The Time of the Clockmaker

by Anna Caltabiano

  I stood up on my shaky legs and walked a few feet to a nearby bench. From where I sat, I couldn’t see the cars and buildings of the city, and I was at peace.

  There, on the simple wooden bench, it could have been any time period. I half expected Henley to saunter over in his usual way with that gleam in his eye I had grown to adore. I closed my eyes.

  He would bring a hand from out of his pocket to brush a strand of his dark hair from his eyes. His touch was always so gentle. He would sit mere inches away from me, almost, but not, touching. And he would look at me the way he always did, with those clear eyes of his seeing directly into me.

  I wondered what I would say if he were here. Sorry, I forgot to mention that I was immortal? By the way, since I found out that Miss Hatfield is your mother, you’re actually half-immortal too. . . . Not that that would matter, since you’re dead.

  I sighed and opened my eyes. I reached into the pocket of my jacket to pull out a slip of charred paper. I always carried it with me, and taking it out just to hold it had become a habit. I already knew the words on the piece of paper. To my darling Charles. With all the love in the world, Ruth. It was a note from Henley’s mother, Miss Hatfield, to his adoptive father. I was careful as I unfolded it, given that it was now a hundred years old.

  I remembered how my hands shook upon first seeing the photograph the piece of paper contained. There, in a lavish dress with her beautifully curled hair piled on top of her head, was Miss Hatfield. There was no mistaking it, yet every time I saw that photo, I couldn’t help but draw a sharp breath.

  It did make sense, how Miss Hatfield had encouraged me to pose as Henley’s father’s niece, and didn’t mind too much my staying with the Beauford family much longer than expected. I recalled how she had even asked about Mr. Beauford’s son once. It all made sense, yet I couldn’t muster the courage to bring it up with Miss Hatfield.

  I knew it was silly, since I had already uncovered what I thought was most of it. And I did have a right to know, because it did concern me. . . . But for some reason it felt horribly wrong. As if I would be trespassing where I didn’t belong.

  Besides, Miss Hatfield always seemed to be rushing out of the house, even disappearing for a couple of days at times.

  I heard a sudden sound near me and my head snapped up. I slipped the piece of paper back into my pocket. It had sounded like the crunch of leaves under someone’s foot. Normally the noise alone wouldn’t have startled me, but it sounded like it was so close.

  I looked around, but all I saw was an alarmed bluebird, hopping out onto the path in front of me. I guess I was just being more paranoid than usual.

  “I knew I’d find you here.”

  Hearing the familiar voice, I turned my head in the opposite direction. Miss Hatfield was walking toward me between two rows of graves. It didn’t faze her that she was in a cemetery, or that she was walking above bodies of those who had probably been alive when she was living.

  “It’s useless to dwell in the past,” she said. She didn’t even have to glance at the graves I was near to know that I was by the Beauford family plot. “We’re not like them. You know that.”

  And I suppose I did. I knew that what she was saying was true. I even left Henley, telling him that I didn’t love him, just so he might forget me and live a normal life. I loved him enough to want that for him.

  I glanced at Miss Hatfield and wondered how much she knew. She knew that Mr. Beauford had adopted her son, and she had briefly seen me with a young man, but I didn’t think she had connected the two. But then again, Miss Hatfield was full of half-truths and mysteries.

  “Rebecca?” She looked at me.

  “Yes, Miss Hatfield?” I said.

  “Yes, Rebecca,” she corrected.

  She always made a point of wanting me to use her first name, but I couldn’t help but call her Miss Hatfield in my mind. When I became immortal, I left the identity of Cynthia behind and became Rebecca Hatfield—the same as all the other immortals before me. We took on one identity that existed in any time.

  “Let’s go home.” Her eyes darted about. “I don’t feel safe. I never feel safe in any time.” She whispered so low that I had to crane my neck to make out her words. She was normally suspicious, but lately she had seemed to be even more suspicious than I was used to. “Come along home, Rebecca,” she said. “We should dress for the gym. And remember to avert your eyes. People easily remember the faces of those they’ve had eye contact with.”

  I mumbled assent, but Miss Hatfield was already too far ahead to hear.

  I watched her as she made her way back through the rows of graves. She who could not die walked casually among the dead. It was all perverse and unnatural. Not the way it was meant to be.

  Since I had been born in the forties, I was supposed to be in my seventies. I looked down at my hands, almost hoping to find a wrinkle, but I found none. Smooth. Young. Forever. Everyone else would age, while I stayed behind, unchanging.

  TWO

  “HAVE YOU BEEN going to the gym like I asked you to?” Miss Hatfield inquired that afternoon.

  Miss Hatfield’s normal pace was almost a jog for me. I struggled to keep up with her enough to hear the ends of her sentences.

  I was about to admit that I hadn’t been going as much as she wanted, but Miss Hatfield answered for me. “Of course not. I’m glad I’m taking you with me now. You know, I bought the gym membership for a reason.”

  I did know that she had bought the gym membership for a reason, but the reason wasn’t to work out. It was to be seen working out. Miss Hatfield believed that being recluses would make us stand out. Although it sounded contradictory, it made sense in its own way. We had to do all the things that normal people did: go to the gym, make small talk with the receptionist, be polite enough to look normal—so normal that a regular person would simply forget us. The goal was never to befriend anyone. Appearances were what mattered to Miss Hatfield. Truth was always secondary.

  “The woman at the front desk has been asking me where my sister has been lately,” she said. “I told her you had a dermatologist appointment on Wednesday morning. A skin rash. Nothing serious. Just a little minor thing from when we went camping together on Saturday.”

  Camping. That was the last thing I could imagine Miss Hatfield doing. But then again, she did do anything and everything to try to look normal.

  “Got that?”

  I jogged up to her as she waited for the light to change on East Sixty-Fourth Street. “Dermatologist on Wednesday morning. Skin rash. Camping on Saturday. Just us?”

  “Just us. What type of skin condition did you have?”

  I tried to think fast. “Poison oak?”

  “No, that takes about two weeks to clear up completely. An allergy we didn’t know you had to an unknown insect’s bite,” she said. She took off walking at her fast pace again.

  “Where were we even camping?” I was concerned she was going to say Central Park.

  “That’s easy. Montauk.” She bounded up the stairs and through the frosted glass doors of the gym, her ponytail swinging. It would have never crossed my mind that she didn’t belong in New York at this time.

  I followed her through the glass doors.

  “I see you two ladies are already dressed and ready to work out. Are you here for the class?” The woman at the front desk looked slightly more orange than she had when I last saw her a couple of weeks before.

  “I’m afraid not,” Miss Hatfield said. “We’re just here to use the ellipticals and maybe an erg. Some sister-to-sister bonding time.” She smiled at me, and it scared me how genuine she sounded. “By the way, I love your tan,” she said, turning back to the woman at the desk.

  The woman sneezed.

  “Bless you.”

  “Excuse me. But yeah, thanks. They had a sale on professional tans at the salon across the street.”

  “We’ll definitely have to check that out,” Miss Hatfield said.

  “You should. They work mag
ic there!” The woman smoothed her hair back. “How was camping, by the way?”

  “Oh, it was fun,” I said. “Well, fun except for the nasty rash I ended up getting.”

  “Your sister told me about that. What did it end up being?”

  I shrugged. “The dermatologist said it was some sort of reaction I had to a bug bite.”

  “We didn’t even know she was allergic to anything,” Miss Hatfield chimed in.

  “What a shame. . . . Anyways, enjoy working up a sweat today, ladies.” The woman pulled a tissue from behind the desk and blew her nose.

  “Oh, we will,” Miss Hatfield called over her shoulder.

  Once we were out of earshot, I spoke. “We’re not actually going to the salon, are we?” I had to ask.

  “God, no. Of course not. She looks like a tangerine.”

  Miss Hatfield grabbed some hand sanitizer from a freestanding automatic dispenser.

  I didn’t understand. As immortals I thought we couldn’t get sick. “Better to be safe than sorry?” I asked.

  “Don’t be absurd,” Miss Hatfield said, getting on the elliptical next to me. “Immortals don’t get sick or catch diseases.”

  “That’s what I thought. . . . But the hand sanitizer?”

  “No chance of dying of disease or old age, but we have to look normal,” she hissed. “The people in this time are germ obsessed. We need to follow suit. And remember, you can still die of physical harm, which is why I don’t recommend dropping one of those heavy weights on yourself.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Now no more talk of this in public.”

  I set up my elliptical and started jogging in silence.

  I wondered how long it would take me to start lying to people so seamlessly. If it wasn’t alarming, I would have been quite impressed by Miss Hatfield’s skill. I guess she had centuries of experience. Maybe I would get that way once I had centuries of experience too.

  Miss Hatfield interrupted my thoughts. “If you’re going to look dazed, at least look sweaty and dazed like you’ve actually done some work.”

  I almost laughed. That was such a typical Miss Hatfield thing to say.

  “Sometimes I don’t understand you,” she said. “Your strange little smiles . . . It’s like you’re seeing another world behind those eyes.” She sighed.

  I was glad I was as much an enigma to her as she was to me.

  “I chose you specifically—to give you this whole other life—because I saw something in you that reminded me of myself when I was turned.”

  I was surprised that Miss Hatfield was bringing this up right after she asked me to drop the subject.

  “And do you regret that now?”

  “No . . . if anything, I see more of myself in you now.”

  “I’m not sure immortality is only a gift,” I said.

  “Keep your voice down.”

  I looked around at the people running and pedaling furiously around us. There weren’t that many, and most were out of earshot. The closer ones had earbuds in, and probably had the volume cranked up.

  I thought Miss Hatfield would ask me what I meant, but she knew. “There are drawbacks, yes. Things you have to give up. But I’ve given you another life. A chance to be happy. You weren’t happy at all in your old life.” Miss Hatfield looked straight ahead as she ran at a constant tempo.

  She was right that I hadn’t been happy in my previous life as Cynthia in the 1950s. But back then I still had family. Parents. Friends. I had a life.

  Now . . . I’m not sure what to call my existence. This sneaking from time to time, as if we were fugitives slipping from hiding place to hiding place.

  “I’m not sure if I can call this a life,” I said.

  “Be grateful.” She didn’t even turn to look at me when she said it.

  Miss Hatfield waved to her left, and I turned to see an athletic woman patting down her Afro.

  “That’s the woman who’s going to teach our Pilates class next Friday.”

  I shook my head. Miss Hatfield was too much.

  That evening, we had supper in front of the television. Miss Hatfield was the one to suggest it, and that was unusual in itself.

  Miss Hatfield always preferred Google News and Twitter to television, because she said it was a quicker, more efficient way of staying current with the news and brushing up before going out each day. Television, on the other hand, was seen as a useless thing we had to pretend to watch, to keep up with the latest reality TV shows.

  So you could imagine my surprise when she brought our Chinese takeout to the couch in front of the dusty television.

  “Um . . . What do you want to watch?” I asked. I figured it would be easier to ask her and have her choose a channel, rather than me picking a show and being chastised on my poor taste and opinion.

  “I don’t know. Just pick something,” she said.

  Miss Hatfield never didn’t know, much less admitted to it. Was this a test of some sort? I wouldn’t put it past her.

  I flipped through the channels before I settled on a sitcom. The show revolved around a family—a patriarch with his new younger wife, his two grown kids, and their own families. I hadn’t seen it before, and the only place I would have heard of it was if it had been in articles online, or shown on public televisions in electronic-store windows. I didn’t even know what it was called, since I had tuned in partway through.

  My eyes flickered over to Miss Hatfield to see what she thought of the show I had picked. She seemed engrossed already, trying to figure out the family dynamics while biting into a pot sticker.

  “Do you think those two are related?” she asked, pointing to two of the kids.

  “I don’t know. It’s hard to tell.”

  I grabbed a carton of the fried rice and sank into the couch.

  This episode seemed to be mainly about two gay parents worried about their newly adopted baby’s behavioral development. Most of the comedy was in the parents panicking over things the baby both did and didn’t do, like talk or walk.

  Miss Hatfield shook her head. “I don’t understand why they can’t be content with what the baby can do. She’s healthy. They should be thankful that that’s the case and there isn’t anything more seriously wrong with her.”

  “Perhaps they’re worried that the baby not talking may be an indication that she might have a greater problem . . . like a disease or something,” I offered.

  “Still. It seems foolish.”

  “They just seem to be worried,” I said.

  “I know, and that’s why they’re foolish. They’re investing all this time and energy into something so trivial.”

  “But it’s their child.” I was struck by the fact that she saw the baby’s health as trivial.

  But all she said was, “There’s more to worry about in life.”

  I paused. “I should think that as a parent, you’d worry about your own child, and that would be a primary part of your life.”

  “Even if one worries, there’s only so much one can do.”

  I supposed I should have expected this kind of cynicism from Miss Hatfield. It had technically been only about a couple of months since I had rejoined her after leaving 1904, but it felt like an eternity with her, and I thought I should have known she would say something like this. After all, she did essentially give up her child. . . . But I knew I couldn’t blame her for that. She knew she was immortal, and I guessed she didn’t want her child to have to deal with that growing up. At least, that’s what I would have thought in that situation.

  “You have to take care of yourself first. Even if that means taking care of yourself before family,” Miss Hatfield said. “Those who think otherwise are either weak or deluded. Maybe both.”

  I put down the carton of food I was holding. “What if you take care of yourself by taking care of the people you love?” I pointed at the screen. “I mean, they all look so happy to just be around one another. Even when they’re worried beyond belie
f, they seem satisfied just being with family. Maybe that’s how they take care of each other.”

  Miss Hatfield shook her head slowly, but this time she was looking at me instead of the television screen. “You’re still young. Your views will change as more time passes.”

  I was doubtful but remained silent.

  She turned back to the TV show.

  I wished I had picked another show. Not because Miss Hatfield had her own opinions—I was used to that by now—but because watching the family on-screen made me hurt more than I had in a long time, since leaving the people I loved. Watching the family bicker and laugh together forced what I was missing back into my thoughts. Sure, it was obvious on the street, with families walking their dog together and couples sitting on the benches hand in hand, but here, actually sitting down to watch a family interact, I had nothing to distract myself with. It was in plain sight, and I had to watch.

  We watched three or four episodes of the show and at some point the characters all drove one another crazy. The kids argued, the siblings argued, the parents argued . . . But in the end, none of it mattered. They always made up. They had this bond to one another that nothing could break. And so long as they had this bond, they had something—they always had a person to return to. I was envious of that.

  Miss Hatfield stood up, straightening her shirt. “Have a glass of milk. I could heat it up for you. It’ll make you sleep better.”

  “Sure.” I knew this was as tender as Miss Hatfield could get. But somehow, knowing this, it was enough.

  THREE

  I OPENED MY eyes, but I couldn’t see a thing. All that was around me was light and color, shapeless and disfigured. I blinked, trying to refocus. When I rubbed my eyes, I felt wetness on my cheeks. It was as if I had cried in my sleep again.

  Looking up, I could make out the thin outline of the curtains on the window above my bed. Through my tears the picture became clearer and I soon saw the individual rays of light coming through my curtains and scattering upon the opposite wall.