The Love Child (1979)

Eve Shelnutt's first collection gathers stories first printed in the American Review, Carolina Quarterly, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review and elsewhere, several of them about a family of sisters and their mother Helen. In "Children", Claire, a hotel switchboard operator, screams and runs out into the street, and her sister Lucy and their mother Helen search for her while Lucy phones their father James in Tampa. (Open Library)

Watches

Wittnauer watch: After Lucy calls Tampa to say Claire is lost, her father James hangs up with the local hurricane news on his mind, but makes himself a note to send Lucy a Longines-Wittnauer for her graduation, which he does. Much later, the story tells us, when Lucy is living alone with her small son, their cat will play with the watch and Lucy will let it, her arm feeling airborne for the first time. The hyphenated name is the brand's own; the model is not given.

Source text: Even if it isn't James, who, on putting down the phone makes himself a note to send Lucy for her graduation a Longine-Wittnauer watch, which he does, and, much later, when Lucy is living alone with only her boy for company, who is so fine a child he makes her chest ache, their cat will be playing with the watch and Lucy will allow it, her arm feeling for the first time airborne. (Eve Shelnutt, The Love Child, scan cataloged as Black Sparrow Press, 1979, p. 145, in "Children", which begins on p. 143 by the contents page (the entry the scan's OCR renders only in a search of the page number); the copyright page dates the stories 1974 to 1979; Internet Archive scan OCR)