Stitch in Time

Artwork by Jayda Korn

 

My watch has been broken four times, and fixed almost as many.

 

1.

 

A great mid-July asphalt swelter had set in on the city. The blue glass of the finance quarter scintillated in the sunlight, and the tinny hot-dog stands emitted waves of heat around the train station. The smell of jasmine wafted out of the corner occult store, the preacher howled a foul-mouthed sermon, and pigeons scattered for fear of being trampled as I rolled my suitcase over popcorn kernels and cigarette butts. I stood in the midst of the crowd as people sped by, becoming a blur of muddy browns, lopsidedly lumbering through in the same way I was—weighed down with duffels and suitcases. I looked down at my watch again. 

 

The silver appendages called hands were still positioned resolutely at 8:20, the minute-keeping arm just a smidge offset from the 4. It had been frozen this way for quite some time. This was evidenced by the very large clock in the centre of the station, which read a completely different and hopelessly later time on its dignified expression (I wondered, what timekeeper fixes Big Ben when he goes out of whack? Who spins his kingly crown to bring him back to the present?). I looked back down at my watch, and it stared back at me obstinately with its mustache fixed, trying to pass off the convincing 8:20. On that big omniscient face, the time, the actual time, read 9:48, giving me 12 minutes to make the train.

 

We give our watches identities of their own, stopping just short of naming them Pearl or Thomas. They have faces and hands. Even royalty: the adjustment knob is called a crown, at least by horologists and connoisseurs. Not only their bodies, but their innards too—watches have regulating organs called movements. They have hearts.

 

 They have always appeared to me in dreams as little men with round bodies and pacemakers, pinstripes fraying on their worn-out suits. Like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, they bumble out of hollow, rotted tree stumps, telling me that I’m late—for work, for the dentist. I startle out of bed and hurry down the passageways of a maze-like train station, only to wake again, the clock’s energetic second hand ticking away punishingly. 

 

It occurred to me to hurry, though my feet were glued to their spot. I stared indignantly at my wrist—rather bad timing for a mishap like this. I was supposed to visit my family, and I had a bad feeling that something was amiss. My father had a history of falling into what he called “episodes,” where he became unbearably miserable, stopped sleeping, and would hide away all the time. They tried to keep it from me—my mother didn’t want to worry me, and my father didn’t care for me to see him like that—but it wasn’t the sort of thing that you could hide. 

This summer, whenever I called my father, my mother answered the phone instead. I recognized the signs. I had the feeling that I needed to go home to see him, but it filled me with dread to think of the dirty cereal bowls and that uncanny quiet in the usually bustling house. And I was so supremely happy that summer. I suppose I hoped for a freak July snowstorm, or that I’d find my seat taken at boarding due to massive overbooking—anything that might force me to reschedule—so that I didn’t have to plunge back into that house and all its troubles. 

 

I began towards the platform at a brisk pace, plunging stroboscopically in and out of window light and back into the cool marble shade. I began to run, felt ridiculous, went back to my mincing stride—something like a grandma power-walking laps around a plaza. 

 

I had just met a girl. Her name was Emma. A series of recollections flood the acarpous shores of my mind—quiet scattering of crabs, kicking the sand off their feet. Emma in the library, doing a headstand to keep awake while studying, her foot accidentally punching a hole in the canvas of a portrait of the dean. The mismatched buttons of her red suede jacket, and the jacket I later found in her closet, abandoned, buttonless. The funny way she emphasized the first syllable of hotel, forgotten, oracle. 

That time I met her family: her father, a lightning strike survivor who had come away unscathed save a bad case of tinnitus—old Greggory yelling across the Thanksgiving table, Emma smiling, blushing, reminding him that he was shouting over his solitary static again. I remember I hated leaving her that summer, even just for a day, a week, a moment. 

 

I got stuck in a crush as the crowd narrowed into a bottleneck at the staircase. I took the opportunity to take off my watch, hoping it was a simple matter of rewinding—nothing more than its stalled internal mechanism—but just as I did, a trench coated man in slippers jostled by me aggressively, and the watch slipped from my hand. It came apart on the marble flooring, making a sound like dice scattering. The glass, the face, and the backing were disbanded across the marble floor. I stooped amongst the scuffling feet and rolling suitcases to collect the pieces. I saved the quartz from a stiletto puncture and noticed the minute hand just before it was trampled with an unfortunate-looking sneaker. I hurried out of the way before I was squashed myself. Pocketing my watch, and back into the fray. 

 

I eyed someone’s watch as I ascended the stairs behind them; it was inching towards 10:00 with increasing dexterity, as if racing for the same deadline I was. At the top, I took off in my half jog half power walk, encumbered by luggage. Soon stopped by a family in front of me, lumbering to a later train in so solid a line, it was as if they were trying to contain a small riot: maintaining the front. I tried to pass them, but one of the little ones—pig tails, runny nose—kept wobbling back and forth, obscuring my opening. I tried to squeeze past, only for her to wobble to the left and back to the right again. I tried to slide through—just inches prevented my passage. I glanced at the place where my watch ought to be, but found only a pale spot on my wrist in the shape of my watch— 

 

“Excuse me,” I tapped the little girl on the shoulder. “May I pass you?” 

She put her finger in her nose and let me through. I thanked her kindly. 

 

I bustled through the crowd, shouldering past, stepping on toes. I had very little time to waste; a mad dash ensued. 

 

The serviceman was just latching the nylon ropes as I arrived, breathless. Guiltily, I skidded to a halt. 

“Surely the doors haven’t closed.” 

“But they have, sir.” 

 

Red faced and seized by a misplaced sense of guilt, I tried to explain myself. 

“My watch stopped.” 

“Sorry to hear that, sir,” he said with an apathetic, blank look. He had a belly and a commendable mustache. I almost wanted to kiss him. 

 

I could hear the train chugging and shrugging away down the tracks as I left the station, into the pearly sunlight. 

 

Back into the sunlight, with a pocketful of time, I went home to fix my watch. 

 

2.

My father had given the watch to me when I was 13 and had told me that if I could fix it, I could keep it. It was a different watch then than it is now. Many of the parts since been replaced, and the band is a different color. When it was first given to me, it had an emerald-green crocodile leather strap and a weighty buckle that I liked. I don’t know what it might have looked like before that. The crystal was badly yellowed—my father was a smoker—but I loved its patina, knowing it was through ages of love that it was acquired. I imagine I carried that same secondhand sepia all over me, too. 

 

The back of the watch bore an inscription: Dear Elliot, My Love Forever 12-13-67. My father’s name is Richard. I asked him about it, and he told me he had gotten it from his father, who had gotten it from her mother, who had stolen it from someone she had presumably had an affair with (or so the story goes). It was characteristic of my grandpa to accept a present like that and cherish it precisely because of that origin. He found it charming. An heirloom. 

 

He made me a small workshop in the basement and gave me the tools I needed. It became a hobby of mine. I liked to fix things, it turned out. I fell in love with the multiple layers of interlocking pieces, so tiny and delicate they looked like bird bones, fragile and sooty. Watches require servicing; like grandfather clocks and bell towers, they are meant to be kept, loved, and looked after. The straps wear down, gears chaff, hinges must be oiled,r faces polished, springs wound, or they fall out of use. 

My workshop was spare. There was a swivel chair impossible to fall asleep in—its reclining mechanism was broken (I fixed watches, not chairs), so if you leaned back at all, it would suddenly give way, and you’d have the sensation of falling backwards. There was a single overhead bulb with a tenuous string that made a sound almost like a back cracking when you pulled it. And I had pencil cases full of small screwdrivers and gear oilers—unorganized, collected by my father, and at my disposal.

 

My father told me that if I could keep a watch well, I had what it took to be happy. It was so like him to prophesize, especially about happiness. Every time he got depressed, he let his beard grow out; he looked like a sorrowful mage in a sweater-vest. He had a waste-not-want-not attitude—our kitchen cabinets were lined with jam jars and old yogurt containers for tupperware. He’s had the same pair of shoes since I was 2—good friend to the cobbler. It pleases me to fix things. People come to you broken, and you restore a piece of them. A daily-worn watch, leather straps, and silver bracelets; each different, each changing.

 

3.

A downtown intersection during rush hour—rush hour that is also happy hour, that is also winter sunset. The snow falls in heavy flakes from the sky, grey buildings rendered unreflective and ruddy in the dim December light, snow still white and freshly laid. My mind was elsewhere: on a moth-eaten sweater I was mourning; the apple crumble rotting in my fridge; my Wii tennis failures. And on the fridge itself, a Post-it reminding me to reserve a table for my 5-year anniversary with Emma. 

Behind me, two girls were making dull observations about their surroundings— the kind exchanged by people who’ve known each other for a long time and who feel comfortable giving voice to their vague and unremarkable impressions. 

“Look at that window display.:

“Reminds me of Rebecca.” 

“I hate Seinfeld.”

 I was helplessly eaves dropping, quite against my will. 

 

My cold-numbed hands fiddled with my watch, the metal cold around my wrist, and as I fidgeted with it, it snapped clean off. It fell into the snow—fresh and unmuddied yet— leaving a watch-shaped hole in the white bank. The green crocodile leather was well-worn, frosted by the cold, its final straw a long time coming. 

The girls behind me again:

“Oh, to be so in love.” 

“I should call my ex.”

“How sweet and happy.” 

“I love her scarf.”

As I picked my watch out of the snow and looked up, there was Emma, standing beneath the stoplight. She had both her mittened hands around a steaming styrofoam cup, her boss’s hands cupping hers, their foreheads nearly touching under the streetlamp—a shock of warmth in the soft blizzard. A Hallmark moment. 

My heart swelled, then stopped between beats, an interrupted rhythmic thud in my chest. Perhaps I should see a doctor. 

The light turned green. I stood there unmoving while the crowd passed by me, the girls I’d been listening to brushed my shoulders as they split around me. I turned around before they got to my side of the street. I pulled my hood over my hat and pressed the cold metal of my watch into my palm. It burned. 

 

I went to the store instead of  my workshop; the thought of fussing with latches the size of an eyelash, fine gears, and hair springs made me grimace. I wandered around the department store for some time before I found the watch department. I was depressed by the Christmas displays; the holidays were right around the corner. This year’s Christmas cheer, embodied around me in the cheaply suited patrons, was dazzlingly present in the fluorescent shop-floor light. People were gift shopping, assessing ornaments, buying Le Creuset, and blushing as they discussed velvet holiday dresses with matching candy-striped lingerie. I knocked over a stuffed Santa Claus as I walked by. It all made me sick. I hadn’t booked a train ticket home. I had been non-responsive with my family, busy with work and other tedious distractions. It wasn’t intentional on my part, but I had cut them out. I wasn’t sure what I’d find there when I went home; my father was doing better for now. I was now oppressed by the thought of having to explain why Emma wasn’t at Christmas. I wandered through the sporting department in a frustrated search, when finally, through a candy cane tunnel, I found menswear. 

 

I was determined to buy a new watch as the salesman whisked me through displays of white quartz faces, rhodium-plated bands, water-resistant dual-dials. All winking at me beguilingly, one silver and emerald watch sang a carol of newness, magnetic. I’m always putty in the hands of salesmen, their special chrome and polish art of persuasion is something I’d never honed in my years of novice customer service. It’s not that I don’t notice when I’m being swindled, it’s that I am so charmed by it that I just let it happen. 

 

“Suits you perfectly, you have great taste! These go pretty fast in the holiday season. It’s top of the line, cutting edge, and will last you a lifetime! They’re going, going, gone my friend!” He didn’t need to convince me to buy; I was itching to get my hands on it, and I had my broken heart set on it. “Cash or card?” he slithered. When I went for my wallet, I felt the trusty weight of the watch in the opposite pocket. It only had a broken strap. Although shiny new hair springs and golden crowns beckoned to me, I saw my beloved, beat up little watch, a time-keeping frown on its dejected opal face, and I couldn’t give it up. 

 

The salesman was still shouting after me as I wandered into the women’s section looking for an exit. Department stores sully the dramatic exit. 

 

4.

My mother was one of those photographers who took photos of babies in sunflower costumes and in cabbage patches —a hometown Anne Geddes for a dime. When I went home again last Spring, she had twin dachshunds gamboling about the living room with flower crowns strapped to their heads as she set up a photography backdrop which looked like blue sky, stippled with white clouds. She did pets, too. She bid me a distracted “Hi honey, your father’s in the kitchen.” 

I passed into the dining room, washed in the rainy white sunlight of late April. He sat with his glasses low on his nose, a book held far out from his face—evidence he needed a new prescription. Birthday decorations were ready for the party later that night: Happy 58th! strung up above the table in gold. The whole house felt like a jovially set stage. I felt numb. 

I fixated on the punch bowl, still empty, and thought about how people would drink and be merry. Back then, whenever I drank, I got drunk. In fact, I planned on it. Counted on it. Drunk, I would be. 

“Look what the cat dragged in,” was my father’s customary phrase when I came home. It made me feel better. He was his old self: clean-shaven, bespectacled.

 

My separation with Emma had stretched into a whole month of arguments—and worse yet, painstaking logistics. There were things to be sorted through, boxes to open: whose limited-edition record was that, who got the couch. Of course, I should take whatever I liked— just not that. She wanted to be there for me, but I was unable to lean on her shoulder as if it could make things better. I knew she was sorry. But I didn’t care. To break it off would have been one thing: I could have gone on loving her from afar. Instead, there was nothing. And, to make matters worse, my mom loved her. 

 

I checked my watch. Its brand-new imitation leather strap already fraying. It impossibly read 4:35. Outside, it was already dark. Crickets began to chirp indifferently. 

 

“What time is it? 

“8pm, son.” He set his book down. “Would you like the year as well?” 

 

I sank into a seat at the table, pushing aside the place setting which my mother had painstakingly set out—she was a Martha Stewart prodigy, her napkins were swans, her candlesticks unlit in a candelabra. I laid my head down on the bare mahogany; the silverware clattered. People would be arriving in the next hour or so. I still had my bags in the foyer, practically barricading the door. 

 

My father again. “Welcome home.” He patted me on the back, then gestured to my watch. “Still wearing that ugly thing?”

 

The watch’s heart had suddenly stopped beating. Those intermittent clicks that go on in the inner mechanism, between gears and guts, had just ceased to work. And it was a misalignment that I felt was tied to the strings of my heart—but at least I knew how to fix the watch. I took it down into the basement, where I still had a good deal of fix-its, tools, and tweezers. It smelled like the inside of old wooden cabinets, of heather and rust. I clicked the light on. I took it apart piece by piece, placed each delicate gear into its respective tray, and I rewound the spring. It refused to work again. It was far too slow when it did tick, and no matter how much I fussed with it, prodded it with pliers, wound and rewound that delicate hairspring, it refused. 

 

I could hear dishes clattering upstairs, the quiet pop of the decanter where my dad kept the good bourbon. I heard him laugh. I lit a cigarette downstairs like I used to, certain no one would notice. I felt the first calm I’d felt in a long time, down in the workshop. I will try again. It needed a new part. I would take it apart a million times before I gave it up. My father believed in fixing things. Fixing things takes time, and I had lots of it. 

 

When horologists fix a watch, they leave a small tick mark in the very depths of the watch, called a service mark—a tally of each time the watch has needed to be reassembled to work properly. These marks say: someone has seen the deepest parts of me, left their mark, and now I am changed; now I can work again. You wouldn’t know just by looking, because part of the art of it is that it should go unnoticed. But there is a whole history of healing documented inside: of being taken apart and put back together again. 

For love, sentiment, habit, necessity. 

The watch is never the same afterwards. Hands grace its gears, caress its crown, and it is changed. Like a toy soldier, it’s rewound again and again. Marching on and on, keeping time within it.