The Glass Forest

by Cynthia Swanson

  It wasn’t just his charm; it was also his maturity. He’d been everywhere; he’d seen everything. Nothing fazed him—a turn of the weather, a harsh word from a demanding customer, a flat tire on a deserted road. His hands were more capable than any other man’s—with the exception of my father, of course. I could trust Paul with anything.

  Marvelously, it turned out he was as enamored with me as I was with him. When he smiled at me, I felt like a beauty queen. So it was no surprise, really, that a wedding took place only three months after we met.

  • • •

  It wasn’t until our reception in the Top Deck that I got a good look at my new sister-in-law. Silja was sensuously plump: large-chested, round-bottomed, and tall. An emerald-green strapless dress accentuated her curves. Her ash-blond hair was upswept in back, styled low on her forehead in front. Her face was not especially pretty; she had a large, rounded nose that overshadowed her other features, in particular diminishing the exquisite hazel color of her eyes, which were hidden behind cat’s-eye-shaped glasses.

  Silja told me that she had a prominent job in New York City, managing food operations at the Rutherford Hotel. “It’s not the largest hotel in New York by any means,” Silja said. “Nor the most famous. But we have a reputation for impeccable service, particularly in our restaurants.”

  I nodded absently, looking around the room for Paul. He was behind the bar, mixing drinks and laughing with the guests seated across from him. The jovial bartender, even at his own wedding.

  “So we’re sorry we can’t stay longer,” Silja was saying, and I reluctantly turned my gaze back to her. “But I’m needed at work on Monday.”

  Silja reached into her handbag with manicured fingers, pulling out a gold cigarette case and matching lighter. She lit her cigarette, taking a long drag and regarding me. “And you, dear?” she asked. “What do you do?”

  I clutched my handkerchief—something blue, just like the poem says you’re supposed to carry. “Well, I was working here at the lodge over the summer,” I said. “But now . . . with being a married woman and all . . . ”

  I closed my mouth, uncertain whether to say more. No one except my family and my closest friends knew the big secret—although once it became obvious, there would be little surprise, given how hastily Paul and I married. I was barely showing, my rounded belly easily hidden beneath the full skirt of my wedding gown—which, not many years before, had been my sister Carol Ann’s wedding gown. Carol Ann was a size larger than me; hiding my expanding waistline wasn’t a problem in the abundant yards of satin and lace. Still—this was Paul’s sister-in-law, after all—his family. Had Paul told Henry about the baby? And if so, had Henry told Silja? I wasn’t sure.

  Silja nodded. “Marriage is work,” she said faintly. “Marriage is . . . ” She smiled wistfully. “Well, what do I know about it, right? No more, nor less, than any other wife.” She inhaled cigarette smoke, then blew it away from me. “Every wife has her own story.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “I’m sure that’s true.”

  Silja tilted her head, regarding me thoughtfully. “I can see how much you adore Paul. It’s very sweet.” She smiled again. “It reminds me of how I felt about Henry when we met. I was just about your age then.” She turned away, staring contemplatively past the crowd of wedding guests toward the lake outside the Top Deck’s wide windowpanes. “That was such a long time ago.”

  A clinking sound filled the room—people tapping silverware against wine and beer glasses, signaling that they wanted the bride and groom to kiss. Paul met my eye and beckoned me over.

  “Excuse me,” I said to Silja, and scurried across the room. Leaning over the bar, I received Paul’s warm kiss and our guests’ enthusiastic applause.

  4

  * * *

  Silja

  1942

  In Brooklyn, love at first sight only happened in one place: the movies. It happened every Saturday afternoon, to girls who spent their pin money each week to sit in velveteen seats in the Sunset or the Coliseum, contemplatively munching popcorn and watching as Barbara Stanwyck fell hard for an affable Henry Fonda, Vivien Leigh stared hypnotically into Laurence Olivier’s eyes, Irene Dunne found herself defenseless against Cary Grant’s charms.

  And then the girls went home through the blustery, littered streets—home to their overworked mothers, silent fathers, and hordes of little brothers and sisters. The starry-eyed girls scribbled things like “Mrs. Emma Olivier” in their school notebooks, imagining what would happen if dreamy Laurence showed up on the doorstep. For surely he would forget Vivien in an instant, if he had her, Emma, to love instead.

  That girl was Silja Takala. Twenty years old, bespectacled, and untarnished as a new copper kettle yet to feel the heat of fire, Silja was a girl whose only knowledge of love was through the movies.

  • • •

  But then real love did happen. Just like in the movies.

  She met him at a bus stop. She was on her way to visit her friend Johanna. It was Friday, Silja’s short day at Hunter when she only had morning classes. She had loads of homework to do over the weekend, but she hadn’t seen Johanna in months, not since Johanna’s family moved from Brooklyn’s Finntown to New York’s other Finntown, the one in Harlem.

  As she waited for an uptown bus, a tall young man, thin as a cane and dressed in uniform—so many young men were in uniform these days—hesitantly tapped her shoulder.

  “Hi-de-ho, miss.” He grinned sheepishly. “I’m trying to get to the Bronx Zoo. Is this the right bus?”

  “The zoo? Why do you want to go there?” She couldn’t take her eyes off him. With twinkling eyes and an inviting smile, he was Cary Grant’s double.

  “I’m only in New York for a few days. I thought I should see the sights.” He looked up at the bright, sunny sky—remarkably cloudless for the first Friday in March. “And it’s a nice day for the zoo.”

  Such a peculiar thing for a GI to do on leave. There were burlesque clubs and taverns lining every side street in Manhattan. There were jazz joints and dance halls and any type of restaurant you could want. There were pleasures galore that a young man on his way to an uncertain future should surely enjoy while he could. What nutcase—especially such an attractive one—would choose the Bronx Zoo?

  “I’m Henry,” he said, almost as if she’d asked.

  “Silja,” she replied. The bus roared up next to them, spitting diesel fumes. “This is your bus,” she informed him. “Mine, too.”

  • • •

  Silja never made it to Johanna’s. She arrived home well after supper time, her neatly rolled hairdo ruined by the wind at the zoo. She and Henry had strolled past the lions, the seals, the monkeys rattling their cages. Though Henry had claimed he wanted to see the sights, he seemed not to notice the animals. His eyes were on Silja.

  They caught a downtown bus just before dark. Sliding into a seat near the back, Henry put his arm around Silja’s shoulder, which she found both unsettling and exhilarating. She’d never before been the object of anyone’s affection in public. But with the war on, boys in uniform—and the girls accompanying them—could get away with nearly any degree of necking. When Henry leaned in to kiss her, no one around them batted an eye. He pressed his mouth against hers softly but persistently, his tongue only scarcely flicking between her lips. Her heart was pounding when they broke apart.

  “I have to see you again, Silja,” he said. “Can I call you?”

  Could he call her? What a question! She got off at Sixty-Eighth Street near Hunter and headed for the subway, leaving Henry on the bus holding a slip of paper with her number.

  At home, her mother glared and asked Silja where she had been.

  “I’m sorry, Äiti,” Silja told her. “The subway trains were running late.” She bowed her head so her mother couldn’t see her faint smile.

  Love at first sight? Silja asked herself that night as she fell into bed. She reached inside her nightgown, absently stroking her breasts. But love at first
sight isn’t real, she reminded herself, squeezing her nipples, feeling them stand erect against the thin cotton of her gown. It only happens in the movies.

  Perhaps, she thought, lowering her hands. And perhaps not.

  • • •

  They met the next morning at Vic’s, near Hunter on Sixty-Ninth Street—a spot Silja selected intentionally, hoping some of her classmates might see her with this dreamboat of a GI. But she saw no one she knew in the café.

  “New York is my town,” she told Henry as she sipped coffee and he drank black tea. “I can show you anything you want. I’ve lived here my whole life. I know everything about this city.”

  Henry chuckled. “Is that so, hotshot? We’ll see.”

  He professed an interest in abstract paintings, so she took him to the newly opened Museum of Modern Art. As they wandered the galleries, Silja admired the Kandinskys and the Picabias. But Henry scoffed. “I’d hardly call this abstract,” he said, waving at a Kandinsky woodcut. “Where’s the daring? Where are the guts?”

  Overhearing him, a fellow nearby butted in. “Do you know of the Riverside Museum?” When they shook their heads, he handed them a pamphlet. “They’re having a swell show of American abstract artists. It’s worth your time.”

  So they headed uptown. “This is more like it,” Henry said as they took in the works of Rothko and Gottlieb and others. “These Americans, they know how to cook with gas.”

  • • •

  He knew what he liked; she had to give him that. On Saturday, she’d worn a clingy green sweater with pearl buttons and a matching pencil skirt. Henry remarked how swell the outfit looked on her. “You should always wear green,” he told her, eyeing her up and down. “It brings out the color in your eyes.”

  But he wasn’t looking at her eyes when he said it.

  Silja smiled and thanked him. On Monday, when they met again at Vic’s during her lunchtime break, she was in a loose-cut pink blouse and a gray wool circle skirt. It was one of her favorite outfits and she thought he’d like it. But when he saw her, Henry frowned and asked sharply, “Where’s the green?”

  “I forgot,” she said.

  “Don’t forget next time, baby doll.” He escorted her to a booth in the back of the café.

  She resolved she would go out of her way to include something green in her ensemble—a scarf, a hat, jewelry—every time they got together. After all, she told herself, Henry is a GI about to put his life on the line for everyone in this country. It was peanuts, what he asked of her. It was the least she could do.

  • • •

  She was never sure exactly when she’d see him. His troop was stationed at Camp Kilmer in New Jersey, and there was a snafu with their orders—one she didn’t understand but knew wasn’t unusual. President Roosevelt had declared war only three months ago; the army was trying to sort it all out and get troops trained and moved into service efficiently. But it took time.

  Silja, who before she met Henry had all but lived in the Hunter campus library, took to studying in the apartment she shared with her mother, Mikaela, in the Alku, their Finntown co-op. Mikaela frequently went out in the evenings—she was one of a small group of Finntown female air raid wardens—so she wasn’t there on the nights when the telephone rang and Silja grabbed it, a broad smile on her face if it turned out to be Henry calling to say he was in Manhattan.

  “Can I spring you from that gloomy prison of yours?” he’d ask over the line. “Take you to some ritzy joint and get our kicks, Silja, how about that?” She never knew whether he was kidding or if he truly believed what he said about the Alku, which he’d never seen. A prison? Hardly—their apartment was light filled and pretty. Either way, she always replied yes, she’d be there in thirty minutes.

  As she emerged from the subway and into his welcoming arms, her heart thudded. Whenever he touched her—even small touches like helping her into her coat after a restaurant meal—she felt her body flush and warm all over.

  She half hoped, each time she saw him, that he’d suggest getting a hotel room. She had never been a type of girl to think such things. Previously, her sexual notions had been foggy and vague, mostly centered on kissing some shadowy, indistinct male.

  But that was before Henry. Now, alone at night in her bed, when she closed her eyes she saw his face and imagined his kisses raining onto her. She felt Henry’s warm hands when she touched her own bare skin.

  • • •

  On the third Monday in March, when they’d known each other exactly ten days, they strolled through Central Park on a warm afternoon. As they rounded Bethesda Fountain, Henry took Silja’s left hand. He placed a modest diamond solitaire on it.

  “Marry me now,” he said. “Marry me, Silja, and after this war is over, I’ll come back and we’ll make a life together. A life beyond your wildest dreams.” He gently squeezed her hand. “I’ll be yours forever, if you’ll be mine.”

  Silja was speechless. Was this really her he was speaking to? Silja Takala, pleasant but ordinary girl from Brooklyn? The girl who was valedictorian of her high school class, went on to study at Hunter, and was the pride and joy not only of her mother but also of everyone in the Alku? How could she, of all people, be the one receiving this ring, accompanied by this illogical but madly romantic proposal? It was the stuff that Hollywood movies were made of.

  She could barely believe it when she heard her own voice responding yes.

  5

  * * *

  Ruby

  She’d thought no one would hear her if she screamed, but it turns out she might have been wrong. Because glancing to her left, Ruby sees Shepherd parking his car in the cemetery beyond her family’s forest. He gets out, closing the car door softly, and looks up to see her watching him. He weaves through the gravestones, steps over the stone wall, and stands beside her, next to the rock.

  The snake has slithered off into a thicket. It didn’t bite her. Ruby is too fast to let that happen—and besides, garter snakes usually don’t bite or even lash out. They generally keep to themselves and mind their own business.

  That one, though—Ruby thinks it was a crank. It had to have been a crank, to get so riled up about a finger or two wiggling in its face.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” she tells Shepherd. “The cops were here an hour ago, taking measurements of the oak tree and talking and writing notes. I saw them but they didn’t see me. They’re gone, but what if they come back?”

  He nods. “But you’re here, Ruby. Are you supposed to be here?”

  “Not really,” she admits. “I’m supposed to be at Miss Wells’s apartment. She said it was okay for me to stay home from school and call my uncle whenever I was ready to talk to him. And then she left for school.” Ruby shrugs. “I didn’t want to be there alone,” she says. “And I didn’t want to run up Miss Wells’s telephone bill. So I came back here. I tried to reach my uncle, but I had to leave a message with his wife.”

  Shepherd nods again. “I thought you might be here,” he says. “Want to go for a walk?”

  Ruby knows she should go back to the house and wait for Uncle Paul to return her call. But looking into Shepherd’s eyes—which are cloudy despite the brilliance of the day—she can’t refuse.

  “Just for a few minutes.” She turns into the woods and Shepherd follows her.

  Silently—because what is there to say?—they single-file walk, with Ruby leading the way. Sunlight filters through trees brilliant in reds, yellows, and oranges. Leaves crunch under their feet. It’s the exact kind of day that makes people say fall is their favorite season.

  They walk west, then north. There are no fences or markers separating these woods, but Ruby knows where her family’s property is divided from the Burkes’ on the north, the Powells’ on the south. The old, abandoned Dutch Reformed Church cemetery—the one nobody ever gets buried in anymore, the one where Shepherd parks when he visits—is to the east.

  They sit on a fallen black birch, its rotting core soft and crumbly to the touch. She
sifts the broken pieces through her fingers. Heart rot, that’s called—when a tree decomposes from the inside. Shepherd taught her that.

  He puts his hand tentatively on her shoulder, and she raises her face to his. His eyes hold sorrow like buckets hold water.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.

  She shakes her head. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  And then she tells him a story.

  “When we first moved here,” Ruby says, “the summer after I turned ten, I used to lure the neighborhood kids into the forest after dark. I wasn’t scared, because nothing out here is more harmful than what’s inside everyone’s houses. Like the television—even back then, I knew television was doing those kids more harm than anything they’d encounter at night in the woods.”

  He nods because he knows it’s true.

  “This is what I’d do. I’d sit on a low tree branch behind the Burkes’ house next to ours, where they were all playing in the backyard, and I’d give a soft hoot. I’d be in my navy dress because it was my favorite, I wore it long past the time I outgrew it, but I loved it because if I wore it with dark tights, it made me look more like a shadow than a girl. I’d tie a black scarf over my head to hide my hair. I’d pretend that instead of being blond like my mother, my hair was dark like my father’s.”

  “So you wanted to look like your father?” Shepherd asks. “More than you wanted to resemble your mother?”

  “No,” Ruby explains. “I didn’t want to look exactly like my father. But dark hair would have come in handy for this situation.”

  “Ah,” he says. “I see what you mean.”