Clock Dance

by Anne Tyler

had made it feel solider and warmer. Also

Should just say "solid and warm".

“Thinking time,” their father called it. Their mother would shout at him and stamp her foot, or slap Willa in the face (such a stinging, shameful experience, being slapped in the face—so scary to the person’s eyes), or shake Elaine like a Raggedy Ann, and then she would grab her own hair in both hands so that even after she let go of it,

Yikes.

Except his smile was a pleasant, relaxed-looking smile. “Amanda!” he said. “Try Lady Macbeth. Who else would serve rabbit on Easter Sunday?”

Lol!

Ian, their sixteen-year-old, was insisting that he needed a year off from high school. Willa had occasionally heard of students taking a break between high school and college, but never during high school. And he didn’t even have a plan!

Lol the dreaded Gap Year

It was a sunny, warm May afternoon, that unvaryingly perfect weather of southern California. Willa was tired of sunshine. She missed the seasons; she longed for a thunderstorm or even a nasty winter blizzard where everyone stayed inside curled up cozily with a book.

I would miss it too

“I haven’t for quite some time,” he said. “I wrote to Reverend Sands and told him I was resigning on grounds of disbelief.” “Disbelief! What made you stop believing?” Willa asked. “Well, I’ve never believed, actually.” “You haven’t?”

But what helped more was to walk down a crowded sidewalk sometimes, or through a busy shopping mall, and reflect that almost everyone there had suffered some terrible loss. Sometimes more than one loss. Many had lost their dearest loves, but look at them: they were managing.

I remember doing this after Lydia died

but…it always seemed to me we had a perfectly okay marriage.

"perfectly okay marriage" lol

Willa wasn’t sure how he planned to protect her from random gunfire, but she appreciated the fact that he wanted to.

Lol

Not even Peter was brash enough to inquire about the grandparents on Cheryl’s father’s side. He just sent Willa a look. She knew what he was thinking: this was all her fault. They were trapped.

Here's my opinion: Bye, Peter. Get a flight home and leave Willa there

salt…“I can’t believe she doesn’t have kosher salt!” he had fumed. “I knew I’d have to buy juniper berries, but it never occurred to me I should get kosher salt too, for God’s sake.”

Hes such a tool

“In any case,” he said, “isn’t it just that you miss being a mother? I can understand that. But look at it this way: now you’ve got me. The two of us are free now to enjoy our golden years.”

Gag. Not much consolation.

Anyhow,” she said, because she felt she was being sidetracked, here, “if you really insist on leaving tomorrow, maybe I’ll just stay on by myself.”

Thanks Be to God she finally figured this out!

“It may be that Sean will offer me a ride,” she said, “but I thought I should be prepared in case he doesn’t.” “Why not just ask him?” Denise said. “Oh…”

Indeed

Most people would automatically know how to drive back to the place they’d started out from, but Willa wasn’t one of them. She’d written all the turns in reverse on the other side of her instruction sheet, and now she went over them in detail before she started the car.

My kind of gal

Without taking her eyes from the screen, Denise said, “Sean and Elissa could care less if we went to a movie.” Couldn’t care less, Peter would have corrected her.

Lol

It was sad, Willa thought, that an elderly woman’s longtime home should be merely the starter house for a young couple.

“Oh,” Willa said, “I always think it’s a good sign when a man likes cats. It shows he doesn’t feel the need to be in constant control of things.”