Chapter 1
Every villain is the hero of their own story.
My hands creep to the considerable swell of my belly before I even realize what I am doing. What kind of woman kills her own children?
Maeve, a waitress who’s probably been here longer than I’ve been alive, comes to refill my decaf. She pours, not spilling a drop. “What an effin’ monster,” Maeve says. “Can you imagine?” She crosses herself.
“No,” I say faintly. “I really can’t.”
She glances down at my pregnant belly, and smiles. “I’m gonna bring you a Danish,” she says. “On the house.”
Talking heads fill the screen, discussing the inevitable death penalty charge, dissecting whether Andrea Yates is mentally ill or a cold--blooded killer.
There’s a tug on my braid. “Found you,” Adam says, coming up from behind me. A red ribbon is woven through the plait, just like every day. He leans down to kiss me, flattening his hand on top of mine on my belly, a hello for the little stranger inside me.
“How was your flight?” I ask. He’s come in on a red--eye from California.
“Miraculously on time.” My husband is an engineer, and his firm has a contract in Irvine. Adam was picked to head it, leapfrogging people who have worked there longer. It means a lot of travel, at a very inconvenient time, but it also comes with a raise. Babies are expensive.
Adam yawns, reaches for my coffee, and then realizes it’s decaf. “All I want,” he says, “is a black coffee, a hot shower, and a nap.”
I wince. “Two out of three’s not bad.”
I had the water turned off in the master bathroom shower so that I could install the mosaic I’m creating on the walls.
It’s what I do or, rather, what I did before getting ready for this baby—-I’m a mixed--media artist. Until the beginning of my ninth month, I worked in Brooklyn teaching mosaic at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and at a private school in Brooklyn on Saturday mornings.
Before that, I had been a RISD student with an award--winning senior project.
It had been judged by a panel of curators from the Frick and MoMA, who described it as a “launching pad for an artist who is going places.”
Well, I didn’t get very far.
Except that one of the curators now, five years after my graduation from RISD, had a daughter in my Brooklyn mosaic class. She asked if I would ever consider a showing at her gallery.
I took her card. I still have it. One day, I’ll have enough time to create a body of work for a real show. For now, I’m redecorating the master bathroom.
We have both been showering in the smaller guest bathroom, with its tiny glass stall. “I hate the other shower,” Adam groans. “My elbows hit the door when I try to open the shampoo.”
I make a noncommittal noise of sympathy. I don’t know what he’s complaining about. At this point, I am bigger than he is.
Maeve comes back with my Danish and pours coffee for Adam. “Hey, handsome,” she says. “The usual?”
He nods, and she goes off to place his order of eggs over easy with a side of fruit. “Have you heard about this?” I ask, nodding -toward the television.
Adam twists in his seat to look at the screen.
“Yeah. It was on the radio in the taxi from the airport.” He takes my hands into his on the table, like we are a bridge.
It would be structurally sound, same as the ones he has engineered.
For as long as I’ve known Adam, I’ve trusted him to protect me.
His mouth quirks up on one side, and there’s the dimple that made me fall in love with him.
His eyes, a blue I’ve never found in a Pantone book, meet mine.
They are bloodshot, but gentle. “I didn’t ask you how you’re doing. How you’re both doing.”
I turn slightly, so that I cannot see the television anymore. “Better,” I tell him, “now that you’re here.”
Here’s what I love about mosaics: when you’re doing the work, with tweezers and shards of ceramic or glass, you cannot see the picture up close.
Most artists use Winckelmans ceramic or vitreous glass, smalti, marble—-but I prefer to hide personal objects among the usual materials.
I have been working on this piece in the shower for months now.
Before I even knew what I was going to create, I was squirreling away mementos that I wanted to use: a sliver from the coffee mug I was drinking from when the pregnancy test kit came back positive; a shard from a bone china vase that I’d filled with tulips before telling Adam the news over dinner; beads from a bracelet that spell out baby; stones from a picnic in Central Park; a pearl button from the first coat my belly outgrew.
The dining room table has been overrun with little plastic containers that I saved from Chinese takeout, organized by color—-a rainbow of pieces.
There are violent reds and muted blues, periwinkle, seafoam.
A pristine spill of white china and milk glass sits in a recycled aluminum pie tin.
Inky blacks, flaming orange. A bright burst of yellows is scattered over the butcher paper I’ve rolled out to protect the table.
I have created the tesserae, as they are called, by smashing some of these bits, using wheeled and compound nippers on others.
To create a mosaic of this size and scope takes time and planning.
You draw your vision, life--size, on butcher paper.
You see the fault lines where the art can be carved into pieces that are easier to transport and affix.
You create the tesserae you want to use.
All of this happens before you even lay down your mesh to begin.
In the master bathroom shower, there are three walls that reach from the lip of the white tub to the ceiling, and then a hinged three--quarter glass wall that takes the place of a shower curtain.
I started this mosaic when my baby was the size of a strawberry, and when it was the size of a pomegranate, I installed the first wall, opposite the tub spout and showerhead.
The second wall was adhered and grouted when the baby was the size of a pineapple.
But to be fair, these walls were the easy ones (nozzle and knobs notwithstanding).
They are matching ombrés that go from deep purple to azure.
Through each of these walls, branches burst and spread, fingers shimmering with emerald leaves.
But it is this last wall, the final installation, the one you see the moment you walk into the bathroom—-that will be the real showpiece.
Those branches all connect to a tree in this central panel, with one outstretched limb bearing a bird’s nest. In that nest will be a baby bird.
And leaning over it, wings protectively curved, its mother.
I’ve been playing around with the birds.
At first, I imagined them as cardinals, with their mohawks of red--feathered hair and black--rimmed beaks.
Then blue jays, iridescent wings shining.
But the more I fiddled with the tesserae, the more different birds took shape: saffron and crimson feathers streaming out in a long tail, ebony--tipped wings, swan necks, fire in their eyes.
This was a mosaic about birth and rebirth; naturally, these were phoenixes.
I sit at the table now using tweezers to pluck pieces a centimeter square and lay them down on the fiberglass mesh.
I don’t like to use the adhesive kind—-I prefer to be able to see and then revise the image, putting down Weldbond only when I think it’s perfect.
Under the mesh is my conceptual drawing, covered by a layer of plastic wrap.
The part of the mosaic I am working on today features the mama bird, mouth open, while her baby bird cranes its long neck up to look at her, ready to receive . . .
Receive what? A worm?
I take a handful of marbled browns and grays, creating a worm that dangles from the mother’s mouth to the baby’s.
It’s weird. Who wants to shower every day with a bird regurgitating food to its offspring?
I pluck the pieces of the worm off the mesh and fill in the space between the mother and child with the sky blues I’ve used as background elsewhere. The beaks of both birds are still wide--open, giving and taking, but I like that you don’t see what’s being passed between them.
Painstakingly, I pick each piece up with tweezers and spread the adhesive on the back before setting it down again on the mesh.
After these pieces set for twenty--four hours, I will cut the image along its fault lines and peel the plastic wrap off the mesh.
Then, like I did on the other two walls, I can use a trowel to put on adhesive, lay the mosaic sheets to match my concept drawing, tamp them down, and grout them.
Suddenly hands massage the sore muscles of my shoulder and neck. Adam presses a kiss on the crown of my head. “I didn’t hear you come in,” I say. Today, after a quick nap, he’d headed into the office. I have been working here since. I didn’t even realize the sun had gone down.
“The big reveal,” Adam says. “I like it.”
“I’ll finish it soon,” I promise.
He raises a brow. “Can you even fit inside the shower anymore to install it?”
“Yeah. I just may need the Jaws of Life to get me out.” I smooth my fingers over the baby bird’s beak. “I’m going to call it Hollow Bones.”
Adam blinks in surprise. “That’s kind of grim,” he says.
Here is the other thing I love about mosaics: they take broken things and make them beautiful.