A Summer Affair (6 page)

Claire’s hot shop was locked up like Fort Knox. When she worked, the furnace ran night and day, and so the term “hot shop” was something of an understatement. Jason called it the Belly of Hell. Jason had built the hot shop for Claire because there was no glass studio on the island. He’d started out reluctantly.
One expensive hobby,
he called it. They spent tens of thousands of dollars on the pot furnace, the glory hole, the punties, the benches, the molds, the shaping tools, the colored frit, the annealer. A small fortune. Eventually, however, Jason became fascinated with the construction of the hot shop. He was building the only glassblowing studio on the island. For his wife, who was trained in the craft; she had a degree from RISD! She could make things—vases and goblets and sculpture—and sell them. Now the hot shop had paid for itself, and Claire had made enough money from the whims of her kooky patrons to pay off the car and plump the kids’ college funds.

She could not believe she was doing this. She glanced back at the house, stealthily, feeling like a criminal as she unlocked the heavy metal door. But why? There was nothing wrong with blowing glass again. Pan would take care of Zack, and the other kids were at school all day, so . . . why not? But there was guilt. It had to do with her fall. Claire should never have subjected herself to the heat when she was so far along in her pregnancy. She should have been drinking more water. The doctor had warned her! And it was Zack who had paid the price.
There’s something wrong with him
.

Still, she stepped inside. She was an alcoholic opening the liquor cabinet; she was a junkie visiting her dealer. But that was ridiculous! She had, after all, come into the hot shop plenty of times in the past year—to get tools, to go over her books with the accountants, to show Pan the pieces she’d made as a beginner—but Claire had never come in with the intention of starting up again. When she turned off the heat, she did so in the name of her family. She had four kids, a husband, and a home that needed her.

Claire stood in the center of the shop and looked around.
Just admit it!
She was dying to get back in there.

Claire’s attraction to molten glass was atavistic; it was coded somewhere on her DNA. She was drawn to the flame, to the unsafe temperatures, to the blinding light. A blob of molten glass on the end of a blowpipe contained her life’s meaning, even though it was hot and dangerous. She had burned herself and cut herself too many times to remember; she had scars with stories she’d forgotten. But she loved working with glass the way she loved her children—unconditionally, and despite the real possibility of failure. Molten glass fell to the floor, she marvered incorrectly and came out with something lopsided, she blew a piece too thin, she necked incorrectly and could not transfer the piece to the punty, she cooled a piece too quickly and it shattered in the annealer. There was nothing about glass that was forgiving; it was a craft, but also a science. It took precision, concentration, practice.

She found a half-empty sketchbook on her worktable.
Museum-quality piece?
The piece at the Whitney was a sculpture of thinly blown-out spheres—so thinly blown that they had to be placed in a soundproof room—all of which held hints of prismatic color and interlocked like soap bubbles. The sculpture was called
Bubbles III.
(
Bubbles I
and
II
were housed in the private galleries of Chick and Caroline Klaussen and Chick Klaussen sat on the board of the Whitney.) The Yankee Ingenuity Museum displayed a set of nesting vases with differently shaped openings. When you looked down into the vases, it was like looking into a kaleidoscope. Claire had done the vases in sea colors—turquoise, cobalt, jade, celadon. Claire and Jason and the kids had traveled to Vermont to see the vases on display. The vases were lovely and well displayed in the small, rustic museum, though they didn’t compare to the
Bubbles
at the Whitney. Claire couldn’t do another in the
Bubbles
series for the auction; that would be like Leonardo repainting the
Mona Lisa.
But Claire could possibly create another set of nesting vases. Would they be worth fifty thousand dollars?

The door opened and the room filled with breeze. Claire turned. Pan stood in the doorway. Claire felt like she’d been caught.

“Where’s Zack?” Claire said.

“He sleep,” Pan said.

“I’m thinking about working again,” Claire said.

Pan nodded. She was still very brown from the summer. She wore a black tank top and khaki capri pants and a thin silver chain with a tiny bell on it around her neck. Claire had paid twice already to have this chain repaired after Zack had yanked it off. Claire suggested Pan not wear the chain while she was working, but Pan ignored this advice and that was fine. The chain and the bell were part of Pan’s persona, part of her magic. Pan was short and lithe, and her glossy black hair was cut into a rounded pageboy. She was both adorable and androgynous. With the silver chain and the tiny, tinkling bell, she reminded Claire of a wood sprite.

“What do you think?” Claire asked.

Pan tilted her head.

“About me working?”

Pan shrugged. Possibly she didn’t understand the question, and certainly she didn’t understand what Claire’s working again would entail.

Claire shook her head. “Never mind,” she said.

Pan left, but Claire lingered for another few moments on the bench, paging through her sketchbook. Once upon a time, she had made an elaborate pair of candlesticks for Mr. Fred Bulrush of San Francisco. The pulled-taffy candlesticks. She had come upon the design by accident, holding on to the gather with tweezers while rolling the blowpipe; she had twisted and pulled the molten glass, then rolled it into blue and purple frit that she’d scattered on the marvering table. She was like a kid with clay, and she thought she’d end up with a kid’s mess, but the colors blended beautifully and the form cooled a bit and Claire recognized it as a candlestick stem. She added a foot and blew out a small bowl, and when it came out of the annealer, she thought,
This is really cool.
It looked, to Claire, like a psychedelic Popsicle. It was Jason who thought it looked like pulled taffy. He liked it as much as Claire did, but then he said,
What are you going to do with one candlestick?

And Claire thought,
Right. I’ll never in a million years be able to make another one.

She tried again and got close—the color wasn’t quite identical and the twistiness was off—but that was what made it art. She took a picture of the candlesticks and sent it to Mr. Fred Bulrush, a mysteriously wealthy man—a former associate of Timothy Leary’s—who loved Claire’s work because he believed it contained what he called “the elation and pain” of her soul. Bulrush paid twenty-five hundred dollars for the pair.

What about turning the idea upside down? Upside-down candlesticks: a chandelier. Claire had always wanted to do a chandelier. What about a pulled-taffy chandelier that would cascade from the ceiling like party streamers, each strand ending in a lightbulb the size of a grape? God, it could be utterly fantastic. Would Lock like that?

Two o’clock came and Claire picked up J.D. and Ottilie at the elementary school, then Shea at Montessori. J.D. and Ottilie had Little League at three, and Shea had soccer at three thirty. Claire had snacks and drinks for everybody, J.D. and Ottilie’s mitts, hats, and uniform shirts, Shea’s cleats and shin guards. The kids piled into the car with their lunch boxes, their backpacks, and assorted art projects. J.D. had a flyer for an open house, which wafted like an autumn leaf into the front seat.

“How was school?” Claire asked.

J.D. ripped open a bag of Fritos. Nobody answered. Claire checked the rearview mirror; Shea was struggling with her seat belt.

“What did you do today?” Claire said. “J.D.?”

“Nothing,” J.D. said.

“Nothing,” Ottilie said.

“Shea?”

“I can’t get my seat belt buckled.”

“J.D., will you help her, please?”

J.D. huffed. “Of
course,
” he said.

Claire smiled. She was not Julie Andrews, these were not the von Trapp children, these were children who had apparently done nothing during a whole day of school—but everything was okay. She had gone into the hot shop, but the fact of the matter was, she liked her life the way it was now. She was consumed with making sure the kids had what they needed. Because she had spent so much time mooning over her sketchbook, she had forgotten to put the laundry in the dryer, and she hadn’t done anything about dinner, so things would be insane when she got home, and there would be Zack to deal with because Pan was off at five. Claire didn’t have time to create a museum-quality piece. And yet the feeling remained, the tug. The pulled-taffy chandelier was the most exciting idea she’d had in a long time. Claire turned into the parking lot of the town recreational fields. The rec fields were the site of the summer gala; they were the only place big enough to accommodate the tent and a concert for a thousand people. Claire wondered if there was any reason she would see Lock Dixon at the rec fields, and decided the answer was no.

The soccer fields were a great place to get a glimpse of “Nantucket’s children.” On Shea’s team alone, the kids spoke five languages—there were two Haitian girls, a Bulgarian boy, a pair of Lithuanian twins whose parents were deaf (they spoke English, Lithuanian, and Lithuanian sign language). The diversity was amazing, it was exciting; the soccer program was well organized and impeccably administered. It was funded by Nantucket’s Children.

When Claire saw her own group of friends—Delaney Kitt, Amie Trimble, Julie Jackson—she felt the way men must feel about their fellow soldiers:
We’re all in the foxhole together, fighting the same war.
Raising young children, enjoying them, because they would only be young once.

Claire walked up to Julie Jackson. Julie was a natural beauty; she had curly blond hair and was even thinner than Claire (kick-boxing). Julie Jackson had three kids, she sold stationery and occasionally hosted an at-home show, and she served on the board of the ice rink. When Claire saw her, she thought,
Committee!

“Hey,” Claire said.

“Hey!” Julie said. “How are you? Did you bring the baby? God, I haven’t seen him in forever. He must be getting so big.”

“Yeah,” Claire said. Her good mood was like a balloon that she accidentally let go—floating away, up over the trees, out of sight. Claire didn’t bring Zack to the soccer field on purpose. She didn’t want the other mothers to see him and sense something wrong and then confer with one another about whether it was because he’d been
so premature
. “He’s home with Pan.”

“So, what’s new?” Julie asked.

“Oh, not much,” Claire said. How to broach the subject? She should send an e-mail, she decided. But that was cowardly—and this was the perfect place to ask. They were overlooking a veritable United Nations on the six-and-under soccer team. “I agreed to cochair the summer gala. The benefit for Nantucket’s Children? Hey, you know, I would love to have you serve on the committee. Would you consider it?”

Julie Jackson had her eyes glued on her son, Eddie, who had the ball. Julie didn’t answer Claire, and Claire debated whether to repeat herself. Claire suddenly felt like she’d asked Julie Jackson to join her on the chain gang.

“Do you know what I’m talking about?” Claire said. “The summer gala? It’s held right here, in August . . .”

“I know,” Julie said. “Lock Dixon’s thing. Was he the one who asked you?”

“Yes,” Claire said. She found herself flustered at the mention of Lock’s name. Julie had been in the cab the night of Daphne’s accident. Was she making a connection? “They want me to get Max West.”

“Oh, right,” Julie said. “I forgot you knew him.” Did she say this ironically, or was Claire just too sensitive?

“Yeah,” Claire said.

“I can’t take on one more thing,” Julie said. “I just can’t.”

“Right,” Claire said. “I understand.”

“Me, either,” Delaney Kitt said.

“Me, either,” Amie Trimble said. “Ted would kill me. It always seems harmless to join this committee or that committee, but it ends up being hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars.”

“Yeah,” Julie said. She grinned at Claire. “But it’s great that you’re doing it, Claire. You’re a good egg, making time in your life for this.”

“
Such
a good egg,” Delaney echoed.

“It’s going to be so much work,” Amie said. “Better you than me!”

Claire was late getting home from the rec fields because there was an injured bird on the side of the road. She saw it there, the sparrow or wren, hit by a car, maybe, or nipped by someone’s dog, injured, struggling, but not dead. The kids were limp and exhausted in the backseat; they didn’t see the bird, and Claire thought,
Keep going!
She only had five minutes to get home in time to relieve Pan. But no, she couldn’t ignore it. When she pulled over and said, “Look at that poor little bird,” the kids perked up a little, but they did not get out of the car.

Claire knelt by the bird. Something was wrong with its leg and its wing. It hopped lopsidedly. Claire heard a car horn. Amie Trimble slowed down.

“What are you doing?”

“Injured birdie patrol,” Claire said.

Amie shook her head, smiled, drove off.

Claire reached out to pick up the bird, but the bird was having none of it. It hopped out of her reach, and Claire hurried down the sandy border of the road chasing it. Julie Jackson drove by. Claire stood up and looked at the back of Julie’s car. Claire was the only person she knew who would stop for a bird, she was the only person she knew who would agree to cochair something as colossal and consuming as the gala—but instead of making her feel virtuous, she felt like a bloody fool.
You’re a good egg, making time in your life for this.
She
didn’t
have time—
Get back in the car!
—but she could not in good conscience leave the lame little bird here. She sneaked up on the bird and got a hand under it. The kids were cheering her on now from the car. This was all the little bird needed: it got aloft, flew away. Claire was relieved. She headed back to the car. The kids were clapping.