The Home for Wayward Clocks (27 page)

4) Get another job.

5) Get Kat and the kids back.

I
sit back and flip the page. Now comes the hard part. Shaking my hands, then cracking my knuckles vigorously, I clear my throat before hunching over the notebook. I write until sweat pours from my temples, so I know I must be getting to the crux of the situation.

1) I drink too much.

2) I ignore Kat and the kids.

3) I lost my job.

4) I spend a lot of our money on drinking.

5) I never do anything around the house.

6) I lie to Kat about where I’ve been.

7) I’ve lost all my friends except for a bartender named Benny.

8) I lost my license.

9) I put the kids in danger when I drink and drive with them in the car.

10) I slept with another woman, but just once, and I don’t remember her name.

11) I don’t put Kat and the kids first.

12)

F
or a while, I leave number twelve blank. I’m not sure what to put there, but I know it’s important. It’s the sum-up point. I think about Kat, sleeping across town in the twin bed she bought from Goodwill. In a short while, she’ll get up, take a hot shower and have some coffee by herself in that tiny kitchen. I remember her getting up early some mornings, just to scrub my back, to wrap her arms around my waist. “Let me clean you inside and out,” I would say. “You’re a dirty girl.” She threw back her head and laughed and I kissed her neck, not minding the taste of the soap.

She always smelled so damn good.

I look at the number twelve on my list and then I fill in the blank. “I broke Kat’s heart.”

Going back into the bathroom, I recite each of the twelve items out loud to my reflection. I do it again. And again. By the sixth time, my face in the mirror tells me there’s a new understanding, a new depth. “And remorse,” I say. “I am so sorry.” I find myself crying again. It’s a different cry than at one-thirty in the morning, a new cry with a deeper tone and timbre. I look at my face in the mirror, study the tears, and think that they look larger, clearer than ever before. It’s working, I think, and this makes me cry harder.

6:00. I am entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

“This is it,” I say out loud. Crumpling my list, I toss it into the toilet and flush. “They’re gone. It’s over. It all begins again today.” I remember the maudlin, “This is the first day of the rest of your life” motto that appeared on every bumper sticker and cross-stitch pattern and top-forty song in the seventies and suddenly, it all makes sense.

I go to the kitchen and check off Step One on my Game Plan. I make a half-mark on Step Two, because I figure admitting all this stuff is halfway resolving them. Fatigue comes over me, as heavy and smelly as Kat’s sorority sister’s old quilt, and I tuck my notebook into my pocket. Returning to the couch, I try to catch some z’s.

7:00. I humbly ask Him to remove my shortcomings.

At seven, my eyes automatically open and I stare at the ceiling again. No matter how drunk, no matter how sober, no matter how employed or unemployed, I always wake up at seven. I curse the clock in my head. Then the every-morning thought erupts in my brain and drips down to my tongue. I lick my lips.

I want a drink.

A Bloody Mary, rich red tomato juice, sharp clear vodka that goes straight to my sinuses, a stalk of celery as green as spring. They make them at the little restaurant down the street. Vegetables (and vodka) for breakfast.

I moan and roll over, covering my head with my pillow. I picture Ferocious God, but with the wild hair and robes of the rock star. “Please, God,” I say. “Take it away. Please make this easy.”

I get up and decide to do battle with the craving by pitting it against steamy hot water and Kat’s liquid soap. I even use her little loofah. She left it behind, she was in such a hurry to leave. Holding it to my nose, I inhale her and get an instant erection. Jerking off also helps to relieve the craving. I decide, as I towel off, to head the other direction this morning, follow a new road, find a new diner, and order bacon and eggs and hot coffee. I’ll have to imagine the waitress in a silk robe.

8:00. I make a list of all the people I’ve harmed and become willing to make amends to them all.

A
t a diner called Ruby Belle’s, the bacon and eggs taste pretty good, the coffee much better. I look quickly at the menu before ordering, half-hoping Bloody Mary will be there, but she isn’t. I take that as a sign from God that I’m on the right path.

The waitress, her name is Stacy, according to her crooked nametag, refills my coffee and smiles at me. I admire her and wonder what she would look like in one of Kat’s nightgowns. I wonder if the skin behind her knees and inside her elbows is as soft as it looks. Her legs swing open and closed under the short uniform, her breasts beg to be squeezed, tomato-plump in the generous scoop neck.

I open my notebook and stare at it over the lip of my mug. Something looks wrong and I get out my pen, drawing circles around the Game Plan. I circle and circle, trying to zero in on what’s wrong, and then I realize it. The kids. The fifth item says, “Kat and the kids.” I always think of the kids together, as a single unit. Yet surely I’ve hurt them both individually.

I think of the last time I had them for a visit, the last time I drove them home to their mother’s. I went through a red light and then skidded up onto a sidewalk. No one was hurt, but I remember looking into the rearview mirror and seeing Will’s face, gone white like they say it goes in books. His eyes were wide and he looked right at my reflection and his glare refracted directly into my eyes. I tried to laugh, but he only blinked, then looked out the window. After I pulled the car off the sidewalk and we headed toward Kat’s apartment, Will said in this impossibly low voice, “Dad, I’m tired of this. I don’t want to see you again.”

I wondered when his voice changed and then I laughed again, looked at him in the mirror, grinned as broadly as I could to show I could take the joke. “Aw, c’mon, Will. It was just a little slide. The road’s slippery tonight.”

He looked back out and I knew he was seeing the dry pavement. At thirteen, he couldn’t drive yet, but he knew wet from dry.

“It must be the tires,” I said.

“It must be you’re drunk,” he said. The white was gone from his face, replaced with two giant red stains on his cheeks. He’s had those red stains his whole life. When he was born, they were there, like cherry tomatoes on his baby face and I asked the doctor if they were birthmarks. The doctor said, “No, you’ve got yourself a high-spirited son.”

When I pulled in the apartment’s parking lot, Will was out before I even stopped the car. He ran up the walk and slammed the door behind him. My daughter, Marie, just shook her head and said, “Bye, Dad.” From the way she walked slowly to the door and shut it without looking over her shoulder, I thought better of going in to say hello to their mother.

To my wife.

Later, Kat called me and told me I wouldn’t be seeing them again. When I argued, she said she would get a court order and she did. The kids testified that I drove them home drunk several times. When the judge found out I was driving with a suspended license, my fate was sealed. My fatherhood was taken away.

We met in the judge’s chambers and it felt like we were in counseling. I told myself we would all walk out cured. Will spoke to the judge straight-out, his new voice deep and steady. I looked at him and wanted to tell the judge about the time Will stole bubblegum and I marched him back to the store. I’m not sure what Marie said, exactly. She spoke so softly, I couldn’t hear and the judge had to lean forward, almost folding himself across his desk. Kat sat ruler-straight the whole time, never once looking directly at me. When the judge told me I could no longer see my children, Kat nodded, thanked the judge, and walked out the door, the kids following. I sat and stared at the judge until he told me there would be no cure today.

I used to carry Marie on my shoulders, her fat legs fitting perfectly in the grooves by my neck. She pumped her fists in the air and shrieked that she could see the whole world from up there. And she could see everything that was important; the Santa at the end of the Christmas parade, the home run at the ball game, the nearest porta-potty at the state fair. Once, I stumbled and we both went down and Marie smacked her head on the sidewalk. We had to go to the hospital and the doctor snarled at me as I sat in the waiting room, buying cup after cup of bad vending-machine coffee.

Kat wouldn’t let me carry Marie after that, even though Marie begged and begged. She knew it was an accident. So we would sneak away together and I’d carry her then.

Now sixteen, she’s almost as tall as me. At the last Christmas parade, I joked and offered to carry her on my shoulders and she told me she could see everything just fine now, thank you.

Stacy the waitress comes back to my table and offers me another refill. I nod, hold out my mug. She bends, just a little, though it’s unnecessary, and gives me an eyeful. I take advantage of it and smile at her breasts.

“You know,” she says, “I get off at about five.”

I sip my coffee, lick my lips. “You know where Benny’s Barstools is?”

“Sure.”

“Why don’t you come by after work? I’m always there.”

She dips her head, then walks away, hips swaying to a warm beat I can’t help but recognize. I let my gaze linger. And linger. Then I remember I don’t go to Benny’s anymore.

“Shit,” I whisper. Pulling the Game Plan toward me, I put an addendum under number five:

5) Get Kat and the kids back.

Get Kat and Will and Marie back. And if I can’t get Kat back, get Will and Marie back. Definitely get Will and Marie back.

Then I underline, “Get Kat back.” I need her skin.

9:00. I make direct amends to people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

A
t nine o’clock, I stand across the street from my kids’ school. I know that the main office is just behind the front doors and I’m sure that the shadow passing across the blinded windows must be Kat. My mind gives the shadow Kat’s face, her high cheekbones and dimpled chin, and then I recognize her gently sloping shoulders, her arched neck.

The sign at the door says visitors must check in at the secretary’s desk and so I do.

When she sees me, I tell myself that the look on Kat’s face must be joy. Her eyes widen and she gets those tomatoes on her cheeks, just like Will. I smile at her and open my arms. “Hello, sweetheart,” I say.

“What are you doing here?” she hisses.

I start to move toward her desk, but she comes around it, grabs me by the arm and pulls me into the hall. “I thought I’d come by and offer you a cup of coffee. Or a late breakfast. Or an early lunch,” I say. Looking around, I spot the teacher’s lounge. “I’ve always wanted to see the inside of one of those,” I say. “Want to go in there? Is there a coffee machine?”

“Zach, you can’t stay here. I have work to do,” she says. She yanks on my arm, leading me toward the front doors.

“I wanted to see you,” I begin, reaching into my pocket for the notebook.

“Well, I don’t want to see you! Not until you’ve been sober for two weeks, Zach! Two weeks!” Fourteen days.

I spreadeagle my arms when we get to the doorway and she gasps as she pushes against me. She knows she’s no match for my bulk, but she tries anyway and I’m surprised by the force of her little body against mine. Finally, she stops and pants, looking down at the floor. “Zach, please,” she says.

I look past her down the hall and I wonder where my kids are. “Do you think it would be okay if I take Marie and Will out at lunch hour?” I ask.

She puts her hands to her face. “They don’t want to see you, Zach,” she whispers.

She’s crying and I’m instantly sorry. I put my arm around her shoulders. “Oh, sweetie,” I say. “I just wanted to come and apologize. For everything. And I want to tell the kids too.” I think of the Game Plan. “Marie and Will,” I amend.

She turns her back to me, sliding out from under my arm. “You’re always sorry,” she says. “Now, Zach, please just go, before someone sees you.”

Too late. A man steps out of the office. “Is there a problem, Kat?” he asks. He’s bigger than me. She looks quickly between us. “No, Bob, it’s fine. This man was just leaving.” I step forward, sling my arm back around her shoulders, then offer my hand to Bob. “I’m Zach,” I say. “Her husband.”

Kat looks at me, the tomatoes bursting, before running into the office. Bob just looks at my hand, then shakes his head. “You’d better go, Zach,” he says.

“I guess so.” I take one more quick look around, hoping the bell will ring and I’ll see my kids, but the hall remains silent. I smile at Bob, then turn and leave.

10:00. I continue to take personal inventory and when I am wrong, promptly admit it.

“
G
od, you’re stupid,” I mutter as I walk down the street to a phone booth. “You should have brought flowers.” Kat’s favorites, a dozen blood-red roses, a cliché, but something she loves. I picture myself peeking around a huge bouquet and seeing those tomatoes bloom on Kat’s cheeks again, but this time with the pink of pleasure. I hear her squeal.

In the booth, there’s a torn copy of the phone directory. I find the school’s number and scrounge enough change out of my pocket for the call. I don’t have much left after the tip I left for Stacy. I felt I had to leave a big one; I’d be standing her up later.

Kat answers the phone. “North High School,” she says. Her voice sounds shaky and moist.

“Kat,” I say, then pause. She doesn’t hang up. “I’m sorry, Kat,” I say quickly. “I shouldn’t have done that. It was a mistake. I’m a dumb fuck, okay? I’m sorry.” Still silence, but I can hear her breathing. I make my breath match hers, then I slow it down, a trick I learned in our childbirth classes so many years ago. I hear her growing calmer, so I take a chance. “Kat?” I ask, making my voice as soft and sincere as possible. “Can I come to see—”

She slams the phone down so hard, my ears ring.