The bricks of the town square glowed dully, as though rain had somehow fallen from a cloudless sky. Against the saw-toothed line of old buildings the crane loomed, monolithic and cold. In its overseeing shadow squatted the clock tower, the pride and joy of all tradition-minded citizens, the most conventional of which was Ina Gale. Ina was a short woman whose white hair orbited her head in delicate wisps, blown free of pinching clips and bobby pins that most women in her age-bracket saw fit to skewer their heads with. Her dollop of a figure hurried across the square, dwarfed by a passing crowd of junior high students on their way to the base of the clock tower, to be lectured on its historical importance, local significance and all manner of other ways in which it made their home that much better than all the neighboring towns it resembled. Ina was tempted to follow them and listen to what was said, perhaps correct a fact or two as chairwoman of the historical society and the person who stood at the helm of the tower’s restoration, but thought better of it. She veered from the field trip’s path toward more pressing matters.

John, her husband, had woken up in rather a blur, his head only loosely tethered to his neck. It was impossible, Ina had decided just after coffee and toast, for him to make his doctor’s appointment that morning, so, with her make-up applied and hair coiffed, she had struck out in his stead. Canceling by phone at the last minute was completely out of the question.

In the waiting room, uncomfortable in the sudden absence of smell and color, she greeted the receptionist. “Hello, dear,” Ina said, placing her small hands on the counter.

“Good morning, Mrs. Gale. Are you scheduled for today?” Straining forward in his seat, he checked the appointment listing.

“No, it’s Mr. Gale today. Only I’m not sure he’s up to it. He insisted on making the appointment, but then no husband can insist on something so well as his wife can insist against it.”

“I’ll believe that.”

“Would it be possible to reschedule? We do hate wasting Dr. Miller’s time.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine, just let me check…” The computer clicked and whirred like an angry insect as the receptionist pounded away, almost battling it to receive an answer. “Well, there’s an open appointment late this afternoon, but nothing after that for a few weeks.”

“At what time?”

“Four-thirty.”

“Oh dear, I’ve got a meeting at the historical society at four.”

“How’s all that coming? The clock tower’s looking better and better everyday, if I do say so myself.”

“It’s almost finished. Just a few more structural supports, I think, and we’ll have our peace and quiet back.”

“Construction is pretty noisy, isn’t it?”

“Awful. It’s awful. But hang on, I’ll try to send Mr. Gale over for that four-thirty appointment. He should be able to make the walk on his own by then, don’t you think?”

“Sure. He’s fine every time I’ve seen him in. Rips pages out of the cooking magazines, doesn‘t even try to be sneaky about it like the other patients,” the receptionist laughed, “But fine outside of that.”

“It’s settled, then. He’ll be in at four-thirty. Thank you for being so understanding, dear.”

“No problem whatsoever, ma’am. Have a nice rest of your day.”

“You, too. Goodbye.”

Ina set out from the office back home, crossing again over the square, which served as a nexus to all points anyone would possibly want to go in town. From the bank to the grocery store, from the post office to the only decent restaurant for miles, nearly every possible path intersected on the red bricks huddling around the clock tower. Sometimes, Ina found herself walking habitually across it, her intended destination forgotten in favor of familiar passage. It was for that very reason that the tower’s reconstruction was so important. As a young adult, she had done her part in a committee to remove and redesign the offensive human automatons who exploded from their hollows to proclaim every new hour. Those mechanized stereotypes leering down at her, their faces carved into ugly caricatures of caricatures, had given her cause to hate the clock. But now, as sparrows and gargoyles and monkeys instead rattled to announce ten o’clock, she felt only a warm connection with the structure. It was the weight which held down her home, the only stationary point in a life, as all lives must be, of change. Ina kept her head raised as she walked the rest of the way home, savoring the chill of the breeze against her bones.

“I’m back, dearest,” she called, coming in the front door. The Gale house was comfortably small and worn, despite the great care Ina took with it. Straightening an embroidered throw on an armchair before she continued on to the kitchen, she took a long, satisfied breath. Along the walls, reprints of famous paintings hung in frames better suited for the originals, heirlooms valued only for the sentiments they could elicit from Ina and John crowded the many shelves and coffee tables. An old conch shell, cracked along its broadest section, she noted, was in need of a dusting.

“Hello, dearest.”

“Good morning,” John said cheerfully, though he did not look up from his meal.

“Having breakfast again, hmm?”

“Again?”

“Don’t you remember?”

“Yes, yes, of course.” He smiled and took a bite of his cereal. “Just it’s my favorite meal and I never seem to get enough of it.”

Shapeless and soft, John’s edges had long ago buckled under the weight of gravity and the demands of metabolizing. He was large and almost fuzzy, like a misplaced drop of watercolor paint. There was a hazy glow about him, something Ina felt more than saw, something the doctors had counted a precursor to dementia. And though Ina was not one to argue with doctors, she often wondered if it wasn’t something John had taught himself, a mindset he had worked hard to grow into. She’d never known him to be happier.

“You must eat six meals a day,” Ina laughed as she took her usual seat across from him, a shabby blue placemat inviting beneath her hands.

“Old age is a second childhood, you know, and I’m a growing boy.”

“Is that your new excuse?”

“Yes. Don’t you like it?”

“It’s fine. I spoke with Dr. Miller’s receptionist and he says it’ll be fine for you to take your appointment at four-thirty.”

“Today?”

“Yes.”

“That’s rather short notice, don’t you think?”

“Well, we did cancel the first appointment.”

John grunted around a mouthful of bran.

“Will you be alright to go on your own by then?” Ina asked.

“You won’t be coming with me?”

“Historical society meeting.”

“Oh, off to talk about the cuckoo again, of course.” He often referred to the clock tower as “the cuckoo” or “that damn big bird”. As much as she could, she humored him, taking his resentment as a demand for attention rather than anything more telling.

“Will you be able to go or not, dearest?”

“I’ll go, I’ll go. But it’ll be your fault when I can’t remember for the life of me what the old quack’s told me not to do this time.”

“Dr. Miller already knows to send you home with a note.”

“Can’t drink, can’t smoke, can’t eat beef, can’t eat pork, can’t eat lamb, can’t eat sweets. I won’t be able to eat anything at all if I keep listening to him like this…”

“I’m sure he went to medical school all those years to learn how to properly starve you.”
“Hush. I don’t like it when you’re sensible.”

They smiled aimlessly at one another over their nicked dining table and fell silent for the remainder of the morning, Ina thumbing through old periodicals and John eating his second and third breakfasts.

He greeted Ina some hours later with a child’s smile, shy and uncontainable, at the steps of town hall, where the Historical Society took its meetings. Ina had stayed late, as she always did, curled in the lobby couch scouring over budget reports and community testimonials, her hearing aid perched on the armrest beside her to keep the outside world from getting in the way of work. Almost in challenge, a small earthquake had shook her momentarily from her reading, but it was no match for Ina’s unwavering dedication to civic upkeep. Once she was satisfied with the amount she had accomplished for the day, she locked the building and was pleasantly surprised to see her husband ready to escort her home. The click of her small heels quickened down the steps. Before she could ask on the occasion, John had covered her hand with his and whisked the two of them away.

“What’s going on?” Ina laughed, “Home is in the other direction, John. John? John? John?” She wondered if he was having an episode.

Finally, he shook his head. “I have something to show you.”

They hurried toward the main square, buildings lit by the oranges of false flames as the sun began to slink out of the sky, and on the way her eyes strayed from the scenery to the peculiar things happening around her. The sirens, the crowds massing on street corners all headed in the same direction, the men and women in suits sharing an ironic chuckle behind their hands. It was only when Ina saw the red square, though, aligned like a sliver in the distance, that she noticed an absence. ‘Isn’t the crane missing a piece?’ she thought. Ina’s mind had a way of overlooking what she did not want to see, but could only fool her for so long. Eventually, she had to address reality.

Rough-cut stones, looking more like loose boulders than the remainders of a building, were scattered around the tower’s foundation. The clock’s hand and face were nowhere to be found and now without the cue, Ina could hardly remember what they had ever looked like. Her sparrows and marionette gargoyles peeked from new hiding spots in the rubble, some still twisting their smashed heads or swinging their arms in an attempt to chime the hour.

“Surprise,” John murmured, looking out on the destruction with the same bemused expression he would have worn if Ina had just told him she loved him. Her worn-out knees buckled and Ina fell, swaying as she did, into John. Her head lay upon his formless chest, sunk in to his sweater, and a shuddering breath caught in her throat.

“What a horrible accident,” someone in the crowd said.

“And just when they were almost finished with it.”

“Bad supporting on the crane caused it, I heard. But if you ask me it was probably some drunk on the job, or some yahoo who wanted to bring the tower down.”

“Thank God no one was killed.”

Ina said to herself, wooly fabric deadening her voice, “What a shame.”

“What lovely weather we’ve had today,” observed John.