Clock Dance

“To Willa, he seemed perfect just the way he was, and she loved him more than any other person in the world. He was funny and kind and soft-spoken, and he never got grumpy like Sonya’s father or belched at the table like Madeline’s. But ‘Oh,’ their mother would say to him, ‘I know you! I see right through you! All “Yes dear; no, dear,” but butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth.’”

This quote reveals Willa’s admiration for her father’s passive, gentle nature. She cannot understand why her father’s calm, collected demeanor so infuriates her mother. Willa’s mother’s bitter exclamation shows her resentment of his cold and unemotional attitude, painting a picture of their tumultuous marriage. We see here that Willa will grow up to be like her father—she has yet to understand that his passivity is deeply toxic.

“She unbraided Elaine’s hair and brushed it, with Elaine squirming and wincing away from her, and braided it again. As she snapped the second rubber band in place she felt capable and efficient, but then Elaine said, ‘They’re not right.’”

In their mother’s absence, Willa has taken responsibility for helping Elaine get ready for school. As she finishes braiding Elaine’s hair, a task she’s proud of, she’s met only with disappointment from Elaine. Instead of appreciation or gratitude, Willa is criticized. This is the first of many thankless tasks Willa takes on, developing the theme of The Need for Appreciation.

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

After making an effort to clean the kitchen and failing to make pudding for her father, Willa feels defeated. She wants to help and take care of her family, despite being far too young to actually be expected to do so, but she’s gotten no thanks for her work. This quote is a pointed acknowledgement of this lack of appreciation—Willa has noticed that no one has thanked her for her work in her mother’s absence, but she refuses to point this out or to ask to be valued.

“‘I’m guessing the guy was just some kind of joker,’ he said. And then, to Willa, ‘After all, sweetie, you had only his word for it that there even was a gun. Guy was probably just sitting there bored out of his skull, and he thinks to himself “I know what: I’ll have myself some fun with this snippy little college girl.”’”

After Willa is held at gunpoint on her first plane ride, Derek dismisses Willa’s experience, demeaning her as “snippy” and “little” to minimize what she says. Derek isn’t concerned about Willa, and Willa fails to stand up for herself. Her submissiveness and fear of confrontation allows others to walk all over her.

“He had no idea how much he’d asked of her, suggesting she give up her work with Dr. Brogan. The discovery of language had been her great epiphany in college.”

Willa muses over Derek’s marriage proposal and his request that she leave college and move with him to California. Willa has a scholarship and a carefully planned study track; abandoning her academic passion would be a great sacrifice for her. Nevertheless, Willa goes along with what Derek wants, sacrificing her career ambitions for his happiness.

“She had tried her best to be a good mother—which to her meant a predictable mother. She had promised herself that her children would never have to worry what sort of mood she was in; they would never peek into her bedroom in the morning to see how their day was going to go. She was the only woman she knew whose prime objective was to be taken for granted.”

Willa was deeply affected by her mother’s wild mood swings, but her response is equally problematic. As a mother, Willa embraces complete self-effacement, asking nothing of her sons in a misguided effort not to disrupt her children’s lives. Willa enjoys being a caretaker and wants to be taken for granted by her loved ones—but she cannot understand that everyone wants to feel needed and that not allowing her children to feel like they can support her damages their relationship just as much as her mother’s impulsive rages damaged theirs. Later, we see that Willa is completely estranged from her children, who have taken her for granted to the point of not caring about her feelings and desires.

“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. They were putting one foot in front of the other. Some were even smiling. It could be done.”

As Willa grapples with the grief of losing Derek, she finds comfort in being around other people and considering their lives. This quote shows Willa’s utter loneliness and lack of support system: She can only pretend to have community by imagining the inner lives of strangers that she is not actually in relationships with.

“‘Oh Peter,’ she said, ‘can’t you see my side of this? I haven’t felt useful in…forever! And here are these people who say they need me. Callie and Cheryl and Airplane with their noses pressed to the window! Surely you can understand that!’”

Willa begs Peter to understand why she wants to fly to Baltimore despite not being related to Denise or Cheryl. Peter has completely isolated Willa in Arizona, where she has no job, no friends, and nothing to do. Willa is desperate to feel needed, as she finds being useful to others fulfilling.

“Willa loved saguaros. She loved their dignity, their endurance. They were the only things in Arizona she felt a deep attachment to.”

Willa feels a deep attachment to these desert plants because their hardy survival ability mirrors the way she sees herself: managing to remain calm and undemanding through hardship, family deaths, and her sons’ estrangement. What Willa doesn’t realize is that saguaros are prickly, covered with needles, and unapproachable—their isolationist self-sufficiency gives them no ability to be touched by human hands.

“TSA couldn’t have prevented him from pretending he had a gun.”

Peter is just as dismissive of Willa’s story about her encounter with the gunman as Derek was. Rather than respond with concern about Willa’s fear or upset when she tells him this story, Peter latches onto the idea that Willa didn’t see the gun and has now internalized Derek’s objection that there might not ever have been one. In both of her marriages, Willa’s husbands dismiss her feelings.

“There’s this bunch of total strangers, see, eating lunch in a hamburger joint. All these different people on their lunch break. And these space aliens come and kidnap them and take them off to study them, because they believe these people are a family. See? They want to learn how families work and that’s what they think these customers are. Get it?”

In this quote, Cheryl explains her favorite show, Space Junk, about an accidental found family. Space Junk represents the community of Dorcas Road, another group of unrelated people functioning as a family. Space Junk as a motif plays into The Importance of Community by showing that people do not have to be related to support and rely on one another.

“‘Ordinarily they’re huge. Twenty or thirty feet tall, at least.’ She said this protectively, almost defensively. She felt the same kind of pity that she would feel for a caged tiger. Saguaros were not supposed to be cute! There was nothing cute about them! Saguaros were calm and forbearing; they had stoically weathered everything from Apache arrows to strip malls.”

Willa’s protective feelings towards the tiny saguaro from the hospital gift shop reveal how connected she feels to these plants. Like Willa, saguaros can seemingly weather everything. However, Willa’s defensiveness shows that she sees for the first time that even these self-sufficient organisms need tending and care from others to grow.

“Willa, Cheryl, and Airplane were watching Space Junk. Peter was supposedly watching too—‘Please?’ Cheryl had begged him, and Willa had said, ‘Oh, try it, Peter’—but his heart wasn’t in it, you could tell; he kept checking his phone.”

With Space Junk functioning as a symbol for the community of Dorcas Road, this scene is a metaphor for how Peter refuses to engage with the people he’s met in Baltimore. While Willa and Cheryl are growing close and enjoying the company of neighbors, Peter pointedly rejects their camaraderie.

“The way she stressed the word ‘their’ made it sound as if Willa were her grandma. Willa couldn’t help feeling pleased by that.”

When Cheryl draws a comparison between her friends’ grandmother and Willa, Willa reads into the subtext to conclude that Cheryl sees her as a grandmother figure. Willa is excited by this notion because she’s wanted to be a grandmother for a very long time. This significant moment allows Willa to grow closer to Cheryl and Denise, which is ultimately one of the factors in how the story’s resolution plays out.

“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.’”

After Denise gets back from the hospital, many neighbors emerge from their houses to help her get inside. The gathering of such a large group looking out for Denise and Cheryl shows how much the community of Dorcas Road cares about supporting each other.

“Sometimes Willa felt she’d spent half her life apologizing for some man’s behavior. More than half her life, actually. First Derek and then Peter, forever charging ahead while Willa trailed behind picking up the pieces and excusing and explaining.”

Willa acknowledges the unhealthy dynamics of her relationships with men. This realization explicitly parallels Derek and Peter, who have both taken advantage of Willa’s passivity and acquiescence. In this important moment of reflection, Willa admits that these controlling men have influenced the roles she plays.

“‘I thought I might stay for a few days, if that’s all right with you.’ Cheryl whispered ‘Yes!’ on a long outward breath, and Denise said, ‘Well, gosh. I know I should be arguing, but gosh. Thanks, Willa.’”

When Willa announces that she will be staying in Baltimore without Peter, Denise and Cheryl’s affectionate and appreciative responses are in deep contrast with Peter’s peevish complaining about being in Baltimore. Denise and Cheryl are the first people who haven’t fallen into Willa’s more familiar family dynamic of being a martyr who wants but can’t ask for gratitude from others.

“She began to have a slight feeling of panic. What am I doing here? she thought. Where, even, am I?”

When Peter leaves Baltimore, Willa panics. It’s the first time she’s been on her own in a long time, and she questions her motives for staying. Willa has tethered her identity to a man for so long that she feels lost when alone; however, working through this self-doubt is important for her self-actualization.

“Why did she go at things so slantwise? By late afternoon, when she knew Peter must be home now but still he wasn’t calling, why didn’t she just call him and ask, ‘Are you back yet?’ And ‘How was your trip?’ But maybe he was napping, she told herself, because he’d had to get up so early in the morning. She would hate to wake him.”

After Denise asks Willa why she approaches things “slantwise,” Willa for the first time considers what her passivity—and sometimes passive aggressiveness—has meant to the dynamics of her relationships. Willa refuses to ask Sean for a ride, hoping he’d offer, and she refuses to call Peter to check on him, hoping instead that he’ll call her and show her he cares about her. Now, as Willa comes into her own, she must reject this slantwise approach—one of the personality flaws that are The Drawbacks of Passivity.

“It turned out that the actual drive was less daunting than she had feared. On Dorcas Road, she met only one car, and she was familiar with Reuben Road because of the stuffed rabbit that had been sitting at the corner for the past two days holding a cardboard sign that asked ‘Did You Lose Me?’”

Willa is finally facing her fears. She is anxious about driving but learns that it is easier than she feared. Here, the symbol of the lost stuffed rabbit stands in for Willa’s feelings of being lost without Peter. The rabbit is at a crossroads, which is also where Willa makes choices for herself for the first time.

“The guest room had acquired that settled, slightly shabby feeling of home; the people she met on her morning walk greeted her with a smile; the man who passed the house twice daily towed by his three Westies had started commenting on the weather; and the stuffed rabbit on the corner had been claimed at last, or else discreetly discarded.”

Just as Willa begins to feel at home in Denise’s guest room and in her growing relationships with the neighbors, the lost rabbit disappears from the street corner. It has been claimed or discarded—a choice Willa will face herself when she considers going home. In the end, Willa will return to be claimed by Denise and Cheryl, rather than thrown away by Peter.

“‘I wish I had a daughter.’ The words popped forth without her planning them, almost without her thinking them. Denise said, ‘Why, Willa, I’ll be your daughter any old time!’ Willa felt touched, and all the more so when Cheryl snuggled against her and wrapped both arms around her waist.”

Willa has grown very close to Denise and Cheryl during her time in Baltimore. Willa’s desire for a daughter and for grandchildren is fulfilled when she allows herself to be adopted by Denise and Cheryl. Expressing her wants is a key step in Willa’s development, allowing Denise and Cheryl to feel needed by Willa in a way that Willa’s sons never got a chance to be.

“The next day, same as always, she drove Denise to work, but it was dawning on her now that she wouldn’t be doing it for much longer. She began to look at everyone here with an eye to losing them, the way she used to look at her sons when they were about to go off to college.”

Willa worries that she’ll no longer be needed in Baltimore once Denise heals and is afraid of losing the people she’s grown close to in Baltimore in the same way she’s distant from her sons today. The comparison here shows how Willa values these people as her own family.

“‘What do I have to do for it?’ Cheryl asked.

‘Just water it from time to time, but not too much. It can stand a lot, remember; it doesn’t need to be pampered.’

‘Then will you come back in a while to see how it’s doing?’

‘Of course,’ Willa said. Because she didn’t want to admit she had no intention of coming back.”

In her final conversation with Cheryl before leaving, as Willa describes how to care for the cactus, what Cheryl really wants to know is how to get Willa to stay and nurture the relationship they’ve built. Willa’s comments about the cactus being resilient also reflect Willa’s feelings about herself. She knows she’ll be able to withstand the pain of parting with Cheryl and Denise, but she has not yet realized that she doesn’t have to put herself through it.