And so as you grow older, you settle into your solitary life. You find solace in your clocks and in your home and even in the distanced comfort that the little town you live in provides. There are people who smile at you, shake your hand, and claim to make your acquaintance. And though you know the truth, you still gather whatever warmth you can while keeping your life carefully to yourself.
It’s the nights that are so cold. Even as the clocks gather around you, fill the emptiness with chatter and song, there is only your own skin to keep you company.
Inside you, the rage slithers down the river of the parallel veins. And you wonder sometimes if it’s thick, thick like cholesterol, gumming up your blood. Gumming up your life. But as long as that river is alive, as long as your mother flows within you, you have to be on guard.
Late at night, when you sit in your living room, watch the fire, and listen to the clocks, you fold your hands in your lap and you hold very, very still. You can feel the thrum of that hidden river, follow its pulse from your mind to your chest to your fists and feet. Your mind thinks unthinkable thoughts sometimes. Like the time it burst and your thoughts roared with the profound pleasure of watching someone else’s face bloom red and blue and purple. Your chest sears with the strength and desire to harm and it sends the anger to your extremities, turning them into weapons. And sometimes, in the darkest of nights, you have your dream of sending someone else to the root cellar. Sending a child who looks amazingly like you, but isn’t you, and you burn with the wonderful ache of power. But when you wake, you are soaked through with shame.
You know how it feels, to be locked away like that. How can you possibly want to do it to someone else? Even in your deepest most hidden place? You wonder if burn victims wish for blisters on their wives, if cancer patients dream of tumors sprouting on their sons’ brains.
Imagine.
You are so ashamed.
You consider sometimes as you sit by the fire, your hands folded in your lap, who you would have been if only your own blood flowed through you. If your mother wasn’t there at all. You imagine what it would have been like to be in a different family. Would you have learned to play? To sing at the sky and swing through leaf-laden branches, watching the sun fall in dapples over your favorite pair of jeans? The jeans a different mother shook her head over, but still washed and left on the foot of your bed so you could find them in the morning on days when the outdoors called and you could run and hide as a game and only as a game. Would you have dated a few girls in high school, kissed in movie theaters and in dark parked cars and sometimes, even behind the closed door of a special girl’s bedroom while her parents were away? Would you have gone to college and learned everything you ever wanted to know, everything you ever questioned and wondered about?
And married. Married a special girl, maybe the same special girl from high school, and you would have had children. A boy, a girl, maybe more. And the only door you would have closed would have been those to their bedrooms, at night, softly, after kissing them with lips so light, they never stirred beneath their blankets. You wouldn’t even own a root cellar.
Imagine.
Instead, you live alone in a house full of clocks. Clocks which you love and which love you. You do what you love, search for clocks, save clocks, present them to the public and protect them from the same. Yet every night, as you sit surrounded by those you love, you ache with a loneliness that you can’t imagine anyone else feeling. Not as they live their lives of laughter at dinner, kisses at bedtime, and spooned bodies before falling asleep.
James knew that ache, as he knew so many different kinds of pain so very well. Too well. Sometimes, he wondered if there was any other way to be, but in pain. He sat at night and listened to his clocks and to the flow of his hidden and secret anger and he tried to imagine what his life could have been. Who he could have been.
Imagine.
Oh, imagine.
The next afternoon, Cooley helped wind the clocks. James’ fingers were completely healed now and he could do it himself, but she just kept hanging at his elbow. So James told her to make use of herself and get to work.
“You know,” he said as he watched her wind a mantel clock, “I can really do this myself now. You don’t need to come over anymore.”
She shrugged and kept winding.
“Why aren’t you hanging out with your gang?” For a moment, James saw Cooley again, sauntering down the street, surrounded by those black-clad kids. He remembered their sneers and their loud voices, Cooley’s among them. The voice she had, the snarl in it, her words bitten and sharp. When she looked at James now, he could still see that Cooley, but there was a difference too. There was something going on with her eyes, with the way she held her mouth. He wondered if her voice had changed, he wondered if it was softer.
But there was a part of James that didn’t want to know. It would be so much easier to keep Cooley where she belonged, with the gang of kids he hated, than to learn how to like somebody, how to behave when he liked somebody. With Ione, with Gene, even with Molly and Neal and Doc, James could fake it, he could reflect off of what they did to him. But Cooley was different. She was still new, still fresh-faced under the too-dark make-up she wore, and anything James did could hurt her and the hurt would show in her eyes. And anything she did could hurt James too. It would be better if she stayed where she belonged, and James as well.
She shrugged again, then crossed the room to get the notebook. James busied himself winding. “I’m mostly here,” she wrote. “They think I’ve gone weird or something.”
“Well, there’s not all that much for you to do here,” James said. “I don’t really need an employee, unless I’m away for the weekend or something.”
She just turned back to the clocks.
He watched her, watched her young arms turning the keys, pulling on chains, saw her bend easily to get the clocks on the lower tables and shelves. She smiled as she worked and he saw her lips move. She was talking to the clocks. James wished he could hear what she said.
And he realized that he didn’t want her to go. It had been a while since he didn’t want someone to leave and he didn’t know quite what to do. So James walked quickly out of the room.
Ione was in the kitchen, cleaning up the lunch dishes. He didn’t need her to do that anymore either, but Ione seemed to have taken up permanent residence. Her form at the kitchen sink was a familiar sight now. It was like she belonged, her body pushing a worn curve in the edge of the countertop as she leaned over the sink. If James walked by outside and saw her face in the window, he wouldn’t be startled. Wouldn’t be startled to see another face in the house where he’d lived alone for so long.
Ione placed a cup of coffee in front of James and when he picked it up, his hands shook. Coffee slopped over the edge of the cup onto the table. In a flash, Ione wiped it up. Then she placed her hand on his shoulder and looked at him, her eyebrows raised. James knew exactly what she was asking. Are you okay? Are you okay, James?
He asked himself the same question. Then he took a sip of coffee and closed his eyes. It took a moment, but he nodded. He wasn’t sure which motion his head would take, a nod or a shake, until he started, but then his chin dipped forward. James felt Ione leave and when he opened his eyes, she was back at the sink. He knew she was humming, her hips swayed with her own song, and he wondered what it sounded like. He wondered if Ione could sing.
Cooley walked in and sat down. She had the notebook clutched in both hands. James could see big handwriting on it again and her mouth was drawn tight and her knuckles were white. She said something to Ione who came and looked over her shoulder at the notebook. She said something too and Cooley nodded, her eyes closing. She slid the notebook over to James.
In big black letters, diagonally across the page, Cooley shouted, “DON’T U WANT ME HERE ANYMORE?” James was about to hand the notebook back when he noticed smaller letters at the bottom of the page, on the last line and crammed into the right hand corner. She said, “plz don’t send me away.”
James’ hands shook again and he set the notebook down quickly. Please don’t send me away. Please don’t send me there. How many times did he think those words, say them, as his mother pointed to the root cellar? Too many times, because they stopped being words after a while. They became a feeling, a cramp in his lungs, a cramp that got worse after he got into his cage and raised his nose to the dirt ceiling and howled.
He looked at Cooley. She faced James, but her eyes were still closed. He wondered if she wanted to howl. He wondered what root cellar he’d be sending her to if he told her to leave. There was so much he wanted to say, but so little he could actually muster. “Yes,” James said softly. “Yes, I still want you here. I can always use the help.”
Cooley’s eyes flew open and for a moment, James saw a joy that soared right through his body. Part of him wanted to jump up and grab her then, dance her around the kitchen. And another part wanted to run away as fast as he could. This girl needed to be wanted, needed to be welcome and necessary, and James just didn’t know where to start. If he could wind her and set her time and stick her in a corner, he could do it and do it well. But looking at her, James knew there was going to be more to it than that.
Ione patted Cooley’s shoulder and said something and Cooley looked up and laughed. Bits of her laughter broke through James’ ears, a staccato sound, high-pitched and sharp. He closed the notebook so he could shut the need away for a while. “We should get some work done on your clock,” he said and headed for the basement. On the way down, James felt Cooley’s weight reverberating behind him. She was like his shadow. At the workbench, she sat on the stool next to him, the notebook resting in her lap. She chewed on a pencil as she watched James work and listened to every explanation as he cleaned the parts and settled them into place.
James stopped about an hour and a half later, when all that was left was to wind the clock, attach the pendulum, get it going. Setting the clock upright, he turned to look at Cooley. Her eyes were focused on the painting on the front of the clock and she was smiling, a soft smile that made her seem like a child again, a six-year old sitting expectant in front of a storybook. James looked at the painting too and admired the soft greens and yellows of the willow tree, the pale blue of the lake. Cooley touched his elbow and then pointed at the little cottage tucked in the back of the painting, almost hidden by the trees. She wrote in the notebook, “I want 2 live there.” She hesitated a moment, then added, “Just me. And some clocks. It would B perfect.”
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.
After 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.
James 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.”
The ice-blue mellowed then and pooled. She blinked rapidly and turned away, walking down the sidewalk. When James touched her elbow, pointed toward his car, she resisted for just a moment more. She looked away, toward the line of houses that stood on the other side of the school. Then she dropped her backpack from her shoulder and threw it into his back seat.
Her house looked normal enough from the outside. It was just a plain ranch, white with black shutters, black metal mailbox with a fancy silver scroll spelling out Dander. James thought of his mother’s house, the little cottage he grew up in. James drove out there once, a few years after his mother died. The new family gave it a new paint job, pale green with a bright red door, but otherwise, it was just the same. There was smoke curling up from the chimney and at the time, James thought, Quaint. It’s quaint. It’s quiet and cozy and quaint. He wondered what that family thought when they went down in the root cellar and found the dog cage, the leftover leashes and chains and collars.
“Look,” the man probably said. “She must have kept a poor dog chained down here.”
“How awful,” the woman would say and they would both shiver in the dampness. Maybe they used it now to store potatoes and onions, the way it was supposed to be.
Cooley looked at James and he nodded. When they went up the steps, he thought he heard something. Tilting his head, he heard it again and he felt the vibration through his feet. Cooley’s mother must have the stereo on. James felt and heard the thrum of the bass.
They went into the living room and he saw her, sprawled on the couch, one leg up, the other stretched to the floor. One arm was over her eyes and James thought she was asleep until he saw her mouth open and moving. She was singing along with whatever was on the stereo. There were several empty beer bottles carefully shaped into a triangle on the coffee table. They reminded James of pool balls, all racked up, and he couldn’t help but notice how neat they were. They were the neatest thing in the room. Everything else needed a good scrubbing.
But James went cold when he saw the ashtray on the floor by the couch. Several cigarette butts were mashed there and one half-finished cigarette smoked steadily. As he watched, she reached down without opening her eyes, picked it up and took a long drag.
Cooley glanced at James, then crossed the room and switched off the stereo. The thrum left James’ ears and it was silent again. His feet stopped buzzing. Cooley’s mother hurled to a sitting position, her mouth moving wide, already yelling. Cooley motioned to James and her mother looked. She stopped talking and stood up. She crossed her arms and cocked one hip.
“Mrs. Dander, my name is James Elgin. I run the Home for Wayward Clocks, where Cooley’s been working.”
She nodded. James noticed Cooley slowly sinking herself into a corner of the room. When James spoke next, she slid down the wall and pulled her knees to her forehead, her arms, hidden in long black sleeves, curling tightly around. She wanted to disappear.
James squarely planted both his feet to make sure he wouldn’t disappear with her and he hoped his voice sounded deep and strong. “I know what you do to Cooley, Mrs. Dander. I’m taking her away. She’s going to live with me now.”
Mrs. Dander looked at Cooley and the smile she gave was closer to simply baring her teeth. She began to throw words at Cooley and James saw Cooley’s grip tighten on her knees. Her head sunk even lower. When Mrs. Dander moved toward Cooley, James saw her mouth widen and he knew Mrs. Dander was shouting. Her hands moved rapidly and one of them still held her cigarette.
James stepped between them. “Stop it!” he yelled and out of nowhere, his voice broke through his ears and he heard “it,” bitten off and sharp. But when he spoke again, his voice was gone. “You have a choice, Mrs. Dander. Plain and simple. Either Cooley comes to live with me, or I take her down to Social Services and show them this.” James reached behind him, pulled Cooley to her feet and yanked her shirt sleeve back. Cooley leaned against James, her head pressed into his shoulder. But she held her arm out straight, like a bizarre third arm of his own sprouting from beneath his armpit, her palm up, the scars bare and violent in their color across her skin. James noticed a new one since the day before, a simple black hole burned into the bend in her elbow, the skin around it ringed in red. He thought of a bulls-eye.
Mrs. Dander stepped back. She looked at James and the venom made him shake. But he controlled his panic, stopped it as it rose from the floor toward his knees, and he shoved it down. He kept his face stiff and firm, his eyes steady. He wouldn’t allow her to see him afraid, not even for a second. A moment of fear was all animals needed to move in for the kill. She turned and left the room.
James pulled Cooley from behind him, pushed her toward the stairs. “Go up to your room and pack everything you can. Even if you have to carry it down in armfuls. Put it in my car. Get everything, Cooley. I don’t want to have to come back here.”
She pulled her sleeve back down, flexed her fingers, then ran up the steps.
James stood in the entryway to the kitchen and watched Cooley’s mother make herself a cup of coffee. With every motion, he saw how her hands shook. Finally, she sat down and wrapped her fingers around her mug. She didn’t drink. She just sat there and stared. James wondered if she would cry, but there was nothing. He was glad. If she cried, it would be harder for him to hold firm. He remembered his own mother crying sometimes. He always wanted to make the tears stop. It didn’t matter how many times she made James cry; for him, there was nothing worse than watching his mother sink to the floor, placing her face flat against the carpet, and hearing her racking, retching sounds as her hair went from blonde to mud-brown with her tears. James never knew what to do. On those days, he locked himself in the root cellar, volunteered himself to the dark and the damp. Away from the noise. Away from her face and wet hair.
“I’ll take good care of Cooley,” James said. “She’s a good worker. She’ll have her own room, she’ll be well fed, she’ll have a job to put away money for college. Whatever she can’t handle, I will. You can come see her all you want. But for now, I don’t want her coming here, unless someone is with her.” He stopped for a moment, swallowed. “I need to make sure she’s safe.”
Mrs. Dander glanced up then, just a fast shifting of the eyes, and James saw more hate there than he’d seen in a long time. He remembered looks like that. If he walked by too loudly on his way to the bathroom or school or bed. If he cried when she put him down the root cellar or when she hit him. If he said anything while they ate supper at night. It got so James tiptoed everywhere and he clenched his teeth to keep from making any sound. But the looks were always there.
Now, James clenched his teeth again. It wouldn’t work to have them chatter. He would lose Cooley.
He didn’t know how many trips Cooley made, he never heard her going up and down the stairs. They just stayed there, the two of them, Mrs. Dander and James, her sitting, staring, not drinking, James leaning against the wall. He locked his knees to keep them from shaking and he tried very hard not to blink. He couldn’t let Cooley’s mother know how scared he was. That all she’d have to do is raise a hand and he might shrink away. He was so glad he couldn’t hear her voice.
Eventually, Cooley came into the room. She looked at James and nodded. Her cheeks were flushed from exertion and he thought he saw a spark of excitement in her eyes. She stood at the opposite end of the table from her mother and said something. Mrs. Dander didn’t answer and Cooley said something again, raising her hands up, holding them out. But then, she shrugged and turned, motioning with her head toward the door. The excitement James caught in her eyes was gone. There was nothing there now and he recognized that too. The curtain that comes down, the shield, blocking off everything. He tried to meet her glance, tried to smile, to bring some life back into those eyes.
And that was his mistake, pulling himself away from Mrs. Dander. James never saw her grip her coffee mug, draw back her arm and throw it as hard as she could at Cooley. It crashed into the side of Cooley’s face, hot coffee spilling everywhere, and Cooley went down.
But she scrabbled to a corner, so James knew she would be all right, she was conscious. In a breath, he flung Cooley’s mother out of her chair and up against the wall. She slid down, but he grabbed her by her shoulders and smacked her against the wall again. Then he drew back his own fist. The river inside was raging, the blood in his parallel veins roaring in his ears. He felt the blackness of pure and rich anger descend down, leaving no sound, leaving no sight, nothing but the feel of power in his fists and the delight and righteousness he would feel when he smashed her face. When he smashed her again. When he left her black and blue and with nothing left to do but howl at a useless moon that allowed the pain to continue and continue and continue.
But in that blackness, James froze. As the dark turned to gray, he saw that Mrs. Dander’s eyes were closed, her face squinted shut. Her entire body was braced. A thin line of tears slid between her eyelids.
James was now the stronger one, the bigger one, bearing down on someone much smaller. Someone weaker. Someone he hated with the full force of his heart. All he wanted to do was hurt her. Make her scream in pain. Kill her. As his mother wanted to do with him. As Cooley’s mother wanted to do with her.
And from the way Cooley’s mother looked now, there was someone else who hated her this way too. Cooley’s father? Her own mother?
And as the gray turned to the light of a late afternoon in a kitchen in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of What Cheer, Iowa, James stepped back. There was a choke collar wrapped around his heart, its links running through his blood and through Cooley’s too. He knew he had to break it for them both. He had to get her out of there. And he had to leave Mrs. Dander unharmed.
“I changed my mind,” James said and he felt his voice shake. Mrs. Dander’s eyes flew open and Cooley suddenly appeared at his feet, grabbing onto his shirt, looking up at him, grief deeper than the bruise purpling her face. James shook his head at her and quickly pulled her up, hugging her close. “Not that, Cooley, not that. You’re still coming with me.” She went limp and James held her up. He turned back to her mother. “I meant I changed my mind about you being able to see her whenever you want. You can’t. You can only see her when Cooley wants. It has to come from Cooley. Do you understand?”
Mrs. Dander slid back down the wall. It was her turn now to wrap her arms around her knees, hide her face. James half-carried, half-walked Cooley out to the car. It was loaded with her stuff, filling the trunk and the back seat and the floor. He settled her in the front, carefully buckling her seatbelt, and they took off for home. Their home.
Cooley cried the whole way. She lifted her face to the roof and she wailed. Sounds of it broke through James’ ears. Not all of it. But some. And with each broken sound, James became more convinced that he’d done the right thing.
Doc came over to look at Cooley’s face. James wanted to make sure that her cheekbone wasn’t broken or that the gash from the coffee mug didn’t require stitches. Doc settled Cooley in James’ recliner and put a cold compress on her cheek. He said a few words to her and she nodded. Doc’s voice came to James’ ears like a crackle, a static he couldn’t clear. Cooley just kept staring at the fire that James built in the fireplace. She shook so when they got home that James thought she’d need some extra warmth. Ione bundled her in a blanket and gave her a glass of milk and a plate of cookies. The whole house smelled like cookies; James didn’t even know Ione could bake.
“Show Doc your arms, Cooley,” James said. When she didn’t respond, he pulled back her sleeves himself, but carefully. She kept her arms limp.
Doc winced as he looked. He tugged her sleeves back down and patted her hands. She smiled, but just for a moment. Then he motioned for James to follow him to the kitchen. They sat at the table and Doc rested his face in his hands for a few moments before writing in the notebook.
“I’ll send over some salve for her burns,” he said. “I can’t do anything about the scars. But she’s out of harm’s way now.”
James nodded. Doc wrote some more.
“I’m going to bill the girl’s parents. I’ve seen them before, they have insurance. Whatever that doesn’t pay and whatever they don’t pay, I’ll cover.”
“I can handle it,” James said, but Doc held up his hand. Something in his face made James stop. Cooley was being looked after by a lot of people. There was a lot of good in that and James wasn’t going to fight it.
Ione bustled into the kitchen and she happily displayed the empty plate and glass. James realized he’d been looked after by a lot of people too. Ione pulled more cookies out of the oven and set a steaming plateful on the table, along with two mugs of coffee, before she took some more to Cooley.
Cookies suddenly looked like the most wonderful thing on earth. James and Doc both dove in and ate like they were starving. Then Doc tapped James’ elbow and pushed over another note. “Did she hurt you too?” he asked.
James shook his head. “No. She wanted to, but she didn’t.” He paused. “We came to an understanding, I guess, though I didn’t talk to Cooley’s father.”
Doc rolled his eyes and waved his hand and James understood that he wouldn’t be talking to the father. It made him wonder about fathers, about how they could just stand by and watch. Or leave and never come back. Even if their intentions were good, even if they didn’t want a little boy to have to walk the miles necessary to escape. Even if what kept them away was death.
At least James’ mother stayed.
For a moment, he wondered which was worse. To beat a boy, collar him, lock him up in a root cellar, or stand by and do nothing.
I know what happens, son.
James began to think that maybe he hated the wrong person. Or maybe he was just one short.
Imagine.
He felt a poke in his ear and realized that Doc was beside him, otoscope in hand. Holding still, James heard the echo of the instrument moving around and thought he heard Doc’s breath. Doc sat down and nodded. All was well.
“Say something,” James said.
Doc’s mouth moved and James heard the static again, like someone flipping a tuner, looking for a radio station. “I’m hearing crackles,” he said. “I can’t make out words, but there’s sound now.”
Doc smiled and gave the A-OK sign. Then he shook James’ hand. It felt like they accomplished something together.
To celebrate, James got them both more cookies. But he knew cookies couldn’t heal anything.
Cooley chose the room the furthest down the hall from James’. He didn’t blame her, this room was an old favorite. It was right above the living room and so it had a fireplace too and he quickly fell into the habit of building one for Cooley every night, even when the weather was warm. She settled her grandmother’s acorn clock on the mantel. James just had extra pieces of furniture in there, an old couch, a chair, an end table, furniture that was too good to throw away, but not good enough to sell. He went to the furniture store in town and bought Cooley a bed, a double-sized number that had a bookshelf headboard. He bought her an easel too and some art supplies, but while they stood at the ready by the window, she hadn’t touched them. James had the picture of the little girl learning to tell time on his dresser. Eventually, he wanted to have it framed. But for now, he liked picking it up and tracing Cooley’s lines and feeling the weight of the paper and the way it rumpled and wrinkled under her pencil strokes.
Cooley spent a lot of time in her room. She helped out after school and had dinner with James, of course. While the Home was open, she busied herself following visitors around, looking like a visitor herself, and she was always right there if someone was about to do something they shouldn’t. She was better than the security system. James began taking more breaks when she was around. He still sat in his office, watching people on the cameras, but he sipped coffee and reread the paper too.
Cooley always left her door open, even when she was sleeping, and so he looked in on her as he puttered around at night. She was usually in front of her computer or curled up in a chair, a book open on her lap, but he caught her quite often standing in front of the fire, looking at her clock. She always smiled when she stood there and it seemed like she wasn’t even in the room. James could walk in, stand next to her and watch, and she’d never notice he was there.
She showed James around the internet on her computer. And she introduced him to eBay. It was like an online flea market and he just couldn’t get over it. The first time she typed in “clocks” in what she told James was a search box, 70,886 items came up. Of course, they weren’t all clocks, they were clock parts, clock puzzles, clock toys, but it didn’t matter. There was a lot. He couldn’t get over how many people were dumping clocks and dumping them like they didn’t matter, to people they couldn’t even see. The first night, James just kept looking and looking and eventually, Cooley stretched out on her bed and fell asleep. After a few more nights of this, they went out and bought James his own computer. She had to teach him how to work it, but all he really wanted it for was eBay. She kept showing James other stuff, but he didn’t care. Clocks started arriving regularly in the mail. It felt wonderful to be able to reach beyond Iowa and rescue them. James even bought one from Africa.
So after a couple weeks, they settled into a routine of sitting in their separate rooms and staring at their separate computers. James knew this wasn’t good, but he didn’t know what else to do. His hearing was still sporadic and he knew they could talk through the notebook, but he just didn’t know what to say anyway.
At night, James watched his mother’s anniversary clock spin round and round, the dancers following their worn path. But he held Cooley’s drawing. And he wished a thousand times or more that he’d had a different mother, a different father, so he would know what to do now. James hadn’t worn a collar in years, but suddenly, he felt chained to his room every night. Cooley was out there, just down the hall, and he didn’t know how to reach her, any more than he knew how to reach his mother.
Though James knew Cooley wouldn’t hurt him. But it was like there was this wall, a physical wall, that kept him in, just in case. Just in case. Just in case she was dangerous too, just like the rest of the world. The wall was just too big. It was like James’ mother managed to glue those locked cellar doors to his mind and he just couldn’t get out.