Glass House

by Chris Wiltz

  “Getting one of them alarms put in, are you?” Burgess had said in front of the salesman. When he said that, his girlfriend smiled a tight, rather contemptuous smile, as if Burgess had said one thing but implied another.

  Thea looked from one to the other of them before she said, “I'm thinking about it,” but she was thinking this had turned into a ludicrous situation: she'd been scorned by Sandy for hiring Burgess and his not-very-expert men in the first place, frightened by Lyle because she'd even let them in the house, now laughed at by Burgess and his girlfriend for putting in a burglar alarm to keep them out, because it was them, all of them, the alarm was supposed to keep out; it was, after all, them against us.

  She offered them tea, but Burgess declined, saying he'd just come by to talk about the bookcase and check on the upstairs work. She gave him money for the saw. He folded it and it disappeared into his pants pocket. Then he and Janine left in the oxi-dized-red pickup truck, the putt-putting of the muffler growing louder by the day. A little while later the workers left and the Cadillac came for Delzora.

  Yes, it was all ludicrous, nothing more so than Burgess’ buying a flashy, souped-up Cadillac so his mother could be chauffeured to her job as a maid while he himself drove a beat-up old truck that needed a new muffler.

  Her dream was full of these realities given an odd, sinister twist—Burgess and his girlfriend arriving while the salesman, determined, was finishing his slow-speed pitch, the two of them laughing openly at her, though Thea did not think they were at all amused, herself babbling incoherently, trying to be heard over the loud rumbling of the salesman's deep voice, trying to explain to them it was all Lyle's idea, since Bobby had been attacked in front of the house. Janine said, “Burglar alarm won't do much good out there,” and she and Burgess laughed some more. Thea kept trying to explain, but she was speaking so fast they could not understand her.

  And then there was a leap in the dream to herself asleep in her bedroom, next to the cabinet full of dolls. She dreamed of a deep sleep brutally interrupted by a sudden and insistent shrieking, a sound so loud and intense that it seemed three-dimensional in its ability to grab her body and make her fight to be released, all of her muscles bunched and pulsating against its huge and pervasive force. It was the new burglar alarm going off in the middle of the night. As her eyes snapped open, the glass of the curio cabinet shattered and the frightened faces of the dolls cracked into spidery black lines from the high pitch of the Gestapo-siren wail of the alarm.

  She dreamed that Burgess, Janine, and the salesman being there before was only a dream, but that now she was really awake, wide awake, and someone was either in the house or trying to get in. She must do something: first, get out of bed.

  She felt her way across the carpet of her room, her toes digging in, holding on for dear life, and made her way down the stairs—so many stairs, she didn't remember so many flights—the darkness filled with the scream of the alarm, so that if she screamed, no one could hear her.

  She groped her way down, down endless flights, cowering, expecting an attack, to the panel where she shut off the alarm. Outside the front door she could see the police already there. She ran to the door and down the walkway in her long white gown, the light from the police cars casting supernatural blue on the street, the houses, and the foliage. She thought she saw Bobby lying under the oak tree, but it was only the light playing tricks.

  She ran to the nearest policeman, whose head was bent as he wrote in a small booklet he held in his hand. He stood in the shadows of the big oak so she wasn't sure at first, but yes, it was Lyle. She began to laugh with relief, to tell him how glad she was to see him; she wanted to fall on him, have him hold her.

  He cut into her laughter. “We've checked the premises, ma'am.” He spoke as if he did not know her, his hard impassive face showing no recognition of her. “No sign of entry, all doors and windows closed and locked. It is the responsibility of the homeowner to make certain the security system is in proper working order.” He tore a page from the booklet and handed it to her. It was a ticket for improper use of a burglar alarm and disturbing the peace.

  She started to reach out to him, to say, Lyle, don't you know me, but he turned and went back to his police car, only it was Burgess’ customized Cadillac he got into instead. He stuck a blue light on top and he was gone, his siren blaring, his light flashing, the chromed Cadillac streaking off into the night.

  The other policemen left too, and the lights went off behind the neighbors’ windows. All alone again, Thea walked slowly back to the large foreboding house, gloom settled on it so that it looked for all the world like one of those scary Victorian houses on the covers of the Gothic novels in the supermarkets, and she, like the heroine standing before the house in her thin white gown, was caught between whatever sinister forces were inside the house and the unknown, invisible ones outside. The only thing missing from the picture was a man.

  She went back inside, locked the door behind her and started down the hallway. And there, standing in the shadows, waiting for her, was a man.

  Was there something familiar about him? The way he held himself? The cock of his head? His thinness—or was that just the darkness camouflaging his bulk? She couldn't be sure, the shadows pitching his face into blackness, his features, as long as he stood back, remaining unknown. Her heart pounded wildly. Outside, in the distance, was the putt-putting sound of a bad muffler. Thea woke up.

  The dream had been so real, and she'd been so certain she was already awake, that she lay in bed thinking the man must be in the room with her. She strained to see into the darkness, a block of ice in her stomach, her skin cooling rapidly without covers over her. She was too afraid to move. She remembered the sound of the muffler and wondered if that had been part of the dream or if she'd really heard it. She wanted to get up and look outside but she couldn't.

  It took a long time to calm down, to feel that there was no threat in the house. It took until daybreak. And as she lay there Thea tried to understand why she was so frightened so often. She'd never been frightened like this in Massachusetts. Of course, there were no ghettos where she'd lived, no housing projects; in fact, hardly any sign of poverty, and hardly any sign of blacks, some students, a few professors, a poet or a musician in town every now and then. It was not the way it was here in New Orleans, people living so close together, their lives intersecting and connecting frequently, more frequently than anyone liked, if they would admit it. Take this neighborhood, so many of the blacks dependent on the whites for jobs and not enough jobs to go around, some of those same whites dependent on the blacks to keep up their huge houses, their lawns and gardens, even their children, and not wanting to give up their easy way of life.

  But there was something that reached farther than that, beyond the exteriors of everyone's lives. Thea could hear Sandy referring to them, and alone now, she heard all the fear and hate, the racism, that one word carried. There was no denying the fear, no denying it was real, and easy enough to see how such fear could turn into hate. There was no denying, either, the unjustness of that hate and the basic unfairness of the often vast differences in the way the two races lived, the haves having so much, the have-nots having it always in their faces. No one had been concerned about the people in the Convent and their lives of violence and deprivation and misery. No one had been concerned until they came out, threatening and dangerous in their poverty and need.

  Her dream had cleared some of her confusion and left a small crystal of understanding about what she was trying to come to terms with: not only the lives of blacks and whites, but the fates of both races were connected by their dependence upon each other. No matter how either race would try, there could be no separation. What one did affected the other; neither could thrive unless both did. Her parents’ death forced her to face the fact that their fates, all their fates, were connected, and that this truth transcended her personal loss.

  Yet she was struck by a piercing aloneness, as if these thoughts were mo
re responsible for her aloneness in the world than any death. She got up and pulled back the curtain, letting the first light of day into the room. She found herself wishing Michael were there, but he had not even called, just boxes arriving now and again, no letters, no communication, as if he were the one offended, the one who had been abandoned. She cried thinking about him. But Michael was only another kind of aloneness. She stood at the window and pressed her eyes with the heels of her hands until her tears retreated, catching in her throat.

  20

  Thea did not know what she was going to do about getting a security system. She could imagine herself lying awake at night waiting for the alarm to go off, in bed cringing against the anticipated blast of noise. On the same morning after her dream, Bobby solved her dilemma. He arrived at the house and surprised her with a dog. He also brought a cat, a canary in a cage, and a Corinthian-style plaster pedestal.

  Thea hung the birdcage so that the canary had a view of the trees from one of the living room windows. She put the pedestal on the porch so that when the kitten was old enough to get on top of it, he could jump to it from the backs of the wicker rockers. It seemed unlikely, though, that he would ever use it to escape from the dog: on the afternoon of the first day the kitten curled up against the dog to take a nap. The sight made Thea so happy that her throat got tight and her chest got full. The dog, no longer a puppy but not yet full grown, looked comfortable. When she stretched out she was like a tawny bear rug. She was a mixed golden retriever and Labrador with a rich chestnut coat.

  “That dog jus the color of a nice dark roux,” Zora said.

  So Thea called the dog Roux.

  She stayed busy getting the animals adjusted to the house—and the house to the animals—and she forgot for a while how irked she'd been that the carpenters had failed to show up that morning. Neither had Burgess called or come by to tell her why. It had never happened before; nevertheless, all she could hear was Sandy saying, “You front them money, they disappear.”

  Later that afternoon she asked Zora to help her clear out the last of Aunt Althea's personal belongings from the closet of one of the unused bedrooms upstairs.

  Roux followed them up, behind her the kitten, who stopped to mew every couple of steps and had to be coaxed to come along.

  As they reached the upstairs hallway, one of the painters, Jared, the one who sang, came out of what had been Aunt Althea's bedroom, paint can in one hand, brush in the other. He saw Roux and froze just outside the doorway. Roux rushed forward, the hair raised on the back of her neck. She stopped about the middle of the hall, planted her front legs, her hind legs ready to spring, and barked fiercely. The kitten, not to be left out of the action, arched its back and hissed. Jared stepped backward, his free arm held out in front of him as if to ward off an attack. He tripped on the threshold and the paint can swung on its wire handle as he jerked his arms upward to maintain his balance. Paint sloshed onto the hardwood floor.

  “Roux!” Thea yelled, but Roux rushed forward again, stopping short of stepping in the paint, but barking louder and more insistently.

  “Miss, please,” Jared said, his voice a plaintive whisper.

  Thea moved up beside Roux, telling her it was all right, running her hands over the dog's head and neck. Roux backed off but continued a low growling until she let Thea lead her into the spare bedroom. Thea closed the door behind them and hugged the dog, glad that she'd won Roux's loyalty already but feeling bad about Jared. She went out to the hall. Jared was cleaning up the spilled paint, Zora watching.

  “I'm sorry my dog scared you, Jared,” she said. His eyes darted up at her and back to the paint spill.

  “Liked to scared me to death too,” Zora said.

  The other painter working with Jared came to the door grinning. “All dogs scare Jared,” he told Thea. “They all want to eat im up.” He laughed.

  Jared turned and said something to him that Thea didn't catch but didn't sound too nice. The other painter didn't stop laughing, but he moved back inside the room.

  Thea tried to think of something else to say to apologize. Before she could, Jared said, “I don’ like dogs.”

  “I understand. I'll keep her away from you.”

  “I'd ‘predate that,” he said and went to get more clean-up cloths.

  Thea and Zora went into the spare bedroom where Roux sat waiting. She jumped up to lick Thea's face.

  “Bobby Buchanan done give you a good watchdog,” Zora said. Roux jumped on Thea again. Thea patted her and told her to get down. Zora closed the door and said, “Maybe she don't like them black mens.”

  “No,” Thea protested. “That's not it. She knew Jared didn't like her. She knew he was afraid of her too.” She didn't know if it was true, nor was it her first concern at the moment. She said, “I wonder if she would have hurt him.”

  Zora, crossing the room to the closet, stopped and turned to Thea. “Hard to say,” she said. “When somebody's that afraid, I guess they be pretty scary themselves.”

  Zora had such a way of saying things, a way of making Thea think about something differently, from a viewpoint she would never have thought to take. Roux, of course, had meant to frighten Jared, but Thea had latched onto another idea—what a person who was frightened looked like to someone who didn't necessarily mean to be frightening. She thought about Sonny Johnson's nervousness making her so nervous. It would be much the same, wouldn't it?

  But the moment to reflect on this idea vanished when Zora opened the closet door and out of it came that odor that was so overwhelmingly Aunt Althea. The odor of plaster and paint had moved it out of the rest of the house, but it spilled from the closet, a powdery evocative odor that Thea might have called “old lady” smell except that she remembered it as always being there, even when Aunt Althea was a much younger woman. In that odor Thea smelled part of her childhood. It was such an integral element of those years that she had never thought to decide if it was pleasant or unpleasant until the day she arrived in New Orleans after such a long absence. When Zora had opened the front door that afternoon, the smell had lunged at Thea, distinctly unpleasant, not only an odor but a powerful way of summoning feelings that could not be summoned so immediately or so succinctly through any of the other senses. She had recoiled from it then as she recoiled from it now, only to be drawn toward it, as to a memory not fully remembered or an experience not fully understood.

  She stepped into the closet. Against one wall hung a row of dresses. On the other side were shelves with boxes of old shoes stacked on them, and higher up, on the top shelf, a row of well-worn handbags. Aunt Althea must never have thrown anything away. And all of it was drenched in that powdery odor. It was flowery, yet it also had a metallic quality to it, as if you'd stopped to smell the roses, expecting a floral perfume, only to find that the roses were sculpted from tin.

  Thea wrinkled her nose. “This room will have to be painted,” she told Zora. “It's the only way to get rid of that smell.”

  “That's that talc Miss Althea liked,” Zora said. “She used to get it over at the K & B. I ‘member one time she went over there and someone tole her they wasn't gon be gettin it no more. She bought a whole box and brought it home. She told Mr. Dum'ville ‘bout buyin it and he says, ‘A whole box? I never liked the stuff.’ “ Zora shook her head. “Lawd, lawd, they went round and round ‘bout it, Miss Althea sayin he never tole her that before and him sayin she never asked him. She was mad with him for a week.”

  “But she didn't stop wearing it,” Thea said.

  “Yeah she did, for a while. Then she said Mr. Dum'ville never noticed nothin even when it was put under his nose, and she started wearin it again.”

  “Did he notice?” Thea wanted to know.

  “No. Sho didn't. Least, he never said nothin. Miss Althea said he wouldn't say nothin ‘bout nothin ‘less them sisters of his said somethin.”

  Thea handed Zora some of the dresses. “Those sisters. Aunt Althea did not like Uncle Cecil's sisters.”

&n
bsp; “Who could blame her? They never treated her like fam'ly. She weren't no sister-in-law to them womens, she were a rival.”

  Thea dumped another load of dresses on one of the twin beds in the room. “What do you mean, a rival?”

  Zora leaned against the bed, one hand on her hip. “I mean them sisters never treated Mr. Dum'ville like a brother neither. They treated him more like he was a husband or somethin.” Thea raised her eyebrows at what Zora was telling her. “It's the truth,” Zora said. “They come over to this house fussin all ‘round him like a coupla old busybodies and flirtin with Mr. Dum'ville too. That ain't no way to be treatin a brother.”

  This was definitely a new slant for Thea, who had seen her aunt as culturally, socially, and articulately inferior to the dangerously sharp-tongued Dumondville women, not as a victim to them, not as rivals from whom she had to win her own husband's affection. Now she couldn't help but wonder if maybe it wasn't by watching Uncle Cecil's sisters that Aunt Althea had learned how to flirt herself. Do unto others what has been done to you.

  Thea and Zora had spent hours side by side going through Aunt Althea's things, talking about Aunt Althea's eccentricities and about Uncle Cecil and his peculiarities. Zora was the only person left for Thea to share family history with, a springboard for her memories. She felt close to Zora, talking to her about these things, but of course, her closeness to Zora went back to the time that her parents died, since it was Zora who had comforted Thea and given her the sympathy she needed, Zora who had understood her loss while Aunt Althea made the audacious move to replace it, busying herself with Thea's clothes, prying into her friendships, eager for her to make friends at her new school, break off with her friends from the old school, leave off with her old life, begin a new one, meddling, not ever giving Thea the privacy to be her own person or have her own thoughts. But now Zora was telling her that her aunt had had her meddlers too.