Glass Mountain

by Cynthia Voigt

  I was losing ground, visibly, but didn’t know in what other direction to flail. “Almost like magic”—floundering glibly—“in answer to a wish—”

  Her glance stopped me, like a slap across the face. She was cross, bored and cross, and ashamed. I didn’t blame her. Neither did I blame myself: she wasn’t giving me much help in elevating the conversation. But then, I had much more invested in the success of this lunch than she did.

  “You don’t believe in fairy tales,” I remarked, drawing back into safety, hoping to pass my stupidity off as attempted wit.

  “Oh, I might believe in them,” she said.

  She didn’t need to say what she didn’t believe in.

  She said it anyway. “It’s you I’m having trouble believing in.”

  It was a moderately humiliating moment, a difficult moment to seem blind to. The only consolation I could offer myself was that this was a personal reaction. If she hadn’t previously thought well of me, I couldn’t have disappointed her, I told myself. I wasn’t much comforted, sitting stiff and wondering if I had to let her insult me, if that was a necessary part of the arrangement. “Maybe because I’m not a fairy tale,” I said, having reached a quarrelsome state myself.

  “You can’t be, you’re a real person. Fairy tales have to be apart from reality, distant—” Her whiskey eyes, within their dark rims, looked beyond me as if she had recognized someone in the street. Her smile was unselfconscious, for herself, not for me. “That’s what’s wrong with Into the Woods,” she announced. “I just figured it out.”

  I had started to turn around to see who it was, and I halted. “You mean the second act?”

  “Because he forced a modern reality into a fairy-tale world. You’ve seen it?”

  I’d seen it, with an empty seat beside me. “Yes,” I said.

  “Didn’t that time when everyone was going to turn Jack over to the giant’s wife and save their own skins—everybody trying to save themselves, and only the common man had nous, and there’s no heroism and no hope for heroism.”

  I knew I should draw her out and be curious about what interested her, but that isn’t what I did. “Twentieth-century cynicism is really only moral relativism. That’s why the first act did work.”

  She hadn’t followed me. I admit to being pleased at finding myself a step ahead.

  “Because it was purely comic, just a switched point of view.”

  “A tale told by an enfant terrible,” she said, smiling.

  “Nasty,” I said. If I thought, I’d have held my tongue. I did neither. “You have a nasty streak.”

  She waved that problem away, happy, eager. Alexis shook out her mind like some women shake out their hair, to display its bright tumbling qualities, to attract. “Real fairy tales are pretty cynical.”

  “Cruel, yes, but I don’t see cynical.”

  She dropped Bettelheim on me—Red Riding Hood as learning the difference between the seductive, devouring wolf-man and the protective, well-socialized hunger-man. I listened politely, awaiting my chance to drop Freud on her—Red Riding Hood’s little red cloak the symbol of menstruation and the dangers of sexual maturity. She kicked Freud aside and suggested a Jungian archetype. We had a fine time. I let Alexis do most of the talking, and I didn’t have to fake my interest. Most women are less reluctant to show you their breasts than their minds, and I may know why. Alexis had no such qualms of modesty, or if she had, she had forgotten them in the pleasure of conversation.

  “Especially cynical about women,” she finally said. “Think. I mean think.” As if I hadn’t been doing so. “All a girl has to be is beautiful, although being a princess helps a lot. Snow White’s prince doesn’t even care if she’s dead. Maybe he prefers it. As far as he knows, she is dead, and that doesn’t make any difference to him, he falls in love with her anyway. Don’t you think that’s cynical?”

  “What are you, a militant feminist?”

  “No,” she said, “an economics major.” She laughed then, with a lifting gesture of her chin, enjoying her own mischief. After a hesitation, to decide something, she told me, “I’ve got a doctorate, with a specialty in the economics of developing nations.”

  “Were you teaching the course you told Jordan you came from?”

  “No, that’s a language course. I’m taking it.”

  “Spanish?” Her face told me I was right. “You already have French,” I guessed again. “You’re intelligent,” I said, adding to myself, and rich and unmarried. “But why economics?”

  “I thought, you should understand what you have.”

  It took me a minute. There was a practicality to the idea, although it wasn’t immediately apparent. “So if you’d been beautiful? You’d have—what? Gone to modeling school? Studied aesthetics?”

  Then I heard what I’d said.

  And Alexis burst out laughing, a warm, chuckling laugh. I could have leaned across the table and kissed her for that laughter. I didn’t, of course, that would have been going too far. Instead I looked down, to notice that my plate was empty. I had apparently eaten my lunch. “Dessert? Coffee?”

  “I have to go. No, I really do.”

  “I thought we might walk uptown,” I offered.

  “I’d like that, but I really can’t.” She meant both statements and I took her at her word. I was satisfied with my luck, and the use I’d made of it. No need to push it.

  I settled the bill and we went back outside. There was too little time before a cab appeared. I held the door open. She hesitated, not getting in. “What is your name?” she asked me.

  “Gregor.” I think I kept my voice calm. Resonant, perhaps, but mostly calm.

  Mocking herself, she held out her hand. “How do you do, Gregor. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  I let go of the door handle and took her hand. “How do you do, Alexis.” Then we were kissing, I have no idea how: we were already doing it before I’d noticed, until she stepped back, into the cab, and away.

  I couldn’t move. I tried to remember the expression on her face—surprise, a little fear too, fear was part of it; it was definitely a mixed facial response I remembered. It was just a kiss, just lips. I wasn’t plummeted into irresistible desire. More to the point, neither was she. It was just a mutual impulse. Her mouth tasted sweet, like the air.

  I tried to think clearly, while memory was fresh. It wasn’t an experienced kiss and not one she’d anticipated or maneuvered. I didn’t know if I’d bent down or if she’d raised her face. We were shaking hands and then kissing; whatever time had separated the events was lost. I was just as surprised as she was. But I wasn’t afraid. Or not afraid of the kiss and what it might mean.

  14

  Enter Sarah Mondleigh

  Eagerness, like happiness, is dangerous. So the next morning I took a long, meditative walk—the wrong move now could cost me the prize—and picked up the Sunday Times on the way home. As I came down the street I saw a figure seated on Mr. Theo’s stoop. Dark-haired, female, two large suitcases at her side.

  For two steps my heart was in my throat, and then the unlikelihood of it reached me. I slowed down. She could have no idea of where I lived. Her hair was longer, chin-length, and not so dark. She was a deliberative character, Alexis, not the kind of woman to appear on a man’s doorstep with suitcases, after a single kiss. She allowed other people to make decisions and for herself decided only whether or not she would go along with them. We were nowhere near the point where she might fly to me; we were barely past the point where she would fly from me. Reason reasserted itself.

  The girl did no more than glance at me as I came near. She wore basic urban black—long skirt and long-sleeved T, high-topped shoes—her dark hair swung down to touch her cheekbones, and I wondered, with an anticipation that wasn’t entirely unsympathetic, what crisis Mr. Theo had at hand.

  I came to a halt before her, the keys in my hand. She looked up at me and smiled—a bright red slash of color. She stood up, a slight thing, a little thing. “You’ve
got to be Gregor, I bet. Are you?”

  I nodded. She was young for Mr. Theo, perhaps twenty, and she had those suitcases, which boded ill.

  “I’m Theo’s little sister. I’m Sarah.” She was enjoying my surprise. She was entirely pleased with herself.

  “Ah,” I said. It made sense when I looked at her. I could see a resemblance. Mr. Mondleigh’s domineering genes had been at work here, too—the broad cheekbones, the willful mouth. “How do you do, Miss Sarah. Is Mr. Theo expecting you?”

  She was blocking the door, standing between her suitcases. I waited, with a bag of fruit and the Times.

  “Nobody’s expecting me. I’ve just”—she threw her arms out—“flown away home. You’re not at all what I expected. I expected someone stodgy. Old.”

  I shifted my grip on the bag. “Your parents don’t know you’ve returned?”

  “I hope not. I waited until they’d gone south. I’m not in any hurry to hear what they have to say to me. Can’t we go in?”

  I reached around to unlock the door and hold it for her. I unlocked the inner door and quickly punched the code into the alarm. She stood in the hallway, looking about her, smiling to herself.

  I took my parcels into the kitchen.

  She wandered into the living room, into the library.

  I went back outside to bring in her suitcases. She came out to look expectantly at me. “Shall I take these up to the guest room?” I asked.

  “Theo won’t mind, will he? I couldn’t take it any longer.” She ran fingers through her short hair, to express how desperate she had been. “I just couldn’t take it any longer, I really couldn’t. I need a shower too; I caught a midnight flight.”

  “If you’ll follow me, miss?”

  In the guest room I took the luggage racks out of the closet and set the suitcases down on them. She wandered into the bathroom, wandered back.

  “When will Theo be home?”

  “I’m not sure I expect him tonight.”

  She smiled knowingly, then giggled. “Same old Theo. I don’t want to go out to the Farm, Gregor. Nobody’s there.”

  “I’m sure your brother would want you to stay, miss,” I assured her, mendaciously. Mr. Theo would have to straighten this out when he got back. My proper role was to keep an eye on her, keep her safe, until he could take over.

  “First, I’ll take a long hot shower. Then I’m going to launder my things.” She smiled proudly at me. “I’m going to do my own laundry, Gregor.”

  I set the table, started a dinner, and considered my options. The best seemed to be a show at the Metropolitan, three centuries of Dutch paintings, landscapes, still lifes, interiors. I cut out the notice, underlined it, and wrote with a ballpoint pen Sunday, two p.m., Main Entrance. Miss Sarah interrupted me, entering from the dining room with the placemat, napkin, silver, and glassware in her hands.

  “I won’t do it.” She put the items down on the kitchen table, pushing the Times aside.

  I rescued my clipping, folded up the Arts section.

  “I’m not going to eat alone out there while you eat in here. As if there was something wrong with us sharing a table.” She folded the napkin in place, arranged silverware. “That finishing school about finished me, Gregor.”

  I didn’t attempt to argue proprieties. I sat down again, to put my clipping into an envelope, seal it, address it. Alexis.

  “Have you run away then, miss?” I asked, putting the envelope into my jacket pocket.

  “And you calling me Miss Sarah, like something out of Gone with the Wind. That kind of stuff has gone with the wind, Gregor.”

  “It goes against all my training.”

  “It might be good for you to go against all your training. I have, I am, and I feel so…free and…strong, and everything. What are you doing?” She had sat down. I had arisen. “Where are you going?”

  “To get my own plate and serve the meal.”

  While we ate, she told me about the school, with its boring classes, shallow students, and snobbish faculty, the tedious culture weekends, the hypocrisy of the entire endeavor. “They say you learn French, but everyone speaks English because it’s the only common language. It was beautiful, a château, right on the river, that part at least was true, but…being beautiful isn’t enough. Not for me, anyway.”

  “Ah.” I nodded, which had been all the conversation required from me throughout. As far as I could tell, Miss Sarah meant no harm, and that was good enough for me.

  She placed her knife and fork at twenty after two on her plate. I rose to clear. “That wasn’t so bad, was it Gregor?”

  “Very nice, miss,” I said. “Will you have dessert? Coffee?”

  “Coffee but no dessert, thanks. You’re a really good cook.”

  I thanked her. She suited my mood, Sarah Mondleigh did: it was like having a kitten in the room, like a vote for unreason.

  She studied me over the top of her cup and finally said what she was thinking. “What’s someone as young as you doing being a butler anyway? Didn’t you want to do something else? Not now, but ever before? Because you’re good-looking too, in a handsome way. Didn’t you? You must have.”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “It’s none of your business, if I may say so, miss.”

  Her attention went back to the more interesting subject. “I’d like to stay here for a long visit. If Theo will let me, I’m going to. He’ll let me, won’t he?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “And he’ll have to call the school to tell them I’m here, safe. Or you could but you’d have to pretend to be Theo.” I shook my head. “Or I suppose I could, but that wouldn’t convince them because I could be calling from anywhere and lying about it. Where is Theo?”

  I couldn’t tell her.

  “Mother says he might be getting married. Is he?”

  “You’ll have to ask him.”

  “But he couldn’t be out with Pruny because then he wouldn’t be staying out all night. In by midnight, I bet, that’s what she’d do, maybe one kiss, at the door. Certainly no sex. No overnights. So he can’t be getting married, can he?” She waited.

  “I couldn’t say, miss.”

  “So discreet, so perfectly discreet.”

  “As you say,” I agreed.

  She put her cup down impatiently. “Isn’t this—all this, and yourself too—don’t you find it awfully dreary?”

  “No, miss, I don’t,” I said, stuffily. She laughed, pleased with me and herself. It was entirely true, however stuffy: at that moment, with the envelope in my pocket and the chance of Alexis, life seemed the opposite of dreary. Life seemed filled with promises approaching fulfillment.

  “Well I do,” Miss Sarah announced. “I want things different, I want to do my own laundry, and I want to do everything completely differently from the way everybody always has, different and better. I’m going to do the dishes, Gregor. No, you can’t stop me, I’m serious about this. And my own ironing too. And, and…” Imagination failed her. “And everything.”

  15

  All Fools’ Day

  I was preparing a sauce for the pork loin, stirring Madeira into simmering cream; Miss Sarah was ironing, apparently quite happily, chattering about her former roommates; the carrots were ready to go into the steamer; the pilaf—done Middle Eastern style, with almonds and raisins—was cooking in the second oven. Mr. Theo would be home at any moment, and I wondered what he would say to his sister’s presence. I found her companionable, no more wrongheaded than any other person her age, and almost painfully sincere.

  “This is fun, Gregor.” She was working the iron around lacy flounces of a nightgown. “I don’t know why women complain about ironing. Everything looks so much nicer after you’ve ironed it.” She looked up from her labors. “You still think I should call Theo.”

  I’d given up that argument in the early afternoon. She hadn’t.

  “But what’s the difference? He’ll know when he gets home, and that won’t be long
now. It’ll be soon enough then. It’s his own fault, anyway: he could have come home last night and then he’d already know. If he’s going to go tomcatting around…He can’t be seriously thinking of getting married; he couldn’t be. The parents are going to feel personally let down. He’s probably been leading them on, hasn’t he? By not seeming to disagree. Although it’s what they deserve—trying to make him do what they want him to, not what he wants. Anyway”—she smiled with satisfaction—“he’ll be surprised to see me.”

  I was about to agree when I heard the outer door open. “We’ll know in a minute,” I told her, removing my apron to go greet Mr. Theo.

  She resumed ironing. I considered: should I forewarn Mr. Theo or let Miss Sarah have her surprise? But there were more surprises: the girl with Mr. Theo was young, much too young despite her makeup and a dress that depended on two spaghetti-thin strings to hold it up over bursting breasts. She had the unfinished face of an adolescent. I took a breath, trying to find the right thing to say. He had shocked me. I didn’t think he could, or would, but he’d done it.

  “Good evening, Gregor.”

  The girl draped herself over his shoulder. His eyes were bright, his cheeks flushed; his hand rested on her bony hip.

  “Good evening. Sir—?”

  “Look what followed me home. Do you think I should keep it?”

  “Sir?”

  “I know, a joke in bad taste.” He looked down at her. Her hair had been cut into points, clinging like short pennants around her face; she looked up at him. “Come into my parlor, Carlie.”

  She giggled.

  “We’ll slip into the library and have a drink while Gregor sets an extra place. Dinner will feed two, won’t it, Gregor?” He gave me no time to answer, only a look of smug sexuality. “Carlie and I seem to be working up quite an appetite.”

  “I guess we are,” she agreed.

  “There she was, a gift from the gods. Followed me all the way to the car. If a lady wants to share your limousine, Gregor—”

  “Sir. If I could have a word?”