The Grandfather Clock (4 page)

“
You don’t have
to.”

“
Really, don’t worry.
Yeah, I swear Danny comes in here every time he has a new girl,
just to show her off to me.”

“
Oh, right,” I said. “I
forgot you guys dated. We didn’t hang in the same
circles.”

“
Yeah, you were always out
here at the beach. I was doing theater and Danny was driving around
in that stupid Camero. Wasted my first two years of college on that
guy.”

“
Where’d you go?” I
asked.

“
UCI. I’m a teacher by
day. Fifth grade.”

“
Nice. You must be
exhausted.”

“
I bought a house,” she
sighed. “Overpaid for a house.”

“
Bummer. Hey, I just broke
off an engagement, so, cheers,” I offered.

“
No way. With that chick
you were with last time? She seemed...”

“
You remember
that?”

“
Yeah. My life is pretty
boring.”

“
New tattoo?” I said,
observing a dark line curving out on her shoulder blade. It was
still red and puffy.

“
Yeah, I keep it covered
at school. It’s a Gaelic symbol for water. I think.” She craned her
neck to see it. “It looked cool on paper.”

A group of four guys filed in the door
and she took menus to them. I recognized one from my volleyball
days, but I didn’t remember his name. We exchanged a
nod.

The time change was getting to me. It
was almost two in the morning back home. “Erica,” I said, leaving
five dollars on the bar, “I’m beat. Jet lag. You working
tomorrow?”

“
No.
Wednesday.”

“
I’ll try to stop in,” I
said.

“
Good to see you, Mike,”
she said with a smile. Pretty girl. Dark hair to her chin. She had
the same raspy voice in high school.

As I walked out the door I heard,
“Hey, brah.”

It was the mop-headed guy from my
beach days. “You playing still?”

“
Um, here and there. I’m
just visiting town.”

“
You should come out to
Huntington Beach tomorrow. Got a regular game going. We’ll find you
a partner.”

“
I’ll try. Thanks for the
invite. I’m Michael. Uh, Mike.”

“
Lucas.”

Lucas Wright. I remembered him
now.

I woke at 5:30 and couldn’t get back
to sleep. I felt good. I took a shower and lingered over breakfast.
I read the Orange County Register and had three cups of coffee. The
morning sun was bright. I had the entire day ahead of me, and I
hadn’t been this upbeat in months.

One thing I missed about California
was hills. They gave me a sense of location as I moved about. They
provided compass points and a constantly changing beauty, even as
rows of identical houses crept higher and higher up. I made my way
to the storage unit on Grand Avenue, where nothing would indicate
that Tustin had ended and Santa Ana had started. In fact, you could
drive for an hour north and never notice leaving one city and
entering another. It all ran together forever.

I checked in at the office and told
the manager that I had hopes of having the unit empty that day. He
directed me to Unit 419. I pulled the van in front of a door, about
half the size of a single car garage. Stale dry air hit me as I
opened the door.

There it stood. A full foot taller
than me, it had a blue moving blanket draped over the top. There
were a half dozen dusty boxes stacked next to it. I took the
blanket off. The dark wood was still in perfect condition. Over 100
years and it had been cared for meticulously by my grandfather, who
had inherited it from his father. He passed away a decade before my
grandmother. After that, the clock would fall out of use when my
brother couldn’t stop by to make sure the weights were set
properly. I remembered that you could only set the time at certain
times of day or the chimes wouldn’t ring properly. I’m pretty sure
there was a special key to wind it as well. My chances of getting
this thing working were slim, but it was as beautiful as I
remembered. The gold in its face was real; its simple curves carved
into the top made it look like a tall stately gentleman.

I opened the top box. It was full of
tiny plastic boxes. In each was twenty or thirty photo slides. My
grandfather used to set up a home movie screen and show slides of
their vacations. He would have loved PowerPoint. I spent an hour
squinting at the slides. Some were straight tourist gift shop
collections. Twenty-four slides of San Francisco, or Yosemite.
Others were pictures of my grandparents visiting relatives. Another
box contained the delicate teacup collection. I didn’t know what to
do with that. With the huge van, I could take it all and worry
about that later.

Vince called to see if I had plans for
lunch and we agreed to meet for a burger. I stretched my legs,
stiff from sitting on the ground, and started to load the boxes.
The clock presented a challenge. It was heavy, but manageable. But
its sheer height made it unwieldy. My brother told me that the
weights were wrapped in towels in the base of the clock. I walked
the clock on its corners but it was too tall to go out the door
without leaning it over. A light “gong” sounded as I tipped it, a
tone that immediately brought me back to childhood. It was that
same note, same resonance, that I had heard a thousand times
growing up. I was like a smell or a taste that takes you back to a
moment, only it took me back to a million moments. Along with it
came all the people. I could see my grandmother tying her garden
shoes. I could smell the orange blossoms in her back yard. I could
picture the 1950s pink and brown tiles in her bathroom and the
scale that sat in the corner. I could see the pencil marks on the
doorway where I was in constant pursuit of my once-taller
brother.

I smiled. This clock re-connected me
to something. I laid it gently into the opening of the van and
eased it in. I pushed it in like a casket and covered it with the
blanket. I had no idea where I was going, but it was going with
me.

The sun was still high in the sky when
I showed up at the beach volleyball courts in Huntington Beach.
Slamming the van door shut, I could hear the dead thuds of more
than a dozen men and women practicing. This was a serious crew. Far
more serious than the typical league at the Undertow. There had to
be four guys over 6’5”. The women had deep tans and were covered in
ink. I approached tentatively. I didn’t see Lucas Wright, or anyone
from his group. I left my flip flops on a wall separating the
sidewalk from the sand and surveyed the four courts. The Pacific
roared beyond.

“
That all you got? Man,
this is going to be easy,” I heard someone yell as a ball went
bounding toward the wall.

There he was. Maybe ten pounds
heavier, with a shaggy goatee.

“
Pick Sotpeak,” I
said.

He squinted and looked my
way.

“
Are you still talking
shit on this beach?” I yelled, walking toward him.

“
Mike Chance? What
the...”

I tossed him the ball and we exchanged
a hug.

“
What are you doing here,
you bastard?” he asked.

“
Family business,” I
shrugged. “I’m leaving in a day or two.”

Pick shouted in the direction of two
other players. “Hey, Rolo! I got my partner for tonight.” Then he
turned to me. “You need a partner right? Who told you to come
here?”

“
Lucas Wright. Saw him at
Joey’s last night.”

“
Ah ha! That guy’s a
punk,” he smirked.

“
You think everyone is a
punk,” I said, stretching. “So, what are you doing these days?
Besides playing volleyball. Please tell me you aren’t still waiting
tables at Tony Roma’s.”

“
Hell no. I’m a lifeguard,
man. This is my office. And real estate. You know, on the
side.”

“
Lifeguard slash real
estate. So, ‘California,’” I laughed.

“
Call me if your house is
‘under water,’” he joked.

“
Is that on your bus-stop
bench?”

“
It should be. Let’s
play.”

Admittedly, I was nervous at the
start. Aside from the height and power on the beach, most of the
teams played together year round. Several were pros. We dropped the
first set against an easy opponent, and found our groove quickly
taking the next two sets. We fell into familiar plays. Pick was a
far better player than Sam, and he’d improved significantly since
our teen years. Less athleticism, more smarts. We won our second
match, before getting completely smoked in the third by a pair of
Lithuanians. It was past 10:00. I was beat, but the night was just
starting.

I agreed to have a drink with Pick and
Rolo, a short Filipino with calves like grapefruits. His black hair
had bleached spots. Pick hammered on him for letting his sister
practice hair dying on him. I wasn’t sure if this was true, or
another one of Pick’s jabs. We folded in to Rolo’s Audi. For a
bunch of beach bums, everyone had tony jobs and cars.

“
You a lifeguard too,
Rolo?” I asked.

“
Real estate. Just real
estate.”

“
You sold a house since
you dumped Clorox on your head?” Pick called from the back
seat.

“
Four,
jackass.”

“
Bullshit.”

“
Hey, man,” Rolo fired
back, “I sell houses to make money. Not to live in
them.”

“
Shut it, and drive
faster.”

“
Mike,” Rolo turned to me,
“Pick has been living in this lady’s house for seven months. Says
he can’t sell it. How many showings have you done there? What?
None? Did you say none?”

“
Hey, it’s got bad decor,”
Pick argued. “It needs staging.”

“
It’s your
furniture.”

“
It’s a quarter mile from
the beach, man. She’s in Paris. She doesn’t really want to sell it.
And I don’t have a car.”

“
You could buy a car for
the commission,” Rolo shook his head. “An agent without a
car.”

We drove inland. I asked where we were
going. The answer was vague. Rolo had a cousin in Garden Grove. I’d
left the van on the beach. I really didn’t want to be in Garden
Grove, but I didn’t want to rock the boat.

The smell of marijuana could knock you
down from the sidewalk. Then I remembered, it was basically legal
in California now. I was immediately offered a joint. Not a toke. A
joint. I declined.

“
I work for a bank. Drug
testing,” I said. I’d never been drug tested. But I hadn’t smoked
pot since college. There was tequila, so I poured some in a glass
with ice and squeezed a half a lime into it. Two strong drinks
later, we were back in the car, heading back toward Tustin. Pick
wanted food and he wanted a specific diner’s chilidog. Rolo passed
cans of cheap Mexican beer and played Led Zepplein. It was a time
warp.

I told Pick about seeing Erica at
Joey’s the night before.

“
What’s her last name?” he
asked.

“
Moss, I
think.”

“
Erica Moss?” Rolo asked.
“I know her. Hot.”

“
She’s okay,” Pick
replied.

“
I have her number,” Rolo
said, reaching for his phone.

“
Do not call her,” I said.
“Last thing she needs is a late night call from us.”

“
I’ll text her,” Rolo
said, gripping the steering wheel with his knees.

I reached over and put my hand on the
wheel, “Just drive, man. Focus.”

The rest of the night was a blur. We
inhaled a plate of chilidogs and polished off a twelve pack of beer
on Newport Beach.

I woke up the next morning to a
snoring chorus. Pick was sitting in a blue hotel room chair with
his head pitched back toward the sky. Rolo was on the opposite side
of my bed. The sun was up. My phone was buzzing. It was
Vince.

I whispered into the phone,
“Hi.”

“
You have a girl in
there?”

“
No, I wish. Two dudes, in
fact.”

“
Wow, guess you’ve moved
on,” Vince laughed.

“
Volleyball game got out
of hand last night.”

“
Well, get your recovery
in. I promised Sara we’d come down to Joey’s tonight. Kids go to
bed early, so meet at 5:00.”

I spent the morning getting rid of
Pick and Rolo and getting the van. I called my dad and said I would
be on the road on Thursday and I hoped to make it to Santa Fe in
one day. It would be a full day of driving, but everyone in my
family had done it. I called Sam and asked him to go by my
apartment and get my mail. I admitted that I also wanted a report
on how Christie was acting. I called work and told them that I was
working with Human Resources on using vacation time for missing the
entire week. I told them there was a family issue. I did not call
Human Resources. There was no communication between the
departments, so I could untangle the matter when I got
back.

I was early to Joey’s, and a little
anxious because I knew Erica was working. She saw me and poured a
Sierra Nevada. She was all business for the first few minutes, but
when she got a lull she leaned on the bar in front of me and
smiled.