Glass House

by Chris Wiltz

  “So where's he gettin rock from?” Dexter asked Burgess, but he knew Burgess had no one answer; there were lots of answers and they were all trying to move in on the Convent. And the Bishop.

  “Well, okay,” Burgess said. He was ready for Dexter to leave now. He didn't want to think about all this; he was tired of these problems. But Dexter didn't get up. He kept turning that beer can into his jeans, fidgeting, killing time.

  It was true, Dexter was stalling. He had something else to say to Burgess, something he'd primed himself to say, something unrelated to Ferdie or any drug problems. He had primed himself to say it but now he was having trouble getting it out.

  “Listen, about your mama, Burgess,” he finally said.

  “What about her?”

  Dexter pulled one shoulder up, half a shrug. “It's the truck. She havin a hard time gettin up and down, you know? She cusses under her breath an you know she don’ like for no one to help her.”

  There, he'd gotten it out and it wasn't such a big deal. He hadn't meant to say Burgess’ mama was cussing—he didn't know what she was saying when she talked to herself like she did. What did it matter anyway? This was just a little thing, nothing like that day in the police station.

  Burgess was laughing, keeping his mouth closed so that deep rumbling laugh was kept down. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “Let Mama ride in the Cadillac.” He laughed some more and said he'd get Janine to take care of the paper work the next day. He kept the Caddy in her name. “You just bought yourself a car, Dexter.”

  Dexter left Burgess, having gotten more than what he'd gone after. All that business about Ferdie—that was just a lead-in; he didn't figure Burgess expected much more from the kid. He swiftly crossed the grass to Sherree's, anxious to tell her the news. But Dexter was getting wiser. He jumped ahead, anticipating Sherree's reaction: her face would be stern, she'd find something wrong.

  He slowed his pace, thinking hard. Sherree, somehow, would make it seem his plan had backfired because Burgess gave him the car. So he didn't have to tell her about that.

  Dexter glanced furtively over his shoulder and walked faster. It might not be such a good idea to linger in the Convent yard these nights. But his feet felt leaden, as if they were carrying a bad boy home to face the music.

  What the hell, at least he would be driving the Cadillac again.

  After Dexter left, Burgess sat where he was on the sofa, his hands resting loosely on his thighs, his shoulders drooping, his chest sunken. He felt a bit as if the wind had been knocked out of him. It was happening; the shit was coming down. Before long the Convent would be the same killing place it had been when he got there, shootings every night, more dead every week, too many pushers, everybody wanting control and nobody strong enough to take it, but plenty enough guns to come after him. He had a couple of choices: he either went back into business big time, got Ferdie and his gang making runs the way they used to so maybe they thought they were making enough money that they didn't have to deal in the Convent, or he got out, tried to get Janine out too. What his mama had been telling him to do.

  Janine came in quietly on her stockinged feet, the undulating fringe on her dress catching his eye first. She stood in the entrance to the hallway.

  “Hey, baby, what you doin all dressed up?”

  “Waitin for you, Burgess. I been waitin for you.”

  “Aw, baby, I'm sorry. There was some trouble over at the house where Mama is.”

  “What kind of trouble, Burgess? White woman trouble?”

  Her face was like stone, her jaw muscles clamped hard with anger and jealousy. He didn't answer; he held his hand out to her. She came to the sofa and sat beside him, and he ran his fingers up and down her arms, combing through the long silky fringe. He kissed her neck but she sat rigid, not responding. He didn't stop. He put his hand on the upper part of her back, bared by the scooped top of the dress, then let it drift down and pull the zipper. He pushed his other hand into the front of the dress, over her breast, taking the hard nipple between his fingers, and felt her sink toward him, her breath on his face.

  Janine drew her shoulders in and let him push the top of the dress down around her waist. Both of his hands were on her breasts now, his head was bowed. She knew he would start to kiss her breasts soon, pulling on her nipples with his teeth, and she could feel the anticipated pleasure opening her up to him. With the little resistance she had left she pushed on his chest until she forced him to look at her.

  “Burgess,” she said, and her breath caught involuntarily, “tell me what's goin on over there.”

  She felt his deep laugh vibrate the wall of his chest. “You want to know what's going on, you gon have to come over there with me and see for yourself.”

  He started bending toward her neck, but she stopped him. “What's all this stuff Dexter's talkin about, with Ferdie and that killin? What's all that mean?”

  He laughed again but this time moving on her, his breath hot on her neck as he spoke: “It means they know when you ain got no teeth left.”

  He pushed her back on the sofa and bit into her dark, goose-bumped areola.

  18

  Sandy fell into her old way of making Thea her confidante. She talked as if there were no one else she could really talk to, no one else who would quite understand. Thea knew how seductive women with highly developed social skills could be and that it was possible Sandy confided in all her friends this way. But not about Lyle. When Sandy talked about Lyle, her words rushed over Thea as if a long-stoppered bottle's fecund contents, grown too large and squeezed too long into their confined, well-guarded space, had been suddenly released. Talk like this would pass around Sandy's social circle like an infectious disease. Thea was certain that it was only her status as an outsider that made her privy to Sandy's intensely private world gone horrendously wrong.

  The morning Sandy came over to help Thea with the bookcases there were no workers downstairs at the house. There were two painters in Aunt Althea's old bedroom and a third man replacing rotten wood and ripped screen on the second-floor porch. Zora was also upstairs, running the vacuum cleaner. The motor droned directly above them as Sandy stood in the center of the room that was to be the library. She made a slow pivot as she scanned the room, a forefinger resting at the side of her mouth.

  She narrowed her eyes at a corner. “It is a difficult room,” she said to Thea, but after more thought, accompanied by pacing and squinting, she came up with an ingenious solution: window seats, cushioned seats that were also cabinets, so the motif of the columns could go all around the room, unbroken except by the doors.

  Sandy had other ideas too. She walked to the door of the living room. “The mirror's okay,” she said, “but you've got to get rid of that chandelier. You should have pitched it out with those Gone-with-the-Wind curtains.” She told Thea she had a catalog of the most marvelous contemporary light fixtures.

  Thea was disappointed to hear Sandy say this about the chandelier. She'd gotten up on a ladder and cleaned each of the crystals, nearly two hundred ovals and balls cut like faceted jewels. She'd shined the brass structure, taking the better part of two days to do the job, and she'd been pleased with the results, the crystals sparkling and catching the afternoon sun coming through the long, uncovered living room windows, throwing color on the white walls and ceiling until twilight. She thought the chandelier was so beautiful and such a part of the room that it would look good no matter what else was in the room. Now Sandy was saying the chandelier wouldn't do at all.

  “I thought you liked the idea of blending the old with the new,” Thea said.

  “Oh I do, but you have to be very careful about what you keep. The chandelier is so big and fussy, and the room has clean, tailored lines now.”

  “But I like the chandelier,” Thea said, and she had a sudden longing for her memory of the room, with all its fussy furniture and the red velvet curtains like the lining of a womb.

  “Oh well, if you like it . . .” Sandy said, but she sounded di
sappointed with Thea.

  Sandy walked farther into the room, her flowered tea-length skirt touching lightly against her legs. The sofa and chairs were off to the side, pushed there so Thea could clean the chandelier. Sandy went to the center of the room and stood under the huge, heavy fixture. She held her arms out, swinging around to face Thea. “Don't you just love it when a room is empty like this?” she asked. She looked around with an expression that approached beatific ecstasy. “So full of potential!” She turned her face upward as if at any moment she would be struck with a vision coming down out of the cut glass.

  It was Thea instead who was struck with the vision: she saw Aunt Althea's furniture back in the room, but reupholstered and refinished, leaving the dark-stained wood and worn red brocade to the past. The second she thought of it, she knew it was right, the right way to fold her memories into her present life, to turn her former childhood palace of pretend into a place where the memories of her future could happen. She was about to suggest to Sandy that they go up to the third floor to look at the furniture, but at that moment the vacuum cleaner went off, and as if deflated, Sandy's arm fell limp to her sides. She said, “Thea, really—” and came back to the doorway where Thea stood “—you should call my architect. He'll do everything for you, design the bookcases, the window seats, do the contracting. He'll show you things you can do with this house you never would have dreamed you could do.”

  Thea was very aware of the silence upstairs, their voices, so loud in these empty downstairs rooms, carrying up the stairwell straight to Zora and the workers.

  “I've already hired a contractor. I thought you knew.” Thea pointed upward.

  Sandy missed only a beat. “Oh, you did tell me. I forgot.”

  Thea suggested coffee. As soon as they reached the kitchen Sandy lowered her voice considerably, though no one upstairs could hear them now. “Sorry. I completely forgot you hired Delzora's son. I wish you would have talked to me first.”

  “I don't need an architect, Sandy. After these bookcases are finished, I want to stop working on the house, settle into it, try to feel that it's mine and not Aunt Althea's.”

  “I understand,” Sandy said, “but you need someone really good to do your library.”

  Thea was pouring coffee. She put the pot down and asked Sandy, “Is there something wrong with the work that's been done?”

  “No, no, of course not, but it's just some painting, floating the walls, hanging shutters—you need a really good finishing carpenter for those bookcases.”

  Thea handed Sandy a cup of coffee and walked out to the back porch. She turned on the ceiling fan and she and Sandy sat in the wicker rocking chairs, side by side, across a small table with inlaid green tiles.

  Thea took a sip of coffee, put her cup on the little table, and said, “Burgess has a good finishing carpenter.”

  “You've seen his work?”

  “No, but—”

  Sandy flipped her hand, dismissing whatever else Thea had to say. “The carpenter my architect uses has his work in at least a dozen houses right in this neighborhood. He'll show you.”

  “And if Burgess and his carpenter never get any work, how will they ever have anything to show?”

  “That's their problem, not yours. You should hire the best you can get.”

  “And what if they're as good as the best?”

  Sandy made a face as if Thea were talking utter nonsense. “You won't know, will you, until the job is done and paid for.”

  “So far, Burgess has gone out of his way to make sure I've been satisfied,” Thea said. Sandy indicated with a shrug that this cut nothing with her, so before she could argue anymore Thea told her, “I'm already committed to Burgess anyway.”

  “Yes, I can see that. Well, just be careful and—”

  Thea held up one hand. “Please. You don't need to tell me. Lyle comes over at least twice a week to tell me to be careful.”

  Sandy's voice rose with exasperation. “I was going to say, don't let them take advantage of you; don't front them any money—it causes them to disappear, like magic. Until they need more.”

  Thea thought about the saw she'd told Burgess she'd front the money for, not exactly what Sandy was talking about but close enough that she was sure Sandy wouldn't approve. She frowned, annoyed that Sandy and Lyle's approval always seemed to be an issue these days.

  Sandy didn't notice her frown; she was frowning herself, staring off toward the gazebo. “Lyle comes over here that much?” she asked.

  For a moment Thea feared some sort of accusation of an illicit relationship. “He's just trying to get me to install a burglar alarm,” she said. When Sandy didn't react, she added lightly, “Are you sure he's not moonlighting for one of those security companies?”

  It was as if Sandy had not heard her. “Has he told you that if you don't get an alarm, Burgess is likely to break in one night and slit your throat, or better, shoot you in the head—execution-style—before he takes everything of value in your house?”

  She shot this out rapid-fire. Thea, thrown back into her confusion about Burgess, didn't answer.

  The heat in Sandy's eyes died down in the silence, and she suddenly looked horrified. “Oh, Thea, I'm sorry. I didn't mean . . . your parents . . .”

  Thea, distracted still, touched Sandy's forearm. “No, no, it's not my parents, not that. It's . . . I can't explain it.” It was not her parents’ death but something bigger. She did not know how anything could be bigger, but she knew that she was being compelled to look at something and to look hard, and that looking frightened her.

  Sandy was crying softly. “I'm becoming as morbid as Lyle is, saying things to you that are terrible to say, the same way he talks in front of the children about terrible things.” She stopped to wipe her tears away before her words were rushing again. “He talks in front of the children about the murders he's seen until they can't sleep anymore, then he takes off in his police car, Mr. Tough Policeman,” she spat, “and leaves me to deal with their nightmares.”

  She had been speaking out toward the gazebo but now she turned to Thea. “They're so little, Thea, they don't know what he's talking about when he talks about crack and ghetto violence and little children getting shot with assault weapons. It just scares them.”

  She looked intently at Thea, asking for understanding. Thea nodded. Sandy went on. “I asked him the other night please not to talk in front of them.” She stopped, biting her lips to keep her crying under some control. “The bastard,” she said with barely controlled rage. “I asked him not to talk in front of those babies, so he stopped talking. He comes in with that horrible scowl on his face just long enough to change his clothes, and he won't talk to me at all. That's how he gets back, the coldest, the meanest—I hate him. I'd divorce him but he'd force the sale of the house. He'd ruin everything we've worked for, everything we've built. He'd tear it all down to nothing without a second thought. Everything would change. I'd have to start all over again.”

  “That might not be such a terrible thing,” Thea said.

  Sandy's lower lip trembled. “But I like my house. I want to stay there. Except for the way Lyle is acting, I like my life the way it is. I don't want to lose it.”

  Sandy cried again, and as Thea tried to comfort her she realized she would not know who Sandy was if Sandy were without her house and her marriage, one as much a possession as the other, together providing an answer to the question, Who is Sandy Hindermann?

  Sandy was what she had.

  19

  Thea had another night of waking in a sweat, the sheets twisted around her legs, her heart sending vibrations down through the bed. A dream had waked her, a dream that began with the realities of her days and nights. She dreamed of going to sleep, and she slept on the cusp of waking, drifting in and out, never quite certain what was real and what was not.

  The dream was real enough at the start, beginning with a man coming to see her about installing a security system, the same man who had come to the hous
e that very day to give her an estimate, but in the dream his eyebrows were arched peculiarly, drawn up nearly to triangles, the eyes underneath them mad, spittle foamed white at the corners of his mouth.

  In the dream she was nervous. She wished the man would hurry and finish, but he seemed to be delivering a canned sales pitch, determined not to miss a word. She kept glancing toward the door, and every time she did, the speed of his delivery would slow down and his voice would deepen, as if he were a record being played at slow speed. She wanted him to finish before Burgess arrived. But his words came slower and slower, his eyes got madder and madder, and she began to feel an urgency and a frustration that centered itself in her groin, as if at any moment an orgasmic explosion would lift her right off the red brocade sofa and send her crashing into the crystal chandelier.

  What had actually happened that day was that Burgess and his girlfriend had arrived as the salesman was leaving. As Thea was showing him out, the man remembered a brochure he'd meant to give her and put his briefcase on the hall table to rifle through it. There were some awkward moments, the four of them in the hallway, Burgess introducing Thea to Janine, and Thea not certain whether to introduce them to the salesman or not. If she did, it would prolong his being there and her embarrassment—an irrational feeling that Burgess had caught her doing something wrong. If she didn't, they might feel she was in some way slighting them. In the end she didn't because the salesman snapped his briefcase shut, told her he'd send her the brochure, and departed hastily enough to make Thea think he was uncomfortable too.

  It was Burgess, that way he had of always looking amused by whatever was going on around him. It was, Thea decided, another way of being inscrutable, and inscrutable people always had such a commanding presence, drawing people to them, at the same time intimidating them.