I love my grandfather, the dear man as
old as Methuselah. I'm not entirely sure just how old he is, but he's
quite ancient. The family teases that he must be preserved in
formaldehyde. Perhaps, in all his scientific tinkering, he had
discovered the secret of longevity, longevity if not a completely
sound body. He still works in his old antique clock shop. His son, my
uncle, who is past retirement age himself, works there too, as does
my cousin. Like his old clocks, Grandpa might need some winding up,
but he keeps going. Grandpa's always been a bit eccentric, full of
wild theories and ideas and wild inventions that never quite get off
the ground, but the latest reports were wilder than usual.
It was a shame, but it certainly seemed
that Alzheimer's had finally struck. Lately, the stories Grandpa told
me over the phone were peculiar to say the least, like stories of
having tea with Queen Elizabeth. It would have been strange enough if
he had claimed he had visited Buckingham Palace, met with the queen
for a spot of tea and petted all the Corgis, but he didn't even mean
Queen Elizabeth II. He meant the first. He also claimed to have gone
swimming with Winston Churchill and that Churchill liked to skinnydip
and looked just like a manatee in the waves. As far as everyone knew,
the old man hadn't left the country – the U.S., that is – never
mind left the decade … or the century. The only thing that seemed
to have taken off anywhere was his senses.
I decided I needed to go see him, to
persuade him to wind down and take a rest. The clock shop was always
a wonderful and confusing overload of my senses. There were mantel
clocks of ornately carved wood, grandiose clocks with miniature brass
sculptures of mounted warriors, bronze Rococo clocks with
ostentatious confusion of sculpted swirls, Bavarian cuckoo clocks
with delightful figures that popped out of miniature doors, and in
between all the tick tocking, there were cacophonous bursts of chimes
and bells and cuckoos.
“Laurie!” Grandpa stood up from his
chair, looking like an old bent tree. As I approached, he took my
hands in his two gnarled and knobby ones. “Dear Laurie, you've come
to see me. I've made a wonderful discovery!”
“You're always making wonderful
discoveries, Grandpa,” I said. “Perhaps you should do something
different for a change.”
“What's that, dear?”
“Take a nap.” This wasn't exactly
the subtle approach to suggesting rest that I had intended to make.
“Take a nap when I've made a
wonderful discovery?”
“Well, even great minds need to rest
sometimes. That's how they go on being great minds.” Perhaps I had
redeemed myself just a little.
“Come, sit.”
Grandpa had a sort of personal nook in
a corner of his shop, with a couple of stuffed chairs facing the
door, books on antiques and an electric hot water pot. I sat down in
a chair with sculpted wooden arms.
“Oh, just wait 'til I tell you,”
said Grandpa. “It's quite wonderful. So, there I was …” Grandpa
remained standing and spun slowly in a kind of confused dither. “Ah.
Look at this.” He pulled an old herringbone tweed golf cap from a
nearby hat rack and sat down.
“It's a hat,” I said.
“Yes, it's a hat.”
On closer inspection, I said, “It's a
hat with a hole in it.” There was a small hole through the center
of the hat.
“Yes,” he said. “Do you know how
that hole got there?”
“I have no idea.”
“Annie Oakley used my hat for target
practice.” Grandpa laughed in a kind of whistling laugh. “Isn't
it wonderful? She's a marvelous woman. A marvel, that's what she is.”
I nodded my head and resisted the urge
to correct him. I tried a different strategy instead. “So, I
suppose, after Annie Oakley used your hat for target practice, you
rode off on a unicorn and had fairy cakes with the leprechauns at the
end of the rainbow?”
Grandpa laughed again. “Laurie, don't
be ridiculous. You've always been so imaginative. Unicorns and
leprechauns …”
Apparently, there were some parameters
to my grandfather's madness.
The phone rang just then. In keeping
with the rest of the atmosphere, the phone that rang was an antique
reproduction rotary phone with a bell-shaped mouthpiece. Grandpa
picked it up. “Ah, Hello Stephen. What? Speak up.” Covering the
mouthpiece, he said to me, “It's your Uncle Stephen.”
I didn't want to sit and twiddle my
thumbs while these two talked, so I decided to get up and wander up
to the upper level, ascending the creaky wooden stairs to my left.
The upper level had no clocks, but, instead, interesting examples of
antique clockwork, automata, elaborate mechanical toys. I was
fascinated with a rather large piece in one corner with twirling,
waltzing couples. The figures were nearly two feet tall. It was
dizzying after a while standing still and watching them twirl in
circles. I turned my back to them and was face to face with a
full-length mirror. Watching the twirling reflections in the mirror
was no less dizzying.
I thought I heard a noise and turned.
As I did, my heart nearly leaped into my throat. There, standing
between me and the twirling figures, was a man, at least what seemed
like a man. He could have been a mannequin in antique Victorian
dress, only mannequins don't just move themselves and plant
themselves in new spots. Partly because I was startled, and partly
because I was doubting my senses, I felt no obligation to be polite
and turned my back to him once more. Strange, but there was no
reflection in the mirror of a man behind me. I turned again to face
behind me, and there stood my Victorian gentleman. Like one of the
twirling waltzing figures, I turned to the mirror again. There was no
reflection of any Victorian gentleman in the mirror.
“They say madness runs in families
...” I muttered aloud.
To be continued …
© Susan Joy Clark 2016
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