The Home for Wayward Clocks (43 page)

James thought of his house, the Home, not hidden by trees, but in the middle of a small town block. Yet he knew the feeling. For a long time, this house might as well have been in the woods, far away from everything.

James pulled out the drawing pad. Opening it to Cooley’s picture, he set it in front of her on the workshop bench. Her fingers immediately got jumpy, ruffling the edges of the notebook paper, and they sat that way for a while. James was in silence, but he knew the paper must be making a whisking sound that echoed around the basement walls.

He finally figured she wasn’t going to volunteer anything. “You do that?” he asked, pointing to the drawing pad.

That was all it took. She bent over the notebook and wrote like mad. While James waited, he opened his drawer of spare clock keys. Finding the right one for the acorn clock, a number six, he began to wind.

Finally, Cooley threw the notebook on the bench. She turned her back. James studied her for a moment, noting that her shoulders were steady; there were no sobs. She just sat straight, her body braced. He picked up the notebook.

“I’m sorry I went thru UR things,” he read. “I did it 1 afternoon while U were gone. I just wanted 2 look. And I found that pad. I liked UR picture but it wasn’t right. I had 2 fix it. There shouldn’t be a mom. The mom made it wrong. Moms don’t do stuff like that.”

James blinked, then turned back to his own picture. A mother teaching a little boy to tell time. The mother’s face was his mother’s face, drawn as closely as he could remember. But he knew his mother didn’t teach him to tell time. He knew that better than anybody. But he thought other moms did. He thought Cooley’s mom did.

“Cooley,” he said and her shoulders hunched. “Cooley, what do mothers do?”

James waited. After a bit, Cooley straightened up again. Then she turned. Her eyes were huge. Then, one arm at a time, she drew her sleeves back.

The room lurched sideways.

Scars ran from her wrist up to her elbow, then disappeared under the tight grip of her sleeve. Some scars were white and thin, others gray, and some an angry, angry red. There were dots and streaks and James could almost smell the smoke. He could almost feel her skin burning, peeling away from her flesh. A knot grabbed at his throat, the familiar feel of the collar. “Oh my god,” he said softly, and then louder, “Oh my god!” James grabbed her and she came flying and he held her as tightly as he could. He felt her shaking and he knew the insides of her arms were pressed against his back, the scars rubbing into his shirt, and he wondered how she could take the pain.

But James knew. He knew. Sometimes, the pain is the only thing left that you can feel.

Reaching behind Cooley, James started the pendulum on the acorn clock. He moved the minute hand until it just barely touched the twelve. Cooley gave a great shudder and James knew the clock began to chime.

A
fter Cooley left, James thought about what to do. She hadn’t said anything else before she left, once she stopped crying. But James knew it was her mother.

He sat at the kitchen table and drank a cup of coffee. His supper, delivered by Molly, sat on the counter. He hadn’t touched it yet. Molly knew she didn’t have to provide meals anymore, but she said she wanted to, just to welcome him back home. And that night, James was relieved. He was too tired to think about cooking. He was too tired to eat. But having someone deliver it made him obligated and eventually, he got up and warmed the meal in the microwave.

Ione came in just as he was pushing mashed potatoes around on the plate. She’d already left for the night and while James was surprised to see her, he didn’t jump. She glanced around the table, then looked at him, her palms raised. James knew she was looking for the notebook. “I think I left it downstairs,” he said.

She shrugged, then picked up her pink sweater from the chair across from James. She waved it. She’d forgotten her sweater. James nodded, then set down his fork.

Sitting down, she pointed at the dinner plate. Then she pointed at James, her eyebrows raised.

“I’m okay,” he said. “Just not hungry, I guess.”

They sat like that for a while. Suddenly, she leaned forward and looked James straight in the eyes. James shrugged and sat back. “I’m worried about Cooley, Ione,” he said. “There’s…well, there’s a lot going on at her home.”

Ione nodded.

“You knew?”

She looked around again and so did James. Neither wanted to make the trip down the basement stairs. Finally, she got up and fetched a paper towel. She pulled a pen out of her purse and began to write. Her words bumped over the raised texture of the paper.

“Amy Sue’s mom is no secret around town. We all no she’s a bad person.”

A bad person. James pictured this woman, someone whom he couldn’t put a face to, holding Cooley’s arm and lowering a cigarette onto her skin. Watching Cooley smolder. Watching her own daughter cry in pain. “Not a bad person,” he said slowly. “A monster.” James said the words with a certainty that weighed his tongue down in his mouth. He knew about monsters.

Ione wrote again. “Not a monster. She sleeps around a lot. Not just her husband. She drinks. Sleezy. It’s not real nice for Amy Sue.”

“Ione,” James said, then leaned forward and grabbed Ione’s hands. She stared at him, her eyes wide. “Ione, she’s hurting Cooley. Her arms are all scarred. Cigarette burns.” He released Ione’s hands and she fell against the back of her chair. “I’m sure there’s more too. A woman like that wouldn’t stop with cigarettes.”

Ione wasn’t looking at James anymore; she stared at the air. Her lips moved and from the way they trembled, he knew she was stuttering. She was trying to say that she didn’t know.

“No one knew, Ione,” James said quickly. “Unless Cooley told you, you just wouldn’t know. She hides it.”

Ione blinked, then leaned forward to write. “I always wundered why she wore long sleeve shirts all the time,” she said.

James nodded. Then he joined her in staring into space. “I have to do something, Ione,” he said. “I just don’t know what.”

Ione scribbled some more. “Call the athoritys?” she asked.

“No. They’d just take Cooley away. She doesn’t want that.” And James didn’t want that, though he chose not to say it aloud. He drummed his fingers and wished he could hear them, but the sharp feel of the table against his fingertips helped. He hit them harder, then harder, until Ione reached out and pressed his hand flat. The sudden stop forced the words at the tips of his fingers, the words that echoed through his head, out of his mouth. The rhythm was strong, two syllables pounded by four fingers and a stabilizing thumb, though he doubted their sensibility. “Live here,” James said, then completed the thought. “I think she should live here.”

Ione patted his hand, then shook her head.

“Oh, I know. I know it would look odd. A teenage girl living with an old man. But she’d have her own room and she’d be fine. She likes it here, Ione. After living in a place like that, she needs to live somewhere she likes.”

Ione shook her head again, then wrote on the paper towel. “Not proper. She culd live with me and Neal.”

James pictured Cooley sitting in a bedroom, her feet curled beneath her as she watched Ione dust everything with her lavender duster. Then he saw Cooley stretch her legs out and on her feet were a matching pair of pink fuzzy slippers. On her bedside table was a ceramic clock in the shape of a poodle and he knew it was battery-powered.

James wiped his eyes to clear away the vision. “No, Ione. She needs to be here.” He carefully rubbed her words on the paper towel, tracing the letters. “See…I understand her, Ione. I…well, I know what it feels like. Okay? Can we leave it at that?”

Ione’s mouth hung open and James saw her glance down at his arms. There were no scars there, but he crossed his arms quickly. Ione tugged at his wrists and for a second, James resisted. But then he wondered why. There was nothing. Not physically anyway, not where she could see. There were still old remnants of collar burns around his throat, but age and sagging skin helped disguise those. And the signs of the beatings were well hidden, tucked away behind layers of clothes. Slowly, he opened his arms and laid them flat on the table, palms up. His skin shone clean. “Not exactly like Cooley, Ione.” James tried to think of what else to say, what words would express what he meant without giving too much away. His mother was dead. There was no need to exhume her, to expose her to other people. It was enough that she still lived in his mind, flowed through his body. “Different people have different ways, I guess.”

She wrote on the paper towel. “Your mother?”

James nodded.

She sat back and closed her eyes. Her chin trembled. Then she reached out and patted his hand again, quickly, rat-a-tat pats. She returned to writing. “You’ll never get her mom to agree,” she said.

James grabbed the paper towel and crumpled it, feeling it crush inside his fingers. “Then I’ll have to convince her,” he said. It made James think about that one moment, that one time that he drew back his fist and hit his own mother. The way she staggered, then fell to the ground. And he thought about how he was able to walk right past her then, walk away, and she never even said a word.

James had to find that strength again. He looked at his curled fingers, gripping the paper towel.

Ione pulled away from the table. For a second, she stood there, hugging herself. Then she stepped behind James and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. James felt the embrace and let himself relax into it. He knew she was saying that she would help, that she and Neal would come with him to Cooley’s house, if that’s what he wanted.

“I’m going to fetch her myself,” James said. “But I will need help getting this house fit for a young girl. You’ll have to tell me what she needs.”

Ione planted a kiss square on the top of his head and James thought about how he always wanted his mother to do that sort of thing. He watched Ione go, then got up to dump the rest of his meal down the disposal.

Going into the living room, James built a fire, then sank into his recliner. He watched the fire and he watched the pendulums and he thought about things. He thought about Cooley and what it would be like to have her living there. He thought about what it would be like to have anyone living with him. Cooley knew the clocks, she was getting better at it every day, but would she stay out of his way? Would she be underfoot all the time? James looked over at Diana’s recliner and pictured Cooley’s thin body there, her feet up in a way that Diana’s never were, her lap full of homework. She’d probably be full of questions that he couldn’t answer.

James wondered what room he should put her in. He wondered if she would stay there and leave the rest of the house to him. Which he knew wouldn’t be good, but every time he pictured himself coming around a corner and seeing Cooley, bumping into her as she came out of the bathroom or as she slid down the stairway banister for a snack, James cringed. He was used to living only with his clocks and at times, running into shadows and shapes and scents of the past. What was he going to do with flesh and blood that didn’t eventually go home?

James must have thought himself to sleep. But at midnight, he woke up. Or something woke him up. He knew it was midnight.

Because he could hear the dwarf longcase clock. Her alto voice came through his fog, cutting through soft and gentle, just enough to let James know she was there. He turned his right ear toward her and he heard her more clearly, and a few other voices came through as well. But it was the longcase, the grandmother clock, that reached out to James first. He held absolutely still until her song was over and the silence descended again. Then he got up and banked the fire and turned out the lights. On his way out of the room, he stopped by the dwarf longcase and looked long and hard into her face. She was protected by glass, so he leaned his forehead against hers. Her touch was cool.

James went on up to bed. There was nothing else he could do that night. It would have to wait until the next day. Until after school, when Cooley came home.

J
ames waited across the street from the high school. He wasn’t sure if Cooley came to his house straight after school or if she stopped at home first, so he thought it best to nab her here. He knew she wanted to escape. He also knew how hard it was to leave.

The ache of that still stayed in his bones. It’s amazing how long a person can stay hopeful, even when locked in a dog cage down in the root cellar. Or burned with cigarettes.

Eventually, students began to straggle out, so James figured a bell must have rung. Some moved faster than others, some in groups, some alone. He worried that he would miss Cooley and so he tried not to blink, not even once, as he stared at the front door, hoping she wouldn’t exit any other way.

Which she must have, because somehow, she found James. There was a tap on his shoulder and he turned and there she was. Clutching her backpack, she said something and he figured he knew how to answer. The question was clear on her face.

“We’re going to your house,” James said. “I want to talk to your mother.”

She stood completely still, her face blank, the smile that a moment ago was welcoming now stretched to fun house proportions. Then she flushed red and shook her head vigorously. She said something, her mouth moving so fast, her lips and teeth became a pink and white blur, and then she swung away from James. He grabbed her arm. “Listen,” he said. “I want to get you out of there. I want you to come live with me.”

She stopped and she snapped her arm, forcing him away. When she looked at James, he recognized the expression in her eyes. Ice-blue fear. She twitched and he knew her thoughts. What would her mother do? What would James be like to live with? What would the kids at school say?

What did he want from her?

James could answer the last one. He could answer to anyone who wondered about the situation, who came close to letting the phrase ‘dirty old man’ into their minds, into their gossip. He would even tell the mayor if it was necessary, if he thought about taking the key to the city back. “You’ll have your own room, Cooley,” James said. “There’s a few you can pick from.”