Breadcrumb #667

KEVIN TRAVERS

Angus’ mother never spoke of family. Miriam said the two of them had come from Newfoundland to the Jersey shore when he was five. That explained her accent. Any other questions were discouraged or ignored. When he was sixteen he demanded to know who his father was and she threw a plate at his head. It smashed against the wall and she cried and cried and apologized but this is something Angus never forgot. But he did stop asking.

Angus’ mother was an artist of some renown. Her sculptures were landscapes in miniature, marvelous sprawling forests and mountain ranges of clay and turf and wood, found materials and painstakingly handmade structures. The geography was fantastic and familiar, fields from song and story. Miriam would never say what mythic place she charted but it was clear she knew it like the back of her hand. Haunted hollows of bending trees, sheer cliffs capped with the ruins of once great keeps overlooking an ocean through a curtain of mist that the viewer could almost feel just beyond the sculpture's edge. The small black rabbits that populate these lands, sometimes burrowed in the vast invisible depths of her little countries, have become items valued by collectors. A small but loyal group of enthusiasts have attempted to catalogue each one and trace their homes.

Miriam’s sculptures sold for high prices in the mid 90s and still sit in the homes of the wealthy and the fashionable to this day. The vague stories of her origins only made her more intoxicating. It was rumored that she was aristocracy fallen on hard times, her charm so old world that it was almost other world. She opened a gallery of her own in New York and was comfortable for the rest of her days. 

Angus, her only son, had none of this charm. He was large and shy and clumsy, more at home with books than party guests. Miriam would pet and preen him in public but at home they were left to their own devices. Miriam’s devices were wine and clay. 

And the box.

Angus had never touched the box, never saw it without spying. When he was very young, and Miriam thought he was asleep, Angus would sneak halfway down the stairs and watch her, surrounded by the half completed mounds of her latest piece, a bottle of red by her side and the box on the glass coffee table with the silver legs. The box was wood, old and brown, thick and gnarled. Next to the box was laid a large creased document, yellowed old. Angus couldn’t make out its contents, but he could tell that it was brightly colored, meticulously lined. He thought that there were dragons at the edges. 

From the box Miriam produced two small figurines: on the table sat a golden lighthouse, blue light shining from its peak and a ship the colors of the dawn. Angus acknowledged as an adult that what came next was impossible, but in his memory, Miriam would raise her hands, palms up, and sigh and the ship would take flight around the room, first gliding about her shoulders and then making its way to the ceiling, sails billowing from a true north wind. When she began to weep, he would return to bed and shiver his way to fitful sleep, dreaming of red-haired people sailing the mist in many-colored ships.

“Next to the box was laid a large creased document, yellowed old.”

Angus was not with his mother when she died. He’d been in Philadelphia, making ends meet at the press where people constantly questioned him about being the son of a famous artist. Ever polite, Angus always smiled but had few friends at work. Or outside of work. He was also being dumped.

 “I’ve known the end was coming for a long time” Chase had said, holding Angus as if that made it easier. Angus did not want the taxi driver to feel uncomfortable, but he could barely mask his sobs as he was taken from one broken relationship to another.

A week later Miriam was gone. They hadn’t spoken in a month. This was not unusual, or particularly unkind, there was just nothing to say. Angus felt vaguely like a disappointment to Miriam and she gave him no verbal indication that he was incorrect. She had never lost the accent that he could not place and never had and only reminded him of things he never knew. 

The funeral was well attended but he didn’t know anyone, not really. 

Miriam left a home by the sea, a two-story modern construction with a studio on the second floor. He’d sell it when he sobered up. He slept on the couch during a three week sabbatical from work, he received only phone calls from his mother’s solicitor and from some of the more ruthless of critics and collectors.

  Angus drank gin by the ocean, from a bottle pink with bitters that he crammed with lemons and limes. 

He went through her things slowly. He had been asked to catalogue her few unfinished pieces, the things that had never quite worked out, her models, and the shadow boxes she crafted as a hobby. The ones containing black rabbits would probably fetch a handsome price. Maybe he could get away, start new.

The box was in her closet, the wood a deep reddish brown, its lines hidden in the gnarled surface. The latch was shaped like a rabbit. Angus brushed the latch and the lid flipped open, almost eagerly. The figurines were inside, the lighthouse and the boat that he thought had been a dream. But there was no parchment, no map of parts unknown. 

Angus fell asleep on the couch, the figurines on the table. There was no light, the ship, though still the color the sky as the sun sets, lay on its side, it’s sails windless.

On his last night by the sea, Angus felt an urge to be out of the house. He needed salt air in his lungs, to be surrounded by my mist and water and sand. He brought the box with him.

Angus took a swig of gin and jammed the bottle into the sand. The horizon swayed slightly before him as the sun began to go down. He flicked open the lid of the box at his feet. Tears in his eyes, almost without realizing what he was doing, Angus raised his hands to the sky and gasped a ragged sigh.

A blue light erupted from within the box, the lighthouse a beacon to the darkling sea.

The ship took to the air around him, ruffling his bushy red beard as it spiraled up and down his body. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a small dark shape dash across the sandy banks stopping to regard him before retreating into the grassy dunes. 

A northern breeze began to blow. His fringe blew back and his glasses slipped down his nose, tears mixed with sweat and salty spray.

Angus looked out and hoped to catch a glimpse of larger sails moving on the horizon, red and purple and gold coming at last to take him home.

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