Chronophobia
April Brower sat on her backyard deck one warm September afternoon, exchanging small talk with Monica Seacole and trying not to pick up a fork and dig into the macaroni or potato salad on the picnic table.
"I can't imagine what's keeping Glen," the Puritan Falls High School English teacher said, glancing at her watch. "I expected him around five, and it's ten past six."
"Maybe he changed his mind about coming."
"I don't think that's the case. I hope nothing is wrong."
Ever the consummate matchmaker, April was trying to pair Monica, the new French teacher who had just moved to New England from Allentown, Pennsylvania, with Glen Zeller, a math teacher and, in April's opinion, the most eligible bachelor in the school district. Rather than send him a text message, she found his number in her contacts and called him. He answered on the fourth ring.
"Hello?" he said, not bothering to read the name of the caller on the screen.
"It's me, April. What happened to you?"
Glen looked down at his watch and mildly cursed at the lateness of the hour.
"I'm sorry, April. I had no idea what time it was. I'll leave right now. I ought to be at your house in about fifteen minutes."
"Okay. I'll get Tom to start the grill. See you then."
Twenty minutes later, Glen's Subaru Forester pulled into the Browers' driveway. When the math teacher got out of his car, he apologized profusely for being late.
"I stopped at the flea market on the way home from Lowes in Copperwell," he explained, "and lost all track of time."
Monica glanced at his car and noticed both the back seat and the rear cargo area were filled with cardboard boxes.
"You must have found some good bargains," she observed.
"I did actually. I was lucky enough to find a number of reasonably priced items to add to my collection."
"Oh? What do you collect?" asked Tom, who was turning the marinated steaks on the grill.
"Timepieces."
"You mean clocks?"
"Yes."
Monica looked at his arms and noticed a wristwatch peeking out from beneath the cuffs of his long sleeve shirt—not on just one arm but on both. She had never seen a man wearing two watches before.
"What do you do with them?" April inquired, as she reached into a cooler and took out bottles of Sam Adams for everyone. "Tune them up and sell them on eBay?"
"No, I keep them."
"How many do you have?" Monica asked.
"I never counted them, but my guess is somewhere close to a thousand."
Glen could tell from the flabbergasted looks on the others' faces that they considered such a collection more than a bit odd, and, embarrassed, he decided it was time to change the subject.
"Did you make the salads, April, or did you buy them at Shop 'N Save?"
"I made the macaroni and potato salad, and Monica brought the coleslaw."
"Which I made from my mother's recipe," the French teacher added.
"They all look good. I can't wait to try them."
April was about to ask another question about Glen's clock collection but changed her mind when Tom announced. "The steaks are done."
* * *
April's matchmaking talents did not fail to garner results. As she had envisaged, Glen and Monica got along remarkably well, and soon a romance was kindled between the two. On their first official date, Glen took Monica to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park, one of the last of the season.
"Where would you like to eat?" he asked as they headed out of the stadium after the conclusion of the game.
"Can we go to Cheers?" she asked eagerly. "I've always wanted to go there."
"Sure, but first I want to stop at the team store."
While his date was browsing through the tee shirts and baseball caps, Glen picked out three wall clocks bearing the Red Sox team logo. Monica, who had yet to become overly concerned about what she would later come to believe was an unhealthy fixation with timepieces, made a good-natured joke.
"Do you have any Yankee clocks in your collection?"
"As a matter of fact, I do."
It's funny, she thought, remembering the day of April's backyard cookout. For someone who surrounds himself with clocks, he seems to lose track of time so often.
There were seven more dates before Monica was to see the inside of Glen's house and learn the full extent of his obsession. He had hoped to put the visit off indefinitely, but when she asked for the third time to view his collection, he could not refuse.
When Glen picked Monica up at her apartment that Saturday afternoon, she came to the door with a bag of groceries in her hand.
"What's that?" he asked.
"I'm going to make you dinner. I bought chicken breasts, baking potatoes and everything needed to make a dynamite salad. Oh, and I hope you like rice pudding because I made some for dessert."
"I don't have much room to eat in my kitchen," he said uneasily.
"There must be someplace we can sit down. Don't you have a sofa or living room chairs?"
"Of course. You don't mind roughing it, then?"
"Not at all."
When Glen put the key in the lock and opened the front door, Monica stood on the stoop, staring open-mouthed into the house. From what she could see of the interior—the entrance foyer and a good portion of the combined living and dining room—the walls were literally covered with clocks. There were so many hanging up that she could not immediately distinguish what color the walls were painted.
"Come on in," he said. "I'll put the groceries in the kitchen."
As she followed him inside, her eyes took in the hundreds of clocks crowded on the tables, stands and windowsills. There were more than a dozen clocks on the fireplace mantel alone and several more on the hearth. From the large antique grandfather clock in the hallway to the travel size alarm clocks lined up on top of the air conditioning unit, there were timepieces of all shapes and sizes, digital and analog, those that ran on batteries and those that plugged into the overloaded power strips.
And nearly all of them were ticking.
"I don't know how you can hear yourself think!" she exclaimed.
"The noise doesn't bother me. I've lived with it for years, so I'm used to it."
He then led her through the dining room into the kitchen.
"Let me just make some room for the food," Glen announced, removing the timepieces from off the counter. "While you're doing the cooking, I'll clear a spot for us to eat on the kitchen table."
After getting over the shock of seeing what looked suspiciously like the living space of a hoarder, Monica asked where the pots and pans were kept. Glen responded by pointing out the appropriate cabinet. Thankfully, there were no clocks inside.
Not yet, at least, the overwhelmed French teacher thought.
* * *
"Did you do anything special this weekend?" April asked when she met Monica at The Quill and Dagger's coffee bar one Monday morning before school hours.
"After being cooped up inside all winter, Glen and I wanted to take advantage of the nice spring weather, so we drove to Provincetown."
"It's a good time of the year to visit the Cape, before all the crowds start heading there. Did the two of you spend the weekend in one of those quaint bed and breakfast places?"
"We only went for one day because Glen had to get home."
April noticed the look of disappointment on her coworker's face.
"Why? Does he have a cat or dog that needed to be fed or let out?"
"No. He had to check on his clocks."
"What?" April asked, trying not to laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation.
"It's a little ritual of his. Every morning when he wakes up and every night before he goes to bed, he makes sure that none of the battery-powered ones have lost time. If they have, he quickly changes the batteries. His dresser drawer is full of Duracells."
"What does he do with the plug-in ones when there's a power outage?"
"Never fear!" Monica laughed. "He has a generator."
"Despite his rather peculiar hobby, you two seem to be seeing a lot of each other."
"Yes. In fact, Glen wants to take our relationship to the next level."
"Really? That sounds serious."
"He's asked me to move in with him, but I don't know if I want to."
"Why not? Glen is quite a catch. He's intelligent, good-looking and has a great sense of humor."
"Have you ever been to his house?"
"I've driven past it many times, but I've never gone inside."
"I don't know if I could take living with wall-to-wall clocks. You can get used to the ticking sound of one or two of them, but not close to a thousand! Worse yet, he has about a hundred clocks that chime every fifteen minutes."
"I hate to say this," April hesitantly began. "But it sounds to me like Glen could use some professional counseling."
"He does seem to be suffering from OCD."
"My brother, Lionel, is a psychiatrist. Maybe he could help."
"I'd feel funny suggesting Glen see a shrink."
"Maybe there's a way around that. Why don't you bring him to dinner at my house some night, and I'll arrange for Lionel to be there. He doesn't have to know it's anything but a purely social gathering."
"Great idea!" Monica exclaimed. "That way he won't suspect that I think he has a problem."
"I won't tell if you don't."
* * *
"What's the occasion?" Glen asked when Monica told him about April's planned barbecue.
"Why does there have to be an occasion?" she countered defensively. "Can't friends just get together and enjoy each other's company? Besides, it's good to see coworkers outside the school environment."
"Don't get me wrong. I like April and Tom, too. I just don't want to turn up at someone's birthday party without a gift."
"Don't worry. It's nothing like that."
When they arrived at the Brower home, Lionel Penn and Sarah Ryerson were already there. April made the introductions, and Monica quickly took a seat next to Sarah, leaving only the chair beside Dr. Penn free.
"Oh, good," April said. "You brought your homemade coleslaw."
"I also baked a pineapple upside down cake."
As the three women talked about food and Tom manned the grill, Glen entered into a conversation with Lionel.
"So you work at the high school with April," the psychiatrist began. "What do you teach?"
"Math."
Lionel grimaced.
"Not one of my favorite subjects at school, I'm afraid."
"No? What did you like?"
"I enjoyed history the most, but I didn't see it as leading to a career."
"What do you do for a living?"
"I'm a doctor."
"What's your field of specialization?"
"Psychiatry."
"Lionel has become somewhat of an expert on treating people with phobias," Tom said, reaching for a cold bottle of Sam Adams.
"Really? That sounds much more interesting than algebra and geometry," the math teacher laughed. "But then, as boring as mathematics can be, it's a necessary evil."
"Let's not talk shop today," the hostess suggested. "We always wind up discussing our jobs."
This was Monica's cue to speak.
"Glen, why don't you tell April's brother about your hobby?"
"It's not really a hobby. It's more of a collection," Glen explained.
"Oh? What do you collect?" Lionel innocently asked.
Not having been taken into his sister's confidence beforehand, he was unaware of the reason he had been invited to the barbecue.
"Clocks," the math teacher answered.
"Antique ones?"
"Not specifically."
"Basically, he collects anything that ticks," April teased.
"He has close to a thousand," Monica added. "They cover every inch of wall space, table space and shelving in his house. And he checks them all twice a day to make sure they haven't stopped running."
Glen blushed with embarrassment.
"You make it sound as though I have a mental condition. Next, you'll want Dr. Penn here to take me on as a patient."
Here was the moment April and Monica had been waiting for.
"Just out of curiosity, is there a phobia related to clocks?" the psychiatrist's sister asked.
"There is one known as chronomentrophobia. People that suffer from it usually experience anxiety related to punctuality."
"Punctuality?" Monica echoed cheerfully. "That's not Glen's strong point."
"I'm not suggesting our young mathematician here suffers from chronomentrophobia. People with that condition tend to have an aversion to clocks in their homes and at their places of employment. Of course, some people are afraid of the passage of time itself. They have a condition known as chronophobia."
"I'm not afraid of anything," Glen insisted, throwing his hands up in a gesture of mock surrender. "I just like clocks."
However, the perspiration that beaded up on his forehead did not support his light-hearted contention.
* * *
On the first of November, with the holiday season looming ahead, Glen Zeller began to think about family. He knew Monica was the woman he had been waiting for, and he wanted to make a commitment to her. A week before Thanksgiving, he finally found the courage to propose.
"You know I love you," she replied apologetically. "But I'm not sure we should get married."
"Why not?"
"Honestly? I don't think I could live in a house full of clocks. That's why I didn't move in with you over the summer. It wasn't just that I had six months left on my lease."
"You expect me to get rid of my collection after I've spent most of my life acquiring it?"
"No. I'd be satisfied if you would put, say, half of them in storage. That would mean almost five hundred clocks still on display."
Glen was encouraged by Monica's willingness to negotiate. He, in turn, was prepared to compromise. After all, that was what marriage was all about.
"What if I move as many as I can to the basement, the attic and the garage? That ought to free up most of the bedroom, kitchen and living room space."
Monica took a few minutes to consider his offer.
"All right. But before we make any definite plans, why don't we try living together first? If everything goes well, we can get engaged at Christmas."
"I suppose I can wait that long for your answer."
In the six weeks following their conversation, Glen moved close to six hundred timepieces from the rooms he would share with Monica. She did not care that almost every inch of the garage, attic and cellar walls were covered with clocks or that they even lined the ceiling and much of the floor in the attic and cellar. (Only the fact that he had to pull his car into the garage kept Glen from covering that floor, as well.) As long as she could hang artwork on the living room wall, prepare food on the kitchen counter and sit down to eat at her dining room table, Monica was happy.
On the night of December 24, she lay in bed next to Glen. As the two cuddled beneath a heavy quilt, she admired the diamond ring on her finger.
"I can't wait until there's a gold band there, too," her fiancé said.
Monica took out her earplugs—they only somewhat helped drown out the ticking and chiming of the clocks—to hear him better.
"I suppose we should start thinking about a date," she announced.
"The sooner the better. How about the day after tomorrow?"
"Slow down, Romeo. We need to see when the church is available, and then we'll have to reserve a restaurant for the reception. Which would you prefer: the Essex Country Club or Chez Pierre?"
"I suppose Charlie's Bar and the Green Man Pub are out of the running," Glen joked.
"Very funny! Next I imagine you'll suggest going to Cape Cod or Boston for our honeymoon."
"Honeymoon?" he echoed, the smile on his face replaced with a frown. "You know I can't go away for more than a day."
"Why not?"
"Who will wind the clocks? They might stop."
Monica angrily threw off the quilt and got out of bed.
"Are you serious!" she cried. "You expect me to forgo a honeymoon because of your damned clocks!"
She removed the diamond ring from her finger, placed it on the night table and began getting dressed.
"Where are you going?"
"Anywhere there are no clocks, even if I have to sleep in my car. Don't worry about a honeymoon, Glen, because the wedding is off."
"Isn't there something I can do to change your mind?" he pleaded.
Her anger suddenly cooled.
"If you are really serious about wanting to get married, then you must go see Dr. Penn. You may not have a phobia, but you do need help."
"I'm not ...."
"This is a deal breaker. Either you get help for your clock obsession or I'm ending our relationship and moving back to Pennsylvania."
Glen loved Monica and could not imagine losing her now. Also, he doubted any other woman would feel differently.
"All right, I'll go," he conceded, his voice so low she barely heard him.
* * *
It was during the course of his third appointment with Lionel Penn that Glen revealed the reason behind his bizarre relationship with timepieces.
"My father died from a heart attack at the young age of forty-two. He was never sick a day in his life. He watched what he ate and got daily exercise, yet he came home from work, walked in the front door and dropped dead on the living room floor. I noticed at that very moment the clock on the mantel stopped ticking. Three years later I was reading a book beside the fireplace. In the background I heard the grandfather clock chime six. Suddenly, it stopped at four. The silence was interrupted a moment later by the sound of my mother falling in the shower. She broke her neck and died. It was like that old song we sang when we were kids—you know, the one where the clock stops, 'never to go again, when the old man died.'"
"Surely, it was a coincidence," the psychiatrist said.
"At my mother's funeral, my aunt told me the same thing had happened when her parents died. Apparently, in my family there is a close connection between the marking of time and death. I started buying clocks that afternoon."
It took another five sessions before Lionel, unable to shake his patient's unswerving belief in the power of timepieces, to convince him that his lifespan might be connected to a single clock rather than to an entire collection of them.
"It seems to me," the psychiatrist theorized, "that the more clocks you have the more likely it is that one will stop working."
"I never thought of it that way," Glen said, his eyes widening with wonder. "If I cut down to say a dozen clocks, it will be so much easier to keep them all going."
"And you could even take a few of them with you on your honeymoon. You can leave them in the hotel and still be able to check on them when you wake up and before you go to sleep."
"You know, Dr. Penn, when Monica insisted I see you, I didn't think it would do me any good. I'm happy to say I was wrong."
* * *
The wedding of Glen Zeller and Monica Seacole was to be held at the end of the school year.
"You're going to be June bride. How romantic!" April Brower exclaimed during the bridal shower held at the Sons of Liberty Tavern. "Have you two decided yet where you're going on your honeymoon?"
"We thought about Hawaii, but, frankly, it was too expensive. So we're going to New Orleans instead."
"New Orleans is lovely! Tom and I went there for our tenth wedding anniversary."
"I've always wanted to see the French Quarter."
"I'm glad Glen is willing to go. See, I told you my brother would be able to help him."
"Yes. Dr. Penn has worked wonders. We're down to about thirty clocks in our home now."
"What will he do about them when both of you are in New Orleans for two weeks?"
"We've worked out a deal. I've agreed to shorten the trip to one week, and he's agreed to bring only three clocks along with him."
"What about all the others?"
"Glen is going to pay his neighbor's teenage son to go into the house once a day and make sure they're all still ticking away."
"That's progress, I suppose."
Unfortunately, the strides Glen made in his psychiatric sessions did not go far enough.
After throwing her bouquet—caught by Sarah Ryerson—Monica and her groom left Chez Pierre amidst a chorus of good wishes. They returned to their house where the bride went into the bedroom to get out of her wedding gown and change into travel clothes for the flight to Louis Armstrong Airport. Eager to be on her way, she dressed quickly and grabbed her suitcases.
"I'm ready," she announced.
Her smile immediately faded when she saw Glen standing in the center of the living room, still attired in his tuxedo.
"You'd better hurry up and get out of that tux," she said. "We've got a plane to catch."
"I'm not going."
His words brought tears to her eyes.
"You can't do this to me!" she screamed. "We had a deal."
"I'm sorry. I really thought I was ready for this, but I'm not."
"We've already paid for the trip. The airfare, the hotel, the car—how much of that money can we get back now?"
"Do you think I can help it?" Glen asked, falling to his knees and whimpering like a small child.
Although she felt pity for her husband, anger was the stronger emotion.
Enough of this therapy bullshit! she thought. It's time I take matters into my own hands.
Feigning exhaustion she did not feel, Monica announced, "I'm tired. It's been an exhausting day. I'm going to go up to bed. We'll discuss this further tomorrow."
She lay on her side of the four poster bed, pretending to be asleep. When she finally heard her husband's soft snores, she quietly got up and put her plan into action. Armed with a pair of heavy shears, she unplugged every clock and then cut the power cords in two. Next, she removed the batteries from the rest of the clocks.
It's so quiet in here now.
Her work was not done yet, however. To truly end her husband's obsession with timepieces, she had to rid him of the two watches he always wore. Thankfully, he took them off every night before he went to bed. She tiptoed upstairs, found the watches on the dresser and brought them down to the kitchen.
"Monica?" Glen whispered into the dark, silent bedroom.
Upon realizing that he was alone, he got out of bed and went in search of his wife.
"What the ...?" he cried when he saw the first signs of the havoc she had wreaked. "My clocks!"
His panic mounting, he ran downstairs and found his wife covering his watches with a dishtowel. Her intentions were clear: she had a hammer in her right hand and was prepared to smash them to pieces.
"Don't!" he shouted, but he was too late to prevent destruction to the first watch.
"Believe me, darling," Monica said. "This is for your own good."
She raised the hammer again, and when it came down a second time, her husband fell to the floor.
* * *
When Lionel Penn entered D'Agostino's Funeral Home, he spied his sister and brother-in-law sitting in the rear of the viewing room. Acknowledging acquaintances he passed, he made his way across the room and took the empty seat next to April.
"I can't believe this has happened," he said. "It was only a few days ago that we attended their wedding."
"I know. Have you heard anything about the results of the autopsy yet?"
"Sarah told me the cause of death was an aneurysm."
"Poor Monica!" April exclaimed with undisguised pity. "Imagine the shock of having your husband suddenly die on your wedding night?"
Lionel nodded his head in agreement, refusing to acknowledge that this was far from an isolated incident in the history of Puritan Falls. The psychiatrist remained seated with April and Tom for close to forty minutes. Then, after paying his heartfelt respects to the widow, he left the funeral home, stopping only long enough to pick up Sarah at the hospital, before heading to his boat. It was a gorgeous spring day, after all, and he wanted to spend it out on the water.
Other mourners left soon after Lionel did. Monica knew that the viewing was coming to an end. Vito D'Agostino would soon emerge from his office and open wide the double front doors. Once everyone was cleared from the room, he would lock them. Then his workers would prepare for the graveside service which was to be held at Pine Grove Cemetery. The floral arrangements had to be loaded in the flower car and transported to the graveyard. More importantly, the lid of the casket was to be closed, and the remains sent via hearse to Pine Grove for burial.
I'll never see Glen again, Monica thought, wiping her eyes with the damp Kleenex she clutched in her hand.
She saw the mortician's office door slowly swing open, and she knew the time for her final farewell had come. Unsteady on her feet, she stumbled toward the casket and looked down on the face of the man she loved. His eyes were closed, and, yes, it did look like he was only sleeping.
Tears brimming in her eyes again, the grieving widow leaned forward and whispered in her husband's ear, "I'm so sorry."
After kissing him lightly on his cold, marble-like cheek, she looked for the last time at his handsome face, hoping to capture his features in her memory. At that moment the grandfather clock in the funeral home's lobby chimed the hour. Was it only Monica's imagination, or had Glen's lifeless lips momentarily smiled?
Salem once turned himself into a clock. Sadly, the minute hand hit him on the head.
