I have this thing for glass eyes. I guess you could say they've become one of my subjects, right in line behind fathers and dogs. In Big Fish, an old lady's glass eye is stolen by some college boys. In Ray in Reverse, there's a single mother with a glass eye, and all the kids in her neighborhood want to know whether her new baby has one, too. It's unclear to them whether you're born with a glass eye or get one, somehow, later. So they hatch a disastrous plan to find out. In real life, I learned everything I ever needed to know about glass eyes from my neighbor, Fred McGowan. He actually had a glass eye. He lost his real one when the blade of a tiny battery-operated helicopter spun off its bearings and impaled itself in his vitreous cavity, the very inside of the eye.Things were pretty good for me then. My father's business was doing well enough that we moved from Homewood, Alabama, to the suburb of Mountain Brook. Mountain Brook was all old money and big houses. It was like a picture book. My parents were in love, and my sisters were beautiful.Fred McGowan lived across the street from me. Fred was my age, but he was shorter, and pudgy, with chalk-white skin and reddish-brown freckles. His bangs stopped about an inch above his eyebrows. I thought his haircut must have been a mistake, but he kept getting it again and again. He wasn't especially brilliant, and he wasn't good at sports, and with his puffy jowls and buck teeth, he looked like a chipmunk. Nobody really liked him.Fred was in Mrs. Flower's sixth grade class with me. Given that we were neighbors, and knew each other right from the start, we were always teamed up when teaming was necessary. If we had a little math quiz,Fred graded my answers and I graded his. If there was a take-home project, it only made sense that Fred and I worked together. And when Fred had to wash his glass eye, which was three or four times a day, he always asked Mrs. Flowers if I could accompany him. It was a request she never refused. In the middle of a lecture or a reading or even a test, Fred would raise his hand and say, "Mrs. Flowers, I need to wash my eye". She would nod, and then Fred would ask, "Can Danny come?" And she would nod again. This was no doubt her first experience with a glass eye: who knew what strange protocol was necessary in its washing? Maybe it was a two-boy operation. But one thing was clear to her and to everybody: without a doubt, the eye could stand a washing. Over time a tiny gelatinous mush would collect around the eyelet, where Sleep collected in mine.My presence wasn't really necessary; Fred just wanted me to be with him. I think he thought of me as his friend, maybe his only friend, though I wasn't, really. I went with Fred, not out of friendship, but because I was happy for any excuse that got me out of class.In the bathroom, he and I would stand in front of the sink, not saying much, and he would turn on the tap, letting the water run for a moment. Then he would reach up to his face and, gently pulling back his bottom lid, insert his fingers beneath the lower edge of his eye, and out it would slip. He would hold it in the palm of his hand like a treasure, and let the water rush over it, until it glistened in the florescent light. It was green, and it was shaped like a seashell, or half of a hollowed-out, oblong marble. The pupil was piercingly black, and the green of the iris was deepand very real. It was so weird that Fred -- a boy, just like me -- would have this accessory in his life, the way my grandparents had false teeth, or my aunt wore a wig because she was balding, or the way my sister used a cane. I never asked to hold the eye and Fred never offered; it would have been too much for us both. I just watched as he took a brown paper towel from the wall dispenser and dried it, and then as he used the same towel to wipe whatever mush still clung in the corner. Then, the eye held in the soft tips of his fingers, he brought it to the socket and sort of ... pushed it ... and ... moved it ... around, until it felt good to him, in its place."Okay?" I said."Okay", he said.Then we went back to class.Why do I write about glass eyes? It's because of Fred McGowan. The children in Ray in Reverse are too young to know that life is a process of subtraction, and that much of your time is spent looking for ways to make up for the loss. When Fred removed his eye from his head, and he held it in the palm of his hand, I still felt it looking at me -- me, who had all my parts. It was like a preview of coining attractions.