The Year of Broken Glass (5 page)

We hike back up to Miriam's house in silence, each of us contemplating where we've just been. There are places on this earth which, by virtue of human creation or some localized perfection of the planet's biorhythm, seem home to some energy, sacred, elevated beyond that which is normally sensed. Jin Su says it's why the monks always live high in the mountains, where the energy is clear, unmuddled by human cacophony. She says she's never felt it, always in the city as she is, inside the electricity. I think I have, alone on the water, though only to a degree, and wonder what it might feel like on a wind-powered boat in the middle of the open ocean. At any rate Miriam's beach of glass has that sense, that marriage of human homage and nature's magnitude, and it sets us all outside of time a bit as we climb back up the steep embankment together, offering and taking each other's hands when needed, and walk through the brightening orchard and into Miriam's home.

“There's one more thing I'd like to show you,” she says, and leads us down a hallway to a door at the back of the house. Taking a key from her pant pocket she unlocks it, ushering us into a room lined with hundreds of shelved books, most of an aged appearance. There are pencil sketches of fishing boats, wharves, trees and children's faces pinned to the walls. At the far end of the room there is a rustic hutch upon which a small collection of glass fishing floats sits. She leads us to them and lifts one of clear glass into her hands.

“This float was blown in 1949 by the Northwest Glass Company in Seattle. It's thought there were only twelve made. Of those twelve, only five have been found.” The float is in the shape of a doughnut, with a walled hole clear through the centre. “The hole is for hanging the float line through. It was a good idea, but proved too time-consuming for mass production. I was given this one by an old patron from Alaska when she passed away. She found it on the shore of Bristol Bay while collecting seaweed for her garden.” Miriam smiles and sets the float down, not offering this time for us to hold it, then lifts another from the hutch-top. “This one is a binary double ball, not as rare a shape, but see the violet hue at each base.” She holds the float up into the daylight coming through the room's only window. “That's the fire's colouring, also rare.” She shows us a large, unblemished float of deep cranberry and explains how the Japanese used gold to create the hue; and a float of light green with a thin spindle of glass falling through its centre like a stream of water in stasis; and another clear one with a small amount of water trapped inside it—water, she tells us, which was absorbed through porous imperfections in the glass while suspended in Arctic sea ice, where it was found by some of the first Canadians to attempt the North Pole on foot.

“And this is my most prized,” she says, lifting from the hutch a rather ordinary-looking dark green float, still encased in its beige twine mesh, with
BV
embossed on the seal. “The trademark is that of Biri Glassworks, one of the four I mentioned earlier who made floats for Christiania Magasin. This float was one of the first blown there in 1841, and was given to me by my mother's father, Kjell Biri, the last of the Biri glassblowers. It was never sent to sea.” This float she sets in my hand, holding onto it still by the bind of its meshing, and looks me closely in the eyes.

“These are all very rare and valuable treasures, Mr. Wishbone,” she says, a little grin rising in her lips as she says my name. “But their rarity and value are nothing compared to what you have brought here with you.” She lifts the float from my hands and places it back on the hutch, then turns and waves for us to follow, which we do, back down the hallway to her living room.

“There is considerable mystique around the float which you have found,” Miriam continues, seating herself on the chaise lounge beside my float. She lifts it again from its tote. “To my knowledge there have been less than a dozen discovered. No one knows where or when they were blown, though all those found have been in the North Pacific. Most agree they were likely among the first Japanese floats, blown just prior to the First World War. Every one of them is now owned by a single collector, a Mr. Sunimoto in Hawaii. I've never seen one of these floats before, but this one is remarkably unworn for its probable age, and its exceeding thickness and opalescence is of particular uniqueness as well. I couldn't put a price on it, but through the right people this float may fetch you a very substantial sum.”

“We've noticed Stu Farnsworth is offering upwards of thirty thousand dollars,” Svend pipes in, almost leaping from his chair with excitement.

“And that's a considerable sum, Svend,” Miriam responds. “Though it would be unwise to sell this to Stu.” She looks to me now dead-on. “If I were a shrewder woman I'd cut you a check right here and now for that same sum, and I'd be sure to double my money, maybe triple it, by sundown. One phone call.” Svend is sitting back smug as she says this, finally triumphant in his scheming to sidestep a middleman. “Instead, I'm going to make that call for you, Mr. Wishbone, free of charge, and in return you're going to stay with me another night and we're going to feast of the sea, be happy, and give thanks for all that the ocean provides.”

MIRIAM DROVE US in her fully loaded Prius out to a beach on the east side of the Esowista Peninsula. We harvested oysters and clams, then drove further on to town where we bought fresh crab from one of the local fisherman and a bag of expensive food from the local market. By the time we started back toward her house I'd simmered in myself a broth of dislike for Miriam, for her pat expropriations of the Native customs, art and language (at least those convenient to her lifestyle and aesthetic); for her ease and self-assuredness and easy environmentalism, her fifty-thousand-dollar hybrid car and her organic wool sweater. Then I thought, watching the forest whiz by her back-seat window, how my knee-jerk contempt was just like Anna's, almost instinct, and I resolved then and there to put it aside.

When we arrived back at Miriam's house I went out onto the front deck to call Anna. On the car ride I'd resolved to tell her the truth of where I was and why, thinking again that if the float was as valuable as Miriam suggested I would use the money to finally break with Anna; if it wasn't, it was of no consequence other than to give her more fodder to fling my way.

She wasn't angry at first, not expecting me home still for a few more hours. But as I told her about the float and what it had led to, she grew more and more irritable, launching into a tirade about my desperate financial schemes, my head always off in the clouds dreaming up some fucked up way to get us out of the mess I'd gotten us into buying the stupid fucking boat in the first place. Of course I fought back, our voices growing louder and more hostile, till I realized the others were most likely hearing my every heated word inside the house.

So I told Anna she'd see and she'd be sorry, and I hung up and went back inside, my anger re-bloomed inside me like an algae in the harsh light of Anna's reprimand. But now it had its familiar object of attention, my wife, back in focus, which left me free to celebrate with Miriam when she emerged from her study with the news that a buyer representing Mr. Sunimoto would indeed be in Vancouver on Monday to exchange $150,000 cash for the fishing float I nearly broke when—later in the evening and drunk on the first bottle of wine I'd drank in nearly five years—it dropped from my hands and rolled the length of Miriam's kitchen island before falling to the forgivingly soft fir floor.

Svend, Fairwin' and I journeyed back this morning at first light, Svend and I nursing our collective hangovers. Fairwin' drove the Dart—the whole time with this little schoolboy's smirk upon his face, unlicensed, and having not driven a car for nearly fifteen years—through the mountains to French Creek, where we took Svend's boat across to Squitty Bay. Fairwin' stood in a grove of huge old arbutus and watched us motor back out into the strait. From the stern, as I puked my guts out into the southeasterly waves heaping up on Point Upwood, I could see his lone figure climbing out onto Poor Man's Rock, a barren buttress of scoured igneous protruding from Lasqueti's southern tip like a prow into the sea.

Back on the Coast I drove to Sechelt with Svend and bought some new Levi's, a couple of t-shirts, underwear and socks. I picked up some toiletries at the pharmacy and went with Svend back to his house to shower, shave and call Jin Su. All to avoid going home to Anna. I considered hauling Willow from school for a walk or lunch, to spend some time with him and get some grounding in the midst of all this.

Ever since Miriam pronounced the figure $150,000 I've been hovering six feet off the ground, oscillating between elation, nervousness and fear. Will the approaching exchange, with such a large sum of cash involved, go off without a hitch? Is that even possible? It seems that my every turn of fortune these past few years has been, though not catastrophic, certainly not without its foibles. I thought better than to have Willow see me in such an anxious state, to expect that he might be able to calm me down when quite likely he would be disturbed by my preoccupation.

Then I considered driving down to the dock and loading up what little crab I had hanging, maybe three hundred pounds, into my pickup before heading to town. But I was clean and dressed in my new clothes and quite frankly still exhausted, though wired, from the journey and the excitement and the booze still flushing from my body. So instead I headed straight to the late-afternoon ferry, where I fell asleep in my truck, still aware of the wind howling through the upper car deck.

I dreamt I was with Miriam making love in her big bed of driftwood and white linen. When I woke up, I stumbled from the truck to the side of the boat and threw up again into the wind and the tumultuous seas below. Back in the truck I thought of my drinking and of Miriam. I cursed my slip back to the bottle, but consoled myself with the fact that she was indeed a beautiful woman, attractive still for her age, and had clearly made advances toward me once Svend was snoring on the couch and Fairwin' had gone off to bed. Advances that, despite my drunkenness, I'd denied.

I felt better as I pulled the truck off the ferry in the dusk, my body having ejected the last of the poison and my mind calmed by the thought of soon being with Emily and Jin Su, of the love that awaited me there, still untarnished and strong.

•

Jin Su answers the door in boxer shorts and a kimono when I arrive. She leaps up into my arms and wraps her legs around my waist before I've even made it in the door. The pent-up lust of my dream on the ferry rises up to meet hers and we make love frantic and heated on the couch, little Emily already down for the night in the bedroom. It's a world of difference in comparison to the love Anna and I seldom, if ever, make anymore: the occasional attempt at romance between us always leading to a lovemaking that proves only to reaffirm and widen the chasm between us, so we lie naked and darkened afterward, turning away from each other, each to our own arms.

Jin Su and I lie entwined now on her grey leather couch, her light body on top of mine, her head on my chest and her hand up behind my neck twirling my hair with her small fingers. She stares toward the door and finally asks, “What's in the box?”

I'd set it to the floor as she'd leapt at me, then slid it into the room with my foot as I closed the door and carried her to the couch. “It's a surprise,” I reply, just as Emily starts to stir, then sputters a cry from the bedroom.

Jin Su lifts herself off me, slips into her kimono, and wrinkles her nose. “She's fussy,” she says. “Cutting her first teeth I think.” Then a scream like a battle cry issues from the bedroom and Jin Su springs away to tend to our daughter.

Emily was born ablaze, a roaring inferno from the first breath. She's all fire, from the birthmark spreading perfectly from the midline across the left side of her face to her tuft of light red hair standing up static on top of her head, despite her mother's dominant Chinese gene and my own head of dark brown curls. She has a wiry body, a rambunctious disposition, and a ferocious, though often playful, howl. She is, frankly, foreign to me, as is Jin Su, having come swiftly like a fresh wind into my life. Though it's a wind that feels hospitable, carrying an undercurrent of settling and the unexpected scent of home.

I gaze around Jin Su's apartment. There are some baby toys by the window, a small collection of rattles and stuffed animals and little musical instruments, a tambourine and a bean shaker, a drum and sticks. There are painted wooden blocks and a couple of old Chinese dolls, a baby boy and girl, from Jin Su's childhood, all ordered neatly on the polished floor. She's arranged a collection of photographs of her large family back home on top of the piano and another on the wall space between the dining room table and the floor-to-ceiling window. There's a tiny alcove kitchen beyond the table, and though I can't see it from here, above the stove is a picture of me in rain gear on the deck of the
Prevailer
sorting a trap loaded with crab. Jin Su took it soon after we first met, the one and only time she's been out on the water with me.

Taped to the stainless steel fridge is another picture taken at our request by a stranger on Granville Island one sunny Saturday in early February. We're all three bundled up in winter clothes and smiling from beneath our toques and hoods, happy together in the mid-winter sunlight. I can hear Emily suckling in the other room, contented, and I'm amazed that I am here, that this is my life, in stark contrast to the one I share with Anna and Willow. Somehow it seems there's more of me here in this relatively tidy, relatively empty apartment than there is or ever has been in that other rental home with its half-acre yard littered with my spare traps, motors, haulers and crab crates, my heaps of clutter and scrap.

Having failed at her attempts to nurse her back down, Jin Su brings Emily from the bedroom and plops her down on my stomach. Then she retrieves the tote from the entryway, sets it on the floor beside me, and sits down at my feet on the couch. Emily pounds my chest like a drum, a wily grin splayed across her face. “Take it out,” I say, sliding the tote toward Jin Su, and I can tell she thinks it's some kind of present I've brought for her, which in a way it is, though it's evident she's both disappointed and intrigued by what she finds as she unpacks the glass float. “Careful,” I can't help but caution her as she lifts it to her lap.