The Glass Ocean (33 page)

This is exciting.

•   •   •

My father, though, is obdurate—rising from his chair, deigning at last to put on his large coat, which he wears rucked up carelessly in the back. He is returning again, compulsively, to the more certain warmth of his furnace and lamp, to the glass that is more responsive to his loving ministrations than his Clotilde could ever be.

He is ready now. His work, his real work, is about to begin.

•   •   •

He can do amazing things with glass, turn the rod in the heat of the flame until it grows soft, caress it with his tools to form the bulb, the bud, the first perfect, translucent body upon which he will practice his art, from which he will conjure, with a series of small but eloquent gestures, other bodies, other forms, embedding as he does, within each of them, her initials.

•   •   •

It doesn’t matter. It’s useless, all of it.

•   •   •

Harry Owen wonders, gesticulates, grows emphatic, spastic. Froths at the mouth practically. My father says nothing, nor do I.

We are in collusion, we two.

Finally, painfully, Harry Owen stops asking, sharpens his beard instead over books by the stove.

•   •   •

Her absence has become a wound nobody wants to look at.

Meanwhile the snow is replaced by a sullen, dark dripping; the sea reclines on the horizon, an indolent, silver-scaled beast, cold thickened, slithering slowly: forward, back; forward, back; into the harbor, out; into the harbor, out. I am lethargic, too, my numbed fingers awkwardly fumbling the buttons of my dress in the frigid bedroom where nobody bothers to light a fire anymore.

Nor is there a fire in the parlor.

Nor are the lamps lit.

The fifteen corners of the three pentagonal rooms of the Birdcage are stale, contain, suddenly, strange, unexpected pockets of abandonment that hover like ghosts, cling damply to the skin when passed through. Smelling of dust, of fur, of feathers, of formaldehyde; of unbrushed hair, unswept fingernail clippings, unread books, undrunk tea, uneaten food, unriddled cinders.

•   •   •

In this way, it seems, we are haunted.

It is a reverse haunting, though: instead of a presence, an absence. Trembling of air. Attempts at conjuration fail: descending the spiral stair I see her from above, sitting at the table. I hear her: footstep in the pantry. Voice—a single word—short, sharp, impatient, imperious:
Carlotta!

But I am mistaken. It’s just a shadow. Vinetap on windowpane. Snippet of dream. I wake up; she isn’t there; things fly apart: the molecules will not cohere.

My mother is gone. She isn’t coming back.

•   •   •

Finally though, one day, after many days of tense silence, through a blue filigree of frost I do see a figure after all, dimly familiar, lurking at the gate, indistinct in the sleeting; from its slouching, clowning manner I realize it cannot be my mother, yet just the same I feel a sense of relief, of breath inheld released: I have been waiting for this, too, without realizing. It’s Hip. How long has it been? Long enough: he won’t know she’s gone. There’s relief in that. Wrapped in a thick, greasy parka, tongue protruding teasingly from the gap between his teeth, colorless as ever, his breath white upon the grey-white freezing air, he is a shadow, unlike others, that grows in solidity as I approach. It is easy enough for me to slip out to meet him, to disappear, myself, into this monochromatic world; to slip between; nobody, after all, is looking. In the shed the bellows respires, smoke rises greyly through roof vent into grey sky, this is my father at work; Harry Owen, reclined by the fire, has buried his spade of a beard deep in the pages of a book and will not be aroused. So I slip past, slip through. What is one more disappearance, after all?

Quickly I cover my hair with a shawl, and become invisible. A ghost myself, gladly conjured.

I won’t tell him she has gone. In our shared world, she’s still here. This is magic.

•   •   •

I am barely through the gate when he says,
You got to see this!

Again?

Yeah. You got to see.

This is how it is with us, it is as if no time has passed since the last time. Time with Hip is a single blink, or several parallel worlds he is interweaving. Only he can see the thread.

What is it?

Of course he will not tell me. He never tells. Surprise being of the essence. I know this, in itself it is no longer surprising. The thing he shows me, that is what will surprise.

Come on!

He touches my hand lightly, ghost tap on ghost flesh, distantly apprehended.

Naw. Hold up. It’s too cold. I don’ wanna go.

C’mon. Why not?

I don’ wanna, that’s why.

Nonetheless, of course I’ll go. This is what I do, what we do, he and I, together. Beneath us is the Esk, boiling and freezing simultaneously, dousing us with its cold contempt.

At the corner of Bridge Street we turn, head down the hill single file, unspeaking. He grows indistinct in the sleet, as if vanishing behind a scrim. Then pausing to wait for me he grows solid again at my approach, a veil is lifted, it’s like a game, molecules flying apart, coming together.

I can depend on this.

•   •   •

I won’t tell him she has gone. In this way she can accompany us, a ghost among ghosts. I feel her absence at my back, it is loyal, like a thing on a leash, tugging lightly, playfully, though Hip can’t see it.

He senses it, perhaps, my silence giving shape to that which is missing. I know this but can’t help myself, having nothing to say.

Fortunately he is magnanimous, has no wish to unmask me.

So we will descend, three ghosts together, into the warren.

•   •   •

The sleet is so thick that today even this is abandoned, mean figures and mean, low buildings emerging darkly from ice and wind, then sinking away again, the streets narrowly turning back upon themselves and each other in a circuitous dream of stucco and stone that has for its accompaniment the rhythmic, angry music of the sea.

•   •   •

It is right below us here. The ground trembles with it. We are a heartbeat away from the wave that could dash everything to pieces, all of it, all of us, ghosts then, in the sea.

Instead we turn another corner, and another, this is Hip’s territory, the sea’s an impersonal menace, it does not care about us, and I myself am lost, getting in deeper with every turning.

Imagining her there, on the sea. Distance growing greater.

Though at the same time she is with me.

My mother is and is not on the sea.

Come on. This way. Over here
.

How does he find these things? When has he the time? His master, if there is such, is certainly a lenient one. Somehow Hip has memorized these streets, follows them by touch or smell or some other sense uniquely his own, by the cobbles beneath his feet, perhaps, the cant of them, the curve, the rough and smooth spots, or, like a jungle creature, by a trace he left the last time he was here, undetectable to all but himself. Me he leads with gentle touches, hand on wrist, hip, shoulder, this is palpable enough.

I haven’t been here since she carried me inside her. She has dislodged me at last, I suppose. Having held her grudge longer and better than I ever could have imagined, she has left me her ghost only, to carry with me from now on. This is another of her inversions, I left to bear the weight of nothing, an empty space that, as it cannot be emptied, will only grow heavier with time.

Over here
, says Hip,
look at this!

He has brought me to the window of a little music shop where along with the flutes and mandolins there is a woman seated behind the streaked glass, playing at a small keyboard; the music issues out to the sidewalk in brittle gusts through a gap in the door, which is narrowly ajar. We are not alone in watching; a small gathering, children, one or two women, stand before the window as well, staring intently.

We are silent, all of us, watching, waiting.

Two days she’s been here
, Hip says.
Ain’t that something? Ain’t it?

Behind the glass the musician lifts her arm to turn the page of her score, shifts disjointedly, with a roll of eyes resumes her play, which is awkward, the flanges stiff in the fingers though those fingers are slender, pale as flesh, paler, the nails small and delicate and rosy.

Look!
cries Hip.
Ain’t that something? She looks just like your Ma! Don’ she? Don’ she? When she turns her head like that?

She don’,
say I.
Not at all.

I can be discriminating now, even if at first something did jump up in me. Blue of eye, whorl of ear, tilt of neck, slope of shoulder, all these resemble, but being lifelike without life, point up, instead of resemblance, its opposite: the lack, the gap, the fissure. The distance between.

Growing larger.

This is not my mother. Despite the golden hair.

Though the eyes are blue.

My mother is gone.

My mother is, and is not, on the sea.

Unable to bear her absence I must bear it some more.

Hip is disappointed now.

If we go inside
, he says,
they’ll show us the motor. D’ya want to see it?

Naw.

That’s all right. I seen it already.

With the crowd we stand a while and watch, as the sleet comes down on us, until I cannot stand it anymore. It grows horrible, watching, in the end.

Let’s go.

•   •   •

At the top of the hill Hip says,
I thought you’d like it.

Tone injured, slightly defensive.

•   •   •

And then when we are at the gate,
Do she always watch you like that?

Who?

Your Ma.

She ain’t watching.

Is too.

Isn’t.

He gestures by jut of chin over my shoulder toward the house; turning toward the Birdcage I see the light on in the parlor window, and my mother there, having pressed back the curtain, watching. From where I am standing I can see the glint of firelight on her hair, the outline of her cheek, this is clear as day almost, despite the sleet and the impending darkness; I can even see, behind her, the row of terra-cotta heads on the mantelpiece above the hearth. Abruptly then, as if she has noticed us noticing, and doesn’t like it, the curtain falls.

She’s beautiful, your Ma
, Hip says, with a rapturous expression.
So golden.

He touches me then, my hand with his hand, my lips with his lips. We are warm together in the cold.

This is a thing of mixed feelings. My mind is elsewhere.

I think,
My mother has returned
.

•   •   •

When I get inside, though, the fire is roaring brightly, and my mother isn’t there. No one is there but me, with the empty space behind me. I lift the curtain and gaze out into the liquid blue unraveling of the evening, but Hip has already gone—disappeared—not a trace. There is a strange, dull glow to the east, from the sea; it undulates softly, rotates, like a net that has captured nothing.

Then there is a change, a slight but vertiginous disalignment, tilt of sky, horizon, shift of earth on axis; houses descending darkly down the hill, backs turned, the indifferent, whitewashed shrugs of our neighbors. Trembling of masts on the harbor. Shrug of sea as well, with the
Emerald Isle
upon it. Somewhere. A tremor that may or may not have traveled upward, from the river.

This is slight. Am I the only one who feels it? It is in me, perhaps. Movement, a lurching. Whether inside or outside, I can’t tell.

The lamps are lit, in the city. The shades are drawn.

The empty net undulates softly, greybluegreyblue, this is the phosphorescence of storm. Sleet becoming snow becoming wave. It is a white night, tonight.

And I am haunted.

Haunted, yes, certainly I am that.

Of what use is this fire to me. Given the room is empty.

I don’t understand how Hip does it. Disappearing like that.

The curtain falls. I let it. There’s nothing to see.

•   •   •

It is peculiar, this emptiness of the house. Harry Owen has lifted his beard out of his book and gone off somewhere, leaving this bright fire, the lamps lit, half-smoked cigar on the fender, prawns half eaten on a plate, this all speaks of hurry, the ship abandoned in haste. Or else have I slipped again in time, fallen out of whatever net Hip has been weaving, tumbled at a blink into a world of which I am the sole and lonely occupant? Upstairs does nothing to dispel this feeling or fear, it, too, is empty, the bed an unmade tangle, my mother’s things still strewn around because nobody has the heart to put them away, the cayman grinning through the armhole of her old corset, wicked, toothy snout where the pale, slender, seemingly translucent arm used to be. This cannot be real, certainly I have slipped through again, fallen unnoticed into a strange, soft space I cannot get a purchase on, which nobody will ever bother to lift me out of. The river throbbing through the floors, up into the soles of my feet, my chest, my throat.

Through the back window, though, I can see light in the shed, the orange glow outlining the door, and the smoke still rising thinly from the metal vent, though riverthrob occludes what might or might not be the warmer thrum and throb of the bellows.

My father is out there, that is what I think. My father is out there working.

But nor is this true. When I enter I find the stove lit, the lamp warm, my father gone. It is as in the house, the tools set down as if abruptly, small unfinished objects, half formed, ambiguous, bobbing in the crucible. So convinced am I that my father’s absence is only temporary that I wait there at the bench in the dark, cave-like space, my father’s space, listening to the hiss of the sleet against the walls and the strange, surreptitious rustlings within, as of small furred creatures making their way through my grandfather’s boxes, small, furtive gnawings and hungry peripatations, restless susurrus of warm bodies turning in tangled, acrid knots of dream, these going still, suddenly, at my approach.