Shaun.
Evan awoke to Shaun’s soft crying. The monitor’s lights jumped with life. He threw off the covers and crossed the hall before sleep completely left him, the dream receding into what he recognized as relief—relief it wasn’t reality, it wasn’t actually happening again. When he flipped the light on, he saw that Shaun had kicked his blankets off and rolled close to one edge of the bed. Dark, clumpy stains surrounded his legs and feet.
Blood.
Evan rushed forward and grabbed Shaun’s shoulders, ready to run to the pontoon and rush him to the emergency room, but then he smelled it.
Shit. Shaun had soiled the sheets.
“Oh, buddy. You had an accident, that’s all,” Evan said, his muscles relaxing. “We’ll get you in the tub.”
“T-t-t-tub,” Shaun sobbed.
Evan picked him up and, trying not to get the sticky waste on him in the process, carried him into the bathroom. Stripping off the pull-up, he saw that the diaper hadn’t held near the leg holes, overflowing and subsequently waking Shaun. Evan got the water flowing in the tub, and wiped his son’s legs and backside as well as he could with a nearby towel, then placed him in the warm water.
“There, we’ll get you all cleaned up,” Evan said, pouring several dollops of bath soap into the water.
Shaun continued to cry and look up every few seconds, his eyes reddened and ashamed.
“It’s okay, honey, it’s okay, you had an accident, you’re fine.” He stroked Shaun’s hair and smiled at him, then wiped sleep from the corners of his eyes. “Everyone has accidents. Uncle Jason had an accident once at college, except he wasn’t wearing a pull-up, but he probably should have, seeing as how much he drank that night.” Evan shook his head at the memory and laughed a little. “He had to clean himself up the next morning, I wouldn’t go near him.”
As the water crept higher, Shaun’s crying diminished, until he sat still while Evan washed him. He tried to remember the last time Shaun had had an accident, and couldn’t. It had been at least a year.
Evan drained the water, scrubbing Shaun down one more time before toweling him off and placing him on the couch. He then undertook cleaning the bedroom, balling up the sheets in a garbage bag and scouring the mattress with hot, soapy water. When he was satisfied, he flipped the mattress, but failed to find another set of sheets anywhere in the house. So he covered the bed with an old blanket from the master bedroom’s closet. It smelled musty but looked clean, and after unfurling it, he saw it was hand-sewn. Evan finished putting away the cleaning supplies, and finally glanced at the clock: 2:17.
“You want to watch something?” he asked, as he entered the living room.
“Somfing?” Shaun echoed.
Evan flipped through the TV channels and found a documentary on dinosaurs.
“This okay, buddy?”
Shaun didn’t reply. He glanced at his son and saw the entranced look on his face as the ancient creatures trundled across the screen. Evan smiled and yawned. As he watched a brontosaurus roam across a lonely, windswept plain, his mind traveled back to the dream, like a tongue prodding at a sore tooth. He closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind, but Elle’s worn face, still beautiful through the pain, kept floating across his vision.
When Shaun fell asleep an hour later, the anxiety hadn’t receded, and instead of returning to bed, he opted to sit on the screened-in porch. The night air felt good against his warm skin, and the sound of the lake all around gradually lulled him into calmness.
When the bed called to him, he went and fell into a dreamless slumber without broken clocks or hospital rooms.
~
The next morning dawned bright and hard, a cold wind sweeping in from the north, chopping Long Lake into a rolling bed of saw teeth. After a light breakfast, they stood on the shore, Evan helping balance Shaun with hands on his shoulders. They watched the waves move past the island, toward the southern end of the lake. Cars streamed by on Main Street in Mill River, only gliding dots of different colors to them.
When Shaun began to shiver, they returned to the house. Evan grabbed his phone and walked into the kitchen, while Shaun watched Thomas the Train again. Jason picked up on the second ring.
“How goes life in paradise?” Jason asked, in a breathless voice.
“Pretty good, how about down there?”
“It’s god-awful, just got off the treadmill. When the hell did we get so old?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t get the memo,” Evan said, sinking into a kitchen chair. Exhaustion pulled at him, and he promised himself he would nap when Shaun went down later in the day.
“So what’s happening up there? No more surprises, I hope.”
Evan glanced at the basement door and then looked away. “No, nothing to speak of.”
“Good, I was worried about you guys.”
“We’re fine. I was actually calling to see what you wanted me to do around here for upkeep. The place looks really good.”
“Oh, I don’t know, do some cleaning, make sure the fucking shingles aren’t falling off, that sort of thing,” Jason said.
“So I was going to ask you,” Evan said, feeling a strange amount of trepidation, “what’s with the clock in the basement?”
Jason didn’t say anything for moment, and Evan wondered if Jason hadn’t meant for them to go into the basement.
“Why do you ask?” he finally said.
“I don’t know. I was down there the other day and saw it. Looks like someone was working on it.”
“Yeah, I think grandpa tinkered with it for a while.”
“Kinda strange looking,” Evan said, jokingly. When Jason didn’t respond, he continued. “I mean, with it all torn apart, it looks a little weird.”
“I think it was the last thing he worked on before he passed away, he never got to finish it. I didn’t have the heart to throw it out or sell it, so it got left. Even now, I don’t know why I didn’t get rid of it.”
“Sentimentality.”