And so she left with her softness and curves and smooth as silk skin, and things return to your kind of normal. A world focused on clocks, on their hearts and minds and their need to be cared for. And like before, clocks don’t raise much of a fuss in your life. As long as you keep them wound and cleaned and balanced, they’re happy, and as long as they’re happy, you’re happy.
Except now it seems like you never were. You try to remember when.
The only voice in the house is yours when you murmur to the clocks, or when you specify directions to the tourists. The tourists’ voices ring out from time to time, and then all falls silent again. There’s no melodic voice, singing your one-syllable name in a variety of octaves, soprano for excitement, alto for serious conversation, tenor for that certain invitation to bed. And bass for the guttural sighs experienced there. And as for warmth, well, the sheets have never been so cold.
Your normal life no longer seems so normal. Your normal life now seems empty. Even though you never expected to receive such a gift as a partner and a lover, even though you never expected that gift to stay, there is a new hollow in your life. A hollow that echoes with the experiences of intimacy in all its forms. You tell yourself to fill that hollow with clocks. Because, after all, clocks never hurt you. That’s why you fell in love with them in the first place.
Fell in love. Imagine.
Climbing unknowingly onto the five steps of grief, you argue your way through self-righteous denial—she’ll be back—and then get hung up forever on anger, leaving the other three steps unmounted. How could she do this? She knew you, she knew everything about you, everything you dared tell. And there are things that you don’t dare tell, but how can you ever give voice to that? It seems to you now that all women bring hurt and desertion with them, even as they bring soft skin and soft voices and love.
So you stay in anger. And who could possibly blame you? How could anyone expect anything else but a constant flow of rage through you, recycled over and over again through the beat of your own heart and all the years of your life.
But only you know the full map of that flow. That river. Thunderstorms of fear fill your river of anger, and that in turn empties into the ocean hidden away in the deepest part of you. That profound sadness. Imagine all the blue and all the shades and all the salt. At times, you feel that you’re drowning.
How can any woman change the direction of that river, alter the logic of geography? How can any clock? Only an earthquake can change the current, and only for just a little while. Then back to the same path through worn-out and eroded banks. The force of an earthquake is no match for the depth of an ocean.
Imagine.
James knew what it was like to wake in the night and gasp for air, pulling away from that drowning ocean. And he dreamed that he could turn away from it, step out and shake himself dry in the sunshine, by surrounding himself with all that he loved, all the clocks of the world, and by caring for them. The comfort of that sound first heard in the dark of a root cellar multiplied itself by the hundreds and James couldn’t imagine a life without the steady tick, the constant reminder that something else was out there. He wasn’t alone, even when nothing else breathed next to him.
And as time went by and Diana became more and more of a vapor, he couldn’t dream of a life with another person either. Surrounding himself with that person and caring for her, and she caring for him. The comfort. It was a fairytale, mostly dimly remembered, and then with a stunning clarity at times, when he threw himself out of the ocean in the middle of the night, gasping, and remembered the calming stroke of a palm, the whisper of a breath in his ear. But then there was nothing but the ticking of clocks and he had to reach for them again. Reach for them for years.
Now imagine there is nothing to hear.
Nothing.
Imagine.
Standing by his car, James tried to feel that it was right for him to go. He had his back to the house, to all the clocks, and he wondered if Cooley was truly up to the task, if Ione would be able to handle it if he was gone far into next week. It was Saturday morning and he planned to make the five-hour drive in one fell swoop. The appointment at the clinic was early Monday, which gave James Sunday to get his bearings and look around. With the car at the ready, though, it felt different. Cooley gently placed his suitcase in the trunk; his maps were in the front seat, courtesy of Neal. And suddenly, James wondered if he should leave on Sunday instead. Sunday night. Maybe even the middle of the night so that he would arrive just in time for the appointment. And then turn right around and come back home, before anything had a chance to go wrong, before the clocks stopped, before they learned to live without him.
Trying to shake this off, trying to remind himself that he needed the time to relax before the appointment, and that if he came home right after, he wouldn’t be able to see the Time Museum, James walked around the car, checking the tires, wiping the mirrors and brake lights. His worries switched to driving without being able to hear. How would he hear sirens or if the car was making an odd sound? The night before, Ione argued with the others, waving her arms around, insisting that someone needed to accompany James to Chicago. He could tell what she was saying by her flushed cheeks and her busy hands, pointing first to Dr. Owen, then to Gene, to Neal. For a while, she even patted her own chest and James wondered what it would be like to go to the Time Museum with a woman armed with a purple feather duster. “Ione,” he said then. “You’re not going with me. You’re needed here.”
They all stopped and stared then, for a blank-faced moment before their mouths burst into rapid flapping. Dr. Owen grabbed the notebook and wrote, “James! You can hear?”
“Of course not,” he said. “I just figured out what you were talking about. I have to go to Chicago. I can’t hear. You’re all thinking that I shouldn’t travel by myself.”
Dr. Owen started to write something, but then he just nodded. Ione sat down. Cooley’s legs stretched like sticks on the floor, her back in a corner, her hands folded neatly in her lap. She watched the adult faces as they spoke and from time to time, she glanced at James. When she did and she caught him watching, she smiled.
“Look,” James said. “I’m sure other deaf people drive. It’s not like I’m blind.”
They all said something, but it was Dr. Owen with the notebook. He wrote while they talked, then handed the notebook over. “I’m sure you can drive, James,” he said. “Your other senses have probably become a lot more acute. While you’re driving, make sure you check your mirrors constantly. And trust what you feel in the vibration of the car. You’ll feel it through your wrists and fingers on the steering wheel, through your legs and hips for the engine and tires.” So the good doctor could lecture on car anatomy too.
James nodded, then announced it was time for them to go. He needed sleep if he was to make the drive alone. Trying to feel like he had everything under control, James assigned tasks. Ione was watching the Home during the weekdays and Neal would be in and out to check on her. Molly was a backup for Ione, should Ione be needed somewhere else and then Gene would check on her. Cooley would be in after school to work with the clocks. If James was still gone by the next weekend, Ione and Cooley would work together, with Ione focusing on the visitors and Cooley on the clocks. James hoped their two sets of eyes could do what he’d been doing for years. They needed to be everywhere at once.
Before she left, Cooley stopped by James’ side. She had the notebook. “I cud go w/U,” she said. “I cud miss school.”
James frowned at her and shut the notebook. It was all the answer she needed. He felt the force of her footsteps through the floorboards.
Now he turned back to the house, wondering if he should go through one more time, check the pendulums, check the hands, make sure all was well. He thought about taking a clock or two, placing them beside him on the passenger seat to keep him company, but he worried that the jarring of the road could knock them out of whack. James faced the car again, reached in the open window and touched the steering wheel, warm from the sun, and he told himself this was his chance to be on his own again, to make his own decisions and be his own companion. He’d come to realize that these people cared, but that didn’t make him relish their company all that much more. Though at times, it was nice to have them around to talk to.
James hoped that in the silence of the car and in the strange hotel room, his mother would return to her grave. Maybe in new surroundings, she would finally leave him alone.
He opened the car door and looked up. Cooley was in the house somewhere and Dr. Owen, Neal and Ione stood on the porch. They shouted something and smiled, so James waved. Then he started the engine. He could tell it was running by the vibration and he thought maybe Dr. Owen was right. Driving off, he resisted the urge to look back through the rearview mirror. He knew they were all waving. He knew the clocks inside continued on their way. Some, he thought, might have a worried sound in their mechanisms, a pause in the pendulum, a shriller sound to the chime. He told himself they would be all right. In his head, his voice was unsure and hollow.
James always enjoyed driving, enjoyed the silence and the easy motion. But the silence was truly deep this time and he found himself straining to hear anything, the smallest of noises. He turned the radio on, hoped, and heard nothing. James never played the radio in the car, other than when he had to listen for Iowa’s many weather bulletins, but now he found himself wishing he could turn the radio down because it was too loud. He wanted something to be too loud again. Something other than the silence and his own thoughts. Other than his mother’s voice.
He began talking to himself, reciting the sounds he missed. He could feel his lips move and the slight burn of words in his throat. “The trees are moving and I have to keep straightening the wheel,” he said. “It must be windy. There is the whoosh of the wind pressing up against the windows. The engine is humming, my keys are jangling from the ignition.” When a truck passed, appearing out of nowhere, James jumped and reminded himself to check the mirrors. “There’s a roar,” he said and he imagined a lion as the six big wheels tore up the road. He thought he felt the extra vibration through his seat.
His initial thought at lunch was just to go through a drive-through and eat on the road. But when he pulled up to the loudspeaker, he realized he couldn’t hear when the people inside were talking, asking what he wanted. “I’m sorry!” James yelled out the window toward the microphone. “I forgot I can’t hear. I’ll have to come in.” When he drove through the checkout, he ducked his head, sure everyone inside was laughing.
He didn’t really feel safe until he got to the hotel. Turning on the television, he stretched out on the bed. The faces on the screen, moving and talking and waving their arms in a black silent void, kept him company. He thought about phoning home, to let everyone know he arrived safely and to make sure that everything was okay, but then he realized he wouldn’t be able to hear when someone answered.
Restless, James’ eyes wandered the walls and he knew he was looking for his clocks. James needed something to watch, something with rhythm. But there was nothing on these walls, nothing but screwed-on scenic paintings and a mirror. James sat up, feeling dizzy, and grabbed onto the bedspread. Planting his feet on the floor, he tried to feel grounded, but things blurred all around. Swinging his head, his eyes darting, James noticed a flash of red and zoomed in on it. It was the radio alarm clock next to the bed and the colon between the hours and minutes flashed the slow beat of seconds passing. Sliding onto the floor, James knelt in front of the bedside table and watched the dots blinking and he put his hand on his chest and felt his heartbeat. Eventually, the room stopped spinning and James’ whole world slid down onto those two dots. He controlled his breathing, wiped the cold sweat off his forehead, then climbed back onto the bed. Rolling onto his side, he turned the clock so that he could keep watching it.
It was going to be a long wait until Monday.
Sunday, James ventured out for a little while. Chicago was so big, he shrunk to nothing and didn’t go much farther than a couple blocks. Just far enough to find a restaurant. He carried his notebook in case he needed someone to answer a question or give directions.
On the way back to his room after lunch, James spotted an antique store down a side street. Abandoned Here, it was called. James liked the sound of that and so he went inside. A man behind the counter smiled around his cigar and then said something, but James just lifted his hand in a wave. The store was bigger than it looked on the outside and James roamed down the haphazard aisles. There didn’t seem to be any left or right, up or down, just aisles spreading this way and that and then intersecting with others. It didn’t take too long for James to get lost, but he felt okay. He knew he was in this store and he saw a few clocks and so he knew he was among friends. The aroma of the man’s cigar, a rich rum and tobacco smell, followed wherever James went and at times, he took a deep breath and drew it deep into his lungs. James’ father used to smoke a cigar and the scent calmed him. He tried smoking one himself when he was seventeen, but he couldn’t handle the taste. It was amazing how the taste of something could be so different than the smell. Yet James liked tobacco shops and often stopped in, just to breathe and remember small glimpses of his dad. Sitting in his father’s lap, his voice deep around James, reading a story. Playing with James on the nights his mother disappeared, giving him a bath, making bubbles into tall wet hats or fragrant necklaces that dripped down to his chest. Tucking James in at night.
James remembered well the morning his father left, a foggy morning when James was eight years old “I know what happens, son,” his father said and he ran his finger around James’ throat, touching the latest collar burn. “I’m going to find us a place far away and I’ll get it all set up. Then I’ll come back for you.” He paused for a moment and then answered the question that was held back, incoherent, by a voice choked with little boy tears. “It won’t be for much longer. I might have to sell the car to get us somewhere and we’d have to walk to get away and that’s just too far for a little guy like you. I’ll get as far as I can, then sell the car and walk farther, get us a place, then I’ll figure out how to get you.”
James wanted to say that he could walk just as far as his father could, that James could run to keep up, and that if he couldn’t, he could be carried on his father’s shoulders, the way he did sometimes, making James feel tall and strong with his father’s body like his own flowing beneath him. But James’ voice remained stuck as if he still wore the collar, sealing off his breath. So James just closed his eyes and when he opened them, his father was gone.
James kept waiting for him to come home. All through the progression of collars, from leather to choke, to a cage, a tether, beatings with a brush, then a belt. James was seventeen when his mother told him his dad was dead, struck by a truck as he walked on the side of a highway nine years before, in the early morning when there was a fog. A fog that hid him, kept him from finding a place far away that was safe and quiet, that had no root cellar. James cried and hated crying because he was seventeen and too old for such things, and he told his mother that she lied, that his father was coming back, coming back to get him. She laughed and said he was buried in town, in the little cemetery behind the Catholic church. “Go and see,” she said.
“Then why don’t I remember a funeral?” James asked.
“I didn’t have one,” she said. “Just buried him, because I had to. He didn’t deserve it, he was running away. What kind of a boy wants a father who leaves him?”
Something in her voice, so deep and derisive, so hateful, made James stand straight that day, straight for the first time in his life, pull all his nearly adult bones in order, throwing off the beaten slump, the rounded shoulders, the lowered head. And he realized he looked down on her. She came to the bottom of his chin. She looked up too, seeming to recognize James’ height for the first time, and for a moment, her face changed from its feline sneer to the glistening wide eyes of a rodent. James knew the look, he felt it on his own features often enough, saw it on his face when he combed his hair in the morning before school and found her in his reflection. It was fear. Yet then she slitted her eyes and the cat came back and she silently pointed toward the root cellar.
James hit her. Just once, but he hit her full in the face. It was enough to knock her backwards on the ground and she lay flat on the grass, her nose flowing red over her lips and teeth. And then James left.
It was as easy as that.
So easy that he wondered what force held him, curled in a box in the root cellar, for all those years when all he had to do was take off the collar and run. Run like his father.
His father who was supposed to come back. And save James. It never occurred to James to save himself until the hero was gone. Buried without ceremony in the back of the Catholic church.
And now in this shop, in the middle of Abandoned Here, the cigar smoke wrapped itself around James and he felt his father’s hand again covering his own. James welcomed him in, even though he was so, so late.
Turning a corner, James found himself in an aisle that looked familiar and he realized he must have gone in a circle, an odd angled circle. He was about to turn down the opposite way when a movement caught his eye. It was a gold flash, a wave from a bottom shelf and he bent down to look. And he found a skeleton clock.
James didn’t like skeleton clocks because of their nakedness, baring everything they had to the world. When he lifted this clock from the shelf, he could see its entire workings; there was no shiny gold or wood skin covering its most private of parts. It was undressed and as such, vulnerable. It was mounted on a black and white marble base and a glass dome fit snugly over it, tucked into grooves in the marble, to protect all the exposed parts from the dust and grime in everyday air. James was always put to mind of strippers when he saw this type of clock, strippers moving on a stage, all the parts undulating and swinging and swaying. James was never in a strip joint, but he could imagine and these clocks left nothing to the imagination.
But this time, when James raised the clock to a higher shelf so it was eye-level, he felt something different. It stood stocky and solid and its plates and metalwork were cut in a gothic cathedral style. Everything was erect in this clock, moving skyward, and James could see every cog and pinion moving, interlocking, pushing the clock’s life ahead second by second. The pendulum, round and smooth like a jeweled belly button, swung seriously left to right and James’ eyes settled on it and his heart moved with it and in a second, he and the clock were connected.
While this clock was naked, it was splendid and it held everything it had toward James. While he watched, it glowed, and its movements matched James’ breath and settled him into safety. Carefully, James lifted the glass dome and then turned the clock, getting as much of its workings into his vision as possible. The feel of the gears beneath his hands made him shiver. James wasn’t home, but home was here, present in the bare bones of a clock.
He didn’t even check the price. He didn’t care.
Cradling it against his chest, James moved slowly through the rest of the store. There were plenty of clocks, all old, all in various states of repair. Some moved happily and clearly, others had hands that were stuck on a permanent hour and minute. Most were very reasonably priced. James saw by the other objects around the shop that clocks were not a specialty for this storeowner…the high-priced items were stained glass figurines and windows and lampshades, all throwing paths of red and green and gold light on the floor. One path glowed marvelously purple and James looked up to see a huge arch of window, standing free from a wall, apparently extricated from a church. James thought he was near the center of the store and there was a bright light shining from somewhere, through this misplaced stained glass, and the thing shone with a life of its own.
While it and the other pieces were beautiful, they weren’t clocks. And it was to James’ benefit…the proprietor didn’t know how much to charge. James knew he could probably talk the prices down even lower, but standing there in the purple light, he decided not to. The items were Abandoned Here and the cigar-smoking man saw fit to care for them. The clocks were already priced much lower than they should have been. James didn’t want to take advantage of a good heart.
Working his way back to the counter, James set the skeleton clock down. “Would you by any chance have a good-sized cardboard box?” he asked the man. “I collect clocks and I’ve seen a good number I’m interested in and I can’t carry them all.” The man nodded and scrounged beneath the counter, coming up with a solid box. “Thank you,” James said. The man answered around his glowing cigar and James shook his head. “I’m sorry, I can’t hear. I lost my hearing recently through an accident.” James handed over the notebook. “Can you write what you just said?”
The man frowned for a second, then grabbed a pen and began to write. The cigar was clenched tightly in his teeth, the smoke curling like a gray coil to the ceiling. Then he returned the notebook. “You can leave this clock up here if you want,” he wrote.
“Oh,” James said and looked at the little skeleton. He was torn about leaving it, it felt so good against his chest where the movement swung in time with his own pulse. But it made sense to leave it there, rather than jostling it around the store. “You won’t sell it to anyone else who comes in?”
The cigar man shook his head.
“All right, thank you.” James patted the little clock, then moved around the store again. The clocks were hard to say no to and it didn’t take long before the box was filled. Retracing his steps to the counter, James requested another. The cigar man raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.
James was on his way back with the filled second box when he spotted one more clock. It was tucked away on a corner shelf, near the back, but the light shining through a red pane of stained glass caught it and its wood turned to fire. James set the box down and carefully scooped the small clock up.
It was an exquisite miniature mantel clock. It fit neatly in James’ open palms, its humpback rising in a sensual curve. The heft and shine of the wood bragged it was mahogany and the clockface was a dim brass, just begging to be polished. The roman numerals were etched and graceful and the hands were a swirl like filigree. But holding it, James felt something was missing. He held it to his cheek. No rhythm. James felt nothing at all.
Turning it, he opened the little back and saw that the insides were completely cleared out. This clock was basically just a case, a shell, all the heart and soul of it gone. James stood there for a second and thought about this, this glorious body of a clock compared to the bare skeleton of the one who waited on the counter. He touched it again, running a single finger gently over its body, then cupping his palm over the rounded mound of its curve. In an instant, James was transformed back to a warm bed with Diana. His hand over this wood could have been over the softness of her breast and James felt his pulse quicken.
And then it hit him.
This clock was small, a miniature, a clock movement inside had to be a certain size. A size like James had at home, resting on a bed of lamb’s wool. Diana’s clock. Diana’s clock movement tucked away inside this body that reminded James of the warmth and softness of her breast. Her heart making this brass face glow again, the hands move like a smooth caress over the numbers.
James stroked the clock again and had trouble breathing for a moment as everything shifted and settled back into place. Then his body relaxed, each muscle shaking loose and then wrapping itself around his bones. It could all work.
Returning to the counter, James set the box down. “That’s it,” he said to the cigar man, who laughed. The man reached for the notebook and wrote, “That’s IT? You’ve about picked up every clock in the place.”
Together, James and the cigar man took newspaper and tucked it in and around the clocks to protect them on the way back to the hotel and later, to home. James was careful with them all, but especially with the skeleton and the miniature mantel. There was everything to protect in the skeleton and nothing at all in the mantel, but he felt they both needed him and so they got an extra cushion of paper.
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.
In 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.
Dr. Carson finished writing and he smiled at James before handing over the notebook. “The news is good, James,” he said. “That you were able to hear anything at all is wonderful. Hearing those sounds shows that your hearing mechanism is still intact, although it’s not functioning perfectly right now due to the swelling and the healing of the eardrums. What will probably happen is that certain sounds will eventually start breaking through. You’ll hear a siren, an alarm clock, bits and pieces of someone’s voice. It may sound like a radio while you’re trying to tune it. But I think it will all come back.”
“You think?” James said and Whitecoat’s arm tightened around his shoulders. “You think? Probably? You can’t be any more definite than that?”
Carson shrugged again and James wanted to hit him. Rage soaked him black and pure as his deafness and he wanted to hit the doctor full in the face.
“How long?” James said. “How long, if it does come back?” His voice felt low in his throat. He was snarling.
Carson grabbed his wall calendar. He pointed to a week, then two, then flipped the calendar ahead a couple months, then fanned through the entire year. It was the same as a shrug.
James forced the anger back. He needed answers and it was too hard to talk through a rage. “Will I need hearing aids? I mean, if it comes back.” He cleared his throat, trying to feel steady, trying to feel as if his voice was strong. “Do you need to see me again? Is there anything else I can do?”
This time, Dr. Carson retrieved the notebook and wrote some more. “You didn’t need hearing aids before, so you probably won’t need them now. You only need to see me again if two months goes by and there hasn’t been significant improvement. The only thing to do is to continue with Dr. Owen’s regimen…and wait.”
“Fine,” James said. A timeline. At least there was a timeline. Two months and there should be significant improvement, whatever that was. James moved out from under Whitecoat’s arm. Whitecoat crossed his fingers, waved, then left the room.
James grudgingly shook the doctor’s hand when it was offered, then followed the receptionist back to the waiting area, where she raised one finger in the air. Wait a minute, it said. She poured another cup of coffee, put a lid on it, then reached under the desk and handed James one more chocolate chip cookie. She made walking motions with her fingers. For the trip home.
Two nice people working for a jackass who couldn’t make up his mind if a patient was alive or dead.
“Thank you,” James said again and then he turned to leave. While the silence was all around him again, he tried to picture it as a shade of gray, instead of black. Gray, like a mist or a fog. Something that would definitely lift and leave the air bright. Or that would keep him from being seen by a fast-moving truck.
James decided to stay the night in Chicago, then leave in the morning for Rockford. Cooley only gave him the directions to Chicago and the Center for Ears, Nose and Throat, so he had to seek out a gas station to buy a map. The trip didn’t look that hard, though it was always difficult to figure the sizes of roads from the blue and red lines on a map. But James knew he was heading out of a big city and that was enough.
James sat on the bed that night, looking at the clocks and wishing he could call home. He wanted them to know that he was probably going to be okay, that word “probably” figuring bigger and bigger in his head as the night went on. He stared at the phone, thought about dialing it, about waiting what would feel like an appropriate amount of time and then shouting into whomever’s ear was hopefully on the other line. But he couldn’t trust that, he couldn’t count on anyone picking up the receiver. James didn’t have an answering machine.
Glancing at his watch, always more accurate than any of the clocks, James saw it was only seven o’clock. It was possible Cooley was still there, doing the winding. He walked down the hall to the check-in desk. “Hello,” he said to the young boy behind the counter.
He looked at James and nodded.
“I’m wondering if you could do me a favor.” James handed the boy the notebook. “I wrote my home number on there. Could you call it and see if anyone answers? I’m deaf, so I can’t hear if someone picks up. If they do answer, could you tell them my doctor’s appointment went fine and ask them if everything is okay there?”
The boy glanced at the notebook, then shrugged. He said something and turned away.
“I can’t hear,” James reminded him. “What did you say? Will you call?”
The boy turned back, a scowl on his face this time. He grabbed a pen and wrote heavily on the paper. “I’m BUSY!”
James looked over the counter. There was only a comic book there, but the boy quickly whisked it away. “Listen, buddy,” James said. He pulled himself up to his full height, which wasn’t much, but at least he was taller than the boy. “This is very important. Now, you’re supposed to take care of your guests and that includes those who can’t hear. Do you want me to talk to your manager?”
The boy stood there a minute and James could see he was thinking, wondering if he should call James’ bluff. James tried not to tremble.
Finally, the boy took the notebook. James leaned as far over the counter as he could, to make sure the boy was really pushing the buttons on the phone. “If someone answers, tell me who it is,” James said.
The boy glared, but continued dialing. Eventually, James saw his mouth flapping and he wrote on the notebook. “Kooly.”
“Good!” James said. “Tell her my ears are probably going to be okay. Probably. And then tell her I won’t be home for a few days yet, I’m going on to Rockford.”
The boy nodded, talked, then wrote some more. His scrawl was so bad, James could barely make it out. “She says good. Wants 2 no Y U R going.”
He wrote like Cooley and James had no idea what he was saying. “Yur?” James said. “Wants to no yur going? What is that?”
The boy rolled his eyes, then wrote more clearly. “She wants to know why you are going to Rockford.”
“Oh!” James said. “Y U R! Why you are! I get it.” James nodded. “Tell her I’m going to a famous clock museum. And ask her if everything is okay.”
The boy talked some more, then hung up the phone. James was about to protest when he picked up the pen. “She said is OK.”
James sighed. That was as much as he would get. “Thank you,” James said. He started to walk away, then stopped and handed the boy three dollars. “For your time,” James said. “Buy yourself a real book and learn to read.”
In the morning, James carefully boxed up the clocks and loaded the car. He put the skeleton clock and miniature mantel in a little box that fit in the front seat. James wanted those next to him as he navigated his way to Rockford. James couldn’t hear them, but he knew they were there and they kept him company.