The Perfect Watch

 My grandmother’s watch was an ugly thing - bulky and hardly feminine. It was loud, too. Its ticking could be heard anywhere in the house, no matter where I went or how deep it was buried. If that wasn’t enough, the ticking was out of sync – always too fast or too slow for what should’ve been its rhythm. More than once I’d tried to rid myself of the thing. Pawnshop after pawnshop I’d tried, and failed, all on account of the watch’s incessant ticking.

No one could pry it open. No beating or smashing did the trick. The watch was set in its rebellion; a spiteful little thing that I’m not even sure my grandmother was fond of, considering I’d never seen it till she passed. But there it’d sat on her desk, a note tied around the brass bracelet stating that only I should have it, much to my confusion. My grandmother and I had never been close. She wasn’t close with anyone in the end, so absolutely no one minded. They all saddled me with the ugly, loud watch from a woman I hardly knew.

The night I brought it home, all I heard was tick, tick, tick! and I decided very quickly, I would in fact not have it. The watch would be gone first thing that morning.

Then three days passed.

I felt guilty for hating it, and even more so for trying to sell it. Now I felt extremely guilty as I dangled it over the kitchen trash bin. My grandmother gifted me this (awful) thing because, for whatever reason, she wanted me to have it, and here I was desperate to get rid of it. Of her.

Tick, tick, tick!

The watch wasn’t the only one that knew spite.

Taking the ticking as a challenge, I let the watch slip from my fingers. Finally, I’d had it. I would wash my hands of the ugly watch and after a few days, the guilt would subside.

When I heard the clatter of metal against the bottom of the bin, my guilt drained away, suddenly satisfied. Surely she would understand. I didn’t mind that it was ugly – I simply didn’t have to look at it – but if it wouldn’t stop ticking…

Then I realized. The ticking…it had stopped!

I looked down at the bin, even more elated than I’d been moments ago. I wouldn’t have to part with it after all!

And yet, there the bin sat achingly empty.

Odd. Surely my depth perception wasn’t that bad. But the watch was simply nowhere in sight.

You would think a giant brass wristwatch would be noticeable against a white linoleum floor, but seeing as I couldn’t find the damn thing, you’d be wrong.

They say you have an easier time finding something when you aren’t looking for it, so after about ten minutes of crawling around on the floor, I decided to do just that. The watch was just playing tricks on me. Scolding me for daring to throw it away in the first place.

The guilt returned in full force.

Sleep was hard to find that night. A worrisome knot had settled deep into the pit of my stomach. The house was silent, eerily so, and as annoying as the watch’s irregular ticking was, it had become this constant thing in my life; a metronome of subconscious comfort.

I missed it. More than I missed my own grandmother, I realized.

She hadn’t been much different than the watch. She was loud and opinionated, and hardly any of my family felt any peace around her. She liked to needle her way into things. Demand one’s attention and then berate them for going against her advice or her idea on how life should be lived.

It was tiresome keeping up with her, and so many of us, myself included, just gave up. There’s only so much energy you can give a person before you yourself run dry.

In the end, she’d died alone. None of us even knew her health was failing, she’d edged us all so far away. It was depressing, really, to think that no one had the tolerance for her, and no one had ever been good enough for her. But she must’ve cared. Why else would she give me the watch?

Maybe it wasn’t the watch punishing me, but her herself. I certainly wouldn’t put it past her.

Normally, I wake up to my alarm clock, but the next morning, I woke to the sun poking at my eyes.

The house remained quiet, but there was no peace in it. The knot from last night remained as I looked over to my clock, curious as to how it hadn’t gone off yet.

12:00 AM blinked before me. Of course. The damn thing wasn’t working.

It turned out, none of the clocks in the house were working. There must’ve been a power surge during the night, which meant that on top of missing my alarm, my phone hadn’t charged either.

No wonder I’d felt so guilty throwing the watch out. My gut was warning me about all the horrors my grandmother’s wrath would invoke.

As annoying as it was, I was eager to get out of the silent house. Even though my grandmother had never been over to visit, I swore I felt her in the air, sucking my peace away from me as she had in life.

The roads were strangely empty that morning. No cars, no runners, no bikers or dog walkers were anywhere in sight, and every stoplight I passed flashed yellow. A miasma of fog had also taken hold over the world, and the farther I drove, the foggier it got. 

Without warning, I found myself blinded in every direction. The fog pressed against my car, preventing me from moving forward or backward. I was simply stuck. All I could do was turn my hazards on, even though they likely wouldn’t do anything, and wait till the thick barrier lifted.

And then my car shut off.

It seemed my grandmother had followed me out of the house.

“Oh, come on!”

Frustrated, I reached down for my phone to see if it had at least charged enough to turn on, but just as I made contact, it disappeared. In fact, the entire car disappeared. I was standing outside in the chilly fog, car nowhere in sight.

There was nothing but asphalt before me. No other landmarks could be seen through the unrelenting haze. My first thought was that I was dreaming, but as dreamlike as it all felt, there was a tangibility to it all that was far too elaborate for my mind to conjure.

I felt the sudden urge to walk forward. I don’t know where it came from, but my body didn’t hesitate. Step after step I walked, hoping my subconscious would guide me out of the fog. Instead, the fog felt heavier, colder. I shivered as the wetness clung to my hair and skin.

It was just like my grandmother to make you suffer for disagreeing with her. All she ever did was twist things back on you, never taking accountability for herself. Never did she think that maybe she was in the wrong; that maybe she was the one isolating herself. I could never figure it out if she did it knowingly or not. To me, it seemed obvious. If she would just stop pushing…

My feet stopped. My mind settled.

The watch lay in the street before me, glinting sadly in the diffused light. I reached down, accepting that she’d moved it here, but when I clasped the watch in my hand, I found myself transported back to the safety of my kitchen, staring down at my empty trash bin. 

The weight of the watch in my hand was the only thing that gave me any indication that what I’d just experienced was real, yet when I looked down, the watch was changed. This watch was still brass, but slender and stark in its design. The bracelet was thin, and the face boringly mundane, and the most strange of all – its quiet ticking was perfectly in time.

This was the watch I’d wished for a thousand times over during my sleepless nights. It was not raucous or ugly. It was entirely tolerable, forgettable. Palatable. By all accounts, I should’ve been happy. I should forget the strange occurrences of the morning and be thankful the universe had given me the very thing I’d wanted, but it was a blessing that I wanted no part of.

I didn’t notice I was crying till a tear hit the plain face of the watch. I stared down at the tear, wishing it would transform this perfect thing back into the ugly watch I hated. I missed the ticking, the heavy feeling of it in my hand. I wanted it back, so I wished for it just as fervently as I’d wished for this one. But the perfect watch remained.

She was mocking me. Throwing my mistake back in my face and unforgiving in the wake of my guilt.

A thought came to me then, like one of those epiphanies you have in the shower. Something had happened to the ugly watch to make it tick like that. It couldn’t help its physicality, but surely it hadn’t been made to tick so poorly if it were ever good at telling time.

A weight lifted from my shoulders, or from the house. My grandmother’s taunting presence dissipated but was not the cause of the peace I found. That came from within me, deep in my heart and soul. It spilled out – forgiveness for her and myself abounding. It was healing I hadn’t known I’d needed. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe the watch was the only reason for it.

And maybe, though I doubted it, this was her way of reaching out and asking for forgiveness.