My Better Life

23

Jamie

Gavin blinkswhen I turn on the lights and I hold my breath as I watch him take in my studio. I don’t have to look around, I’m in here every day, I know what he sees. I’d rather watch him. He holds my hand, and as he takes my work in, he strokes my skin.

I’m waiting for him to smile, to frown, for his brow to furrow or for his shoulders to hitch, really for any reaction, but his face is as smooth and unreadable as melted glass sitting in the crucible.

The longer he stares without saying anything, the more worried I get.

I turn to the open room and judge it as if I were seeing it for the first time. First off, it’s an old stone barn. Even though a decade has come and gone without any animal or agriculture passing inside, you can still feel the history, smell the wet stone, and imagine the milking cow lowing as she meandered inside for the night.

The ceiling is low. It might be considered claustrophobic, although I like to imagine it’s cozy. A year back, Big Tom installed new lighting, tracks that run along the low wooden beams and illuminate the room in a soft yellow glow.

The furniture is second-hand and mismatched in styles, but I painted them all a pearly white. There’s my chunky workbench in the center of the room, my easel where I hang my latest watercolors for project ideas, and the long rows of shelves along either wall holding all my finished glass pieces. Against the stone walls, the white furniture, and the gray concrete floor, the glass, to me, looks like bright rays of hope, colorful and optimistic.

There’s a decade’s worth of work here. I’ve given away many pieces, and sold others, but most of what I’ve created is stored here. It’s almost a museum, and if I look at it closely enough, I can tell exactly which year and which season I created a piece.

There are flowers from my early years, the easiest pieces to make. The simple Roman vases and the glass tumblers. Moving all the way to the complex sculptures I create today.

I can point out the early years with Bobby in the carefree abstract designs and the bright primary colors. There’s the sunshine yellow and persimmon orange flowers, dozens and dozens of flowers, from when Elijah and Tanner were born, when I was exhausted from having two babies but couldn’t stay away from glassblowing. There’s the clear, uncolored bowls and tumblers, from after Bobby was gone, when life was so completely without color that I couldn’t even put it in my glass.

There’s the shelf full of blue wine glasses with thin, fragile stems, a mirror of when I thought I myself might break. Not surprisingly, I wasn’t as gentle as I should’ve been, and many of the glasses broke when I attempted the transfer between the blow pipe and the punty.

I can point out the season when I started seeing color again, when Shay first laughed, and I put the shape and color of her laugh into a pink and gold vase.

There’s the Christmas ornaments from when Diedre told me that from now on, we’d be celebrating Christmas together, and that we’d never be on our own. They’re green and red, silver and blue, white and gold and full of friendship.

Finally, there’s my current work in progress, the spheres that I’m slowly creating, iridescent balls of color, each one a bubble, rising into the sky, with the hope that this one will never burst.

So, to me, my studio is like looking through a kaleidoscope, with the colored glass shifting as you turn, giving a thousand views and a thousand emotions to a single life.

Gavin steps forward into the studio, his warm hand clasping mine. Our footsteps echo on the concrete floor, his heavier, mine hesitant and quiet. He stops in front of my workbench, the most recent spheres laid out.

He reaches out and his fingers stop an inch from the smooth, curved surface.

I lick my dry lips. I can taste my nervousness, a tannic, coppery flavor that’s similar to the smell of a heated metal rod.

Gavin squeezes my hand and my shoulders fall. “You don’t like it?”

He looks to me quickly, his eyebrows raising. “Not like it?” He shakes his head and stares at me as if he’s never seen me before. As if I’m an entirely different person than the one he’s known.

I take a shaky breath. “You aren’t…you aren’t saying anything.”

He stares at my mouth, and my lips tingle as his gaze roves over them. His hand tightens on mine.

“I have no words.” He shakes his head and gestures around the studio. “I didn’t know. I knew you were beautiful but I had no idea that you could make all that beauty come to life like this.”

I stare at him, not quite understanding what he’s saying. “You…”

He gives me a self-deprecating smile. “Don’t you know how much I want you?”

I feel short of breath, like I’m breathing through the blow pipe and can’t get enough air.

He touches my cheek, running his fingers over my skin, like I’m as fragile as that wine glass stem. I lean into his touch and his eyes warm.

“Why aren’t you sharing your art with the world? Not that I don’t mind keeping you to myself, but why is all this here, hidden from view? Am I the reason? Is it my fault?”

I shake my head, like I’m trying to dispel air bubbles from glass. I can’t think when he’s looking at me like I’m the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.