Hilda smoothed any ruffled feathers of jealousy in her usual way, knowing that sometimes speaking to the stomach can distract one from the sensitivities of the ego.
“I would guess it is a bit of both. I am destined to be surrounded by talented men! Now who wants a big slice of raspberry torte? I have whipped some fresh cream for the top!”
The following day Siegfried was at Gareth’s door, explaining to Elaine why he was there, uncomfortable that Gareth hadn’t explained it to her better.
“I will be honest with you, madame. I believe that your son has what it takes to be an ocularist, and I am here to see his work and, if he wants, to mentor him.”
“Mentor him?” Elaine was taken aback.
“Yes, it is a skill that is still passed down from one generation to the next …”
“You mean it’s a trade? No, no, no. He is going to college or university. We saved since he was a baby for this … for him. He is going to get his degree.”
“Is this your choice for him or his?”
Siegfried walked over to the painting above the fireplace. He had seen it in Jack’s photos. How much more alive it was in person! The photos had flattened the surface of the painting and only now did Siegfried see how the waves almost rolled out of the canvas toward him, beckoning him to enter the image, maybe even to also walk into the water with the doomed woman. He went in closer, studied the work, the brush strokes, the colours, the subject matter.
“And what do you think of this painting?”
“I think it is beautiful,” Elaine replied, “which is why I was hoping he would go on to study art at university.”
“Yes, but how would you make it a better painting?”
Elaine wondered how Hilda could have possibly let go of her ex-husband, John, to go for such an abrupt and impolite man. Sure, he had a beautiful voice and he was almost handsome, definitely stylish, but what unusual manners! So straightforward. Did he not know how things were done here?
“It is perfect. Why would you want to change it?” Elaine crossed her arms, covering that part of her stomach that always twisted whenever it seemed to her that conflict was on its way.
“I wouldn’t. It is you who thinks he needs to learn how to paint. Not I. I just think he just needs to paint more. Make mistakes, take risks, and do it again. Be critical enough to throw away what he doesn’t like, and then try again. He is an artist. Now tell me, how is his glass-blowing?”
“He has never blown glass.” Elaine was confused.
“Ah. So.” Siegfried shrugged.
“What?”
“Well, that is something he could learn, then. Okay. I see.”
“What do you see?”
“Perhaps a degree means much to you and you would like him to have that success. But, perhaps, something else in life means more to him. Perhaps a degree is not his ultimate calling? One cannot escape one’s destiny. And his destiny was set the day he told his best friend that he should climb higher. He chose a path away from one you could possibly imagine for him that day.”
Elaine had no idea why she was crying. In fact, she had no idea that she was crying until the ocularist handed her his handkerchief, with S.V.P. embroidered on its edges.
“S’il vous plait?” she asked.
“Siegfried von Pichler. Apparently Pichler is derived from the word hills. So, I guess I am Siegfried of the Hills. Although not so much here.” He smiled.
She began blowing her nose into his perfect hankie, gobs of snot filling the pressed linen. But he didn’t say anything. He just waited.
“He can never give his friend the sight he lost that day. But they were just boys. And boys climb trees …” Elaine stammered.
“Yes. All over the world, boys climb trees.”
“And Jack fell,” she continued.
“Yes, Jack fell. He climbed too high. He was not meant to climb so high. But Gareth climbed that high and he did not fall. Now Jack is going to university and Gareth is floundering. Such is the irony of life,” the ocularist said with a shrug.
“Yes,” Elaine sobbed, “but what if I had been watching them? What if I had paid better attention? So that is twice in my life that I wasn’t watching closely enough. The day Jack lost his eye and the day that woman,” she pointed to the painting, “the day she walked into the lake.”
“And can you save her now?”
“No!” Elaine stared at him, tears still rolling down her cheeks, cutting a path through the rouge blush until white rivers ran in lines through the light pink.
“And can Gareth make eyes for all the children who might lose one, from doing what boys do? Climb too high, play too hard or, worse, have an eye removed because of cancer.”
Elaine collapsed in floods of tears and the ocularist opened his arms so that she could cry into the light cotton of his summer jacket. How awkward, a woman he had just met, clinging to him as a stream of salty tears poured from her. He patted the back of her head with an anemic there, there gesture. Was he too harsh in his approach because he saw in her boy an answer to his greatest desire and selfishly set out to acquire it so that he could pass his knowledge to the next generation? To have someone, even though he was not his own son, take up the history of his family and hold it safe? Foolishness, it was. A crazy notion that was already wreaking havoc in another person’s home. Why could it not have been Jack who had the promise of the continuation? But Jack was the capturer of moments, caught in a second of stillness. He was compensating for an eye lost, using the camera’s lens as an extension of himself. Besides, he was not enough of a perfectionist. Not exact enough. Not seeing in two eyes. But Elaine’s youngest son was a boy who had an eye for detail, and could work in the smallest, most delicate strokes. How he wanted to settle this woman, so that he could see the miniatures Gareth had done, and then, only then, he would know for sure if what he sensed in his soul was real.
Elaine pulled away self-consciously with stammering apologies. She handed him back his wet, used hankie, which Siegfried reluctantly put back into his pocket. How embarrassing! But the tears had been a long time coming and once the dam was cracked there was no end to it. She knew that the dreams she had nursed for her son, as early as she had nursed him, were not the dreams that would be his reality. And yet, yet, in the arms of this stranger she felt comfort.
“You looked away. That is not a sin. It was an accident. Not a mistake,” he consoled her.
“It was my fault.”
“You know, it was not Gareth’s fault that Jack climbed too high. It was Jack’s choice, even if Gareth told him to climb higher. And it was that woman’s choice to walk into the lake that day, even if you looked away. When we take the credit or the blame for another’s actions, we diminish their choices.”
Elaine turned away from the stranger. What if it hadn’t been her fault, after all? What if she had no control over those events that day? What if she had no control over anything at all? She went to the foot of the stairs and called up to Gareth.
Siegfried looked through Gareth’s work, studying each and every painting for what seemed an eternity. When he was quite satisfied, he closed Gareth’s portfolio and sat back. His fingers pressed against one another as though in their own contemplation. Gareth waited, silently, unsure of what the ocularist was thinking. His heart fluttered and he knew that this could be his answer. To see the world, to live abroad. To be unlike anyone else and to be far, far away from his childhood. How could he not accept the opportunity if it was offered to him?
“Couldn’t he just learn to blow glass here to see if he even likes it? It seems a big step for someone who has never even worked with glass,” Mark interrupted, entering the conversation, late to the party.
“Well, yes, but it would not help him to become an ocularist. We do not work in front of large furnaces. We do not design the glass in the same way. Besides, there is the making of the object, but then he will also have to learn how to measure and fit an eye. There is much more to it than blowing glass. It is a
s much a science as an art.”
“Yes, which is why I don’t understand why it isn’t a university course. You would think that he would at least get a Bachelor of Science for studying this. I mean, you are working with people’s eyes, so why isn’t it a medical course at a university?” asked Mark, not wanting his son to live so far away.
Siegfried was not one to brag. He rarely spoke of his work, unless it was during a consultation, or if that rare person showed an interest and brought it up in conversation. But now he felt the need because somehow Gareth’s parents had to know the value of his work and the importance of the offer.
“I am considered one of the very best ocularists in the world. I have devoted my life to it, as did my father, my grandfather, and his grandfather. It is more than a respectable choice for someone who is a talented artist. It is a chance to help people, on a deeply emotional and psychological level. You understand that, for most people, the loss of sight is one of the greatest of fears. But there is more to it when it is not just sight but also the whole eye is lost.”
Siegfried remembered Jack when he was still young Johnny. How hopeful and frightened he was then. His weeping eye, his curiosity, his shy demeanour. How changed he was once he had an eye that fit him properly. An eye that suited him.
“I had to be very sensitive with Jack. When I gave him back an eye, I gave him another opportunity at life. Isn’t that what you do, Mark, when you defend someone in court? And you, Elaine, don’t you help those who are troubled? I think that Gareth, here, has both the temperament and the talent to do this. I think that, one day, he could be a great ocularist.”
Elaine shifted her weight uncomfortably. She knew Siegfried was right.
“What do you think, Mom?” Gareth asked. “I think I would like to give it a shot. I think it’s what I am supposed to do.”
“Then do it.” Elaine took her son’s hand; it was no longer the little palm that fit inside of hers. Now her hand seemed lost in his.
Clara didn’t know why Gareth wouldn’t return her calls. The summer had passed. It was late August and all the time that they could have shared had passed them by. And now she was leaving.
She knew that Blanca and Jack had been having kissing sessions all summer. Clara didn’t understand how Blanca could move on at this time. How could she walk away from Jack? How could she abandon Bleach? Or the big house? And Esther, what about her? How could she leave the lake where their mother slept for all eternity?
Of course, Clara never told Blanca how often she would go and speak with her mother. Sometimes the words were silent but spoken so loudly in her head that surely her mother could hear her. Other times they were simply whispered on the wind. It was her private secret. And it was the secret she wanted, for no logical reason, to share with Gareth. She wanted to tell him how she had a life apart from her twin. That it was okay for him to like just her because, even though they looked the same, they were so very different. She wanted him to see those differences but he had closed her off. Didn’t return her calls.
“Hey, Clara!” It was Jack, calling down from the cliff above. The two must have climbed up, leaving her below on the boardwalk, the lake at her feet. She squinted up at them. They were waving, arms above their heads, as if they were stranded on an island and she was the rescue boat.
“We’re going to drive you to the airport! Tristan and me. I asked him yesterday.”
“Not Gareth?”
“No, haven’t you heard? Gareth’s going to Germany with Siegfried. So he’s too busy getting ready to go!”
Clara turned her back on them. So she would not see him before she went. The door to first love was opened a crack and then nothing happened until the wind blew it shut again. Yet she knew it wasn’t quite over. She, herself, was on her way to Germany. They would be in the same country! If it was meant to be, it would surely happen!
“Mama,” she whispered, “let me be lucky in love and let me know the happiness that was denied to you.”
“Clara!” Blanca called to her. “We gotta pack!”
“Coming!”
She looked out over the water one more time, then she pointed to her heart and said, “You’ll be right here.” She picked up a smooth stone and held it to her chest.
He wasn’t sure if it was the sherry or the admission, but ever since he told Blanca the secret he began to get his strength back. It was as though God was draining him of life and now, because he had faced his great fear and given power to the words of it, the life was coming back into him. It was clear that he had a purpose. A calling. He had a second chance and reason to be alive. Perhaps he would retire from peddling his wares from his tricycle. Why give happy pills and mood-altering drugs to teens when he could give them a greater high? And what could be a greater high than Jesus? He would go every day to Victoria Park and he would stand on a wooden box, ready to talk to anyone about the mysterious power of God.
“Look, here I am, a dead man walking just weeks ago, and now as alive as live can be! I am the physical proof of a miracle!”
It wasn’t too much to ask, to be given his life back. And a place at the table of the Father. After all, he had been forgiven, reborn. All his sins had been cleared, the slate was clean. It was a brand-new day! There was no point in even seeing his doctor now. He knew those tumours were shrinking away. He could feel it!
But why, when he had changed his ways, were his precious flowers leaving him? Going to Europe (Germany, of all places!), to sing that crazy music no one could understand? What was the purpose of that? Yes, they were his precious flowers and they belonged with him. They were no longer the manifestation of shame, but the blossoms of truth. The blessings he needed. They were his road to Damascus.
Suffer the little children so that they may come to me. That was why God created them so freaky-looking. They had the power of forgiveness. The awful acts of his son could only be forgiven by the two white angels his seed had produced. There was only one thing to do: bring his son to his knees and have him ask them for forgiveness.
Blanca refused to go upstairs. She had been very clear with her grandpa that if their uncle showed up it would be the last time he would ever see them. And now here he was, at the big house, expecting to say their goodbyes. Clara saw no problem with it, thought it would be the right thing to do, to say goodbye to someone who had cared for them and loved them. Weren’t some of their best times at his house, watching TV and playing with their cousins?
“No. Clara. They were not good times.”
“Yes, they were. What is wrong with you?”
Esther said it was fine for them to wait downstairs. She could go up and gather their things for them, but Blanca said they could wait. The boys could do it. Esther had already done more than enough. She had taken them for their passport photos, had done all the paperwork, applied for their work visas, and then paid for their fares. The whole process had taken time, but Esther went step by step, taking care of every detail.
“It is the start of your new lives. The lives you were meant to have. Who knows, maybe one day you will get to Buckingham Palace!”
“Well, at least we will know our manners because of you,” Clara said, throwing her arms around the older woman.
“Hey, get yer little white heinies up here now and say yer goodbyes!”
It was Uncle Bob’s voice. Clara started for the door, but when she saw Blanca shaking she stopped herself. What was going on? Her sister wasn’t shaking from fear, she could see that. It was rage that made her body quake. Esther put her hand on Blanca’s shoulder to steady her.
“You know something,” Clara said.
“No. But you can’t go up there. He’s drunk and angry.”
“But we should say goodbye.”
“We already said goodbye to Grandpa,” Blanca said.
“It is better if you just go. Goodbyes can be too hard. Let the boys get the last of the bags,” Esther advised.
“Well, there’s someone else I have to say goodbye to and yo
u’re not stopping me!”
Clara ran past her sister, past Esther, and out the apartment door. She didn’t go upstairs — she ran straight to the lake. She took off her shoes so the cold of the water could kiss her feet. She let the wind from the lake blow through her hair, the white strands lifting away from her face. Then she reached out her arms as far as she could, so that her fingers were just over the shoreline. She stood like that for a very, very long time. But her mother did not rise up from the waters. She did not awaken from a dream. She did not come to her even when she sang out. And Clara finally knew that her mother had left her a long time ago.
Jack and Tristan had gathered up the last of the suitcases and were heading down the steep stairs from the attic apartment. The twins’ grandfather had been helpful, but Uncle Bob was uncooperative and insulting. Even as they descended the stairs they could hear him, complaining and speaking in tones only possessed by the righteously drunk.
“I don’t fucking get it! You make me come all the way out here to see them off and then they don’t even come up and say goodbye. Been down there at the Jewess’s place all this time. You know, I coulda drove them.”
“Maybe you should go down and say goodbye to them, then.”
“They can bloody well come upstairs. Lazy little bitches. Everything I’ve done for those ingrates!”
Bob helped himself to the sherry. Not very good, but that was all that there was. He wished the old man had gotten it into his head that vodka or tequila would be the magic cure instead of bloody cooking sherry. Fuck, the place stank! He hated going to his father’s apartment. Hated the drive. Hated the nosy woman downstairs, always interfering, but, mostly, he hated seeing his father’s emaciated body. It wasn’t pity or empathy he felt. It was rage. Why did he have to drive over there to see his revolting, dying body?
“You got any percs or ’ludes?”
“No, I told ya. Not doing that now.”
Outside the apartment, on the landing, Tristan paused. He couldn’t help but listen in. This was real life, not dialogue, but still he thought that he might be able to use it in a script one day. He put his finger to his lips and crept back up the stairs to hear a little more.
Two White Queens and the One-Eyed Jack Page 22