What the Clocks Know

by Rumer Haven

Exhale. Nothing. Her eye floaters bobbed lazily against the white light of day.

  Turning to leave, however, Margot’s chest caved as she heard the bedroom window shudder in its frame. Though she wasn’t looking at it, she knew the sound from past struggles trying to open the flat’s tall Victorian sashes; their hidden weights helped counteract the heaviness of their oversized panes, but the uneven layers of paint on the frames often caused resistance. She retraced her steps to look for certain.

  The shrunken, rotted wood of the bedroom’s lower sash rattled in place.

  Margot looked outside at the trees. Their leaves shook gently, commensurate with the breeze she’d just felt from the open windows, but nowhere near violent enough to match the pressure against this closed one.

  It’s tucked between the building’s rear extensions, though, so maybe that creates a wind tun—

  A pinprick of blue light stole her attention. It flashed once into her lower peripheral vision. Seconds later, it returned and held constant. She looked down toward the point of light and focused on it. Appearing at waist-height, it didn’t maintain one position; instead, its movement was elliptical to small degrees, subtle but deliberate. A floater hovering just above and off to the side of it quickly levitated, and then the light vanished. Margot’s eyes chased around for it desperately, but there was nothing. The window held still.

  Drawing the door closed behind her, she went to get dressed, searched online for the name and address of the nearest vision-care center, and left for class.

  Chapter 10

  Twenty / Twenty

  “WELL, MARGOT, your eyes are healthy. You’re just a bit long-sighted, with a slight astigmatism that we can correct.”

  “Is long-sighted the same as farsighted?”

  “Yes, but your current lenses are actually too strong for you. It seems your vision is improving, so I’m giving you a lighter prescription.”

  “Can eyes do that?” How can I be seeing better?

  Chloé hadn’t been at class that day, which left Margot deflated on her journey to the optometrist. Since their heart-to-heart at lunch yesterday, she’d retrieved her friend from the Drinking Buddy bin and lowered her gently into the Confidante basket. Granted, she was ready to pay a therapist to listen, yet hoped to first fit in another session with Chloé, free of charge.

  In the meantime, though, she was anxious to hear what the eye doctor could say about it from a scientific angle. A graying man with a mild manner, he stood darkly silhouetted against the illuminated X-ray of her eye, which burned golden in the dim room like a setting sun.

  “They can improve for some lucky people, but probably only for a time. At some point, your sight will deteriorate again, so you might want to hold on to your old spectacles.”

  “Are my retinas okay?”

  “Yes, they look good.” He turned to the X-ray and motioned across key areas of the cross-section. “No signs of glaucoma or inflammation in the optic nerve. Have you been noticing anything abnormal in your vision?”

  He was at the ready with his clipboard and pen, just in case.

  “Yeah, I think. I see a pulsing glow, especially in the dark.”

  “Huh,” was the doctor’s unhelpful reply.

  “There’s this other type of light, too. And floaters, which are a lot more distracting than they used to be, so I’ve been afraid there’s an issue.”

  “Huh. Those can be symptoms of retinal detachment, but from your examination, everything does look healthy. Is it a flash of light that you see? As though someone’s taking your picture?”

  “Not a big flash like that. Just a tiny dot in my peripheral vision mostly, but I can look at it directly sometimes, too. Same with my floaters.”

  “Directly? No.” He set down his clipboard. “You might see them in your outer field of vision, or they might appear to drift in front of your cornea, but their nature is to dart away as soon as you move your eye to look at them. You can’t truly focus on one.”

  “But I have.”

  “I’d suggest it could be an ocular migraine, but, just like floaters, the impact on your vision wouldn’t behave that way. But mind that you do try to count the floaters when they’re noticeable. If you have five one day and a significant increase—say, twenty—the next, that could be a precursor to detachment, and you should go to hospital immediately. But unless that happens, you’re healthy, Margot. Your eyes are in brilliant condition.”

  With a grin, he punctuated his diagnosis with a click of his pen and plunked it back into his jacket pocket as means of dismissing her.

  “Actually, right now I think I see…”

  “Pardon?”

  “Um, I think I’m already beginning to see a little better with the dilation drops wearing off.”

  “Well, hopefully you don’t have much planned for the next hour, as it’ll take at least that long for your vision to fully return to normal.”

  Blindly, Margot selected a new pair of frames with great trust in the store associate’s taste. She maintained a pleasant farce of trying on different ones, pretending she could see clearly and not the multitude of light and shapes swarming around her.

  She’d been about to tell the doctor she could see the number of floaters dramatically increase in the time it had taken for the drops to take full effect, but decided against it when it became too obvious that what she saw was something different.

  Graciously placing her lens order and smiling and nodding her way out the door, Margot tried to navigate her way safely through the throngs of blurry shoppers on the sidewalk. With her pupils enlarged, the glare of the overcast sky stabbed her eyes, so she wore sunglasses. Several times she stopped short before walking right into someone, and she flinched at motions coming at her from the side.

  High street’s busy today. Even more than usual.

  She concentrated on the nearest people walking in and against her direction, yet the more she tried, the more people she saw, clustered against and intersecting each other, some fainter than others. Unable to stand it any longer, she ducked into the quiet alley of a residential mews building that once housed horses and servants—and now, ironically, the more affluent set.

  Feeling her way along a cool brick exterior wall for a bench, Margot decided the cobblestones would serve just as well. She sank with her back against the wall and drew her knees to her chest, crushing her bag in her lap. Regulating her breathing with closed eyes, she imagined the empty corridor to which she would open them; it would contrast so sweetly with the street’s bustle.

  When she did, she froze.

  From left to right, she scanned traces of colorless figures in motion around her, rhythmically rising and falling and distorting her vision like rippling water. She leaned now and then as though to clear their paths, but if she was in their way, she felt nothing as they passed.

  This seemed to continue for several minutes. She shook nervously, and, after a time, she had the sensation of elevating. Digging her fingernails into loose gravel, she knew she wasn’t lifting from the ground. Yet, looking straight ahead of her, she had the perspective of something translucent but discernible—horizontal lines within a tall, narrow trapezoidal form that conveyed jerkily downward in relation to her like a malfunctioning escalator.

  Her vision dimmed somewhat before brightening back. This time, rectangular shapes in assorted lengths, widths, and heights emerged, and, with a sweeping feeling of motion, Margot felt she moved among them. Though she shut her eyes, a negative imprint of what she saw continued to play out against the black screen of her inner lids. Her eardrums popped as though depressurizing, with tinny words echoing through them like a distant phonograph:

  I saw her upon nearer view,

  A Spirit, yet a Woman too!

  Her household motions light and free,

  And steps of virgin-liberty…

  Margot vaulted back out into the busy high street, exalting in the physical sensation of bumping into and brushing against other pedestrians. She walked the re
st of the way home as she waited for her sight to merge back into one, singular focus.

  “Hey, Mom. How are you?”

  “Oh my goodness! Hey!” Her mom’s voice became more muffled. “Phone call from overseas! Just a minute,” she said more clearly. “Your dad’s getting on the other line.”

  Margot had just enough credit left for another internet call to her parents’ landline from Rand’s computer. She heard a click, then some static.

  “Well, hello, Marty! Good to hear your voice!”

  Sitting in her bedroom, Margot concentrated on holding her voice steady after hearing her dad use her old nickname, the identity she’d have been given had she been a boy. “Good to hear yours, too! Hope I’m not calling at a bad time.”

  Both parents spoke over each other in shared, emphatic assurances that it could never be a bad time for their little girl to call.

  “So, what’s up?” her mom said.

  “Oh, nothing much.” Just losing my mind, is all.

  “Are you still working on that project?” her dad asked.

  “Thank God, no. All done with that one and just waiting for the next—and last. Then I’m home!”

  “We can’t wait for that,” Margot’s mother chimed in as her father continued, “Good, good, Marty. So, you’re learning a lot there?”

  “Yeah, on so many levels.”

  “Ah-hah. Good!”

  “There’s so much depth to this city, so many layers.”

  “I bet so.”

  “Well, your dad and I’ve been talking about maybe planning a visit, but we don’t want to interrupt your studies. We were thinking, unless you have to go back to work right away, we could come when classes are done, just a week or so. But not if you don’t want two old codgers there.”

  “No!” Margot checked herself. “I mean, no problem, that’d be awesome! I haven’t asked because I don’t want you to feel pressured, but, yeah, that’d be so cool.”

  “Well, we can think about it. We don’t want to keep you from getting back to work. But if it did work out, we’d stay at a hotel, you know. We wouldn’t impose on Rand.”

  “It wouldn’t be an imposition whatsoever. He’s so laid-back like that. He’d probably offer to stay over at his girlfriend’s, or if he’s away for work, he’s got a queen-sized bed you could—or, whatever, unless a hotel would be more comfortable and private for you.” She couldn’t believe how soon she’d forgotten such a critical detail: Oh yeah, sure, there’ll be plenty of room for the two of you and Lady Grey to three-way spoon.

  “Sure, a hotel would be easy enough,” her dad insisted. “We don’t want to take advantage.”

  “Either way. It’s up to you,” Margot played along, cringing at how insincere she sounded. “I could also take the couch.”

  “No, we wouldn’t want that…”

  There was an awkward silence for a few seconds.

  “So, what’s been your fav—”

  “I just got back from the eye—”

  “Oh, sorry, go ahead.”

  “No, I’m sorry. You were saying?”

  Margot’s mom plowed through the polite banter of father and daughter with her own agenda.

  “So, when do you think you’ll be getting back? Have you talked to anyone at your office?”

  “Uh, I actually haven’t…yet.”

  “Well, it would be good, you know, to know where you stand. Just in case something else doesn’t come up. It would be good to know you’ve got a job there.”

  “Yeah, I agree. I’ll email them this week.”

  “Otherwise, you know you can stay with us as long as you need to find something else here. It’ll be so much easier than dealing with work permits and everything, you know. Back in Chicago.”

  “Yes, Mumsy, you’re a master of subtlety. I get the point. Don’t worry, there’s nothing keeping me here.” Again, the conviction behind her words faltered, but this time she herself didn’t know why.

  “Have you heard anything from James?” her mom asked.

  “Where does that come from?”

  “Well, I just thought maybe he’d be in contact with the two of you in Europe at the same time.”

  “But he doesn’t know I’m here. Does he?” All she believed James had needed to know when she’d moved out of their condo was that she didn’t want to exist in a space connected with him. That he could mail the check for her agreed-upon share to her parents’ address. “Has he called you?”

  “No, not us, but wouldn’t friends’ve told him?”

  “I guess, but I haven’t been in touch with our mutual ones in a while. I don’t think any of them would even know.” Margot thought for a moment. “You’re not afraid we’ll get back together and I’ll stay in Europe, are you?”

  Her mother’s tone became aloof. “I’d be lying if I said the thought’s never crossed my mind.”

  “Mom. I haven’t talked to him in months, and there’s no way he could just whisk me away now.”

  “I’m just saying. You never know. It’s as they say, you know, ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder.’”

  “Yeah, well, they also say, ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’ Not to mention ‘Too little, too late’ if he did try to make amends.”

  “But what about ‘Better late than never’?”

  “I think if there’s a cliché out there to contradict every other cliché, there isn’t so much wisdom in those words after all.” With her eyes still aching from the dilation drops, Margot really didn’t desire a mother-daughter catfight. It was time to call in the referee. “So, Dad, what were you going to say before? When I interrupted you?”

  “Huh?” He sounded surprised to be acknowledged, having grown so used to melting into the background during their squabbles—preferring it, as Margot well knew. “Oh! Nothing much. I was just going to ask what’s been the highlight so far.”

  She chewed her chapped lip. “Hm. It’s difficult to pinpoint any one thing.” It’s a toss-up between the depression and the paranormal presences. “Probably the cemetery.”

  “Cemetery?” her mother sounded off in concern whereas her dad, ever encouraging of his little girl, gave an interested, “Oh! Ah-hah?”

  Margot couldn’t escape explanation. “It’s a really pretty park, actually. It has a lot of flowers and trees and beautiful old Victorian gravestones, and just makes for a really solemn place to think.”

  If she hadn’t felt so creeped out still by her hallucination there, that might have been a good place for her to go after her eye appointment, to sort through what she’d instead tried to escape with this phone call. Even as an adult, she still believed her parents had all the answers, but they’d done so much for her—always—that for once she wouldn’t stand for making her problems theirs. Not before she’d tried solving it on her own. Not before she even knew the problem needing solving.

  Her mom seemed convinced enough, though. “I bet that’s really neat. Just don’t get stuck there alone after dark, missy.”

  Margot bit her lip again to stifle a laugh. “Please, Mom. Like that would happen.”

  Making the excuse her minutes needed topping up, she began to wind down the conversation with some benign suggestions of what they could do during their possible visit at summer’s end. Margot knew her father would love the pubs and Churchill War Rooms, and her mother would need to see Kensington Gardens and the V&A.

  “Aw, we’ll be happy with anything. I’m sure your father will like the museums, but I’m just curious to see where you buy your groceries!”

  “Ah, Marks and Spencer will be at the top of our list, then.”

  “Wow, to think we’ll actually be there. It doesn’t seem real!”

  So little does anymore.

  “All right, we’ll let you go, honey, so this call doesn’t get expensive for you. Love you so much.”

  “Yes, it’s good to hear your voice, Marty.”

  “Love you guys, too, and don’t be silly, internet calls are so cheap. I could video-call y
ou for free, ya know, if you’d figure it out.”

  “Eh,” her mom grunted, like always, against all things technology. “We like the phone and will reimburse you for it. Love you, toots.”

  “You are not paying for this. But I love you, too, and enjoy the rest of your day.”

  “Yes. You, too. Is it night-time there?”

  Oh boy, here comes the marathon goodbye…“Yeah, going on seven.”

  “Is it dark yet?” her dad asked.

  “No, won’t be for about another three hours.”

  “Really!”

  “Wow!”

  “Yeah, so I should probably get some work done and something to eat before bed.”

  “You haven’t eaten yet? You’d better go, then, little missy.”

  “All right, I will. Take care.”

  “We will. Take care of yourself, too.”

  “Love you.”

  “Love you, too, Marty.”

  “Talk soon. And say hey to George and the fam.”

  “Okay, sounds good. Thanks for calling.”

  “Of course! I’ll do it again soon.”

  “Sounds good. Love you.”

  “Love you, too. Bye.”

  “Bye. Or ‘goodnight,’ I guess.”

  “Yeah, right. And ‘good day’ to you.”

  “Yep, we’ll try. Love you.”

  “Love you.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  Click.

  Not in the mood for additional calls home, Margot started surfing the web as another sidetrack. Her spirit was certainly warmer since speaking to her parents; the familiarity of their voices had snapped her into place, and she felt more herself.

  Riding that high, she emailed George to see how he, his wife, and their little girl were doing, and then she reached out to Sylvie, too, before composing—for good measure, or else her mother would never let her hear the end of it—a casual check-in with her boss.

  Writing was so much easier than calling anyway. Writing gave control, the ability to pause, reread, and revise. Margot didn’t trust herself with speaking any longer; the restraint in talking to her parents had been difficult enough, and they were too innocent to even pick up on vocal cues. Her not-as-innocent friends and brother, on the other hand, were risks she couldn’t take. Not after she still hadn’t heard a word from Derek.