Housewarming Party
If you and I were in the kitchen of the home I had just moved into, and while I was towel-drying dishes I asked you, “Where should I put my grandfather clock?” And you responded by only raising a quizzical brow at me.
I’d continue,“Well, where do you think it will sound the best?” And even though you are my guest, you take me about the house, imagining where the grand tolling instrument of time would appear most pleasingly.
And when you lead me through the stained glass windowed sitting room—projecting crystal-like blue and green hues across an otherwise plain room; to the hall with tapioca-colored carpet and cedar wood walls; and into the coat closet in the front hall—where inside a single bulb dangles by a wire illuminating one winter coat and one sport jacket—there, I’d ask you, “Friend, while your enthusiasm flatters me, must we run about someone else’s home like this?”
And when, out of breath, you ask, “What do you mean?” I’d simply inquire—while looking up to the vaulted ceilings, and side to side at the undecorated brown walls around us—“Don’t you think the clock would sound best here?”
And when your eyes widen I take this as a “Yes.” And when your mouth falls agape, I assume this means, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
And when I shut the door behind me, it’s as if I can already hear the clock in this crevice of the house.
For a clock is no more than an instrument to count the moments. Moments that may have passed otherwise unaccounted. The clarity that washes over the home following each TOLL and PANG reveals, to the listener, the delights of the day’s events.
The beauty of the grandfather clock—though it is heavy, though it is fickle, though it is high maintenance—is when it announces itself, on the hour, it offers a moment of silence for everything else in the vicinity. With its grandiose sound, it eliminates all others.
I hear it now, immediately, coming from the front hall closet—TOLL, PANG, PANG, PANG.
And there comes, immediately, the clarity in the absence of every other sound an old house and its inhabitants could offer; just the peace I needed to retrace the steps of a day that would have otherwise gotten away from me.
I recall, finally, how I even happened upon this home. Admittedly, I was snooping the grounds when I realized the back door to the kitchen was wide open—like a pie cooling on the window sill. And so I helped myself.
And the clock goes TOLL, PANG, PANG, PANG—and I realize now that, earlier, it wasn’t dishes I was drying by hand; it was rope I was tethering around your wrists as I caught you eating your lunch in the kitchen.
TOLL.
That, earlier, we weren’t touring the new home together to find a spot for my soon-to-be clock; but rather I was chasing you through this home I found you in after you battered me when I bent down to bind your ankles.
That, earlier, it wasn’t a closet we came upon; but your new cage—like the mahogany body of a grandfather clock, inside of which you will
PANG, PANG, PANG.
And scream.
Oh, how I know you will scream, but it will disappear into the sound of the wooden closet door thudding under the weight of your bound body—TOLL.
How the ungodly heavy door will eventually rattle on its very hinges from the force you bring down on it—PANG, PANG, PANG.
And relentlessly you will do so, as if that might bring about your freedom. As if I won’t be waiting outside the closet door every midnight, and every noon, and every hour in between—on the hour—waiting for your body to TOLL and PANG.
But what is grand about our new arrangement is that it causes you little pain and offers immense reward. You may, now, see it as an ongoing obligation. But to me, it makes you into more than just a man crouched over a table eating a lonely lunch—a man too careless and complacent to even shut his back door.
And I promise as my grandfather clock and prized possession, you will be treated as my cherished guest in the home I just moved into.
Margaret Smith is a Chicago-based writer, editor, and recent graduate of Columbia College Chicago. The focus of her work ranges from the socio-political to the eerie and uncanny—and, sometimes, the moments when those aspects of life coincide.