The Glass Harmonica
The Glass Harmonica
ALSO BY RUSSELL WANGERSKY
The Hour of Bad Decisions
Burning Down the House
THE
GLASS
HARMONICA
RUSSELL WANGERSKY
THOMAS ALLEN PUBLISHERS
TORONTO
Copyright © 2010 Russell Wangersky
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any meansâgraphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval systemsâwithout the prior written permission of the publisher, or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Wangersky, Russell, 1962â
The glass harmonica : a novel / Russell Wangersky.
ISBN 978-0-88762-524-4
I. Title.
PS8645.A5333G53 Â Â Â 2010 Â Â Â Â Â C813'.6 Â Â Â Â Â C2009-907219-X
Editor: Janice Zawerbny
Jacket design: Bill Douglas
Jacket image: istockphoto
Published by Thomas Allen Publishers,
a division of Thomas Allen & Son Limited,
145 Front Street East, Suite 209,
Toronto, Ontario M5A 1E3 Canada
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of
The Ontario Arts Council for its publishing program.
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which
last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.
We acknowledge the Government of Ontario through the
Ontario Media Development Corporation's Ontario Book Initiative.
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government
of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development
Program (
BPIDP
) for our publishing activities.
10 11 12 13 14 15 Â Â Â 5 4 3 2 1
Printed and bound in Canada
For Leslie . . . finally.
Contents
Her Majesty's Penitentiary, St. John's
118A: Cavendish Street, Victoria, B.C.
Victoria Airport, British Columbia
The Glass Harmonica
KEITH O'REILLY
FEBRUARY 11, 2006
M
OST PEOPLE
just don't know how to lookâand if they do know how to look, they don't know how to remember. They get stuff stuck up there in their heads and forget about it back there, just wasting it. They can't see things and keep them handy. Me, I do both. I can close my eyes and tell you every single thing there is to see here: six margarine tubs with nails, five of them yellow and one white from the time I bought the wrong kind. I won't forget that in a hurry. They're all above the workbench on a narrow shelf I built, set up high enough so there's space underneath.
The white tub, that's ring nails for drywall. They don't even use ring nails anymore, they use drywall screws and cordless drills instead. It's faster, and a better jobâbut if you've got to tack in just a little piece, like getting in at pipes under a sink or something, ring nails work just fine. I can tell you about the space heater, out here in the add-on next to the house, because there's no heat out here otherwise, and about the radio I got, an old-fashioned brown one with a light behind the big circular dial. I don't really listen to it as much as let it play on in the background.
It's the only part of the house that's really mine, one small piece of McKay Street that belongs to me, to Keith O'Reilly. Just one small piece of McKay Street where nobody else goes. Even Evelyn doesn't come out here anymoreâforty years we've been married, and we've found a way to circle around each other without crashing into ourselves. I heard her tell a friend once that we wouldn't like the moon much either if it kept swooping in and almost smacking into the earth. That's Evelyn in a nutshell: sometimes, it makes more sense talking to the cat.
I built the add-on myself, did the framing-up and the roof and the clapboard on a long weekend at the end of August almost thirty years ago now, eye on the street in case there was a city inspector driving around or something. Made crooks of us all, the city has. The weekend comes and I can see all the neighbours loading up as if they were smugglers, hauling in all kinds of construction contraband. Sheetrock and big heavy boxes of spackling mud, and every now and then even bathtubs and toilets. Two-by-fours and two-by-sixes going in basement doors, and you'd swear the whole neighbourhood was owned by the guys who showed up in their battered vans and pickups, lugging saws and extension cords into every house on the street. Gypsy contractors, we used to say, but you can't get away with that anymoreâsaid it a few years ago when the Roses were over, and Evelyn's mouth got so big and round you'd swear her nose was going to fall right down in the hole. Then, just like that, she sealed it up into that tight line and the corners of her eyes came right down. After, when we were putting away dishes, she told me you don't say “gypsy” now, but I don't see what the big deal is.
Like I said, I didn't need a contractor, as much as I need everyone to just mind their own business. Whole workshop is only about four feet wide, and it runs the length of the house all the way to the back wall. I've got an old door on the front cut in half, so I can lock the bottom and swing the top open in summer, lets the air in without letting neighbours get too familiar, if you know what I mean. Got a big vise on the end of the bench, and a spot to pile the empty beer casesâEvelyn doesn't like them in the house, and I can usually sneak a few more than she knows when I'm out here in the summer. No phone, thoughâprobably should have had a phone, but then it's just going to ring and everything, someone trying to sell me insurance or make me get a new credit card or something.
Summertime, it's dark inside and the air's a little cooler, and no one really sees me back there in the shadows unless they know I'm there already. Not like down the street. There's a guy down there, Brendan Hayden, sits in the front bedroom upstairs with his computer lighting the whole place up like he was a lighthouse, all alone and guiding in the ships. He doesn't get itâcan't see himself, I guess. That's the differenceâthe difference between being and seeing. When it's dark, I've got a scrap of cloth up there for a curtain, just enough of a scrim to let me have some privacy. Tourists walk by and I get scraps of their conversations: “It's so beautiful, the houses so close together and so colourful,” and “I can imagine living here, can't you?” even though they don't know a damn thing about the sloppy nastiness of St. John's in March.
Runners go by, mostly in the evenings, and I feel sorry for the young guys, pounding along out there even though they're gonna get old anyway, and I can watch the women's assesâback out of sight, you can stare all you want. And sometimes I work on projectsâI took the whole ball valve assembly apart on the toilet when it used to run all the time, and I packed the spaces in the shed with insulation and put up vapour barrier. I'll do the last of the drywall too, when I get around to it. The full sheets are heavy, especially for a seventy-year-old retired dockworker, and I'm not as steady on my feet as I once was. Built a thing once so that Evelyn could press a button and a little light would come on out on the workbench to let me know if it was suppertime or she just needed me in the house and I was lost in whatever I was doing out there. Should have thought about that a bit moreâit's like building a leash for yourselfâbut at the time, it beat having her come out to find me whenever she wanted something.