• • •
What, exactly, does my father think he is giving up?
His life as an artist, certainly—the potential of it, at least, since it does not yet exist in actuality. It is at present only an idea, an idea that cannot possibly come to fruition without Thomas Argument’s furnace; but my father does not know this; this is an irony of which he is, at the moment, unaware. What he is aware of, at present, is the potential—lost potential, as he sees it. And something more. Something that has to do, specifically, with Thomas Argument, and with the look in my mother’s eyes when she slipped the little kaleidoscope, given to her by Argument, into the pocket of her skirt.
• • •
Later, when the furnace has become my father’s life, it will be less clear what—who—he has sacrificed. Or why.
• • •
So it begins. Slowly at first, not only because my father, feeling the pull of the family tendenza, remembering the old stories, balks against it; but also because Thomas Argument wills that it must be so. He will hire my father, but only as a taker-in. It is a boy’s job. My father, at twenty, will be the boy who carries the hot pieces of finished glass to the lehr for annealing, who runs errands for the men, fetches beer and sandwiches. He will replace the boy who, while carrying a goblet in the shape of an open-mouthed fish, almost brushed against my mother, coming so close that she felt, for a moment, the radiant heat of the glass against her arm. She could have been singed; she was not; but that boy, for his near mischance, has been fired. Now my father will take his place. Now, in Thomas Argument’s glasshouse, he will be called, at any hour of day or night, to complete shifts of ten hours or more, whenever the furnace is hot, the glass soft enough to work—the teazer arriving at his door and shouting Dell’oro, all in!—my father must get out of bed if he is in it, or up from a meal if he is eating it, or away from his paper if he is drawing, and run to Church Street, where he will sweep the glasshouse floors before the blowers arrive. He will carry goblets and vases and candy dishes at the end of a pincer, placing them carefully and slowly (very carefully, very slowly) into the oven, where, by stages, they will cool. My father will also turn the winch that moves the iron trays of finished glass on a belt through the vault of the smoking lehr, bit by bit, away from the furnace, toward the cooler air. It is a slow progression. Each time a tray is filled with finished pieces, my father turns the crank once; the trays inside the lehr move forward one station; my father inserts an empty tray, which he will fill, in time, before he turns the crank again. It takes an entire day, a full twenty-four hours, for Argument’s wares, his decanters and carafes and finger cups, his trifle dishes and water jugs, his sugar basins, butter tubs, pickle glasses, cruets, salts and inkstands, his glasses for champagne, claret, hock, and wine, his jelly cups and custard cups, his fish globes and beer tumblers to make their full transit through the lehr. Minding the lehr is an important job even though it is a dull job, even though it is a boy’s job. Objects allowed to pass through too quickly, although apparently beautiful, are flawed: unevenly cooled glass is unstable, liable to shatter, to fly apart unexpectedly with the slightest of stress. A single touch is all it takes. A touch upon the sensitive place. Of course, this does not happen right away. The touch upon the sensitive place is inevitable, it must come, but it takes time. It may take days, even weeks, before the glass reveals its flaw. But the flaws are always revealed, in the end. This Thomas Argument will not tolerate. A bubble in glass is a flaw, sir; and what is flawed is fragile; and what is fragile can break—never forget it!
My father does not forget it. If Argument’s wares shatter without cause, if they are returned in pieces, if there are complaints, it will be my father’s fault. The cost of inadequately cooled items will be deducted from his pay.
• • •
He is, of course, not permitted to polish items of glass once they have emerged, still warm, from annealing; that is for somebody else to do. Somebody skilled.
• • •