The Grandfather Clock Read online

  Wrapped in cloth and tape was something long and heavy, like the poker for a fireplace, only fatter. Brian got a knife and I cut away the clear packing tape that secured the cloth around it. I carefully unwound the cloth, which started coming off in sections. They were old kitchen hand towels that I didn’t recognize.

  The object began to emerge. First the silver bell-shaped end, then the flintlock, the trigger, and finally the handle.

  Brian stood wide-eyed with curiosity. “Wow.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “No kidding.” At the time I didn’t really know much about what I was looking at.

  “That’s a big old gun,” said Brian.

  “Yes it is.”

  4

  That Sunday was a big day. After telling Christie that I was not coming back to St. Pete, and finding an old musket inside the clock I felt obligated to call my parents to tell them where I was. I was glad my mother answered.

  “Hi Mom!” I said with cheer.

  “Michael! Did you make it home yet? Where are you?”

  “Well,” I said, “I’ve got some news.”

  “Yes?” she said hesitantly.

  “I’m in New Orleans. I stopped to see a friend yesterday. And I got offered a job.”

  “Um... wow. That’s wonderful!” she said in a combination of shock and relief.

  “Bartending,” I added.

  There was a pause. “Okay,” she said, less enthusiastically.

  “I know, it’s probably a rash decision, but I’m burned out at Globe Bank and that isn’t going anywhere. I need a change of scenery. It’s just until I find something I want to do, someplace that I want to go.”

  “Well, Michael,” she said, her voice growing warm. “I think you should do what makes you happy. But listen, I want you to take care of yourself, and don’t get stuck. You can’t tend bar forever.”

  “I know, Mom,” I said. I was still a kid to her. “Let me ask you a question on a different topic.”

  “What is it?”

  “When we were moving the clock, we found this old gun... this old musket. It was wrapped up in rags inside the clock.”

  “You’re kidding,” she said. “I remember my father had an old gun hanging on the mantle in the house I grew up in over in Orange. He must have put it inside the clock when they moved to Tustin. That was in the early 60s.”

  “Do you know anything about it?”

  “Gosh no. I forgot it even existed. I haven’t seen that thing since I was a teenager.”

  “Do you want it?” I asked.

  “Why would I want it?”

  “I don’t know. Well, I’ll hold on to it.”

  “You should take it on Antiques Roadshow,” she laughed.

  I smiled as she laughed. She sounded good. I felt like my visit had helped, or maybe it just helped me to not worry about her. I wrapped up the musket and put it back inside the clock.

  Dan was right. By week four, I was beginning to acclimate to the irregular hours. On Monday through Wednesday, I worked three twelve-hour shifts. My legs were getting strong, my back and shoulders had stopped aching, and my hands were nimble. I wasn’t Tom Cruise in “Cocktail,” but I could work the bar efficiently. During the busiest hours, I had help from either Laura or Melissa. Laura was a single mother, picking up a few days to supplement her main job waiting tables at Red Fish. She was younger, but careworn. She bantered just enough with customers to make the tip, but she was in it for the money and worked quickly.

  Melissa was fresh out of LSU and she had a jealous boyfriend who would sit at the bar for two or three hours. He eyed me suspiciously. I made a couple of attempts at friendly conversation with Sean, and when he didn’t play along, I ignored him, which made him more paranoid. Melissa was pretty, but she came to work dressed like she was going out, hair teased out, too much makeup, and ridiculous shoes. She was actually a good bartender when she wanted to be. Other times, she’d talk with a group of customers for ten or fifteen minutes, and end up going out with them when she got off work. Sometimes even sooner.

  It was an easy bar to work. If you wanted a frozen hurricane, take your business to another bar. But gin and tonic? Beer? Shots? This was the place.

  I usually picked up a few afternoon hours on the weekend, but generally I kept a couple of days free to recover physically. Strangely, tending bar for fifty hours a week, I was drinking less than I had since I went to college. Getting off at four in the morning, I was often invited for the after-after party at someone’s place. But by then, most of the people I met had been partying for hours and were totally smashed. I’d have a few beers and watch people pass out, or hook up, and sometimes both. More than once I’d find myself watching the sun come up, get some breakfast, and go home and sleep until three in the afternoon. I really started sleeping better when I got my own tiny hovel of a studio apartment on Dauphine. I bought dark curtains and earplugs for getting my day sleep in.

  About a month and a half in, I flew back to St. Pete. Christie graciously handed over my clothes, my laptop, and I filled three boxes with books and other random, mostly useless, items that were mine. I shipped them to New Orleans. Sam greeted me with a mixture of disappointment and happiness. He promised to come to New Orleans, and often. He lamented the loss of his volleyball partner, but was glad that he didn’t lose me to marriage. I drove back on a Sunday night, arriving Monday morning. I was used to being up at night, and the drive was a breeze without traffic. Now I had a seven-year-old Honda Accord parked on the street. It was soon filthy and I only used it once or twice a week.

  I bought a cheap bike at a pawn shop. One that I wouldn’t worry about getting stolen. It was a simple existence. Every day was a different repeat of the one before. Off days, I caught up on sleep. Each night at the bar brought a new set of tourists, many of whom wanted to include me in their Big Easy experience. The tourist crowd would give way to servers, bartenders, musicians and hostesses as they got off work. I made friends, but didn’t get close. Brian and Dan were my best friends there, but Brian was playing his music and Dan worked when I didn’t. On a rare occasion, I’d fire up a barbecue in my courtyard and invite them over. We’d eat steak and drink Abita. Text messages would flow in, and we’d decide who had the best invitation to do something better. Dan always won that contest. He knew every girl in town and, unfortunately, why they were someone you wouldn’t date.

  Every once in a while I thought about Erin and the unceremonious end of our acquaintance. That way my story. Missed opportunities. Whether it was a pretty bridesmaid who thought I looked like a Hollywood star, or a successful advertising executive with a wry sense of humor, I was not even getting their phone numbers. To top it off, now I was a bartender. The one-night stand was easy. Except, it wasn’t. A one-night stand that starts at four in the morning is generally a medical intervention. “Drink some water.” “Take some aspirin.” “Eat something.” I would wake up in the morning, wanting to get out and do something, and there was a hungover stranger in my bed whose phone was buzzing incessantly. And that was the tourists. I quickly learned not to take anyone home. The tourists were a mess, but the locals were hardcore partiers. They’d suddenly call their drug connection, and start going through my CD collection. To a twenty-two-year-old hostess on Royale Street, a CD collection is vintage vinyl. I actually heard the words, “Wow, you have Nirvana!” As if it were the White Album.

  This was not my effort to play the field. Any bartender can take someone home. It was really my effort not to be rude. I’d be in a situation where Brian or Dan was taking someone home, and I was taking care of the friend. Or, I would pathetically think I’d met another Erin, only to find another Christie. A few months in, I gave up. I didn’t express interest in anyone. It only made it worse, because these women were drawn to the cold, disinterested man. That’s not a cliché. I wasn’t trying, and girls liked that. In the same way, I always went for the girl that wasn’t flirting. I knew I was on to something when my behavior earned the admiration of Dan. He sai
d it took him over a year to stop banging his head against the wall of partying every night, and jumping at every girl.

  I was not too cool though. There was something alluring about the parties, the late nights, and the total lack of judgment in that world. No one cared that I lived in what amounted to a 600-square-foot kitchen with a bed, or that I opened 400 Rolling Rocks a day for a living. I counted. By four in the morning, no one has the upper hand.

  It was the Thursday afternoon shift that became interesting. The bar hired a middle-aged man with a P.E. coach mustache to play guitar. He showed up every Thursday with a shiny case and tiny amp and microphone. It was probably three o’clock in the afternoon when Robert was going through his motions that I met Claudette. It was the first time I’d seen her. She was not our typical customer. First, she ordered a martini, which was fairly unusual, and was drinking slowly. Second, she was in her fifties, at least. She had an accent that I initially confused for Cajun. At some point, she walked up to Robert and put a ten-dollar bill in his tip jar. She sat back down, smiled at me, and said, “Listen.” Robert then sang a song in French. It was slow, melodic, and pretty. I could see a tear gather in Claudette’s eye. Then he played the familiar “La Mer.” People in the bar stopped to listen. Claudette began to chat with me and a young guy sitting next to her. She was from France, and had married an American. I heard her say that her husband traveled, and she knew Robert from another bar he played in. She had followed him to Ol’ Toons.

  On her third visit, Claudette confirmed what I had suspected. She was divorced from her husband. She still used the term, “my husband,” but there was a distance to it. I had learned to listen and not pry. I never asked too many questions, but I knew Claudette was my friend when she started showing up when Robert wasn’t playing.

  Every visit was a process of formalities. First, she would order her drink, as if she’d never been there before. She would taste it, to make sure it was to her liking, and then she’d light a cigarette. Then, as the smoke drifted into the air, she became my friend. She usually arrived in the mid to late afternoon, and stayed for two or three drinks. She always left when the rowdier crowd began to arrive.

  It was probably a month after I first saw her, and the second visit she’d made that Robert wasn’t playing that I realized she was there to talk to me. So I asked her the question I usually avoided.

  “What do you do?”

  “What? Besides drink a dry martini and smoke?”

  I laughed. “No. You aren’t a tourist. You’re French. What are you doing here?”

  She put out her cigarette, I think to be polite, and explained, “I teach French. U.N.O. and Dillard. Some of my students even learn French.”

  I nodded. “I took three semesters of French in college, and I can order a beer and find a bathroom.”

  “You have to use it,” she said. “You have to need something. Or you’ll never learn anything.”

  As I learned Claudette’s story, she learned mine. I told her about how a grandfather clock had led me to New Orleans. I hadn’t told many people about the clock, because it was just this odd thing. Every once in a while, when someone would have something interesting happen in their life, whether it was a new girlfriend, or leaving town for another job, she’d say something like, “They have a grandfather clock too.” It was like she was reminding me, or reassuring me, that I was there for a reason.

  With Claudette at the bar, I began brushing up on my French. There were plenty of opportunities to use French in New Orleans, although, it isn’t as widely spoken as Spanish. Everywhere you went, there were French place-names, and French foods, and French visitors. I was genuinely interested in learning more French, but mostly I just liked her eager attempts to teach me. I could tell Claudette was lonely, and maybe she didn’t know it. Maybe she did. When I thought about that, I wondered if I was lonely. I didn’t feel lonely.

  By October, the weather was getting cooler and the sun was going down earlier. It was a welcome change. I’d been sweating since February. Sam came to visit. He arrived off the plane and came straight to the bar. It was a Friday so I was getting off work around the same time Claudette was closing out her tab. It was happenstance that Sam and I were walking with Claudette toward Canal Street. I felt it necessary to tell Sam that I didn’t plan on bartending forever.

  “You should not fear time, Michael,” she said. “In French we have a saying. ‘Le temps est un grant maitre.’ ‘Time is a great teacher.’”

  “Wow,” said Sam, taken aback by the impromptu wisdom. “That’s deep.”

  She continued, “Dit-on, le malheur est qu’il tue ses eleves.”

  I laughed. Catching most of the meaning.

  “What’s that?” Sam asked.

  “Time is a great teacher. It’s too bad it also kills all of its students,” she smiled.

  “Damn,” Sam sighed.

  “The clock is a lesson for Michael,” she said.

  “If the clock is a lesson, what’s the gun?” Sam laughed.

  “Gun?” Claudette asked.

  I had almost forgotten about the gun.

  I explained, “When we were moving the clock, we found an old gun that had been stored inside the clock. It’s like an old muzzleloader. I haven’t had a chance to really look at it, honestly.”

  “All these old things,” she said motioning to the window of an antique shop, “they have stories they want to tell.”

  “So the clock has a story to tell,” I said.

  “Michael, you are part of its story now.”

  She stopped at a Canal Street bus stop. “Au revoir, Michael. Sam.”

  As we got into the holiday season, I settled into a routine. Monday through Wednesday, I worked and slept. I picked up day shifts on Thursday and Friday. On the weekend, I got out of the quarter. I rode my bike. I read. And when I did stick around, I listened to music. Brian had formed a band and I supported them by attending their first gigs. Listening to music in a bar gave it purpose. After spending all of my waking hours at Ol’ Toons, just about the only thing that would get me into a bar was good live music.

  Claudette continued to come in. She brought me a French textbook and started quizzing me. We got to the point where we attempted to conduct all, or at least most, of our interactions in French. It was basic French. As long as we were talking about houses and bus stations and food, I was doing pretty well. As soon as the topics became more abstract, I got lost.

  One day in late November, I was particularly excited to see her. After finishing a book on the Battle of New Orleans, I got curious and had a look at the gun for the first time since Brian and I stumbled upon it.

  Claudette didn’t arrive alone, which was unusual, but not unheard of. I practically ignored the young woman with bobbed black hair who sat down with her.

  “Claudette, I’ve got to tell you...,” I started.

  “En Francaise, Michael!” she interrupted,

  I paused to shift gears. “Perdon. L’arme a une inscription en français.”

  “C’est intéressant!”

  “Oui,” I said.

  She stopped me again to introduce her niece. Celeste Demers was visiting her aunt from Paris. I know Claudette had mentioned this, but I had assumed she was talking about a child. The fact that Celeste was beautiful and in her twenties was a deliberate omission. The kind she would make for the sheer sport of watching my reaction.

  I teased Claudette in English, “You didn’t tell me your niece was a beautiful woman. You’re evil.”

  “Did I not mention it? I’m sure I did. Should I tell her that you think she’s pretty?”

  “Why don’t you ask her what she wants to drink?”

  “I’ll have a Stoli and tonic,” Celeste said clearly, with a French accent.

  I turned red, and shook my head. “You also didn’t tell me she speaks English.” I extended my hand. “Nice to meet you Celeste.”

  “Michael, all young French women speak English. Celeste will be celebrating her f
irst Thanksgiving,” Claudette announced.

  “Wonderful,” I said, making Celeste’s drink. “Are you making a turkey, stuffing, the whole setup?”

  “Oh, I think we’ll do a ham,” she said.

  “Ham? You can’t have ham on her first Thanksgiving! You might was well order Chinese food.”

  She dismissed the idea. “I’ve never made a turkey.”

  “It’s the easiest thing. I mean, you can literally just stick the thing in the oven and it will come out fine. I mean, you can throw some seasoning on it, and baste it, but it’s hard to mess up.”

  “I’ll think about it,” she said. “Are you having turkey?”

  “The Hilton serves a traditional turkey dinner. I know a big group of people going there. Fellow pillars of the service industry.”

  “You aren’t going to see your family?”

  “Next month,” I said. “Christmas.”

  “Well, I won’t have you eating your Thanksgiving in a hotel restaurant. You’ll join us,” she said emphatically. “And you’ll make the turkey since it’s so easy.”

  And with that, it was settled. Suddenly the idea of making a turkey didn’t seem so easy.

  Claudette lived in a tiny house in the Garden District. She usually rode the trolley, so I decided to use the trolley to get to her house on Thanksgiving. I carried a deep disposable aluminum pan with a medium sized turkey that I’d put in the oven at five in the morning, before going to sleep. Over my shoulder I carried a duffel bag, with a bottle of red wine, a bottle of Stoli, tonic, and a musket.

  The weather had turned cold and her house was charming and warm. I knew Claudette had had some difficult times. She had been divorced for more than five years, and she had once lived a more luxurious life. She had friends, but seemed a little lonely. With Celeste visiting, she was animated. Celeste lived just outside Paris. This was her fourth trip to America. She’d been to New York twice and visited Claudette once before.