Cooley’s father turned away.
He was almost out the door when James heard the word, “Dad,” come out of Cooley’s mouth. It might have been Daddy, James’ ears might have cut out, but he wasn’t sure. The blank look was gone from her face and she stepped forward. When she did, her father opened his arms and they embraced.
James didn’t know what to do. He wanted to smack her away, to tell her she was being stupid, to ask her why she hugged this man who allowed her to be hurt. But James felt a pang when he looked at them and he had to turn away. He knew it too well, the ability to love the one that didn’t hurt, the one that stood by and watched. Or even left. There was just no way to turn the heart off, even if the mind said that this person was just as evil as the other.
So James left them there. He told himself that Cooley wouldn’t leave, but the whole time he was in the kitchen, warming coffee, gathering some of Ione’s latest baked cookies, his hands shook. When he finally turned to sit at the table, Cooley was there, leaning in the doorway. She said something and James caught the word, “gone.” He nodded.
She sat down and opened the notebook. “It’s OK,” she wrote. “My dad isn’t bad. But I’m not going back. I told him.”
James could see the sadness in her eyes, in the set of her shoulders. He looked away.
She tapped him on the shoulder. “Come…show…done,” he heard her say. She yanked at his arm, so James scooped up the cookies and coffee and followed her. They looked through the house as they went; they were alone. No tourists that afternoon.
Cooley sat in front of her computer. She pointed at the screen. James saw a graph in bright colors, showing the different months of the year. Cooley grabbed a piece of computer paper and wrote, “I’m keeping track of how many visitors we get. I checked thru the guestbook, but not every1 signs. This will help U 2 C what our busiest months R, and which 1s need help. C how the numbers jump once we reached May?” She pointed again at the screen.
Cooley was smart. James always kept track of this himself, by totaling the number in the guestbook at the end of each month. But he had to flip back and forth through the book to compare numbers. Now it was here in front of him, the whole year. “How did you do that?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Show U L8R,” she wrote. Then she pointed to the screen again. Another window popped up, this time showing the amount of money taken in each month. She clicked again and it broke it down to each week, then to each day. James thought of the piles of ledgers he kept in the office. Cooley smiled. “I’ll show U how 2 do it,” she wrote. “But if U want, I can maintain it 4 U.”
James nodded, then handed her a cookie. She laughed. They both went downstairs to finish their snack.
James wasn’t sure how he felt about her tackling the business this way. The Home for Wayward Clocks was his and his alone, only he knew the numbers, knew how to juggle them to make things balance, to make his life work. After their snack, James told Cooley to do her homework and then he went through the house, visiting, touching the clocks, making sure that all was well. Some clocks he could hear, others still withheld their voices, making him lean against the wall to feel their vibration. James told himself the numbers didn’t matter. The clocks mattered. They were still running, still alive. Cooley was just adding her own touches, helping to make things run smoother. But James was still the only one who knew how to repair a clock’s broken heart, how to warm its hands and then set it on its path again. Even with Cooley learning from him, she would never know as much as he did. Her heart belonged to one clock. James’ went out to many.
The clocks knew this. He could feel it, see it in their faces.
Later that night, after supper, James was downstairs, working on Diana’s new body. It was tricky business, getting this movement from a ceramic clock to go inside a wooden one. It was glued before, its smooth side plastered and thick so it would stick to the inside curves and bumps of the flowerbasket, but James didn’t want to glue it to the wood. That wasn’t proper, it wasn’t the way it was done. So he carefully attached little brackets to the movement, making sure they fit the right measurements for the existing screw holes in the miniature mantel clock. He didn’t want to create new holes in the clock, causing more stress to the wood. It was painstaking work and a couple of times, James knocked things loose in the movement and had to stop to fix it. He was sweating like a surgeon when Cooley appeared at his elbow. She stood so close, he couldn’t move his arms right, so he finally set the clock down and turned to her. “What is it?” he asked.
She opened the notebook. “I want 2 fix it,” she wrote.
James shook his head. “Not this clock, Cooley,” he said. “I told you, this one’s special.”
James saw her sigh and he heard, “ALL…special.”
She was right. But this was Diana. “Look, just not this clock, okay, Cooley? You’re not ready for this yet.”
She turned and walked away, going to stare out the door into the back yard. He tried to ignore her, but her neck was strung tight and from time to time, she gave a shudder. Finally, James put the clock down again. “Wait here,” he said.
Going through the house, James reached the room just past the living room. It was small, a sitting room of sorts, but he used it simply for displaying clocks. Shelves were the only furniture. In the furthest corner, on the lowest shelf, sat a beat-up odd-shaped mantel clock.
James picked it up. Instead of having the smooth camel’s hump, it had a square frame encasing the face. Hidden behind the decorative scroll on the base was a line of electric plugs, like a power strip. It was a handmade job from a high school’s shop class. James bought it from an old woman at a rummage sale a couple towns over. She said her son made it, but he moved away and didn’t want it anymore. The clock was ugly, but James wondered how her son could give up someone he made with his own hands. At the rummage sale, James held the clock under a maple tree and stroked its rough corners. “Did it ever run?” he asked.
She nodded. “Oh, yes. It ran very well.” She sat heavily on her front step. “He just stopped taking care of it.” She shook her head. “You know kids.”
James didn’t, but he handed over two bucks and brought it home. James tried fixing it, but the boy did things to it that he couldn’t quite imagine. What were the electric sockets for? There were four knobs placed around the clock face, at each of the quarter hours. They turned, but James had no idea why. Nothing happened when he turned them. There were misplaced parts throughout the whole movement. James just wasn’t sure what the boy intended the clock to do. Not wanting to disturb the boy’s original vision, not because it was good, but because it was now the clock’s soul, James left it alone.
But it would be a good clock for Cooley to tinker with. She was young too. Maybe she could figure out the way that boy’s mind worked and restore the clock to what it once was. James patted the clock, then tucked it under his arm for the trip downstairs.
Cooley sat hunched at the workbench, her hand twirling a tiny screwdriver at a frantic speed. Diana’s movement, which was two screws away from being firmly attached to the miniature mantel when James went upstairs, now lay in pieces on the bench. James’ eyes tunnel-visioned, swooping down onto the movement, the parts, the clock on its side. Anger seared his skin, he felt the heat of the river flooding his body. “What did you do?” he yelled, loud enough that he heard every word.
“Tried…help…just…” James heard faintly. But he didn’t look at Cooley. He couldn’t see anything but Diana, in pieces again on the table. Shoving Cooley aside, he was conscious of the weight of her as her body flew away. But it was the noise that made him look down.
He’d knocked over the stool that she was sitting on. She was sprawled on the floor, her head against the concrete, looking up at James with an open mouth. The screwdriver was still clenched in her hand.
Something in James recoiled at her wide-mouthed expression. Something in him knew the sound she was making, remembered it, could feel it as it echoed in his own lungs and throat, even if he didn’t hear it. But there was Diana. There was the clock in pieces that he would have to once again put back together. Another delay before Diana’s heart beat once again.
James bent down and twisted the screwdriver from Cooley’s hand. “Get out!” he yelled. “Get out of here!” Again, each word came through, James felt them falling against his eardrums. His ears rang with the force.
James didn’t know how long he worked on the movement before his back began to ache. He didn’t know when Cooley left. But when he turned to pick up the stool so he could sit while he worked, she was gone. James glanced at the skeleton clock on the workbench and noted that it was ten o’clock. Cooley was probably in her room, getting ready for bed. James thought for a moment about going up to her, but Diana’s clock was insistent so he went back to work.
It was after midnight when James was done. The movement was in one piece again. He only needed to attach it to the clock. But his eyes were so tired and his fingers so shaky, he didn’t trust himself to do it right. Diana’s heart would have to do without a body until the next day.
James turned out the lights and locked the doors as he went upstairs. Cooley’s room was dark, but he looked inside. The first thing he noticed was the acorn clock missing from its place on the mantel. And then he saw the empty bed.
It didn’t take long to figure out where she must have gone. There was only one other place she ever called home. James got in his car and drove across town.
Cooley’s house was dark. He thought about checking the doors, seeing if they were locked, if he could get inside and climb quietly to her room. But then her parents could call the cops and he didn’t want to have that happen. Cautiously, he walked to the back of the house.
The moonlight shone down on a ragtag yard. What was once a garden was now a clumped mass of weeds, though James could see a few daffodils and tulips poking up. A rotting wooden sandbox, filled with more mud than sand, squatted in a corner. There was a rusty swingset. And Cooley sat in the passenger swing, the acorn clock on the seat across from her. James couldn’t see her face. He wondered if she was bruised, then he saw again her expression as she lay on the basement floor. Her face was turned toward him; it was the back of her head that hit. But there could be a lump. A bruise well-hidden beneath the purple hair.
James wondered what to say. His mother never said anything. And he knew now that there was never anything she could say to make it right. But James didn’t know it then. He remembered wanting her to say something whenever she opened the root cellar doors, whenever she released him from his chain. Something that sounded like a mother. A mother who knew she’d done wrong and was sorry. But James’ mother was always silent.
James didn’t know how to sound like a father. He wasn’t a father. But he had to say something.
When James picked up the acorn clock to sit down, Cooley lurched forward and snatched it from him. Even James could hear the squeak of the swing and he glanced toward the house, to see if any lights came on. “Shhh,” he said. Then he sat. “I wasn’t going to take the clock, Cooley. I came here to get you.”
She wouldn’t look at him.
“Look, I’m sorry. I lost my temper, I know I did. I shouldn’t have shoved you, I didn’t mean to. But I told you that clock was special and I told you to leave it alone. You didn’t listen.”
Her arms tightened on the acorn clock. James worried that if she squeezed it too tightly, he’d have to repair it again. Reaching out, he touched her hands, hoping she would let go. But she only clutched tighter.
“Cooley,” he said. “Cooley, from living here…don’t you ever find yourself wanting to hurt someone? Like it’s there, under your skin, and it would feel so good to let it out through your fists?”
Cooley’s eyes flickered up.
James thought again of the moment he shoved her. Of the anger moving so swiftly through his bloodstream, it washed him away down the river. James thought of that contact, the moment of pushing against her, feeling her body react, feeling her fly through the air, and for just that second, the incredible rightness of the way it felt. That feeling of punishing somebody for doing something wrong. The same way it felt when he hit the cat that scratched him. The boy that taunted him. Diana, once. His mother. Once.
The way his mother probably felt when she hit him.
“The difference is,” James said slowly, then stopped to try and find the words. “The difference is that I should know better. And you too, you’ll learn to know better too. Because we know how it feels. We know, don’t we.”
She kept looking at James, but he didn’t know what else to say. He didn’t want to give her the details, load her down with another painful life. It wasn’t time for that. She was supposed to be healing. “Listen,” James said. “I do know. Just differently.”
He thought they’d have to sit there until morning before she nodded, but she finally did. She loosened her grip on the clock too, just a little, just enough to yank on her sleeves, making sure they were firmly down around her wrists.
“I guess I have to get used to you, Cooley,” James said. “I’m not really used to living with someone. It’s going to take me some time, okay? That clock…well, it’s special, like I said. It belonged to the last person I lived with.”
So he told her about Diana. It wasn’t any easier to find those words. In a way, it helped that he could only hear a few of them. He had to feel the words, rather than hear them. And by the end, Cooley looked fully at him, her grandmother’s clock sitting beside her.
James stood up carefully, making sure the swing didn’t rock too much. “I’ve put clocks first for a long time,” he said. “It’s a tough habit to break. But I think you should come first now, Cooley.”
Her eyes glistened in the moonlight, but then she looked away. She shrugged.
“Let’s go home,” he said and started to walk away. It felt like a miracle when she fell in beside him.
At home, James waited for a while, giving her time to scrub up, to brush her teeth and change into her pajamas. While he waited, he went downstairs to retrieve the shop clock. It was on the floor, underneath a chair. James must have dropped it in the middle of his anger. He picked the shop clock up, relieved that it seemed to still be all together. It wasn’t working in the first place, of course, but he felt like he must have hurt it somehow, just dropping it like the trash. He wiped it off with a damp cloth before bringing it upstairs to Cooley.