The Home for Wayward Clocks (22 page)

And now James couldn’t hear it at all.

Cooley flipped the schedule over and wrote a note. “How do I wind it?”

James pointed to the little stepstool. “This clock’s movement is in its base,” he said. “When you stand on the stepstool, look on the side, behind the bird. There should be three holes. One is for the time, one for the birdsong and one for the chime.”

Cooley nodded, then went to get the stepstool.

James found this clock at a flea market in St. Charles, Illinois. It was a huge flea market, one he heard about for years before he finally decided to pack up the car and drive down one weekend. It was worth it; acres of tables and booths to dig through. He brought home at least thirty clocks that weekend. But this one sat in the front in the passenger seat, safely buckled in, on the way home.

James saw it from a distance. It sat on a table and it looked like an ornate statue of a bird in a cage. He could tell it was light by the thinness of the bars, easily hung from a ceiling, and he wondered if it could be a birdcage clock, and if it was, why the owner didn’t have it hanging somehow, to show off the face. Wandering by the table a few times, James glanced at the clock, trying not to appear too interested. It was on the third pass that he caught sight of the three holes at the base and he knew he’d not only found a clock, but a rare one. Stopping at the table, he picked up a few items, and then picked up the clock itself.

James admired the bird, poised, ready to take off. Then he hefted the clock above his head, to get a look at the face. Some glass shards rained down and James dodged.

The glass was smashed. What was left dangled like sharp pointed tears and the hands were missing. The face, unprotected by the glass, was scratched and gouged. But James knew he could replace it.

The man behind the table watched. “Does it work?” James called. The man shrugged. This was a good sign; he didn’t know what he had. James set the clock back down and opened a door in the side of the base. Inside, the clock movement was a mess. It would take months to restore it, months to determine what parts were needed and to find them. If James could even fix it at all. He could make the clock look good. But he didn’t know if he could start its heart again.

“How much?” James asked.

The man shrugged again. “Two-hundred,” he said.

James closed the clock door, poked at it a few times. He must have looked too interested…the price was higher than he expected from a shrugger. So James shook his head, turned as if to walk away. He even took a few steps, stopped, then walked back. “Fifty,” he said.

The man laughed. He came over, patted the clock, straightened it out on the table as if he was making it look perfect for the next buyer. “One-fifty.”

“It’s a mess,” James said. “The hands are missing, the glass is broken, and the insides are all in a jumble. I bet you don’t even have the key.”

The man shrugged.

James sighed, turned to leave and really left this time. He walked down a couple booths, got out of the shrugger’s line of vision and waited ten minutes. Then he strolled back. The shrugger was sitting again, reading a book. The clock, James noticed, was shinier, as if the shrugger polished it during James’ absence. The sunlight caught the bird and it spread its wings. James needed to get it out of there, take it home, start working on it. “One hundred,” he said.

The shrugger looked up from his book. His eyebrows went up, as if he was surprised to see James, but James knew the shrugger was alert and aware from the moment James stepped back to the table. He’d been waiting. And then, mercifully, he shrugged and held out his hand.

The clock was James’.

It took almost a year to fix it. That bird sat, voiceless, on the basement worktable until James thought it would build a nest and roost there. He always tilted the clock when he was done with work, so the face could see out too. That clockface wasn’t meant to be buried; it was supposed to shine down on whoever wandered by and looked up. Eventually, the clock was done and the bird sang twice an hour from the back east bedroom. James made sure to stop, at least once a day, and raise his face to the clock, let it tell him the time.

Now Cooley climbed up and James watched her insert the key and start twisting. The clock swung slightly from its hook. “Be careful,” James said. “Hold it with your free hand. Don’t pull down on it, you don’t want the extra weight to pull it from the ceiling.”

Cooley made a face, but she steadied the clock. She wrapped an arm around it, as if she was putting her arm around the shoulders of a friend. And that clock nestled right in while she wound.

James was still watching this, seeing the tender bend of her arm, the concentration in her face, when Ione appeared in the room and tugged at his shoulder. She tilted her head several times toward the doorway. James didn’t want to leave, there were still over a dozen clocks left to go. But Ione grabbed the schedule and then she wrote on it too. James wanted to scream.

“Let Amy Sue do sum of this on her own,” she said. “You need two rest. She’ll find you if she needs help.”

“I’ll just go with,” James said. “I’ll sit down in every room and watch.”

Ione shook her head and took his arm again.

He yanked it away. “Damn it, Ione!” he yelled. “It’s my house and these are my clocks! If I’m tired, I’ll take a break. But it’s me that says so.”

Ione’s face clouded. She turned and left the room. James felt the reverberation from her feet as she stamped down the stairs and he followed her movements until she was out the door. The slam shook the floorboards. For a moment, James thought about calling out to her, telling her to come back, that he was sorry. But only for a moment.

When James turned back, Cooley shook her head. She wrote on the schedule. “Maybe we both need a break,” she said, and then headed off toward the kitchen.

James groaned. At this rate, the clocks would never get wound. He swore at his hands, at the bandages, at Dr. Owen. And he swore at himself for getting into this mess. He never should have tried to fix that damn clock tower. It was just too big.

James went to the kitchen. Cooley stood at the sink, looking out of the window. The clipboard, the keyrings, the stack of index cards were in neat piles on the table. After James sat down, Cooley went to the coffeepot, searching in the cupboards above for a mug. Ione already washed the breakfast dishes. James stared at his bandaged hands, thought about his damaged ears.

The remaining clocks needed to get wound. James hated to admit it, but he needed someone. More importantly, the clocks needed someone. He thought of Ione slamming through the front door. For now, all he had was Cooley. All the clocks had was Cooley; James was useless.

“Cooley,” he said.

She turned, her hands cupped around James’ mug. He thought her hands must be cold and she was drawing warmth from the coffee.

“The newspaper should still be on the front stoop, unless someone brought it in. Go get it and help yourself to the comics. Then get your own mug of coffee. And the day-old doughnuts from the cabinet.”

She looked at him and beamed, the light of her smile bringing a new, old light to this room. But it wasn’t welcome. James knew that lights could go out as quickly as they go on. He flinched away when she touched his shoulder, on the way to get the newspaper.

Then he concentrated on picking up the coffee in his thick fingers, determined not to spill a drop.

M
eg felt heroic as she sat down to save her healthy marriage before it needed saving. The book promised she could do it, declared in bold gold letters on its cover, “Rescue Your Marriage!” Given the right directions, Meg knew she could do anything. Decorating books helped her to create a relaxed, yet classic look in her already stunning house. Exercise books kept her always athletic body in shape. And “How To Raise Baby A to Z” hadn’t failed her yet. When Alyssa was only four days old, Chapter Three told Meg that the baby should have a nickname, a loving little spark that would always let her know she was special. Meg remembered looking at her new daughter, sleeping in the bassinet. She looked so much like Paul, Meg’s husband, and at first, Meg nicknamed her Paulie. But that sounded too much like a parrot, so she switched to alliteration and wordplay and called her Paulerina and Paulie-wollydoodle and Paulie-Peeps. Eventually, she shortened it all to Peepers.

Peepers was five years old now and insisted on using her nickname all the time, even at school, proof of how special she felt. Books just weren’t wrong.

Meg was deep into the first chapter of marriage-salvage when Peepers ran by with a doll stroller. “Peepers, remember?” Meg called to her daughter’s back. “No running in the house!” The A to Z book said that a gentle reminder of the rules worked every time. But Peepers kept running. She sang a tune again and again and Meg reasoned that Peepers probably didn’t hear the warning over her own lyrical voice. Meg listened closely; the song was unfamiliar. The A To Z book said that a child’s song often gave clues to her innermost feelings, her thoughts and her troubles. This song had three syllables and Peepers put the emphasis on the second, roaring it while barely mumbling the other two. “Hmm-TOR-mms,” Meg heard. “Hmm-TOR-mms.”

She tried to block it out and concentrate on her marriage, but every time Peepers dashed by, all the words in Meg’s book blended into that three-syllable sound. Finally, she grabbed the back of Peepers’ shirt. “Peeps,” Meg said. “Peeps, we don’t run in the house. And what are you singing?”

Peepers leaned into her shirt, pulling it taut, her toes straining and her heels lifted with the desire to be in motion. But then she sank back against her mother’s knees and accepted a hug. “A song I made up,” she said. She patted her flat chest. “Me, by myself. About my new doll.”

Meg looked inside the plastic stroller and saw the doll that Paul brought home last night. It was an ugly thing, with green and purple hair, bruised eyeshadow and ketchup lipstick, dressed in frayed bellbottoms and a tie-dyed shirt that proclaimed, “Attitude—My Way or the Highway.” Paul said it was supposed to look like a teenager. A Jive-Diva Girl, it was called. When Meg asked why Peepers would possibly want a Jive-Diva Girl, Paul shrugged. “Maybe as an inspiration? Besides, it was on clearance.”

Meg shuddered. In her book, “Wise Financing: Making Sense With Cents,” it said to never buy anything on clearance. Through some convoluted formula that Meg couldn’t quite follow, it showed that clearance items only made the stores richer and the customers poorer.

In the stroller, the Jive-Diva Girl was wrapped in a baby blanket. The blue-lidded eyes looked out of place, peering over the pink bunnies and lavender duckies. “Can you keep it down a bit, Peeps?” Meg asked. “Mommy’s trying to read.”

Peepers squinted at the book. “Res-kew-Your-Mar-marrrr-marrrry-age,” she sounded out. “What’s a Mary-age?”

“It’s marriage. And it’s what a mommy and a daddy have. They’re married.”

“Oh.” Peepers straightened her tugged-sideways shirt. “My song is about my doll’s name.” She moved away, walking, Meg noted, and whispering her song. Which was worse. Now it sounded like “Psssss-TOR-hissssss.”

Meg sighed and tossed the book to the couch cushion. “All right, I give up. What did you name your doll and what’s the song?”

Quickly, Peepers turned back and sank down on one knee. Throwing her arms wide, she bellowed, “Clit-TOR-is! Clit-TOR-is! You’re the best one FOR us!”

Meg instantly snapped her legs together. Then she tried to relax and return to her original position, but she couldn’t remember what that was and suddenly, every position she took seemed suggestive. In the A To Z book, they warned that you should never let your children know when you’re shocked or panicked, especially over sexual matters. It could cause the child to have such extensive trauma, she’d never lead a fully developed sexual life.

Meg took a deep breath, then took Peepers by the shoulders. “Do you mean clitoris?” Meg stated the word carefully, using the real pronunciation, with the emphasis on the first syllable. She learned it long ago, in college, when she read the book, “Meet Your Body, Treat Your Body.”

Peepers nodded. “Yep, clit-TOR-is. I love that word. Ms. BigBrain taught us.” The teacher’s name was actually Ms. Barbain, but Paul changed it after Peepers’ first month in her kindergarten classroom, a month filled with science experiments and dramatic plays and strange 3-D plastic puzzles. Ms. Barbain insisted on a steady stream of odd supplies, empty 2-liter bottles and button-filled baby food jars, baggies of sand from backyard sandboxes, even plain white bars of soap that Meg learned later the kids carved into animals, brandishing real knives! Meg was appalled, but Paul laughed and changed Ms. Barbain’s name and now Meg couldn’t get Peeps to say it correctly. The A to Z book said if parents allow their children to ridicule adults, the children would learn to disobey and disrespect.

“You mean Ms. Barbain, Peeps, remember? And why was Ms. Barbain using that word?”

Peepers pulled the Jive-Diva Girl from the stroller and tossed her into the air. The blanket went flying, but Peepers caught the doll by her purple-green dreadlocks. “For learning about our bodies. What makes girls girls and boys boys.”

Meg remembered seeing the announcement last week in the kindergarten’s newsletter for the “Body Language Unit,” but this wasn’t what she expected. She thought it was odd that kindergarteners would be taught what it means when people cross their arms or legs or when they lean forward or straddle a chair. Her own book, “How To Make Your Body Say What You Feel,” was far too complicated for children. Meg was amazed at how much a cocked eyebrow could say.

But this was something altogether different. This was real life. Meg still quietly asked Peepers if she wiped her hoo-hoo after using the bathroom; she didn’t think Peeps was ready for the real thing. Peeps had never even seen her father naked. The A to Z book said children shouldn’t be taught what they aren’t ready for. Meg would have to call the principal again.