"The Microwave Clock is Unreliable" by Richard A Shury

There’s nothing I’m more sick of than the reliable tick of my grandmother’s

grandfather clock, standing watch as it does over a living room frozen in time, décor from an age where all ornaments were acquired from trips to the seaside, lavender puffs fading

through scents from fresh to nostalgic to simply dusty. If any of the strange wooden carvings that adorn the walls are shifted out of position, the wallpaper behind is so dark and fresh it looks wet; but no one would ever attempt such heresy. Even blowing the dust from the top of the waxed fruit screams desecration. Porcelain boys and girls stare down from behind their umbrellas with unaltering, disapproving faces.

Even blowing the dust from the top of the waxed fruit screams desecration. Porcelain boys and girls stare down from behind their umbrellas with unaltering, disapproving faces.

If I were to wax sentimental and wonder what the figures had seen through all their years of immobility, they would tell me that the room’s existence has mirrored their own. The lounge chairs not-quite-facing each other; the table for cake and tea – designed to be put away when not in use but never moved; the long, low couch whose decorative cushions are truly that. Low, slow lectures about how things used to be better, and my culpability for the excesses of my generation. The ‘greatest generation’ in their cloak of honour, forgetting that my generation never had two World Wars or a Holocaust. Half of it must be down to repression disguised as respectability. If you let people fuck, generally they’re less stressed, less inclined to fight, I always wanted to retort, but it went without saying that there was less than no point. Even if I had dared to speak, her mind was set.

I’ve determined to avoid becoming the same, but I’ll inevitably say some things to my grandkids that I’m not supposed to say.

‘Grandma,’ they’ll whine, hiding behind embarrassed hands, ‘crazy isn’t a word we use. It stigmatises people with mental health issues.’

‘Is everyone in the future such pussies?’ I’ll ask. Another infraction.

None of this makes me sympathise with her, though. Not one smile, not one joke in all those years. Why did my mother send me to stay with her? I always meant to ask, but put it off too long. Now that her mother is gone, it seems too cruel a question to lay on her, distracted as she is by grief.

During those visits, my grandmother and I spent so much time in each other’s presence, but I never really knew anything about her beyond what she deemed it proper for me to know. No childhood reminiscences, no inadvertent swear words or the little faux pas that bring us all down to the same level.

The house fails to warm me to her now. I wonder if that’s what it was for, this gift I’ve been given: a final attempt at connection, reconciliation. But that would be too human.

It seems more likely that it’s a double-edged sword, like the comments she’d let drop from the corner of her mouth. Clean it up, clean it out. Take the time. Before it’s of any worth to you, you have to put the work in. It’s exactly the type of thing she’d do. A reminder that I always had to work to be worthy of being hers.

I stand, wondering why I’ve been sitting in the living room, a room I always hated. I walk through the room pretentiously called a parlour and into the kitchen, wooden chairs with floral cushions tied on. The kitchen is full of light. It is the memory of work gladly done, sanctuary from the crushing silence just down the hall.

Some people at least watch murder mysteries, or game shows. In this day and age, who calls a TV ‘common’? I’ll make some more tea, I’d say. There was always a need for more tea, the breath that I took as I left the room and headed towards the kettle. Chasing me out of the room was the instruction to let the help do it, but the help were long gone and so was I.

It sounds childish but I am determined to win. I am determined because it is childish, because I know she’d hate it. I stare at the clock on the microwave, knowing it’s never right, never as precise as the grandfather clock. I stare at it now as I used to stare at it then, but now there is no need for me to will it onward.

‘Use the oven, next time. It heats things through better.’ The words echo in my mind unbidden, and I release a sharp breath, trying to spit them out. In my memory, a plate of scones sits untouched on the cake table, a fly buzzing around the pat of butter I’d delicately laid on the side.

There is a sound. In response to it I rise, open the front door. The man in the overalls steps into the house, looks around, gives me an are-you-sure kind of look.

‘Everything?’

I indicate the house with a sweep of my arm.

‘Everything,’ I say. ‘All of it. Except the microwave. That’s mine.’

Richard A Shury recently returned to New Zealand after haunting London for many years. His story Chiaroscuro was read at Liars' League, and his flash piece The Dog House made the Bridport Prize shortlist in 2020. His short story, The Vortex, placed second in the Limnisa Short Story Competition 2018, and he has had several short stories published in anthologies. He’s a part-time optimist.