by Lisa Kleypas
They had gone to the car, and her mother had climbed into the back seat, holding Alice as if she were an infant. The sounds Alice had made were so startling that Lucy put her hands over her ears. She shrunk herself into as little space as possible, the humid vinyl seat covers sticking to her legs. After her parents dropped her off at Mrs. Geiszler’s house, they drove away in such a hurry that the tires of the minivan bruised the driveway with black marks.
Mrs. Geiszler’s face was creased like a shutter door as she told Lucy not to touch anything. The house was filled with antiques. The agreeable mustiness of old books and the lemon tang of furniture polish hung in the air. It was as quiet as church, no sounds of television in the background, no music, no voices or telephone ringing.
Sitting very still on the brocade sofa, Lucy stared at a tea set that had been carefully arranged on the coffee table. The tea set was made of a wondrous kind of glass Lucy had never seen before. Every cup and saucer glowed with a multicolored luminescence, the glass adorned with thickly painted gold swirls and flowers. Mesmerized by the way the colors seemed to change at different angles, Lucy knelt on the floor, tilting her head from one side to the other.
Mrs. Geiszler stood in the doorway, giving a small laugh that sounded like the crackle of ice cubes when you poured water over them. “That is art glass,” she said. “Made in Czechoslovakia. It’s been in my family for a hundred years.”
“How did they put the rainbows in it?” Lucy asked in a hushed voice.
“They dissolve metal and color into melted glass.”
Lucy was astonished by the revelation. “How do you melt glass?”
But Mrs. Geiszler was tired of talking. “Children ask too many questions,” she said, and went back to the kitchen.
Soon Lucy had learned the word for what was wrong with her five-year-old sister. Meningitis. It meant that Alice would come back very weak and tired, and Lucy must be a good girl and help take care of her, and not make messes. It also meant that Lucy must not argue with Alice or upset her in any way. “Not now,” was the phrase Lucy’s parents told her most often.
The long, quiet summer had been a grim departure from the usual routine of play dates and camps and ramshackle lemonade stands. Alice’s illness had turned her into the center of mass around which the rest of the family moved in anxious orbits, like unstable planets. In the weeks after her return from the hospital, piles of new toys and books accumulated in her room. She was allowed to run around the table at mealtimes, and she was never required to say “please” or “thank you.” Alice was never satisfied with eating the biggest piece of cake or staying up later than other children. There was no such thing as too much for a girl who already had too much.
The Marinns lived in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, originally populated by Scandinavians who had worked in salmon fishing and canning industries. Although the proportion of Scandinavians had diminished as Ballard had grown and developed, there were still abundant signs of the neighborhood’s heritage. Lucy’s mother cooked with recipes that had been passed down from her Scandinavian ancestors…gravlax, cold-cured salmon flavored with salt, sugar and dill…pork roast rolled with gingered prunes in the center…or krumkake, cardamom cookies rolled into perfect cones on the handles of wooden spoons. Lucy loved to help her mother in the kitchen, especially because Alice wasn’t interested in cooking and never intruded.
As the summer thinned into a brisk autumn, and school started, the situation at home showed no signs of changing. Alice was well again, and yet the family still seemed to operate on the principles of Alice’s illness: Don’t upset her. Let her have whatever she wants. When Lucy complained, however, her mother snapped at her in a way she never had before.
“Shame on you for being jealous. Your sister almost died. She was in terrible pain. You are very, very lucky not to have gone through what she did.”
Guilt radiated through Lucy for days afterward, renewing itself in cycles like a persistent fever. Until her mother had spoken so sharply, Lucy had not been able to identify the nagging feeling that had drawn her insides as tight as violin strings. But it was jealousy. Although she didn’t know how to get rid of the feeling, she knew that she must never say a word about it.
In the meantime, all Lucy could do was wait for things to go back to the way they had been. But they never did. And even though her mother said she loved both her daughters equally but in different ways, Lucy thought the way she loved Alice seemed like more.
Lucy adored her mother, who always came up with interesting rainy day activities, and never minded if Lucy wanted to play dress-up with the high-heeled shoes in her closet. Her mother’s playful affection, however, seemed folded around some mysterious sadness. Now and then Lucy would enter a room to find her staring vacantly at some fixed spot on the wall, a lost look on her face.
Early some mornings Lucy would tiptoe to her parent’s room and climb into her mother’s side of the bed, and they would snuggle until the chill of Lucy’s bare feet had dissolved beneath the warm covers. It annoyed her father when he realized that Lucy was in bed with them, and he would grumble that she should go back to her own room. “In a little while,” her mother would murmur, her arms wrapped securely around Lucy. “I like to start the day this way.” And Lucy would burrow against her more tightly.
There were repercussions, however, when Lucy failed to please her. If a note was sent home because Lucy had been caught talking in class, or gotten a low grade on a math test, or if she hadn’t practiced her piano lessons sufficiently, her mother would become cold and tight-lipped. Lucy never never understood why it felt as if she had to earn something that was given freely to Alice. After the near-fatal illness, Alice was indulged and spoiled. She had terrible manners, interrupting conversations, playing with her food at dinner, grabbing things out of other people’s hands, and all of it was ignored.
One evening when the Marinns had planned to go out and leave their daughters with a babysitter, Alice cried and screamed until they canceled their dinner reservation and stayed home to appease her. They had pizza delivered, and they ate it at the kitchen table, both of them still dressed in their nice clothes. Her mother’s jewelry sparkled and scattered glints of reflected light across the ceiling.
Alice took a piece of pizza and wandered to the living room to watch cartoons on television. Lucy picked up her own plate and headed to the living room.
“Lucy,” her mother said, “don’t leave the table until you’re finished eating.”
“But Alice’s eating in the living room.”
“She’s too little to know better.”
Surprisingly, Lucy’s father joined the conversation. “She’s only two years younger than Lucy. And as I recall, Lucy was never allowed to wander around during dinner.”
“Alice still hasn’t gained back the weight she lost from the meningitis,” her mother said sharply. “Lucy, come back to the table.”
The unfairness of it clamped around Lucy’s throat like a vise. She carried her plate back to the table as slowly as possible, wondering if her father would intervene on her behalf. But he had given a shake of his head and had fallen silent again.
“Delicious,” Lucy’s mother said brightly, biting into her pizza as if were a rare delicacy. “I was actually in the mood for this. I didn’t feel like going out. So nice to be cozy at home.”
Lucy’s father didn’t reply. Methodically he finished his pizza, took his empty plate to the kitchen, and went in search of the phone.
“My teacher said to give this to you,” Lucy said, extending a piece of paper to her mother.
“Not now, Lucy. I’m cooking.” Cherise Marinn chopped celery on the cutting board, the knife neatly dividing stalks into little u shapes. As Lucy waited patiently, her mother glanced at her and sighed. “Tell me what it is, sweetheart.”
“Instructions for the second grade science fair. We have three weeks to do it.”
Reaching the end of the celery stalk, Lucy’s mother set the knif
e down and reached for the paper. Her fine brows knit together as she read it. “This looks like a time-consuming project. Are all the students required to participate?”
Lucy nodded.
Her mother shook her head. “I wish these teachers knew how much time they’re asking parents to spend on these activities.”
“You don’t have to do anything, Mommy. I’m supposed to do the work.”
“Someone’s going to have to take you to the crafts store to get the tri-fold board and the other supplies. Not to mention supervising your experiments and helping you practice for the oral presentation.”
Lucy’s father entered the kitchen, looking weary, as usual, after a long day. Phillip Marinn was so busy teaching astronomy at the University of Washington and working as a NASA consultant on the side, that he often seemed to be visiting their home rather than actually living in it. On the evenings when he made it back in time for dinner, he ended up talking with colleagues on the phone while his wife and two daughters ate without him. The names of the girls’ friends and teachers and soccer coaches, the minutia of their schedules, were foreign to him. Which was why Lucy was so surprised by her mother’s next words.
“Lucy needs you to help with her science project. I just volunteered to be a room mother for Alice’s kindergarten class. I have too much to do.” She handed him the piece of paper, and went to scrape the chopped celery into a pot of soup on the stove.
“Good God.” He scanned the information with a distracted frown. “I don’t have time for this.”
“You’ll have to make time,” her mother said.
“What if I ask one of my students to help her?” he suggested. “I could set it up as an extra credit activity.”
A frown pleated her mother’s face, her soft mouth tightening at the corners. “Phillip. The idea of pawning off your child on a college student—“
“It was a joke,” he said hastily, although Lucy wasn’t entirely sure of that.
“Then you’ll agree to do this with Lucy?”
“I don’t appear to have a choice.”
“It’ll be a bonding experience for you two.”
He gave Lucy a resigned glance. “Do we need a bonding experience?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Very well. Have you decided what kind of experiment you want to do?”
“It’s going to be a report,” Lucy said. “About glass.”
“What about doing a space-themed project? We could make a model of the solar system, or describe how stars are formed—“
“No, Daddy. It has to be about glass.”
“Why?”
“It just does.” Lucy had become fascinated by glass. Every morning at breakfast she marveled at the light-gifted material that formed her juice cup. How perfectly it contained bright fluids, how easily it transmitted heat, coldness, vibration.
Her father took her to the library and checked out grown-up books about glass and glasswork, because he said the children’s books on the subject weren’t detailed enough. Lucy learned that when a substance was made of molecules that were organized like bricks stacked together, you couldn’t see through it. But when a substance was made out of random disorganized molecules, like water or boiled sugar or glass, light found its way through the spaces between them.
“Tell me, Lucy,” her father asked as they glued a diagram to the tri-fold board, “is glass a liquid or a solid?”
“It’s a liquid that behaves like a solid.”
“You’re a very smart girl. Do you think you’ll be a scientist like me when you grow up?”
She shook her head.
“What do you want to be?”
“A glass artist.” Lately Lucy had started to dream about making things out of glass. In her sleep she watched light glimmer and refract through candy-colored windows…glass swirling and curving like exotic undersea creatures, birds, flowers.
Her father looked perturbed. “Very few people can actually earn a living as an artist. Only the famous ones make any money.”
“Then I’ll be a famous one,” she said cheerfully, coloring the letters on her trifold board.
On the weekend, her father took her to visit a local glassblowing shop, where a red-bearded man showed her the basics of his craft. Mesmerized, Lucy stood as close as her father would allow. After the glassblower melted sand in a high-temperature furnace, he pushed a long metal rod into the furnace and gathered molten glass in glowing red lump. The air was filled with the scents of hot metal, sweat, scorched ink and ash from the wads of wet newspaper the studio used to hand-shape the glass.
With each additional gather of glass, the glassblower enlarged the fiery orange mass, turning it constantly, reheating it frequently. He added an overlay of blue frit, or ceramic powder, onto the post and rolled it on a steel table to distribute the color evenly.
Lucy watched with wide-eyed interest. She wanted to learn everything about this mysterious process, every possible way to cut, fuse, color and shape glass. Nothing had ever seemed so important or necessary to know.
Before they left the shop, her father bought her a blown glass ornament that looked like a hot air balloon, painted with shimmering rainbow stripes. It hung on its own little stand made of brass wire. Lucy would always remember it as the best day of her entire childhood.
Later in the week, when Lucy came home from soccer practice, early evening had turned the sky dark purple, with an overlay of clouds like the silvery wax bloom on a plum. Stiff-legged in her armor of plastic shin guards encased in tube socks, Lucy went to her room and saw that the lamp on her nightstand had been turned on. Alice was standing there, holding something.
Lucy scowled. Alice had been told more than once that she wasn’t allowed to go into her room without permission. But the fact that Lucy’s room was off-limits seemed to have made it the one place Alice most wanted to be. Lucy had suspected that her sister had sneaked in there before, when she’d discovered that her stuffed animals and dolls weren’t in their usual places.
At Lucy’s wordless exclamation, Alice turned with a start, something dropping from her hands to the floor. The resulting shatter caused them both to jump. A flush of guilt swept over Alice’s small face.
Lucy stared dumbly at the glittering mess on the wood floor. It was the blown-glass ornament that her father had bought for her. “Why are you in here?” she demanded with incredulous rage. “This is my room. That was mine. Get out!”
Alice burst into tears, standing with the broken glass shards around her.
Alerted by the noise, their mother dashed into the room. “Alice!” She rushed forward and plucked her off the floor, away from the glass. “Baby, are you hurt? What happened?”
“Lucy scared me,” Alice sobbed.
“She broke my glass ornament,” Lucy said furiously. “She came into my room without asking and broke it.”
Her mother was holding Alice, smoothing her hair. “The important thing is that no one was hurt.”
“The important thing is that she broke something that was mine!”
Her mother looked exasperated and distressed. “She was just curious. It was an accident, Lucy.”
Lucy glared at her little sister. “I hate you. Don’t ever come in here again, or I’ll knock your head off.”
The threat elicited a fresh storm of tears from Alice, while their mother’s face darkened. “That’s enough, Lucy. I expect you to be nice to your sister, especially after she’s been so sick.”
“She’s not sick anymore,” Lucy said, but the words were lost in the sound of Alice’s vehement sobbing.
“I’m going to take care of your sister,” her mother said, “and then I’ll come back and clean up that glass. Don’t touch any of it, those pieces are razor-sharp. For heaven’s sake, Lucy, I’ll get you another ornament.”
“It won’t be the same,” Lucy said sullenly, but her mother had already carried Alice out of the room.
Lucy knelt in front of the shattered glass, glinting with the deli
cate iridescence of soap bubbles on the wood floor. She huddled and sniffled, and stared at the broken ornament until her vision blurred. Emotion filled her until it seemed to rise from her skin and pour into the air…fury, grief, and a craving, nagging, desperate need for love.
In the dim smear of lamplight, little points of light awakened. Swallowing back tears, Lucy wrapped her arms around herself and took a shivering breath. She blinked as the glimmers rose from the floor and swirled around her. Astonished, she wiped her eyes with her fingers and watched the lights circle and dance. Finally she understood what she was seeing.
Fireflies.
Magic meant just for her.
Every shard of glass had transformed into living sparks. Slowly the dancing procession of fireflies made their way to the open window and slipped into the night.
When her mother returned a few minutes later, Lucy had gone to sit on the edge of her bed, staring at the window.
“What happened to the glass?” her mother asked.
“It’s gone,” Lucy said absently.
It was her secret, this magic. Lucy didn’t know where it had come from. She only knew that it would find the spaces it needed, take life in them, like flowers growing in the cracks of broken pavement.
“I told you not to touch it. You could have cut your finger.”
“I’m sorry, Mommy.” Lucy reached for a book on her nightstand. She opened the volume to a random page, staring at it blindly.
She heard her mother sigh. “Lucy, you have to be more patient with your little sister.”
“I know.”
“She’s still fragile after what she went through.”
Lucy kept her gaze fixed on the book in her hands, and waited in dogged silence until her mother had left the room.
After a desultory dinner, with only Alice’s chatter to relieve the quietness, Lucy helped to clear the table. Her mind was filled with thoughts. It had seemed as if her emotions had been so strong, they had changed the glass into a new shape. She thought the glass might have been trying to tell her something.
