By Hailey Pierce
I wear my watches on the inside of my wrist.
Counterintuitive and strange, to lift my wrist, the joint cocked palm-away from my face to expose the blue spider veins under pale skin. But I see the time amongst the backdrop of my blood; heartbeats counting just like seconds, the rhythm of my body, the rhythm of my life.
Twenty bucks got me a blue plastic watch, four buttons on each hemisphere of the face to control timed laps and to shift with Spring Forward or Fall Back. Running and swimming were – and still are – against my philosophy of wellbeing, so I only needed a watch to ensure punctuality – the watch is set five minutes fast, the lie encouraging hustle – and to track what times I wake up in the middle of the night.
(Note for my doctor: I wake up 4-6 times a night, usually b/w 1 and 4:30. Do you think this ruination of REM cycle sleep is the key to my exhaustion?)
The blue plastic watch was my companion for five years. Four to six times a night, I’d press the bottom left button to light the screen up a fluorescent blue, illuminating the wee hours to my waking mind. Eyes would forget, but my mind would remember, and my circadian rhythm marched to the beat of interrupted sleep every single night.
It died in December of 2020. It was a cheap piece of crap; the blue watch band had faded into the skin of my wrist from countless showers, dips in the pool, and lotion massages, and the buttons that mattered had all jammed into their crevices. But I wept for the companionship, I wept for its timekeeping.
(Note for my doctor: is it normal to cry over inanimate objects? I’ve got this strange grief in my chest, and I don’t think my antidepressant can help it go away.)
Once in college, I snuck up behind a friend and covered his eyes. Modulated my voice to trick his sensitive ears.
“Guess who,” I growled.
His hands slipped around my wrists, grasping the soft skin, the bird bones of my joints.
“Hailey.” No hesitation.
“How’d you know it was me?” I frowned, releasing him into illumination.
He turned to look at me, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “You’re the only person I know who wears their watch on the wrong side.”
To be known, to be loved. How divine.
(Note for my doctor: is it normal to feel like your heart shreds itself apart in moments of love? I’m not sure I quite deserve it. Does anyone deserve to be known like that? Do I?)
***
My father once spent all his mom’s cash on a used trumpet.
He thought he’d play for his middle school band, blasting the fanfare, pimple-pocked alongside all his other friends. But after two halfhearted practices, he abandoned the instrument. A handful of his mom’s spare cash, the only spare she had, and he left it to collect dust.
“A sorry way to repay the woman that raised me,” he told me one day. Tears, rarely seen by me, filled his eyes. The yellow of his sclera (from years of slipping vodka into his coke) contrasted with the ruddy red of his skin. “And I’ve worked hard to pay her back for all the crap I put her through.”
(Note for my therapist: is generational trauma laced in DNA? Is guilt an inheritance?)
We couldn’t have had more different childhoods: the son of divorced parents, he split his time between a poor mother and a father with a wicked stepmother. He was a college dropout to pursue the family business, and he’s worked the same job ever since.
I grew up with two loving parents, got my Bachelors, and am well on my way to a Masters. I’ve never worried for money; my dad’s promise of reparations ensured he repaid his mom tenfold, with more than enough to spare for my ambitions.
(Note for my therapist: I think the guilt is entirely my own.)
***
I once spent four hundred and fifty-eight dollars on a Gucci t-shirt, just because I could.
With a scholarship and a college fund filled with money from the time I was born, I could spare the cash for a luxury brand item. It was only the one time, and then I swore I’d never blow such an egregious amount on a piece of fabric again (and I’ve maintained that; instead, I’ve spent hundreds on furniture I don’t need, but it’s cute and matches my scholarly grunge aesthetic well, so it was necessary).
(Note for my therapist: I know that materialism doesn’t heal all wounds, but is it “frivolous spending” if I really needed a third chair for my living room?)
And I’m really good at using what I pay for: my Gucci t-shirt is my official ‘celebration shirt’ and has witnessed concerts and tattoos. Everyone says you pay for the brand, not the shirt, but until you’ve experienced the soft and supple quality of my t-shirt, the way the hem sits perfectly at the hinges of my torso and legs, how the fabric billows like curtains in the wind yet does not expose the black lace of my bra, I don’t want to hear complaints about the way I spend my money, or the money given to me.
(Note for my therapist: is poor stewardship as a teenager the catalyst for progression into an irresponsible adult?)
And I’ve worn my Gucci t-shirt with my backwards Target watch. It’s called dynamism. I’m dynamic. It’s a thing.
I swear.
***
My dad never buys clothes for himself.
Every birthday and Christmas, he unwraps a parade of multicolored button-ups and polos, ones that can dress down or up, because things that are versatile are the most efficient, the most valuable. It’s rare that he won’t wear a gift from my mom; it’s his appreciation, it’s the way he loves: quiet, but proud.
My sister and I gift him useful things, because things that are useful are things that are the most efficient, the most valuable: durable sunglasses case (in bright yellow, because function can also be fun), bamboo toothbrushes, and roadmap atlases updated to the most recent highway constructions. He’s a man of paper, a man of feeling the heft in hand of plans.
(Note to my therapist: does it count if all the gifts to my dad are ones my sister came up with? He only uses the gifts she gives, so does that mean I don’t love him well enough to get him something he wants?)
I once gave him a book about the Eagles, his favorite band of all time. It had lots of pictures, lots of interviews from the original guys like Don Henley and Glenn Frey, glossy pages that felt good rubbed between fingertips, everything pleasing. He smiled and flipped a few pages on Christmas Day, told me that it was very thoughtful and that he loved it.
I visited home a few months ago, and it’s still sitting on a cabinet, on a shelf next to all the old fabric-bound classics books that make upper-class families seem intelligent and high-brow. It’s been there for five years, unmoved.
(Note to my therapist: I don’t think I know how to love people well.)
***
My dad wears expensive watches.
I think he inherited this preference from his dad, but he died before I was old enough to care about small things like that, to find the connections we stumble our way into, blind.
My dad has this contraption, some velvet-lined box for rich people that rotates all the watches you don’t wear to keep the gears turning. Once when I was a kid, he left the box open on his bed. A business trip came up, and he needed to pack only the necessities: some slacks, a few pressed button-ups, and a watch or two for taste.
I stood slack-jawed, hypnotized by the circling timepieces: gold and silver bezels catching glints of lamplight, a few diamonds crusted on the flickflickflick of the second hand, some Roman numerals for hours and others, simply lines. The bones in my neck cracked as I swiveled my eyes to follow them. Dad let me try one on, but the leather strap didn’t have enough holes to tighten around my wrists. Besides, the whole watch face spanned the width of my bones.
I slid one up the full length of my arm, the circumference of my bicep still too small for the strap.
“I could wear it as a sweatband!” I said.
My dad’s hands, thick and solid, pulled the watch from my arm and tucked it into a pair of socks. He wouldn’t lie and say that I’d grow into it someday.
And there’s that saying about how kids try to follow in their fathers’ footsteps, but I think I always wanted to match my father’s handprints: fingers laid on top of one another, no overlap or inconsistency to be found. I’d like to have hands of protection.
But I think mine are better suited for pulling apart, one thread at a time.
***
I met my parents in Switzerland for three days during my junior year of college.
I had just finished a semester abroad in England, and since I was already in Europe, my parents thought that we might as well just go to Switzerland for the hell of it. What good is money if you don’t spend it sometimes?
We hopped from Zurich to Interlaken and ended in Geneva, bouncing and curving on the roads. My dad handled the rental car as if he’d driven it all his life, braking and accelerating in the cadence of mechanical motion. I watched his hands, holding the wheel at 10 and 2, his watch resting on his left wrist.
It’s his best watch, his most expensive and most prized timepiece from his collection. A relatively recent crafting from Patek Philippe, the glass on the face bears no scratches and probably never will. Its width could span three of my knuckles. The white-gold bezel blends with the espresso-brown background of the clock itself, the ticking hands and the Roman numerals etched in yellow gold. The watchband is a lovely dark brown leather, patterned like mismatched bricks to contrast with the smooth precision of the body.
My mom won’t tell me how much she spent to procure a piece like that. It’s one of only a handful of its kind in the world.
Our last day in Geneva, I followed my parents down the Rue du Rhône, the land of luxury brands and high-brow shopping. They went from store to store (well, my mom did; Dad and I simply trailed behind), exploring all the overpriced clothes that big cities in America also have, but it’s fancier if you pay for it in Swiss francs rather than American dollars.
My mom asked if I wanted to stop in the Gucci store, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted by the thin white font of the sign. But I was tired, feet aching, and I wanted to lay down. I complained as such for the next half hour, my parents turning a deaf ear to me.
After a bit, my dad suddenly walked with purpose, his feet confident in his direction, and I was helpless to follow after. My nice hotel bed was calling; I didn’t want to go into a stupid watch store.
I watched as he entered the glass doors, gleaming in the sunlight under the crisp, white letters spelling out PATEK PHILIPPE on the awning. A security guard stood outside staring down my glaringly American family in our sweatshirts and New Balances. My dad, especially, in his faded blue jeans.
Southern hospitality knows no boundaries. We North Carolinians bring that genteel air to every part of the world. My dad, words round and deep with his rural vowels, called a “hey, how’re you doin?” to the associates. They looked at us like we had stumbled into their pristine establishment coated in blood, fur fuzzing out our ears.
I wanted to leave immediately.
But my dad, unfazed by the culture-shock of silence, approached one of the associates and struck up a conversation.
I stuck to the peripheries, to the sterile white walls of the store to minimize my primitive self. There were only a few watches on display, tucked safely behind glass two inches thick, as if these were timepieces handcrafted by Michelangelo himself. If I breathed on the glass too much, I’m sure sirens would’ve rung out and guns trained on my chest.
I made sure to keep my hands very, very close to my sides.
“Oh!”
An exclamation of surprise wheeled me around.
The associate had taken my dad’s forearm in her grasp, holding his wrist level with her face as she gasped again. I felt like I could see all her freckles in the reflection of the watch face.
“It has been years since I have seen one of these!” she said.
These words struck a frenzy of movement from the other associates, like alligators to the carcass. Standing proud in the midst of pleated pants and tailored suits, my dad held out his wrist for all to see. A Southern king.
My mom, too, wore her best Patek Philippe: a baby-blue leather band holding a diamond-studded timepiece to her own wrist. The associates flocked to her, as well, complimenting her refined taste, but the belle of the ball was my dad’s watch, that thoughtful gift from my mom.
I learned through periphery that his type of watch had been discontinued six years earlier and that pre-owned versions were selling for well over one hundred thousand dollars. I wondered once more how much my mom paid for this one.
A feeling of pride swept through me at the sight of my home-grown Southern parents as an admirable spectacle.
But guilt quickly smashed through, taking root in my heart and stomach like kudzu. All this money around me, money from my parents and their generosity to me… My dad needed this moment for himself, to prove that he was no longer the poor kid with an unused trumpet. He needed to know that forty years of hard work had brought him here to Switzerland with one of the most sought-after watches sitting at home on his wrist.
This trip, catalyzed by me, was not about me and shouldn’t be; it was a chance for my dad to stand high on the mountain and proclaim: “Look how far I’ve come!”
(Note for my therapist: hey, I know I dropped off the face of the earth, but do you have anything available for the upcoming weeks?)
***
After the initial frenzy faded, the associate turned to me, a smile on her perfectly painted lips.
“What do you wear?” she asked.
And so I tugged back the sleeve of my sweatshirt, and I flashed my own wrist at her. Not the way that my mom and dad did, with their curled palms pulled away to expose the top of the wrist.
I cocked my curled palm toward her, the face of my blue plastic watch resting on the blue spider veins on the inside of my wrist, the same place it had been for four years, the same place it would be for another year until the battery would finally sputter out.
With a smile, I said, “Twenty dollar Target special.”
Hailey Pierce is an MFA Candidate in creative writing at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is newer to the world of publishing, but that hasn’t stopped her from co-editing and producing Chatham’s literary journal, The Fourth River, and also a journal of prison works from inmates at Perry Correctional Institution in Pelzer, South Carolina. Her writing reflects passion for humanity and reconciliation, and she hopes to enter the world of prison education upon receiving her degree. Aside from that, Hailey enjoys talking about trees, looking at trees, and thinking about trees. Birches are her favorite.
Academy of the Heart And Mind 