Dr. Connors said he had seen his patients attached to all sorts of items: blankets, teddy bears, restaurant menus, a parent’s article of clothing. One child, he remembered, had even grown fond of a plastic skull she found at a Halloween store. As he said this, Dr. Connors made his fingers fang-like, showing us how the child clung to the skull through the open holes of the eyes for their entire meeting. He said this attachment to inanimate items happened because children had a tendency to manifest connections to the things we as adults take for granted. Their imagination is immeasurable, he said, and that sometimes means assigning meaning to the meaningless. While Dr. Connors continued, I looked on at Miguel through the two-way glass and noticed he had propped Clockie up against the leg of the chair in Dr. Connors’ office. He was constructing something with the LEGO pieces, telling Clockie what they would do once he finished building their little town.
Clockie reminded me of the clocks from school, the ones that hovered in the hallways and that I would only look at when I remembered they existed. They were always tattered up, the plexiglass surfaces cut and bruised from years of abuse, their digits faded, the once-white faces tanned and damaged by age. But Clockie was in near-mint condition, not a single blemish on its face.
“When did this start?” Dr. Connors asked as he put his pen to the open page of the notebook on his lap. Dr. Connors was a handsome man. He had dirty-blond hair, some silver sprinkled in around his roots and in his thick mustache. I could tell he was white, just tanned from his years of overexposure to the Corpus Christi sun. Me, him, and Nani were in the room next door to the playroom looking on at Miguel on the other side. Most everyone said Miguel looked like me, but when they told me this, I would disagree and point out Nani’s small eyes on him, the way his face curved from cheek to chin like hers. I did this mostly because I was trying to convince myself it was one less thing he inherited from me. But now, as I studied him playing on the ground, I could see my eyebrows on him, my ears and their unusual bigness. The parts of me were uncanny, undeniable. I also noticed how calm he was as we all discussed him just a few feet away. I always imagined if I was being talked about that my ears would grow hot or my fingers might tingle. But apparently not Miguel; he just kept offering tiny bricks to Clockie as if it would grow limbs and take them from him, help Miguel build the things he dreamed of.
“Do you know those clock toys you give kids? The ones with a face and moveable hands with different colored numbers? Well, one day Miguel’s broke. He was upset. I gave him one just sitting in the garage—I’m an elementary teacher and I was changing classrooms—anyway, this one,” Nani motions to me, “comes home and puts batteries in it and now we’re here.” As Nani said this, I could feel her shoot a gaze at me.
It was a look I knew too well, the one that says I told you so without saying the actual words. I didn’t like that she blamed me for Clockie because I knew it was also to blame for Miguel’s lack of having friends, how he only paid attention to this thing in his hands. But I didn’t remember him ever being sociable before Clockie. What I did remember was how happy Clockie made him. All I wanted to do was show him that the things we love shouldn’t have to stay silent.
“It’s no one’s fault,” Dr. Connors said. “I’m sure Miguel will grow out of this soon enough.”
“Then do we need to bring him here?” I asked.
“Well.” Dr. Connors shifted in his chair. He smiled disarmingly. “There’s nothing wrong with therapy. See, parents bring their children to therapy not because something is wrong with them, but because they want to assure that remains the case.”
“That’s what I keep telling Raul,” Nani said. And it was true. She had told me there wasn’t a stigma to therapy anymore, something I had already known to be true. But I was still hesitant to bring Miguel here from the beginning. I just knew that if someone outside this room found out he was here, they would treat him like he was damaged, afraid they could damage him more. It’s not that I wanted him broken, but I felt like everyone deserved a chance to learn from their hurt.
“There’s nothing wrong with him,” I said. “He’s seven.”
“Of course not,” Dr. Connors said. He looked at me, then Nani. Again, he grinned, this time with a bit of pity. “Everyone needs help every once in a while.”
We sat in silence. Again, I turned my attention to Miguel who had seemingly finished the small house between him and Clockie and was now moving two male dolls in a circle. Miguel blew raspberries as he crashed one doll into the ground and held the other above his head like the doll was preparing to freefall. It was muffled behind the glass, but I could hear him tell Clockie they had saved the world.
It was moments like this one that scared me, the moments he was more alive in his imagination than I had seen him outside of his own world. He didn’t just look like me; he reminded me how alone I felt as a kid, how I preferred solitude and silence.
“He looks like he’s having fun,” Dr. Connors said.
“He is,” I said, still looking at Miguel.
“Let me talk to him next week. I just want to see if there is anything I can do to help.”
“We’d really like that,” Nani said. “Right, Raul?”
I nodded.
We all got up, shook hands, then exited the room into the playroom. Miguel never looked up from his creation, just acknowledged us by narrating our entrance.
“Come on, mijo,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.” Miguel looked up at me and smiled. He grabbed Clockie with both hands and wrapped his arms around it. He hid himself behind me, something he had done since he began walking.
“Did I hear that you and Clockie are headed to the beach today?” Dr. Connors asked as he squatted down to Miguel.
“Yes,” Miguel said, sheepishly.
“Now it makes sense! I was wondering why you had those cool sharks on your shorts. You think you’ll see any out there?”
Miguel nodded and smiled while Dr. Connors kept asking him about his beach day. What I admired about Dr. Connors was how he spoke to Miguel as an adult and as if Clockie was as real as everyone else in the room. I had tried this myself at one point, giving Clockie a voice when I saw Miguel was playing with it, even offering Clockie food and drink when I cooked us dinner. But Miguel would stay silent and leave Clockie on the floor, disappointed almost that I had even attempted, like I had interrupted his imagination.
This was the second time we had ever met with Dr. Connors, the first being his initial consultation with Miguel. That day, when Nani and I were the ones on the opposite side of the glass looking on at the two of them, Miguel seemed to open up to him a bit; Dr. Connors was how we found out Miguel didn’t have any friends at school. Each time they interacted, I noticed how Dr. Connors never looked to me or Nani for answers, never let Miguel remember we were with him. He just let him come to him in his own time. Dr. Connors entered Miguel’s world happily and Miguel seemed to like it. I envied that.
Miguel sat on the towel we laid out for him and Clockie. The two of them played in the sand, Miguel occasionally throwing handfuls of sand onto Clockie’s plexiglass surface. I knew Miguel would ask me to clean Clockie sometime tonight. “Bath Time” I called it, as I didn’t want him to bring Clockie into his actual bath.
Cleaning Clockie was soothing for me. I would wipe down the surface with disinfectant wipes, then take a toothpick and clean the dust from the small space between the plexiglass surface and Clockie’s plastic body. It was like ironing or mowing the lawn, something so mindless it let me be free of thought for a few moments. I took it as a chance to get to know the thing Miguel loved so much.
Sometimes as I cleaned it, I would imagine what Clockie would sound like, what secrets Miguel would tell it. But the thread of my imagination was thin. Something would pull my focus and I’d forget what voice I would assign to Clockie this time. Then I’d look down and all it would do is stare back at me, its two red clock hands ticking in my face, telling me nothing but the amount of time the two of them had been apart.
“We can’t take him to the beach after every session,” Nani said to me. We both sat in the open trunk of the SUV as Miguel played on the beach a few feet ahead of us. Dr. Connors told us it would be good to take some time and just observe Miguel, see what he does with Clockie, what he says. From here, we couldn’t really hear him above the waves crashing, which I was happy about. I wanted him to have something to himself.
“We won’t. I just thought it’d be nice.”
“I’m worried about him. He seems to get attached to anything.”
“He’s a kid, babe.”
Nani turned her body toward me and sprawled her legs across mine, relaxing herself as she laid down on the floor of the trunk.
“Were you ever attached to something as a kid?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I had this tiny bear. Beary. He was small. Could fit him in the palm of my hands. He had one straggly eye and food stains all over his fur.”
“That’s adorable.” Nani put her hand on mine. “What happened to him?”
“I lost him,” I said. “Did you have something?”
“Not really. I used to have this one pink hair clip I wore every day to school. It was the kind you snap down and it sounds like a gunshot. It had two pink butterflies at the top of it.”
“What happened to it?”
“I just stopped using it one day. And I stopped slicking my hair back like a lady bus driver.” She laughed as she said this.
As we watched Miguel, I tried remembering when it was that Beary came into my life. I must have been young, an age before memory begins to ruin us. What I did remember was how close I held him to me, how he came with me everywhere I went. To the movies (I would prop him in the cupholder and face him toward the screen), to family barbecues (he would get a toothpick full of whatever food I ate), to the grocery store (he would guard the food my mother put into the basket as we trekked along each aisle). No matter where I went, Beary came along.
Anytime he wasn’t near me—if I had left him back for fear of people finding him or I didn’t have room to stuff him in my pockets—I would feel a hole inside of me, a literal emptiness. The few times I had to leave him behind and I’d realize he was all alone, the moment I got back home, I would rush to my room, grab him from under the covers—my favorite place to hide him—and run to the restroom. With the shower drowning out my voice, I would tell him about everything I did that day, whatever adventures I had gone on, and I would apologize for leaving him behind. Beary never seemed to mind. He would just stare back at me, his stitched face always fixed in a frown.
It remained this way for quite a while. And it didn’t seem to be a problem. Until it was.
In the beginning, everyone dismissed me and Beary the same way they would dismiss the wind in the trees. But as Beary stayed with me into my late teens, I could feel everyone judging me, scolding me for living in a world beyond this one. The worst came from my father, staring at me, burning holes as he studied the two of us together. He never said a word to me about Beary; everything he wanted to say was in his stares of disappointment, the way he looked away when we made eye contact and nodded his head. That was when I knew I had had him for longer than was acceptable. The moment I began to feel this happening more often, Beary became a secret. The more I distracted myself with school and work, the more I could feel him being pushed into the shadows of my mind. It wasn’t until one day while I was in college, when my parents had joked about Beary, mentioning him in the past tense, and I had gone along with it, that I realized he was nothing but a memory.
Miguel reminded me of Beary when he first showed signs of attachment to Clockie a few months ago. He had propped Clockie up on the chair next to him at the table and I couldn’t help but see myself from so long ago. It was the first time in years, but I could still recall Beary so clearly in my mind. At first, I was happy to remember my friend. But as the memories of Beary came flooding back, how Beary came alive because I wanted someone to understand me as much as I did myself, I wondered if Miguel and his affinity for Clockie was because of me. If somehow, my body had mapped the road to loneliness, and it had found its way to my son.
Outside on the beach, Miguel was still tossing sand onto Clockie’s face, now spreading the fistfuls like ashes. After a few more blessings, Miguel stopped. I saw him place his hand over Clockie’s face, patting it, almost slapping it. Then he began to cry.
I stepped onto the sand and made my way to him.
“Clockie!” Miguel screamed.
I grabbed Clockie and noticed the hands had stopped moving. I gently shook it, put my ear against its chest. Nothing. Nani stepped out of the car and was now comforting Miguel. She kept saying Clockie’s okay, it’s sleeping. Miguel didn’t care. He held his tiny hands over his ears, tears streaming down his face. He kept saying he wanted to go home.
Driving down SPID, I could hear Miguel through his tears, whispering to Clockie to please wake up. Nani looked at me, and whispered: “We can wean Clockie away from him.”
It surprised me how easily she said that given that Dr. Connors had warned us about taking Clockie away from Miguel so abruptly. He said it could cause all sorts of unwanted trauma. I remembered those were his exact words because I kept asking myself what kind of trauma is wanted. I never summoned the courage to ask him.
In the rearview mirror, I could see Miguel holding Clockie tight against his chest. Tears began welling in my eyes.
“We’re almost home, baby,” I said to Miguel, and focused my attention back to the highway into town. At some point, I looked down at the speedometer. I hadn’t noticed, but I was driving fifteen miles over the speed limit.
When Miguel was three months old, Nani used to do this thing called Tummy Time where she would place him, face-down, on my back as I laid on my stomach. Miguel would flail his arms and legs as he swam in the absent water, cooing and gazing around the room. Then, suddenly, I could feel him stop moving altogether and he would just lay his head against me. His body would remain still as his mouth would try to nibble on my shoulder. And after a few minutes, he would fall asleep. I liked to think it was because he heard the sound of my heart beating in my chest. He could hear me through my bones, my blood.
Now, as I sat at the dinner table, Miguel had his head against my back. Every so often he’d peek over my shoulder as I gave Clockie a bath. Nani had tried tucking Miguel into bed when we got home, but he refused. Instead, he stood at a distance and asked if Clockie was okay. I would tell him yes, but when I turned to see he had crept closer, he would ask again, and it was then I knew he wouldn’t believe me until he heard his friend speak.
I stood up and scavenged through the hot sauce-soy sauce-old mail-battery drawer to find a lone screwdriver and two double-A batteries in their packaging. With Miguel still watching me, I unscrewed Clockie’s backing.
“I’m a skilled surgeon,” I told him, and waved the screwdriver. I could tell it did nothing to really assuage Miguel, but he nodded anyway. When I pulled out the old batteries, I placed them on the counter only for Miguel to gather them. It was the first time he had looked away from Clockie since I started working. I considered what it was he was doing, what he could possibly be seeing as he stared at the dead batteries.
“Did you and Clockie have a good time at the beach?”
Miguel looked at me, somewhat confused. He shifted his gaze over to his friend, disassembled on the table.
“You know, every once in a while, Clockie’s heart is gonna give out. But that’s okay. I’ll make sure Clockie’s good as new.”
Miguel studied me for a moment. He looked down. “Do you promise?”
“I promise, baby.”
With the batteries cupped in his hands, Miguel held them close to his chest. The way he held them was the way someone would hold a baby bird. Every so often, he would peek down into his palms, then close them, letting the metal shells clang and then rest in the home of his hands.
I placed the new batteries inside of Clockie and almost immediately we could hear tick tock. Miguel’s face lit up behind me. I quickly screwed everything in place and asked Miguel if I could fix Clockie’s time. He agreed, just happy to hear his friend.
With Clockie still on the table, Miguel placed his ear against its chest. He closed his eyes, almost like he was asleep.
“Is Clockie saying anything?” I asked.
It took a few moments, but when Miguel opened his eyes, he smiled. “No,” and he laughed. “Clockie can’t speak,” he said.
“It can’t?”
“No. Everyone at school asks me that too.”
“What do you tell them? When they ask?”
“I tell them Clockie can’t speak,” Miguel said, “but I still listen.”
“Listen to what?”
He then opened up his hands, guiding me to Clockie’s face. “Here,” he said.
I did as he had, putting my ear to Clockie. I tried siphoning what sounds I could make out. All I could hear were quick and loud ticks. I imagined the gears inside of Clockie, seeing them turn in unison to make its two hands move. Metal against metal. Wires in the background. With every new tick and tock, a light flickered in my mind. It was piercing. Literal.
“Now close.” Miguel ran his tiny hands along my eyes. I must have looked like a ceramic doll with gravity-adjusting eyes. This time, I really tried to concentrate, even emptying my mind of everything that came to the forefront.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had stood this still. For some reason, I felt like I wasn’t supposed to know what this stillness felt like. Like I would be missing something if I didn’t move this very moment. It took a few flashes of guilt to pass until all I began feeling were the ticks from Clockie vibrating through my body, stopping in my chest. I reached my hand under my shirt and placed it over my heart. It was faint, but I could feel it beating through my skin. My heart was in rhythm with Clockie’s. Out of nowhere, I thought about Beary again, this time his face stitched with a smile instead of a frown. All I could think about was how much joy he brought me. How, at one point in my life, he was all I ever needed. I didn’t care about pleasing anyone, because as long as I had Beary I would be okay. In his two furry hands, I found happiness. And somewhere along the way, I lost that. I didn’t want that for my son.
Sometime during my reverie, Miguel had rested his head on my back, leaning into my body like he had when he was a baby. This time, he wrapped his arms around me. “Can you hear it, Papa?”
“I can,” I said.
