The Glass Ocean

by Lori Baker

  I haven’t been here since she carried me inside her. She has dislodged me at last, I suppose. Having held her grudge longer and better than I ever could have imagined, she has left me her ghost only, to carry with me from now on. This is another of her inversions, I left to bear the weight of nothing, an empty space that, as it cannot be emptied, will only grow heavier with time.

  Over here, says Hip, look at this!

  He has brought me to the window of a little music shop where along with the flutes and mandolins there is a woman seated behind the streaked glass, playing at a small keyboard; the music issues out to the sidewalk in brittle gusts through a gap in the door, which is narrowly ajar. We are not alone in watching; a small gathering, children, one or two women, stand before the window as well, staring intently.

  We are silent, all of us, watching, waiting.

  Two days she’s been here, Hip says. Ain’t that something? Ain’t it?

  Behind the glass the musician lifts her arm to turn the page of her score, shifts disjointedly, with a roll of eyes resumes her play, which is awkward, the flanges stiff in the fingers though those fingers are slender, pale as flesh, paler, the nails small and delicate and rosy.

  Look! cries Hip. Ain’t that something? She looks just like your Ma! Don’ she? Don’ she? When she turns her head like that?

  She don’, say I. Not at all.

  I can be discriminating now, even if at first something did jump up in me. Blue of eye, whorl of ear, tilt of neck, slope of shoulder, all these resemble, but being lifelike without life, point up, instead of resemblance, its opposite: the lack, the gap, the fissure. The distance between.

  Growing larger.

  This is not my mother. Despite the golden hair.

  Though the eyes are blue.

  My mother is gone.

  My mother is, and is not, on the sea.

  Unable to bear her absence I must bear it some more.

  Hip is disappointed now.

  If we go inside, he says, they’ll show us the motor. D’ya want to see it?

  Naw.

  That’s all right. I seen it already.

  With the crowd we stand a while and watch, as the sleet comes down on us, until I cannot stand it anymore. It grows horrible, watching, in the end.

  Let’s go.

  • • •

  At the top of the hill Hip says, I thought you’d like it.

  Tone injured, slightly defensive.

  • • •

  And then when we are at the gate, Do she always watch you like that?

  Who?

  Your Ma.

  She ain’t watching.

  Is too.

  Isn’t.

  He gestures by jut of chin over my shoulder toward the house; turning toward the Birdcage I see the light on in the parlor window, and my mother there, having pressed back the curtain, watching. From where I am standing I can see the glint of firelight on her hair, the outline of her cheek, this is clear as day almost, despite the sleet and the impending darkness; I can even see, behind her, the row of terra-cotta heads on the mantelpiece above the hearth. Abruptly then, as if she has noticed us noticing, and doesn’t like it, the curtain falls.

  She’s beautiful, your Ma, Hip says, with a rapturous expression. So golden.

  He touches me then, my hand with his hand, my lips with his lips. We are warm together in the cold.

  This is a thing of mixed feelings. My mind is elsewhere.

  I think, My mother has returned.

  • • •

  When I get inside, though, the fire is roaring brightly, and my mother isn’t there. No one is there but me, with the empty space behind me. I lift the curtain and gaze out into the liquid blue unraveling of the evening, but Hip has already gone—disappeared—not a trace. There is a strange, dull glow to the east, from the sea; it undulates softly, rotates, like a net that has captured nothing.

  Then there is a change, a slight but vertiginous disalignment, tilt of sky, horizon, shift of earth on axis; houses descending darkly down the hill, backs turned, the indifferent, whitewashed shrugs of our neighbors. Trembling of masts on the harbor. Shrug of sea as well, with the Emerald Isle upon it. Somewhere. A tremor that may or may not have traveled upward, from the river.

  This is slight. Am I the only one who feels it? It is in me, perhaps. Movement, a lurching. Whether inside or outside, I can’t tell.

  The lamps are lit, in the city. The shades are drawn.

  The empty net undulates softly, greybluegreyblue, this is the phosphorescence of storm. Sleet becoming snow becoming wave. It is a white night, tonight.

  And I am haunted.

  Haunted, yes, certainly I am that.

  Of what use is this fire to me. Given the room is empty.

  I don’t understand how Hip does it. Disappearing like that.

  The curtain falls. I let it. There’s nothing to see.

  • • •

  It is peculiar, this emptiness of the house. Harry Owen has lifted his beard out of his book and gone off somewhere, leaving this bright fire, the lamps lit, half-smoked cigar on the fender, prawns half eaten on a plate, this all speaks of hurry, the ship abandoned in haste. Or else have I slipped again in time, fallen out of whatever net Hip has been weaving, tumbled at a blink into a world of which I am the sole and lonely occupant? Upstairs does nothing to dispel this feeling or fear, it, too, is empty, the bed an unmade tangle, my mother’s things still strewn around because nobody has the heart to put them away, the cayman grinning through the armhole of her old corset, wicked, toothy snout where the pale, slender, seemingly translucent arm used to be. This cannot be real, certainly I have slipped through again, fallen unnoticed into a strange, soft space I cannot get a purchase on, which nobody will ever bother to lift me out of. The river throbbing through the floors, up into the soles of my feet, my chest, my throat.

  Through the back window, though, I can see light in the shed, the orange glow outlining the door, and the smoke still rising thinly from the metal vent, though riverthrob occludes what might or might not be the warmer thrum and throb of the bellows.

  My father is out there, that is what I think. My father is out there working.

  But nor is this true. When I enter I find the stove lit, the lamp warm, my father gone. It is as in the house, the tools set down as if abruptly, small unfinished objects, half formed, ambiguous, bobbing in the crucible. So convinced am I that my father’s absence is only temporary that I wait there at the bench in the dark, cave-like space, my father’s space, listening to the hiss of the sleet against the walls and the strange, surreptitious rustlings within, as of small furred creatures making their way through my grandfather’s boxes, small, furtive gnawings and hungry peripatations, restless susurrus of warm bodies turning in tangled, acrid knots of dream, these going still, suddenly, at my approach.

  • • •

  My giantess’ footfall and large shadow portending an unknown danger.

  Then moving on. Peaceful resumption of nibblings, gnawings, dreamings.

  • • •

  My grandfather’s boxes, never fully unpacked, do constitute a kind of forest, one that sways slightly, like a real forest, settles, seems to respire. Of course this is just the wind, entering through chinks and gaps and fissures. How many years have the boxes been here now? Many. There are traces of my mother’s gnawings, boxes she has opened and from which she has extracted bits and pieces of her patrimony, taking what interested her, leaving the rest for the mice.

  The rest. Thousands of stilled breaths there, in these boxes. Thousands of lifeless, formerly living things. And that soft sibilance: the sound of specimens breathing.

  I wonder if my grandfather, Felix Girard, the collector, the explorer, the naturalist, he whose remarkable regio frontalis, regio orbitalis, regio zygomatica, large feet, long fingers, thrusting elbows, broad back, and ginger hair I have inherited—did he ever hear the sound of his lifeless specimens, breathing?

  Maybe that was why he col
lected them—why he grabbed and gathered and piled up as much and as fast as he could, why he disappeared over the edge of the earth, still desperately grasping and clutching and snatching—going over—past the edge—taking my mother with him, in the end. To obtain the company of these many strange, lifeless respirations.

  To replace a single, beloved, living breath that had gone away?

  • • •

  No. He preferred these. This is hardest of all to understand. Though there is much company here, among my grandfather’s boxes. This I acknowledge.

  • • •

  Imagine the ghosts!

  I walk between them, think, what are these to me? Though the wind rattles fiercely, causing all my father’s flames to flicker. This is not a reassuring thing, when surrounded by ghosts.

  But then, of course, I have my own ghost, I take her with me everywhere. Sometimes she even speaks to me, or so it seems.

  Carlotta.

  Soft susurration of wind.

  Carlotta!

  Irritated now. Impatient. Peremptory.

  Oh angry ghost.

  Burst of wind, gust, sudden upspark of flame, tinkling, sighing, coruscation of glass. The boxes sway.

  Carlotta!

  Finally I see her, just a glimpse, between the stacks. Tangled gold gleam, pale smooth cheek, whorl of ear. Pink and white. She’s beautiful, your Ma.

  Carlotta!

  There is another fierce burst of wind and the door flies open, Harry Owen is saying, It’s a damn fine vessel!

  My father is less certain. Though Harry Owen thinks they should take advantage immediately.

  But, he says, you must make more glass. She won’t go on like this forever, you know.

  Yes.

  My father admits that this is true.

  Nobody will give money for nothing, says Harry Owen.

  I emerge then, into their company, and Harry Owen tells me that the patroness, she who has been taken, has donated a small, seaworthy vessel for their use, his and my father’s. It’s wonderful news! And a diving suit, he says, the latest thing. Rouquayrol and Denayrouse. Great excitement, expressed as bristling of beard.

  Less so for my father. I’m n-not an ex-p-plorer, Harry.

  Eyes large and dark, thin, pale gesture toward a neck. I look at him closely: he’s a stranger, too. He notices me looking. Expression turns evasive.

  I’m d-doing the best I c-can, Harry.

  This is for my benefit also.

  Anxiously rubbing one wrist against the other.

  A sensation as of sinking through black water, bubbles rushing upward, colliding, humming as of a thousand bees in my ears, or is that just the wind—

  The wind.

  The shed door banging in it. Clatter now, of hail on the roof. I have seen what I should not see.

  The fine, translucent hands, delicate fingers, nails like seashells, tiny, perfect. Mother of pearl.

  This has been his real work.

  My mother is and is not on the sea.

  Harry Owen says, Come! Let’s go inside. We can discuss it further in the morning.

  Some things, though, cannot be discussed. My father locks the shed door behind us, carefully slips the key into his waistcoat pocket. In the new world, the gangway has been lowered, my aunt’s hand is on my shoulder, she’s pushing me, a gentle hand but insistent, the moment of embarkation has come, Carlotta, she’s saying, Carlotta, it’s time to go.

  IV.

  ON A WINTER NIGHT A TRAVELER

  On Christmas eve, late, I mounted the East Cliff in the rain: a ginger giantess, orphaned now, hugging my thin coat around me, carrying my sole remaining possession, a broken suitcase tied with twine. Below me, as I climbed, Whitby spread itself, the same sea-spittled, brine-slicked place it had ever been, stinking of rot and ocean, the harbor with its ships groaning restlessly at anchor, the cottages huddled stoically together like barnacles on a rock, backs turned, windows bundled, releasing only, like errant fingers beckoning, thin shafts of light that hinted at the hidden lives lived behind the tightly closed shutters and carefully drawn shades. I could not see the Birdcage, from where I stood; perhaps that was just as well, for it was my home no longer. I couldn’t see the Emerald Isle either where I knew it must be, turning at anchor, restless in the tide. Whitby was a place I knew, and yet I did not: it had been made strange for me; there was no longer, here, a door I could knock on, and expect to be let in, except, perhaps, for one. Penniless I mounted toward the Ravenscar Hotel and my future, whatever it might hold. I had been summoned there, and so I went.

  As for that place, which had loomed large and mysterious over my childhood, it burned like a torch above the darkened city, threw off mad sparks of light and laughter and music, and gravel, too, from beneath the churning wheels of carriages ricocheting up and down the long drive—blurred faces turned toward me behind frost-covered windows, gawked, then were carried swiftly past, rocketing forward as I persisted in my own slow, orphan’s trudge: I a spectacle again as always, on the verge of the road with my flimsy case, my hair disheveled, my frock a baggy enigma in wool, my shoes unsuited to the snow, and yet.

  • • •

  And yet this was the one place in Whitby where they must let me in—which they did—though there was, it’s true, an exchange of glances at the threshold, the eyebrow raised. Does Madam wish a room? No. Does Madam wish to check her, ah, bag? No—. But the mockery of porters and bellmen, refined to the point of abstraction, were easy for me to step over and past, and I found myself, rather quickly, and for the first time ever, in that glittering, mythic lobby, where a tannenbaum stood, starred tip nearly touching the distant eminence of the dark-paneled ceiling, candles burning low and dangerously among the needles, branches festooned with gold garlands and glittering ornaments shaped like planets, seashells, saints, stars. Revelers, moon faced themselves, clustered like moons at the foot of the tree, festive hats tipped back at dangerous angles on seal-sleek heads, clutching their stemware as they toasted together giddily over the fizzing fruit of the second fermentation.

  Anybody who cared to look could have seen that I didn’t belong there—gawky goony bird that I was, with my shabby clothes and my twined-together bag; but nobody looked, or else they looked quickly and then looked carefully away, in the usual mannerly violence of exclusion that is practiced in such places. Stranger in a strange land, that was I.

  Until finally, from among one of the groups surrounding the tree, a single figure detached from the many, came toward, extended.

  It was a woman, with long, straight, dark hair, wearing a snug, black velvet sheath with a low-cut bustier, droplet of pearls at the white throat, tapering black gloves, wristlets of marcasite gently tinkling, giving off those characteristic cold, black sparks.

  I did not take her hand.

  Sound of amusement at the back of the throat. The hand withdrawn.

  You’re like your father in that, she said. He was stubborn, too.

  Of course it was she: I had recognized her immediately. It was Anna, my aunt.

  She knew me, too, of course, there was a conflict of eyes between us then, as we sought and found in each other that which was familiar conflated with that which was strange; then she took me by the arm, and moved me away from the crowd. They were glancing at me curiously now that she’d made me visible by acknowledging me; they were gawping at my ginger frizz, all right, judging me, surreptitiously, over their shoulders, through their lorgnettes, from beneath the glittering brims of their holiday hats, oh yes, they were taking me in, every inch, with a smirk, and finding me lacking. So I performed the curtsey my mother taught me, holding out, with the tips of my fingers, the edges of my ill-mended colorless skirt, so as to expose my laddered stockings, and taking a bow, low and deep, and holding it, that bow, right foot forward, left knee bent, just as Clotilde showed me, until, in consternation and embarrassment, they were forced one by one to look away, and hotly to reconsider the bubbles in the depths of their champagne.

&nb
sp; She, of course, did not look away, but instead looked more closely, with an ironical lift of a single, darkly penciled eyebrow eloquent as a hieroglyph incised on pale marble.

  I hoped you’d come, she said, quite calm, as if she’d assumed it all along.

  Which was presumptuous: for I had debated, when I received her letter. More than six months my father had been gone, by the time she finally wrote me.

  You should have come to me, said I, tartly I fear, after all, I’m the one who’s orphaned and alone, my world emptied out of protectors and friends, and I only sixteen—

  She said nothing in answer to this, but her grip on my arm tightened, and I felt, in the place where we touched, a soft shudder, by which I knew my remark had struck home. She looked down, hair sliding forward to hide her eyes, large and dark, which so resembled my father’s. Come, she said, and began to propel me, not quite against my will, through the glittering public rooms of the Ravenscar Hotel. Each room was a new chapter of festivity, here diners tucking into venison and chestnuts, there dancers moving together at a leisurely pace, like dreaming, ladies’ gloved hands on gents’ arms, all of us somnambulating, they and we, through a sweeping diminuendo that took Anna and me all the way to the broad, red-carpeted staircase, then up, through and around a complication of hallways like lovers’ knot. Mirrors blazed along the walls, reflecting, as if at a great distance, pale intimations of movement that I recognized as ourselves, mounting yet another flight of stairs. Finally Anna paused, fumbled at the wall, and disappeared into a rectangle of light.

  With only a moment’s hesitation, I followed.

  Behind the door of Room 301 I found her, once my eyes had adjusted to the glare of the gaslight, sprawled out on a bed richly wrapped in softly ambiguous undulations of vermillion and gold; she had taken off her shoes, and comfortably stretched her toes in the direction of the hearth, where a fire fiercely blazed.

  Relax, she said. It’s all mine; I’ve rented the entire floor. Make yourself at home.