The Glass Ocean(113)

            The unanswered call. Soft laughter. Scrap of conversation tossed up above the roar of the river.

            . . . off on another one of her adventures.

            Is that so?

            Murmurs. Rattle of coal in the scuttle.

            I imagine them downstairs, snow-burdened coats stripped off, grimy, wet boots puddling on flagstones, wet scarves steaming. Red palms slapped together for warmth. Nape of neck goosepimpled, laid bare to unexpected cold. Raw smell of ice. Specimen bags encrusted, glittering, shedding their wintry second skins.

            Clotilde! Carlotta!

            You’d think she’d have lit the fire, at least, before she went.

            I listen as if from very far away. I am far away. I am on the third floor, in the bedroom, sitting on the stale, unmade bed, surrounded by my mother’s turned-out dresser drawers, the clothes scattered, rejected, left behind among the sheets, on the pillows, on the chair, on the rug.

            I, too, left behind. Scattered.

            Squandered.

            Clotilde?

            He is working his way up, through the house; he hasn’t seen her note; walked past it; stands on the threshold, gazing down at me. At me and then past me, at the mess she’s made.

            From the glazed, anguished look in his eye I know he knows it. I don’t have to tell him. The chaos tells him, the crumpled stockings, the dumped camisoles, the emptied dresser. Without a word he turns away.

            Leaden footsteps on stairs.

            She’s g-gone.

            Gone? Good God! Are you sure?

            There is a silence; some shuffling.

            She’s t-taken her father’s book!

            • • •

            Muffled voices, descending toward the kitchen.

            I am forgotten. I have slipped through once again. I sit on the bed, shadows stretch out across the room, a finger of winterkilled vine scratches at the window, snow sluices down, filling the casements, stilling the vinescratch, the outside world begins to disappear, bridge, street, harbor, sky, all consumed in a torrent of white, edged with lozenges of crystal. The only sound in the house is the sound of the river: hollow, mindless boom-broom! of water, storm maddened, tumescent.

            • • •

            My mother is on the sea.

            My mother is not on the sea.

            She has put on her boots, her gloves, her shawl, her hat, her muff. She has gone downstairs, into the parlor; into the kitchen; out, into the yard, the shed, the street. She has gone into town, walked down to the churchyard, the marketplace, the dressmaker’s shop. She is lengthening her orbit, moving away from me.

            She is not coming back. She has taken her Papa’s book.

            She is coming back. I am confident of it.

            She has never left.

            My mother is and is not on the sea.

            Meanwhile I am waiting. Snow is whispering. I am alone and at sea myself, adrift in the storm.

            • • •

            The silence in the house is also a tension that must not be broken. I sit very still so as not to break it. The slightest movement might shatter everything: then we will fly apart, all of us, like improperly cooled glass.

            Eventually I dare to go downstairs, silently, so as not to break the tension, which is all that holds us together. As I pass through the parlor I see the envelope my mother left on the mantel. It leans against the head of a goddess. My father hasn’t seen it, not yet.