The Clock Winder Read Free

enough, believe me. Children and friends and boyfriends and neighbors, all just having a grand time.” She was staring vaguely at a wooden rocker, although the girl was already halfway down the steps with her own load. “Ask anyone in these parts, they all know my children,” she said. “ ‘It’s the Emersons,’ they’d tell each other, when we’d go sailing past in the car with everybody sitting in everybody’s lap. I am Pamela Emerson, by the way.”
    “I’m Elizabeth Abbott,” said the girl.
    She had stopped on the grass. She waited while Mrs. Emerson dragged the rocker down the steps. Mrs. Emerson said, “Abbott? It’s funny, I can’t remember seeing you here before.”
    “I haven’t
been
here. I come from North Carolina.”
    “Oh, I have cousins in North Carolina,” said Mrs. Emerson. “Not to know personally, of course. Are you just visiting?”
    “I’m going to see these people about a job.”
    “A job. Goodness,” Mrs. Emerson said, “and here you are moving furniture. Do you usually go at things in such a roundabout way?”
    Elizabeth smiled. The whole of her face smiled. “Always,” she said.
    “I just hope you won’t arrive late, that’s why I asked. The last thing I’d do is interfere but I have daughters, workingdaughters, and I can’t help telling you: first impressions are all-important. Promptness. Neatness.”
    She was looking at Elizabeth’s shirt-tails, but Elizabeth didn’t notice; she had moved off now with her chairs. “They don’t know to expect me, anyway,” she called back. “I saw their ad on a bulletin board in a thrift shop. I like getting jobs from bulletin boards. What they want is a mother’s helper, and I need to find out if that means housework or babysitting. Babysitting wouldn’t be good at all. I don’t like children.”
    “Is that right?” Mrs. Emerson said. She was trying to remember if she had ever heard anyone else admit to such a thing. She puffed along with the rocker, taking short rapid steps to keep up. “Now, I would have thought you were still in school.”
    “I am. I’m earning money for my senior year at college.”
    “In September?”
    “I’m taking a year off.”
    “Oh, that’s terrible!” said Mrs. Emerson. They had reached the garage by now. She set down the rocker to stare at Elizabeth, who seemed undisturbed. “Interrupting like that! It’s terrible. Why, one thing may lead to another and you may never get back. I’ve known that to happen.”
    “It’s true,” Elizabeth agreed.
    “Couldn’t you get a scholarship? Or a loan?”
    “Oh, my grades were rotten,” she said cheerfully.
    “Still, though. It’s no good to have to stop something in the middle. What does your father do, dear?”
    “He’s a minister.”
    “Nothing wrong with
that
. Although a lot depends on the denomination. What denomination is he?” “Baptist.”
    “Oh.”
    “If this job is babysitting,” Elizabeth said, “I’ll just haveto find me another bulletin board. But the friend that dropped me here said Roland Park was the likeliest neighborhood.”
    She stacked her chairs inside the garage and reached for the rocker. Mrs. Emerson said, “Do you know the people’s name? The ones you’re going to see?”
    “O’Donnell.”
    “O’Donnell. Well, I’ve never heard of
them
before. If it’s people I don’t know they’re generally young. New young people buying up these old houses for a song and moving in with children. But
children
aren’t so bad. What is it you have against them?”
    “I don’t like people you can have so much effect on,” Elizabeth said.
    “What? Goodness,” said Mrs. Emerson.
    They climbed back up the hill. It seemed to have grown steeper. Mrs. Emerson’s palms were sore, and two fingernails had broken, and her stockings were in shreds. “If only my boys were home,” she said. “If only I’d thought of this sometime when they were visiting. They’d have been glad to help. But I just never did, and