The Year of Broken Glass (6 page)

“Oh, it's quite beautiful isn't it?” she says, after turning it around in her hands. Emily reaches back and gives it a swat. “Careful sweetie,” Jin Su says, holding Emily's hand for a moment as she does. “Where did you find it?” she asks.

“In the inlet. On Thursday afternoon.”

Jin Su carries the float across the room and places it on top of the piano. She turns the little piano-top lamp on beside it and sets three of Emily's blocks around its base to keep it from rolling off. Its opalescent sheen swirls up now under the light as Emily lets out a yowl, pointing firmly toward the float and her blocks.

“It's okay sweetie,” Jin Su assures her, taking two more blocks from the floor and handing them to our daughter. Then she says something to her in Chinese followed by, “Daddy brought us a pretty pretty ball,” in her quiet, calm voice. I feel almost reluctant in telling her, though I know the money is more of a gift than any glass ornament could be for Jin Su, so I do: “I'm meeting a man at a sushi restaurant on South Granville tomorrow and he's going to give me $150,000 for that thing.”

“What?”

“Cash. It's all arranged. Through this woman, Miriam Maynard, Svend and I,”—she doesn't know anything about Fairwin' Verge and I don't feel like explaining right now, so leave him out of it—“we met with her a couple days ago in Tofino. She's some kind of aficionado when it comes to these things. She says this one's among the most treasured in the world. So she made a phone call, and wham, $150,000!” I stand up as I say this. I'm still naked, I've got Emily in one hand hanging off my hip, and I feel ridiculous, but what the hell, it's just finally setting in what this means, here now with my daughter and Jin Su, as I tell her the news. I set Emily down and slide my jeans on, then reach out and take Jin Su by the waist while Emily beats her blocks against the floor. “What are you in to?” she asks me, with some suspicion, and blooming joy, in her eyes. “One hundred and fifty thousand dollars?” And I repeat it. “One hundred and fifty thousand. Enough to buy Anna out of her half of the boat. To break clean.”

There's a sadness that enters the room as I say this. It settles like a fog in the valley formed between our two bodies. Perhaps it's the wrong time to point out that opportunity, those intentions, as it suggests a future, a near future, of both renewal and loss, pain and healing; of change and upheaval, redefining and reconfiguring. I sense in Jin Su an immediate resistance, which strikes me suddenly as something I might have anticipated in her, as organized and tidy and conservative as she is. I kiss her on the top of her head—something I often do as it's right at mouth level—and reassure her. “It'll be good Jin Su,” I say. “You'll see.” Though I wonder if it's not myself I'm reassuring, because I've been here before, at this place where choice and commitment suddenly weigh in like the Achilles heel of the horse you've put all your money on; like the little rattle in the engine room, the sound that's not quite right—you search and search for its origin without luck, and so assume the best, and grow to accept it as just another sound.

•

“It's up to you Jin Su,” I say to her through the dark. Emily is asleep between us, restful, the pain in her mouth finally subsided as her little teeth relax their heaving at the surface of her gums.

“What's that?” she asks sleepily. I flick the bedside lamp on and walk out to the living room to retrieve the float. Back in bed I lie down and hold it on my chest.

“However this works out tomorrow, whatever this brings, if we do get that money like Miriam has said, it's up to you what we do with it.” Jin Su turns over, props her head up and looks at me, then rests it back down on the pillow, flipping her long black hair from her face as she does. She slides her hand over and places it on my hand where it steadies the glass.

“It's up to both of us Francis,” she says, and closes her eyes again. “I love you. And I'm ready for whatever life you're ready for.” The room is warm and silent, the three of us close in this little bed together, her gentle hand on mine and our daughter's small breathing between us. Her hand eventually goes limp and slides down to my chest as I stare for a time at the orb of glass till it takes me as if by trance, in the dim light and the sweet scent of my daughter's new life, into sleep.

•

We wake to a loud bang, as if something far off has exploded or collapsed. Then the walls and window start to undulate and the bed begins to shake with the floor which is heaving and bucking. I bolt upright and the glass float rolls from my chest to the bedside table, as the floor-to-ceiling window explodes, sending a spray of tempered glass out into the early morning air. I grab hold of Jin Su, all I can think to do, and we ride out the racket of shearing wood and cracking concrete with Emily in our arms between us, stunned, then screaming, as the earth far beneath rumbles and shakes.

The sound is of a million wine glasses being stomped underfoot by a million people stampeding. It suspends time, so it's as though we lie on the bed like this for a moment and an eternity concurrently. Then it's over, and the city around us falls to a tenuous silence that hangs in the air like a single strand of spider's silk. Then the grind and shatter of glass again, buildings creaking on one last precarious point-load, and a splintered, agonizing moan issues from the throat of a woman far below us.

As more cries of the injured begin to rise into the day, I come back to myself, turning toward the window just as the float rolls the last few inches of Jin Su's bedside table and drops into the void left in the window glass's absence. I look back to Jin Su holding Emily tight to her breast, our daughter wailing now in fright, then leap to the buckled floor and scurry on all fours to the edge. All I see with my nearsighted eyes is a white blur of broken glass on the street twelve storeys below. I squint and squint and think I see a spot of blue on the other side of the street, so I wave Jin Su over.

“Are you kidding,” she cries at me from the bed, one tear streaking down her face.

“You're okay right?” I ask, looking back at her, Emily hysterical in her arms. I get to my feet for the first time since waking, go to the bed, and hold them both, just hold them tight for a long time till Emily's wailing turns to sobs, then sniffles, then finally stops.

“Okay,” I say. “We're okay.” I wipe the last of the tears from Jin Su's eyes and Emily decides to smile, which lightens her mother as I lead them both to the ledge. “Is that it on the other side of the street?” I ask. “I see blue there, is that it?”

Jin Su looks at me incredulously, then finally begins to scan the street below. “It might be,” she says. “I'm not sure. And anyway, even if that is a portion of it, it's bound to be cracked or blown apart. We're twelve storeys up.” I think about this for a second, then I think of how it flew from my hands at Miriam Maynard's and landed unscathed on the other side of the room, and I wonder. What are the chances?

“I have to go down and check,” I say to Jin Su as I start looking for my clothes.

“Are you kidding Ferris?” she says. She only calls me Ferris when she's displeased with me, but I don't care because she's all right, and the baby's all right, and I'm all right. If that float is all right too I want to be the first one to it. Short of being one of the first looters downtown at Birks, it's my only shot at setting my life somewhat straight, a little gift from the gods, and I'm not going to give it up till I've seen it ruined or in shards with my own eyes, up close.

“You just have to trust me, Jin Su. We have to get out of this building anyhow, right now, so let's go. Grab whatever you can and let's get to the fire escape before the rest of the building does.” Jin Su thinks only for a moment on this, she's sensible, before she grabs a bag from the closet and starts filling it with clothes and diapers for Emily, whom I hold as Jin Su changes herself. Thankfully she has no mirrors in her room, no glass other than the window that ejected out onto the street, so we walk unhindered to the entryway. “Boots, Jin Su,” I say to her. “You'll need the thickest soles you've got.” I pull on my steel-toes, then Jin Su laces up her hikers and ties Emily in her mei tai close to her chest while I grab some bananas, apples and bottled water from the kitchen.

We try the door, but it won't open. The framing is buckled so I slam my body into it. Still it won't budge, wedged tight in its jamb. Instead I go to the bedroom with one of the dining room chairs and smash a hole in the drywall. Then I smash a few more and tear the sheathing away, then the insulation, then kick between the studs and break through the drywall on the other side. I keep kicking till I've made a large enough hole for us to slip through, and we do, out into the darkened hallway. Jin Su flicks a little flashlight on and we walk swiftly to the fire escape door, which opens, then we descend the concrete stairs, turning down and down, twelve flights to the ground floor.

In the lobby there's an old woman with tempered glass in her hair and clothes. Her face and arms are bleeding and she's just sitting stunned and huddled in a corner. Jin Su starts toward her. “We've got to get out, away from the building Jin Su,” I say, thinking that if the aftershocks come, if the building isn't sound…

“Just give me a minute with her,” she says, and turns to the old lady. “Mrs. Maven, it's Jin Su.” She takes her by the glass-gouged arm and lifts her from sitting. “Where is your husband Mrs. Maven?” Mrs. Maven is gasping and choking on her own attempts to breathe, in shock, unable to answer Jin Su's question.

Beyond the lobby, out on the street, a massive shower of glass falls to the sidewalk. I'm not sure whether it's safer inside the building or out now, so I tell Jin Su to wait in the lobby and step out and up onto the heaps of glass, the most recent shower of which was kicked out by a cluster of elderly people and a young woman who seem to be trapped in an apartment on the fourth floor, calling out for help to the few people standing below them. I start walking down and across the street, to its opposite side, to where I think I saw the gleam of my float's iridescent blue from high above. There are branches and wires down and it's nearly impossible to walk, the glass is everywhere and it shifts and cracks underfoot. There's a building fire raging up the block and black smoke is starting to billow toward me, obscuring the sky.

Then I see it. It shines at me. Shrouded beneath a tree branch I catch its opaline swirl in my peripheral vision, just a tinge of it. I'm nearly on top of it, and reach down and lift it from amongst the oak leaves. With my shirt sleeve I brush some flecks of dirt and glass from its surface.

A water main has burst and everything is wet. There's a river running beneath the wire, glass and steel in the street. I don't know enough about the grid to be sure, but it occurs to me that this quantity of fallen high voltage wire and water seems questionable. Some of the glass is starting to slide on the flood and it feels altogether unstable and frightening beneath my feet.

I tuck the float under my arm and make my way back toward the lobby. People are scrambling from the building now, and I'm struggling against them, against their panic, within my own, trying to get back to Emily and Jin Su. Then they emerge from the crowd, Jin Su takes my hand and we start down the street, away from the fire and the flooding waterline. Saying nothing, we just walk, toward another building in flames further down, and another, through a city strewn with glass and rubble, wire fallen everywhere, and people, some wailing, some starting on the looting, as the choppers begin to circle overhead, their blades thumping the smoke filled air—we walk toward the only place I can think to. We walk together down to the sea.

Forty blocks through the smoke and clamour, glass everywhere underfoot, and Emily, poor thing, falls asleep against her mother's chest. Every so often another explosion splits through the din of screams and sirens, another cracked gas line flaming. We get to the bottom of Main then head west on Second Avenue to Fir Street. There's a ragtag of fishboats and scuzzy live-aboards tied to the floats at Fisherman's Pier. I'm going to, if I can, commandeer one of these things and get us out of here.

Jin Su waits on the dock while I jump aboard a little shrimp trawler. It's unlocked and I go in, but there's nothing to it, gutted of everything but its engine. I scramble off the bow to the stern of the next boat along, an old fifty-foot wooden troller. The cabin door is padlocked so I smash the captain's window out and squeeze through. Inside, the boat reeks of rats and rot, a damp winter untended. There's no key in the ignition. I try the start button anyway, but nothing turns over or clicks. So I throw my body at the cabin door, bust the latch clean from its screws, and tumble to the deck. I lie on my back for a few seconds looking up at the sun, a hazy ball of dark orange above the burning city, ash drifting like snow through the air.

Jin Su peeks over the bulwarks from the dock. “Are you okay?” she asks, and climbs aboard as I start laughing. I can't help it: she's standing above me on this shitty boat in the middle of a whole city of pandemonium, holding my stupid fishing float below the lump of our sleeping daughter tied to her chest, somehow calm. Sensible. Anna would be through the fucking roof. Emily starts to stir, then screams. “I've got to feed her,” Jin Su says, handing me the float. She unties the mei tai and sits down on the hatch coaming to nurse.

“Give me your flashlight,” I say, and Jin Su digs it out from her jeans pocket. I turn it on and climb into the cabin, down into the fo'c'sle, then crouch into the engine room in the bowel of the boat. There's a single battery hooked to a Constavolt charger with a single wire coming off it, to drive a bilge pump no doubt, but the rest of the battery bank is gone. I swing the beam of light over to the engine and look it over. It's an old pre-war Perkins. I remember Svend telling me about these motors, how they can be started by hand, one cylinder at a time, but I've never done it or seen it done.