The sign catches her eye. It is round and gleaming in the late afternoon sun: TIME & TIDE ANTIQUE CLOCKS above a white clock face with black Roman numerals. She notices there are no hands on the clock. Although the shop has been on the outskirts of town forever, she had never taken notice of it as she does on this day. Having driven two hours from the Philadelphia airport, she is ready for the day to end, yet she is compelled to turn at the entrance next to the sign.
Helen has been twenty years away from the sights and sounds of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Memory awakens in a dreamlike way, as she observes the horse and buggies clopping along the roads, and the makeshift farm stands stocked with fall wares: pumpkins and chrysanthemums lining the front, jars of relish and jam stacked on shelves, zinnias and dahlias in tin buckets. She stops to buy flowers for her mother. A sullen young girl in a plain gingham dress and white apron, who makes no eye contact, lifts a bunch of bright zinnias and wraps them in newspaper. She hands them to Helen, counts out change from a green glass jar and returns to her post.
Driving on past the field of sunflowers, Helen remembers how, when she was a child, she would standat her window for hours, gazing at the endless acres to watch them turn their brown eyes toward the sun’s arc across the sky. The variegated crops in patches, like a giant quilt, stretch over the landscape to the misty blue hills beyond. Despite the quaint appeal and simple beauty of the place, she feels she’s been washed ashore on a lonely island—as a stranger.
Just a few weeks ago, she received the letter. Her mother was dying. She had to come, wanted to come. During those years away, she hadn't thought to return, not even for a visit, but here she is now in the place that had never felt like home. She found her true home in the Mediterranean—on the island of Lipari, bathed in light and warmth, wrapped in blue sea and sky. She intends to carry something of it with her into the cold winter ahead, which holds the unwelcome promise of grief.
Time is of the essence. This she knows, but there will be time with her mother before it is too late. Still, she turns at the sign instead of going the short distance to the bleak farmhouse where her mother lies waiting.
She drives slowly past a white-washed mansion with an ornate wrought iron fence, brick walkway lined with hedge rows and Victorian lamp posts. Though the elegance of the stately house seems out of place in the otherwise austere landscape dotted with modest houses, it gratifies her finer sensibilities.
Just ahead she spots a long, concrete block building, assuming it is the shop, though there are no signs or markings on it. With some effort, she pulls open the carved wooden door that looks like a portal to a church rather than to the one-story rectangular warehouse. When she steps over the threshold, out of the bright afternoon daylight into what seems total darkness, she hesitates. The interior slowly comes into focus as sun shafts filter down from row of windows along the top of the building. She moves into the misty light to the sound of ticking clocks. Such an odd place, she thinks, as her vision adjusts to take in the sight of hundreds of clocks on multi-leveled shelves set on long tables. Amid the odor of wood and dampness, she sees no one, not even at the island desk far ahead that seems to mark the middle of the gaunt space.
She walks an unhurried pace along the main aisle, and several side aisles, viewing the vast display of clocks standing like old soldiers at attention, waiting to be inspected. She stops here and there noting their shapes and designs. She admires the colorful ceramic clocks with scenes of farmhouses and gardens. She shudders at the somber black cases of others. She smiles at the one with a white marble base, a brass horse and hound on one side, and bright yellow clock face under a glass dome on the other.
Where have these clocks been, and what have they seen? Who were their owners, and how had they lived? Where are the souls now who lived by their ringing reminders of passing time? She wonders.
She is startled to hear a thin voice in familiar sing-song Pennsylvania Dutch. Turning, she sees an old man
standing next to her, as if he has just appeared out of the mist.
“Can I help you?”
“Oh, thanks, but…no, no, I just popped in to see what you have here. I grew up in this town, but I’d never been to your shop.”
“Welcome, then, but it’s not my shop, Miss. It’s my father’s.”
Your father’s? she thinks, but says only, “Oh?”certain that his father could not possibly still be alive. The man looks ancient, bent over, with white wispy hair, and eyes clouded with a bluish film.
“You let me know if you have any questions, young lady.”
“I will for sure. Thank you.”
“Marchenmeister”
“Excuse me?”
“Marchenmeister, I’m Earl Marchenmeister, Jr.”
“Oh, right…yes. Well, nice to meet you, Earl. I’m Helen. I think I’ll just take a quick look around if that’s okay.”
“Yah, you do that, Miss Helen. I’ll be right there,” pointing to the island ahead situated in the sea of clocks. She watches as he pads his way back to the elaborate desk, its front in the shape of a ship’s prow.
What a strange little man!
She imagines that over the years he has cared for every timepiece, recognizes each unique chime or bell, knows where each has been, maybe even the fate of those who had owned it. She wonders if he has a son who will inherit the shop from him when his time runs out.
Now I am being ridiculous; he’s just an old-fashioned man who’s inherited the shop, and still thinks of it as his father’s. Why do I care about that? What does it matter to me? No matter!
Then she sees it—an exact replica of the clock in her apartment in Italy—elegant with a satiny red cherry wood case embellished with gold leaf designs. The hands on the clock face are filigreed silver, and a flowery scarlet line is drawn around the perimeter above the hours. On the glass door, in the thinest of gold lines, is drawn an image of the basilica of Santa Croce in Florence. The embossed silver pendulum peeks through, swaying hypnotically, as she is lost in disbelief.
Helen had been a wayfarer ever since she can remember—first in thought. Then, restless and curious, she left home and wandered for years on end, traveling through the Greek isles and Italy. Finally, she settled in Florence, across from the Piazza di Santa Croce on via di San Giuseppe, thinking she had found a home. She was thrilled to have had a few feature articles published in La Nationale's series on “Americans in Tuscany,” and a few short stories in European magazines. And, she had found love she thought was lasting. She felt she was living a dream, all of her senses heightened. But one day, her lover left—without a word. Again she was alone and restless.
When she saw the ad: “appartamento con vista,” on Lipari, one of the Aeolian Islands off of Sicily, she did not hesitate for a moment. Before she had even set foot on the island, a view from the ferry confirmed that she had found a home at last. Before a month had passed, she had settled in to devote herself to writing and continued to submit short stories to the few small European publishing houses expressing interest.
As soon as she entered the apartment, she saw it on the mantel above the fireplace, an exquisite clock with the image of Santa Croce drawn in delicate gold lines on the glass over a pendulum formed like a labyrinth. To her it was another affirmation that she belonged, bringing the past into the future. She had arrived after so many harried years in search of a place she could call home.
As she settled in, when the clock chimed, often she would close eyes and feel herself back in Florence—her lover warm beside her on the daybed by the fire, his kind and shining eyes looking upon her, the smell of espresso and wood fire drifting in through the window, church bells resounding through the room.
With thoughts of the Mediterranean, whose beauty still surprised her after so many years, she is warmed now in the cold warehouse, but dislocated by the appearance of the familiar clock. She crosses the aisle to gaze at it for a time in reverie. Then she turns to make her way to the desk where the old man is dozing with arms folded across his chest.
“Excuse me…excuse me, Earl,” she whispers, so as not to wake him.
He opens his eyes and looks up, “You want to know something about one of my clocks?”
“Yes, yes, I do have a question. I saw that beautiful Italian clock just down the aisle there. At least I think it’s Italian. I have one exactly like it. I mean…it isn’t mine. It was there in my apartment in Italy when I moved in, and …. ” They walk together to where the clock rests.
“Oh, this one,” Earl remarks. “This is special, Miss Helen, one of a kind it is. There are no others.”
Just as Helen begins to protest, eager to assure the old man there is a replica she has lived with for many years, all of the clocks begin their hourly fugue of chimes and bells. When the ringing finally plays out and fades to uneven ticking, she speaks more loudly than needed.
“No others? That can’t be. There must be…”
“No, one of a kind it is. Yah, this is a special one.”
“One of a kind? No, it’s exactly like the one I.… How long has it been here?” “Hmm, can’t remember how long now. From New England it came…maybe twenty years ago? Maybe waiting just for you, no?”
“No, it must have….” She takes a deep breath, then asks, “Can you tell me something about it? It must have…”
“The clocks will tell you about themselves.” “What? What do you mean? How, how do they tell about themselves?”
“When they are yours and you love them, you hear what they know.”
“Know? What? Then you must have heard what this clock knows, right?”
“Yah, yah, but it’s different for everyone, Miss Helen. Yah, you will see.”
“This is all very strange,” shaking her head, still in disbelief.
Earl turns from the clock to face Helen, “Yah, different, but not so strange. You will see.”
“See? How will I…?” Feeling a bit strange herself, it is clear the old man is not going to tell her a thing about the clock. “I will think about it. It’s lovely, but I…I should be going now.” Heading toward the door, she turns for a last glimpse of the clock, feeling she is abandoning it—silencing it somehow.
“Not going to take it with you now, Miss Helen?” Earl calls after her, his last words rising in a raspy voice. “It will have things to tell you.” Who is that man anyway, the Geppetto of clocks?
She shakes her head again and laughs, picking up her pace. Pushing hard on the heavy door, she is expecting a burst of light, but the sun is already low on the horizon.
When she arrives at her mother’s house, Mary, a hospice nurse, answers the door, holding out her hand in greeting. “Helen? Nice to finally meet you. How was your trip? You must have had a few very long days.”
“Mary? Good to meet you too. Yes, a long few days, but all went well. Thank you so much for keeping in touch, and for…everything you’ve done.”
“Not at all, I wanted to wait until you arrived.”
“I apologize. I should have gotten here sooner. How is she?”
“No worries, really, I didn’t mind. She’s asleep now, but has been restless all day, looking forward to welcoming you home. I told her she would see you when she wakes up. That made her smile.”
“Do you think I could wake her?”
“Well, I’ve just given her morphine for comfort and rest. She may not rouse easily, but you can certainly try.”
Mary shows Helen how to administer morphine drops for anxiety or pain, and how to set up the nebulizer for breathing treatments. “I’ll be back day after tomorrow, but you’ll call me if you have any questions, or…if things take a turn for the worse, won’t you?”“Yes, will do.” Helen walks with Mary to the door, thanks her again and says good night.
“Good night, Helen…and welcome home.”
Walking through the hall to the kitchen, Helen looks around.
Home. Nothing’s changed; everything’s changed.
She places the zinnias in a Mason jar she finds on the dusty window sill. She goes to her bag to get the gift she’s brought for her mother, and turns into the dining room, set up for care of the old woman who rests in the dim and close room.
So thin and frail. Oh, Mother, I should have come sooner.
She sets the flowers on the bedside table. Leaning over, she touches her mother’s slender arm, and takes her blue-veined hand into her own
“Mother, it’s me. It’s Helen.”
“Helen?”
“Yes, I’m here now”
“I’ve been waiting,” her mother whispers back. Her eyes drift to the ceiling, flutter and close again from the effort.
“I know, I know, Mother, I’m here now, and look, I’ve brought you something.”
Helen positions a large mosaic tile under the lamplight on the dresser across from the bed. The scene of Lipari in the sea is illuminated: red tile roofs, golden bell towers and tall cypress trees on azure hills.
“Look, Mother, isn’t it lovely?” The old woman opens her eyes and looks long at the tile. She smiles. “Bring it to me,” her voice fading into a sigh.
Helen holds the tile so her mother can see it, then sets it next to the flowers. She sits at the bedside, her eyes on the slight figure now in a sound sleep, and holds the hand of the woman who had been strong, so severe, so demanding.
She did the best she could. That’s all anyone can ask…all anyone can be expect, isn’t it?
The weight of guilt and grief about to descend, Helen rises, steps into the hall, picks up her bag and climbs the stairs to the little room at the top.
She is taken aback, but not entirely surprised, to see that there too everything is as it had been when she left at age eighteen: high school banner above the mirror; jewelry box on the dresser; some forgotten trinkets; faded pictures of Einstein and Leonard Cohen on the cork board over the white and gold provincial desk. She slides the dusty board behind the dresser and stuffs everything else into one of its empty drawers. When she looks into the mirror, she half expects to see the younger version of herself reflected back.
Has it really been twenty years?
She sees that Mary has left clean linens for the bed under the dormer, and a forgotten multi-color quilt her mother had made for her sixteenth birthday. Helen runs her hand over the Joseph’s Coat pattern. She turns on the bedside lamp in the shape of a sunflower, hoping the warm light will fill the dreary room, and the empty feeling within.
Exhaustion setting in, she quickly makes up the bed, and from her bag she takes a small embroidered pillow, a silk melon flower and a book of hours—familiar things she knows will settle a rising tide of sadness and unease.
Three things about the book always comfort her: Each page is bordered in gold with designs of ivy intertwined with bright cornflowers, daisies, columbine and wild strawberries. Second, there are twelve small illustrations—jewel-like vignettes of peasants going about their monthly labors, and third, the prayers and verses designated for hours of day and night.
Although she does not consider herself religious, she had been drawn to the practice of reading from the book when the church bells rang out at the canonical hours across every Italian town and village. She carries it to the window, opens the sash and reads the verse for the end of day into the cold silence, the moon rising above the dark fields below.
When at last she lies on the bed, her thoughts turn to the clock shop, half wondering if it disappeared as she drove away: the stately house, the warehouse full of clocks and the odd figure of the man inside, with his claim that the clocks stand ready to tell what they know. At least, if that familiar clock were near, she might feel closer to her island home—another comfort. Though she does not believe that the clock could tell her anything, she doesn’t entirely disbelieve it either.
Helen dozes off and on throughout the night, getting up several times to check on her mother. She is in a deep sleep in the morning though when she is awakened by the sound of her mother coughing. She bolts out of bed and down the stairs.
“Mother, I’m here. Are you okay?” Leaning down, she kisses her mother’s cheek and reaches for her hand. The coughing becomes so intense and lasts so long, it frightens her. She goes for the morphine, takes the liquid up into a dropper, opens her mother’s lips with one hand, and with the other empties a few drops onto her tongue. When the coughing subsides, the old woman opens her eyes, and turns her head toward the mosaic tile and bright zinnias.
She looks at her daughter and smiles,“Helen?”
“I’m here, Mother. Do you remember, I came in last night? Mary told me you’re doing well,” Helen lies, “and what I need to do to take care of you. Here, let me fluff your pillow.” She straightens the covers, and sets up the nebulizer. “I’m going to make you some hot tea and toast.”
When she returns with a tea tray, she removes the inhaler. The old woman opens one eye and moves her lips as if trying to form words. Helen hears only unintelligible sounds.
“What are you saying, Mother?”Again, the whispered sounds, and then a third utterance. Helen feels desperate to interpret what her mother is trying to say, but to no avail.
“I love you too,” she hears herself say, choosing to believe her mother’s words had been, “I love you,” although they had never before been spoken to Helen.
She senses her mother drifting off to a place further away than sleep, her breathing becoming heavy with a watery sound. She carries the tray into the kitchen and returns to hear the breathing is now a loud gurgling.
A call to Mary confirms, “It may be the dying process has begun,” Mary says and offers to come, but Helen refuses.
Dying process? No, not already, not so soon. She does not want to believe the hour has come. If they had more time together, her mother might have said, “I missed you so, Helen,” and asked, “Why did you stay away so long?” She recalls that, on the flight back, she was hoping they would not have that tiresome conversation again. Now she wishes they were able to talk about that—or anything.
“I told you before, Mother,” she would have said. “I found a home in Italy, and my work is there.”
Was there, that is. I have nothing to write, nothing to say, believing for some time now that she has no stories left to tell and no inspiration in sight.
She once heard a best-selling author say, “I have a million stories in my head, and I’ll never have enough time to write them all.”
Helen does not have even one, and believes she never will again.
All through this day she reads to her mother from the book of hours, to the sound of that breathing she will never forget. She thinks of her mother’s smile when she saw the mosaic tile as both a welcome home and a blessing on the life she had chosen, if not forgiveness for having left her mother alone.
Toward evening, the breathing fades into silence as Helen reads the verse for vespers:
What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbors, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost.
Phone calls are made, a funeral arranged, a memorial service planned, a burial endured. Now, there are the legal and financial obligations, and the ritual of sorting through the things in the house, and the things in her heart.
The mementos Helen’s mother held dear: a ceramic rose candy dish, a framed cross stitch of an Amish boy, a figurine of a glittery angel, had never meant anything to Helen—until now. There are boxes of yellowed papers in closets, pictures, cards and letters in a desk drawer—ones she had sent her mother over the years. On a snowy evening, she burns them in the fireplace, envisioning the resentments and regrets in the house, and within her, rising up into the clean, cold air above.
Through the months of winter, Helen lives in the quiet house filled with the absence of her mother and thoughts of her years of waiting and loneliness. Now she lives in loneliness with the lingering dread that inspiration for her work is gone forever—that which has always sustained her and kept her from despair. At night she lies in the cold room at the top of the stairs, listening to the wind whip around house—the house she thought she had escaped from, an ocean away from the light and blue of Lipari.
Then, one early February morning before sunrise, Helen feels a turning within. She will move her bed and few belongings to the front room downstairs, where the southern exposure allows the light of the lengthening days. There she will have a fire to warm her in the evenings.
When all is in place, she takes the book of hours from whee it had remained since the night of her mother’s death. She opens it to find the miniature depiction of the labor for February: a peasant woman at a beehive holding a honeycomb. She places the open book on a table and lights votive candles, which burn until dawn. That day, Helen returns to the clock shop, and again walks the long aisles.
She stops at the place where she thought she had seen the Italianate clock. It’s not there. She walks half the length of the shop to the desk, expecting to find the old man napping.
Oh! Here it is.
At the counter behind the desk the clock is waiting, its pendulum keeping time. A calm comes over her and, at the same time, a feeling of awakening from a long sleep. Seemingly out of nowhere, a voice is heard.
“You’ve come for your clock then,” more statement than question. “It’s ready to go.”
When she turns toward the voice, she sees, not the old man, but a much younger one. She notices he does not have the local accent and does not look like he belongs in what she has come to think of as, that fairy tale of a shop.
“Oh, yes…actually, I did come to see if the clock was still here, but…where’s the old man, Earl? How did he….How did you know I’d be back?”
“I’m Earl, Earl, Jr., remember?” he says, as he places the clock into a wooden box. “I’m trying to keep the shop going, but there isn’t much interest or demand these days.” It’s just me here now. My father died a few years ago.
A few years ago? “No, it was only….” Helen feels she will melt away. Light headed and confused, the tranquility on first seeing the clock dissolves in an instant. “What? I mean, when I was here before, the old man…he and I talked. I can see how he thought I might be back, but I don’t understand. That was only a few months ago.”
The young man smiles. “That was me, Miss Helen, remember? You spoke to me that day. We did talk about the clock, and I knew you would be back because you loved it. Well, no matter! Here you are now, and you will have what you came for.”
“No matter? It was not you. It was the old man. He said it was his father’s shop. Am I dreaming or…?”
“We are all dreaming, no?”
“Yes…no, not now, but I … ”
“Here you are, Miss. This is a special one; it’s yours now,“ holding out the box to her. For just a moment, she is drawn into his gaze.
It’s all so strange, but in a way familiar now, his smile, his kind and shining eyes, and the clock.
Neither one speaks a word. She takes the box, holds it close to her and walks toward the door, having the same thought she had when she had left the shop the first time, seemingly a lifetime ago now.
Will it all vanish into thin air when it is out of my sight?
She walks out into that silent stillness before a snowfall.
The clock is beautiful, glowing above the blazing fireplace in the little room. She runs her fingers over the case, tracing the golden lines on the glass. She spends days in reverie there—what to do, where to go—back or forward? She doesn’t know, but, for now, she will simply live in its silent company.
On the threshold of spring, she awakens as if preparing to sail out on a faraway adventure. She takes up the key, winds the clock and sets the pendulum into motion. In the following days, she reads the designated prayers at the hours of daylight, and often during the night. As the chimes sound, she sometimes feels herself drifting into another realm of no place or time.
There, at peace, she remains until all manner of dark and light beings began to flash and flutter before her—some in images like holographs, others heard in voices, heard in whispers and secret thoughts. When they come, they come like a swift, incoming tide—surreal, filled with beauty and sadness, old regrets and new life, muddled, intertwined, as in a dream.
There is an image of a man come back to his childhood home to tell his story to an empty room, and the voice of a woman obsessed with the starry sky brought back to earth through the suffering of others. She thinks the thoughts of a therapist whose saintly lover leaves her a gift, and of a husband left alone to endure memories of all that is lost to him. She sees the shadow of an enlightened soul becoming a truer form of herself. She hears a mother grieving for her lost son on sacred ground. She experiences the confusion of a young actress who is deceived by desire for what she thought she loved. There is the vision of a teacher whose broken, irreparable things become her strength.
Are these the beings who once owned the clock, lost in time—waiting to tell their tales? Are they conjured out of Helen’s revived imagination? Or do they emanate from the eternal minds of distant souls who, like the Greek hero Odysseus, found ways of contending with the trials they encountered—wandering on their way home to a place of rest?
Not each day, nor all at once, but over the course of a year, she sees them, hears them, feels she is them. She dreams their dreams, is in the dreams—learns their minds—and their stories, hundreds of them, maybe enough to last a lifetime. She will speak as them and for them.
Helen returns to her azure island home, having come to rest in her love for the beings and the truth of their stories she carries inside her.
She sits by the window, gazing once again upon the turquoise sea, and begins to write them down—one by one.
Epilogue
(appears at the end of the book after the tales)
Lipari
When Helen completed her first collection of tales, Book of Hours—each one a prayer—she felt she had given the beings voice, set them free. There are many more waiting to be heard; of that she is certain.
It is not lost on her that the beings and their tales had found her, not in her beloved island home, but across the wide ocean, in a house that was not her home, in a town devoid of the kind of beauty that has become part of her, in a place she never loved as she loves Lipari.
Yet, it was there that they were waiting to find her. Or had she found them?
No matter.
She holds her book lovingly in her hands and opens it. She turns each page, then writes a note of greeting and gratitude to Earl Marchenmeister, Jr., and sends it off to Time & Tide Antique Clocks.
She is not surprised when it comes back, stamped: “Address Unknown.”
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| "She drove slowly down the long driveway, past a white-washed mansion with its ornate black iron fence, brick walkway lined with hedge rows, lush shrubs and Victorian lamplights." |
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| "Such an odd place, she thought, as her vision adjusted to take in the sight of hundreds of clocks on multi-leveled shelves set on long tables. Amid the odor of old wood and dampness...." |
