Often we’d find ourselves on the waterfront looking out at the Puget Sound. There’s no shine on the water, just beautiful waves of normalcy. It’s here that we first started to learn how to control the shine, to mute it and hide layers.
Dad would place a ball in the surf with just two or three distinct shines on it. That ball, set against a backdrop of beautiful shine-free water, allowed me to focus on one shine at a time and, eventually, to turn the others low, like you would with a dimmer switch. I’ve never been able to completely shut it out, not on my own, but the relief that came from learning to turn the neon glow down is indescribable.
It came at a price.
The effort of it gave me headaches, real skull-pounders that throbbed at the front of my head. The first few times it happened I remember holding my eyes closed with my hands. The pounding was so bad I thought my eyes might pop right out of my head; I was determined to hold them in.
It was on a trip to a glass studio a month before my eleventh birthday that things changed, and for the better this time. Mom was with us; it was actually her idea. She had been talking about taking up pottery or some other hobby and wanted to see what glassblowing was like. This particular studio was having an open house, and though we had to drive an hour to get there, Mom determined that it would be quality family time.
Of course she loved it: the studio, in addition to the quality time.
The studio was in a surprisingly small work space with an odd assortment of metal tools and stands and three metal doors built into the wall, each opening into a separate furnace with a separate purpose. We soon learned that one was the main furnace, where molten glass waited to be collected and shaped. The second was the glory hole, a furnace used to reheat a piece as it was being worked on. Finally, there was the lehr, or annealer, used to slowly cool the glass over hours or even days.
When we first entered the shop, a glassblower, or gaffer, was taking a raging-hot glob of shapeless glass from the furnace using the end of a long metal rod—which, I soon discovered, was hollow. The blob began to take shape as the glassblower blew air through the rod and then rotated it around and around and around like a piece of wood on a lathe. In no time at all it began to resemble a vase with bands of color, called caning, running from top to bottom.
That’s about the time I lost interest and wandered into the gift store attached to the shop. Here was every manner of bowl and plate and vase and glass, a thousand colors shining and reflecting from ten thousand facets.
Near the front of the store was a magnificent platter propped upright on a wooden stand. The glass was clear, with a flourish of burgundy and blue on each end. I remember giving it a casual glance as I passed, the glance of a disinterested ten-year-old on an art outing with his parents.
But something in the glass caught my eye.
The glass was so crystal clear—ironically because it was crystal—that I noticed a fingerprint on the backside. A single fingerprint on the upper edge, most likely left when it was placed on the stand.
Big deal, it was a fingerprint.
Only this fingerprint didn’t have any shine. Big deal! Huge!
Walking around to the other side of the table, I stared at the backside of the platter. There before me was a fingerprint in dark walnut dappled with rose petals. It stared back at me; hell, it slapped me in the face. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Every fiber of the feltlike texture was on display … as clear as crystal. I moved back to the front of the platter.
Nothing: a fingerprint.
It was maddening, overwhelming, amazing.
I wanted to scream, DAD, DAD, DAD, and run into the other room, but I realized that would be unwise and hard to explain. Instead, I walked with excited steps back into the shop and tugged at dad’s right hand, trying to pull him into the store while at the same time trying not to garner too much attention.
Dad resisted, caught up in the magic of glowing glass and dark metal tongs.
“Da-aaad,” I whined … though I kept the volume to a whisper.
He ignored me.
I tugged again … and again … and again.
“What is it, Mag—” The look on my face when he whirled around, or maybe it was the tears stretching down my checks, startled him, and he whisked me from the room, shepherding me in the crook of his left arm.
In the store, he knelt before me and held me at arm’s length, looking me up and down. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Did you hurt yourself?”
I remember shaking my head and taking him by the hand. I led him to the platter and just pointed as the tears started to fall again.
“What, Magnus?” he practically pleaded. “What?” He glanced through the opening into the workshop and saw that Mom was still engrossed by the glassblower.
“Do you see the fingerprint?” I asked. I used my own small finger to guide his eyes, until the tip was just inches from the glass.
“I see it,” he answered.
“So do I.”
I burst into tears and threw myself into his arms. Over the next ten minutes he had me look through maybe a hundred different pieces of glass and crystal, always with the same result. Soon it all made sense. Glass had no effect; it was something we’d experimented with before with no luck, despite what colors might be added to it. But put a crystal in front of my eyes and every bit of shine was magically erased, as if it never existed. Move the crystal away, and the shine returned in all its hideous glory.
The glassblower found it a rather odd request, but within a week I had my glasses with their lead-crystal lenses: my special glasses.
And with them I reclaimed my sanity and my life … until some dozen years later when the FBI took both away. At least this time I have some say in the matter. I can quit anytime I like. Jimmy says so.
I can quit anytime I like.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
June 28, 7:47 P.M.
“Diane, it’s almost eight, what are you still doing in the office?”