Craquelure, and: Handiwork Robert B. Shaw (bio) CRAQUELURE The ancestors were more relaxed than some when sitting for their portraits, given that the painter was their son, presumably performing gratis. In their Sunday best, they peer shrewdly from their his-and-hers twin ovals now exactly as they’ve done for something like a century-and-a-half. His formal white cravat, the filmy bands depending from her lace cap set off healthy complexions, features glowing with composure, hair brushed to a sheen; in short, the earmarks of prosperous middle age. A bead of white glimmering from each pupil works to bring their eyes to life. When I first pondered them, flanking my grandparents’ fireplace, they did not seem approachable by children— too venerable, even though their brows were mostly free of wrinkles. Now I find I’ve not only approached them but outpaced them, drawn past their age that day they gave their son his chance to practice on familiar subjects. Immunity to mutability confers on anyone a great advantage, and for years I credited them with it. Their sameness cast a spell of reassurance on any of the parlors they were hung in. Children of the latest generation have had their turn at being sobered by them, subdued to order by their steady gaze. Lately, though, by sidling close enough to give them a more skeptical inspection, [End Page 66] I’ve seen what doesn’t show up at a distance: clinging to each unworried face a wealth of radiating fissures forming nets of lines as delicate as hairs that once were snugged together on the artist’s brush-tip, the one he favored for his finest strokes to show posterity his parents’ eyebrows. Imagine filaments as fine as those, spreading a weft, on each a weightless veil, as if to compensate, year after year, for all the wrinkles that would never show in either likeness anchored to its canvas. An aging on the surface of the paint or in the once-protective coat of varnish belies their images’ arrested aging. By now I’m used to this, but at the moment it first came home to me, I thought of times I’d made my way with care across a sheet of pond ice till the cracks began to fan out from my feet, warning me to back off. Thank you, great, great Grandmother and Grandfather, for offering a modicum of caution along with your unruffled optimism. No doubt you found this out before I did: sooner or later, cracks are bound to come, however safe our customary frames prompt us to feel; the ice cannot be trusted beyond a point we only recognize on reaching it. Here, there’s no turning back. [End Page 67] HANDIWORK Against the back wall of our garage my grandfather built a long workbench on which whatever else we wanted to have built for us would assume form beneath hands that knew the ways of wood— which meant his, plainly. My lefthanded father had no knack for carpentry, nor liking, either, but was more than willing if the old man had a mind to put tools smartly through their paces. Coffee tables, cupboard shelves and doors, bookcases, trellises and easels, more and less structural joinery filled his hours when he visited. He let me heft with my untutored hands the implements that in his hands were like deft bodily extensions. The handles I liked most to handle looked like lemon jelly petrified. Even now I have a mental grasp of gear going about its business capably, or hung ready to hand on hooks, or stowed on shelves: the sharp ones he warned me about (planes, chisels, saws), the three hammers (tack, claw, and ballpeen); screwdrivers and wrenches in their ranked sizes, and the spirit level with its bubble that would never tell a lie. Most of all I liked (I wonder why) the pencil that he marked lumber with. Flat, unfaceted, so it would not roll out of sight or onto the floor, its wooden shaft glowed tomato red. He scored a dark line to guide his saw; on each graphite track the saw bit down. Sawdust from his cuts gleamed...