The Glass Ocean

by Lori Baker

  • • •

  She seems so fragile sometimes. Brittle, even. The milky-white translucence of her skin. Every molecule gleaming. There is less of her on some days than others. Sometimes, I feel like I can see through her. Straight through.

  • • •

  My mother is going to leave us.

  • • •

  I know this without knowing. It’s already inside me, her departure, lodged like a bubble behind my sternum. There is a hollow place, a gap, a fissure. A missing piece. Tap hard with my finger against my chest and I can hear the echo. Nothing I can do is going to change it now. It can be neither swallowed, nor dislodged. I have always known it without knowing. Thus my cries as she moved away from me.

  Inevitably away.

  • • •

  There are signs.

  • • •

  One day, I find her at the dining table, papers spread out before her. She leans over them, chin cupped in hand, with an appearance of intense concentration. Approaching from behind, I see, over her shoulder: the blue of an ocean unknown to me, yellow dots that must be islands, the curving, black lines of latitude and longitude, a distant hemisphere divided up into wedges like a piece of fruit; notes that I can’t read, written in an unfamiliar hand. My mother hears me; quickly, she shuffles the papers into a stack, the map disappearing among them. She rises. The chatelaine jingles at her waist. Keys, thimble, scissors, tumbling. Without looking at me, pretending not to notice, she turns to mount the stairs.

  • • •

  Another day: I enter the bedroom. I don’t see her at first; I think I’m alone. Well: I have often been alone, in her company. Then, movement—her blond head, white shoulders. She is kneeling; the bed is between us. Her body is obscured. But I can tell what she’s doing: she’s shoving something under the bed, something heavy. Before I can see what it is, she says, Out! Out! Go find your father!

  So I do.

  • • •

  He’s in the shed, working. That’s usual. He’s always in the shed. That is where I find him. Here he is, my father, in the shed, in the dark, or rather in the not-quite-dark, it isn’t as absolute as that, so: in the semidark I find him, here he is, sitting at his bench. Light does come in, but randomly, through chinks in the walls (there are plenty of those), bright random motes and beams, alive with galaxies of dust; pencil-thin rays fall around my father like shooting stars, spatter his shoulders, his hair, fall uselessly to the floor around his feet; then, too, there is his own light, my father’s special light, that is to say, the light of the lamp. So though it is dark, it is not absolutely so. In the semidark, then, my father, hunching over the lamp (this, too, is usual), holding a rod of glass in the flame. I who have slipped in, between the motes, stand silently, watching, as he turns the rod in the flame, turns it, turns it, nipping here or there with his special tools, which gleam wickedly even in this obscure light; then he pulls, and suddenly the rod expands, a bulb appears, elongates, flattens, grows ovoid, gravid, shrinks, twirls, expands, rises—this is my father’s magic, this is what he does, the glass responds to his touches, to his teasing pokes and prods, in a sort of dance, a call and response from which shapes emerge, mysterious shapes; undefined things; insinuations; bodies of glass; fleshly glassine enigmas. What is my father making? On this day, it is impossible to tell. With a single, swift blow of the pliers he severs the rod so that the body, whatever it is, falls into the crucible. He does it with a slight, shielding movement of his arm, protecting whatever it is he has made, hiding it. Only then does he turn to me.

  • • •

  From this it may be seen that he, too, has his secrets.

  But his secrets are different from my mother’s. They shimmer, glassily, are refractive, harder, and yet, at the same time, are vaguely apologetic, suffer from uncertainty, and perhaps, even: from shame. Unlike my mother, he does not always shut me out; rather, he shuts me out and takes me in, simultaneously, because he knows that shutting me out is wrong. Nodding at the honeycomb of cubbies where the rods of glass reside (packed tight between and among the stacked remains of my grandfather’s collection—though these have been moved, more and more, into the house, at my mother’s insistence), he says, gravely, The blue one—. Gravely says it; stretches out his hand. It is a severe hand, severely offered. Where has it come from, this severity? My father is not usually severe; only when making glass; then he is severe, as his father was severe, too, carving jet. The severity is my cue: I know if I am not quick enough he will snap his fingers once, twice; and then I might panic, hand him a rod of the wrong color, or even fumble, and drop it. This must not happen, for the glass is precious—precious as living things are precious—therefore the rod must not break. I understand this; and usually it is all right. As it is this time: all right. I hand my father the glittering blue cylinder of glass, and stand at attention in my too-small dress, my hair a complexity of knots and mats and frizzes and curls because no one can be bothered to comb it, feet aching in too-tight shoes because nobody can be bothered to buy me new, watching my father work. I take very seriously my role as assistant. But he isn’t noticing me; not anymore; because it has begun again, his dance. Undistracted, he bends over the lamp, stretching out from the narrow rod of glass the beginnings of whatever he might be making, coaxing from his low flame the first blue, tonguelike extension of some mysterious object; he works with such slow, minute seriousness, eyes narrowed, shoulders hunched, what little movement there is concentrated in his hands only, hands moving gently in the darkness. There he is, in his apron and goggles, turning and turning the delicate bit of liquid glass, creating, from its hot, malleable heaviness, something that will, when it hardens, become, paradoxically, light as air, and infinitely more breakable. Stained with enamel. Chromate of potash. Sugar of lead. Gold chloride. Copper oxide. Bone ash. Arsenic. Oxide of manganese. Saltpeter. From these hard things beautiful colors are made. Hard things, ground up, melted together, then, inside the oven, in a clay crucible. Which I must not touch. Which I will not.

  It is very hot, my father says. It will burn you.

  • • •

  He doesn’t have to tell me. The flames themselves tell me this.

  • • •

  He is making me a toy in the flame of the lamp: a tiny fish, blue, flawless.

  It is his apology to me; though I don’t realize it, at the time.

  • • •

  (This is how I remember him, now that he is gone—)

  • • •

  Later, in my excitement, successfully distracted, I will run to show it to my mother. Look what Papa made me! It’s a fish!

  • • •

  She’s at her spinet. Because of me she has dropped her sheet music. Now it’s all on the floor, hopelessly disarranged. She cannot put it right.

  A fish? she cries. A fish! Of course it is! What else would he make! Your Papa is a very great man, for fish!

  • • •

  She shouldn’t be blamed. She is so unhappy. It does not go well with her.

  For my father is spending a great deal of time in his shed, more than before, working. Harry Owen has written, requesting more glass. There has been an influx of money from an anonymous patron—taken with your work, the letter says, A patron is taken with your work—as if the work is an illness, a contagion, by which someone can be taken. Taken away? Taken hold of? Taken in? And suddenly there is greater demand. This, for my father, is pressure. Hornsby is elated—can’t you, for God’s sake, Leo, send me more glass?

  Strange, isn’t it—how the opening of a wallet in London can change my father’s life? And my mother’s?

  Can’t you, Leo, for God’s sake, send more?

  My father, unused to demands, is very slow about it. The letters from Harry Owen arrive at regular intervals, distinguished from the usual post—mostly tradesmen’s bills (To Mr. L. Dell’oro, A bill in the amount of 4/3 for one pair of ladies boots. To Mr. Leopoldo Dell’oro, 5/- outstanding for the purchase of bread. Mr. Leo
poldo Dell’oro, 6/3 for 1.5 dozen oysters purchased Saturday last. Mr. Dell’oro, Please pay 6/0 for three weeks’ delivery of coal. Dear Mr. Leopoldo Dell’oro, in regards to the amount of rent owed, currently overdue on the cottage called “The Birdcage,” the amount of 12 s. 4 d. Mr. Leopoldo Dell’oro from Mr. William Cloverdale, Glassmaker, in consideration of the glass you stole from me when you were in my employ. This is my third letter)—by the fine, thick creaminess of the paper, the official Montagu House stationery with the return address decorously embossed in the upper left corner—and are left to pile up unattended on the dining table among the other detritus of our lives, the uncleared unwashed plates, the toys, my mother’s combs, my father’s papers, whatever part of Felix Girard’s collection my mother has lately unearthed, played with, grown bored by, set aside, and forgotten.

  He does not immediately read these letters, my father, despite all. Sometimes he slits them open, peers inside, and extracts a check, leaving the letter itself for later—or for never—

  Though he doesn’t think of it that way. He knows he ought, he knows he must, and he believes he will. The thing is, he has set himself to the solving of a problem—several problems—out there in his shed, and he doesn’t want to be distracted. Or rather: cannot allow himself to be distracted. Or rather: he’s fallen into something, and he can’t stop himself, even though he knows he should.

  He’s got something he’s tinkering with, out there; he’s got it wrapped in cloth, tenderly wrapped, gently wrapped, secretively wrapped; he began it in a moment of boredom, as a distraction, between commissioned objects, then set it aside; but he couldn’t set it aside, not really, because it nagged at him too much; and so he unwrapped it—carefully drawing apart the grimy layers of cloth, one layer at a time, then laying out, on his bench, one by one, the pieces, each piece a secret in itself; all very surreptitious, for it is of the utmost importance that my mother not see; I, of course, have seen, but it’s nothing to me, not now, I am a child, easily distracted by a new toy, a new treasure, a glass fish, or a swan, these being the currency of my father’s attention, a hard, warm currency that I can carry in my pocket, pausing every now and then to touch, not realizing until later, much later, the dissatisfaction of such things, the emptiness of the currency, of the object without its maker; I am a child, I take my gift and go, leaving him, always, to his other, his real work …

  He’s got the kaleidoscope out there, the one Thomas Argument gave to my mother—that very small first gift—and he’s taken it to pieces. He’s removed the lenses, has laid out in a row its small, cunning mirrors, he’s got the colorful glass innards out of their chamber, in a heap sometimes, at other times spread out on the bench like the pieces of a puzzle, each piece almost but not quite touching the next, and he ruminates over them, these pieces, rearranges, holds them up to the light, thinks about them, puts them back down, puts them away, wraps them up carefully, like objects of value, like gems. Then, too, he’s got the pocket mirror Thomas Argument gave her, in which she’d seen the reflection of her dear, vanished Papa; he’s taken it apart, has picked all the shards of broken mirror out of the silver frame. Even the yellow glass bird is there, carved and filleted on his bench, the wings removed to expose the delicate mechanism within. He’s studying, very carefully, each of these objects, and others, Thomas Argument’s gifts to my mother, studying in depth, contemplating, learning, or trying to learn, how they work.

  This, of course, does not satisfy my father, even when he has these objects, innocent in themselves, bared to the bone, as it were; there’s something here he can’t penetrate, not even once the cold mechanism has yielded its secrets—and they do yield, eventually, these objects of Thomas Argument’s, though they don’t do it quickly; no—there are challenges here, even for my father, who, with his Dell’oro tendenza, is an indefatigable scratcher at and ferreter out of secrets of the mechanical kind— though he is less perspicacious with other types, secrets of the flesh or of the emotion, for example. No—apart from the purely intellectual rewards my father derives from understanding, fully, the mechanisms of his rival, his explorations leave him unsatisfied. Carving them down to the wire, to the nuts and bolts, to the mirrors and lenses, still—unsatisfied. But this is the Dell’oro condition, is it not?

  He can discern how the mechanisms work, but he cannot discern how they worked on my mother—this, no baring of mechanism will reveal; the secret cannot be reached this way; no merely mechanical penetration, however deep, can ever be deep enough to fathom this mystery. In the gloom of his shed, though, my father does not realize his efforts are in vain; indeed, does not know just what it is that he is seeking—it’s a shadow, something somewhere on the periphery—though he knows very well he isn’t finding it; and so he continues with his dissections. Harry Owen and Montagu House are forgotten (at least until another envelope arrives, and then another; but even these are mere nagging presences, nits buzzing in the ear, pests, to be waved away) in the shadow of this other, more urgent, undertaking.

  What a fool my father is, in his shed, with all this tinkering, tinkering, tinkering. He has learned nothing, it is clear, about my mother, or about the high price of neglect. Monsters are fathered that way. He got off lucky the first time. Who knows what’s next. But that doesn’t occur to him; he’s working, that’s all, there’s nothing else, just the work.

  In his own odd way he’s not neglecting her, of course. As far as he’s concerned. More like, he’s forgotten where she is. He’s groping blindly, he’s lost. But it’s her he’s thinking of, all the time, every time he turns a screw to recalibrate a mechanism, or reaches for his soldering iron, or examines a minute cog and wheel with the aid of a magnifier that belongs to Harry Owen, and Montagu House. Every time he starts the bellows, bends over his lamp. Because of course he can’t be content just taking Thomas Argument’s gifts to pieces. He’s a Dell’oro, after all. There’s always got to be something more. He’s going to do something with them, these gifts.

  • • •

  It’s taking him closer to her. That’s what he thinks.

  • • •

  I remember his hands moving, gently, in the lamplight. There’s nothing left but his hands. That’s what he’s reduced to: it’s memory’s work. The spattering of sunlight across his shoulders, that’s part of it, and his hands, moving, moving, gently, desperately (except I don’t know that yet, I am still a child), in the semidark dark. He cannot continue, yet continues. Ever in the attempt to penetrate that which cannot be penetrated. That which moves away at his approach. Closer is farther. Cold is warm. Glass is flesh.

  This is what love has made of him. A creature part flesh, part fire, he’s been winnowed down, has winnowed himself to just lamp and hands, a face partially occluded by goggles (eyes invisible, shielded), neck a thin, pale stalk beneath the untrimmed mane of his curly black hair, he’s bent earnestly in my memory, bent forever, there in the dark semidark, a supplicant before the flame.

  • • •

  Meanwhile the letters from Harry Owen pile up unanswered, slip down between the dining table and the wall, lie forgotten on the Turkish carpet, among the crumbs. Are trod upon at mealtimes. Beneath her sharp heel, my ill-fitting shoe, his boot with the worn-down sole. Can’t you, Leo, for God’s sake, send more glass? Hornsby is keener than ever—

  • • •

  But my father is too busy. He is rearranging small, gemlike shards of glass in a glass chamber, a small, tightly lidded capsule, of Thomas Argument’s making; dissatisfied, opens it, adds other shards, other brilliants, of other shapes, other colors; then he turns his attention to the mirrors, gently alters their angles inside the wooden tube of the kaleidoscope. It was my mother’s first gift from Thomas Argument—that which began all. The object that piqued my father’s interest in glass. Without it, perhaps, he would never have made glass. Had he never lifted it, looked inside, and, being a Dell’oro, seen the possibilities. Now at last it is laid bare, disarticulated, exposed. With a sharp knife he
cuts a convex curve, delicate as a sliver of new moon, from the narrow far end of each of the three rectangular mirrors. Three new moons fall onto the bench, onto the floor, reflect narrow scimitars of light, scintillating blue scythes of sky. Carefully he replaces the mirrors in the tube, the chamber at its apex, the clear lens into the viewing end. Applies his eye to the viewer. Rotates. Sees what he has made, multiplied two, four, sixteen, a hundred, a thousand times. And is lost there, in precise, brilliant geometries of glass.

  • • •

  His work, his real work, has begun at last.

  • • •

  Carefully he removes the chamber again, once again opens it, and with a tweezer, begins removing small, brilliantly colored fragments. Like gems they glitter in the uncertain light at pincer’s end.

  He is dissatisfied: always dissatisfied.

  • • •

  My mother, for her part, hasn’t noticed the loss of these, Thomas Argument’s purely sentimental gifts. It is the missing pearl earrings she pursues, down on her hands and knees on the bedroom floor. They, after all, are germane to a secret project of her own. As for the others …

  • • •

  They don’t matter to her. But I believe she feels their loss. She just doesn’t know it. Instead, what she feels is a reduction in her self. Something’s gone. But she doesn’t know what’s missing. She’s groping for it without knowing what she’s groping for. Finding a pearl earring. Yet feeling, still, the gap, the lack, the fissure. The missing piece.

  • • •

  As for me, I’m growing up in the gap between their two secret, separate worlds—at the juncture of their mutually averted eyes. For all the childish length and breadth of me, I’ve managed to slip between them, unnoticed by either. Nobody bothers to look for me where I’ve been dropped. And so I remain, shining, quietly, in the dark, increasingly mysterious to myself, as, too, I am sure, to them. I lie in my trundle bed—the little bed that has become, over time, too small, my self (that mystery) projecting, feet and ankles, over the low drawer that supposedly contains me—lying there, hearing, while it is still dark, the first noises of the morning—the single, cawping gull, then the many; rumble of early cart wheels, clatter of hoofbeats; footsteps on the cobbles; shutters opening, a quarrel starting up early in the house next door; my parents turning, beside and above me, so near and yet so distant, my mother’s soft, inscrutable, warm murmurings in sleep; and I, the eavesdropper, aware, always, of the growing mystery, my self, under the rough sheet, the blanket, atop the prickling straw mattress; everything a mystery—swelling breast buds a mystery, my skin a mystery with its unexpected pink blushes, the sudden scrawny, startling growth of red bush at my pubes and the twin tendrils, smaller, in my armpits, all this a mystery to me, all new; I feel myself growing, being built, as it were, piece by piece, expansion of blood, bone, sinew, and also of mind, there beneath the roof of the Birdcage, which it seems sometimes will hardly hold me, so quickly am I growing, and so large—