From downstairs voices filter up, muffled by the carpet, fragmented by the roar of the river. I can’t make out the words, just rhythm, cadence, tone. Three voices, two male, one female. Two low notes, one high. Untamped by either rug or roar: fragrant, unfamiliar aroma of tobacco, winding its way up the spiral staircase.
And I can hear my mother laughing. This noise, too, floats upward, the unaccustomed sound of her happiness making its way among and around the clamorous disharmonies of the river, buoyed, somehow, instead of drowned, by the sound of the water. It washes over me, this tide of my mother’s laughter. Hearing it makes me aware how seldom she laughs.
Downstairs, they are talking to Harry Owen. A stranger, he has entered unexpectedly through the kitchen door, bringing with him blast of cold and wet, spackling of sleet, black umbrella half furled, dripping; boots clinging with leaves; small earnest spectacles blurred with the weather; soaked mackintosh slick as a second skin, which reveals, when removed, tweed, a dark serious wedge of beard, deep resonant voice, smell of cinnamon and tobacco. Cigar tamped out at hearth, new one lit. Leather satchel, overbursting with books and papers, belted once, crosswise, belted again, lengthwise, as if he fears that left unrestrained it might fly apart, releasing its contents to the wind. But in the Birdcage it is safe; he leans it against the hob, along with the umbrella, once he has it thoroughly buttoned and contained. He is my parents’ friend; but he is nothing to me, a stranger who takes my chin in his fingers, turns my face from side to side, then runs his fingertips lightly over my skull, beginning at the forehead, then back and up, behind the ears.
She is the image of Felix Girard!
he says.
Same broad
regio frontalis . . . same cranial vault . . . same strong orbital structure . . . prominent chin . . . and then too the shoulders, the chest, the
membri inferioris
. . .
everything! Remarkable resemblance! Young lady, you will have a large brain and a strong body, just like your grandfather!
• • •
He has not mentioned the adventuring spirit; I have that, too. But do I really have a grandfather? Felix Girard is a mythical creature. We do not speak of him.
• • •
Harry Owen lets go. I take a step back, stare; we stare at each other. Already I am as tall as he is. I feel conscious, under his scrutiny, of my long, gangly legs, my big, uncoordinated feet, my large hands, but then, too, of the small, tender new breasts, feel all of it taken into his gaze, examined. Critically? This is unclear. Clinically? Yes. He is a stranger. I don’t see the friend in him yet.
But I feel the excitement he has brought with him. My parents have sparked with it, their eyes bright, smiles relaxed, mindful, suddenly, of a distant place I can’t even imagine. It’s just a name to me, a place packages come from. Chromate of potash. Sugar of lead. Gold chloride. Copper oxide. Bone ash. Arsenic. Oxide of manganese. Saltpeter. Colors are made from these. They are the spark, the snap, the heat of my father’s glass.
Harry Owen is the source of all these, the source of the glass, of bench, of the tools. Of whom my mother has said:
It all belongs to him! What’s in it for us?
Despite this, though, she is smiling now, cheeks brightened with excitement as she stands by the door, the flowers Harry Owen brought her cradled in her arms. She averts her eyes as I am examined. Her eyes are on the window above the cast-iron sink. Through that occluded glass nothing is visible except the clattering torrent, rain laced with ice.
• • •
I think of her differently now, my golden mother. Does she think of me the same way?
• • •
When the examination is over and Harry Owen has released me she says,
Carlotta, go upstairs now.
Sharply. A bright, cutting tone.
This is my cue. I curtsy, just as she has taught me. I do not, in this instance, trip over my too-large feet.
Remarkable!
Harry Owen says.
Remarkable!
He does not say:
What a lovely young woman
.
Rather:
Remarkable
regio frontalis!
By which he means to admire my broad, bulging forehead, recipient of a Felix Girard–sized brain.
Again I have that sensation, shaft of bubbles breaking upward, opalescent, through black water, a gasp for air, as I mount the spiral staircase, circling round and round and up, their voices growing indistinct below me.
The light notes of my mother’s laughter, the deeper tones of the men, of my father and of this stranger, Harry Owen. Feel myself: shut out. Afloat. Cast adrift and carried upward on the foamy roar of the river. Turkish carpet a raft for me and my thoughts. Hip, ah, Hip: where are you? Rising on the flood.
Two words surface from below, bob clear in sound if not in meaning, a magical incantation in a stranger’s voice:
Argonauta argo.
The Birdcage shudders, groans with the combined vehemence of wind and water; there is a shift, a change in pressure, a blast of cold air carried up, with a scattering of leaves, brown and brittle, deprived of vital juices, around the winding stairwell; then a slam that shakes the house.
From the window I see the three of them, my mother and father, Harry Owen, wrapped in winter coats, hats, gloves; moving slowly against the driving rain, their bent bodies a series of ciphers. Inscrutable alphabet that I cannot yet read.
The shed door sucks open, then closes, they disappearing within it. I, in the Birdcage alone, rifle through my mother’s drawers, withdrawing these secret garments, the corsets and camisoles and stockings, the small cask for jewelry, with which I stretch out then on the carpet, my vessel, legs stretched forward, arms back, making desultory examination of my mother’s belongings, then casually brushing, beneath the white fringe of the bedspread, an object. A hard object, large, smooth, resolutely right-angled.
I allow my fingers to play over it for a time, idly exploring. Until an image comes to mind, of my mother kneeling. The bed between us. Her body obscured. She was shoving something under the bed, something heavy. I had forgotten. Now my fingertips remember, passing over the smooth surface of the wood.
It is my mother’s trunk. I slide it out from under the bed, undo the clasps. Fingers beneath the lid. It is awkward, even for my large hands.
Inside: Skirts. Bodices. Petticoats. Bustles. Corsets. Nightgowns. Stockings. Gloves. Hats. Shoes. Boots. Shawls. A muff. A large winter coat, much finer than the one she usually wears. All these items appear new, perfectly folded, never worn. They must belong to my mother, though I have never seen them before; it is her trunk, therefore her belongings; yet not a single article is familiar, and when, very quickly, I succumb to the urge to bury my face among them, I immediately miss the familiar scent of my mother’s body; there is nothing familiar here; I draw back, having found myself suddenly, uncomfortably intimate with the belongings of a stranger.
Also in the trunk there is a smaller wooden box which, when opened, reveals a glittering universe of jewelry sharply in contrast with the few humble items in the cask she keeps in her drawer. Here I find a diamond necklace and brooch with matching earrings, which I’ve never seen before. A tiny, gold ring set with a green brilliant. A pin in the shape of a dragonfly with a sapphire thorax and a slender, tapering abdomen set with tiny rubies. Objects belonging to a mother I do not know.
Also in the jewelry box I find a fine purse of blue shot silk, large with coin, and containing a single piece of paper, yellow, carefully folded, bearing at its top the logo of the steamer
Emerald Isle.
Open passage.
These are my mother’s secrets, nesting, one within the other, inside this trunk. With my large hands I open them one by one. I unpeel her.
• • •
If I look out the window, I can see the
Emerald Isle.
It is moored in the harbor, waiting out the storm. Broad, black bow, red funnel. Gangway withdrawn, stowed. Nosing in among the fishing boats as if wishing to hide. But really seeking shelter. This, too, is my mother’s secret.
Bound, turning at anchor in uneasy water.
• • •
The deck of the
Emerald Isle
is abandoned. Her crew is in the Bird in Hand, drinking bitter. Her customers have not yet boarded. Looking out, I do not really expect to see my mother there, on the deck, a small distant figure in a blue shawl, hands jammed into a pert fur muff. My mother is here, nearby, in the shed with my father and Harry Owen. I know this and in spite of knowing, feel my mother is there, on the
Emerald Isle,
all the same. If I look hard enough I will see her, my other mother, the stranger who packed this trunk.
A door slams below. Quickly I replace, layer upon layer, what took her years to accumulate; sharp lowering of lid. Trunk slid back, into the dark beneath the bed. Into a place of forgetting.
Except I won’t forget it now. The hollow place in my chest resounds with it. With its strangeness. Its stranger-ness.
My mother is going to leave us. I know, although I don’t know it.
• • •
Here she is, though, sitting by the fire.
My father and Harry Owen are nearby, at the table, talking. Papers are spread out between them, jars, calipers, tweezers, a magnifying glass. My father is leaning back in his chair, sketch pad on knees.
Their voices murmur a gentle counterpoint to the rattle of hail against the windows.
Harry Owen is saying:
A charming little Eolis. It was transmitted to me, alive, by a Mr. David Landsborough, of Saltcoats. Found beneath rocks at low tide.
They have it on the table between them, in a jar. My father sketches it, makes rapid lines.
Harry Owen says,
It is the only specimen found as yet in the British Isles.
He says,
It is pelagic. Throws the branchiae forward when angry.
A soft laugh. It is futile to object.
My father says,
Manganese and cobalt.
This is the formula for amethyst glass. This is how he will make it. Another soft, surreptitious life, exposed. Turned hard. Stopped in time.
My mother says,
Leo, I’m bored.
She is still here, now, by the fire.
Leo, I’m bored. Leo, it’s staring at me. Can’t you make it stop?
He says,
Carlotta.
I go to my father, stand behind him, watch him draw. I stand so close I can see the fine, curling hairs at the back of his neck, the red whorl of his ear, his cheek brightened with the heat of the fire.
• • •
My mother has packed her trunk. I have seen it, seen the folded clothes, the money in the purse, the open passage to London on the steam packet
Emerald Isle.
I could tell my father this, but I don’t.
What a secretive creature I have become! I stand by my father and watch the drawing appear,
Eolis landsburgii
, the delicate tentacles, the feathery fronds along the double line of the back, the fine details that my father will later fill in with color: delicate amethyst shading to red, transparent violet shading to white, light yellow, orange . . . intimations of a life barely seen, lived in the margins, in the tide pools, in cracks and crevices and sandy bottoms, under rocks green with algae fine as mermaid’s hair, hidden places. I have a kinship with this and with all creatures who hide.
I will not tell him.
Later, I’ll wonder why I didn’t do it when I could have. Didn’t intervene. Didn’t try to stop her from leaving, when I could feel, already, the exquisite pain of her anticipated departure like a sharp stone wedged behind my sternum. When already I knew that once she left, the tether binding me to her would stretch and stretch, would fray unbearably, but would never break, leaving me bound, always, to a loss, to her loss, to
the loss of her.
• • •
I see my mother as already on board the
Emerald Isle,
in her blue shawl and her muff, with her golden hair bound up for travel, her breath white on the cold ocean air. Her trunk is already stowed in the hold. The gangway has been withdrawn, she is there, on the deck, among a crowd of others, all waving their good-byes as the
Emerald Isle
slips its tether and backs slowly away from the wharf. Only my mother is not waving as the
Emerald Isle
backs away, as it maneuvers, slowly, through a harbor crowded with fishing boats and steamers, whalers and merchant ships heavy with paper and coal. She has already turned away from us, she has turned her back on her point of departure and faces only the future, a future that lies somewhere on a map barely glimpsed from over her shoulder, a map, divided up, like fruit, into wedges of longitude and latitude for her to devour selfishly, alone. It is her intention to devour those distances, those strange places that remain beyond the reach even of my imagination. My mother is already gone.
Maybe it is the strange doubledness of her, the sense that she is simultaneously here, by the fire, and there, on board the
Emerald Isle,
that prevents me from speaking.
She has become an uncanny thing. A thing of two faces, and none.
And me? How many faces have I got?
• • •
My mother. Saying,
Leo, I’m bored. Leo, can’t you make it stop staring at me?
While outside the window there is wind, hail. Hip, somewhere. Inside, the fire. The smell of Harry Owen’s cigar. The scratch of my father’s pencil.
But these things are temporary, illusory, a scrim through which may be discerned the shadow of her other life, the place where she really lives, the place she’d really rather be.
She doesn’t live here with us anymore. Even I know that.
She is a ghost.
She inhabits insubstantiality, makes ghosts of us all. My father is not real, the warmth of his body where I press against his back is an illusion, the curling hairs at the back of his neck are an illusion, the pencil he sketches with, the paper he sketches on, none of this is real; nor is Harry Owen, tapping his cigar and saying, enigmatically,
Onychia platyptera
, strange words that my father recognizes, nodding—not real.