The Weight of Glass

by Stuart Heatherington

  “All I’m saying’s you picked him out.”

  “You see, that’s what I miss about you, Daddy. Always looking out for God’s little creatures,” she said, leaning in and kissing both my cheeks.

  “Somebody has to keep watch over the one eyed wonder,” I said.

  She smacked me on the shoulder. “Don’t you talk about him like that. He’s not here to defend himself. And you better hope he can find his way back.”

  We scanned the top of the dunes and couldn’t see anything.

  “It’s an island. All he can do is go around in circles. Besides it’s not his nose that’s broken.” I pictured Jacks chasing the surf with his troubled eye and eating sea foam. “Just his brain.”

  Charlie pointed at me. “You’re gonna get in trouble.”

  “Speaking of trouble, you weren’t even supposed to be here. Dumb ass Amy told you to pack a bag, I know it.”

  “That might’ve been part of the plan.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’ve got my own plan. Escape is easier than you imagine. Don’t think I won’t brave the currents of this island at night.”

  “It won’t be that bad.”

  I grumbled back. “You don’t know my sister like I do. The domesticated ass is a dangerous creature when confronted in the wild, trust me. For dinner tonight, I brought cyanide capsules. Keep one between you cheek and gum; she’s known to take hostages.”

  “Amy’s not that bad.” She grabbed at the love handles on my sides. “And besides, I don’t think you’ll drown sporting those around, Flipper.”

  “Lucky for you those natural buoys are there. It’ll give you something to hang onto, other than my fat ass, if we decide to make a break for it.”

  *****

  I helped Charlie unload her things as Jacks came barreling through the door, soaking wet and dripping.

  She used her foot to push the wet lab off. “Don’t you dare, you bad dog.”

  Jacks looked up into my face with his lazy eye as if to say she can’t be serious and shook his coat free of water anyway.

  “Would you lay down?” Charlie grappled with Jacks’ collar, pushing his neck to the floor where he proceeded to chew on her shoelaces.

  We walked through the house and out to the end of the porch and onto the deck that trailed around the back.

  She took it all in. “I keep forgetting how amazing this place is. The view’s gorgeous.”

  I watched the waves roll in on the beach, knowing the beauty it held had a lot of pain buried in its sand. “It does have its moments.”

  “I mean really, it’s beautiful.” She pulled her hair away from her face and tucked it on the back of an ear. “I don’t think I could sell it.”

  “Part of me thinks it’s time. But I don’t know.” I shook my head, still not having come to grips with a decision. “That’s one of the things we’re going to talk about.”

  She stood up straight. “I still see Mom here.”

  “Me too.”

  Her brow arched. “I almost didn’t come back because of that.”

  I pushed on the screen of the deck behind me. The soft tick of the nylon netting slid against my fingers. The way she said it made me hurt inside, made me wonder if I’d taken too much of Jenn and closed it off from her.

  “It holds too many memories.” Charlie stopped for a moment to pull a lock of her hair from the corner of her mouth where the wind had driven it. She twisted around and leaned against the railing of the deck, turning out toward the beach further. “God, I miss her.”

  I moved my gaze further north up the line of the dunes, the heat in my chest expanding with the thought of her death. I was surprised she still remembered that much. I tried to avoid looking at the spot where I found her mother in the sand. But something like that lived and breathed every moment of a man. I didn’t know what to say.

  “Do you still think about her?”

  “Almost every day.”

  She shrugged. “What was she like again?”

  I fixed in on the soft curves of her cheeks and beamed. “Just like her, daughter. I see a piece of her every time I look at you. You’re every bit as sweet as your mother. And like I said, when I married her, most guys would gnaw their arm off at the elbow to have a chance at what I had. And that goes double for you, too.”

  “Just the elbow?” She giggled.

  “Well, you did go to Alabama.”

  “You Auburn Tigers, you think you’re so high minded.”

  We both laughed as the waves rolled out deeper. Shallow banks of sand emerged like giant footsteps in the water.

  “Jenn, had this extraordinary gift to….” Turning to her then, I felt the quiver in my face almost come apart. “She could bring out the best in the biggest asshole on the planet. And I think we both know who I’m talking about.”

  Charlie rested her hand on my chest. “Just to be fair, I think you’re the sweetest one I know.”

  I figured that wasn’t a terrible thing. “I’ve had to work pretty damn hard at being so rosy. Before you came along, Jenn used to say I was her greatest treasure. She only had to dig up half the beach to find me.”

  I thought of the place in the sand, high on the empty dune next to the house. All those years ago seemed like a hole never quite filled in, a depression in the soul, something marked by a pain I could never forget. I discovered it easier in my mind than I remembered possible.

  When I found Jenn, she was dead in the chair I carried out earlier that morning. Feet buried in the dune, a simple act to keep them from burning under the watchful eye of the sun. For some reason, I recalled them more than anything, the way the red nail polish gleamed through the sand, where toes dared to poke through. Faded sunflowers, the ones covering the band of her hat, bristled under the wind.

  Always it came back to the hours spent sitting with her lifeless hand in mine, wishing for lost opportunities, time we were never given, a brief moment to share one last view of the beach as the sun reached its zenith high above us.

  *****

  April of 1991. A long time ago my wife tried to teach me about letting go of the past. Her lessons were long and she was an exceptionally talented teacher—the problem was that of the student. She told me to look back at life’s pain with a smile, to take suffering by the arm and welcome it into my life, because as she used to say, “You can’t truly know the joys of love without ever experiencing the hurt.

  “It’s like antique shopping—sometimes we pass over the best junk because we can’t make ourselves see the good in anything. You used to tell me all the time that the only thing expectations were good for…was nothing.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  She touched her gown where it covered her barren chest and I ached inside at the memory of the ragged circles formed in the absence of her breasts. “You know what that says to a mother who’s dying? Do you know what it says to this?”

  I looked away, punch drunk and nearly unable to breathe, feeling the blow of her words in my head. We were pretty sure the cancer had metastasized by then. Jenn had been fond of singing, “The cancer bone’s connected to the...breastbone and the breastbone’s connected to the...lymph bone and the lymph bone’s connected to the...death bone.”

  “Okay, I get it.” I tried to anyway, because she was right and I knew it. The doctors had pretty much confirmed our suspicion when they had taken to looking at the floor when asked the prognosis—if we’d reached the death bone, yet. Somebody should have told me that the death bone always trumped the wishbone; the way rock always beats scissors.

  “No, you don’t. It says I’m dying and I can’t change that. It says I shouldn’t care anymore.” The sound of the IV surged in and out, a clock counting down the minutes. “But, I do. I’m not like you, Lee. I see the good in people. I relish in the warmth of arms and smiles.”

  “Jenn, I….” Seconds passed around my inability to speak. A part of me—a deeply drowning part of me, still sat visibly shaken by the image of her barren chest in my m
ind, the wide running scars that patched a resemblance of her breasts together in densely laced ribbons of soldered tissue.

  “It’s okay. All of this will be over soon enough. Really, I’m fine.” She lifted the IV tube up. “I trust enough in God to say that. He’ll see me through it this time, one way or another.” Jenn stirred slightly. “So that brings me to asking you something. Have I made you happy?”

  Her words prickled the lining of my chest and I winced. “Good grief, Jenn. What do you want from me? A club or a chair?” I pointed to the hall. “That way you can just hit me in the head and get it over with.”

  “Don’t you dare. This isn’t about you. So, quit reading into it like you do and just answer me. Did I make you happy as a wife? It’s not a hard question.”

  “I’m trying to—”

  “Then say it!”

  I could taste the sickness of despair in my throat. My hands were shaking and I gripped them together to keep from running them through my hair. “Goddamnit, I’m trying too—give me a chance.”

  “Don’t you get it, yet? I don’t have time for chances with you anymore. I want to hear the things I’ll miss as your wife.”

  Her eyes searched mine for a reply and naturally I averted my attention to the floor…to the death bone. “Jenn....” I swallowed hard. “My life…the things that I’ve gone through…it wouldn’t have been complete without you, without Charlie. I love you more than anything.” I found a place on the bed to sit, my arms settling around her.

  “Why didn’t it always seem that way?” She began to cry. “You always found it easier to hate. Maybe life hasn’t gone just like you planned and things or people haven’t been there for you, but look at the good that’s come out of the wrong. We have her don’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  “And before long you’ll be the only thing she’ll have. And we both know it.”

  Her words poured over me like reddened embers falling through my chest. And I realized that my time with my wife, for reasons I couldn’t accept yet, was a life slowly slipping down. In the quiet undertaking of her death, our pasts had converged into a solitary room where the silence of a desperate embrace would be the realization that I had failed on so many levels as a husband.

  “So you just listen to me if you want.” She knotted the sheet up in her lap and twisted it in her hands. “Living with you, I knew you loved me, but I always felt like you were holding something back. And I don’t know why, and it’s too late now anyway. But you have to change for her.” She pointed out into the hall where I knew our daughter was sitting with her grandmother. “There’s a little girl that’s going to need you.”

  I shook my head no.

  “And I think you understand exactly what I mean.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Then let me help you.” She leaned on my shoulder. “You’ve lived in that hate for so long, it’s become you. I can see it in your eyes when I take flowers to your mother’s grave. It’s like some form of disloyalty with you. You’d have me pick sides even when she’s dead.”

  I cringed inside, not liking the truth.

  “But I want you to know that I wouldn’t change a thing about my life. If things would have been different I might not have had that little girl, and she’s what brings me so much joy. All of my life I have known some of the deepest sorrow, but I have been loved in those times and I have given that love back without question. That is my joy. It’s sorrow’s companion. You can’t have one without the other. And I choose to have them both.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to…” I kissed her neck and cried into her shoulder. Here I was supposed to be lending support and I was eating up parts of her that the cancer had not quite reached. “I just…please, don’t leave me—I’ll do better—I can do better. I promise.”

  She pushed me back, her thumbs slipping under my eyes and wiping back my tears. “You have to, Lee.”

  “I will,” I begged her.

  “For Charlie.” She pulled her hands down from my face and smiled at me. “I love you. I always will, but there is one more thing I need you to promise me today.”

  I nodded, unable to speak.

  “This is going to be hard for you, but I know you can do it.” She waited for me to look at her. “While I’m dying I want it to be at Rabbit’s Hole spending it with the two people I love the most. But when the time comes,” she said, “I want you to bury me some place special.”

  “Don’t…not yet, Jenn, please—we’ve got time still—there are things…things we can do.” Like a fool, I didn’t know what they were and I was begging, breaking down in front of her finally. My hands were patting hers, and then drying at my eyes almost simultaneously. And for the love of Christ I couldn’t sit down anymore. So I stood up and it was just as bad, because I wanted to pace the room. To yell at the nurses in the hall to make her stop. For doctors to do their damn jobs for a change. To just scream. “You can’t leave me now.”

  “Why is it that you’re so afraid for me? You of all people—you’ve cried for me enough already, but have you prayed for me once?”

  And with those words the life in me seemed to tear away just for a moment, bone jarring and painfully clear. Because I could remember the day she gave birth to our daughter, a morning spent holding my heart in my hand with wonder and love, but I didn’t know the last time I’d prayed for her.

  “I want you to bury me beside your mother. We have a lot to catch up on and an eternity to do it. And when you feel up to it—” she cupped the top of my head in her hand and moved it down under my chin, pulling me to her eyes “—you come out to visit me. And when you do I want you to dust off the window of your soul and take a look inside.” And with that she sobbed. “I’ve got enough for both of us, and if you need to…there’s nothing wrong with stealing faith. God will forgive you of that, even if you can’t.”

  7

  Rock salt coated and trapped a generous helping of fresh herbs, Worcestershire and pepper, spread over a prime rib roast. It covered the meat until it formed a thick layer over the fat roll—what would eventually become the hardened case I needed to knock off before serving. And in the oven it went.

  With everything finished I broke the seal on a bottle of Pinot Noir. After uncorking it, I found enough dust in the cabinet to spend a minute rinsing clean a set of plastic glasses. I laid out a small wheel of baked brie, sliced dill Havarti and a spread of crackers on a chipped platter and headed out back.

  Charlie had changed into a bathing suit with a sheer wrap around her waist. A weathered copy of Into the Wild, left behind by some family, rested in her hands. I offered up a glass of wine and listened to the sound of the crashing waves off in the distance. From behind me, they stirred like the echoes of a song. Far off to the north was a kite, a silky blue and red tailed thing, plotting its chase of the sun.

  I snapped up a cracker. “Hope you brought an appetite.”

  “Smells great. Are you sure you didn’t need any help?”

  “Not from you. I’ve seen you cook popcorn remember?”

  “That was an accident.” Charlie’s face flushed over.

  I loved embarrassing her. “I’m lucky the house is still standing.” I shot her a look. “Fifteen minutes to cook Jiffy pop? Do you really need instructions for that? Last time I checked, there’s like only three steps to follow.”

  From a distance, she buttoned my lips with her fingers. “You said we’d forget that.”

  “Look, if you can read, you should be able to cook.” I opened my eyes really wide at her. “Popcorn anyway. The house smelled like Orville Redenbacher crawled in the attic and set himself on fire.”

  “Okay, I’m going for a walk now.” Charlie jumped up from the chair, leaving her book turned over. “Like to go?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve got stuff in the oven. Besides, I know what kind of walk you like to go on, the kind that takes waaaaay too long. That’s why I avoid working out with you—you’re too intense.”
<
br />   “I’m too intense? This coming from the guy who mastered the fork curl,” Charlie said.

  I signaled in agreement by popping a cheese cracker in my mouth as if to defend my silent love of food. “What’s your point?”

  “Do I have to have one?” She clapped her hands. “Jacks, where are you?”

  I watched the Lab crawl out from under the hammock, stretch, and lay down again. “Would God’s visually challenged canine like to go for a walk today?” To which Jacks stood up as if by name, and, for a second, I felt awful for calling him visually challenged. Then again, he was shitting in the surf earlier.