It is very hot, my father says. It will burn you.
• • •
He doesn’t have to tell me. The flames themselves tell me this.
• • •
He is making me a toy in the flame of the lamp: a tiny fish, blue, flawless.
It is his apology to me; though I don’t realize it, at the time.
• • •
(This is how I remember him, now that he is gone—)
• • •
Later, in my excitement, successfully distracted, I will run to show it to my mother. Look what Papa made me! It’s a fish!
• • •
She’s at her spinet. Because of me she has dropped her sheet music. Now it’s all on the floor, hopelessly disarranged. She cannot put it right.
A fish? she cries. A fish! Of course it is! What else would he make! Your Papa is a very great man, for fish!
• • •
She shouldn’t be blamed. She is so unhappy. It does not go well with her.
For my father is spending a great deal of time in his shed, more than before, working. Harry Owen has written, requesting more glass. There has been an influx of money from an anonymous patron—taken with your work, the letter says, A patron is taken with your work—as if the work is an illness, a contagion, by which someone can be taken. Taken away? Taken hold of? Taken in? And suddenly there is greater demand. This, for my father, is pressure. Hornsby is elated—can’t you, for God’s sake, Leo, send me more glass?
Strange, isn’t it—how the opening of a wallet in London can change my father’s life? And my mother’s?
Can’t you, Leo, for God’s sake, send more?
My father, unused to demands, is very slow about it. The letters from Harry Owen arrive at regular intervals, distinguished from the usual post—mostly tradesmen’s bills (To Mr. L. Dell’oro, A bill in the amount of 4/3 for one pair of ladies boots. To Mr. Leopoldo Dell’oro, 5/- outstanding for the purchase of bread. Mr. Leopoldo Dell’oro, 6/3 for 1.5 dozen oysters purchased Saturday last. Mr. Dell’oro, Please pay 6/0 for three weeks’ delivery of coal. Dear Mr. Leopoldo Dell’oro, in regards to the amount of rent owed, currently overdue on the cottage called “The Birdcage,” the amount of 12 s. 4 d. Mr. Leopoldo Dell’oro from Mr. William Cloverdale, Glassmaker, in consideration of the glass you stole from me when you were in my employ. This is my third letter)—by the fine, thick creaminess of the paper, the official Montagu House stationery with the return address decorously embossed in the upper left corner—and are left to pile up unattended on the dining table among the other detritus of our lives, the uncleared unwashed plates, the toys, my mother’s combs, my father’s papers, whatever part of Felix Girard’s collection my mother has lately unearthed, played with, grown bored by, set aside, and forgotten.
He does not immediately read these letters, my father, despite all. Sometimes he slits them open, peers inside, and extracts a check, leaving the letter itself for later—or for never—
Though he doesn’t think of it that way. He knows he ought, he knows he must, and he believes he will. The thing is, he has set himself to the solving of a problem—several problems—out there in his shed, and he doesn’t want to be distracted. Or rather: cannot allow himself to be distracted. Or rather: he’s fallen into something, and he can’t stop himself, even though he knows he should.
He’s got something he’s tinkering with, out there; he’s got it wrapped in cloth, tenderly wrapped, gently wrapped, secretively wrapped; he began it in a moment of boredom, as a distraction, between commissioned objects, then set it aside; but he couldn’t set it aside, not really, because it nagged at him too much; and so he unwrapped it—carefully drawing apart the grimy layers of cloth, one layer at a time, then laying out, on his bench, one by one, the pieces, each piece a secret in itself; all very surreptitious, for it is of the utmost importance that my mother not see; I, of course, have seen, but it’s nothing to me, not now, I am a child, easily distracted by a new toy, a new treasure, a glass fish, or a swan, these being the currency of my father’s attention, a hard, warm currency that I can carry in my pocket, pausing every now and then to touch, not realizing until later, much later, the dissatisfaction of such things, the emptiness of the currency, of the object without its maker; I am a child, I take my gift and go, leaving him, always, to his other, his real work . . .