Of all people it was Margaret who reminded him to change their clocks. He’d known, vaguely, but like so many inessential things, it had gotten lost in the growing backlog of errands and chores. They’d been working in the garden every day, and by nightfall he was ready for bed.
“Is it that time already?”
“I know,” she said. “I wake up too early as it is. I don’t need to lose another hour of sleep. You’ve heard about that study that says it causes accidents.”
“No.”
“People fall asleep at the wheel.”
“Makes sense,” he agreed, but after they said goodbye, he thought it was like her to fasten on the morbid. She was a strange bird, as his mother once said. She’d seemed sober, at least, though, almost finished with his scotch, maybe he wasn’t the best judge.
“What I want to know,” Emily asked, “is why she’s calling Thursday night. What was she doing all day Sunday?”
“You want me to guess?”
“Stop. Be nice.”
They’d never know. Like all addicts, she was secretive, a practiced liar. As a girl she’d hidden candy bars in her closet. As a teenager it was cigarettes, then pot and pills. Emily regularly went through her shoeboxes. Now she’d have bottles stashed around the house—in the basement and the linen closet and in the back of cupboards. Jeff said he checked, but she was only working part-time. Most afternoons she was alone until the children came home from school.
She might be sober. There was no way to tell. He thought he should be more charitable, but after all her troubles, he’d learned to temper his hopes. Fool me once.
Before she called, he’d been thinking of having another Dewar’s. Now he did on principle, remembering his Al-Anon. He would not be a hostage to her problems.
“You’re going to have a headache,” Emily said.
“I already have two,” he said, pointing at her and Rufus, but in the morning she was right. He wanted to blame Margaret.
“You should listen to me,” Emily said.
“I should.”
“I don’t care, we’re still mulching.”
“As long as we do it quietly.”
Every year the job seemed more involved, the garden taking over the yard. In the garage he dug up a crusty pair of work gloves and loaded a shovel, two rakes, a pitchfork and an edger into the wheelbarrow, their handles jutting forward like a prow so he could make it through the gate. His old scissors were dull. It was quicker to tear the plastic with his bare hands. The mulch was wet and cold and stank like compost. Not halfway to the birdbath, they ran out and he had to go back to the Home Depot for more. With each bag, the rear of the Olds sagged, the springs creaking. At the end of the day they still had the whole right side left to do. His lower back hurt. For Emily, it was her fingers. They both took some Aleve and went to bed early.
Saturday the sky was low and the Home Depot was overrun. They spent all morning finishing, a misty drizzle wetting their faces, soaking their clothes. Rufus watched from the French doors, bored. It was a day to stay inside, Henry thought, but the yard looked good and he was glad to be done. After a hot shower, they had tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, an old favorite of the children. Emily took a nap, leaving him free to putter in the basement. He got the Pirate game from Bradenton on his transistor, plugged in the jigsaw and started cutting pieces for a spice rack he was making for Chautauqua. He sanded and stained them on the bench, falling into a pleasant rhythm. The game went to the tenth inning, ending in an unsatisfying tie. When he checked his watch, he was shocked to find it was almost five.
As the local news signed off, the anchorman reminded viewers to spring ahead. The national news had a feature on why Ben Franklin invented daylight savings, and how several states were trying to repeal it. Henry didn’t need them to tell him how arbitrary time was. For years he’d followed a rigid schedule, getting up at five-thirty so he could be at the lab by seven. Now he didn’t know what day of the week it was, let alone the date. Emily was the keeper of the calendar, warning him of appointments and the grandchildren’s birthdays like a secretary, but for the most part his time was his own. Like a farmer, he followed the seasons, one eye on the weather. Losing or gaining an hour didn’t matter to him. Like jet lag, it was a question of simple relativity. The sun hadn’t moved, only his position.
As with anything mechanical in the Maxwell household, the clocks were his responsibility. He waited until Emily was ready to head up to bed and went around the downstairs room by room. She used the stove and microwave every day, yet claimed not to know how to change the time. What was she going to do when he was gone? His computer would adjust automatically, and the atomic clock on his bookshelf. He wound the Black Forest cuckoo clock in the breakfast nook, waking the bird, inserted the key in the face of the grandfather clock and twisted, making the chimes ring as he brought the minute hand full circle. He’d locked up and turned off the lights when he saw the glow of her stereo.
“Tricky,” he said, because it always got him.
Upstairs Emily had left the bathroom light on for him and was reading in bed, Rufus sacked out at her feet. Henry fixed the clock radios in the children’s rooms and the banjo clock in the den before adding an hour to his father’s watch and setting it on his dresser.
“We are officially in the future.”
“What?” Emily lowered her book.
“We’re living in the future for the next couple of hours.”
“That’s great,” she said. “I’m reading.”
The new time seemed wrong. It wasn’t really that late, but he didn’t feel like reading, and didn’t bother turning on his light. His back ached from lifting all that mulch. He stretched, absorbing the warmth of the electric blanket. He’d forgotten to take his Aleve. Too late. He’d be up in three hours to pee anyway.
Finally Emily closed her book and rolled away from him, raised up on one elbow.
“I’m setting my alarm for eight,” she warned.
“I don’t think we’ll need it,” he said, but in the morning he was dreaming and didn’t want to get up.
It was too early. His back hurt, and his eyes burned as if he’d been on the computer too long. As he was brushing his teeth, the cap of the toothpaste got away from him, bouncing along the counter. He lunged to catch it one-handed and batted it off the glass of the shower stall so it rolled into the corner behind the toilet. Stiffly, bent over, bracing himself on the closed lid, he was reaching for the cap when his back spasmed, making him grunt and straighten up. “Dammit.”
The only handy tool was the plunger, which he immediately vetoed. Ultimately he used a towel, limply fishing in the corner. On his third try he managed to snag the cap, but as he was dragging it out, he knocked the toilet paper loose, the spring-loaded holder coming apart, sending the roll unfurling across the floor.
“Nothing’s easy,” he said, an observation his father applied to the universe when frustrated by a stripped screw or a balky engine, and deliberately, with the grim efficiency of a hired killer, Henry retrieved the roll and fit it back in place, rinsed off the cap, screwed it onto the tube and stuffed the towel in the hamper.
As every spring, the last clock he changed was the one in the Olds, a single touch of a button. After the bathroom, he was careful driving, remembering what Margaret had said. In church he prayed for her, for all those in the grip of addiction, and their loved ones. He was looking forward to talking to her, for once. He wanted to share his misadventures with the cap of the toothpaste and tell her she was right—a small point of agreement, but something. He knew she’d enjoy imagining him playing the fool, and that he’d exaggerate his bumbling to make her laugh. When she was a girl he used to make up stories for her. Please, she asked. Pretty please? Okay. Once upon a time there was a brave little chicken named Margaret. The plot had something to do with a fox and a dog and a chicken coop, he couldn’t remember. Maybe she would. All afternoon he waited for her to call, but she never did.