Clockwork

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

CLOCKWORK

By Selina De Luca

An original piece of short fiction written for the Literary Taxidermy 2020 writing competition by Regulus Press and shortlisted as a runner-up. The story uses the first and last line from the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley but otherwise has nothing to do with Huxley's work.

(Trigger warning: infant loss/miscarriage)

     A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories and beshadowed beneath surrounding high-rises, 801 Perry Street was effectively invisible. Passing drivers sprayed puddles across its front steps, which did little to wash away the pigeon defecation and cigarette butts. A spray-painted expletive above the doorway, faded from the rain, provided the only colour in sight.

     Brooke was also effectively invisible with her grey skirt, brown coat, and umbrella as she splashed her way up the steps of 801 Perry Street for another day of work. If you looked closely you would see that her eyes were bright blue and her cheeks pink, but no one looks closely at 8 a.m. on a Monday. She blended in with the grey skies, the grey cement, the grey shadows. Even a yellow school bus would look grey on a day like today. But Brooke didn’t know anything about school buses. 

     Nobody wished her a good morning in the elevator, in the bathroom, on her way to her cubicle, or in the bathroom again. No one wished her any other kind of morning either. The only wishing here was Brooke wishing 4 p.m. would come a little faster.

     At 9:17 a.m. Brooke again was heading to the bathroom. No one was counting bathroom breaks. No one noticed, nor cared.

     The bathroom had a distinct puke smell, which made her feel worse. But Brooke took a few extra moments to herself. No one would miss her. She dabbed at her eyes with toilet paper.

     She returned to work.

     Like clockwork, she went back and forth from the bathroom to her desk. Sometimes from the coffee station to her desk. She went through the motions of her work. She watched the hands of the clock.

     When 4 p.m. finally came, a stream of people whose faces told they had spent their day doing nothing meaningful (if anyone had bothered to look) streamed out of the squat grey building at 801 Perry Street. Brooke merged with the crowd, keeping pace until she came to a pause outside the corner store.

     Don’t do it, she told herself. Don’t go in.

     She went in. 

     She made her purchase and went home.

     Brooke stood outside her apartment building for a long time before she reached into her coat pocket. She pulled out the pack and her lighter.

     A man came up the walk ten minutes later and sat beside her.

     “You’re not supposed to be doing that,” he said.

     “I know,” she said.

     They sat together, quiet and heavy in their thoughts.

     “Everything’s going to be okay, you know,” the man said after a while.

     “How do you know?”

     “I don’t,” he replied. “But I think it will be.”

     Brooke flicked the cigarette butt and kicked it off the lower step.

     “I’m tired, Greg.”

     “I know, honey.” 

     This was someone who knew Brooke had bright blue eyes and pink cheeks. He reached over and took her hand.

     “Brooke,” he said after another moment. “Don’t smoke. Please. It isn’t good for the baby.”

     “What baby,” she said sullenly. She got up and went inside. 

     Her husband didn’t follow her in until much later. 

     The next day was sunny, but once you hit 801 Perry Street you can hardly tell. Brooke brought her own shadows with her and hardly noticed the difference.

     At 9:05 a.m. she was in the bathroom when there was a timid tapping at the door.

     “Brooke?”

     Brooke wiped her mouth and said, “What?”

    “You okay?”

     “You can come in, there’s an empty stall,” Brooke replied. Jenna’s head poked in, then the rest of her.

     “You’re sick,” said Jenna.

     “I’m okay,” said Brooke.

     “You sure? You could go home. I can tell Alena for you."

     “It’s okay. Really.”

     Brooke didn’t want her boss involved. She didn’t want anyone involved. This was a mind-your-own-business kind of office and she preferred it that way.

     “Thanks for checking on me, though,” she said.

     “For sure,” said Jenna.

     Any delivery packages for 801 Perry today? she texted when she got back to her desk. 

     Greg’s reply didn’t come in until 3:13.

     No, love. Miss me? Followed by, You ok?

     Brooke didn’t stop outside when she got home. She went right in and crawled into bed until Greg came home.

     “Hey, Brooke, you asleep?"

     "Hmm? …no.”

     Greg curled in beside her.

     “Hey, sweetie,” he whispered. "I'll make supper tonight. You rest up."

     “Greg," she said, turning and looking at him with sombre eyes, afraid to ask; “What if we lose this baby?”

     In both their minds an image was cast of two cold little stones. Every word he could say next echoed around them. “We’ll try for another.” “We’ll still have each other.” “I don’t know.”

     “Let’s focus on today,” he said finally, “and let tomorrow tend to itself.”

     When supper was ready, Greg found Brooke asleep, and didn’t have the heart to wake her. 

     The next day was Wednesday, and Brooke was late for work.

     “Brooke.” It was 8:38.

     “Alena, I’m sorry, I overslept –”

     “I’m not here to chastise you. Come see me in my office.”

     Had she forgotten something? A meeting, a due date?

     The word “due date” brought something else to mind, but Brooke shoved it back out.

     Alena’s office was tight and messy, with artwork hanging like pieces of ragged colour thrown at the walls. The clock was crooked. Brooke thought it still looked better than the mundanity of everything else.

     “Brooke,” said Alena when she had sat down, “You know, you can tell me if you need time off work.”

     “Yes,” was all Brooke could think to say.

     “And if you are planning to, ah, take a leave sometime at all, I’d love to know as early as possible.”

     Brooke frowned.

     “Why would I leave?” she said. The words sounded dumb as they crawled through the air.

     “I don’t know, but if you do, you should tell me,” Alena said.

     Brooke thought for a moment, then said, “I’ll quit in the Fall.”

     “Quit?” echoed Alena. “Not a temporary leave?”

     “Quit,” repeated Brooke. 

     “Oh. Okay.”

     Even if nothing else happens, she almost added, but didn’t.

     “Also, Brooke,” Alena began again, “if you need a mental health day, it's no problem.”

     “Thanks,” Brooke said softly. She avoided looking directly in Alena's eyes. She looked at Alena's scarf. There was a trickle of coffee on her scarf. 

     “I'd rather keep working through,” she said in a voice that sounded like she really wouldn’t. 

     Being at home alone is worse, she almost added, but didn't. 

     “I understand,” said Alena.

     Do you though?

     She returned to her desk.

     Six more months. Maybe five. 

     … Then what?

     She did not know.

     Thursday and Friday passed as monotonously as Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday had. At 4 p.m. on Friday, the building itself seemed to issue one great sigh of relief. 

     Brooke made several sighs of her own, and not all of them were of relief.

     With the air of 801 Perry Street still about her, she sat at the dinner table that evening – that place of ritual conversation that burdened her, just like the bedroom did; and the other bedroom too, the one that was empty, the one with the nice pink, blue, and yellow teddy bears and ducks and things.

     “Rough week, eh, honey?”

     “Tell me about it,” with another sigh upon others too many to count.

     “And you didn't call in sick.”

     “Didn't want to.”

     They were eating soup from a can. They used to do homemade pizza on Fridays, but that was before. Now meals were just another part of the mindless clockwork of the week, and everything Brooke ate tasted like ash.

     Brooke's eyes travelled the room while she spooned at her soup. Her brow furrowed without her realizing. Momentarily she looked at her husband.

     “What is it, honey?” Greg asked.

     “Do you remember… Remember when we said we would buy a house after we had a couple kids to fill it with?”

     “Yes,” he said questioningly. 

     “Well…” She wasn't sure how exactly to word it. How much longer are we going to wait for kids that don’t come?

     “It's been a while since we've talked about moving,” said Greg.

     “I don't like this apartment.”

     “But – the baby's room.”

     “That's the worst part!” Brooke cried. “And it’s cramped, there's no backyard or laundry, and I hate having to take an elevator and sharing a big building with noisy people who smoke weed!”

     “You worked hard preparing that room,” Greg said calmly. “It hasn't been touched. You couldn't bear to leave it.”

     He meant that she never could bear it before, but she thought he meant she would never be able to bear it at all, and resentment rolled in like a fog.

     “I don't want to wait for kids that might never come.” Icicles clung to her words. 

     “We have one on the way right now,” said Greg. 

     Brooke set her spoon down very, very carefully and looked her husband dead in the eye, dead like the part of her heart that didn't want to heal because, if alive and happy, would render her losses meaningless. But she didn't have to remind him.

     “We can start looking at houses again if you want to, Brooke,” said Greg. “I want you to be happy.”

     Brooke wanted to be happy too, but she also didn’t.

     Brooke dreamt that night of a very young crying sound coming from the other room, but when she went to check, the room was barren but for a sales agent babbling about windows and square footage.

     When she woke, it was noon. Brooke noticed both the sunshine and the size of her bump. She and Greg combined effort on the eggs, oatmeal, and yogurt with strawberries. Brooke seemed refreshed, though her body still drooped.

     “Brooke,” Greg said as they sat to eat, “your job is burdening you too much. Or is it just the pregnancy and… you know.”

     “I never liked this job,” she admitted. “It's boring as hell.”

     “I think it's causing you undue stress.”

     “It's dull, not stressful,” she shrugged. “The people are robots. The building is the most blah place in the world. The street is both too noisy and too quiet, if you know what I mean.”

     Greg thought he knew, but he didn’t walk into 801 Perry Street every Monday at 8 a.m. and every other weekday too. 

     “Will you consider finding a new job?” he asked. 

     “What job, Gregory?” The knots in Brooke's shoulders were audible in her voice. Greg unconsciously spread his fingers out like a shield. 

     “I don't know. Something less boring. More fulfilling.”

     “Like what?” Her voice became bitter as dust.  “Like teaching, Greg? Or, I don't know, maybe I should try stay-at-home motherhood like I always wanted? Or should I join you in mail service?”

     “Brooke.”

     The eyes that met across the table were the eyes of loved ones that had been through just enough rough times that they had forgotten how to be loving. She didn't apologize. She mumbled something about tomorrow being Sunday and then offered to top up his coffee. But he put his hand on hers when she refilled it in a gesture of forgiveness, or of asking for forgiveness. 

     Brooke left at 2:15 p.m. to take a walk. She took her smokes with her. She walked and she walked down a long, straight trail in the woods. There were several paths winding off, but she stayed on the main path. Brooke wanted an easy path. She did not want any obstacles in her way. And she just kept walking, mindless and mechanical. But the cigarette pack got tossed into a garbage can along the way. 

     When she got home at 7:03, there was supper ready for her on the table and a clump of fresh daisies in a little bouquet, with a note.

     Greg's kind gestures just made Brooke feel guilty. 

     My sister's in labour and Mom is sick. Gone to watch Avery. Love you.

     The text on her phone said the same. In case you didn't see my note. I’ll be back after the baby comes.

     Emotions washed over Brooke – envy, guilt, sadness – and then it hit her that she could be alone in the apartment all night, hit hard enough to leave bruises.

     When Greg got home at 4 a.m., he found the supper untouched and no one in his bed. Cursing, he was almost ready to call 9-1-1; Brooke never left the house at night. Ever. He thought to check even the closets and bathtub first. He wouldn't have thought to find her there, but the door ajar arrested him. He found a sleeping Brooke as fetal as she could get inside the untouched crib. He could tell she had been weeping. He lifted her gently, as he would have lifted the children who should have been with them now, and brought Brooke back to their bed.

     He then lay awake in bed for a long time. He thought of his new nephew who had arrived in the night, and of the little life inside his wife. He thought of other times when there had been little lives. He thought about the house they didn't own and the teaching job Brooke had lost, and the two little gravestones in the cemetery.  

     “I believe this one will make it,” Greg had said one Sunday visit. They always drove out to the cemetery on Sundays.

     “How do you know?” Brooke had asked, her voice wistful and pained.

     “I don't. I just believe it.”

     “Like you believe in God when you don't know if he exists?” she had scoffed. 

     “Sure.”

     “If God exists,” she said after a tearful pause, “why does he hate me so much?” 

     “Maybe,” replied Greg, “when the baby is born, you will wonder how he loves you so much.”

     “Is that what you believe?” she’d retorted.

     He had gathered her in the kind of hug only he could offer her and kissed her hair. What else could he do? 

     “If you listen carefully,” Brooke had said on another Sunday, her voice wild, trying too hard, “the wind sounds like voices calling to us.”

     He'd said nothing, but he listened. He heard the breeze, but he couldn't imagine any words even if he tried. There were no words.

     “It’s coming from every direction,” she went on. And, like a mechanical dance, she turned slowly to receive the messages of comfort from each point on the compass. Greg did not know if he was watching hope rekindling, or a wildly desperate woman injecting meaning into everything.

     She turned, and she turned. North, north-west, west, south-west...

     Greg fell asleep to Brooke still turning and turning in his mind. Her face was lifted to the breeze as though she could catch one more breath of her children before they blew away. And she just kept turning. Like clockwork. South-south-west, south, south-east, east....