The Home for Wayward Clocks (40 page)

But what about the skeleton? James sat down at his workbench and watched it, its artful precision open for all to view. It was like seeing a person made of transparent skin, exposing all the bloodwork and muscles and organs within. The clock was constant motion, the teeth of various wheels fitting into each other, the cogs moving ever forward, pushing the pendulum, the pendulum pushing the hands. This clock was an open diagram on how time passed.

James blinked. Then he looked around.

Other than clocks in various states of repair, this room had no timepiece. James always used his watch down here. Yet in front of him, there was now a working model of what he strived for: a cleanly performing clock. No hesitation, no skips or jumps ahead. Just time moving solidly before his eyes.

What better place for this clock than in the workshop?

Carefully, James constructed a worthy pedestal. Setting an old but sturdy wooden box upside down on the lefthand corner of the workbench, James covered it with some black crushed velvet so that no sign of the knotted wood peeked out. Digging around in another drawer, he found a lace doily, probably picked up at some estate sale or another, and draped it over the velvet. Then the skeleton clock settled down on its perch. It was an odd slice of elegance on an old workbench, but it worked. The skeleton clock would help him to resurrect more and more of its extended family, starting with the acorn clock and the miniature mantel.

Satisfied, James went upstairs to unpack. When he put the suitcase away on the top shelf of his bedroom closet, he truly felt like he was at home.

Before shutting off the light in final preparation for sleep, James reached inside the bedside table for his drawing pad. He needed to say goodbye to the clock he knew he would never build. Flipping to the correct page, James looked at the picture of a young boy learning to tell time at his mother’s knee. James held it for a bit and his hands began to shake.

He didn’t learn how to tell time at his mother’s knee. It’s hard to tell time in the underground darkness of a root cellar. It was James’ third grade teacher who discovered he didn’t know how to tell time when she incorporated time-telling into math word problems. James stared at his math sheet that day, reading the words that told him to give the number of minutes passing between 2:10 and 2:35, 5:30 and 7:10 and he had no idea what the answers could be. He heard people refer to the time, but he didn’t know how that connected to the numbers on a face of a clock. Going around the room, calling on students, Mrs. Bernicky finally came to James. “James,” she said, “read problem number twelve.”

Carefully, James said, “Grace leaves for the store at 10:20. She gets back at 11:10. How long was Grace gone?”

The class waited for the answer. The silence pushed against his chest and he had difficulty breathing. He tried to figure it out. If he did it like a regular math problem, 1110 minus 1020, he got ninety. “Ninety minutes?” James whispered.

The look on her face and the suppressed snickers of his classmates told James how wrong he was. Mrs. Bernicky made him stay after school that day, which terrified James because he knew he’d miss the bus. If he wasn’t off that bus and down in the cellar in his cage when his mother woke up from her nap, James would be in huge trouble.

But the stuff Mrs. Bernicky showed James fascinated him. She brought out a big red molded plastic clock with bright blue hands. The numbers were blue caps that lifted off the clock, showing the number of minutes underneath, so under the one was a five, under the two was a ten, and so on. She explained the difference between the hour and minute hands. Although the plastic clock didn’t have one, she told James about the sweeping second hand too. “Over the next few days,” she said, “I’ll show you when to say how many minutes it is before the hour, or when it is a quarter past or half past or quarter to.” That sounded wonderful to James and he loved the way the clock hands neatly sliced the day into manageable pieces. If he could just get through his day, five minutes at a time, he would make it.

“We’ll do this again tomorrow, James, okay?” she said and James followed her gaze to the big flat-faced clock at the back of the classroom. Its solid ticking accompanied his thoughts throughout the day and now he knew what to call those sounds…seconds. He could count them and follow them into minutes and minutes into hours. James looked at the clock and figured out the time. 3:25.

“Mrs. Bernicky, what time does school get out?” he asked.

“Two-thirty-five,” she said. “How many minutes ago was that, James?”

She smiled, but James’ heart froze. He knew now that fifty minutes had passed. He would have to walk home from school and it would take forever to get there. He tried to answer, but he couldn’t. Instead, his eyes filled up with tears. James hated crying, but it seemed to sometimes come over him as a force he couldn’t control.

“What’s wrong?” She looked at the clock again. “James, do you take the bus or are you a walker?”

“I take the bus,” he whispered.

“Oh, and I’ve made you miss it!” She quickly got up and threw some things into a big leather bag with a buckle that she brought with her every day. “Come on, I’ll take you home. Can you show me the way?”

James nodded and tried to swallow his tears. All he could hope for was that his mother was still napping and he could slip into the root cellar and she’d never know that he was late. He was buttoning up his jacket when Mrs. Bernicky handed him the toy clock. “You take this with you,” she said. “You can practice with it tonight.”

It felt like the most precious gift in the world, even though James knew he couldn’t keep it. All the way home, he balanced that plastic clock on his knees, moving its arms, pulling out the numbers and seeing the time passing underneath. When they got within sight of his house, James slid the toy under his jacket. He knew he had to hide it from his mother.

As Mrs. Bernicky pulled up to the front door, James’ heart fell beneath the car’s tires. His mother was standing on the front step.

After getting out of the car, James stood behind Mrs. Bernicky. “Hi, Mom,” he said because he knew Mrs. Bernicky expected him to say something. His mother didn’t say a word.

“I’m sorry James is late, I hope we didn’t worry you,” Mrs. Bernicky said. “He was having a little trouble in math and I kept him after to work with him on it. I didn’t realize he was a bus student.”

James peeked around his teacher’s coat. His mother wasn’t looking at him, she was staring at the ground.

“Did you know James couldn’t tell time?”

His mother shook her head without raising it. “I guess I never thought about it,” she mumbled.

“Well, I’d like to work with him to help him catch up, if that’s okay. Could I keep him after school for the rest of the week? I think that’s all it will take.” Mrs. Bernicky hesitated, then stepped a little closer. James shadowed her. “He’s really very bright, you know.”

James saw his mother’s mouth twist. Mrs. Bernicky stepped backwards and bumped into James and he knew she saw it too.

“You can have him,” his mother said.

Mrs. Bernicky nodded and then turned. “See you tomorrow, James,” she said. She bent down so she was face to face with him and she smiled. He smelled mint and something flowery. “Remember to practice.”

Then she left and James was out of her shadow, standing in the sun, but he felt like all the warmth was sucked out of the air. He stood there, listening to the car get further and further away. Then he looked at his mother.

She met James’ eyes. And she pointed toward the root cellar. So he went. But even in the dark, that little plastic clock kept him company. He could feel its hands and he moved them forward. Like a blind boy, he lifted the caps, then felt the numbers underneath. Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. Time was always moving forward to where he could escape.

James still had that toy clock, he never could bring himself to throw it out, even when he grew too old for toys. Setting the drawing pad aside, James got out of bed and went to the closet. He kept the clock in there, in a box on the floor, away and out of view. For a while, he even hung it on the wall of his bedroom, but when Diana started staying over, he took it down. It was too embarrassing to have a toy on the wall, plus he didn’t want her to ask any questions. She always did anyway and James didn’t need something to start a conversation about his past, about his childhood. Diana wanted children. James could never tell her. He could never let her know about his mother, about the parts of his mother that flowed through his own body, his own blood.

Now James unearthed the clock and brought it back to bed. Mrs. Bernicky never asked him to give it back. He felt like he stole that clock, and that bothered him because he liked Mrs. Bernicky so much. But that clock kept him such good company, James couldn’t return it.

In bed now, he moved its hands, watched time going by. The little number caps still lifted out easily and he looked at the minutes preserved below. His mother gave him a watch for Christmas that year, a Mickey Mouse watch, which surprised and delighted James. She never gave him anything, but that year, when he woke up in the morning, it was there in a little box on his dresser. No ribbon or paper, but it was there. James looked at it for a while, wondering if it somehow came from his father, and for a few seconds, as James set the hands and pushed in the stem that set the watch forward, he let himself believe it. James knew better than to say anything, so he just carefully strapped the watch onto his wrist and wore it to breakfast. Mickey told time by moving his arms and pointing at the numbers and James laughed at all the uncomfortable positions he got into. His mother never said a word.

With that watch, James discovered another wonderful way that time could help him. When he went out to the root cellar that Christmas day, it was cold and the coldness made it seem even darker. As he curled up in his cage, trying to stay warm under his jacket and a thin baby blanket, James heard the sound of a new ticking, harmonizing with the Big Ben alarm clock at his side. The lighter than air tick came from his watch and it filled up his ear and a part of his heart and suddenly, he wasn’t so alone. There was more sound.

James wished he could hear that sound now. He still had that watch too, tucked away in one of the dresser drawers. It still ran. But a grown man doesn’t wear a Mickey Mouse watch, even if it did come from his mother, even such a mother as she was.

Now, James set aside the toy clock and looked again at his sketch. He noticed some odd shadings and markings and he rubbed at them and then realized they came from a drawing on the next page.

But James’ drawing was the only one in the book.

Slowly, he turned the page. It was a penciled picture, beautiful, with lots of fine detail. A little girl stood before James, wearing ripped-knee jeans and a t-shirt with a star on the front. Her face was downcast and she studied a little watch on her left wrist, held up to her chin. Next to her stood a grandfather clock. The picture was so clear, James could see that the time on the clock matched the watch.

He ran his fingers carefully down the page, not wanting to smudge it, but wanting to figure out who drew it. As if his fingers could detect who held the pencil.

At the bottom left, on the sole of the little girl’s untied sneaker, James found it. Three initials. ASD. He went through each of the people who’d been in his house while he was gone, and none of their names matched up. But when James ran through them again, thinking of each person, he heard Ione’s voice. She turned to James and said, “You shouldn’t have yelled at Amy Sue,” and “Amy Sue needs encouragement.” Amy Sue Dander.

Cooley.

W
hen Marcus lost his job because a melon-breasted girl told the School Board about his collection of photographs of nude junior high school girls on the computer in the classroom where he taught eighth grade English, he didn’t think it would be a big issue. He coached a winning basketball team after all, and sports are important, and everyone knew that the English teacher who crooned Sylvia Plath’s poetry to rapt prepubescents and who wore a ponytail down to the middle of his back was cool, and so he was invaluable. Those pictures? Who knew how they got there? He did, but who else knew?

So Marcus left the school, confident that he’d get his job back in a few days, when the fuss blew over. But then a few days passed, and a few weeks. A couple months and he was looking for a job. But no one was looking for him. He looked everywhere, from other schools to jobs in factories, in retail stores, in 24-hour convenience marts. Being fired from a public middle school mid-semester seemed to raise red flags with employers.

In desperation one afternoon, Marcus stopped at a little house in town that had a flashing sign by the front door. “Tarot,” it read. “Crystal ball. Tea leaves. Stop inside.” An old lady turned off her television set and invited Marcus to sit down at a card table covered with black velvet and last night’s supper. He chose Tarot, and she flipped cards in a quirky pattern and told him that his life had taken a turn for the worse recently and that he had to forge a new path. Which Marcus already knew. But as he left, she pressed a green candle in his hand, told him to burn it every day, that it would bring him good fortune. And that it cost five dollars. He paid, went home, and lit the candle.

As the days passed and the candle burned further, Marcus began to consider it more and more. The power of fire. Mysticism. Magic. That woman, just by scattering a few cards, was able to make enough money to support herself and her house. There was magic there. And five dollars for this little candle!

The bills were piling up. The phone was cut off and with it, his computer line which led to chatrooms with the young girls he missed so much. Marcus sat and worried and looked at his diminishing candle. Then he went to the Dollar Store. Maybe he needed more bang for his buck, more magic for his money.

So he bought candles. Dozens. Green for money (obvious, and backed by the fortune teller), yellow for fame (if you’re famous, you’re a star and stars are yellow) pink for good health (in the pink!), and purple for a long life (royalty wore purple, and royal lineage went on forever). Marcus reasoned that if he could just keep them all lit, good things were bound to happen. But keeping them all lit proved a challenge. More and more, he began to stay home, watching his candles, making sure his future was guaranteed.