The Home for Wayward Clocks (48 page)

She was in bed, but sitting up. The acorn clock was back in its place. James set the shop clock on her lap.

“This is for you. See what you can do with it.”

She held it carefully, a frown puckering the skin above her nose. James knew what she was thinking. The same thing he thought when he first saw it. What the hell is it? “I bought it at a rummage sale,” he said. “I’ve never been able to make it work. The lady told me her son made it in shop class at school. You’re probably the same age he was when he made it. So I thought you might be able to figure it out.”

She smiled.

“I’ll set up some kind of table in the workshop for you tomorrow. You can use all my tools and parts, as long as you always put things away and keep things clean.”

Cooley got up and set the shop clock next to the acorn. She stood there a minute, the firelight casting a glow on her face. She turned to James and said something so softly, he couldn’t catch any of the words. He told her he wasn’t able to hear it.

She crossed over to her desk and wrote on some computer paper. “I want 2 stay here 4-ever,” she said. “I want 2 take care of the clocks. All of them, but these 2 are mine.”

James swallowed and held the paper as she went back to stand in front of her clocks. It was what James wanted too, so many years ago, when he began bringing the clocks into the Home, filling it, the clocks’ souls singing and chiming in every room, keeping him company, keeping him from being alone. And now he had someone who could take over for him, when he died, someone who loved the clocks as much as he did. Or almost as much; James didn’t think anyone could love them as much as he did.

He didn’t think anyone else should.

James blinked and looked at Cooley standing in front of her fireplace. Her lips were moving, but he knew she wasn’t talking to him. She was talking to the clocks. It was like he wasn’t even in the room anymore. He started to leave, but then stopped and studied her again. He tried to picture her ten years from now, twenty, fifty years. Standing here, in this place, talking with these two clocks. After a day of talking to all the others, scattered around the house. Clocks James brought home. Clocks she brought home. He saw her spending just a little extra time with his mother’s anniversary clock. Because he was no longer there.

She lived there alone. There was no one else in the house. Just the way James had for all those years before Diana and then after she left. He remembered again the warmth of Diana in his bed, the sight of her, still sleepy, as they had coffee in the morning, the way she would hand him keys as he wound different clocks.

All those years of a cold bed. And only a newspaper to share breakfast with. Cooley wasn’t alone now, James was there, but in a few years, that could all change.

“No,” he said and Cooley turned sharply, her hands wrapping around her own shoulders. Protectively. Keeping the world and James at bay. “Cooley,” he said, and he heard his own voice break. “Sit down.”

She went to the bed and pulled up her blankets. James sat at the foot. “You can live here forever,” he said and he watched as she smiled, the bright smile that he knew held Amy Sue Dander, the real child, blonde hair a halo, blue eyes shining. The child she should have been all along. “But you’ve got to do other things too.”

The smile dimmed and Cooley came back. “What things?” she said.

“I want you to go to college, maybe study art, if that’s what you really want to do. Or study something else,” James motioned toward her computer, “like business or computers. Whatever it is you want to do. When that’s done, then you can come back here to live.” James nodded. “Forever, if you want. But bring others too.” He thought of Diana, laughing up at him as she bent over a box of clocks from a flea market. “Bring a husband. Have children.”

There was a blush, a quiet pinking of her cheeks, a lowering of her eyelashes.

But then the blush went deeper, turning into a deep scarlet flush and James heard every word that Cooley shouted. “I don’t want to get married! I don’t want any man! I just want to be here with the clocks!”

James sat back. Cooley turned away, curled up by her pillow, hid her face. James thought all girls liked boys. He thought they all wanted to get married and settle down to a life with a husband and children. He knew Diana did. Before she left, they talked about getting married several times. James thought that was where they were headed, until she disappeared.

They were going to have four children. Two boys and two girls. James remembered thinking about that, about holding an infant in his arms, other children playing at his feet. Diana talked about having to raise all the clocks on high, to keep the children from playing with the small parts and pieces. She talked about keeping the children safe, but all James could think about was keeping his clocks safe. He wondered if the children could stay in just one room, a playroom, with their beds and all their things, leaving the rest of the house in peace. Picturing this infant and children, he tried to summon a sense of warmth, of love and fulfillment, but none came. James suggested the children’s room to Diana. She turned away and they never talked about it again.

Thinking of that now, with the silent Cooley on her bed, James wondered which room would have been the children’s room. And then he thought of the root cellar, the only place besides his bedroom and the bathroom where he was allowed in his own home. His mother’s home. But this wasn’t like that; the children’s room would have had windows and toys and noise and fun. It wouldn’t be dark all the time and silent, except for the tick of a Mickey Mouse watch and a Big Ben alarm clock and his own voice, humming quietly to keep himself company. The jingle of a collar.

But as he thought of the children’s room, sequestered away in a back corner of the house, he shuddered.

James’ mother didn’t seem to want a husband and children either. He looked at Cooley, lying perfectly still, and he wondered if his mother ever shouted those words the way Cooley did, ever lay stiffly across her childhood bed like this. James wondered if anybody listened. “Cooley?” he said. He reached out and touched her shoulder.

And it was like she erupted. She swung at James then, talking in a shriek that broke through any remaining swelling in his ears. It was like she had the flu and she was throwing up all over him, retching out the words, and he was frozen, unable to move, unable to do anything but sit there and let her bury him.

She shook and shuddered as she told James about a boy she met on the internet. A boy who wrote her love poetry and who told her he loved her. And he began telling her what he wanted to do to her if they ever met and she listened to him, listened hard. She closed her eyes when she said this, coiled her fingers into fists, and then she stopped shaking and she rose up on her knees, her body as straight and stiff as a stopped pendulum. The rest of her words were aimed at the ceiling, her neck tense and locked, forcing her face up, yet still everything she said fell down on James. He raised his hands as if to ward off her words, but they wouldn’t stop coming. So he closed his eyes too and let her story fall.

The boy came to meet her and he turned out to be a man. A large man who took her to a shed in the park and did all those things he said he would do. Even though she was only fourteen years old. Even though she said no. Even though she screamed it until she had no voice.

And like then, she fell silent and the silence tumbled over James like a blanket. A wool blanket, heavy and scratchy and not comfortable at all.

He held still for a moment, then opened his eyes. Cooley stared back at him. She was shaking again and she sank back down onto her heels. She wrapped her arms around herself and James thought about hugging her, about securing her in an embrace other than her own, but he didn’t know if it was the right thing to do. So he let his hands hold each other, gripping the fingers until his knuckles popped.

“Cooley,” James said and heard his voice break. He cleared his throat. “Cooley, all men aren’t like that. They aren’t. And…it just never should have happened.” James shook his head and when he felt the tears build behind his eyes, he tried to get angry and will them away. But they wouldn’t go. “It never should have happened. Not to you.” James tried closing his eyes again, so she wouldn’t see him cry, but he felt his chin tremble and knew his own body was betraying him. “Not to you, Cooley. Not to anybody.”

James felt her hands on his and he looked at her. She was still shaking, a little, and she was crying too. In a soft voice, he heard her say, “You’re not like that.”

James could hear her and with that, it was all over. The sounds were fully back. He tilted his head and said, “Say that again.”

She blinked. “You’re not like that,” she said.

“Whisper it.”

She began to smile. She leaned forward, but he pulled away, wanting to keep the distance, wanting to see if he could still hear, without her being close. “You’re not like that,” she whispered. Then she said, “You’re hearing me, aren’t you?”

James nodded and began to shake some himself. “I hear you,” he said. He reached out, carefully, not quite knowing what to do, and touched her purple hair. “I’m not like that,” he said, trying the words out for himself, and he felt their truth. He tried to picture his mother, sitting at the foot of his bed like this, talking softly to him and touching his hair. He failed. Yet he sat there, in a way his mother never did. “I’m not like that,” he said again. “You’re right. But I’m not the only one.”

She looked away then.

“Just…give it a shot, Cooley,” James said. “Go to college.”

She shrugged. “I have to pass high school first.”

He stood up. “There’s no question about that.” She smirked. “Cooley, there is no question,” he said, trying to sound firm. “You’re living here now, under my roof. You will graduate. You will study and get good grades.” She shrugged again, but smiled this time.

James stood there a moment longer, even though he felt it was time to go, time to leave Cooley to her own thoughts and return to his own. But he couldn’t get the picture of Cooley with that man out of his mind. Cooley with that man and then…what? “Cooley,” he said, “did you ever tell anyone this before? Did you tell your mom?” James knew the answer to that before he even got the words out. Cooley lowered her head and that confirmed it. “The police?”

“No. No one.”

“So he’s still out there.” James looked at her computer, feeling watched suddenly, as if that man was on the other side of the gray monitor, his hands braced on the edges, preparing to climb out.

“I haven’t seen him since,” she said. She got off the bed and moved over to the computer. A touch of her finger and the screen bloomed to life. “I’ve blocked all his emails, his IMs. I changed my email address.” She shrugged. “There’s nothing else I can do.” She glanced at James. “I’m always afraid he might come back. But he wouldn’t know to look for me here.”

James nodded. He thought how his home was suddenly not just a safe haven for broken clocks. Then Cooley faced her computer. “James, what about Diana? How long since you’ve seen her?”

James stopped and leaned against the doorframe, looking out into the hallway. “Forty years or so, I guess.”

Cooley looked at him like that was a lifetime. “What was her whole name? Do you remember?”

As if it was possible to forget. “McFarren,” James said. “Diana Joyce McFarren.”

“Sit down,” she said. Her fingers flew over the keyboard and he wondered how she ever learned to find her way through this internet thing. Ebay alone was overwhelming, but Cooley jumped from website to website like a frog on lilypads. He watched Diana’s name get entered, over and over again. Different women came up, but their ages were always wrong.

But then Cooley hesitated and James read the newly opened window and he knew it was right. Cooley moved the mouse, preparing to delete the screen, but he put his hand over hers. He needed to read the whole thing. He needed to be sure.

It was an obituary from a Wisconsin newspaper. The Waukesha County Freeman. It was a back issue, from five years ago.

NELSON, DIANA J.

(Nee McFarren) Found peace on April 30, 2000. Age 63. Preceded in death by her husband, Frank and her beloved grandson, Paul. Dearly loved mother of Grace Thomas (Nicholas). Adored grandmother of Mary Elizabeth Thomas and Jeffrey John Thomas. A longtime Waukesha resident, Diana moved here from Dubuque, Iowa in 1960 upon her marriage to Frank McFarren. The family wishes to thank the staffs of Waukesha Memorial Hospital and Faithful Hospice for their loving care in Diana’s final days. Visitation Friday at Anderson & Miller Funeral Home from 4:00—8:00 p.m. Funeral service at First Baptist Church on Saturday at 10:00 a.m. Burial following at Prairie Home Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, memorials to the American Cancer Society are appreciated.

J
ames sat back and didn’t stop Cooley from deleting the screen. Diana was dead. Presumably from cancer, given the wishes for donations. He pictured her, her young body next to his, always laughing, always moving. Diana was a whirlwind. Even in sleep, she tossed. Her constant movement left him without the blankets on most nights. Yet the cancer would surely have wasted her away, slowed her down.

James was glad he didn’t see it. But he wished he’d been there in between.

“I’m sorry, James,” Cooley said. She began shutting the computer down. James watched her work, each click bringing the computer closer to that darkened screen, the static hush as the light died from the monitor.

“It’s okay,” James said slowly. “She’s been gone a long time anyway.” He patted Cooley on the back and told her to get to bed. Then he went off to his own room.

He was exhausted. But after an hour of staring at the ceiling, he knew he wouldn’t sleep. Quietly, so he wouldn’t wake Cooley, James headed downstairs to the workshop. He had to finish Diana’s clock. It was even more important now to make sure that some part of her was still alive.

James knew from the obituary that Diana had a daughter and grandchildren. Her blood flowed through them in their own internal rivers, and possibly her laugh and her quick movements and long dark hair too. But that Diana wasn’t the one James knew. That Diana grew into a wife who loved another man, someone named Frank, and she became a mother who loved a little girl named Grace. She had grandchildren. James pictured her for a moment, gray-haired, lightly wrinkled, still beautiful as she stood between her husband and daughter and watched the grandchildren tumbling through fall leaves on a Wisconsin lawn. He wondered if she owned clocks. The Diana James knew picked out that ugly flower basket clock at a dusty beside-the-road flea market. She lay nude beside him and he still thought of her every night, leaving room for her in his bed. The soul of that quick and bright Diana was in the movement of the ceramic clock and he had to get it resurrected again.