Clock Dance

Denise’s nine-year-old daughter, Cheryl, has a “pudgy face and a keg-shaped tummy that strained her T-shirt” (122). Mature for her age, Cheryl is comfortable around adults: She doesn’t hesitate to ask questions or have conversations with Willa and Peter. Cheryl’s favorite thing to do is bake; she asks “for baking equipment for Christmases and birthdays” (156).

Cheryl seeks out father and grandmother figures to fill in the gaps that come with being the only child of a single mother. Cheryl quickly latches onto Peter when he speaks to her like an adult. Cheryl “like[s] to tag along with [Peter]” (186) when he runs errands. Cheryl also asks Willa, “[N]ow that you’re in Baltimore, do you think [Sean will] come here to visit you?” (136), showing that she misses even this rather poor paternal presence. Willa worries that Cheryl is “a child who felt the lack of a man in her life” (185) when considering Cheryl’s questions about Sean and her crush on neighbor Sir Joe.

Cheryl and Willa develop a strong bond during Willa’s time in Baltimore. Cheryl wants a grandmother, and Willa deeply desires grandchildren, making their relationship a mutual and positive one based on two-sided need. Cheryl openly considers Willa to be her grandmother, asking her, “Would you ever take me for a manicure?” adding that her friends’ “grandma takes them” (163). “The way she stressed the word ‘their’ made it sound as if Willa were her grandma” (164) makes Willa feel happy and wanted.

When Willa tells Cheryl goodbye before flying out of Baltimore, Cheryl pleads with Willa to stay. In return, Willa gives Cheryl instructions on how to care for the baby saguaro, entrusting Cheryl with the novel’s symbol of a thriving life.

Cheryl’s mother and Sean’s ex-girlfriend, Denise, is “enticingly rounded, at that perfect point where one more pound would have been one too many but you wouldn’t want her weighing any less” (137). She also has “streaky dark-blond” hair with a “slightly crooked” part (137). After Denise is shot in the leg, Willa is summoned to Baltimore to look after Cheryl due to an accidental misunderstanding. Denise does the best she can as a single mother, but she keeps a messy bedroom and feeds Cheryl mostly frozen and canned goods. Denise is boisterous and emotional, but unlike Willa, she has a strong sense of her own dignity. She cries about the way Sean left her, saying, “I’m not crying because I’m sad […] It’s more that I’m mad, is what it is” (141), but she asserts that she doesn’t want Sean back.

After Denise comes home from the hospital, she and Willa quickly form a bond. Denise never told Cheryl’s father that Cheryl exists. She and Willa both gave up their studies to raise kids, but Denise did so alone—Willa realizes that this made Denise’s experience difficult in ways that the married Willa never had to deal with. Denise still longs to be married someday—another point of divergence between her and Willa, whose experiences with marriage have been fairly negative.

Once Peter leaves, Denise and Willa grow even closer, coming to be “like longtime roommates,” with Denise “counting on Willa to finish her sentences for her” (251). Unlike many other characters in the novel, Denise shows Willa appreciation for all Willa has done for her. She thanks Willa for staying longer without Peter, and she thanks Peter for “letting us borrow that wife of yours” (200). Soon, Willa starts feeling maternal towards Denise. When Willa laments that she never had a daughter, Denise says, “Why, Willa, I’ll be your daughter any old time” (256).

Willa’s relationship with Denise allows her to learn how to functionally navigate conflict with a close friend or family member. When Denise finds out Willa knew who’d shot her and kept the information from her, she calls Willa superficial and accuses her of “[m]eddling and interfering” (268). Willa, never having learned how to productively fight, believes that this has created an impassible rift between them and flies home even when Denise insists Willa doesn’t have to go. However, moved by Ben’s observation that playing the martyr only prolongs a fight instead of ending it, Willa realizes that she and Denise still have a very strong connection. Willa returns to Baltimore, to Denise, Denise’s family, and the neighbors.

Willa’s second husband, Peter, is 11 years older than Willa, making him 72 in 2017. He’s a “tanned, trim, serious-looking man with a crisply etched face and close-cut silver hair” (111). Willa and Peter live in Arizona, where they moved for Peter to live on a golf course. Despite being retired, Peter still does work part-time, keeping in touch with colleagues and sitting in on business conferences. Peter and Willa’s relationship replicates many of the dynamics of her first marriage: Peter calls her “little one” (169) and otherwise demeans her.

When Peter joins Willa on her trip to Baltimore, he grows distant and bitter toward Willa, petulant that she is taking care of the needs of other people. Peter tries multiple times to get Willa to leave, despite Denise and Cheryl still clearly needing help. Unlike Willa, Peter does not develop any affection for Denise or Cheryl.

Once Peter leaves Baltimore, he calls often to nag Willa, complaining that “I supposedly have a wife but I’m forgetting what she looks like” (260) and demanding that she return so he can have someone to go to dinner with. Later, he offers to pick Willa up from the airport, but only if she flies in on the weekend. However, when Willa does fly home, Peter leaves her an angry voicemail asserting that he has a life and Willa will “just have to find your own way home” (287). Without Peter there to pick her up, Willa decides to return to Baltimore.

Willa grows up adoring her father, a passive, mild-mannered man. Willa’s mother often blows up at him, though as a child Willa cannot understand why her mother mockingly calls her father “Saint Melvin” or remarks that “butter wouldn’t melt in [his] mouth” (11). Despite her mother’s rages, Willa’s father thinks the world of Willa’s mother, minimizing her abusive tendencies: Willa observes that when he comments that his “wife is very tempestuous” (55), he “made it sound like a virtue” (55). Although he does his best to keep the household running in the absence of Willa’s mother during the first chapter, he quickly gets on Willa’s nerves with his dependence on her to get Elaine ready and help in the kitchen. He does not even thank Willa for doing the dishes. When her mother returns after abandoning the family for several days in one of her fits, Willa’s father brushes this behavior off with amusement and wonder, as though every part of her infatuates him—even her flaws. Willa’s father, though often the target of his wife’s rages, enables Willa’s mother’s behavior with his unwavering approbation.

After learning about Willa’s run-in with the man with the gun on the plane, her father tells a story about his own encounter with a mugger. Upon learning that her father had nothing in his pockets but gum, the mugger called him “just a loser” (68) and left him alone. Willa’s father sees his meekness as a positive, but Willa’s mother is angry that he allowed someone to speak to him like that.

Willa’s father remains an important part of her life. After Willa becomes a widow at 41, Willa’s father stays with her and takes care of her, making cocoa and sharing how he dealt with the death of Willa’s mother. He offers to fix things around Willa’s house—“his way of showing he loved her” (200). Willa’s father’s influence on Willa is clear through Willa’s passivity. Willa explains in the final chapter that, as a girl, she thought her choices were to “marry such a person or be such a person” in reference to her father’s mild-mannered nature (284), showing how she adopted his passive ways. Only a conversation with Ben, in which the doctor points out how infuriating being married to such an endlessly un-provokable person would be, shatters Willa’s illusions about her father.

Willa’s mother, “the prettiest mother in their school, and the liveliest and the smartest,” (10) appears only in the first two chapters of Part 1, but her tempestuous personality bleeds through the rest of the novel. The defining events of Willa’s childhood are her mother’s rages: “Their mother would shout at [their father] and stomp her foot, or slap Willa in the face […] or shake Elaine like a Raggedy Ann” before storming out for what their father referred to as “thinking time” (23). When Willa’s mother returns home, she acts as though everything is normal—an attitude Willa’s father abets. The abusive and unstable side of Willa’s mother explains why Willa becomes so deeply averse to conflict and so insistently acquiescent to the will of others.

In the second chapter of Part 2, a new side of Willa’s mother emerges. At first, we see that the impulsive anger continues: Willa’s mother complains about Elaine’s darker fashion choices and about her messy room, bragging that she “opened the window and I heaved all her clothes down into the backyard” (55). However, although she happily welcomes Willa’s fiancé Derek, her mother grows angry with Derek’s plan to “talk [Willa] around” (70) about giving up her studies. She stands up for Willa’s education and asks Willa if she wants to end up like her friends who already have a house full of kids in their early twenties. Unfortunately, Willa cannot process the outburst as protective—it is too reminiscent of her mother’s more abusive rages. Rather than reassess the power dynamics of her relationship with Derek, Willa ends the fight by agreeing to all of Derek’s demands on the spot.

Fifteen-year-old Erland lives next door to Denise and Cheryl. Erland lives with his older stepbrother, Sir Joe (or Sergio). Their parents are dead, and Sir Joe is the only family Erland has. Erland is thin and elf-like, with “a red-and-white-striped knit hat from which a tangle of golden corkscrews exploded almost horizontally” (150). When Willa first encounters him, he’s trimming the hedges in Denise’s yard, but “he didn’t seem to know what he was doing” (150). Erland’s nervous air is explained in Chapter 10, when Erland confesses to Willa that he’s the one who shot Denise by accident.

The shooting was the result of an attempt to get in with a cooler crowd at school. Erland struggles to make friends: “[G]irls don’t like me, and teachers hate me, and the only sport I don’t suck at is baseball but the one time the coach let me play I made the final out” (237). In desperation, Erland showed Sir Joe’s gun to “Magnus the Locker Bomber” (234). However, when Magnus tried to take the gun, Erland attempted to stop him and the gun went off, hitting Denise in the leg.

Erland’s horrific mistake offers Willa another of several opportunities to get involved in life on Dorcas Road. Once Erland lets Willa in on the secret, Willa inserts herself into the situation, promising to help Erland tell the truth to Sir Joe. Erland worries that Sir Joe will kick him out, but with Willa’s intervention, the upset Sir Joe agrees to let Erland continue to live with him because “[i]t kind of sucks, being fifteen” (250). Willa’s effective intercession makes staying in Baltimore compelling to her.

Ben is a doctor that lives on Dorcas Road. Ben is in his sixties, with “saggy-lidded blue eyes that almost disappeared when he smiled” and glasses (157). Ben sees mostly elderly and immigrant patients at his practice attached to his home, and he volunteers at a church-run clinic for immigrants despite the fact that he is Jewish. Ben is also an extremely helpful neighbor: He offers advice and medication samples for Denise, and he fetches groceries for Mrs. Minton, who has mobility issues. In return, the neighborhood regularly helps Ben search for his cat Robert, who has a habit of sneaking out.

Ben and Willa strike up a friendship, connecting over Willa’s love of linguistics. Ben imagines a future where Willa stays in Baltimore and helps him communicate with his immigrant patients. He also invites her to the church where he volunteers. Willa also loves to help people, so Ben’s volunteer work appeals to her.

When Willa is leaving Baltimore, Ben offers to drive her to the airport. On their way, they converse about passivity and life choices. Ben offers Willa advice for dealing with Denise. At first, Willa is offended that Ben calls her “meek and wronged” (284), but then Ben says his wife used to theorize that “hell would be marrying Gandhi” because “[e]veryone else looked so rude and loud and self-centered by comparison” (284). Willa looks inward and realizes this is the kind of relationship her mother and father had—and the behavior that might have led to her own estrangement from her sister and sons.

When parting ways, Ben tells Willa he likes the way she looks at people. Willa feels the same about Ben, and the implication is that when Willa returns to Baltimore, she and Ben may begin a romance.

Derek is Willa’s first husband, whom she met when she was a freshman in college. Derek is “square-jawed and clean cut” and “with his short blonde hair he could not have looked sloppy if he’d tried” (42). He also has freckles, which Willa feels “rescued him from handsomeness” (43). Derek has a “single-minded interest in sports” and “a bit of a temper” (48), but Willa adores him, replicating the dynamic she saw in her parents. Derek claims to love Willa, but he is deeply dismissive of her as a person: He doesn’t care about Willa’s career ambitions, and when Willa informs Derek that she wants to finish her studies, which she is passionate about, Derek calmly responds that he’s “counting on changing [her] mind by and by” (45).

When Derek meets Willa’s family, he initially charms Willa’s parents. However, when he announces their engagement, Willa’s parents quickly turn on Derek, upset that he wants to uproot Willa from her college path to move to California. Willa impulsively decides to marry Derek, simply to end the confrontation.

Willa and Derek have two sons and a life built around Derek’s career. Derek remains the same stubborn and condescending man he was before. Driving to a party for his colleagues, his temper flares as he and Willa discuss their son Ian’s desire to take a year off from high school. He also grows impatient with other drivers. Despite Willa’s warnings for Derek to remain calm and make good decisions, Derek decides to vindictively overtake a slower driver. His road rage gets the best of him, and as he merges at a high speed, he crashes the car and dies instantly. Willa is lost after this because the controlling Derek has instilled in her a sense of learned helplessness.

Sean is Willa’s eldest son. Sean takes after Derek in both appearance and interest in sports. At Derek’s funeral, Sean charismatically tells stories about his father. Since Willa has raised her sons to never think about her feelings, Sean takes Willa for granted and makes little effort to comfort her when Derek dies. Instead, he asks questions like “Had Derek had a chance to realize they were crashing? Had he said any last words?” (82) and comments that the other driver “was not blameless” (83), which Willa observes is “exactly what Derek would have said” (83).

Sean’s reckless romantic pursuits are the reason Willa ends up in Baltimore in 2017. Sean was in a relationship with Denise for a while—long enough for them to move in together and for Denise’s young daughter, Cheryl, to form an attachment to Sean. However, Sean cheated on Denise with Denise’s married friend Elissa and then left Denise for Elissa. When Denise is accidentally shot, a neighbor contacts Willa under the mistaken impression that Willa is Cheryl’s grandmother.

In Baltimore, when Willa has dinner with Sean and Elissa, Sean talks down about the community of Dorcas Road, calling it “not the fanciest part of town” and describing the residents as “[a] motorcycle hoodlum, a seedy private-eye, a has-been doctor with a pack of Medicaid patients” (214). Sean’s low opinion of Dorcas Road shows how he neglects to get to know people and judges them on appearances. In fact, Denise is an outlier in Sean’s dating history, as Willa observes, because he usually goes for the cheerleader type.

When Willa offers to pay for dinner, Sean demeans her too, suggesting she’d just be using Peter’s money. Willa is sad that Sean has little interest in staying in her life, but she’s looking forward to returning to Dorcas Road with the people she’s grown to care about. Sean does not contact Willa again for the rest of the novel.