Timepiece (15 page)

David jumped up from the bed in horror. “Andrea! Dear God!”

David shot to the door and threw it open. A black pillow of smoke billowed into the room. The end of the hallway was completely engulfed in flames and from behind the wall of fire came a horrible sound. Andrea's cry.

MaryAnne screamed. “Andrea!”

“Mama!” Andrea wailed faintly from behind the flames.

David ran back to the bed and pulling a quilt over himself, pushed toward the inferno surrounding Andrea's room only to be repelled by the intense heat. He screamed out in frustration. The flames snapped fiercely, drowning out Andrea's pleas. Just then, another male voice hollered out. “David!” Mark raced up the stairs. “David!”

“Andrea is in the nursery! Alert the fire station!”

“Catherine has left to pull the alarm.”

“Take MaryAnne out. I will climb the back railing to Andrea. Go!”

Outside, the pneumatic siren of a fire truck crescendoed as it entered the yard. A second fire vehicle, a large bell-shaped water drum drawn by horses, pulled into the yard behind it. The corps sprang to action. Two men began operating a pump hooked to the vehicle while a half dozen others, carrying leather fire buckets, streamed into the house, throwing water down the hallway.

In the yard below, Mark held MaryAnne back from her home. She sobbed and wrung her hands violently, each second weighing longer than the next. Where was David? Suddenly, he stumbled from the front doorway, coughing violently, his face streaked wet and blackened from smoke and soot. In his arms lay a motionless child.

 

“I know not why I am compelled to write at this time except as those caught in a torrent seek the surer ground and those caught in life's tempests seek the familiar and the mundane.”

David Parkin's Diary. December 4, 1913

Through the heroic efforts of the fire corps, the fire had been isolated to the east wing, though the stench of smoke permeated the entire mansion. The house itself had escaped serious structural damage, but the damage inflicted upon its occupants was of far greater consequence.

Night had fallen and the drawing room
was illuminated by the yellow radiance of kerosene sconces. Usually by this hour Catherine would have extinguished the wicks and secured the downstairs. Tonight, however, there was company in the house. The police officer rose when David entered the room.

“Mr. Parkin, I am Officer Brookes. Perhaps you remember me from the other day.”

David habitually nodded.

“How is your daughter?” he asked cautiously.

“She is badly burned,” David replied, his eyes betraying the emotion within.

“I'm truly sorry. I have a little one at home scarcely older than yours.” The policeman paused. Then he continued, “It is our belief that the fire was deliberately set.”

David said nothing. Just then, Catherine entered the room. She walked up to David and whispered in his ear. David
turned toward her, anticipating some change in Andrea's condition.

Catherine read his intent. “There is no change, sir.”

“I am needed upstairs,” David said. “The doctor . . .”

Brookes frowned. “I am terribly sorry and I will leave you shortly but, please, just two questions.”

David looked at the officer impatiently.

“I understand that yesterday you were threatened by a man named Cal Barker.”

“I don't know the man's name.”

“I was alerted yesterday about the confrontation in the alley, but I arrived too late. I found Barker at a bar and questioned him. He had a broken nose and was raving like a lunatic, but denied the incident. What were his words to you?”

David breathed out. “He said something about getting his own justice.”

The officer nodded. “Barker was a friend of Everen Hatt's. I will be arresting
him this afternoon. I will keep you informed.” He stood up to go. “I am heartfelt sorry to intrude on you now, but time is of the essence. God bless your little one.”

David glanced over at Catherine, who was waiting anxiously.

“I will see you to the door, Officer Brookes,” Catherine said.

“I would be obliged.”

David mumbled a thank-you, then climbed the stairs to the parlor, where Andrea was being cared for. Dr. Bouk stood outside the door, grim-faced and fatigued.

“She has not stirred yet,” he said directly, as if in answer to an unspoken question. “If I thought she could survive the move, I would transport her to the hospital.” He took a deep breath, then looked David in the eyes. “The child cannot possibly live.”

David turned from the doctor and peered in through the crack in the parlor door to where MaryAnne knelt at the side
of the walnut-framed bed. It was the same bed and room where she had given birth to Andrea three and a half years previous. The moment seemed frozen, betrayed only by the faint sound of a mantel clock. David turned to the doctor again. His eyes pled for solace. “Is there nothing to be done?”

The doctor frowned, nodding his head slowly. “The burns are too severe. She is running a high fever from the wounds.” He removed his bifocals and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I am very sorry, David. I wish I could give you hope. If she were conscious, she would be in excruciating pain.” He returned his glasses to his shirt pocket and untied his apron. “Frankly, I do not know what is keeping her alive.”

David looked back in at MaryAnne, bowed fervently over the bed, her cheek pressed against the feather mattress with her forehead touching Andrea's motionless torso.

“I know what is keeping her alive,” he said softly.

The doctor frowned again, then removed his vesture. “If there were anything else I could do.” He shook his head helplessly. “I'm sorry, David.”

David looked down and said nothing as the physician departed. A moment later, David took a deep breath, then grasped the handle and gently pushed the door open, wide enough to enter. MaryAnne did not stir or acknowledge his entrance.

Across the room, the mechanical operation of MaryAnne's grandfather's clock stirred, its hammer ground into position, then, once set, chimed the quarter hour. David walked to the bed and knelt down behind MaryAnne, wrapping his arms around her waist. He laid his head against her back.

“MaryAnne,” he whispered softly.

She did not respond. Across the room, the clock allowed its serpentine hand to advance another minute.

“MaryAnne . . .”

“No, David.” Her voice was hoarse. “Please . . .”

His eyes moistened. “You must let her go, Mary.”

MaryAnne closed her eyes tightly and swallowed. Only the sound of the clock's oscillating pendulum tore at the silence.

“She is my baby, David.”

“Andrea will always be your baby, my love.” He took a deep breath. “She will forever be our baby.”

MaryAnne raised her head and looked on her daughter. Andrea's hair was spread against the pillow, wet at the roots from fever.

With the back of her hand, MaryAnne caressed Andrea's ruddy cheek. She lifted her hand to her own breast, then buried her head back into the mattress and sobbed.

David lifted his hands from her waist to her shoulders. The long hand of the clock advanced three more paces.

MaryAnne raised her head and stared at Andrea, memorizing the delicate features of her face, the gentle contour of her florid cheeks, the smooth slope of her chin. Suddenly, the grandfather's clock struck eleven and the hammer rose and fell for an eternity, dividing the moment into agonizing compartments, as if challenging the fragile life to survive the day.

“Stop it. Please, David. Stop it.”

David rose and walked to the clock. He opened its case and grasped the brass pendulum, ceasing its motion, then returned to his wife's side as the metallic echo of the chime died, leaving the room in an unearthly solitude.

MaryAnne suddenly leaned close to Andrea's ear. “I cannot keep you any longer, my love.” She swallowed. “I will miss you so.” She paused, wiping tears from her cheeks that were as quickly replaced. “Remember me, my love. Remember my love.” She laid a hand against the
velvet face and bowed her head back into the mattress. “I will remember for both of us.”

David pressed the wet flesh of his cheek against MaryAnne's. She swallowed, nuzzled up against the warm, smooth cheek, then, through quivering lips, released her child.

“Go home, my little angel.”

As if on command, Andrea suddenly opened her eyes and looked on her mother with no sign of pain or hope, but as one who falls from a cliff might focus their gaze on the ledge they leave behind. Her small chest rose and her lips parted slightly, drawing in breath, struggling against some invisible resistance. Then, in a sudden motion, her eyes turned upward, her tiny body expelled all breath, then no more.

For a moment, all was still. As if all nature had stopped to recognize the singular fall of a sparrow, until the silence was broken
by a single, gasping sob, then another, then the unrestrained flood that poured from MaryAnne's convulsing body. David lifted the quilted cover up over Andrea's face, then pulled MaryAnne's head against his chest. She would not be comforted.

 

“How quickly the fabric of our lives unravels. We weave together protective tapestries of assumption and false belief that are torn to shreds beneath the malevolent claws of reality.

“Grief is a merciless schoolmarm.”

David Parkin's Diary. December 7, 1913

Upon waking, MaryAnne's heart grasped on to the hope that the past few days might only have been a nightmare—then the first moment of recognition was seized by the horrid and breathless remembrance of reality. MaryAnne closed her eyes as the crushing weight of loss constricted her
chest in agonizing pain. “No,” she moaned.

David took her hand. “MaryAnne.”

“I want my baby. Where is my baby?!”

“MaryAnne.”

She looked at David through swollen eyes. “No,” she moaned. “Where is she?”

“She is gone, my love.”

“Bring her back, David. Can't you bring her back?”

David dropped his head in shame, but allowed himself no tears. “No, Mary. I could not even keep her safe.”

“In Hebrew, ‘Mary' means ‘bitter.'”

David Parkin's Diary. December 8, 1913

The wagon from the cemetery arrived to bear the small coffin to the knoll—though the casket was small and could have been carried by one man and easily by two.

The noon sun was concealed by a dark
tier of clouds as a somber crowd of more than one hundred assembled around the small grave, trampling the snow into a muddy slush.

The jovial greetings of long-unseen friends that usually marked such gatherings had been replaced by simple glances and nods of acknowledgment. Many were there from David's company, whose doors had been closed for the day. The mourners, apparently confused at the etiquette of such an occasion, were not sure how to dress. Some arrived in black and others in stark white.