The Miracle Overlooked

When I was a little older and first saw photos of buildings bombed during the war, their ruined interior walls exposed to the exterior, did our father's obsession take on a more nuanced meaning? Along with Mo and Luigi and Tony who laid bricks, there was Andre, a craftsman who had done his apprenticeship in Holland, then come to America as a sea man and jumped ship. Insulted, he would disappear for a week, then return again without a word. For more than a year, he lay on his back on a platform atop scaffolding in the Grand Salon, restoring the wedding cake plaster full of greed ceiling. One day, after yet another walk out, our father switched