by Scott Hale
TRENT GEMMA CAMILLA
Steam rose off the bathtub, the water filling it a little hotter than Gemma could bear. Stripped down, she stood in front of the fogging mirror on the bathroom wall and stared at herself the way she always did while Mom and Dad fought. It was a ritual where she found her flaws and transmuted them into something else.
The faults rarely changed. She was too skinny, and her chest was too flat. She had weird looking legs and big feet. Her lips were too large, or depending on the day, too small (today, they were too large). Her butt was barely there, and the only part of her that she figured boys might like (her hair) kept falling out. For a while, she kept waiting for time to right these wrongs her body had done to her, but the older she got, the more awkward she looked. It was as though she were some mad scientist’s creation, stitched together from the remains of others. In some places, she looked thirteen, others five or twenty-five. Her mom had said it had something to do with puberty, but Gemma was pretty sure it was just who she was.
Much to her mom’s surprise, she was okay with that. She took strength from these flaws. Took pride in these “defects.” After all, they were hers to own, and if she didn’t own them, she’d be like her friends, boy-obsessed and beauty-possessed and never satisfied with what they were already fortunate enough to have. Gemma did a lot of thinking on this because her “normal” life had turned out to be anything but. And if she didn’t have a normal life, and if she was about to lose her parents (in some ways, she already had), then she had to accept these flaws. Because they were hers and hers alone. Unchanging and frustratingly reliable. And for some reason, a big hit with the guys. That was nice, too.
Gemma headed over to the sink and brushed her teeth. There was enough dried toothpaste in the basin that one could probably age the house by its hardness. She rinsed out her mouth, grabbed a new razor from inside the medicine cabinet. She didn’t really have much hair to shave, but a few new cuts on the back of her leg would help her sleep better tonight.
TRENT GEMMA CAMILLA
“I want you to leave.”
Stupidly shocked, Trent said, “I’m not going anywhere.”
“You’re not staying here tonight. Leave, or I’ll have your brother come get you. You are not staying here.”
“No,” he said. “You always do this. I’m not leaving my own house. It’s storming out there and… No, you go. I’m not.”
A cold chill climbed like dead fingers up the rungs of her spine. This always happened when the fights came to an end. The whole house seemed to drop fifteen degrees, and everything in it became alien, almost hostile. The shadows became darker, the halls quieter than usual. It was as though the house reacted to their animosity and twisted itself to reflect the conflict they and it held within.
“When’s the clock coming?” Trent asked. He was trying to play nice, trying to secure a place on the couch for the night.
Camilla shook her head. “I’ll take care of it, since it’s my problem.”
“Who’s going to—”
“Jasper.” Camilla rubbed her face and started for the stairs. “Get some clothes and go.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Listen, you fucking moron, she thought. I’ll call the god damns cops on you again if I have to. But instead, she said, “If you don’t go, I swear to god I’ll tell Gemma about her mother.”
Trent opened his mouth to fight back, but common sense, finally having broken free of its drunken stupor, stopped him. He shook his head and, for a second, looked as though he may cry.
“Stop turning me into some witch. Stop doing this. Just… do us all a favor and go.” Camilla went up the stairs. As she reached the top, she saw Trent’s stupid, pathetic face in her mind’s eye and added, “Come back later tomorrow. I can’t do this tonight.”
Trent went to the bottom of the stairs. The lights flickered on and off. “Will you tell me? Who you—” he swallowed the sick taste of the word, “—slept with?”
Thoughts of the strange grandfather clock overtook Camilla. If she focused hard enough, she could almost hear its din—a deep thudding, dark and enveloping, like a musical note unplayable by anything but it.
“Camilla?” Trent called.
Coming out of the reverie, she said, “I don’t know who it was. Don’t even know his name. Just some guy, an out-of-towner.”
“Why?”
“Because he didn’t know me. And he wasn’t you.” She turned off the stair light, dousing her husband in darkness. “He was the only easy thing I’ve done in years. Thought it would help get rid of you, of us, but apparently cheating isn’t enough. Go, Trent. I can’t do this anymore.”
TRENT GEMMA CAMILLA
In the humid night, bad deeds came easily. Trent took his car and went out into the dying rain to the parts of town where light was seldom seen. These were the dead places, the untouched places; they were the filthy alleys and abandoned buildings that sat in the back, or in-between. Always there, but never acknowledged. Eyesores of a coastal town too cheap to burn them to the ground.
Trent pulled off the main road and parked in the lot behind a gutted convenience store. The 24/7 Quick-Stop had gone out of business five years ago. Now it was a popular place for teenagers to go to break those laws they couldn’t in their parents’ basements. A lot of rich kids came here, so the local police on their nightly patrols tended to give the place a wide berth.
His cell phone started to ring. Quickly, he took it out of his pocket. Expecting Camilla’s summons, he got Jasper’s concern instead.
He answered the call and said, “She kicked me out.”
“You can crash here,” Jasper offered.
Inside the 24/7 Quick-Stop, cigarettes flared. Sweaty limbs flashed in and out of the shafts of light coming through the busted windows. He was too old to be here, but where else could he go? To the bar? To the bowling alley? The last thing he wanted was to be around others as pathetic as himself. In his youth, he had everything. And youth, to him, was everything.
“Trent? You there?”
“Yeah.”
“Where are you? What are you doing?”
“About to do something stupid.”
Jasper grumbled. “Come over. I’m sure you’ve done enough damage for the night. You can stop digging now. That hole of yours is deep enough.”
Trent fiddled with the door handle. A swell of music rolled out of the convenience store. Who was in there tonight? What was on the menu? He shook his head, punched his temple. As a father, he should have been terrified of these cesspools, for Gemma’s sake, and yet here he was, a few excuses away from diving in.
“Take it you found out about the clock?”
“Yeah.” Trent was half-listening. He smelled marijuana on the air, rolled down the window to get the full effect.
“Listen, I’m going over there tomorrow morning to help her load it and bring it home. I’ll talk to her for you. Soften her up. When the coast is clear, I’ll let you know.” He paused and then said, “How badly did you fuck it up tonight?”
Trent rolled up his window. He couldn’t, shouldn’t do this. “Really bad,” he said. “I don’t know what happens to me. It’s the way she talks to me.” He flicked on his windshield wiper to swipe the rain away. “We need to try counseling again.”
“I think you both need an exorcist.” Jasper laughed at himself. “I’ll see you in twenty?”
Trent, still gripping the car keys in the ignition, stared at the 24/7 Quick-Stop. Long hair in the shadows. Baggies in the moonlight.
“Give me an hour. Need to clear my head.”
TRENT GEMMA CAMILLA
The next morning, Gemma woke to the sound of the grandfather clock coming in, and blood in her underwear. Her period wasn’t supposed to be here until next week. A bit of blood dotted the sheets. Now that she was awake, her cramps were coming hard, too, like a thousand knives stabbing her ovaries. Her mom was right: sometimes, being a girl was bullshit.
After she got cle
aned up, she headed down the stairs. The front door was open, and Uncle Jasper’s car was in the driveway. Hitting the first floor, she got a text from her dad that asked if he could talk to Mom. Gemma almost responded, then looked at the time. It was eight in the morning. Early enough to ignore him until later, like eleven or twelve, when she usually woke up.
“Is that my daughter?” Mom called. “Is she really awake right now?”
Gemma pressed the pain out of her stomach. She wandered outside to the driveway. It felt good out. The sun was warm, the air cooled. Everything glinted with condensation, and the ocean beyond was back to its normal self. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Although, if she looked hard enough, she did spot a few dark ones gathering in the furthest corners. It wouldn’t be until tonight that they would find out if those black omens were headed their way.
“Hey, Gemma.”
She went sideways. In the garage, Uncle Jasper stood, mopping his brow. She headed over to him, bare feet getting wet on the walkway, and gave him a hug.
“You see the clock yet?”
She shook her head. “Where is it?”
“In the living room.”
Gemma did a double-take. “I just came down the stairs. I didn’t see it.”
Uncle Jasper glanced at the cell phone in her hand. “Not surprised.”
She rolled her eyes and pocketed the phone. “I barely use it. Where’s Mom?”
“With the clock?” Jasper must have thought she was crazy. “In the living room, right next to the front door? You sure you’re okay?”
Gemma took a few steps backward and looked over her shoulder. Through the front doorway, she saw the shape of her mom standing in the living room, with a large, black object towering over her.
“But she just called for me. From out here.”
Uncle Jasper shook his head and took her by the shoulders, pushing her towards the house. “I’ll cut you some slack. Whenever I woke up this early at your age, I could hardly form complete sentences.”
“At my age? Psh.” Gemma wriggled free. “You don’t know what it’s like to be thirteen nowadays.”
“Like you do? You’ve been thirteen for what? Four months now? Guess that makes you a bona fide expert.” He flipped her ponytail to tick her off. “Let’s get you inside before you get a sunburn.”
If Gemma’s mother had noticed her walk past earlier, she thought, going into the house, then she didn’t say anything about it now. In fact, she didn’t say anything at all. All her efforts and attentions were focused solely on the monolithic monstrosity at the center of the living room.
Two thousand and something dollars. That was what her mom had spent on this thing. Gemma stepped up beside her, thinking that, if she stood as close as Mom did to the grandfather clock, maybe she would look at it differently. But she didn’t. Not at all. The grandfather clock wasn’t some beautiful antique, but a haggard excuse for a Halloween decoration. It was huge, almost ten feet tall, with two horns curling from the top of it. The body itself was impossibly black, though there were bursts of color here and there in the strange markings that covered it. The moon dial was hellfire red, and the clock face a busted sheet of tortoiseshell metal work fitted with hour and minute hands that hardly moved. But what stood out the most was the pendulum behind the glass case at the clock’s center. It swung back and forth to no particular rhythm, as though the cancerous gunk that clung to it were moving it with a will of its own.
Gemma thought it looked awesome. What she couldn’t believe was that her mother, boring Camilla with her mom clothes and fear of horror movies, felt the same way.
TRENT GEMMA CAMILLA
The shock of seeing the grandfather clock in her living room had yet to wear off. One minute, it had been at the back of Gethin’s shop, promised to another. And now it was here, safe and sound, hers to restore, and hers to covet.
Dreamily, she said to Gemma, “What do you think?”
“It’s really cool. How did you guys get it in here?”
“It’s lighter than it looks.”
Gemma made a pained grunt. She must have started her period early. Camilla had, too.
“Are you going to keep it in here?” Gemma asked.
“Might move it back some, but yeah, for now.”
Gemma took her cell phone, read something, and then pocketed it again. Trent. Camilla didn’t even have to see the text to feel the desperation oozing out of the screen.
“I’m sorry about last night,” Camilla said. She let down her hair and put it back into a tighter bun.
“Whatever.”
“No, it’s not ‘whatever.’” For the first time since she put the clock in the living room, she took her eyes off it. Staring at Gemma, she said, “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to hear all that.”
Gemma’s cheek quivered. “Then why do you do it so much? You don’t try.”
“Believe me, I try, sweetie, I really do. But your father brings out the worst in me.” She went back to the grandfather clock, attention fixed on the scorched moon dial. “I tried for thirteen years.”
“How can you give up now?”
“When you’re older…” Camilla stopped herself. She’d said that line so many times before it had lost all meaning. “Not right now, Gemma. Let’s try to enjoy the day.”
“Did you guys only get married because you got pregnant?”
The accusation hit Camilla like the bomb that it was. “Gemma, god no. No, no. This has nothing to do with—”
Jasper came through the front door, saving her ass yet again. “Looks good,” he said. His face bunched up, like he had just stepped into something he shouldn’t have.
“Thanks for your help, Jasper.”
He nodded, swinging his arms back and forth. “So, didn’t get a chance to ask in the truck what with all—” looking at Gemma, he changed his tune, “—what’s the big deal about this grandfather clock? Said it was a steal?”
It was. Camilla pressed her hand to the glass case that contained the erratic pendulum. Its ticking vibrations coursed through the woodwork into her flesh. The minute and the hour stopped where they willed on the clock face, the times depicted upon it nothing more than jagged gouges in the plate. She ran her fingers up the clock’s body to the horns that jutted from the pediment, which she could only barely touch, even on the tips of her toes.
The piece of antiquity had been carved from madness and lacquered in lunacy. The creator of this morbid creation had to have been an empty man at the end. Standing this close to the clock, Camilla could smell blood in its cracks, feel a pulse of life throbbing in its mechanical innards. She knew she was obsessed with it, and perhaps that was why she didn’t worry about her obsession. As long as she was aware of it, she could be in control of it. And maybe it wasn’t the grandfather clock she was obsessed with, but the notion she had found something so unique and claimed it as her own. The only other thing she had like that in her life was Gemma, but sometimes, and it hurt to admit it, even she wasn’t enough.
“Keep an eye on your mom tonight,” Jasper said. “She’s been checking out all morning like this.”
Coming to, Camilla said, “Sorry. This heat… and I didn’t sleep well last night. What did you ask me?”
Jasper shrugged.
Gemma tapped on the clock. Instinctively, she jerked her hand back, as though she’d been shocked or bitten. “What’s the big deal about this thing? Is it some priceless artifact or something?”
“I already told you guys.” Camilla stepped away and headed for the kitchen.
But Gemma persisted, anyway, saying, “No, you just keep staring at it, Mom. Kind of creeping us out.”
Camilla waved her off. She searched her mind for reasons as to why she’d bought the clock. Had it been the construction or its age? Had it been its history or its uniqueness? She had approached the piece the same way she would a mate for the night: attracted on a purely superficial level, with all good things assumed and all detractors ignored. Truth be told, she
had no idea why she’d bought the grandfather clock. It was an absolute mystery to her. It was as though she had brought a stranger home without asking them about all the stuff they kept in their dirty pockets.
Embarrassed, Camilla said to Jasper, “Tell Trent he can come home for dinner,” and disappeared into the kitchen, to find, for some reason, her sharpest knife.
TRENT GEMMA CAMILLA
Camilla had called him home for dinner. Usually when Trent came back, he came back with a whole host of apologies and, sometimes, even a gift or two. Flowers for Camilla. A movie or a book for Gemma. But this time, as he stood at the front door knocking to be let into his own house, he came to them empty-handed, with nothing more than a vow of silence to prove to his family he, after twenty-four hours, was a different man. The only problem was he hadn’t packed a change of clothes. He still smelled faintly of the 24/7 Quick-Stop and the puddle he woke up in.
Gemma opened the door. She gave him a small smile. He went in for a hug. She shook her head and pinched her nose. “Better change. You know how Mom is.”
Trent nodded, shrugged; scratched his head like a bozo. “Did you get my text this morning?”
Quick as a whip, Gemma said she didn’t.
“Mm, okay.” He leaned into the doorway, immediately noticing the grandfather clock that dominated his living room. “That it? I’ll check it out later,” he said, covering the side of his face, so he didn’t have to see it.
Gemma stepped aside, letting him in. Shutting the door behind him, she whispered, “It’s weird. I don’t know if I like it.”
“La, la,” Trent sang, still refusing to fully give witness to the clock. He swung around to the stairs and started up them. “Where’s your mother?”
“Out back, in the garden. Picking a few things for dinner.”
One of the worst parts of coming home after an argument were those uncomfortable moments of exposure. Walking in on Camilla in the bathroom or her changing. Moments that might have been funny or arousing became clinical, almost sinful. Trent always felt as though he had lost the right to see her naked, or almost naked, after an argument. It was something he had to earn back, or at least, that’s what he told himself. Usually, Camilla just came to him, broke the tension in about ten minutes, and then turned out the lights. That’s how it always was. They hadn’t forgiven each other, let alone said sorry to one another, in years. In their house, absolution had been abolished about the time there were more beer than soda cans in the trash.
