Inside: Skirts. Bodices. Petticoats. Bustles. Corsets. Nightgowns. Stockings. Gloves. Hats. Shoes. Boots. Shawls. A muff. A large winter coat, much finer than the one she usually wears. All these items appear new, perfectly folded, never worn. They must belong to my mother, though I have never seen them before; it is her trunk, therefore her belongings; yet not a single article is familiar, and when, very quickly, I succumb to the urge to bury my face among them, I immediately miss the familiar scent of my mother’s body; there is nothing familiar here; I draw back, having found myself suddenly, uncomfortably intimate with the belongings of a stranger.
Also in the trunk there is a smaller wooden box which, when opened, reveals a glittering universe of jewelry sharply in contrast with the few humble items in the cask she keeps in her drawer. Here I find a diamond necklace and brooch with matching earrings, which I’ve never seen before. A tiny, gold ring set with a green brilliant. A pin in the shape of a dragonfly with a sapphire thorax and a slender, tapering abdomen set with tiny rubies. Objects belonging to a mother I do not know.
Also in the jewelry box I find a fine purse of blue shot silk, large with coin, and containing a single piece of paper, yellow, carefully folded, bearing at its top the logo of the steamer Emerald Isle. Open passage.
These are my mother’s secrets, nesting, one within the other, inside this trunk. With my large hands I open them one by one. I unpeel her.
• • •
If I look out the window, I can see the Emerald Isle. It is moored in the harbor, waiting out the storm. Broad, black bow, red funnel. Gangway withdrawn, stowed. Nosing in among the fishing boats as if wishing to hide. But really seeking shelter. This, too, is my mother’s secret.
Bound, turning at anchor in uneasy water.
• • •
The deck of the Emerald Isle is abandoned. Her crew is in the Bird in Hand, drinking bitter. Her customers have not yet boarded. Looking out, I do not really expect to see my mother there, on the deck, a small distant figure in a blue shawl, hands jammed into a pert fur muff. My mother is here, nearby, in the shed with my father and Harry Owen. I know this and in spite of knowing, feel my mother is there, on the Emerald Isle, all the same. If I look hard enough I will see her, my other mother, the stranger who packed this trunk.
A door slams below. Quickly I replace, layer upon layer, what took her years to accumulate; sharp lowering of lid. Trunk slid back, into the dark beneath the bed. Into a place of forgetting.
Except I won’t forget it now. The hollow place in my chest resounds with it. With its strangeness. Its stranger-ness.
My mother is going to leave us. I know, although I don’t know it.
• • •
Here she is, though, sitting by the fire.
My father and Harry Owen are nearby, at the table, talking. Papers are spread out between them, jars, calipers, tweezers, a magnifying glass. My father is leaning back in his chair, sketch pad on knees.
Their voices murmur a gentle counterpoint to the rattle of hail against the windows.
Harry Owen is saying: A charming little Eolis. It was transmitted to me, alive, by a Mr. David Landsborough, of Saltcoats. Found beneath rocks at low tide.
They have it on the table between them, in a jar. My father sketches it, makes rapid lines.
Harry Owen says, It is the only specimen found as yet in the British Isles.
He says, It is pelagic. Throws the branchiae forward when angry.
A soft laugh. It is futile to object.
My father says, Manganese and cobalt.
This is the formula for amethyst glass. This is how he will make it. Another soft, surreptitious life, exposed. Turned hard. Stopped in time.