The Grandfather Clock Read online

  “In a heart beat I would,” she smiled. “Really.”

  It actually sounded appealing. “Really, why not? Tell you what. I’ll buy your ticket back. You’ll be back for school on Monday.”

  “Ummm.” I could see her wheels turning.

  “Just think. The open road. Truck stops. Canyons. The deep south.”

  “You sure?”

  “Totally,” I said.

  “What the hell? Let’s do it.”

  She didn’t have her car, so we walked back to my hotel with plans to stop by her apartment first thing in the morning for her to pack a bag. In an unusually comfortable way, we collapsed on to the bed talking about high school people. She was exhausted from teaching and working the bar. We lay face to face and I could see her begin to doze.

  “I’m going to fall asleep,” she said, “so you better kiss me.”

  I did. It was a strange feeling after being with the same person so long. I was keenly aware that I was preoccupied. I was afraid she could tell that my mind was racing. I looked at her closed eyes and I could see that she too was somewhere else. We locked eyes, she smiled and we fell asleep.

  I woke up at 6:30 with her dark hair tickling my cheek. She rolled towards me and put her head on my chest. She was in a tank top that showed the tattoo of a rose on her right shoulder. She blinked her eyes and took a deep breath.

  “Michael,” she said softly. I could see a tear on her cheek. “I’m not going with you to Florida.”

  “I know,” I sighed.

  3

  I dropped Erica off at her apartment. She didn’t explain her decision not to join me, and I didn’t want her to. Maybe she didn’t want her students to suffer a substitute teacher for the next two days. Maybe it was because I didn’t try to make a move on her. Maybe the initial excitement wore off. Whatever the reason, I admit I was relieved. I was a little worried about how to handle the visit to Santa Fe, with a woman in tow. I was worried about what she expected from me. What if we got to Texas and it wasn’t going well? We’d had a couple drinks and got along great, but 3,500 miles is a long way to ride with someone.

  Hair mussed, Erica waved goodbye. We exchanged email addresses and agreed to stay in touch, and I meant it. She was a really nice girl. We were in totally different places, literally and figuratively. I wanted a place for someone like Erica in my life, but I had a long way to go. It wouldn’t be fair for me to try to bring her or anyone else along for that ride.

  I love driving into the desert in the morning. Desert mornings remind me of family road trips when I was a child. My dad always insisted on leaving at 3 or 4 in the morning. He’d carry my lifeless body to the car and I’d wake up to a sunrise over Kramer Junction, nothing but Joshua Trees and a gas station. I scanned through the radio stations and settled on KLOS for nostalgia purposes. I recalled the day when every teenager’s car had the rainbow oval KLOS bumper sticker, and the many oval variations, with bands like Blondie, Rush, and Pink Floyd on them. They were still playing those bands. “Time” from Dark Side of the Moon played as the houses ended and the desert began.

  The van rode like a jetliner on that perfect black road. I was on a high. It was only Thursday, but events of the previous weekend were a distant memory. My visit in Santa Fe came with its own baggage, as I knew my mom was still struggling with the grief over her mother. But it felt good to be going there where I could see her. I felt helpless talking to my dad on the phone while he made excuses about why she couldn’t come to the phone. I need to cover 850 miles that day.

  I was lightheaded when I reached Kingman, AZ, stopping only once for gas. I ended up in a diner that had plastered the interstate with billboards. It had a 1950s theme complete with a little floor-show put on by the servers. It was a good choice over fast food and they sent me on my way with a good tall black coffee. It was only one in the afternoon and I still had more than half of the day’s drive left to go. I was already sure that I wouldn’t try to bite off another chunk like this in one day. The heat was oppressive in a way I had forgotten about. My skin didn’t sweat, but my sinuses ached as the air hit me like I was pulling a chicken out of an oven. The van’s AC was keeping up even if I was running out of music options.

  I was finally to Santa Fe. The floorboard of the passenger seat was a beverage and snack history of the day. The day started hopeful with trail mix and fruit juice. By the end, there were Cheeto’s and M&M wrappers sticking out of an empty can of Pringles. I’d also stopped at Cracker Barrel for chicken and dumplings and I had the empty Styrofoam coffee cup to prove it. And there was a glass bottle of café mocha rattling around, breaking my arbitrary two-coffee rule.

  I was within fifteen minutes of pulling up to my parent’s house when my phone rang. Expecting it to be my dad, I was surprised it was Sam. I had left him a message from the road, but it was getting late for a call. He spoke over a lot of background noise, so I knew he was out.

  “Hey, man,” he said over the din, “How far did you make it?”

  “Almost to my parents’ place,” I said.

  “Got a minute?”

  “Of course, I’m driving a van in the desert.”

  “Alright, well, this is awkward. I’ve thought about it and I would want to know if I were you.”

  I knew it had something to do with Christie, after I’d asked Sam to get my mail.

  “What did she do? Please tell me she’s not fucking waiting for me at my parents’ house.”

  “Whoa. No, not that,” he said. “I called her, to get your mail. Well, big surprise, she didn’t answer or call back. No text or anything.”

  “Okay, it’s not that big of a deal.”

  “No, listen. So I went by there because I was heading over to Green Iguana and it was on the way. Her car was there so I knocked on the door. This was like 5:30 or 6:00. Okay, so you aren’t going to like this...”

  “Just spit it out.”

  “Frank Murray was there.”

  Frank Murray was a guy we knew from college. We bumped into him from time to time. I think he worked at a hotel.

  “Frank Murray,” I repeated. “And he was there, like they were fucking there?”

  “Well, I didn’t catch them in the act, but he sure looked flustered when he saw me at the door. And she wore it on her face. Fear. She was busted. I’m sorry to tell you this, but man... that’s just wrong.”

  “Seriously, Sam,” I sighed, surprised to feel a sting of sadness, or maybe it was anger. “This might be the best news you could have given me. I was feeling pretty guilty. Maybe she gets it. I’m not sure what do say.”

  Sam was laughing.

  I started to laugh too, “I think I’m relieved.”

  “Man, I thought you’d be pissed.”

  “Relieved. Just proves I wasn’t being judgmental or cruel. We weren’t happy. She had no problem moving on.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Sam said. “I was just afraid it would bruise your ego a bit. It’s not like you’re shacking up with anyone yet.”

  I chuckled. “Actually, a girl did stay over last night.”

  “You lying son of a... Who?”

  “This girl I knew in high school. Nothing happened. She almost came on the drive, but had second thoughts.”

  “Well, I believe it now. The Christie saga is over.”

  “I told you it was,” I said, pulling into my parents’ neighborhood.

  “Good for you, man. Good for both of you.”

  “And Frank,” I added.

  “God help Frank Murray.”

  “So, did I have any important mail?”

  “I forgot to get it.”

  My dad insisted on getting in nine holes of golf first thing in the morning. I tried to claim exhaustion from the drive, but he wouldn’t be swayed.

  “You’re 35 years younger than me. Besides, you should stretch your legs. We’d play 18, but your mother made us brunch reservations at Casa Del Sol.”

  Casa Del Sol was their country club restaurant wher
e it appeared they dined far too often. Not to be confused with some fancy club of blue bloods, the Del Sol Golf Estates provided “Affordable Active Living” for the fifty-five and up crowd. Santa Fe has a serious love affair with adobe style architecture. Just about every structure is some variation on squares with rounded edges and clay colored paint. Banks, grocery stores, McDonald’s, and just about every housing development have embraced an architecture honoring the style of the indigenous people. I picture the most boring Home Depot paint aisle in the United States, with 900 different shades of terracotta. Del Sol Golf Estates is on board.

  Richard and Meryl Chance made a two bedroom attached adobe villa their home. The roof is lined with false rainspouts, while tan rain gutters do the real job. My dad had even taken to wearing a leather belt with turquoise beading. I wore borrowed golf shoes and an Aetna golf shirt that was probably part of my dad’s retirement gift package. We teed off at 8:03 and the sun was already baking us.

  I don’t golf. At one point, I golfed regularly, solely because someone told me that it would be good for my career. Somewhere along the way I hung up my clubs. I couldn’t bring myself to spend 5 to 6 hours on my day off doing something I wasn’t wild about. I did enjoy golfing with my dad. He was the least competitive golfer I’d ever seen. He played three times a week but rarely kept a real score, and reacted to errant shots the same as great shots.

  We duffed our way down the first fairway. I poured a lukewarm coffee over a cup full of ice. It was truly a beautiful place. The desert, the mountains, and the green grass made an idyllic combination.

  My mom had saved a big plate of pot roast for me the night before and we stayed up talking. I brought them up to speed on the break-up, complete with the late breaking news from Sam about Frank Murray. If my mother had been depressed, ending my engagement was the news she needed. I still could read tinges of sadness, but it was good to see her functioning. I could tell that being normal took some work, but her laugh was coming back. She wouldn’t look at the clock lying in the back of the van. She didn’t want to sit in the living room where the pictures of her mother sat. She said she went in there in the mornings on good days. Just telling me this made me feel better, knowing that she recognized what she was going through.

  “I really wish you’d stay a few days,” my dad said, pouring green sand into a divot.

  “Me too. Rental van has to be back. And work...”

  “How is work?”

  “I’m thinking about quitting,” I said.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? You have a lot of change going on in your life. What will you do?”

  “I don’t know. I’m burned out with that place. You know, I’m not with Christie, I assume she’ll stay in the apartment, so why not, I don’t know... go?”

  “Go where?”

  “I don’t know. Nowhere maybe. I like it there. I have good friends. I’m just not attached to the job right now.”

  We hiked up to the green, trying to locate our last shots.

  “You know, son, Vince told me you turned down his job offer.”

  “That didn’t take long.”

  “Well, it’s a good business. Job security. Freedom. He’d let you buy in. Part owner.”

  “I know, Dad. It was a really generous offer. It wasn’t easy to turn down. But I don’t know, he’s got a good thing going. He doesn’t need me there monkeying things up.”

  “Just tell me you’ll think about it.”

  “I will. For you. But don’t get your hopes up,” I said. “And don’t tell Vince I said I’m thinking about it, or he won’t let it rest.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Don’t tell Mom either.”

  He just looked at me. He didn’t keep anything from her. Even the most mundane news. They really had a beautiful relationship. In my eyes, they were the most solid thing in the world. They were together on everything in every way.

  “Mom seems like she’s getting better,” I offered tentatively. We had never talked about her state of mind.

  He feigned confusion. I gave him a direct stare and he relented. “She has her ups and downs. I think it really hurt that she wasn’t there.”

  “She tried,” I said.

  “I think it hurt, too, that her mother refused to move here. She could have lived with us.”

  “That was never going to happen,” I said breathlessly.

  “It was complicated,” he said. “Son, don’t worry about us. Live where you want to live. Do what you want to do. Just come visit. Bring the grand babies. Call on Sundays.”

  I smiled. It was that simple.

  We played seven holes and my dad hit a drive into the rocky rough and suddenly declared, “That’s about enough.” He didn’t even pick up his ball. We cut right through the neighboring fairway to the restaurant.

  Every day is brunch at Casa Del Sol and my mom surprised me with her eagerness to show me off to her friends. Over Eggs Benedict we ribbed my dad for his sorry golf game and they opened up on their reservations about Christie. Their critique was less about her, and more about me. My mom said, “You are so easy going. You are really like your father. She, she just stressed you out.”

  She was right.

  “Nice girl,” she said.

  “Not really,” my dad said, mid bite.

  “She’s young,” my mom said.

  “Well, it was a learning experience,” I said. “I will be more careful. I feel more relaxed. I feel good.”

  With plans to leave early on Saturday, I spent the rest of the day just relaxing. I caught an afternoon nap, we visited a neighbor, cocktails at five. We drove into Santa Fe for Italian and watched a ball game when we got home. My dad fell asleep at nine o’clock. In the kitchen, my mother pulled me aside.

  “Michael, I want to thank you. For taking the clock. For coming here. It’s good to see you.”

  I hugged her.

  “I couldn’t see the clock get sold. I have a few boxes of other stuff.”

  She interrupted, “I’m not ready to look at those. But I will be. Maybe next time.”

  “It’s okay, Mom. Be sad. But try to... I don’t know... try to think of yourself,” I said feebly.

  She looked up at me. She looked the same as she did when I was ten years old. She kept her hair dark; she wasn’t ready for old age. She smiled with a tear in the corner of her eye.

  “I’ve got something for you,” she said, reaching into a kitchen drawer. “You are spending a lot of money on that van. Gas. Plane ticket. Hotels.”

  “Mom, no.”

  “Michael, I won’t take ‘no.’ My mother left me almost everything. No reason you should be burdened taking care of that big old clock.” She pulled out check, already written. “This is for a boost. Quit your job, or stay. Do what you want. This isn’t much, but it’ll help.”

  It was a check for $10,000.

  “Mom, it’s too much. I’m thirty years old. I can’t take money from you.” But she held up her hand and walked away. I knew that when she was decided, it was decided.

  I made a mistake the next day. In an attempt to impress my dad, I left their house at six-thirty in the morning. So when I hit Dallas before five o’clock, I had designs on making it as far as I could so that I could be in New Orleans by noon the next day. A Saturday night in New Orleans before completing the drive on Sunday sounded like the perfect ending to the trip. I knew a guy who used to be with Globe Bank who lived in New Orleans. Brian Pierson and I had attended a seminar in Chicago together and skipped the company-organized trip to a Bulls game in favor of seeing The Black Keys. I texted Brian from Dallas with hopes of sleeping in Shreveport.

  I was jarred by the sudden pounding of highway reflector and the blast of an air horn, as a semi passed going twenty miles an hour faster than me. I swerved back onto the road, nearly over correcting. The top-heavy van rocked side to side and forward. Sweat poured over my body and Cheap Trick’s “Surrender” emerged from the noise. I was barely 90 miles
beyond Dallas. My adrenaline pumped for another twenty minutes until I could go no further.

  In my mind, Dallas was the end of open road. From there on, the cities and towns would be frequent. But I was in the middle of nowhere. Somewhere between Dallas and a town called Tyler. My tired mind debated pushing to the next motel, but I pulled off where some sort of farm access had been cleared. I was about 100 feet off I-20, close enough to hear the traffic. The line from a Tom Petty song came to mind as I fell asleep across a back seat, listening to cars roll by like waves crashing on the beach.

  I woke suddenly around one in the morning, shocked at how soundly I’d slept. I scrambled out of the van, my bladder about to burst. The line of cars was sparse. A thunderstorm put on a light show to the south, and the stars above were brilliant.

  Then I heard steps.

  They came from the other side of the van. They were slow. Steady. Confident. My heart pounded. This was Texas. Everyone carried guns. I had no gun. I crouched by the rear wheel, attempting to hide my feet if the person were looking under the van. The steps paused, then moved again.

  “Who is it?” I yelled in a comically stern voice, cracking. Another step.

  And then I ran. I don’t know how far. Maybe fifty feet. Halfway to the road, in a diagonal so that I could start to see the opposite side of the van. There was a ditch, and a farm fence. The distant lightning illuminated my pursuer. A lonely cow.

  “Oh shit,” I laughed, gasping for air. Before this trip was over, I was going to have a heart attack.

  I walked back to the van and used my phone to snap a picture of the cow. A twenty-four-hour McDonald’s north of Tyler fueled the next leg of my trip, along with the five hours’ sleep and cow-triggered adrenalin.

  I watched the sun come up over the Mississippi River. Tired, but rejuvenated. The river represented a return to home in a way. The remainder of the drive east would be familiar territory; I’d made the six-hour drive from Tallahassee more times than I could count, and it was another four to St. Pete. It would be a long day on Sunday, especially if Brian and I stayed out late. But it was manageable. The home stretch would be easy.