Black Glass

by Karen Joy Fowler

  Are we ready? All right.

  • • •

  DINNER IS OVER, and the women of apartment 203 are still sitting around the table. They are holding a special financial meeting. Item one: Someone has made two phone calls to Redwood City and is refusing to acknowledge them. This is of interest only to Linda; the phone is in Linda’s name. Item two: Was the Sara Lee cake which Julie consumed unassisted a cake bought with apartment funds or a personal cake?

  Julie’s position is completely untenable. She argues first that it was her own private cake and second that she most certainly did not eat it alone. It is the most flagrant case Linda can imagine of someone trying to have her cake and eat it, too, and Linda says so. Julie is a closet eater and has developed a number of techniques for consuming more than anyone realizes. She will open the ice cream container from the bottom and shovel away unnoticed until someone else tries to serve herself and the ice cream collapses under the spoon.

  Julie can seldom decide if she is dieting or not. This ambivalence forces her to rely on an ancient method of weight control. If, after polishing off a chocolate cake, it turns out she is on a diet after all, she throws it up. Of course this step, once taken, is irrevocable. Julie thinks that she is fat, although the whole time Linda has known her she never has been.

  “Self-induced vomiting is hard on the stomach lining,” says Gretchen. Gretchen is as short as Linda, but more muscular and athletic. She is a feminist and says so. “This is what finally destroyed Roman culture.”

  “Lead in the pipes,” contends Linda.

  “What?”

  “They used lead in their water pipes. Eventually they were all brain-damaged.”

  “The process was accelerated by self-induced vomiting.”

  Julie is not listening. She is holding her red hair in her fingers, isolating single strands and splitting the ends. Julie does this routinely, although she spends extra money on special shampoos for damaged hair. Gretchen bites her fingernails. Lauren, who is black and so beautiful that strange men approach her on the street and say, “Hey, foxy lady,” to her, pulls out her eyelashes when she is nervous and has done such a thorough job she now wears false eyelashes even to class. Linda bites her lips. She was told once as a child that her eyes were her best feature; she ceased to have any interest in the rest of her face. And then later she read in Chekhov that an unattractive woman is always being told she has beautiful eyes or beautiful hair. Linda’s most recent compliment is that she has nice teeth. It is hard to get excited about this.

  Someone knocks on the door. The women’s hands all drop to their laps. “Come in,” says Lauren.

  It is Dave. Linda’s breath quickens slightly. He has brought a penciled sign which he claims to have found Scotch-taped to the doorknob of 201. Attention!! it says. Emergency!!! Clothes drier in basement refusing to fonction! Suzette.

  “What do you make of this?” Dave asks. He is wearing a dark blue T-shirt which reads KAHOALUAH SUMMER CAMP—TURN YOUR LIFE AROUND. It looks good on him.

  “Suzette lives directly above us,” Linda tells him. “Apartment Three-oh-three. Just a guess, but I’d say she’s got a load of wet laundry and she’d like you to fix the dryer. She’s a foreign exchange student from France,” she adds. “Which explains the exclamation marks.”

  Gretchen shakes her head, moves her dark and heavy bangs off her forehead with the back of one wrist. She has to shampoo daily, and even so her hair is oily by evening. “It’s because you’re male, of course. She thinks mechanical abilities are linked to the Y chromosome.”

  “It’s shaped like a little wrench,” Julie points out.

  “Or maybe she read your aura.” Lauren’s smile is particularly innocent. She examines her fingernails. “I wonder what color an electrician’s aura would be?”

  “Bright?” suggests Linda. Dave is looking at her. He is waiting for an explanation. “Suzette’s a little strange,” she tells him. “She communicates with Venusians. She writes herself notes from them; they guide her hand. It’s called automatic writing. I think. And she reads the magnetic field around people’s heads.” Linda swallows uncomfortably. “She’s very pretty.”

  “If you like pretty,” says Gretchen. It is a trick question.

  Dave dodges it. “I don’t know how to fix a dryer.”

  “I’ll tell you what.” Lauren folds her hands and smiles up at him. “You go up there and explain that in person. I imagine she’ll forgive you. Apartment Three-oh-three. Just above this one. You can’t miss it.”

  Dave takes his note and edges back out the door. Linda feels her aura dimming around her ears.

  “I bet they thought living in an apartment building with nothing but women in it would be out of sight,” says Gretchen. Her tone suggests malicious satisfaction. “Serves them right if it’s just one broken dryer after another.”

  “Is the dryer broken?” Julie asks. “I used it this afternoon, fading my jeans. It was working fine then.” She looks at Lauren and they both start to laugh. “Poor, poor Dave. He’ll never leave Suzette’s apartment alive. He’ll walk through that door and one thing will lead to another.”

  One thing is always leading to another in Julie’s own romances. The phrase mystifies Linda, who feels that, logically, a gaping chasm must separate polite “Hello, I got your note” sorts of conversation from passionate sex. “What does that mean, Julie?” she asks, perhaps more vehemently than she might have wished. “‘One thing leads to another.’ That never ever happens to me. Can you describe that?”

  Julie looks embarrassed, but more on Linda’s behalf than her own. “Oh, come on, Linda,” she says. “You know.”

  Linda turns to Lauren. “Tell me about the first time one thing led to another when you were out with Bill.”

  “Don’t be a voyeur,” says Lauren.

  Julie laughs and Linda looks at her questioningly. “Sorry,” she offers. “It just struck me as funny that you should be accused of voyeurism. You’re the last of the prudes.”

  “How the hell can you tell?” Linda demands. “Have I passed up a number of opportunities to be licentious? Alert me when the next one comes along.”

  “She’s not a prude,” Gretchen objected. “Just naive. And very smart. It’s an unexpected combination, so nobody knows what to make of it. And, of course, men don’t care about smart anyway.”

  Linda rises from the table with dignity. “I’m going to my room now,” she says, “because my presence seems to be having such a dampening effect on your desire to discuss me.” She starts down the hall, and it occurs to her that the route is absolutely identical to the one between the kitchen and the bedrooms in apartment 201. Or 303. She dredges up a parting shot. “There’s no way I’m going to pay for two phone calls to Redwood City I didn’t even make. I’ll take out the phone first. Try me.” She goes into her (and Gretchen’s) bedroom and closes the door. She lies across the bed she has very sensibly decided never to make. It would just have to be done again tomorrow. Every tomorrow. The blankets form comfortable little hills and valleys beneath her. And above her? Directly over her head, one thing is leading to another. She tries to imagine it.

  DAVE: I got your note. I came as soon as I could.

  SUZETTE: I’ve been waiting. (Their eyes lock.)

  DAVE: (gazing at her) I don’t know how to fix a dryer, Suzette. I wish I could.

  SUZETTE: It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters now that you’re here.

  (Dave steps through the door. Suzette closes it slowly, sensuously, behind him. She presses against it with her back. They are both breathing audibly.)

  SUZETTE: I was just about to slip into something more comfortable. (She removes her sweater.) Would you like to watch?

  DAVE: (grabbing her) Suzette! (Her silken breasts begin to swell.)

  Linda makes them swell larger and larger until they pop like balloons. It is a fleeting satisfacti
on. She consigns the phrase “One thing leads to another” to the large set of things she doesn’t understand and nobody is ever going to explain to her, a set which includes the mysterious ailment known as hemorrhoids.

  Gretchen comes into the room, ostensibly to find her English Lit assignment, but the quarter has not even started yet. Linda is not fooled. Gretchen just wants to see if she is angry. “Julie made the calls,” Gretchen says. “Of course.”

  “Has she admitted it yet?”

  “Any moment now.” Gretchen fusses with the things on her desk. “Hey, Linda?”

  Linda rolls onto her side and looks at Gretchen. “Yeah?”

  “We all love you just the way you are.”

  “I know that,” says Linda.

  • • •

  ALL RIGHT. That was Encounter Number Three. Let’s just take a moment to stretch and shake off the effects of the absorption. Or sit quietly. Return to yourselves. When you feel ready, we’ll discuss what we’ve absorbed.

  Yes? Is everyone back now? Good. Questions?

  Very good. You are very quick; I wondered if anyone would pick this up. We do have an agent on the scene, although our control of her is limited to suggestion only. The note, for example, was our idea, but the spelling was all her own. We communicate with her in the manner Linda described and we have identified ourselves as Venusians, a wildly implausible cover which she accepted without hesitation. We hope with her help to have some input into the pacing of the romance. At present it is not unusually slow but cannot be said to be developing quickly either. And we have so much ground to cover this term.

  I did say we’d come back to this topic and I take your point. Lauren would be an interesting focus for us later; certainly the additional variable of being black in a predominantly white culture adds yet another complication to the issue of women and their bodies. The other three women represent differentiated approaches to the topic: Julie dislikes her body and abuses it; Gretchen dislikes her body but believes politically in the injustice of current standards of physical beauty and is attempting to substitute standards of health and strength instead; Linda is interesting because, in fact, she likes her body quite well, she just doesn’t expect anyone else to. Linda perceives her major shortcoming to be the size of her breasts, although she is mystified as to the reasons men desire more here. As long as Linda is our focus, we will share this mystification. Later in the term, when we switch to the male point of view, these things may become clearer. Let me just emphasize that it is hard to exaggerate the importance of these physical aspects, perceptions, and self-perceptions to the question of romance. Yes?

  I must tell you that I find your remarks both alarming and repelling. It is one thing to agree, as we all must for the sake of the study, on the principle of physical relativity. We can accept that they find each other attractive even if we do not find them so. We can do our best to dispose of our own physical standards and prejudices in those areas where they seem likely to cloud the study. We can even remind ourselves that they might find us just as repellent as we find them. But it is quite another thing to speculate as you have just done on their physical intimacies with such specificity of detail. You are in danger of losing your academic detachment and, frankly, I will not be able to allow your continued participation if I see any more evidence of such imaginative and sympathetic absorption. Is that clear?

  Yes? No, this is a good question. Of course you have not heard of Redwood City. No one important has ever lived in Redwood City and no one important ever will. The mystery is not that anyone would deny having placed phone calls to such an area; the mystery is that anyone could find someone there to call in the first place.

  We are going to skip the fourth and fifth Encounters. They are brief and concern themselves only with a discussion of possible professors and classes. You will remember them, once absorbed. And I’m going to time our approach so that we pick up another critical memory of the period that has lapsed. Are you ready? Stay with me now.

  • • •

  THE BOYS IN apartment 201 had decided to give a party. Kenneth had come in the evening to extend the invitation. It was to be a small affair, limited to people who lived in the building and a few who could be persuaded to spend the night, since the city of Berkeley was under curfew.

  “We’ll just sit out on the terrace and yell ‘Fascist pigs’ at the passing police cars,” Kenneth said. “It’ll give us a chance to meet our neighbors in a relaxed social setting.”

  Two days later he invited the entire Cal ROTC on an impulse. Linda hears him arguing with Dave about it as she rises slowly toward the second floor in the sticky elevator. “It’s going to be fine, Dave,” Kenneth is saying. “You worry too much. Getting arrested for violating curfew will radicalize them.” Linda gets out of the elevator and Kenneth catches the door with his hand, batting it back so that he can get in. “Later,” he says cheerfully as the door closes, making him disappear from the left to the right.

  Dave looks at Linda sourly. “Did you hear?” he asks. “Can you imagine what our apartment is going to look like after a bunch of cadets have partied there? What if they just don’t go home? What if they pass out all over the place? They’re all going to be physical as hell.” They hear Kenneth’s feet below them, pounding the sidewalk. He has an eleven o’clock class. Linda can see, reading Dave’s watch sideways, that it is 11:02. Dave moves his arm suddenly to brush his hair back with his hand. The watch face flashes by Linda. She likes Dave’s hands, which are large and rather prominently veined. She tries to find something not to like about Dave. “Come on in,” Dave offers. “I’ll make you a cup of hot chocolate.”

  “I hate chocolate,” says Linda.

  “Of course you do. I knew that. Come in anyway. I’ve got a problem, and I’m surrounded by Zukinis. Did Kenneth tell you that Frank registered Peace and Freedom last Monday? Yesterday he switched to Republican. I don’t even pretend to understand the intricate workings of his mind.”

  Linda follows Dave into apartment 201. Her palms are sticky with sweat, which strikes her as adolescent. The whole world is wondering when she is going to grow up, and she is certainly no exception. Linda has hardly seen Dave since the night he went up to Suzette’s. She wishes she could think of an artful way to find out how that evening ended. Or when it ended.

  Dave puts a yellow teapot on the stove. Not a stray dish, not a fork left out anywhere. The avocado Formica gleams. Before, Linda believed they were neat. Now she is beginning to feel there may be something unhealthy about it. The neatness seems excessive.

  Fred Zukini is sitting at the kitchen table. The wastebasket is beside his chair; every few moments he crumples a piece of paper and drops it in. There is a stack of library books by his left elbow. His arm is bent to support his head. “Please don’t make a lot of noise,” he requests.

  Dave lowers his voice. “You want to know his class load? This is the absolute truth. He’s got music for teachers, math for teachers, and volleyball.”

  “Is he going to be a teacher?” Linda asks.

  “God help us. We spent all yesterday listening to him learn to sing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ by numbers. I don’t know if it was music or math. Today, at breakfast, he demonstrates the theory of the conservation of milk.”

  “The what?”

  “How you can pour one large glass of milk into two small ones with no resulting loss of volume. Then he asks me to correct a paper he’s working on. The assignment is for two pages; he’s done ten. I can’t say I was enthusiastic, but I wouldn’t want it said that I discourage initiative. So I look at it. He’s hovering by my elbow, all nervous, because it’s his first college paper and I’m a seasoned junior. Eight pages are a direct quote. Out of one book. I tell him, ‘You can’t do that,’ but he says it’s exactly what he wants to say.”

  “How are your own classes?” Linda asks. “Did you get into MacPherson’s?”


  “I did, but I had to lie about my major. And you didn’t tell me he threw chalk.”

  “Only when he’s provoked. It’s no fun if you’re not surprised. Did he throw it at you?”

  “No, but I jumped about a foot out of my chair anyway.” Dr. MacPherson teaches Economic History and is one of Linda’s favorite professors. He can tell you about the Black Plague so that you feel you’re actually there. If you are momentarily overcome, however, and he thinks your attention is wandering, he sends a piece of chalk singing past your ear.

  The teapot whistles asthmatically. Dave gets out the instant coffee, makes himself a cup in a green enamel mug, and puts the coffee jar away. They tiptoe past Fred, who groans for their benefit and crumples another piece of paper. They sit on the living room couch at a respectable distance apart. No one’s leg touches anyone else’s. “You said you had a problem,” Linda hints. Please, please don’t let it be Suzette.

  “Yeah,” says Dave. He blows on his steaming cup. “I do. It’s Mrs. Kirk up in the penthouse. She hates me. She started hating me Tuesday morning and she refuses to stop. It’s because of the sign I had in our window. Maybe you saw it?” Linda shakes her head. “Well, I’d spent a bad night because a number of our neighborhood cats were out looking for each other. And I made this small and tasteful sign for our window. It said THE ONLY GOOD CAT IS A DEAD CAT.”

  Dave blows on his coffee again and takes a quick sip. Linda remembers how silly she always thought it was, as a child, the habit grown-ups had of making drinks so hot they couldn’t drink them and then having to wait until they cooled. Sometimes they waited too long and had to heat the drink all over again. A bad system.

  “How can you drink that?” she asks. “Thirty seconds ago it was boiling.”

  “You blow right next to the side,” Dave says, “and then you only drink the part you’ve blown on. I could teach you, but when would you use it? Tea? Do you drink tea?” Linda shakes her head. “No, you hate tea. Am I right?”

  Linda smiles and watches Dave blow and take another sip. It’s a larger sip. She thinks he’s showing off.