The Life of Glass

by Jillian Cantor

  “Really? With who?”

  “I don’t know. Some guy she met at the salon.”

  “What’s his name?”

  I still had no idea, so I fashioned a nickname on the spot. “I’m gonna call him the Hair.”

  Ryan laughed. “He could be bald.”

  “Then why was he at the salon in the first place?”

  “Okay. It’s the Hair then.”

  “You wanna ride bikes after she goes?”

  He paused. “I can’t. My dad’s gonna be home soon, and he wants to go out to dinner.”

  “Well, okay then,” I said. “Maybe tomorrow.” It was hard to keep the flicker of annoyance out of my voice. I knew it wasn’t his fault that his dad expected him to go out to dinner, but I wished he would’ve invited me to go along or promised to stop over afterward.

  Ashley helped my mother pick out her outfit, a tiny little denim skirt that belonged to Ashley and a red shirt that really brought out her ivory skin. She had on strappy red sandals that made her legs look extra long. She did not look like someone’s mother.

  She was ready early, and then she paced by the front window as Ashley and I sat on the couch and watched her.

  “This is silly, isn’t it, girls? Maybe I should call and cancel.”

  “No,” Ashley said. I glared at her, but I kept my mouth shut because I really hoped my mother was serious and would decide to cancel on her own.

  The three of us watched as he pulled into the driveway in a big, blue, shiny pickup truck. My dad had never really been a fan of pickup trucks. He used to say that he couldn’t stand it when guys needed to show off how big and powerful and mighty they were by driving around in their huge vehicles and revving their engines.

  When he started to get out, Ashley and my mother dragged me into the kitchen. “Don’t let him see us watching,” my mother whispered, as if he could already hear her.

  I got my first glimpse of him when my mother opened the front door, and he stood there on our porch—tall, extraordinarily tan, clean shaven, completely handsome enough to be an underwear model, and, I was guessing, a good ten years younger than my mother. He had nice, thick black hair, and to my surprise, a good, neat-looking haircut. Maybe my mother knew what she was doing now.

  He handed my mother a single long-stemmed purple rose. I looked to Ashley to see how she was reacting, and I was surprised to see that she looked a little stunned, as if the fact that he was beautiful changed everything. She hadn’t expected a real prospect.

  My mother took the rose. “Oh, how sweet. You shouldn’t have. I love purple roses.” She turned to look at us. “Girls, this is Kevin Baker.”

  I waved, and Ashley smiled at him and said, “Nice to meet you.”

  “Well, we won’t be too late,” my mother said.

  My mother stepped out and shut the door behind them, and I was thinking about how she was walking into this whole new world, this entirely different life.

  “I’m going out,” Ashley said.

  “Where?”

  “None of your business.” She paused. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s not going to last, with Mom, I mean.”

  I nodded. “Well, I know that,” I said, as if it were the most obvious conclusion in the world.

  Then the house was quiet. Empty and eerily quiet. Not the good kind of quiet that comes after a storm but the bad kind that falls in the middle of loneliness.

  I put a jar of Cheez Whiz in the microwave and sat at the kitchen table dipping potato chips into it for dinner. I was lucky that I had good metabolism, that I could eat whatever I wanted and I still stayed skinny, whereas Ashley said she put on pounds just looking at half of what I ate. My mother always said my metabolism came from Grandma Harry, who used to eat a ton and was still as skinny as a rail. “Good genes, sweetie,” she’d say.

  I was obsessing over my mother’s date, where they were, what they were doing, how much she was laughing, how much she was drinking. My mother couldn’t hold her liquor. I’d seen her have a glass or two of wine with my father, and before you knew it she was crazy giddy, laughing and falling all over him. Do not have any wine, I silently willed her.

  I was about halfway through the jar of cheese and starting to feel just a little bit sick when the doorbell rang. Ryan must’ve gotten back from dinner with his father and decided he wanted to hang out after all. I checked my hair in the hallway mirror, pulled it out of the hair band, and let it fall in little waves that hit my shoulders. I smiled, then frowned, and then whispered, “This is ridiculous.” And I put my hair back in the ponytail. It would fly in my face if I rode my bike with it down.

  The doorbell rang again, and I ran to get it, not even bothering to look through the peephole before I opened it, so I was shocked when it was not Ryan standing there but Courtney Whitman, holding on to a dog leash that was attached to a miniature Chihuahua. “Hey, Meliss.”

  “Hey.” I tried to disguise my surprise.

  “I was walking Paco and thought I’d stop by to say hi.” As if on cue, at the sound of his name, Paco jumped up and barked a little.

  “Hey there, boy.” I reached down and rubbed his head, and I smiled to myself. Ryan was allergic to dogs.

  “How did you know where I lived?” I asked.

  “Oh.” She laughed. “My mom’s a realtor, so she knows where everyone lives.” I didn’t really think that was true, but I guessed they must have a way to look it up or something.

  I noticed Courtney wasn’t wearing any makeup like she normally did at school, and her hair was pulled back in a messy bun. She was wearing sweats and a tank top, and without all of that other stuff, the hoopla, as Grandma Harry used to call it, she wasn’t even that pretty, just kind of normal-looking. “Well, what’s up?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “You wanna walk with me?”

  It occurred to me that it was Saturday night, and here she was walking her dog and stopping at my house. Maybe it was harder for her to be new than I’d thought. “I guess so. Hang on. Let me get my key.”

  I shut the door, went back in the house, and scribbled my mom a quick note, even though I was sure I’d be back first. Though she would expect Ashley to be gone, she might freak out if she came home and I wasn’t in one of my usual spots on the couch or in my bed.

  “How old’s your dog?” I asked as we walked down the street, past Mrs. Keely’s house, past Mr. and Mrs. Gonzalez, past Ryan’s house.

  “He’s a puppy,” she said. “My mom got him for me when we moved. It’s supposed to help with the whole transition.”

  “Does it?”

  She shrugged. “Sort of. Not really. I don’t know.” She paused. “Thanks for letting me share with you guys in biology the other day.”

  I felt a little guilty as I thought about how annoyed I’d been. “No problem,” I said. “Anytime.”

  “So you and Ryan, you’re like a couple, then?”

  I felt a sinking in my stomach, as if the Cheez Whiz had just turned into this hard and crushing boulder. “No, no. Nothing like that. Just friends.”

  “Oh.” She paused. “And you don’t like him or anything?”

  “Ryan? What? No way. Oh no. Definitely not.” They were words I felt like choking on, because after I said them, I knew there was no taking them back. I was giving her permission to like him, to love him even, to claim him and take him for her own.

  “I just don’t want you to get mad at me if I go out with him or something. You’re like the only friend I have here.”

  So we were friends. One shared dissection where I’d practically glared at her the whole time, and she considered us friends. There was something I loved about the ease of the whole thing, and something that seemed incredibly forced.

  “You totally remind me of my best friend, Janie, back in San Diego.” She sighed. “She was all serious and quiet and sweet like you.”

  I thought it was a compliment, but I wasn’t sure. “Why did you move?”

  She cringed. I could tell, even in the d
ark; her shoulders shrank. “My parents are getting divorced, and my mom wanted to be closer to my grandparents.”

  “That sucks,” I said. I was tempted to tell her that my dad was dead and my mom was on a date, but I kept my mouth shut.

  We’d walked a circle, and we ended up back in front of my house. “Hold out your hand,” she said.

  I did. She pulled a tiny little tube of lipstick out of her pocket, turned over my hand, and starting writing on the back of my palm. “Here’s my number,” she said. “Call me tomorrow.”

  Just before midnight I heard Ashley climbing in through her window, so I went and sat on her bed and waited for her.

  The strange thing about Ashley was that even though she pretty much despised me most of the time, for whatever reason, she usually let me come in her room and hang out on her bed. Before she dated Austin and spent every single second with him, sometimes the two of us would lie on her bed and read magazines or do our homework. We hardly ever talked, and if we did, it was usually to insult each other.

  She jumped and banged her hip on the dresser when she saw me. “Jesus, Melissa, you nearly gave me a heart attack.”

  She smelled like beer and cigarettes, two smells that were barely familiar to me but still distinct enough to detect. “You reek,” I told her.

  “Where’s Mom?”

  I shrugged.

  “Wow.” She sat down on the bed next to me. “She must really like him.” She swallowed hard when she said it, so I could tell that deep down she was just as nervous about the whole thing as I was.

  “You were the one that was all like, I’ll help you pick out your outfit. It’ll be so great.”

  “Shut up.” She swung her pillow at me, I ducked, and she missed me completely. “I was trying to be nice.”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  We sat on the bed in silence for a few minutes, and I was about to get up and leave because I thought she’d already gone to sleep, when suddenly she said it, her voice suspended and calm, sounding more like my mother than her normal self. “Do you remember the time Dad took us on the boat?”

  I didn’t. Not really. I couldn’t have been more than four or five at the time, and I remember there was lots and lots of blue water, everywhere you looked—the magnificent sparkle of Lake Mead, the opposite of every other desert landscape I’d ever seen. The water was so clear, and seemed to stretch for miles, that I thought the boat would take us to the end of the world.

  “Did you know I almost drowned?”

  I shook my head. “I knew you fell in. That’s why you never like to go swimming.”

  “I just remember being under the water, and it was so cold and rushing up all over. And then it was very dark, black even. Dad pulled me out. I opened my eyes, and he was carrying me, and he was crying. Did you know that? The man was freakin’ crying. He loved me that much.”

  I closed my eyes, and I could picture it. My dad’s round and serious face pulling Ashley from the water. But I had no memory of any of it. “Are you drunk?” I finally said.

  “Get out.” She threw the pillow at me again, and this time it smashed me in the head.

  I heard my mom stumble in a few minutes later. I listened carefully, relieved to hear only one set of shoes, one set of footsteps. She’d come in alone. I heard her pouring water into the kettle for tea, and I thought about getting out of bed and going to sit with her in the kitchen, but I didn’t really want to know, didn’t want to see it on her face, if she was starting to fall in love with him.

  Chapter 6

  I’d written Courtney’s number down on a Post-it on my desk after our walk, and the next morning, as I sat there trying to get my homework done, it was staring up at me. I wasn’t sure why I would call it. I didn’t want to be her friend; I didn’t necessarily even like her. But then as I looked at the number, it didn’t seem like it was an option not to call it.

  It was after eleven and Ashley and my mother were both still in their beds. I’d already made a trip to the kitchen, spooned some peanut butter out of the jar, sat at the kitchen table, and sucked it down alone.

  Before my father got sick, he used to cook us breakfast on Sunday mornings. His specialty was French toast. He had this weird recipe where he’d put just a pinch of chili powder in with the cinnamon, something Grandma Harry had invented by accident when she once mixed up the two spices. It sounds terrible, but it was actually really, really good. My peanut butter on a spoon was no substitute.

  When Courtney picked up, I said hi and I felt like an idiot. “It’s Melissa.”

  “Hey, Meliss. What’s up?”

  “Not much.” I tapped my pencil against the desk, realizing that I had absolutely nothing to say to her.

  “I was just going to give myself a mani/pedi. Want to come over?”

  “Okay. Sure,” I said.

  Courtney lived across the wash from us, in a development of new two-story homes. My development was built in the seventies, so our houses were brick with flat roofs that had this odd slant to them, so they sometimes looked like they could sink right into the ground. We had short driveways with painted metal carports, and black wrought-iron security doors in the front.

  But just across the wash, there was Courtney’s life, an entirely different world. Big beige stucco houses with red tile roofs, long driveways, neat red rocks and trimmed shrubs out front. The houses in her neighborhood were much closer together than in mine, or maybe it just felt that way because they were so much bigger. Courtney lived just down the street from Austin and Ashley’s best friend, Lexie, so in a way, as I biked across the wash, it was as if I was entering Ashley’s world.

  It was strange riding down the hill of the wash without Ryan. I hadn’t been down there without him in a long time, probably years, and I knew if he knew I was going to Courtney’s house he might be upset with me.

  Courtney’s house was like all the others on the street, very tall and clean and modern-looking, and she had a big stained-wood door in the front. I knocked on the door a few times. I heard Paco barking but no human sounds. Then I rang the bell. I had this moment, standing there on the porch, when I wondered if this was all some big joke that Ashley had set up, that Courtney wasn’t actually home, that she didn’t really think we were friends. And I was about ready to turn around and get on my bike when Courtney finally opened the door. Maybe she noticed the bewildered look on my face, because she said, “My mom is out, and I had my music up really loud.” I nodded. “Come on in. I already picked out a polish color that’ll look great with your skin.”

  I followed her into the house, down a long slate-tiled hallway, up a plushly carpeted staircase, into her bedroom. Her room was three times the size of mine and looked like something from one of those design magazines my mother read and sometimes left in the bathroom. She had this big canopy bed in the center with a pink silky-looking comforter and tons of expensive-looking pillows, and her bed was so high off the ground that she had a little step stool to get up.

  She must have noticed me gawking because she sighed and said, “It’s nice, isn’t it? My mother’s trying to buy me off so I don’t miss San Diego.”

  “Do you? Miss it, I mean?”

  She nodded. “Of course. This city is like, all dried up and in the middle of nowhere.” She sighed. “No offense.”

  “Of course.” I nodded, though I had little to compare it to, because I’d lived here all my life, aside from my three-month stint in Philadelphia, which was mostly spent in a hotel and a hospital waiting room. The warm desert air, the sparse landscapes, the brown mountains that turned purple against pink-blue skies at sunset all suddenly did seem a little dry and barren when I looked at the pictures of her in San Diego that she had all around the room—her at the beach with a bunch of other girls in tiny little bikinis, her standing in the driveway of what I assumed to be her old house, modest-looking with this patch of emerald grass out front.

  “But I just hate being new at school. You know?”

  I nodded. />
  “I had so many friends at my old school. I was voted most popular in the eighth-grade yearbook.”

  I nodded again like I knew all about what she was talking about. I had the urge to tell her that being friends with me or dating Ryan was not going to win her any popularity contests at our school, but I kept my mouth shut. There was something about her, this room, that drew me in, that made me actually want to paint my toenails and fingernails, something I usually had no interest in.

  “Here, look at this color.” She handed me a bottle of polish. Sugar Plum Fairy, a deep, rich purple. “What do you think?”

  “It’s nice,” I said, though I had no opinion really.

  “Take off your shoes,” she said. I sat on the floor and obeyed, unlacing my old, grungy sneakers, trying to remember the last time I’d actually cut my toenails.

  “Oooh, you have such nice feet,” she said. “You should wear sandals more often.”

  “Do you think?” My feet looked sort of odd and calloused to me, but I wasn’t a good judge of those kinds of things.

  “Definitely.” She held my foot in her lap and started painting carefully, with the hands of a skilled laborer who had done this a thousand times.

  Two hours later I rode my bike back across the wash, with Sugar Plum Fairy nails as well as toenails, and I didn’t feel like the same person. Maybe what my mother and Ashley said about how wearing makeup could boost your spirits was true, because I felt a lot better than I had when I’d left my house.

  I was in my own little world, so I didn’t even see Ryan out in front of his house at first. “Hey, Mel,” he called, and his voice broke into my little fantasy world where people lived in perfect pink bedrooms. I hit the brakes and skidded to a stop in front of him. “You were riding in the wash without me?”

  I hesitated for a minute wondering whether to lie or tell the truth, and before I could really decide, a lie popped out. “I was dropping off something for Ashley, at Mr. September’s house.”

  “Why didn’t she do it herself?”