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.
J
ames 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.
“Do not go gentle into that good night…
…Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
H
is words pressed against my ear in bed that night, but the words were formless, a hum that wasn’t intended for me. His hand was on me, his arm cradled between my ribs and my hip, and he stroked my breast as he spoke. But while his touch aroused my skin, brought my nipple to full attention, I knew it wasn’t me he felt under his fingers.
He felt a clock. He was winding it, pulling on a chain, twisting a key, tenderly adjusting a fragile filigree arm to the correct time. And in his voice, instead of my name, I heard the chiming of the hour. A tenor chime, sounding out into the night for anyone who heard it, but no one in particular. Certainly not for me.
Do not go gentle into that good night, Dylan Thomas wrote, and I thought about that, thought about raging and shrieking, stamping my feet, smacking James’ face, bringing his full attention back to me, to me, the one who lay in his bed. Not the clocks that stood in the hallway or hung on the wall or sat and squatted and crouched on tables and shelves in every room. I thought about raging against the dying of the light, our light, the light that fell on James and me these three years.
But this was James. And even as I raged inside, waged a war of words tipped with bayonets, I knew I would go gentle. There was no other way to be with James. There was no other way for James to be but gentle. My skin knew that. Every cell in my body knew his touch and even his voice was soft.
I would go gentle. But I would go.
“James,” I whispered. “James, it’s getting late. Time for sleep.”
His hum stopped for a moment, his thumb and forefinger gripping my nipple, arrested in the movement of pushing time forward. He relaxed, his hand opening and settling onto the curve of my breast, and he curled into me for the night. “I love you,” he said.
Those words always got through. Several times a day, they seemed to work their way up through his distraction and obsession, rolling off his tongue, breaking out between his teeth, and each time, it made my belly go soft. But I had to start thinking about all those other times, those long minutes and hours when he was away from me, even within the walls of our home. Moving from clock to clock, adjusting and winding.
I knew he said those same words to them. But I liked to think that the timbre of his voice changed, just a bit, when he turned his attention to me. I liked to think that.
Eventually that night, I rolled out from under his heavy arm and went to sit on the rocker across the room. I wrapped myself in a blanket and stared at James in the grainy gray half-light created by a sliver of moon against white snow outside. A nightlight glowed from the bathroom and I went to turn it off, not wanting the gold halo to reach James, wanting to see him for who he was. I reminded myself to turn it back on before I left. Without a nightlight, James was terrified of the dark.
So I sat and studied him sleeping unawares, his arm resting quietly on the bed where my body used to be, where only my heat remained and was surely dissipating. He didn’t seem to notice that I was gone. His posture didn’t change and his face remained relaxed and calm, his lips curved in a sweet half-smile.
I thought about our weekend. We’d just gotten home from a trip to Rockford, Illinois, where we visited the tiny Time Museum, a museum devoted completely to clocks. It sat squat in the middle of a hotel complex, the Clock Tower Resort. James and I checked in on Friday afternoon and stayed until the museum closed at four on Sunday. He spent almost the whole weekend with the clocks. I spent some time there too, it was fascinating, but I also swam in the pool, looked around Rockford, and ate at restaurants while staring at the blank setting across from me as time and time again, James was late or forgot to show up entirely. I lounged in our bed part of Saturday afternoon, stretching out in the luxury of king size, and experimented with different styles of masturbation when he didn’t join me. Later, at the hotel gift shop, I bought a silk nightgown with clocks all over it and he delightedly identified each clock before pulling it over my head and identifying me. But Sunday morning, even though I slid the nightgown back on and struck a seductive pose, he waved at me and headed for the museum. I packed our things in the car and then went to join him.
By then, I knew exactly where to find James. Although he spent some time admiring all the clocks, he always gravitated to the center of the museum and then he stood there, frozen, his hands in his pockets as he took in the Gebhard Astronomical and World Clock. Every now and then, he whispered something and after the first couple times, I didn’t need to hear him to know what he was saying. He whispered, “Look at it. Just look at it.”
But I stood in the archway and looked at James instead, dwarfed in front of this massive clock. It resembled a pipe organ, something that belonged in a cathedral somewhere, bellowing out hymns in a voice that vibrated the floor. The oak case glowed and climbed upwards in three distinct columns, each housing instruments shiny with purpose. The clock was as intimidating as it was beautiful and when I saw it for the first time in Friday afternoon’s sifted sunlight, I took a step backwards. James grabbed my arm and explained all the different functions. His voice was low and reverent and again I felt like I was in a cathedral.
There were dials and faces that showed Mean Time, Solar Time, Star Time and Decimal Time. On the right side of the clock was a globe, presenting the exact position of the earth at that particular moment in space, and a band ran along the equator, showing what time it was at any point on the planet. On the left side was another globe, but this one bristled with stars and the white lines of constellations. A perpetual calendar sat square in the clock’s belly, a little notch that reminded me of a bellybutton. In a window near the top of the clock, a mustard sun moved in a graceful arc, replaced with a glowing moon at night. There was a barometer and below that, a planetary system showing the sun and six planets, the only ones known at the clock’s creation. They all moved in a cautious and painfully correct revolution around the sun.
“And all of it,” whispered James in my ear, “all of it built in thirty years, from 1865 to 1895. No computers, no calculators, all by hand and by thought. Just look at it.”
It was the animated figures that grabbed my attention, and James’ too. Our first night there, we stayed until six so we could see the clock set off. Because it was so old, the clock was only run a few times during the day, so as to keep it in working condition, giving it less chance to break down. We sat on a bench and watched as a museum employee started the figures on their rounds. He let the clock run from six to seven, so we could see it in its natural form. The clock’s hands were set at eleven and we were told to pretend that we were on our way to midnight.
On the quarter hour, an infant in diapers crawled out and dinged a bell once. On the half hour, a child ran out and rang the bell twice. Three quarters, and an adult appeared and the bell sang three times. And on the hour, an old man seemed to stagger while he struck the bell four times. With the first three, a guardian angel appeared over the figures, her hand outstretched and protective. But she stayed away from the old man and instead, another angel appeared and turned an hourglass over while a hooded creature, carrying a scythe, rang a deeper bell the correct chimes for the hour. Every hour, that old man died, and every hour, a new baby was born.