I wish I had a fancy name,” I said, practicing Abigail Abigail Abigail. “A name like Kimberly or Cynthia or Pamela or Sandra.” I licked my eraser and scrubbed my name so clean, I wore a hole in the page. Now I would have to throw away that paper, too. Despite my longing to learn cursive, the letters came out all wrong.
“Abigail is a nice name,” Mom replied, her back to me as she peeled carrots at the sink.
“Dad just picked it because it’s in the Bible,” I said, pouting, now writing a new line of Abigail across the page, each name bolder and angrier.
“Nothing wrong with that,” Mom said. “Abigail was an important peacemaker. Besides, he could have picked Dorcas or Huldah.” She laughed as I frowned at the mess in front of me. “Or how about Hagar? Or Zipporah?” She turned to me briefly, then wiped the window with her towel. “Isn’t practice usually over by now?” She peered out the window into the darkness.
Of course it was. It was over long ago. Matt never came straight home, and she should know that.
I held up my page, now pockmarked with erasure scars. It was an embarassment. I was supposed to circle the best words, but none were good enough.
“Besides, you weren’t exactly named after David’s wife.” Mom put the pot on the stove and dried off her hands.
“But that’s what Dad said.” I scribbled out the last Abigail on the line.
“Well, I’m glad he thought so,” she explained as she turned back to me. “But I wanted Abigail after Abigail Adams, who was married to John Adams, the second president. That makes her our second First Lady. A very strong woman.” Mom rested her hand on my shoulder. “And you’re my first lady.” I felt her kiss the top of my head, but then she froze and I knew what she had seen as she quickly reached for my paper.
“Abby, why all the scribbles? What are you doing?”
I crumpled the paper into a ball before she could get it.
“Wasn’t that your homework?” Mom grabbed my hand. “Weren’t you supposed to turn that in?” She pulled my fingers apart. “Are you just throwing your work away?” Her voice was desperate. The homework was bad enough. What if she now found out about all the uneaten lunches she packed?
Mom uncrumpled my mess and smoothed it out on the counter. I couldn’t turn that in and she knew it. There was nothing good in that line of Abigails.
“What’s wrong, Abby?”
I shrugged. She wouldn’t understand that Abigail wasn’t good enough. And it wasn’t just in penmanship. It was Roman numerals and rock formations, and keeping my room clean, and telling the truth about Matt, and my upcoming volcano project, which I was terribly far behind in. The project Dad had once promised to help me with much the same way he had with Matt’s project years before. But if I said anything, Mom would be even sadder.
“Abby, this is serious. I don’t know why you’re doing this, but I want to help you.”
Matt came in from the back door and dumped his football gear near the washing machine. The odor of dirt and perspiration threatened to overpower Mom’s chicken soup.
“Oh, P-U!”
“Leave me alone, Abby.” He picked up his practice jersey and put it under my nose.
“Yuck! Get that away from me!” I jumped off the seat. “You’re late!” I tattled, thankful for a distraction.
“So?” Matt shrugged. “You wanna make something of it?”
“Don’t start, Matt,” Mom said. “You’re supposed to come straight home after football.”
“What time is it anyway?” Matt asked. Every clock in the house was off the wall and being cleaned. The clock on the oven was our sole navigation.
“No excuse,” Mom said.
Matt poured milk over his Rice Krispies, his usual post-practice snack. I leaned over to hear them snap, crackle, and pop.
“Get your hair out of my cereal!”
“I’m just listening,” I argued.
“You two stop fighting.” Mom looked at the two of us with a slight smile, as if she might actually be pleased.
“Don’t you have to know something about clocks?” Matt asked, opening the tool chest Dad left on the counter.
“Dad used to sit by his grandpa while he worked. By the hours.” She studied Matt’s reaction. “Those are his grandfather’s very same tools,” she added as Matt fingered the pieces lightly.
“Dad didn’t want the farm; why does he want the clocks?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Mom said. “Maybe because you can see what you’re working with.” She smiled as if pleased with her analysis. “I mean, I never liked vacuuming until I had kids.”
“What does vacuuming have to do with this?” I asked, happy my homework was no longer the topic of concern.
“I like vacuuming because I can see a change. Nice smooth streaks across the shag carpet. I can see when I’m done.” Mom sliced a loaf of bread. “It’s different with kids. You never know if they get it.” She pulled apart the slices. “And you’re never done.”
Clocks, farming, preaching, being a mom. I tried to make some sort of connection and wondered if it’d be one of those things I’d understand later. “Clocks were made to do something. They’re precise. I think that’s why he likes to work on them. Dad can fix them,” she added with a sad smile.
Dad came in from his run. His face was flushed and he wore a sweatband around his forehead. Except for the fact that he didn’t have fancy athletic gear, I had to admit he looked like a runner. We never questioned why he was running. Maybe we all knew the answer. We just didn’t know where. “The usual route,” was all he’d say.
“So you’re the Clock Doc?” I teased. Dad tilted his head to the side.
“That’s not a bad name,” he said at last, nodding his approval.
And so that evening I ran downstairs to see what Dad was up to in the basement, hoping he’d help me with my science project.
Though Dad had turned into a recluse, he didn’t seem to mind when I hauled over a stool and sat across from him. The room tick-tocked with a variety of clocks hung on the nails in the studs. A few clocks lay on the shelves, some clocks were in mid-operation on one table, and a grandfather clock took up the other table.
“So what time is it really, Dad?”
“Hmm?” Dad murmured softly as he concentrated on where to squirt a drop of oil. He frowned so hard his eyebrows nearly met in the center of his forehead. I listened as the clocks ticked in cacophony. Mom’s word for the week. In another ten minutes, the clocks would fight over the precise moment to announce the hour.
“What time is it?”
“Pick a clock,” Dad said.
“But which one? How do you know the real time?”
Dad inserted what looked like a tiny screwdriver into the back of the clock, and I began to wonder if I’d have to wait ten minutes for an answer.
“Is there one clock that’s really right?” I tried, hoping I wouldn’t make him mad. Dad set the screwdriver down and set the clock upright. “Greenwich Mean Time. GMT, for short. Hourly signals are sent out. We coordinate by them.” He spoke in shorthand. “The Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England,” he added as if that would explain everything.
“Sort of like the North Star of time?”
“Good question, Abby.” Dad smiled and nodded, removing the glass from the face and then oiling another part. I had asked a question and Dad had answered. It was sort of like old times. “Some clockmakers have a special clock to set their clocks by. Some have a Vienna regulator; it’s weight driven. It has a constant source of power and is reliable,” he explained. “I set my clocks by my grandfather’s old clock.” Dad showed me the Seiko 70 and then asked me a question. “Now, Abby, here’s one for you. You asked, ‘What time is it?’ But I’m asking you, what is time?”
That was too easy. There must be a trick.
“Some people think it’s measurable; some people think it’s just a way of talking about measuring events,” Dad continued.
“So how come you know all that stuff?” I asked. It was easier to ask questions than to answer his trick ones.
“Astronomy and a few philosophy courses.”
“Astronomy has to do with time?” With my science assignment pending, this was a perfect lead.
“Well, they do kind of go together. The moon measures the seasons of time, but we need clocks to measure the minutes and the hours. Can you think of anything else that measures time?” I thought about the sundial at our grade school, but I was afraid to answer because Dad was talking and I didn’t want him to stop. “Sometimes people burned candles to measure time. Or how about an hourglass?” he asked. “A captain needs a clock to be accurate or he sails off course and can’t determine his position. But for the high seas, it can’t have a pendulum!” Dad almost—almost—laughed. And then he returned to his work and I watched. The ticking of at least five clocks measured time.
“I have a science experiment. It’s about rocks and time and change …,” I began. “I might need a little help.” Or a lot of help, I thought to myself. “We studied the hardness of rocks and the order from talc to diamond. We studied three types of rocks. Metamorphic and sedimentary and ig … igna …”
“Igneous,” Dad finished.
“That, too,” I agreed.
“You know, I think Matt had to do something like that once. Ask him about his volcano project. I’ll bet he remembers.”
Didn’t Dad get it? Didn’t he remember he had helped Matt? I felt embarrassed about asking for his help. I had thought if I could figure out something to do with clocks or astronomy or rocks, I could have Dad’s attention and time. But I was wrong.