The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [33]
“It is, kind of. Glass isn’t really a solid. It always longs to return to its fluid state. Over time the lead weakens and gravity pulls at it—that’s why restoration is so necessary. Otherwise the glass will eventually flow out of its shape and the window will be lost.”
A buzzer sounded. Keegan stood up and opened the door to the studio. He had a quiet but hurried conversation with the new babysitter, during which I gathered my purse and the papers I’d been carrying around all day, feeling the tempo change, feeling both excited about the window and suddenly in the way.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then?” I asked, starting down the stairs, and Keegan paused to smile and wave and tell me to meet him at St. Luke’s at ten.
The next tour had already started, the furnaces roaring, the guide explaining the process to a new group of mesmerized tourists. The only exit was through the gift shop, and I stopped to look at some of the work—vases and plates, stained-glass sun catchers and delicately blown spheres. As I turned, my purse caught the edge of a display, and when I reached to catch the perfect glass egg I’d jolted loose, I hit another display and started a cascade of plates tipping over one by one until the last one fell against a dark red bowl and sent it crashing to the floor.
“Hold still,” the sales clerk said, raising her hands, palms open as if to push back a wave. “Just stand still, and take a deep breath.”
I did, watching while she gathered up the pieces.
“Just one bowl,” she said, finally, and refused to let me pay. “It happens.”
I was very careful as I left, chagrined, suddenly exhausted, too. It was still a beautiful day, windy and changeable. The clouds that had threatened to gather were more scattered now, and the early afternoon was sunny. The Impala floated over the low hills, the lake flashing through the trees. I hadn’t expected to be so moved by seeing Keegan again. Maybe it was simply that things had ended so abruptly between us, with no sense of closure or any kindness on my part, but all the old stirrings from those last wild days of spring were present again, forceful and unsettling.
When I got home, the house was empty. My footsteps echoed, fading in the layers of space, above and below, and I had a moment of understanding why my mother had locked up so many rooms. I went upstairs and slept a deep, post-jet-lag kind of healing sleep, no dreams.
By the time I woke up it was late afternoon. My mother still wasn’t home. The windows were open in her narrow downstairs bedroom, fresh air flowing in through the pines. A yellow dress was tossed on the bed, half-slipping off the corner. Her closet door was open and clothes were askew on the hangers, hanging off the doorknobs, a kind of exuberant chaos that seemed completely out of character. Restless, I changed into the same bathing suit I’d used the day before, cobalt blue and still faintly damp from my last swim, then went down to the lake.
The boathouse doors swung back with a great groan, and I stepped into the cool darkness, water lapping just below the motorboat, which was in its hoist. I lifted my dark green kayak from its hooks and hauled it through the wide doors to the beach. Half in the water and half on the stony shore, it moved lightly with the waves. I waded into the lake and climbed into the boat, pushing my paddle against the rocky bottom until the water grew deep enough to stroke. There was a small breeze, and my muscles moved in a rhythm as familiar as breathing. Leaves fluttered against the vivid sky.
I skimmed across the dark blue water, traveling along the shore as it curved outward into the lake, to the place where sediment from a stream left a trail of silt and the marshes began—a stand of cattails, broken by purple flowers, songbirds flitting in and out, sharp reds and yellows and blues against the muted reeds. This was where we’d always stopped before,