The Home for Wayward Clocks (36 page)

When the men were done, James realized he now had two large cardboard boxes to carry back to the hotel, still two or three blocks away. “Can I make a couple trips?” James asked the cigar man. “I’m staying at the Rest Easy and I don’t think I can carry these all at once. Not safely, anyway.”

The cigar man shrugged, then turned a closed sign on his door. He set the plastic hands of the “Will return” clock sign for a half hour. Then he handed James a box and picked up the other and led James down the street. James trailed the aroma of the cigar all the way to the hotel. When they got there, James tried to pay the cigar man an extra ten for his help. He shook his head, reached in his pocket, pulled out a cigar and tucked it into James’ outstretched hand. Watching the cigar man go, James held the cigar under his nose and breathed it in. All these years and James never once thought to buy a cigar or some tobacco and just smell it every now and then, to bring the memory of his father warm and safe into his home. James tucked the cigar tenderly into a pocket of his suitcase.

While he knew it was a waste of time, James set out each clock in his room. They would all have to be packed again when he left, either for Rockford or home, but he didn’t care. The ones that worked ticked away on the bedside stands, the television, the table, the floor. James felt the vibrations under his hands and against his cheek. The pendulums moved and he swayed with them and felt at home. The clocks that didn’t work still got a breath of fresh air and he polished them as best he could with the towels from the bathroom.

The maid would have a fit.

The skeleton clock and the mantel sat next to each other on the dresser, where James could see them easily from any place in the room. Glancing at the blank television, James stretched out on the bed and watched the sunlight play over these new old clocks. When the bright sun and the swirled wood and the gold and silver pendulums began to blur and blend, he closed his eyes and napped like a child. Like the child he never was. James never was able to sleep in the root cellar.

I
n the morning, James sat awhile over his free doughnuts and coffee. He kept reading and rereading the directions to the Chicago Center for Ear, Nose and Throat that Cooley found on that internet. She booked James this room and then printed directions from the hotel parking lot to the clinic. It looked easy enough to get there, but James couldn’t stop reading the step by step directions. Driving in this big city was nerve-wracking, especially without hearing. He couldn’t tell when there was traffic, when there was a break, when a taxi or a bus might be bearing down.

At home, James mostly missed the sounds of the clocks. Here, he missed the sounds of everyday life. It felt like he was in a vacuum.

Finally, with one last cup of coffee, James gave the skeleton and mantel clocks a pat, nodded at the others and set out. The directions said it would take twenty-five point eight minutes to get there, so he gave himself an hour. He figured even computers couldn’t predict the traffic.

In the car, James clenched both hands over the wheel and with his thumbs, he held the directions in place where he could see them easily. He wanted to stare up at the skyline, no longer far away, but right there on top of him, buildings that went up higher than he could see out of the windshield. But he was so nervous, his eyes wouldn’t leave the road for more than a few seconds at a time. Placing himself into the right hand lane, James decided to stay there until his exit, holding the speed at ten miles under the limit so he would have time to read all the signs. If the other drivers honked, he didn’t hear them. If they glared or made rude gestures, he didn’t see it. Fear and bad ears kept James on the straight and narrow until he rolled down the exit ramp and turned to the right. Then he slid effortlessly into the parking garage of the Chicago Center for Ear, Nose and Throat. For a moment, after shutting the car off, James allowed himself to shake. Shake as a delayed response for what he just drove through, and shake in preparation for what was ahead.

James knew there was a chance that this special doctor would say he was never going to get his hearing back. Whenever he thought about it, it was like a big black box just descended over him and shut him in. It was like deafness was black, a word and color more fitting for the blind. But without sound, the world seemed black and boxlike.

There was also the possibility of surgery. James thought of a knife against his ears, puncturing holes until sound flowed through, like air to a jarred butterfly. Or maybe the doctor would say it would be all right. Just all right. Doc Owen kept saying that, he said it just needed time.

At home, there was plenty of time. It was everywhere, on every wall. James just needed to be able to hear it passing.

Inside the clinic, the hallways were brightly lit and James followed the green path to the ear section. A lot of people were talking by waving their hands around and James wondered if he could learn that, at his age. If he couldn’t, and if this deafness didn’t lift, he would go through a small fortune in notebooks. But James just couldn’t imagine talking to someone by watching their hands, seeing them spell out whole sentences with their fingers. James wanted voices, including his own. He wanted to hear himself speak. Hear somebody answer.

At a reception desk, a woman smiled at him. “Hello,” James said and wondered if she looked surprised because he could talk. “I have an appointment with Dr. Carson this morning.”

She said something as she looked down at this big sheet of paper, graphed out with hours and half-hours. “Excuse me?” James said. “What? I’m sorry, I can’t hear.” He handed her the notebook, which she looked at for a moment, then she smiled again and nodded. She wrote quickly.

“Please have a seat. Dr. is here, but a few minutes behind. Help yourself to coffee.”

James nodded, then poured a cup from a big urn in the center of the room before he sat down. He didn’t really want any more coffee, but free was free. He held his hands around the cup, warming his fingers, cold even though the temperature was fine in the waiting room. As he sat there, James wondered how he would know when they called his name. He blinked, and then before his eyes, he saw himself still sitting there after dark because he never knew they were looking for him and they never knew who he was. Quickly, he got back up and went to the receptionist.

“How will I know when they call me?” James asked. He wasn’t sure, but it felt like his voice trembled. “I mean, I can’t hear.”

She accepted the notebook and wrote quickly. “I’ll get you,” she said. “I know your name.”

James nodded, but worried anyway. She might be away from the desk when they came for him, off doing whatever it was that receptionists do when they’re not at their posts. She might be on the phone. James started to leave, to return to his seat, but she reached out quickly and grabbed his hand. Still holding on, she searched under the desk, then handed James a chocolate chip cookie. She pointed at his coffee, making dunking motions. And suddenly, James relaxed. A cup of coffee, a sweet, and someone who knew his name. Someone who fed him and wasn’t going to leave until he was taken care of. “Thank you,” James said, then went to sit down.

He was just licking the chocolate off his fingers when she came to stand in front of him. Motioning, she led James down the hallway and deposited him into a room. Dr. Carson came in before she even closed the door.

James had to explain the whole accident again, even though he knew Dr. Carson just talked to Doc Owen about it a few days ago. James hated thinking about the accident, hated the thought of those smashed baby birds and the feel of that big clock’s chime attacking him, pressing him to the floor. He told the story as quickly as possible and then held still and quiet through the examination. This doctor was much more thorough than Doc Owens, pulling James’ ears this way and that, sticking the otoscope in so deep, James felt it in his throat. He wondered if the doctor was going to crawl inside, investigate James’ canals and eardrums like a lost man in underground caves. Finally, Dr. Carson sat down and wrote in the notebook.

“Your ears look about as I expected,” he said. “You’ve had a severe trauma and both your eardrums definitely burst. There are also little intricate hair cells in the ear that interpret sound vibrations, allowing us to hear in the first place, and these little hair cells have undoubtedly been damaged. All of this takes time to heal. I agree with Dr. Owen’s regimen of anti-inflammatories and antibiotics, though I think maybe even a decongestant can be added, in case there’s some fluid build-up. It’s possible your ears are too swollen to drain properly and that’s causing some of the deafness.”

James handed the notebook back to the doctor. “Will I hear again?” James felt the words leave his mouth and he pictured them hanging there in the air, black and round, swollen with their silence. Dr. Carson looked at him, then shrugged.

He shrugged. How could a doctor shrug? They’re supposed to know so much, it was supposed to either be a yes or no. A shrug left James no better off than he was before. But then the doctor wrote some more in the notebook. James leaned forward, hoping to see a yes written in capital letters and underlined.

“Let’s run a few tests, see what I can find out.”

James’ words in the air changed to gray, but they were still there. He followed Dr. Carson to a large room filled with what looked like booths. Dr. Carson handed James over to another white-coated man, then he waved at James and pointed to his watch. James nodded and followed the whitecoat to one of the booths. The whitecoat wrote in the notebook.

“We’re going to test your hearing. It might seem like you’re sitting there for some time as I go through the sounds, until I find a level where you are hearing. You might not hear anything at all. I’ll come and get you when we’re done.”

James sat down at a counter covered in some type of fuzzy rough material. Through a gray window, he could see into an adjoining booth where there were a lot of dials and switches. Whitecoat put a set of headphones on James, a strange set of headphones that actually reached deep inside his ears. They made James itch. Then Whitecoat waved and pointed to the window before shutting James into the small booth. The air was sucked out with him and James gasped, wondering if he was locked in, and it was like he was suddenly thrown down the cold cement stairs of the root cellar. There was no strip of light shining around the door and James started to run to it, but the headphones yanked him back, kept him in place. Like a tether. A tether on his ears instead of his throat. James put his hands to his head and gagged, then threw off the headphones and hit the door. Panting, he wrestled with the doorknob, but it wouldn’t open. He was locked in.

He was just short of screaming when the door flew open and whacked him in the head. James fell back on his haunches and looked up into the bright light, only barely seeing Whitecoat standing there. The light hovered around him like a halo and the air was fresh and cool. James swallowed it in big gulps. He knew there were sounds coming out of him, and he knew what they were. The terrified whimpers of a puppy.

Whitecoat helped James up and led him back to the seat. He rubbed James’ back and then looked at his forehead. Whitecoat’s fingers ran lightly over a sore spot that James knew was going to get worse. Whitecoat shook his head, then reached for the notebook.

“James,” he said, “it’s just for a few minutes. I know it’s close in here. Look through the window this time and in a moment, you’ll see me. I promise, I’ll come and let you out. The air will feel different in here as I leave. The room is pressurized, like an airplane.”

Whitecoat replaced the headphones, patted James’ back one more time, then left. James watched the door close, then shut his eyes and pictured Whitecoat walking through the big room to the window. When James opened his eyes, Whitecoat was there. He waved. James focused on him, on the light and the air around him, as he began to twist various dials.

It was a long time and there was nothing. Whitecoat kept looking at James, then looking back down at the panel. James wondered if he should be doing something, shaking his head, holding his hands out, palms up and empty. His forehead throbbed and James reached up and touched it, just once, and Whitecoat seemed to startle, his eyebrows arched up under his hairline. James quickly put his hand back into his lap and shook his head. There was just nothing. The sound of nothing, hollow and black and still.

But then James heard it, a pinprick in the darkness. It was quiet and tinny and shrill, but it was there, like the sound a dime makes when it falls on the floor. James’ right hand shot up, all by itself, and clasped the headphones. Whitecoat frowned like it was another false alarm, but then James tapped the right side of his head, tapped it and wanted to whoop. Whitecoat grinned and began flipping dials and switches like a great mad organist.

James raised his right arm, his left, his right again, and then the first time he raised both hands, raised them high in the air and waggled his fingers to the rhythm of the sounds rising out of the dead darkness in both of his ears, Whitecoat did a little dance, twisting in the booth, shaking his fanny. The sounds grew clearer, little bells, ringing and singing and playing a discordant song in James’ head.

Then Whitecoat bowed, a conductor at the end of a great performance, and he turned two knobs with a final flick of his wrists. The blackness fell over James again, hitting his ears like a wind tunnel. All the chimes blew away and he was alone again. Whitecoat left his little room and as James watched him leave, he suddenly fell headlong into tears. He tried to contain them, but they flew out like an Iowa thunderstorm. James’ eyes squeezed shut, he wailed and he didn’t know Whitecoat was there until he wrapped his arms around James.

“I’m sorry!” James sobbed, leaning into his coat. “I’m sorry! It was just so good to hear something again!”

Whitecoat patted James’ back, over and over, and eventually helped him to his feet. They walked back to the examining room and Whitecoat stayed with James, his arm around James’ shoulders, while Dr. Carson wrote in the notebook. The receptionist was back too, with a cup of water for James, which he gulped. Somehow that soothed him and he was able to calm down to the occasional shudder.