Yes.
And my tools?
Yes.
What are they, Mister Dell’oro?
My father cannot answer this question, not entirely. Silence the only solution.
So Cloverdale says, still pleasant: It is disgraceful, Mister Dell’oro. I ought to have known. Crazy furriner.
He looks at my father now. Or rather, he looks up, smiling, but his gaze is focused somewhere above and behind my father’s head.
My father’s response is inadequate.
I-I-I—
He cannot, of course, justify what he has done.
When Cloverdale finally speaks, he speaks calmly.
That’s all right, Mister Dell’Oro. You can go now. I won’t be needing you again.
The big man’s disappointed gaze shifts back down into the crucible. He begins fishing around in it again, with the tweezer. There are no glass eyes left; he has already removed them all; but he fishes.
My father is dismissed. It takes him a minute to know it.
• • •
It is only when Cloverdale persists in refusing to look at him that he knows.
• • •
Dear Harry, said the letter my father placed in his package, here are a few first efforts, inadequate I am sure, but I think promising . . .
• • •
Returning home unexpectedly he finds the house in disarray, my mother in tears: she has found Felix Girard’s last remaining hummingbird, missing for days, between the cushions on the sofa, holds it, now, cupped, like a sun, in the palm of her hand.
III.
THE GLASS OCEAN
I write these things in retrospect, from the vantage of a distant shore.
I write as if I know that they are true.
For example: In Whitby it is summer. At the twistings and turnings of the streets the sea may be seen: blue emerging behind and between whitewashed walls, black iron gates, roofs of tin or of red tile on which nets are spread. Rough fibers swollen with brine, set out to dry in the sun, which is high at this time of year; high, but sparse, brittle. There is a brittleness about everything, even the roses, of red, yellow, lavender, and white, which climb the walls of stucco and granite, pulling themselves, hand over hand, like jetties, up the trellises, the cornices, and the gutters; addressing, with their leaves and their thorns, the warped windows of the Birdcage. Gently they tap, lovingly, with their thorns, on the thick, bubbled glass, high above the River Esk.
• • •
I do not exist yet in this world, the old world, even though, in the new, I am addressed with various forms of desire. Over here, Red. Walk my way, girlie! Oh, you’re a biggun, ain’t you? Come over here, Big Red!
I am desired, therefore I exist. But also I do not.
In the old world, everything is about to begin.
• • •
My father, Leo Dell’oro, unyoked once again, spends his days watching his wife, Clotilde, expand. Despite the season, he does not confuse her burgeoning belly with the sun. He has not the imagination for that.
My mother lies naked in the heat. Her body, in past hidden scrupulously even from herself, has become a thing of opulent display: breasts, belly, thighs, glistening—tempting, untouchable fruit, openly on offer in the middle of the afternoon. She lies on the sofa, fans herself, turns immodestly from side to side, each revolution an eclipse as she tries, unself-consciously and without success, to balance her discomfort on the worn cushions.