Clock Dance by Anne Tyler
As the three of them were heading to the car they saw Callie crossing her yard to her own car, tripping along on her little hoof feet. She waved to them and called, “How’s Denise?”
“We’re on our way now to bring her home,” Willa said.
“Well, tell her I said hey, hear? Does she need anything from the Giant?”
“I don’t think so, thanks.”
Callie trilled her fingers and got into her car. Cheryl said, “We ought to buy Callie a plant for taking care of me.”
“Oh, what a nice thought,” Willa said.
“I told Mama that and she said, ‘Right,’ but I’m worried she’ll forget.”
“We could do that for her,” Willa said. “Can’t we, Peter?”
Peter just said “Mmph” and unlocked the car doors; Denise’s car was old enough to require an actual key. When Willa was settled in front and Cheryl in the rear, Cheryl leaned forward to say, “Callie didn’t like taking care of me, though, so I think it should be a not very expensive plant.”
“In fact it should be a more expensive plant,” Peter said as he slid behind the wheel. “If taking care of you had been something she liked, we’d let her do it for free, like Willa here.”
Willa turned to gauge Cheryl’s reaction to this and found herself practically nose to nose with the child, who was studying her from beneath her lashes with an expression that seemed oddly bashful. “He’s right,” Willa told her. “I would pay you for the privilege.”
Cheryl gave a little giggle and sat back to fasten her seat belt.
The trip to the hospital was vaguely familiar by now—the stream of shabby front porches, the kiddie pools and Big Wheels littering the yards, the signs for Tamaqua’s House of Hair Weaves and Fix-It Fred. It was already getting hot, and after a mile or two Peter sought out Cheryl’s face in the rearview mirror and asked her to crank her window up because he had the AC on. She obeyed without interrupting herself; she was talking about this idea she had for starting a pet library. “You know how people can’t always own an animal,” she said. “Like, they’re traveling salesmen or something and they have to be away from home a lot. So they would come to the pet library and borrow a nice cozy dog or cat for a couple days at a time.”
“Well, good luck with that,” Peter told her. “Think of the liability issues.”
“Huh?”
“What if a dog bites someone? That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
“I’d make people sign something first. They’d have to promise not to sue.”
“A waiver,” Peter said.
“Right.”
Willa said, “I’m more concerned about the pets’ side of things. How do you know the borrowers will treat them well?”
“They would have to give us three references,” Cheryl said promptly. “And if someone tells us, ‘Well, I don’t know, this guy’s a little bit of a loser,’ we would turn the guy down.”
“Losers wouldn’t worry me,” Willa said. “Sometimes it’s the losers who need a pet the most, and would be nicest to them.”
“Pay no attention to Willa,” Peter told Cheryl. “She’s one of your bleeding-heart types.”
“Well, I know that,” Cheryl said.
Willa laughed. For a moment, she felt she was back in the days when her sons were still chatterboxes, many years ago.
The hospital lot was fuller this time, perhaps because it was the weekend, and Peter would have had to park in the auxiliary lot at the rear. He said, “I’ll just let you two out in front and wait for you to bring her down.”
“You’re not coming in?” Willa asked. “It could be a while, you know.”
“That’s okay. I’ll catch up on my e-mail.”
She decided not to push it. She was being extra tactful since yesterday. “Just don’t blame us if Denise’s doctor hasn’t stopped by yet,” she told him as she got out.
But the doctor had come and gone, as it happened. Denise was waiting for them in a wheelchair, wearing street clothes—a white denim miniskirt and a halter top that tied at the back of her neck—and one wedge-heeled sandal. Her injured leg was stretched out on the wheelchair’s elevated footrest, and a pair of crutches stood propped behind her back, the short metal kind with arm cuffs. “What kept you?” she asked immediately, although it was not much past ten. “I’ve been waiting forever!” She reached over to press the call button dangling from a cord at the head of her bed, and a few seconds later a voice said, “Yes?”
“My ride’s here,” Denise shouted. She dropped the call button and turned to Cheryl. “Did you bring that tote?”
“Oh,” Cheryl said.
“Cheryl! Honestly.” She told Willa, “I asked her to bring a tote bag for my stuff.”
She meant the pile on the foot of her bed—magazines and puzzle books, the cookie bin, her slippers and her other shoe, a beige vinyl purse. Willa said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I should have thought of that myself. We’ll ask the nurse for one.”
“It’s not like the ambulance guys waited while I packed a suitcase,” Denise said.
Cheryl was opening drawers now and slamming them shut, then opening a skinny closet. On the closet floor was a turquoise plastic bedpan in a transparent plastic bag, and she stripped the bag off efficiently and took it over to the bed, where she started filling it with Denise’s belongings. Willa was impressed, but all Denise said was, “I reckon I could take the bedpan too, if I really, really wanted. They told me they throw everything out once a patient leaves here.”
“Well! How wasteful,” Willa said.
“Yeah, that’s the modern world for you. There you are!” she said to the nurse who was walking in.
“Leaving us so soon?” the nurse asked. She was a rosy-faced little redhead in lavender scrubs that clashed violently with her coloring. “Did they give you all your prescriptions?”
“Just the one; it’s in my purse,” Denise said. She told Willa, “They wanted me to take pain pills but I said, ‘I can’t take pain pills! I’d barf.’ ”
The nurse clucked and bent to release the wheelchair brakes. “Where’s your car parked?” she asked Willa.
“It’s waiting at the main entrance.”
They set off down the hall, Cheryl swinging her bag with a crackling sound. At the elevators, the nurse punched a button. “Get a load of what they gave me to walk with,” Denise told Cheryl. She jerked her head toward the crutches. “Aren’t they awful? They make me feel like an old lady. I wanted the long, classy wooden kind, so people would think I’d been skiing.”
“In the summertime?” Cheryl asked.
“It can happen.”
Their elevator arrived, and the nurse pivoted Denise’s wheelchair and hauled it in backward. The only other occupant was an old man in a hospital gown that didn’t cover his knees. He studied Cheryl for a moment and then asked, “How you doing, young lady?”
“I’m good,” Cheryl told him.
“Got your hands full, I see,” he said, nodding toward Denise.
“I’ll say.”
Denise glared at her, and Cheryl gave her a smirk.
When they reached the main floor, the nurse pushed the wheelchair across the lobby and out the automatic doors. Peter emerged from the car and came around to help her load Denise into the rear, while Willa put the crutches and Cheryl’s bag in the trunk. The whole time that Denise was maneuvering into the back seat, she was saying “Ack!” and “Damn, that hurts” and “Watch it!” She landed with an explosive breath, and the nurse held her injured leg out straight while she slid backward until she was occupying the length of the back seat. Then Cheryl climbed in after her and lifted Denise’s feet and settled them in her lap. “Thank you,” Willa told the nurse before she got into the front, and the nurse said, “Good luck!” Willa wondered if she said that to everyone, or only to people with crabby re
As Peter started the car, Denise said, “God only knows how long before I can drive myself again.”
“Well, it’s your left leg,” Peter said, “and this is an automatic transmission, so you could start right away, I should think.”
“Right away! Not a chance! I’ve got this big huge cast on! I’ve got no place to put it! How do you figure that?”
No one answered her.
* * *
—
Denise’s arrival on Dorcas Road was quite a production. She had to rely on her crutches for the trip from the car to the house, and she kept staggering and wobbling and collapsing against Peter, who was struggling gamely to hold her up. Willa tried to help, but she only got in the way and at one point nearly knocked one of Denise’s crutches out from under her. “Durn!” Denise said, panting. “That durn physical therapist! I saw him one time, once. How do they think I’ll work these things?”
They had progressed only a few feet when Erland appeared, wearing his elf hat and a T-shirt riddled with holes, but all he seemed capable of was hovering around the edges wringing his hands and saying, “Oh, crap…oh, crap…”
“Stop that,” Denise told him, and he said, “Sorry, Denise…” and then someone else called, “Need any help?”
It was a fortyish man in khakis, crossing from the yard just beyond Callie’s. Denise told Willa, “Great. Hal,” in a flat tone of voice, and Willa glanced at him curiously, because this must be Elissa’s jilted husband.
“I’ve got this,” he announced reassuringly. Denise sent Willa a wry little grimace. He took hold of Denise’s free arm, and he and Peter between them managed to keep her upright as she made her way toward the house. But when they reached the porch steps, she gave a groan.
“I don’t think I can make it,” she said.
Peter said, “Well, let’s think, now…”
“Wait up,” someone commanded from behind them.
Cheryl said, “Sir Joe!”
Willa turned to watch him approach. Today he did have leather pants on, maybe because it wasn’t a workday. “Stand aside,” he ordered Peter and Hal, and he strode forward and scooped Denise into his arms and carried her easily up the steps, leaving the two men holding a crutch apiece. Denise looked back at the others over his shoulder, her expression comically startled.
“Door,” he said.
Cheryl sprang to unlock the door for him, and Airplane popped out like a jack-in-the-box but then, catching sight of Denise, wheeled and raced back inside and watched intently as Sir Joe carried her in. Sir Joe clopped through the foyer in his heavy boots, turned left and went into the living room and deposited her on the couch. Denise said “Oof!” and Sir Joe stepped back and dusted off his hands in a businesslike way.
Cheryl said, “How’s she going to get to her bedroom every night?”
She was still in the living-room doorway, hugging Denise’s plastic bag to her chest. The others had gathered around—Peter and Hal, Willa, Erland, and now Ben Gold, shambling up behind them to say, “She’s not. There’s no way she can safely manage that flight of stairs.”
“Well, I was wondering,” Willa said.
“But where am I going to sleep?” Denise wailed.
She was sitting on the couch with both legs extended in front of her, Airplane sniffing her cast inquisitively. When Ben came forward to pick up her feet and swing them around so that she could lie down, she said “Ow!” and Ben said, “Cheryl, go fetch your mom a couple of pillows.”
Cheryl raced off, still clutching the plastic bag. Ben told Denise, “We’ve got to rent you a hospital bed.”
Denise said, “I am not having a hospital bed.”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, you know. Plenty of people rent hospital beds.”
“I don’t care; it would still depress me,” Denise said.
“Even if we put it out of sight in the dining room?”
“You’re not going to change my mind about this.”
“Also,” Ben said, “we should think about a commode.”
“Ick!”
“Just for a couple of weeks or so, till you get a walking cast.”
“A couple of weeks!” Peter said, looking distressed.
Denise said, “I am sleeping here on the couch, and I am making do with the powder room.”
“Or,” Sir Joe said, “I’ll come over every night and carry you up the stairs.”
“Absolutely not,” Ben said.
“Why can’t he?” Cheryl asked. “He could do it, easy!” She was back in the living room now, hugging a pillow under each arm and gazing adoringly at Sir Joe.
But Ben said, “The last thing we need is to drop her and break her other leg.”
Sir Joe shrugged. Then he turned his attention to Peter. “Hey there,” he said. “Sergio Lopez.”
“Peter Brendan,” Peter said. “And this is my wife, Willa.”
“Her I know,” Sir Joe said, cocking an appreciative eyebrow at her.
“If we put the hospital bed in the dining room,” Ben was continuing doggedly, “people coming to visit wouldn’t even see it.”
“I would see it,” Denise said. “It would make me feel like an invalid.”
“You are an invalid,” Cheryl told her. “Deal with it.”
Denise scowled at her. “The way this kid acts,” she told Ben, “you’d think mothers get shot all the time.”
“They do, actually,” Ben said. He sighed. “Okay, have it your way.”
“Gal knows her own mind,” Sir Joe told him. He winked at Willa.
Meanwhile, Hal turned to Peter. “You’re Sean’s dad?” he asked.
Willa stiffened. Peter said, “Stepdad, actually.”
“I’m Hal Adams. Happens Sean ran off with my wife.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Peter said pleasantly.
Willa followed suit; she held out her hand and told Hal, “I’m Sean’s mother.”
Hal hesitated, but then he shook her hand. He had sunken eyes and a long-chinned, morose face not unlike the face of Mrs. Minton’s basset hound. It looked as if it had been clamped between two sliding doors at some point.
Denise was letting herself relax, finally, her head resting on one pillow and her injured leg on the other. “One good thing,” she told the ceiling, “is there’s no PA system here. No ‘Dr. Smith, please come resuscitate this dead guy.’ I feel like I could maybe actually sleep. So, yeah!”
This seemed to be the cue for her neighbors to start taking their leave. They trickled one by one into the foyer, Hal hanging back a moment to give Denise a tentative pat on her bare toes. (Denise jerked away irritably.) “You just phone if you need me, now,” he told her. “Night or day! I can be over in a jiff.” And from the foyer Erland said, “Me too, Denise!”
Denise just said “Huh.”
Ben asked Willa, “Did they give her any prescriptions to fill?”
“One,” Willa said. “I’m going to send Peter for that.”
“Let’s see what they’ve got her on; maybe I have samples.”
Willa looked around for Denise’s purse, and then she asked Cheryl, “Where’s that bag you brought in?”
Cheryl was trailing Sir Joe and Erland to the front door. She glanced back distractedly and said, “Oh, um, maybe upstairs?” So Willa went to fetch it herself. “Are you going to visit again?” Cheryl asked Sir Joe. Willa didn’t catch his answer.
As she crossed the upstairs hall, she heard Peter talking in the guest room. She hadn’t noticed that he’d left the living room. “Let’s try for Monday morning,” he was saying. “Anything nonstop, although we’ll take what we can get.”
She went to the doorway and said, “Peter?” He was pacing between the two beds, holding his cell phone to his ear. “Not Monday!” she said in a piercing whisper. “
“What? Wait a sec, Rona.” He lowered his phone and frowned at Willa.
“And Denise will still be needing us, I’m almost sure of it,” she told him.
“If she needs us, we’ll just reschedule,” he said. He didn’t address the Sean issue.
“But then why even make the reservation yet?” she asked.
Although she knew this was the wrong strategy. She should never go at him head-on. He said, “Willa, I’m on the phone. We can discuss this later.” He put the phone back to his ear. “Sorry, Rona. You were saying?”
Willa went on standing there, but he didn’t look her way again and so finally she turned and continued to Denise’s room. The plastic bag lay at the foot of the bed; she rummaged through it for Denise’s purse. As she crossed back through the hall Peter was saying, “Right, let’s go for that one.”
Ben was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Willa took the prescription from Denise’s purse and handed it to him. “Good,” he said, adjusting his glasses to study it. “Just your everyday antibiotic. We can save Peter a trip to the pharmacy.”
“Well, thank you,” she said.
Right then, though, she didn’t feel like doing Peter any favors at all.
7
Denise said, “Doesn’t it seem to you like Cheryl is acting kind of coldhearted about my injury?”
“No, not at all,” Willa told her. “I don’t think that’s true in the least.”
She was remaking the bed on the couch, smoothing the sheets that Denise had rumpled during the night while Denise, newly returned from an arduous trip with Willa through the foyer to the powder room, sat in the armchair with her crutches propped beside her.
“Okay: she’s standing out in the yard,” Denise said, “and she hears this big loud bang. She looks over and her mother’s sitting flat on the ground with her leg bleeding. How is that not traumatic? But oh, no. Oh, no. Cheryl is just like, ‘So can I spend the night at Sir Joe’s, then?’ ”