Nightflower Candor

She sold all the furniture in the house save the grandfather clock. The ticking drowned her thoughts, the darker ones, so she kept it. She cleaned the hardwood floor before laying out all one billion pieces of this limited-edition puzzle.

            She sorted the jigsaw by colors and collected the many, many corners. The shape of the puzzle had no name and was fabricated uniquely for her brittle fingers. Tailor-made pieces that could never be mended by others. The clock always ticking.

            She began getting a sense of the scale. How it interwove between hallways and rooms, formed over sinks and toilets, the stove, the refrigerator, and even up the wall, but never near the grandfather clock. The puzzle seemed to shrink with each deafening tick, unsolved fragments near the edges sinking into blurs. She thought the phone was ringing but that would be impossible because she had gotten rid of it with the rest of the junk. A ghostlike ringing.

            Light blossomed with every piece, and forgotten moments surfaced in its glow. Hazy recollections of memories hidden deeper still. She remembered their wedding day. The weather, the traffic, the wrong cake. She remembered the birth of their firstborn and the beauty and hope that came with it but also the agony. Tiny fists shaking at the world. The smile on her husband as he held the bundle. The tick of the grandfather.

            She sorted through pieces that looked like faces or parts of faces. Eye here, nose there. She created people and tried figuring out where they went. Some were hallway people, some were in the living room, some in the bathrooms. Her reasonings were instinctual and unjustified but it all felt right in some strange way…

            Ticking.

            The edges beside the clock dulled colorlessly while she completed more and more faces elsewhere. Where they go, who they are. Tick. She moved to their bodies and gestures, motives and intentions. Tick. The colors seemed to shift with the mending of more pieces, more of the life invented. Memories of their second child and new house—the big yard. Dewy-eyed and impossibly proud. Tick—

            Knocking!

            She looked at the grandfather clock. No, it was coming from the door. Loud, hurried, and overtaking the great rhythm of the tick. Even the puzzle seemed to recoil under each thud. She felt obligated to answer the door because she knew what was on the other side. She knew what was about to happen because it always happened.

            She opened the door and her family rushed inside the house like water spilling into a sinking ship. They filled every room up to her neck and they gazed at her in that peculiar way. They wanted their grandma back in the family and no longer had time for her marital grief. Cookies needed to be baked and cheeks to be squeezed. They needed her to refill the family with that precious love she had always delivered in perfect moments. The ticking dampened the collective voice and their worry stretched. Her eyes wandered to the puzzle.

            She asked for help but they kept on about what they wanted. She had more faces to build, more faces to recognize. More places, more landscapes, more borders, more connections. The puzzle was important. Why couldn’t they see that? All one billion pieces, but her family kept on about what they wanted, what they needed, and by when and where.

            Her own voice fell under the tick like the others. No one heard her and no one heard themselves. She found her reflection in the glass of the antique clock. Her other self. The colorless pieces around the clock have shrunk to almost nothing now but never mind that, look what is happening around her. Her family started noticing the pieces. They studied the damage caused by their boots and felt deep sadness. They felt responsible.

            The youngest reached out a corner piece to their grandma. That missing corner with part of a face. The face she yearned most. A clockface. Tick.

            “We need to bury it,” she said.

            “We buried him years ago.”

            “The clock.”

            “The clock?”

            “The tick.”

            Her family gathered around the grandfather clock with unclean hands. They watched as empty pieces regained a blush of coloring. Some of the puzzle led out the front door, onto the porch, and into the yard. She didn’t remember connecting these pieces but there they were, whole and intact, entire sections of dashing purples and explosive oranges and hidden faces.

            “We helped,” her firstborn said.

            “And we will help again,” her secondborn said.

            So every hand in the family lay on the oak finish and the tick hastened. Soft hands lifted the heavy grandfather clock through the timeless hall and out the old door. Grandma bore the most but found that her family had done far more than she had realized. They placed the clock inside an already-dug grave, in front of an already-placed tombstone. The furniture could be sold cheaply but not this. This was buried in ceremony. The tick slowed.

            They shoveled dirt onto the grave for a long while and then went inside to work on the puzzle as a cohesive unit. Mishappen pieces regained their groovy borders and vibrant color and the puzzle regained its true form. The process was quicker with the whole family and the ticking could no longer be heard. Maybe a ghost ticking, always a ghost ticking, but she found that peace she desired in retirement but had only managed in youth. She found her family again and an innocence was reborn.

            Grandma placed the final piece that painted an elegant landscape of wildflowers and cherry blossoms in the newly-healed spaces. Love refilled the home and life was celebrated by all those looking at the pieces. All the pieces. All the faces.

            Puzzle complete.