Gadget Man
I am a gadget man. I love to take things apart, see how they work, put them back together, make them better: I can't keep my hands off broken mechanical or electric toys, or even ones that haven't broken yet. Naomi, my first wife, was astounded by my automatic understanding of toys and gadgets. She was a dreamer, not a thinker like me, as disorganized as I was orderly. But we were a good pair, matched by our mutual love, bound by our son, born several months after the wedding he sparked. Naomi's father never fully forgave me for wedding his daughter after - God forbid - sex before marriage, but his old-fashioned beliefs never infiltrated Naomi's free-roaming mind, and she loved me to the edges of the universe, forgiving my quirks and lack of imagination and making up for my numerous shortcomings. She loved me until the day she died, and this I can never forget.
Naomi died a month and two days after our son Noah's seventh birthday. She had been diagnosed with leukemia, and her frail body couldn't handle the chemotherapy meant to save her, the chemotherapy that took the dreaded 70% chance of death and missed the prayed-for 30% success rate. Naomi fought her hardest to live for Noah and I, but my angel wasn't meant for this world.
I was numb and hardly operational after her death. The cogs and gears didn't mesh for me anymore, my wheels stopped spinning, my springs lost tension. In my mourning, I could hardly care for Noah and myself, so I married the first woman to come around -- Naomi's friend Kim, who probably married me out of pity and love for Noah than feelings for me. Her real estate agent salary allowed me to take the fall I did at work: I lost my job, devoting my time to the gadgets that made me a little happier - like candy for a starving man - in my basement workshop. The workshop was a room of concrete brick and floor, dusty painted wooden cupboards, metal shelves, and sawshorses linked with sheets of plywood and covered with my now all-encompassing projects. My love for Naomi was reflected in my work: clocks bearing her name instead of numbers, a toy train set chugging through her small Idaho hometown, the hopping bird toys she used to love so much. Kim was disconcerted with my obsession, and after a few months she confronted me about it.
"You're going to have to stop," she told me. "Naomi is gone. No amount of gizmos centered around her can bring her back." Her voice was hoarse, eyes streaming. "I feel like I hold no value for you." I held her in my arms, crying now myself. The opposite of her claim was true; I had grown to love Kim, perhaps not as much as my true love, my angel, but I loved her nonetheless. I promised her I would pull myself out of my worthless patterns and spend more time with her and less with my memories of Naomi.
And, for quite a while at least, I did. I stopped making my grief-trinkets. I got a job, got out of the house more often, spent more time with Noah. Sure, I sitll tinkered in my workshop once in a while, but I stuck mostly to toys for my son and eclectic clocks for Kim. She raided my workshop occasionally: I could tell because of a moved wrench, a clock out of place, the door wider than I left it. This is why, when I couldn't take it anymore, my final project for Naomi was hidden carefully. A metal hatch in the concrete floor of my workshop led to a tiny disused wine cellar, and this was my secret place that Kim would never find. I set to work on my last endeavor: a music box to play Naomi's favorite song, "Wind Beneath my Wings," a picture of our family before her death decoupaged on its lid.
I worked whenever I could steal a spare minute out from under Kim's hawk-like eyes. I could stop my projects forever, I had myself convinced, if I could finish this last dedication to my angel.
It was a cool, crisp January afternoon that my perfect plans went awry. It was a Saturday; I was finishing some budgeting work, while Kim organized her closet and Noah was... well, out of sight. The house was strangely quiet as I tapped away at my calculator. Finally I heard creaking stairs, the clicking noise of winding gears, then, unmistakably, "Wind Beneath my Wings." I looked up, horrified to find Kim holding Naomi's dedication music box, disbelief and disgust on her face. Noah had apparently found the panel in my workshop. Kim shook her head and cleared her throat.
"I thought you were finished," she said. "I thought I would mean more than this... thing!" She threw the music box across the room, and it smashed against the wall, toppling a framed picture of Noah, Kim, and I. Her wrath was powerful, her screaming painful. Sure, it had been years since Naomi's death, but I couldn't recover on Kim's terms. She left the house shaking, feeling unimportant, disillusioned by my lies and broken promises, jealous of Naomi and tired of being second-tier to a dead woman. She was the second love I lost, and while this loss didn't leave as gaping of a hole as the first, it still hurt. Kim had taught me that sometimes things end, and that one must move on eventually.
Kim came back after a while, but we didn't last long before she left me for good. I became an independent single father. Noah became the center of my universe, and he still is today. I aim to be a perfect, perfectly honest father. It might be the only way to prevent losing my only son. It certainly would have prevented losing Kim: my second love.
Naomi died a month and two days after our son Noah's seventh birthday. She had been diagnosed with leukemia, and her frail body couldn't handle the chemotherapy meant to save her, the chemotherapy that took the dreaded 70% chance of death and missed the prayed-for 30% success rate. Naomi fought her hardest to live for Noah and I, but my angel wasn't meant for this world.
I was numb and hardly operational after her death. The cogs and gears didn't mesh for me anymore, my wheels stopped spinning, my springs lost tension. In my mourning, I could hardly care for Noah and myself, so I married the first woman to come around -- Naomi's friend Kim, who probably married me out of pity and love for Noah than feelings for me. Her real estate agent salary allowed me to take the fall I did at work: I lost my job, devoting my time to the gadgets that made me a little happier - like candy for a starving man - in my basement workshop. The workshop was a room of concrete brick and floor, dusty painted wooden cupboards, metal shelves, and sawshorses linked with sheets of plywood and covered with my now all-encompassing projects. My love for Naomi was reflected in my work: clocks bearing her name instead of numbers, a toy train set chugging through her small Idaho hometown, the hopping bird toys she used to love so much. Kim was disconcerted with my obsession, and after a few months she confronted me about it.
"You're going to have to stop," she told me. "Naomi is gone. No amount of gizmos centered around her can bring her back." Her voice was hoarse, eyes streaming. "I feel like I hold no value for you." I held her in my arms, crying now myself. The opposite of her claim was true; I had grown to love Kim, perhaps not as much as my true love, my angel, but I loved her nonetheless. I promised her I would pull myself out of my worthless patterns and spend more time with her and less with my memories of Naomi.
And, for quite a while at least, I did. I stopped making my grief-trinkets. I got a job, got out of the house more often, spent more time with Noah. Sure, I sitll tinkered in my workshop once in a while, but I stuck mostly to toys for my son and eclectic clocks for Kim. She raided my workshop occasionally: I could tell because of a moved wrench, a clock out of place, the door wider than I left it. This is why, when I couldn't take it anymore, my final project for Naomi was hidden carefully. A metal hatch in the concrete floor of my workshop led to a tiny disused wine cellar, and this was my secret place that Kim would never find. I set to work on my last endeavor: a music box to play Naomi's favorite song, "Wind Beneath my Wings," a picture of our family before her death decoupaged on its lid.
I worked whenever I could steal a spare minute out from under Kim's hawk-like eyes. I could stop my projects forever, I had myself convinced, if I could finish this last dedication to my angel.
It was a cool, crisp January afternoon that my perfect plans went awry. It was a Saturday; I was finishing some budgeting work, while Kim organized her closet and Noah was... well, out of sight. The house was strangely quiet as I tapped away at my calculator. Finally I heard creaking stairs, the clicking noise of winding gears, then, unmistakably, "Wind Beneath my Wings." I looked up, horrified to find Kim holding Naomi's dedication music box, disbelief and disgust on her face. Noah had apparently found the panel in my workshop. Kim shook her head and cleared her throat.
"I thought you were finished," she said. "I thought I would mean more than this... thing!" She threw the music box across the room, and it smashed against the wall, toppling a framed picture of Noah, Kim, and I. Her wrath was powerful, her screaming painful. Sure, it had been years since Naomi's death, but I couldn't recover on Kim's terms. She left the house shaking, feeling unimportant, disillusioned by my lies and broken promises, jealous of Naomi and tired of being second-tier to a dead woman. She was the second love I lost, and while this loss didn't leave as gaping of a hole as the first, it still hurt. Kim had taught me that sometimes things end, and that one must move on eventually.
Kim came back after a while, but we didn't last long before she left me for good. I became an independent single father. Noah became the center of my universe, and he still is today. I aim to be a perfect, perfectly honest father. It might be the only way to prevent losing my only son. It certainly would have prevented losing Kim: my second love.
posted by xtraplanetary at 12:34 AM
1 Comments:
Good job at a longer story and keeping it good. I can never seem to do such. Technically, it's a short story but oh well.
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