Glass Boys (10 page)

Shortly after he died, her sister met a man of some affluence, and she moved to Cape Breton, into a brick mansion with a peaked roof and a sunroom. Perennial garden full of phlox and dianthus. And Mrs. Glass was alone then, with young Garrett, and not two pennies to rub together. She soon discovered that her perfect smiling husband owed every cent they had saved. Not even enough left for a few cups of flour. Requests for loans from her sister were eventually met with silence. Unanswered letters. Unreturned calls. Miss Piddle, the landlady, threatened to kick mother and son out as soon as the first leaf turned green. “I don't rent for free,” she snipped. Mrs. Glass would have to send the boy away, go to the city, find work. A plan was beginning to form, until she received a half nod from Eli Fagan. The man from Knife's Point, who sat in the smoky corner of the Legion, never danced, but decided to take a wife to cook and clean, alleviate the frequent throb that tormented his dreams. She knew about Eli Fagan, but her options were limited—who was going to take on a woman with a young son? A young son who had gone a mite queer in the head since the day he was plucked from the sea. And as her mother always said, “The devil ye knows is always finer than the devil ye don't.” Few words from the reverend, and she transformed from a Glass to a Fagan. Wanted the boy to switch too, but Eli wouldn't hear of it, and the child remained a Glass.

But that business was neither here nor there. No point to wallow when it made no difference to her current state. A husband who was like a kettle perched over an uncertain flame. A son who spent most of his days lost inside his head. A five-year-old daughter who already knew how to use her doe eyes and snarl of brown hair to get just what she wanted. And now, a third child on the way. Another girl, Mrs. Fagan suspected. Girls made her sick for the entire nine months, wide band around her neck, driest of heaves, and all she could keep in her gullet was package after package of Purity gingersnaps soaked to a golden mush in bowls of warm milk.

No, she didn't intend to look up, see the pretty face of the woman who had blocked her way. Felt no need to feign embarrassment or utter an excuse to someone who would only view her shabby clothes and saucy daughter with pity or anger or disgust. Not a common square inch of ground between them, she and Mrs. Trench. Yes, she knew who the woman was, could identify her in her side vision. Married to the last member of the Trench family, and Mrs. Fagan understood full well that her own husband had helped finish the second last one off.

WILDA TRENCH, cheeks shiny and plump from another pregnancy, needed two packages of gingersnaps. She had a recipe for squares that used a base made of butter and crushed cookies, quarter teaspoon of a spice she couldn't remember, but was certain she'd find in the varnished wooden rack that hung beside the stove. Lewis would like this dessert, she was certain, and he would sneak bites of it continuously until the glass dish was empty. Although she had never learned how to break an egg, she could feel the results of her efforts when she hugged her husband, his skin stretched and taut, nourished stores of fat expanding beneath.

That part of her life, slicing moose and sifting flour, scrubbing floors and darning socks, was not difficult. In many ways, she enjoyed the continuity. A bed made, slept in, messed, remade. Easy, simple, and it gave her a sense of purpose. But her newfound well-being teetered after she had her son. Even now, seated inside the grocery cart, three-year-old Melvin was watching her. With his patient eyes. Legs folded, seed-stitch hat and mittens laid neatly on his lap, he followed her every move. Each time Wilda would touch the edge of the cart, his small hand would reach up, rest lightly on her fingers. Always trying to connect with her, always trying to catch her eye. Not with the intent of gaining a sweet, as most children might do, but with an earnestness that made her squirm inside her boots.

Don't look at me like that,
she wanted to say.

Like what?

Like I got hold of your heart.

He had been that way since he was born. She had arrived at the hospital's glass doors with a hardened stomach, stabbing pain in her back, awoke hours later, groggy, cramps a hazy delusion, stomach now an undercooked cake, stomping near the oven door. A nurse handed her a swaddled parcel, only five pounds, face wrinkled like a dried scrap of apple. And she held it reluctantly, stared in quiet panic as the old man hand wriggled free from the swaddling and five tiny digits, impossibly long, curled firmly around her own finger.

In those early days with her son, she frequently thought about nutty Rosie Crowder, roving up and down the laneway in Teeter Beach. Limp hair parted and tied in bows, chubby cheeks marked with dollops of bright pink rouge. In her arms, Rosie always cradled a blanketed rock. Desperate for a real child. Screaming out to any man who was within earshot, “I loves backseat bingo. Plays for free, I does. C'mon, now. C'mon.” Legs spread, skirt held up to her waist, slip askew, hips swaying. “C'mon, fellers. Put a dollie in me. I wants a dollie.” Some days, she'd be gripping a fence, rollicking back and forth, crying, “Me eggs. Me eggs. They's lettin loose.” And the neighborhood youngsters would pelt her with slippery caplin they had plucked from the waves, chant, “Rotty Crowlegs got a henhouse in her drawers. A henhouse jammed up her arse.”

One Sunday morning, just before communion, Rosie rushed to the front of the church, spread herself out on the floor in front of the pulpit. Announced to the wooden ceiling beams and the astonished congregation that she was after Mary's secret, would take one from Jesus, she wasn't fussy. Tugged at the neck of her dress, buttons jumping like grasshoppers, cleavage revealed. Audible gasps and clean hands rising up to cover loose wattles, and father and cousin dashed towards Rosie, helped her to her feet, and guided (hauled, rather) her out the side door. Then, shortly after that, Rosie vanished. Carted off to somewhere padded, an institution where she wouldn't trouble anyone. Wouldn't plant any more seeds in the minds of the impressionable youth of Teeter Beach.

During those couple of years, Wilda had paid her no mind. The woman was simply background buzz, barely registered, as Wilda roamed about in a pleasant state of moderate inebriation. Perhaps because of Rosie, no one bothered Wilda. Wilda's actions were merely breezes while Rosie's were full gale storms. But now, it upset Wilda that Crowlegs took up residence inside her mind, with absolute clarity, during those early days as a mother. Troubled her for ages. Why would this woman's need, soaked with such agony, fill her head? Every time Melvin whimpered, and Wilda's hands patted him with mechanical motion, she would see that woman's hands, vigorously stroking the bottom of her cradled mound. Complete devotion to cold rock.

When Wilda and Lewis took Melvin home, the nurses were sorry to see him go. “He's a real honey ham,” they said. “Never so much as squeaked.” But Wilda heard them saying, “What Rosie wouldn't do to get her hands on that one.” When alone, Wilda would place him in the crib, watch his arms flail, his hands trying to find her. And then she would chastise herself— what was wrong with her? Why did such helplessness water the knot of fear in her stomach, making it swell and flourish? She thought of Rosie, offering continual loving pecks on her stone's flat face, leaning in to inhale the saltwater smell trapped in the miniscule holes of its body. Her eyes wild and weepy. Bottom lip quivering with exaltation. These images made Wilda close the bedroom door, and pray that Melvin would be transformed into someone spiteful and aggressive upon waking. That he would develop an unending wail, like a siren that would pierce an eardrum. A baby that even Rosie would want to abandon on the beach with his millions of rounded brothers and sisters chattering in the waves.

“OOPS,” WILDA SAID,
when the carts struck each other. She glanced upwards, saw Mrs. Fagan standing before her, belly ripe, young girl in hitched tights, hugging a naked plastic doll with shorn hair, eyelids and lips painted with childish streaks of crayon. “Oh, I'm sorry. Not watching where I'm going.”

Wilda knew only a little about Mrs. Fagan. She knew that Mrs. Fagan's husband had some undefined hand in the death of her brother-in-law, Roy Trench. If she ever crossed paths with a Fagan, Lewis had instructed more than once, she was to say nothing. Turn and walk the other way. “Devil got his hand on every one of them,” he'd said. But when Wilda saw Mrs. Fagan now, up close, carts touching, she felt curiously drawn to the older woman. As though, in some antique time, there was an unspoken kinship between the two of them. That perhaps, if they were able to speak freely during an afternoon of tea and cards, they would find a common strand in their life stories.

Wilda put two fingers to her mouth, then lowered them. Eyebrows raised, she said, “Mrs. Fagan?”

The woman jumped slightly, as though startled by hearing her own name, then glanced up, met Wilda's eyes for only a split instant. She made no response, other than seizing three packages of biscuits, clutching them to her bump, grasping her daughter by the wrist and trotting towards the registers. Boots battering the floor. Left her cart, still blocking the aisle.

Wilda blinked several times at the empty space where Mrs.Fagan had been standing. She could still see the woman's eyes, hovering there, in a phantom head, row of canned peas as a backdrop. Wilda looked down at her fingernails, ends nibbled clean away, though not enough so anyone would notice.

It was foolish of Wilda to have spoken, to have momentarily wished for a response. In that flash before she opened her mouth, she imagined that she and Mrs. Fagan shared common ground. Both outsiders in Knife's Point. Both throwing something off into the air, some strangeness that let the other women know they were not raised here. That they did not belong. They had somehow stolen in, mixed in with the compost, potato plants sprouting among the cabbages.

Placing a hand to her abdomen, Wilda took several deep breaths, then removed the required gingersnaps from the shelf, dropped them in beside Melvin. He did not miss the opportunity to graze her hand as it moved past him, but Wilda did not acknowledge his touch.

She slid Mrs. Fagan's cart to the side, waited another moment until the woman had left the store, and made her way to the checkout. Paid with a handful of warm coins from her skirt pocket, and wobbled out into the slippery lot, almost empty with only a few cars. Melvin toddled along behind her, arms out in an open hug.

Wilda shuddered as snow found its way underneath the knot of her hair, floated down the folds of fabric near her neck. It had grown darker, sky like lead, and she had the sense that more snow was coming. Hurrying, she helped Melvin into the front seat, layered the few brown paper bags in around him.

She had seen something in Mrs. Fagan's dull dry eyes. A kind of passive detachment. A nothingness. And even though Mrs. Fagan barely met her stare, they were familiar, those eyes, as though they were offering a sneaky reflection of her own inner thoughts. Wilda realized that Mrs. Fagan's face was the exact opposite of Rosie Crowder's. Both women lost, one from complete lack of desire, while the other was overwhelmed by it. Why then, Wilda wondered, did she find some wisp of comfort in the flatness of Mrs. Fagan's expression? Why couldn't those mental images of Rosie's adoration nudge Wilda in that mothering direction? Wilda didn't want to know, and she pinched her mind as it began to wander. “You good?” she asked Melvin, and when he nodded, his chin scratching the opening of a bag, she closed the door, shuffled across the gravel lot to her side, and drove home with the radio on.

14

“WHAT IS RAPTURE, Mama?” young Garrett once asked his mother as they trudged over the dark snow-covered roads. He had been thinking of the young boys in their church clothes, each holding a candle, their voices melting together as they sang Christmas carols. Standing side by side, swaying slightly, they looked so heavenly, Garrett had to hold his jaw closed with wet mittens. When their mouths formed perfect O's, Garrett couldn't bear the joy that peaked within him, and he had to stare down at the glossy tips of his winter boots.

“My Lordie,” she said. “Now there's a word.”

“Do you know rapture?”

“What a foolish question.” She increased her speed, soaked boots slamming into mounds of slush, making them spray. “None of us knows that, Garrett Glass. And none of us ever will.”

But Garrett knew his mother was wrong. Garrett did know rapture. He had felt it deep in his flesh. And though he had wondered if his devotion was wicked, one morning at Sunday school, the reverend had explained it all to him. Explained to ten-year-old Garrett that love was something special, something pure.

During much of the jumble of Garrett's childhood, he had attended Sunday school. After the first ten minutes of service, the children would quietly leave the church, head outside to the newly constructed church hall. The boys were separated from the girls, and Mrs. Nearly, their particular teacher, would read stories to them or talk about being good Christians. The complexities of being good young men. Sometimes she would bring scraps of brown paper and broken crayons, let them color pictures of the animals marching up the wooden ramp to Noah's ark. Or read them Bible stories from a book with yellowed pages. One week, she surprised the group and pulled out a dozen small black balls. “If you youngsters is well-behaved,” Mrs. Nearly said, “we'll play a game.” “What game! What game!” “'Tis called Fightin' Sin.” Well, they were as good as could be, and she let the balls loose on the concrete floor. Explained to them that each ball represented an offense, and, “You got to give that sin a good kick.” The children ran about screaming and weaving and striking the hard balls with their shiny Sunday shoes. “Stay away from Cussing. Don't Steal,” she'd shriek. “Good one, Sammy. Knock Disobedience right into next week!” Garrett was slow and awkward, tripped over his tight shoes, and he was struck in the thighs and backside, his left cheekbone, his shoulder, by sin more times than he could count. When the game ended, nine of the twelve were lying at his feet.