like she’d been caught.
“Where’s Zack?” Claire said.
“He sleep,” Pan said.
“I’m thinking about working again,” Claire said.
Pan nodded. She was still very brown from the summer. She wore a black tank top and khaki capri pants and a thin silver chain with a tiny bell on it around her neck. Claire had paid twice already to have this chain repaired after Zack had yanked it off. Claire suggested Pan not wear the chain while she was working, but Pan ignored this advice and that was fine. The chain and the bell were part of Pan’s persona, part of her magic. Pan was short and lithe, and her glossy black hair was cut into a rounded pageboy. She was both adorable and androgynous. With the silver chain and the tiny, tinkling bell, she reminded Claire of a wood sprite.
“What do you think?” Claire asked.
Pan tilted her head.
“About me working?”
Pan shrugged. Possibly she didn’t understand the question, and certainly she didn’t understand what Claire’s working again would entail.
Claire shook her head. “Never mind,” she said.
Pan left, but Claire lingered for another few moments on the bench, paging through her sketchbook. Once upon a time, she had made an elaborate pair of candlesticks for Mr. Fred Bulrush of San Francisco. The pulled-taffy candlesticks. She had come upon the design by accident, holding on to the gather with tweezers while rolling the blowpipe; she had twisted and pulled the molten glass, then rolled it into blue and purple frit that she’d scattered on the marvering table. She was like a kid with clay, and she thought she’d end up with a kid’s mess, but the colors blended beautifully and the form cooled a bit and Claire recognized it as a candlestick stem. She added a foot and blew out a small bowl, and when it came out of the annealer, she thought, This is really cool. It looked, to Claire, like a psychedelic Popsicle. It was Jason who thought it looked like pulled taffy. He liked it as much as Claire did, but then he said, What are you going to do with one candlestick?
And Claire thought, Right. I’ll never in a million years be able to make another one.
She tried again and got close—the color wasn’t quite identical and the twistiness was off—but that was what made it art. She took a picture of the candlesticks and sent it to Mr. Fred Bulrush, a mysteriously wealthy man—a former associate of Timothy Leary’s—who loved Claire’s work because he believed it contained what he called “the elation and pain” of her soul. Bulrush paid twenty-five hundred dollars for the pair.
What about turning the idea upside down? Upside-down candlesticks: a chandelier. Claire had always wanted to do a chandelier. What about a pulled-taffy chandelier that would cascade from the ceiling like party streamers, each strand ending in a lightbulb the size of a grape? God, it could be utterly fantastic. Would Lock like that?
Two o’clock came and Claire picked up J.D. and Ottilie at the elementary school, then Shea at Montessori. J.D. and Ottilie had Little League at three, and Shea had soccer at three thirty. Claire had snacks and drinks for everybody, J.D. and Ottilie’s mitts, hats, and uniform shirts, Shea’s cleats and shin guards. The kids piled into the car with their lunch boxes, their backpacks, and assorted art projects. J.D. had a flyer for an open house, which wafted like an autumn leaf into the front seat.
“How was school?” Claire asked.
J.D. ripped open a bag of Fritos. Nobody answered. Claire checked the rearview mirror; Shea was struggling with her seat belt.
“What did you do today?” Claire said. “J.D.?”
“Nothing,” J.D. said.
“Nothing,” Ottilie said.
“Shea?”
“I can’t get my seat belt buckled.”
“J.D., will you help her, please?”
J.D. huffed. “Of course,” he said.
Claire smiled. She was not Julie Andrews, these were not the von Trapp children, these were children who had apparently done nothing during a whole day of school—but everything was okay. She had gone into the hot shop, but the fact of the matter was, she liked her life the way it was now. She was consumed with making sure the kids had what they needed. Because she had spent so much time mooning over her sketchbook, she had forgotten to put the laundry in the dryer, and she hadn’t done anything about dinner, so things would be insane when she got home, and there would be Zack to deal with because Pan was off at five. Claire didn’t have time to create a museum-quality piece. And