Through Shattered Glass

by David B. Silva

  “You never told me,” Foss finally said.

  “What?”

  “About your leg.”

  “Oh.” Jas glanced down, giving his limb a quick, cursory look. “I was born this way. Part of the Thalidomide generation.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Hey, it's not a tragedy,” Jas said blithely. “You don't miss what you've never had. I was born this way. I learned how to make do from early on.”

  “Must have been hard when you were a kid.”

  “Because of the other kids?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It didn't matter once they got to know me.”

  They had finally arrived at a well-lit corner, Seventh Street still several blocks ahead. Jas stopped next to a Community Savings Bank that had gone out of business a couple of years earlier. He leaned against the red-brick building, staring quietly off into the darkness of the side street, as if he were saddened by a moment that had arrived too soon. “'Fraid this is where we part company, my friend.”

  “As far as you go?”

  “'Fraid so.” He nodded over his shoulder toward the side street, where the black of night had thickly gathered. “I'm about half a block from here.”

  “Oh ... well then ...”

  Jas grinned. “I've got a bottle, if you'd like to share a nip.”

  “I don't drink.”

  “Probably better for you.”

  “I just never acquired a taste. Neither did Ellie.”

  “A cup of coffee?”

  Foss stared down the street, feeling cold for the first time, and remembering how cold and empty the apartment had felt since his wife had died. “Hell, I ain't got anywhere to go but home.”

  “Good.”

  Half-a-block down, they stopped outside a tenement building that still had the scars of a recent fire. Half-inch sheets of plywood had been nailed across the front entrance and the only two windows on the first floor. Someone from the city's Public Safety Department had tied a bright yellow banner across the face of the doorway, the word CONDEMNED repeated in inch-high black letters from one end to the next, just in case some poor near-sighted soul might stumble by.

  “This is it.”

  “You're kidding.”

  “I knew you'd like it.” He waved his Thalidomide arm in the air. “You can't get in through the front; we have to go around back.”

  Foss couldn't bring himself to move. “The building's condemned, for Christ's sake.”

  “No noisy neighbors that way.”

  They passed through a narrow alleyway along the right side of the building, and ended up climbing in a basement window that opened horizontally after Jas gave it a little shove with the palm of his hand. Jas crawled through the window first, into the dusky underworld.

  “Careful,” he said.

  Foss followed, stepping down atop a crate of some sort, then down again until he was standing on a cement slab floor. There was the strong odor of smoke in the air. From somewhere outside, a diffused cast of light cut a rectangular swath across the basement floor, though it was difficult to define the shape and orientation of the room. Now that he was inside, it felt a little like trying to find your way to the bathroom in a strange house at two in the morning.

  “This way.” Jas nudged him in the direction of a stairwell. As they began to climb, their footsteps echoed back a hollow, lonely sound that seemed to come from half-a-landing above, sounding as if someone else might be crazy enough to be inside this burnt-out shell of a building. That wasn't true, though. There were only two crazy men here, and Foss caught himself wondering if this wasn't the dumbest thing he'd ever done.

  “You really live here?”

  “Nearly four months now.”

  “What about your wife?”

  “Jean? We split up after Purdy died. She said every time she looked at me, she saw Purdy, and the pain started all over again. It took a heavy toll on both of us, I guess. Jean finally moved to the Midwest somewhere. I heard she remarried.” Three steps ahead, Jas suddenly stopped and turned around, his face cast in shadows too dark to see. “I missed her, but I learned to live without her. Purdy was a different story, though. I've never stopped hoping that somehow she would come back again.”

  Another landing popped up.

  “Fifth floor,” Jas said flatly. “It's right down the hallway here.”

  They stopped at the third door on the right. The frame had been blackened by fire, but the door appeared solid and in one piece. A taut, rusty bicycle chain had been wrapped around the knob and padlocked to a solid steel bar wedged between the wall and the floorboards. Jas fished around in his pocket, pulled out a key.

  “You're kidding. You really keep a lock on this place? In this building? You worried someone might break in and steal something?”

  “Everything I own is in here.”

  The door swung half-open and struck something. There was a nearly-pure absence of light on the other side, but Foss thought he could make out the faint outline of a row of boxes stacked floor-to-ceiling.

  “Just a minute.” Jas disappeared inside, then suddenly a light kicked on. “I broke the seal on the meter box. It'll be months before the power company figures it out. No one pays much attention to a building once it's been condemned. Come on in.”

  At first glance, the room appeared no larger than a narrow entryway. There were boxes rising from floor to ceiling on either side of the doorway. But on second glance, after his eyes had had a chance to adjust to the sudden brightness, Foss realized they weren't boxes at all. They were tall stacks of newspapers.

  “There's nothing to be afraid of.”

  “I know. I'm not afraid.”

  “Then come in. The living room's through here.”

  He led Foss under an archway of magazines and paperback books, newspapers and packing materials. The apartment was a labyrinth of man-made tunnels—seemingly mindless tunnels—and Foss slowly realized this wasn't the kind of place where you found your way out again. Once here, if you wanted to visit the outside world again, someone was going to have to point you in the right direction, someone was going to have to offer you a way out. Otherwise...

  “Do a lot of reading?” he asked, to free his mind.

  Jas smiled as they rounded a stack of Look magazines. “I'm not a reader; I'm a collector.”

  They passed beneath another archway—this one made from old TV Guides—rounded a corner, and at last they were standing in the living room. On one side, a niche had been carved out of the stacks to make space for a well-worn sofa, the stuffing showing through small rips in both armrests. On the opposite side, the room was lined with Georgian sash windows that looked out on the street below.

  Jas motioned for him to have a seat, then leaned back against a waist-high pile of newspapers that were double-strapped with twine. Behind him, a dim light filtered through the windows, mingling with the stir of dust.

  “Why did you invite me here, Jas?”

  “Because you were hurting. Because we're two of a kind.” He glanced out one of the windows, staring safely up the street. “Because I wanted to show you something.”

  “What?”

  “Purdy,” he whispered, off somewhere faraway. “I wanted to show you Purdy.”

  “I thought you said she was dead.”

  Outside, a car rolled slowly down the street, its engine the only sound in the air.

  “When I told you there wasn't anything special about being a Thalidomide baby, I lied. The loneliest thing in the world when you're a kid is being different.”

  “We're all different.”

  He held his arm in the air, as if it were the work of the Devil. “Not like this, we aren't. This is the first thing people see. It's like a flashing neon sign: freak!”

  “You're not a freak, Jas.”

  Momentarily, he seemed stunned, as if he might cry. Then he closed his eyes, took a breath, and stared up the street again, following the sound of the car as it faded off into the distance. “As far back
as I can remember, the only time in my life when I wasn't lonely was when I was with Purdy.”

  Foss's mind turned to Ellie.

  “That's the way it was with you, too, wasn't it? Your wife was the only person in the world who could make you feel like you were alive.”

  He stared at him, unable to say anything.

  “Wasn't it?”

  “I suppose.”

  “And if you could have her back?”

  “I can't.”

  “But if you could?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Yes, you do. You'd take her back in a second.” Jas stood up, his body a gray-white silhouette against the window, and it wasn't the shrunken arm or the short leg which Foss immediately noticed; it was the way the man stood, as if he had suddenly overcome. “I want to show you something,” he said, the sound of excitement creeping in his voice.

  “It's getting late, Jas. I really should be on my way.”

  The man waved a hand at him and started across the room toward the far corner, still dragging his right leg heavily behind him, almost—but not quite—like a caricature of a man dragging a ball and chain. “The empty apartment can wait a while longer, can't it?” He stopped somewhere just beyond the outer edge of the light, his upper body disappearing out of sight as he bent over another stack of old newspapers and brought something out from the darkened corner. He tossed the object across the room at Foss, who caught it with both hands.

  Foss sat forward on the edge of the sofa. “A papier-mâché arm?” he said, turning it over in his hands. It was made from newsprint, the paper soft and pliable, the core hollow. “So what's your point?”

  “Look again.”

  “I've seen it. So what?”

  “Take another look.”

  Foss stared sharply at the man, thinking: I'm crazy for being, here, crazy for staying this long.

  Jas returned the stare with his own brand of firmness. “If I had to offer an explanation, I'd say it has something to do with emotion. At least that has a measure of possibility. A kid with Thalidomide limbs, he knows he'll always be different, and he knows there's nothing he can do about it. But every morning of his life he wakes up hungering to be like the rest of the kids; and a hundred thousand times he breathes that hunger in and out of his system until finally, years later ... in some mysterious, inexplicable way ...”

  “It happens?”

  “Look again.”

  When Foss arrived home that night, he closed the door behind him, locked it, then leaned heavily against the wood frame. The apartment was cast in black, a single line of yellow-orange light seeping in through a crack in the living room drapes. The blood was still pounding behind his temples.

  Maybe it had moved, maybe it hadn't.

  The mind can play tricks on you if you aren't careful.

  Foss thought he saw it move. He thought he saw each finger—one right after the other—slowly curl into a fist, then unfold again. A reasonable man, though, after a few hours of reflection, might argue that he had simply been caught up in the moment. Jas had spent several hours with him, planting possibilities in his head, and he had—quite innocently—let himself believe. Yet, reasonable man or not, it was fresh in his mind, the crystal clear picture of that papier-mâché hand closing into a fist.

  He flipped on the light switch next to the door, and a lamp in the corner of the living room came silently on, casting a soft-white glow across the room. On the end table, next to the couch, there was a studio photograph of Ellie and him, taken three years ago after she had nagged at him for nearly a month to have it taken. It won't hurt you to dress up for a couple of hours. He had finally given in, donning his only suit, a brown tweed that made him look fifteen pounds heavier. Ellie wore a crepe dress with a lace bodice overlay. She was absolutely stunning.

  I miss you, El.

  His mind drifted back to the papier-mâché hand.

  It was a long time before he was able to pull his thoughts out of that scorched tenement living room again, away from the stacks of newspapers and old magazines, back to his own apartment. He hung his coat in the entryway closet. On his way to the kitchen, he stopped and placed Ellie's photograph face down on the end table. Then he fixed himself a can of Vegetable Vegetarian soup, took a shower, and headed off to bed.

  Jas was in his dreams, waving an arm in the air as if it were an American flag on the Fourth of July. A kid with Thalidomide limbs, he knows he'll always be different, and he knows there's nothing he can do about it. But every morning of his life he wakes up hungering to be like the rest of the kids: and a hundred thousand times he breathes that hunger in and out of his system until finally, years later ... in some mysterious, inexplicable way…

  “Pay attention, Fossy.” His shirt sleeve was rolled up above the elbow, exposing an underpinning of elastic straps which held the arm and hand in place. He unfastened a single strap, letting it dangle from his arm as if it were an eviscerated artery. Then another strap. And another. Until, suspended at an impossible angle, the limb had taken on the almost-surreal appearance of a broken arm. With a twist, he snapped it off altogether and held it in the air over his head. The fingers, like nightcrawlers exposed to sunlight, were squirming for their lives. “Need a helping hand?” He tossed the limb across the room. Foss caught it somehow, the fingers still struggling to grip the air, as if they were trying to play an invisible piano, and he screamed...

  He managed to sleep through the dream, though he woke up exhausted the next morning, and while getting dressed—as he slipped his right hand through his shirt sleeve—it came back to him like the aftershock of an earthquake, more vivid than the original dream.

  For three days, he never left the apartment.

  Three weeks later, nearly a foot of snow had fallen.

  It had begun to snow again the evening Foss returned to the burnt-out tenement building. He stood across the street, leaning against a wrought-iron spiked fence, watching the fifth-floor windows for some sign of life. The picture of the papier-mâché hand was still remarkably fresh in his mind, those stiff, glove-like fingers curling into a fist as if they were trying to squeeze every last ounce of energy out of the ink and newsprint. And that's why he had come back. Because three weeks ago, something too fantastic to even imagine had happened inside this building.

  He didn't have a long wait, maybe ten minutes, before a light went on upstairs on the fifth floor, the northeast corner window. Night had come early to this part of the city. The street and alleyways were already clothed in endless black shadows. Against nightfall, the fifth-floor light radiated a soft, ghost-like glow, the only sign of life in the neighborhood.

  Foss leaned forward, pulling his overcoat tight around him. The catch to all this—to standing out in the snow, watching a man he barely knew—was that he still wasn't sure what it was he wanted. No, that wasn't true. The truth was that he wasn't sure if what he wanted was even possible.

  And if it was—

  There was movement at the window, a dark shapeless cloud that slowly came into focus, the silhouette of a man. It was a silhouette that was dream familiar now: a nearly middle-aged man wearing a baseball cap and a pea coat, dragging one leg behind him as if it carried the weight of all his burdens.

  Jas. Picture perfect. Only the Thalidomide arm in nonattendance.

  It's there.

  You just have to peel back yesterday's Sporting Green.

  Foss started across the street, keeping a watch on the window, both anticipating and fearing what he might see through that pane of glass. Whatever was about to happen, he was here because he had to be. It had taken him a few weeks, but he'd come back. He realized now this wasn't about burnt-out buildings and papier-mâché arms. It was about making things whole again, about taking back what never should have been lost in the first place. That's what Jas had been trying to tell him. He had started sleeping on the couch again, the same night he met Jas. Though sleep was probably a poor choice of word. His eyes had drifted shut a few times
, but his mind never stopped replaying the movement of those paper fingers. Over and over again. Until it had slowly sunk in, the reason why Jas collected his newspapers, the reason why it still haunted him to this very moment.

  The blend of anticipation and fear had turned to adrenalin but he was standing outside the fifth-floor apartment now. The padlock was open, hanging from the steel bar anchor, and somehow the idea of protecting this place made more sense the second time around. Everything, I own is inside here. Everything in the world that mattered.

  He knocked.

  Inside the apartment, there was the sound of lagging movement, the sound of a Thalidomide leg being dragged across a floor cluttered with newspapers. It stopped near the other side of the door. Then complete, unnerving silence.

  “Jas?” His throat went suddenly dry, suddenly swollen with unspoken words. “I came to see her, Jas.”

  The door swung open, the light nearly blinding after he had journeyed through the darkness of the stairway. Jas stood to the left, slightly hunched over, dwarfed by an immeasurable background of printed material. He appeared not at all surprised, nor terribly pleased. Though it was difficult to read his expression; from the chin down, his face was hidden behind a black winter-scarf. “There are no straight lines,” he said with a tired voice. “All things circle back to where they started.”

  “I want to see her, Jas.”

  “Purdy?”

  “Yes.” Foss pushed by him, into the labyrinth of newspaper stacks. “It's the Thalidomide, isn't it? That's how you do it. The damn drug didn't just screw up your genes, it screwed up something inside you, something inside your psyche. That's what you were trying to tell me. That's what you meant when you said you wanted me to meet Purdy. Somehow, you've managed to bring her back, haven't you? After practicing with newspapers, modeling them and reworking them, you finally learned how to bring her back, and—”

  “And if I could do it for Purdy, then I could do it for your wife?”

  “Yes! Yes, exactly!”

  Jas stared at him, his expression unreadable, his hand still on the doorknob, his body stiff and steadfast. “It was a mistake, Fossy. Go home and forget about it.”