The missing piece.
Those that got holes in their heads will always need glass eyes.
As he works, my father thinks about the people on the sidewalk in front of Argument’s Glasswares. He pictures her among them, until the image in his mind becomes so real that he believes it. He can feel her there. It is a strong feeling, palpable as a touch. It mounts in him until he is almost crazy with belief.
Were he to look, though, she would not be there. She is at home, in the Birdcage.
He resists. He longs to look, but he resists. This time.
He diverts a strand of honey-colored glass to form the initials CGD’O.
Sometimes my father also thinks or imagines that William Cloverdale has noticed these small acts of simultaneous self-destruction and homage. Sometimes Cloverdale smiles in a manner that suggests it—a sly, confidential smile. A wink. But Cloverdale never says so—just fishes the finished piece out of the crucible, measures with his calipers, looks at the color, checks it against his slips of paper, nods. Very pretty, Mister Dell’oro. A good fit. Once again.
And smacks his lips.
Cloverdale does not know.
He knows nothing about Clotilde, about Argument, about the state of Leopold’s marriage. There is no secret wink.
It is in my father’s mind, all of it.
• • •
The most recent letter from Harry Owen, though, is not in his mind. My Dear Leo, having received from Hornsby of the British Museum, Zoological Divisions, a commission . . . am very pleased to be able to ask of you further drawings, and to offer this small remittance for your considerable labors; and also to request further information in re: your suggestion, of the possibility of reproducing, in glass . . .
• • •
Here is a place for my father to disappear into, when he finds himself thinking too much about my mother, or about the volcanic emanations of Thomas Argument. A bolt-hole.
He is finally positioned to try it. He has the lamp, the rods of glass. William Cloverdale has taught, and my father has learned. He is timid though. His collar is still buttoned up tight.
Hornsby is skeptical but will pay . . .
Emerging into Church Street, into Thomas Argument’s crowd, my father feels something quicken inside him. Eruption of Vesuvius! Destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii!
The crowd shifts and murmurs in front of Thomas Argument’s window. They are buying tickets, already, for Wednesday next. Leopold threads his way through and between and among, feels the anxiety, the indrawn breath of the waiting, the shift and surge and ebb of it, the hoping for a seat at Argument’s spectacle.
She is not there.
Perhaps it would be better if she were. If it were for her, too, a public thing, a matter of tickets, of crowds, of waiting on sidewalks. But she is at home, in the Birdcage. Thomas Argument may be there as well.
• • •
It is a goad.
Dear Harry, while the materials are somewhat lacking . . .
• • •
Leopold is tepid. He is timid.
• • •
Dear Harry, though the materials are somewhat lacking and the tools imperfect . . .
• • •
Where does it come from, this fearfulness of my father’s? The timidity, the hesitation, the acquiescence plus qualifier? The materials are lacking, the tools imperfect. And so, too, the maker. This, I believe, is what my father is thinking. But will not say. He remembers Felix Girard’s It is wrong here. And here. He would rather hide than expose himself in an error. He does hide, feels himself hiding as he pushes through the crowd in front of Argument’s Glasswares. Head down. Shoulders hunched. If he doesn’t see them then maybe they can’t see him. But of course he sees them, feels them, strikes against them, collides, no matter how small he tries to make himself he cannot be small enough, in this crowd: shoulder jostling shoulder, elbow prodding waistcoat, fingers brushing silk, brushing velvet, brushing serge. The ubiquity of ladies’ hats, his face menaced by bristling feathers plucked with savagery from the New World. The intimate and inescapable intrusion of their perfume. GREAT ERUPTION IN THE YEAR 79! DESTRUCTION OF HERCULANEUM AND POMPEII! It is another cold day, spit of rain and stink of sea, the sky above him a ceiling, pressing down. He feels himself constrained, in his collar, in his coat, in this town. Making his way, once again, home to the Birdcage where he will find—what?