The Home for Wayward Clocks (23 page)

She shut her eyes and pinched the skin above her nose, a method she learned in a stress-relief book. “Peepers,” she said, “it’s pronounced clitoris, not clit-TOR-is. And it’s not a good name for a doll. It’s not a name at all, not like Meg or Paul or Alyssa. It’s a thing. A body part.”

“I know. But it sounds neat.” Peepers tucked the doll back into the stroller. “And that’s how Ms. BigBrain says it. We saw pictures.” She nodded firmly, as if the pictures somehow validated the way her teacher pronounced the word. Then she started to walk away. Over her shoulder, she said, “I heard Ms. BigBrain tell Mr. Parker if we show our someday husbands where our clit-TOR-is is, we’ll be happy.” Peepers spun around a corner toward her bedroom. “I’m already happy,” she yelled, “cuz I have a new doll! Her name is Clit-TOR-is!” She slammed the door.

Meg wondered if the slam meant Peepers was angry. She sat for a moment, then rubbed her temples and pinched her nose again. She made a mental note to talk to Ms. Barbain about inappropriate comments near the presence of children. She was sure there was a chapter on that in the A To Z book and she planned to refer to it. Ms. Barbain had a lot to learn about dealing with children. Then Meg decided to leave Peepers alone for now. The A to Z book also stressed that children sometimes needed their own space…parents too. Meg returned to saving her healthy marriage.

L
ater, Meg wandered into the kitchen. It was dark enough to start turning lights on, so Paul was due home soon and supper needed to be made. She wondered what time it was and how long she had. She looked toward the birdcage clock, suspended from her kitchen ceiling, and automatically rolled her shoulders.

She bought the clock on their honeymoon when they stopped at an antique mall a mile away from Niagara Falls. Meg saw the golden birdcage, a bird inside spreading its wings and preparing to fly. Fly from what, she wondered. Who would want to leave a golden cage? She touched the bars, felt the fine twine of thin gold braided together. Reaching carefully through, she stroked a wing. She’d never had a pet. She picked the birdcage up and brought it to the cashier.

It wasn’t until they got back to the hotel that she realized it was a clock. She thought it might be a music box and when she lifted it above her head to find the winder, she saw the clock face flat against the bottom of the cage’s base. There was a key taped to the side and when she wound the clock, the bird sang on the top and half of every hour. It kept pretty accurate time, so they hung it in their apartment for three years, then from the kitchen ceiling when they bought the house. Her book, “Kitchen Savvy: Create More Than Meals In Your Kitchen,” said that it was particularly important to have something striking here, one of the easiest rooms to go cliché.

The clock was definitely striking, everyone commented on it. But it was also really annoying. The only way to tell the time was to stand directly beneath it and look up. Every month when she wound it, every day when she stood under it, Meg swore at the inconvenience. But it was too pretty to throw away and too accurate to ignore. Meg’s Thought of the Day calendar once read, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” So the clock stayed. And Meg never put another clock in the kitchen because it seemed silly and redundant to have two clocks in the same room. So telling the time meant a crick in the neck and a whispered curse each and every time.

Meg rubbed her neck in anticipation and walked toward the clock. Peepers ran past her and looked into the fridge. “When’s supper?” she yelled as she disappeared behind the open door.

“Hang on, I gotta look at this stupid clock first.” Meg put her hands on her hips and craned her neck. “Probably about a half-hour.” Her neck twinged, a shivery pain that ran down between her shoulder blades. “Damn, I hate this clock.” She instantly regretted swearing. It was one of those topics in the A to Z book headed with a big scarlet NEVER. It only took one slip for a bright child like Peepers to pick up an inappropriate word. Like clit-TOR-is.

Peepers looked at her, then up at the clock. “Pretty bird,” she cooed. “Pretty Seymour, sing so pretty.” She smiled at her mother. “Just look at your watch, Mommy.” She waved a thin wrist, sporting a bright yellow Winnie-the-Pooh watch.

“Seymour?” Meg looked down at her own silver Liz Claiborne, bought at full price, then back up at the clock.

“I call him that. He’s my pet.” Peepers went back to the fridge.

Meg shook her head. “Don’t have a snack now, Peeps,” she said. “You’ll spoil your supper.”

“Aw, Mommy. Just something little.” Peepers held up a shiny apple, her pink fingers curled like ribbons against the red skin.

Meg pulled out her new cookbook. “Don’t blame me if you can’t eat a bite of your yummy supper later,” she said. The A to Z book said you should never make an issue out of food.

The new cookbook was called, “Tempt and Tease Your Tastebuds!” She bought it the other day, with the Marriage book and one other at a sidewalk sale outside Schwartz’s Books. Three for a dollar. A bargain. Meg nearly passed them up, thinking of the Wise Financing book, but then she reasoned that the books weren’t really in a clearance sale. They were in a sidewalk sale. The signs were yellow and black rather than bright red with slash marks. And the deal only worked if you bought three.

Meg opened a page at random and looked at the recipe. The first direction was, “Blanch your chicken.” Meg quickly turned the page.

Peepers leaned on the counter, tilting her head sideways to read the book’s title. “Tem-pit?” she asked. “Tastebuds?”

“These things in our mouths that let us taste,” Meg said. “And tempt. Make them want to eat.” The next recipe called for a double-boiler. Meg turned the page.

“Daddy’s tastebuds like sketti and meatballs,” Peepers said. She bit into the apple, the crunch sounding like crisp snow under a boot.

Meg shivered and smiled. “Spaghetti,” she said. “It’s pronounced spaghetti.” The next page read, “Set your pastry blender on—”

“And my tastebuds like sketti and meatballs too,” Peepers said. “Best of anything.” The bird clock went off, breaking into a tinny music box tune that Meg was never able to place. Peepers leaped across the floor, turned a graceful pirouette on bright purple sparkly sneakers, and left the room. Meg heard her singing, “Seymour’s a bird, he’s my pet, he’s my pet!”

Meg started to look up to check the time, but then looked at her watch instead. Her neck relaxed. Her stomach growled and she thought of the long half-hour before supper. After stacking her new book along with the dozen others on the dusty baker’s rack, she turned to the fridge.

As she prepared spaghetti and meatballs, she ate an apple.

M
eg sat on the couch that night, trying to read her third new book while her husband watched basketball on television and Peepers colored at their feet. Meg looked over Peepers’ shoulder and discovered that Paul also brought home a Jive-Diva Girl Activity book and Peepers was busily filling in various mopheads with an atrocious shade of neon green. Clit-TOR-is sat on the corner of the coffee table.

It was hard to concentrate on the book with the noise of the cheers and her husband’s accompanying grunts of approval and the skritch-scratch of crayons. But she tried. This book was the most important one of the bargain three, called, “Are You Hurting; How To Know For Sure.” Meg struggled through the third page of the first chapter, “How To Know Who You Really Are,” when Peepers suddenly sprawled over her knees. Meg jiggled her legs up and down, bouncing Peepers, but unfortunately also bouncing the book in the most seasick way, when Peepers suddenly knocked the book out of Meg’s hands and onto the floor. She shrieked, “Mommy! Where’s it hurt?” She grabbed Meg’s face in both hands and repeated at top volume, “Where’s it hurt? Where’s it hurt?” Meg recognized this as her own refrain from times Peepers ran in crying from playing outside or down in the basement or in her own room. Now Peepers lunged onto Paul’s lap, who sat there gaping, and she beat on his chest. “Help her, Daddy! Help her!”

“What?” Paul and Meg both said together.

Meg scooped Peepers up and rocked her. “Calm down,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with me, what are you talking about?”

Peepers quickly kicked free and rolled to the floor. She grabbed the book, holding it out of Meg’s reach. “Are You Hurting!” she yelled.

Paul began to laugh and he took the book from Peepers. “Sweetheart,” he said. “It’s just a book. That’s all. There’s nothing wrong with Mommy.”

Peepers stood ramrod straight and tears rolled down her flushed cheeks. “Mommy? Nothing’s wrong?”

“No!” Meg reached for Peepers and hugged her tightly. “I’m fine, Peeps. It’s just a book I’m reading.”

“But then…” Peepers pulled away and again took Meg’s face in her hands. “If you’re fine, how come you’re reading a book about hurting?”

Meg opened her mouth, then closed it. She tried again, but no words came out. Finally, she said, “How about some hot chocolate and popcorn?”

Peepers cheered and leaped off Meg’s lap. “Lemme help! I get to put the bag in the microwave!” she said and ran for the kitchen. “Hi, Seymour!” Meg heard her yell at the birdcage clock.

Meg got up slowly, then trembled a smile at Paul. “It’s just a title,” she said. Before she followed Peepers, she took the book and tossed it behind the couch.

I
n bed that night, during the Late Show, Meg told Paul the Jive-Diva Girl’s name and the story behind it. He laughed. Meg waited a moment, uncertain, then laughed too.

“But can you imagine teaching little kids this stuff?” Meg asked. “And then not using the right pronunciation!”

Paul turned off their television and settled down onto his pillow. “What do you mean?”

“It’s clitoris, not clit-TOR-is,” Meg said.

“I think it’s both, actually.”

Meg sighed. “Paul, I’m the woman. I know how it’s pronounced. It’s not like I tell you how to pronounce penis. Or testicle.”

He smiled and closed his eyes.

“Okay, hang on, I’ll prove it to you.” Meg got out of bed and crossed to the computer desk they shared. She got out her dictionary and paged through the C’s. Then she found it.

Or them. Two pronunciations.

She quietly closed the book and got back into bed.

Paul snuggled close. “So?”

“She’s right,” Meg said.

Paul rubbed his hand lightly over her breasts.

“I can’t believe it. Peepers was
right.
” Meg started to roll away, but Paul caught her and held tight.

“You know, we’ve been married for umpteen years now.” Paul rose up on his hands and knees. “And you’ve never shown me where your clit-TOR-is is.” He smiled and worked down her pajama bottoms.

Meg laughed. “Well, that’s silly, you know where it is.”

“Hmmm?” His hands touched her here, then there. His face hovered over her thighs. “Show me, Meg. Where is it exactly?”

Meg grimaced, but took his hand and guided it. “Well, it’s right… right…there. OH!”

She gasped and fell headlong into happiness.

A
nd so you leave the root cellar behind, yet the root cellar never leaves you. Your collars and leashes stay in that damp dirt, the cage ajar, the belt coiled on its hook on the wall. You walk away one day and you don’t look back, yet you still feel the sting of leather on your neck, you still see the dark of closed doors even as you lift your face to the sun.

As you look around, you embrace clocks, but you imagine so much more as you listen to the steady ticking, revel in their song. The seduction of time holds you tightly, keeps you seeking in a hidden sort of way, yet it takes years, years of wondering, years of glimpses and glances and words never said, before you actually touch the softness of a woman. The softness and the curves and the smooth as silk skin and it is like nothing you ever imagined. The rhythm you make together, your hearts alternately racing and slowing down, your skin abrading and applauding, is uneven, yet the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard. You wonder at its imbalance and at its perfection.

But every time she reaches out to you, you have to shut your eyes. You can’t watch her fingers coming, even though they are poised and tentative, not curled. You can’t believe that this doesn’t hurt, you can’t believe that this feels so good, you can’t believe the softness she returns. This softness for you. Just for you.

Imagine.

Yet you feel for its edges. You imagine all along that it will end. Even as you rejoice in the softness and the imbalance and the perfection, all with your eyes closed.

Imagine never believing in love. Imagine never having faith in softness and passion and curves and the silky skin of a woman, even as your body craves it all and cries out for more.

Fear bred from the rage forged in your parallel river keeps you from breathing deeply in your lover’s embrace. Instead, your breath catches and gasps and you bite the inside of your own mouth. Because you know, deep inside yourself, hidden beneath your skin, that secret river solidifies and forms an animal. And not just the sad little puppy left leashed in a root cellar.

You were born from an animal. You know that now, and you knew it then, though you could never have said it. And that animal’s cruel blood flowed through you even before you breached her body and saw the light of day, connected you to your mother in a way that not even death can sever. You imagine, you know, that her blood coils through you still, just under your surface.

You are your mother’s child.

Imagine.

James knew about hidden hardness. He’d seen sweetness turn to wretched steel. He knew that beauty, resting in a pool of sunshine, could raise itself up, tall, and taller, and then bear itself down into an ugliness that stole breath away. His breath, the breath of a child that didn’t come any easier with age.

James imagined that it would be impossible to keep the animal hidden forever. As he tended his clocks, he always listened to the ticking of his own heart. Wondering when he was going to explode. Wondering when his mother would awaken, encased as she was within his own skin.