking perfectly comfortable.She didn’t need Timothy at all. He went off to find a drink.
    The Schmidts were serving hot mulled wine. They were on a budget. Timothy sniffed gloomily at the kettle on the kitchen stove, and then he filled two mugs. He would have preferred something stronger. He had what he thought of as the medical-student syndrome—overworking and overdrinking, alternately, studying all one night on Dexedrine and drinking all the next to rid his mind of that heavy feeling. Hot mulled wine wasn’t much good for getting drunk on. Standing by the stove he drank one of the mugs straight down, refilled it, and went back to the living room. The boy with the mustache had returned to the subject of Mike. Whoever Mike was. “If he would only put that Honda out to pasture,” he was saying. “It’s held together with paper clips. But you know Mike, he’s too soft-hearted.” Timothy handed Elizabeth a mug and passed on by.
    He went to sit beside a blond girl whose turn it was to hold the baby. He was trying to think of her name; she had come to cook him dinner twice last spring. Now she had been passed on to another medical student, and probably at the next party she would come with still another. She turned the baby to face him and said, “Say hello, Chrissy, say hello.”
    “He did, he did,” Timothy said. Jean, maybe. Or Betty. One of those