The Grandfather Clock (2 page)

The money was from my grandmother.
She’d died the previous year at the age of ninety-two, and I’d just
gotten it two weeks before. My brother had settled her estate and
all that was left besides the money was a storage unit in
California that had to be cleaned out by the end of the month.
There were boxes of things she wanted to save when she moved into a
nursing home. I wasn’t sure what was there besides old photo
slides, post cards, a teacup collection, and countless mementos
that she and my grandfather had accumulated after almost seventy
years together. But my brother had specifically mentioned the
grandfather clock. He didn’t want it, but he didn’t want to just
sell it without talking to me. I lived in an apartment three
thousand miles away. What was I going to do with a seven-foot
timepiece? The thing hadn’t chimed in probably four years. I was
fascinated with it as a child and it would be a shame to see it go.
So I decided I would get it.

Christie watched me load my suitcase
back into the car. I didn’t have much, but I had everything I
needed. I could tell she thought that this was just another fight.
The truth was, over the past few months I had stopped fighting and
started ignoring the things that bothered me. I saw no point in
engaging in a disagreement. I stopped pushing for us to spend time
with “my friends.” I encouraged her to spend more time “networking”
after work. Meanwhile, she showed no interest and rarely asked what
I was doing.

She sneered at me as I drove away. She
probably thought I was going to play volleyball with Sam at the
beach. I drove out of the apartment complex and got on the bridge
crossing Tampa Bay and took the first exit to the
airport.

The next few hours were a dream. Was I
really walking out? Just like that? I recognized a certain cruelty
to the whole thing. She’d gotten drunk, found me talking to three
beautiful women, and reacted. I was looking for an excuse and
perhaps I’d overreacted. But everything she did while I waited for
my plane reinforced my decision.

My phone rang incessantly as I made
the short drive to the airport. I put my Honda Accord in long term
parking and scanned the list of departing flights. My phone
continued to vibrate. There were no direct flights to LAX, so I hit
the Delta counter. It would be a few hours, but I found a flight
connecting through Atlanta that would get me there that evening.
Then I made a mistake. Not wanting to use any of my precious
inheritance, I used our joint bank card to buy my ticket. Within an
hour I was getting text messages from Christie. “I know you bought
a plane ticket.” Then twenty minutes later, “I’m at the airport,
please talk to me.”

It was a not a pretty break up. For
nearly an hour she alternated between sad crying, and furious
profanity. One minute she was sweetly apologizing, the next she was
telling me how worthless I had become. To an extent, she was right.
I had become lazy. Lazy in our relationship. Lazy professionally.
Guilty of avoiding the bigger questions in favor of
peace.

Telling her that she was right only
fed the fire. In the midst of this break-up drama, I was aware of
the show we were putting on for the traveling public. The whole
scene was a metaphor for our relationship.

“
Christie,” I said, trying
to bring the level down, “This is better for both of us. We can’t
get married. You don’t even like me.”

“
I do, Michael. We’ve been
together for eight years. I don’t want to be…” she tailed
off.

“
Be what?” I asked.
“Single again? Is that it?

“
Just, we’ve been together
so long, to just stop.”

“
When then? After we’re
married? With a house? Kids? No. This has to be it.”

She turned angry again. “You planned
this.”

“
You’re out of your
mind.”

“
We were about to announce
a date. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“
It’s a lot of things.
Look at us. This isn’t healthy. We aren’t happy,” I
said.

“
I thought we were. You’re
an ass. Good luck finding someone like me.”

The comment made me smile. I tried to
hide it.

“
What are you smiling
about?”

“
Christie,” I said,
contemplating just how bad my next words would sound. “I promise I
will not try to find someone like you.”

“
Go to hell,
Michael.”

“
I’m sorry, Christie. You
are right. I let this go on too long. You have every right to be
mad.”

“
Go to hell, Michael.” And
she walked away.

I surveyed the milling travelers and
walked back toward security, not turning to see if she was still
walking away.

I thought about calling my brother,
but hesitated. It was Sunday and this was totally out of character.
No one in my family lived near each other and no one made
unexpected visits. My parents had moved from Southern California to
Santa Fe. Vince still lived in our home town of Tustin. He was five
years older and had twins less than a year old. I was the wandering
son who took a scholarship as an opportunity to find a school far
away from the smog and sprawl.

Low out-of-state tuition led me to
Tallahassee where I spent four years having fun, getting decent
grades, and enjoying Florida State football. At the end they handed
me a degree in business and I went to work for Globe Bank, which is
how I ended up in St. Pete. That’s where I met Christie. I hired
her. She was funny, a little irreverent (okay, a lot), and she hung
at the same cluster of beach bars where I played
volleyball.

I slumped into a seat near my gate and
I was suddenly exhausted. It was not even six o’clock. We were
about to begin boarding. I called my friend Sam, who was still
single, and since I’d met Christie was busy proving that there were
plenty of things to do besides hang out in bars. He’d joined kick
ball leagues, took up kite surfing, and got an MBA while I dated
Christie. And we still had our Tuesday volleyball
league.

“
Hey man.”

“
What’s up, Mike?” I could
tell Sam was outside. He’d invited me to a barbecue at a
microbrewery.

“
I gotta be quick, here.
I’m about to get on a plane.”

“
Plane? I thought the
wedding was in Orlando.”

“
Yeah, it was. I broke up
with Christie.”

There was a long pause.

“
Hello?” I
asked.

“
Seriously?” he
asked.

“
Yes. I’m going to
California for a few days. Just to get some space. There’s this
clock of my grandmother’s I need to get.”

“
You are broken up. For
good. Like,” he searched for words, “she knows this.”

“
She knows,” I
said.

More silence.

“
What?” I
asked.

“
It’s just that, you’ve
done this before. Said you were leaving.” Sam was treading lightly
on very worn turf.

“
No, seriously,” I said.
“I’m at the god-damned airport.”

“
Yeah,” Sam laughed. “This
is definitely a new development. But I don’t want to say anything
until it’s, I don’t know, official.”

“
It’s official,” I
said.

“
Well,” Sam said, “it’s
about time. So, you’re getting a clock?”

“
Yeah. It’s over a hundred
years old. It’s going to get sold if I don’t take it,” I said. “And
it’s a good excuse to get away.”

“
I get it, man. Christie
was a nice girl. But she can wear you out.”

“
What do you mean?” I
asked.

“
Well,” Sam hesitated.
“Just that...it takes a lot of energy to be around her. She’s
always busting people’s balls for no reason. She never
stops.”

“
Thanks for telling me how
you feel now. Seven years later.”

“
What am I gonna say about
my buddy’s girl?”

He was right. “Shit, dude. Say
something to save me next time,” I said.

“
Next time I will,” he
said.

“
The plane is
boarding.”

“
Go have fun,” Sam
laughed. “You need to.”

I had almost two hours to kill in
Atlanta. Flying west is no picnic, and if I had planned the trip I
would have taken the earliest flight. Fortunately, the A terminal
has the Budweiser Brewhouse. The busiest bar in the south. It’s
like a bar in a time machine. What takes three or four hours in a
normal bar happens in twenty minutes. Normally, you’d hang out in a
bar for two or three drinks and watch a girl have a cocktail and
read her phone. In the Hartsfield Budweiser Brewhouse, there’s no
time. So you immediately attempt to talk to her. Everything is
happening in fast motion. If you make an interesting connection,
you’ll have a phone number or business card within a few hours, and
still never set eyes on the person again.

Since it was a Sunday, there were
weekenders mixing with business travelers getting an early jump. I
ordered a 23 ounce beer and talked to a pair of saintly young women
from St. Louis who worked for the American Heart Association. They
were on their way to Miami for a conference. They were passionate
about their work and for an instance I wanted their life. There was
nothing curious or benevolent about my work. The best I could hope
was that the telemarketers I trained would move on to success
somewhere else. My boss actually encouraged me to look for less
ambition in new hires so that I wouldn’t have to replace them. I
was able to recommend a couple of Miami restaurants. Then they had
to catch their plane.

I decided finally that I should call
Vince and tell him that I was coming. It made it clear that I was
not planning on crashing at his house, with two babies. Vince was
excited that I was coming, but wary. Ever since my grandmother
died, our mom had been seriously depressed. She almost never came
to the phone when I called. Breaking off my engagement and coming
to California looked like an irrational act. He’d borne the burden
of my grandmother’s failing health and our mom’s decline. Now
another family member was going haywire.

“
I’ll get a hotel,” I
reassured him.

“
You can stay here,” he
said, unconvincingly.

“
Vince. I want to sleep,”
I said with levity.

“
Can’t wait to see
you.”

I had always idolized Vince, and he
had never let me down.

I dozed off on the flight. We were
over the desert when I woke up. Bare brown mountains reflected the
late sun. We crossed the border between Arizona and California. The
Arizona side was green, irrigated farmland. The California side was
dry, all the water diverted to Los Angeles. The desert gave way to
city lights almost an hour before landing. Grids of streetlights
and strands of roads went on infinitely. It was an intimidating
sight. The sprawl stopped only when the mountains became too steep,
islands in a sea of city.

I turned on my phone when we landed. I
was one of the last holdouts, using a flip phone when everyone else
had smartphones I checked my email at home or at work. I texted
sparingly on my nine-digit keyboard. Part of the reason for my
technological rebellion was that the bank had offered to pay for a
new phone, but that would require that I get work emails. That
wouldn’t have been a big deal, but I’d recently been promoted. I
not only oversaw the call center in St. Petersburg, but I
supervised three managers in India. I didn’t want to see their
emails at four in the morning. I didn’t take my job home and I was
clear on that matter with management. I had trained employees in
both inbound and outbound call centers. I had reduced employee
turnover and increased credit card sales while reducing costs. In
my little world, I was good at my job and the bank, which my
colleagues and I referred to as “the mother ship,” left me
alone.

My sturdy flip-phone’s message light
blinked. It was a voicemail from Christie. She was crying, telling
me to take some time and she hoped we could talk when I came back.
I was beginning to feel guilty, but not regretful. I was so mad at
myself for proposing. Part of the reason I proposed was my mother.
After living with Christie for two years, my mother was beginning
to frown on the situation. Three months after my grandmother died,
I thought the proposal would brighten my mother’s spirits. And it
was also a relatively good time for Christie and me. She’d taken a
new job, with better hours and pay. We were house hunting. It
seemed right. Once we were engaged, a fear crept in. The things
that bothered me really started to bother me. She had a confidence
borne in insecurity. She was queen of the good put-down, but often
found herself dishing out awkward insults masked as
jokes.

We’d started spending less time
together. She was having drinks after work with her people on one
side of the bridge in Tampa, and I was on the other side, hanging
out at the beach. We just started developing different lives, and I
was happier in mine when she wasn’t around. I hoped she could be
happier in hers. If I was right to leave, the way I left was bad.
But I feared we were doomed and it was better than a divorce. I
sent her a text. “Landed safe. Got your voicemail. I will be in
touch.”