The Glass Ocean

by Lori Baker

  In the end, perhaps it is this look, more than anything, that prompts him up Church Street, almost against his will, for a glimpse of the glittering window of Argument’s Glasswares, and of the other, more circumspect, opposing window of William Cloverdale. He hesitates, crosses back and forth many times between the brilliant shop front, refulgent with commercial triumph, of Argument, and the humbler, perhaps already defeated window of Cloverdale. What does he see? Tumblers, decanters, doorknobs, sherry glasses, saltcellars, fairy globes, desk lamps with green shades: the essence of domesticity, of Gentilessa’s sideboard, Emilio’s desk. Leopold is not interested in glass. Not yet, at least. That will come. For now he is interested only in Clotilde, and it is this that will prompt him, finally, to offer himself as glassmaker’s apprentice to Thomas Argument, despite the fact that he feels more drawn to the unassuming window of William Cloverdale, if to any window at all. But it will take some time before it happens, this offering, this self-immolation; it will be a matter of weeks before he can bring himself to do it, and until then, my father will hang between the two windows, Argument’s and Cloverdale’s, moving first toward one, then toward the other; will inhabit his own studio like a ghost, drawing nothing, seeing only, in his mind’s eye, the look that was on my mother’s face when she slipped Argument’s gift into her pocket. Is it less dangerous, that look, for being unconscious?

  In retrospect, of course, it seems perverse for my father to offer himself as apprentice, therefore as underling, as servant, to the man of whom, already, without quite even knowing it, he is jealous. But it is not perverse that he should want my mother to gaze with similar desire upon some object that he has made—to gaze that way upon himself. Because she does not, he knows, gaze on him, now, in that way. Does he think he can change it by aligning himself with Thomas Argument? It seems unlikely that he would place himself in such a position, so much in the man’s power, were he fully aware of already having, as it were, an argument with Argument. Is it less dangerous, my father’s jealousy, for being unconscious?

  On the surface, at least, the decision is purely practical. He applies to Argument out of need, and because Argument’s prosperity—however gaudy, repellent, even downright offensive, in its display—seems the crystallized embodiment of much that my father desires—success, security, wealth, the admiration of women (or of just one woman), even, perhaps, were he to think in such terms, which he does not, of the future. Yes, in its own way Thomas Argument’s window with its sparkling glass and brilliant jets of gaslight is the future, and my father is drawn inexorably toward its promise, ignoring, as he moves toward it, its inherent fragility. It is bright, it is bold, and what is more—my mother likes it, and my father, despite all, still likes my mother very, very much. Loves her, in fact, to distraction. Enough to sacrifice himself—to the furnace!

  • • •

  At least, that is how he thinks of it at the time. He goes begrudgingly … with relief, because of the money; but also begrudgingly. My father goes to Thomas Argument thinking to make, of himself, a burnt offering, for my mother’s sake. I imagine him now, reluctantly stalking up Church Street in the rain, a small, severe figure in a black suit and waistcoat. I suppose he looks very much as his own father must have done, on a similar occasion, ten years earlier, although I have got, in this case, no photograph to prove it. This is how I imagine Leopold. Hunched against the rain. Slightly angry. This is clear from his frown, but also it is in his bearing, the tightness in his shoulders, the way he holds his arms, slightly raised, bent at the elbows, tensed against his waistcoat, fists unconsciously clenched. He is wearing the suit that Gentilessa bought him for his travels. Still the only suit he owns, it is rusty from exposure to sun and salt water; patched, but proper, or at least, the best that he can muster, given the circumstances. I picture my father’s unwilling hand on Thomas Argument’s doorknob. It costs him much to turn that knob; but he does turn it, and the door swings open. A bell tinkles above his head. He enters that heartless, glittering world. I make of myself a sacrifice. For her.

  • • •

  What, exactly, does my father think he is giving up?

  His life as an artist, certainly—the potential of it, at least, since it does not yet exist in actuality. It is at present only an idea, an idea that cannot possibly come to fruition without Thomas Argument’s furnace; but my father does not know this; this is an irony of which he is, at the moment, unaware. What he is aware of, at present, is the potential—lost potential, as he sees it. And something more. Something that has to do, specifically, with Thomas Argument, and with the look in my mother’s eyes when she slipped the little kaleidoscope, given to her by Argument, into the pocket of her skirt.

  • • •

  Later, when the furnace has become my father’s life, it will be less clear what—who—he has sacrificed. Or why.

  • • •

  So it begins. Slowly at first, not only because my father, feeling the pull of the family tendenza, remembering the old stories, balks against it; but also because Thomas Argument wills that it must be so. He will hire my father, but only as a taker-in. It is a boy’s job. My father, at twenty, will be the boy who carries the hot pieces of finished glass to the lehr for annealing, who runs errands for the men, fetches beer and sandwiches. He will replace the boy who, while carrying a goblet in the shape of an open-mouthed fish, almost brushed against my mother, coming so close that she felt, for a moment, the radiant heat of the glass against her arm. She could have been singed; she was not; but that boy, for his near mischance, has been fired. Now my father will take his place. Now, in Thomas Argument’s glasshouse, he will be called, at any hour of day or night, to complete shifts of ten hours or more, whenever the furnace is hot, the glass soft enough to work—the teazer arriving at his door and shouting Dell’oro, all in!—my father must get out of bed if he is in it, or up from a meal if he is eating it, or away from his paper if he is drawing, and run to Church Street, where he will sweep the glasshouse floors before the blowers arrive. He will carry goblets and vases and candy dishes at the end of a pincer, placing them carefully and slowly (very carefully, very slowly) into the oven, where, by stages, they will cool. My father will also turn the winch that moves the iron trays of finished glass on a belt through the vault of the smoking lehr, bit by bit, away from the furnace, toward the cooler air. It is a slow progression. Each time a tray is filled with finished pieces, my father turns the crank once; the trays inside the lehr move forward one station; my father inserts an empty tray, which he will fill, in time, before he turns the crank again. It takes an entire day, a full twenty-four hours, for Argument’s wares, his decanters and carafes and finger cups, his trifle dishes and water jugs, his sugar basins, butter tubs, pickle glasses, cruets, salts and inkstands, his glasses for champagne, claret, hock, and wine, his jelly cups and custard cups, his fish globes and beer tumblers to make their full transit through the lehr. Minding the lehr is an important job even though it is a dull job, even though it is a boy’s job. Objects allowed to pass through too quickly, although apparently beautiful, are flawed: unevenly cooled glass is unstable, liable to shatter, to fly apart unexpectedly with the slightest of stress. A single touch is all it takes. A touch upon the sensitive place. Of course, this does not happen right away. The touch upon the sensitive place is inevitable, it must come, but it takes time. It may take days, even weeks, before the glass reveals its flaw. But the flaws are always revealed, in the end. This Thomas Argument will not tolerate. A bubble in glass is a flaw, sir; and what is flawed is fragile; and what is fragile can break—never forget it!

  My father does not forget it. If Argument’s wares shatter without cause, if they are returned in pieces, if there are complaints, it will be my father’s fault. The cost of inadequately cooled items will be deducted from his pay.

  • • •

  He is, of course, not permitted to polish items of glass once they have emerged, still warm, from annealing; that is for somebody else to do. Somebod
y skilled.

  • • •

  A boy’s job, then. The heat, the stink, the humiliation, the danger. Always the hovering edge of blame, the hot edge of Thomas Argument’s temper. Responsibility without reward.

  • • •

  For a year my father will create nothing in Thomas Argument’s shop. Even in his own studio, he will very seldom draw. He will lack the energy; and, in the uncertainty of never knowing when the teazer will call him back to Church Street, he will lack the concentration. Everything will be subsumed into the glasshouse. Into the fire.

  • • •

  One thing, at least, is to the good. At the end of a year of being balked by Thomas Argument, Leopold will balk himself no longer. He will long to make glass. But still he will not be permitted. Instead, he will be promoted to the position of footmaker, which means that it will be his job to stand at the red-hot glory hole containing the molten glass, right beside Jack Rose, the gaffer, and, using a handle shear, to stretch a blob of the molten liquid to form the handle of a pitcher; or, with the steel forming tool, to press out the foot of a wine glass; or sometimes to hold a wooden paddle against the rim of a sugar bowl to make sure the edges are true, or use a pliers to bend the lip of a carafe. And he will help to set the pot—winching the new clay tub full of seething, white-hot glass into the furnace—the dirtiest, most dangerous job in the glasshouse.

  By some strange freak of chance, my father is always called when it is time to set the pot.

  He will return home with his face blackened, his eyebrows scorched, his hands cramped. He will have made the base of a wine glass, the handle of a pitcher, the lip of a bottle, the spout of a jug. Nothing more. He will have watched Jack Rose animate the molten glass with his own breath, filling it, shaping it, but will have been unable to do this himself.

  Over time this denial, this frustration, will become, for my father, the equivalent of watching, impotently, another man kiss the woman he loves.

  And coming home to the Birdcage, there above the foul-smelling River Esk—the Birdcage with its bent angles, its jambs askew, its ill-fitting doors, its windows that stick at the hinges, its staircases and closets and corners crammed with artifacts belonging to Felix Girard, he will find Clotilde in the bedroom, folding garments purchased for her by her father in Paris, or sitting before the fire, saying Mr. Argument was with me today; he brought me the most cunning new toy!

  What will it be this time?

  A delicate bird, made from yellow glass, with hinged wings, and a winding mechanism that makes a strange piping sound, very like, and yet at the same time eerily unlike, singing.

  A diminutive lantern, made from bamboo and translucent paper upon which is painted a complex pattern of branches and leaves; inside it, silhouetted figures, cut from tin, circle upon a metal gyre around four candles, in the light of which they cast monstrous shadows upon the wall—a man with a stovepipe hat and an umbrella and a grotesquely hooked nose pursuing a fat policeman with a whistle pursuing a pig that runs upright on its rear trotters with an enormous French horn pressed to its porcine lips.

  A silver compact in the shape of a scallop shell, containing a mirror in which my mother can see, behind the shoulder of her own reflection, the ghostly reflection of somebody else, who, when she turns around, is not there—

  It is my Papa, look and see! she cries—

  My father looks, sees his sister, Anna, standing behind him in the mirror, declares it a sneaky trick, and throws it at the fire. When my mother retrieves it from the ashes, the mirror is shattered, reflects nothing, will never reflect anything again; but this is all right.

  Mr. Argument will bring me another, she says.

  And he does.

  In fact, Thomas Argument has become a frequent visitor to the Birdcage. His long, angular figure slouches and slopes uncomfortably through the low, crooked doorways of the three whitewashed pentagonal rooms, makes its stiff and hampered way up and down the tortuous, narrowly turning stairs packed with Felix Girard’s curiosities, folds itself awkwardly, yet surprisingly often, into a chair before the fire, after having brought forth from some pocket or other (very much as Felix Girard used to do), a gift, varyingly exotic, eccentric, or strange, for my mother. In this chair, which, perhaps, should have been my father’s—except that my father, delayed at the glasshouse, working erratic journeys of ten hours on, twenty-four off, never the same ten, never the same twenty-four, typically arrives too late, too tired, and too dirty to claim it first—Argument shifts, stretches his long legs toward the hearth, then draws them back again, crosses and uncrosses, leans right and then left, then sits forward on his haunches, elbows propped on knees, fingertips pressed together to form a tense arch that he will shortly dismantle by leaning backward again and putting his hands behind his head. His discomfort is evident. Thomas Argument does not fit—not in the house, not in the chair. Perhaps not in my parents’ lives. But he comes very often, and sometimes he stays very late.

  And he talks.

  My father, coming home at midnight, having just put the crimped rim around the top of a glass jar or the notch in the spout of a creamer, enters wearily upon these conversations-in-progress, finds Thomas Argument delivering to my mother a lecture upon the suitability of gas lighting for home use (The depletion of oxygen, madam, is vastly overstated, as is the staining—and the explosions? Pah! Just rumor, my dear); his dislike for French cristal opaline (Fine glass should not look like blancmange. It should sparkle, madam, it should sparkle!); or the wonders of the latest addition to his collection—a drinking cup inside which is nested a magical mirror (The first time you look you will see yourself in it. Look again and you are gone! It is most amusing when drunk. I bought it in Greece, Madam Dell’oro, the last time I was there). Sometimes, when he is excited, Argument reaches out with his silver-headed walking stick and prods the coal in the fireplace. It is the wave of the future—the wave of the future! he cries (whether the subject is gaslight, or electrical conduction, or the daguerreotype, my father is not sure) and—poke!—crimson sparks shoot up the flue. Clotilde in her own chair sits, smiles, gently caresses a yellow bird made from glass. If she winds its mechanism it will sing; it will sound almost like a real bird; but she does not wind it. Her glass bird, a gift, is silent. Above their heads a living bird flits, flashes its ruby breast, quickly is gone.

  My father, coming in like a stranger upon these peculiar conversations in which Thomas Argument talks very much and very enthusiastically while Clotilde sits sphinxlike, inserting only the occasional and perhaps ironic comment (Is that so, Mr. Argument? I think you are quite—wrong!—about that), never feels included. Perhaps he does not desire inclusion. Perhaps he has had enough of Thomas Argument at the glasshouse. This same Thomas Argument who arrives at the Birdcage with gifts in hand, Thomas Argument the charming enthusiast, my mother’s friendly admirer, is a tyrant in his own house, a petty martinet who abuses the men, accuses them of sullying the batch, destroys entire trays of finished glass that do not meet his specifications after failing to say what the specifications are. Whole trays are returned to the furnace to be melted and made again: This glass is blistered! That is seedy! It is uneven! It’s poorly flattened!

  No one but Thomas Argument can see the flaws.

  It is terrible, madam, Argument confides to my mother, the master’s appalling burden of—surveillance!

  Naturally his behavior gives rise to bitterness. There are even rumors about the batch, which Argument insists on mixing himself. He is protective of it, secretive. It is said, both inside the glasshouse and outside it, that he mixes it with ash of animal bones, and that this is why his glass is so dexterous, so translucent. Thomas Argument, it seems, cannot leave the knacker’s yard behind; skeletons rattle in his angry gaze.

  Not surprising, then, that my father might wish Thomas Argument would go home.

  • • •

  If indeed he does wish it. My silent father may have removed himself from Thomas Argument entirely—mentally
, at least. Almost certainly by this time, during his second year working in the glasshouse, he has begun thinking like a Dell’oro. Fretting like one. He wants to make; he is frustrated because he cannot. He has begun, secretively, sketching. Almost certainly he has received by now the first of many similar letters that will be sent to him, from London, by Harry Owen: Despite my best attempts preservation has failed … Can you please send to me at your soonest convenience, your drawings of the Holothuriae, the Monochirus amatus Owenii, and the Aplysi, which remain, at present, the sole scientific record of these wonderful animals …

  My father reads these letters, and thinks about glass. He remembers, in felt memory, perhaps, more than in thought (because making, for him, increasingly resides in touch, not in thought), the handle he attached to a pitcher in the glasshouse this afternoon—the hot responsive twist of the molten glass. Like a living thing. The white-hot sensuous melting. He hears my mother saying to Thomas Argument—

  Why Mr. Argument, that is so very … interesting!

  Her soft insinuating laughter the sudden, barely detected spark that begins the conflagration.

  • • •

  In retrospect, of course, it seems inevitable; I already know what my father will do. But for him, sitting there, in front of the fire, like a stranger in his own house, exhausted, listening to Thomas Argument’s glib pronouncements, then my mother’s adulatory ejaculations in response—what can he have been feeling? I already know what he will do, so I am not surprised when, eventually, inevitably, he gets up and leaves the room (receiving, as he does it, barely a glance from either my mother or Thomas Argument, so engrossed are they in their mutual game of admire and be admired). But what can my father be thinking, in that moment when he decides to leave my mother alone with Thomas Argument? What will he be thinking on all those afternoons, those evenings, yet to come, when he will do the same again? All those evenings when, returning home from his shift, entering the kitchen, and hearing Thomas Argument’s excitable voice reverberating down the screw-turn stairwell, he will simply pass up the stairs to bed, or through the house and out, going straight to his studio, without even bothering to find out what is being discussed in the parlor above?