The Home for Wayward Clocks (34 page)

Marcus laughs, sets his backpack down on the floor. He turns to me and he waits.

I hesitate. I want to kiss him, but I don’t. If I close my eyes and he kisses me, he’ll be my Marcus again. But every time I look, it’ll be this man. “I…I don’t know. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? Just stay around here somewhere and I’ll find you.”

He reaches for me. I close my eyes, give in this time, drown myself in it, smell the old leather of his jacket, feel the warmth and strength of his arms. I kiss him for just a moment, feel his lips open, then the warm wet lick of his tongue. And I keep my eyes closed and open my mouth.

That’s when he grabs my sleeve.

I try to pull away. He kisses harder, his teeth scrape against my lips, my tongue, and I hear him moan, guttural replacing soft. With his foot, he shuts the door and then he lowers me onto the cot.

And that’s when I know what’s going to happen. I try to scream, but he keeps my mouth covered with his, kissing me harder and deeper, a kiss so black, I feel like I’m falling into that March sky. His hands push my shirt up, my jeans down, and I feel him full against me. Then he rears back, his hand over my mouth, and he says, “It’s dark, Amy Sue, like you said you wanted. I want to make it better, baby.”

His mouth comes back over mine and he shoves my legs apart. I scream, scream as loud as I can into the cave of his mouth and I hear it echo down his throat, down to his stomach, battering his insides as he enters me. And I don’t know what else to do, so I scream and scream and scream. Filling him. Filling him with my noise and my pain as he fills me.

T
he sun is just starting to come up when I let myself in the house. I try to walk quietly up the stairs, but I’m so tired, I stumble. When I reach my bed, I fall in and begin to cry. I put my hand over my crotch, where I’m so sore and my panties are stiff with blood and I don’t know how to make the pain go away.

My door opens and when I look up, my mother stands above me. “Mom,” I choke out. “Mom?”

She looks at me, takes me in, lying there crying with my hand in my crotch. Her nose twitches and she frowns and I think she smells my blood. Then she slowly raises both her arms above her head. I watch each finger, both thumbs, one right after the other, curl in and form fists. And then she brings them down in an avalanche.

I try to roll away, but she climbs on me, straddles me, and there is no escape.

There is no escape.

And I open my mouth and scream again, this time into my room, as empty and futile as in the shed, my voice swallowed by Marcus’ mouth.

I scream until there is no voice, I have no voice, no body, no me. I’m gone. I’m just gone. I close my eyes and wait for it to be over.

W
hen she leaves, when it’s been quiet for a while, I slide onto the floor, next to my bed. Carefully, I pull out the box. I lean back and stare at the belly of the clock, at the softly painted picture. I trace it all with my finger. I have no voice, but my raw lips move anyway, and in my head, I hear myself, a whisper.

“You come out of the house and stretch, lifting your hands as high to the sky as you can. The willow tree’s branches weave into each other in the wind and the tips seem to curl and flick, waving at you. You look down at the lake, the blue scalloped with waves, and it all seems to beckon. And you answer. Like you’ve always wanted to do. You answer. Walking to the lake, you stop for a minute to pat the little red boat. You leave your favorite book of poetry there, resting on the seat, the oars crossed over the bow. And then you walk into the lake, feeling the warm water rise and touch, rise and swallow you down.

“And you drown. You drown and you drown and you drown. And you are so happy.”

Carefully, I fold the clock in my arms, bring it to my chest, and hug it as tightly as I dare. I close my eyes and dream of this place, dream where I can be happy, where all is warmth and water and blue and green and gold. And there is no one else but me in my clock and water world.

No one at all.

A
nd so she left with her softness and curves and smooth as silk skin, and things return to your kind of normal. A world focused on clocks, on their hearts and minds and their need to be cared for. And like before, clocks don’t raise much of a fuss in your life. As long as you keep them wound and cleaned and balanced, they’re happy, and as long as they’re happy, you’re happy.

Except now it seems like you never were. You try to remember when.

The only voice in the house is yours when you murmur to the clocks, or when you specify directions to the tourists. The tourists’ voices ring out from time to time, and then all falls silent again. There’s no melodic voice, singing your one-syllable name in a variety of octaves, soprano for excitement, alto for serious conversation, tenor for that certain invitation to bed. And bass for the guttural sighs experienced there. And as for warmth, well, the sheets have never been so cold.

Your normal life no longer seems so normal. Your normal life now seems empty. Even though you never expected to receive such a gift as a partner and a lover, even though you never expected that gift to stay, there is a new hollow in your life. A hollow that echoes with the experiences of intimacy in all its forms. You tell yourself to fill that hollow with clocks. Because, after all, clocks never hurt you. That’s why you fell in love with them in the first place.

Fell in love. Imagine.

Climbing unknowingly onto the five steps of grief, you argue your way through self-righteous denial—
she’ll be back
—and then get hung up forever on anger, leaving the other three steps unmounted. How could she do this? She knew you, she knew everything about you, everything you dared tell. And there are things that you don’t dare tell, but how can you ever give voice to that? It seems to you now that all women bring hurt and desertion with them, even as they bring soft skin and soft voices and love.

So you stay in anger. And who could possibly blame you? How could anyone expect anything else but a constant flow of rage through you, recycled over and over again through the beat of your own heart and all the years of your life.

But only you know the full map of that flow. That river. Thunderstorms of fear fill your river of anger, and that in turn empties into the ocean hidden away in the deepest part of you. That profound sadness. Imagine all the blue and all the shades and all the salt. At times, you feel that you’re drowning.

How can any woman change the direction of that river, alter the logic of geography? How can any clock? Only an earthquake can change the current, and only for just a little while. Then back to the same path through worn-out and eroded banks. The force of an earthquake is no match for the depth of an ocean.

Imagine.

James knew what it was like to wake in the night and gasp for air, pulling away from that drowning ocean. And he dreamed that he could turn away from it, step out and shake himself dry in the sunshine, by surrounding himself with all that he loved, all the clocks of the world, and by caring for them. The comfort of that sound first heard in the dark of a root cellar multiplied itself by the hundreds and James couldn’t imagine a life without the steady tick, the constant reminder that something else was out there. He wasn’t alone, even when nothing else breathed next to him.

And as time went by and Diana became more and more of a vapor, he couldn’t dream of a life with another person either. Surrounding himself with that person and caring for her, and she caring for him. The comfort. It was a fairytale, mostly dimly remembered, and then with a stunning clarity at times, when he threw himself out of the ocean in the middle of the night, gasping, and remembered the calming stroke of a palm, the whisper of a breath in his ear. But then there was nothing but the ticking of clocks and he had to reach for them again. Reach for them for years.

Now imagine there is nothing to hear.

Nothing.

Imagine.

S
tanding by his car, James tried to feel that it was right for him to go. He had his back to the house, to all the clocks, and he wondered if Cooley was truly up to the task, if Ione would be able to handle it if he was gone far into next week. It was Saturday morning and he planned to make the five-hour drive in one fell swoop. The appointment at the clinic was early Monday, which gave James Sunday to get his bearings and look around. With the car at the ready, though, it felt different. Cooley gently placed his suitcase in the trunk; his maps were in the front seat, courtesy of Neal. And suddenly, James wondered if he should leave on Sunday instead. Sunday night. Maybe even the middle of the night so that he would arrive just in time for the appointment. And then turn right around and come back home, before anything had a chance to go wrong, before the clocks stopped, before they learned to live without him.

Trying to shake this off, trying to remind himself that he needed the time to relax before the appointment, and that if he came home right after, he wouldn’t be able to see the Time Museum, James walked around the car, checking the tires, wiping the mirrors and brake lights. His worries switched to driving without being able to hear. How would he hear sirens or if the car was making an odd sound? The night before, Ione argued with the others, waving her arms around, insisting that someone needed to accompany James to Chicago. He could tell what she was saying by her flushed cheeks and her busy hands, pointing first to Dr. Owen, then to Gene, to Neal. For a while, she even patted her own chest and James wondered what it would be like to go to the Time Museum with a woman armed with a purple feather duster. “Ione,” he said then. “You’re not going with me. You’re needed here.”

They all stopped and stared then, for a blank-faced moment before their mouths burst into rapid flapping. Dr. Owen grabbed the notebook and wrote, “James! You can hear?”

“Of course not,” he said. “I just figured out what you were talking about. I have to go to Chicago. I can’t hear. You’re all thinking that I shouldn’t travel by myself.”

Dr. Owen started to write something, but then he just nodded. Ione sat down. Cooley’s legs stretched like sticks on the floor, her back in a corner, her hands folded neatly in her lap. She watched the adult faces as they spoke and from time to time, she glanced at James. When she did and she caught him watching, she smiled.

“Look,” James said. “I’m sure other deaf people drive. It’s not like I’m blind.”

They all said something, but it was Dr. Owen with the notebook. He wrote while they talked, then handed the notebook over. “I’m sure you can drive, James,” he said. “Your other senses have probably become a lot more acute. While you’re driving, make sure you check your mirrors constantly. And trust what you feel in the vibration of the car. You’ll feel it through your wrists and fingers on the steering wheel, through your legs and hips for the engine and tires.” So the good doctor could lecture on car anatomy too.

James nodded, then announced it was time for them to go. He needed sleep if he was to make the drive alone. Trying to feel like he had everything under control, James assigned tasks. Ione was watching the Home during the weekdays and Neal would be in and out to check on her. Molly was a backup for Ione, should Ione be needed somewhere else and then Gene would check on her. Cooley would be in after school to work with the clocks. If James was still gone by the next weekend, Ione and Cooley would work together, with Ione focusing on the visitors and Cooley on the clocks. James hoped their two sets of eyes could do what he’d been doing for years. They needed to be everywhere at once.

Before she left, Cooley stopped by James’ side. She had the notebook. “I cud go w/U,” she said. “I cud miss school.”

James frowned at her and shut the notebook. It was all the answer she needed. He felt the force of her footsteps through the floorboards.

Now he turned back to the house, wondering if he should go through one more time, check the pendulums, check the hands, make sure all was well. He thought about taking a clock or two, placing them beside him on the passenger seat to keep him company, but he worried that the jarring of the road could knock them out of whack. James faced the car again, reached in the open window and touched the steering wheel, warm from the sun, and he told himself this was his chance to be on his own again, to make his own decisions and be his own companion. He’d come to realize that these people cared, but that didn’t make him relish their company all that much more. Though at times, it was nice to have them around to talk to.

James hoped that in the silence of the car and in the strange hotel room, his mother would return to her grave. Maybe in new surroundings, she would finally leave him alone.

He opened the car door and looked up. Cooley was in the house somewhere and Dr. Owen, Neal and Ione stood on the porch. They shouted something and smiled, so James waved. Then he started the engine. He could tell it was running by the vibration and he thought maybe Dr. Owen was right. Driving off, he resisted the urge to look back through the rearview mirror. He knew they were all waving. He knew the clocks inside continued on their way. Some, he thought, might have a worried sound in their mechanisms, a pause in the pendulum, a shriller sound to the chime. He told himself they would be all right. In his head, his voice was unsure and hollow.

James always enjoyed driving, enjoyed the silence and the easy motion. But the silence was truly deep this time and he found himself straining to hear anything, the smallest of noises. He turned the radio on, hoped, and heard nothing. James never played the radio in the car, other than when he had to listen for Iowa’s many weather bulletins, but now he found himself wishing he could turn the radio down because it was too loud. He wanted something to be too loud again. Something other than the silence and his own thoughts. Other than his mother’s voice.

He began talking to himself, reciting the sounds he missed. He could feel his lips move and the slight burn of words in his throat. “The trees are moving and I have to keep straightening the wheel,” he said. “It must be windy. There is the whoosh of the wind pressing up against the windows. The engine is humming, my keys are jangling from the ignition.” When a truck passed, appearing out of nowhere, James jumped and reminded himself to check the mirrors. “There’s a roar,” he said and he imagined a lion as the six big wheels tore up the road. He thought he felt the extra vibration through his seat.