On Friday, Martin begins to make the first bug. He goes outdoors, saws a chunk from a sheet of foam, and clamps it into the vise on his workbench. With a coping saw, he shapes the piece, then refines it with an X-Acto knife and sandpaper. He carves textured ribbing along the thorax and abdomen. After lunch, he cuts wing shapes from the stainless mesh and carefully glues wire to their undersides, creating the illusion of veins. Finally, he pierces the thorax with six thick wires: three sets of legs. When Philomena calls him for dinner, he has not yet begun painting.
He finishes the first insect at ten o’clock that night. There were a few setbacks after dinner—a lost leg, a vein peeled away from its wing—but nothing Martin hasn’t been able to rectify with invisible glue. Finally, he sets about painting the iridescent dragonfly body. Although he is yawning by the time he finishes, adrenaline courses through his bloodstream. He fairly jogs up the stairs holding the piece and carries it to Philomena in bed.
“What do you think?” he pants, holding the insect in front of her. “It’s a blue darner, Aeschna cyanea.”
She looks up from her book. “It’s wonderful.”
“That’s all?”
“It’s lovely. But at this rate, it’s going to take you ten years to finish.”
Martin is silent, holding the dragonfly. “It’ll go faster once I get in the swing of things.”
Philomena smiles and goes back to her book.
“Or if I had an assistant.” Martin puts a hand to his wife’s shoulder.
“You can put an ad in the paper,” she says without looking up.
By Tuesday, Martin has completed two dragonflies, two spiders, and one perfect ladybug. On Wednesday, Philomena agrees to help glue the wings to a gypsy moth, and by the weekend she is sitting with him through whole days, helping to carve new creatures from scratch. The production doubles, then triples—as Martin predicted it would—as they become more adept. Together, they fall into a kind of shared trance, bending wires and sculpting foam as the summer progresses and weeds crawl up the sides of the pink pyramid behind the house.
Slowly, they produce each species in the book. Despite her bad back and creeping arthritis, Philomena works unflagging hours, fashioning the spiky hairs on fly legs, painting the chartreuse wings of a luna moth. She works with a beatific look on her face, like a woman deep in her knitting. By September, they have made a hundred insects. Martin is reluctant to store them in boxes, where they might be damaged. Instead, they rest upon every available surface, until they crowd the studio and overflow into the breezeway. Swarm, Martin decides, will be the title of the piece.
When the Gregorys invite them for dinner, Martin and Philomena walk down Minuteman Road to the glittering stone wall. On foot, the house is more imposing than ever—six thousand square feet at least. Martin says nothing as his wife glances at him and presses the musical doorbell.
Bill leads the tour of the interior, pausing to highlight the artwork. The paintings tend to be oversized, lacking in nuance. The artists’ names are unfamiliar. Several gallery pedestals surround the dinner table, supporting bronze blobs. Martin sits quietly beneath the vaulted ceiling as the others converse and a chef serves steak tartare.
Martin chooses not to return the dinner invitation, despite Philomena’s protests. It is unwise to give his patrons a preview of the piece before it’s complete, he argues, and it will be too much trouble to stow it away.
By November, a phalanx of insects occupies the kitchen. The first snow comes and lays a clean blanket upon the hill of insulation boards. Alone in the house, Martin and Philomena slide into the timeless ski-lodge feeling. With the exception of supermarket cashiers and hardware store clerks, they speak only to each other. It has been a long time since they were together like this—really together—doing something. Something about their shared concentration on the same objective spurs easy conversation. They talk about people they’ve known, relive their children’s blunders, make each other laugh.
From time to time, there are phone calls, the ring resounding like a siren through the house, rattling Martin out of his chair. Philomena speaks to their daughter, Melinda, divorced in San Francisco, and their son, Claude, living in Nashville with their two granddaughters.
“Will we come down there for Christmas? He wants to know.”
Martin does not respond. He has resorted to fingernail scissors for fashioning the knobs of a millipede’s body, and his fingers are blistered from it.
“Martin, I just spoke to you.”
“I heard you, love. I just don’t know the answer yet.”
“The answer to whether you’ll fly to see your son and grandchildren for Christmas?”
“That’s right. I don’t know the answer. I don’t think they’ll be too happy with my bug-making at the dinner table.” He chuckles. “I might get foam dust in the turkey.”
“What’s so funny? Do you think you’re funny?”
“Come on, Phil, I’m only joking. I wouldn’t really bring my bugs to Nashville.” He pauses, breathes in. “But I don’t think I should go. I’ve got too much work to do.”
His wife stares at him, her eyes stygian. He looks back at his millipede.
“You can go if you want, of course,” he adds. “I wouldn’t want to stop you from going.”