Black Glass (22 page)

“You sound angry,” Henry said. “It's not that I couldn't love you. It's not that I don't already love you. Men always disappoint women. I'm not sure we can escape it.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Lily told him sharply. She put her head into the red tent of the sweatshirt and pulled it through. “I should have gotten your sexual history first,” she added. “I haven't done this since the rules changed.”

“I haven't been with a woman in ten years,” Henry said. Lily looked at his face in surprise.

“Before that it was five years,” he said. “And before that three, but that was two at once. That was the sixties. Before that it was fifteen years. And twenty before that. And two. And two. And before that almost a hundred.”

Lily stood up, pulling on Katherine's jeans. “I should have gotten your psychiatric history first,” she said. The faster she tried to dress, the more difficulties she had. She couldn't find one of Katherine's socks. She was too angry and frightened to look among Henry's clothes. She put on Katherine's shoes without it. “Come on, Jep,” she said.

“It can't mean anything,” Henry told her.

“It didn't. Forget it.” Lily left without the day pack. She hurried up the trail. Jep followed somewhat reluctantly. They made the crest of the hill; Lily looked behind her often to see if Henry was following. He wasn't. She went past the painting without stopping. Jep preceded her through the gate into Mattie's backyard.

Mattie and Katherine were waiting in the house. Katherine put her arms around her. “You went to the caves,” Katherine said. “Didn't you? I can tell.”

“Of course she did,” said Mattie. She stroked Lily's hair. “Of course she did.”

Lily stood stiffly inside Katherine's arms. “What the hell is going on?” she asked. She pushed away and looked at the two women. “You sent me up there, didn't you? You did! You and Egan and probably Allison Beale, too. Go to the caves, go to the caves. That's all I've heard since I got here. You dress me like some virginal sacrifice, fatten me up with Hostess cupcakes, and send me to him. But why?”

“It's a miracle,” said Mattie. “You were chosen. Can't you feel it?”

“I let some man pick me up in a bar. He turns out to be a nut.” Lily's voice rose higher. “Where's the miracle?”

“You slept with Henry,” said Mattie. “Henry chose
you.
That's the miracle.”

Lily ran up the stairs. She stripped Katherine's clothes off and put her own on. Mattie came and stood in the doorway. Lily walked around her and out of the room.

“Listen to me, Lily,” Mattie said. “You don't understand. He gave you as much as he can give anyone. That's why in the painting the woman's hands are empty. But that's
his
trap.
His
curse. Not yours. When you see that, you'll forgive him. Katherine and Allison and I all forgave him. I know you will, too, a loving woman like you.” Mattie reached out, grabbing Lily's sleeve. “Stay here with us. You can't go back to your old life. You won't be able to. You've been chosen.”

“Look,” said Lily. She took a deep breath and wiped at her eyes with her hands. “I wasn't chosen. Quite the opposite. I was picked up and discarded. By a man in his thirties and not the same man you slept with. Maybe you slept with a god. You go ahead and tell yourself that. What difference does it make? You were still picked up and discarded.” She shook loose of Mattie and edged down the stairs. She expected to be stopped, but she wasn't. At the front door, she turned. Mattie stood on the landing behind her. Mattie held out her hands. Lily shook her head. “I think you're pretty pathetic, if you want to know the truth. I'm not going to tell myself a lot of lies or listen to yours. I know who I am. I'm going. I won't be back. Don't expect me.”

Her car waited at the front of the house, just where she had parked it the first night. She ran from the porch. The keys were inside. Left and left again, past the bar where the martini glass tipped darkly in the window, and onto the freeway. Lily accelerated way past eighty and no one stopped her. The foothills sped by and became cities. When she felt that she was far enough away to be safe from small-town Madonnas and immortals who were cursed to endure centuries of casual sex with as many loving women as possible—which was damn few, in fact, if you believed the numbers they gave you—she slowed down. She arrived home in the early evening. As she was walking in the door, she noticed she was wearing her wedding ring.

David was sitting on the couch reading a book. “Here I am, David,” Lily said. “I'm here. I got a speeding ticket. I never looked to see how much it was for. I lost my ring playing poker, but I mortgaged the house and won it back. I lost a lot more, though. I lost my head. I'm halfhearted now. In fact, I'm not at all the woman I was. I've got to be honest with you.”

“I'm glad you're home,” said David. He went back to his book.

S
he was being chased. She kicked off her shoes, which were slowing her down. At the same time her heavy skirts vanished and she found herself in her usual work clothes. Relieved of the weight and constriction, she was able to run faster. She looked back. She was much faster than he was. Her heart was strong. Her strides were long and easy. He was never going to catch her now.

•   •   •

SHE WAS RIDING
the huntsman's horse and she couldn't remember why. It was an autumn red with a tangled mane. She was riding fast. A deer leapt in the meadow ahead of her. She saw the white blink of its tail.

She'd never ridden well, never had the insane fearlessness it took, but now she was able to enjoy the easiness of the horse's motion. She encouraged it to run faster.

It was night. The countryside was softened with patches of moonlight. She could go anywhere she liked, ride to the end of the world and back again. What she would find there was a castle with a toothed tower. Around the castle was a girdle of trees, too narrow to be called a forest, and yet so thick they admitted no light at all. She knew this. Even farther away were the stars. She looked up and saw three of them fall, one right after the other. She made a wish to ride until she reached them.

She herself was in farmland. She crossed a field and jumped a low stone fence. She avoided the cottages, homey though they seemed, with smoke rising from the roofs and a glow the color of butter pats at the windows. The horse ran and did not seem to tire.

She wore a cloak which, when she wrapped it tightly around her, rode up and left her legs bare. Her feet were cold. She turned around to look. No one was coming after her.

She reached a river. Its edges were green with algae and furry with silt. Toward the middle she could see the darkness of deep water. The horse made its own decisions. It ran along the shallow edge but didn't cross. Many yards later it ducked back away from the water and into a grove of trees. She lay along its neck, and the silver-backed leaves of aspens brushed over her hair.

•   •   •

SHE CLIMBED INTO
one of the trees. She regretted every tree she had never climbed. The only hard part was the first branch. After that it was easy, or else she was stronger than she'd ever been. Stronger than she needed to be. This excess of strength gave her a moment of joy as pure as any she could remember. The climbing seemed quite as natural as stair steps, and she went as high as she could, standing finally on a limb so thin it dipped under her weight, like a boat. She retreated downward, sat with her back against the trunk and one leg dangling. No one would ever think to look for her here.

Her hair had come loose and she let it all down. It was warm on her shoulders. “Mother,” she said, softly enough to blend with the wind in the leaves. “Help me.”

She meant her real mother. Her real mother was not there, had not been there since she was a little girl. It didn't mean there would be no help.

Above her were the stars. Below her, looking up, was a man. He was no one to be afraid of. Her dangling foot was bare. She did not cover it. Maybe she didn't need help. That would be the biggest help of all.

“Did you want me?” he said. She might have known him from somewhere. They might have been children together. “Or did you want me to go away?”

“Go away. Find your own tree.”

•   •   •

THEY WENT SWIMMING
together and she swam better than he did. She watched his arms, his shoulders rising darkly from the green water. He turned and saw that she was watching. “Do you know my name?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she said, although she couldn't remember it. She knew she was supposed to know it, although she could also see that he didn't expect her to. But she did feel that she knew who he was—his name was such a small part of that. “Does it start with a W?” she asked.

The sun was out. The surface of the water was a rough gold.

“What will you give me if I guess it?”

“What do you want?”

She looked past him. On the bank was a group of smiling women, her grandmother, her mother, and her stepmother, too, her sisters and stepsisters, all of them smiling at her. They waved. No one said, “Put your clothes on.” No one said, “Don't go in too deep now, dear.” She was a good swimmer, and there was no reason to be afraid. She couldn't think of a single thing she wanted. She flipped away, breaking the skin of the water with her legs.

She surfaced in a place where the lake held still to mirror the sky. When it settled, she looked down into it. She expected to see that she was beautiful, but she was not. A mirror only answers one question and it can't lie. She had completely lost her looks. She wondered what she had gotten in return.

•   •   •

THERE WAS A MIRROR
in the bedroom. It was dusty so her reflection was vague. But she was not beautiful. She wasn't upset about this and she noticed the fact, a little wonderingly. It didn't matter at all to her. Most people were taken in by appearances, but others weren't. She was healthy; she was strong. If she could manage to be kind and patient and witty and brave, there would be men who loved her for it. There would be men who found it exciting.

He lay among the blankets, looking up at her. “Your eyes,” he said. “Your incredible eyes.”

His own face was in shadow, but there was no reason to be afraid. She removed her dress. It was red. She laid it over the back of a chair. “Move over.”

She had never been in bed with this man before, but she wanted to be. It was late and no one knew where she was. In fact, her mother had told her explicitly not to come here, but there was no reason to be afraid. “I'll tell you what to do,” she said. “You must use your hand and your mouth. The other—it doesn't work for me. And I want to be first. You'll have to wait.”

“I'll love waiting,” he said. He covered her breast with his mouth, his hand moved between her legs. He knew how to touch her already. He kissed her other breast.

“Like that,” she said. “Just like that.” Her body began to tighten in anticipation.

He kissed her mouth. He kissed her mouth.

•   •   •

HE KISSED HER MOUTH
. It was not a hard kiss, but it opened her eyes. This was not the right face. She had never seen this man before and the look he gave her—she wasn't sure she liked it. Why was he kissing her, when she was asleep and had never seen him before? What was he doing in her bedroom? She was so frightened, she stopped breathing for a moment. She closed her eyes and wished him away.

He was still there. And there was pain. Her finger dripped with blood and when she tried to sit up, she was weak and encumbered by a heavy dress, a heavy coil of her own hair, a corset, tight and pointed shoes.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh.” She was about to cry and she didn't know this man to cry before him. Her tone was accusing. She pushed him and his face showed the surprise of this. He allowed himself to be pushed. If he hadn't, she was not strong enough to force it.

He was probably a very nice man. He was giving her a concerned look. She could see that he was tired. His clothes were ripped; his own hands were scratched. He had just done something hard, maybe dangerous. So maybe that was why he hadn't stopped to think how it might frighten her to wake up with a stranger kissing her as she lay on her back. Maybe that was why he hadn't noticed how her finger was bleeding. Because he hadn't, no matter how much she came to love him, there would always be a part of her afraid of him.

“I was having the most lovely dream,” she said. She was careful not to make her tone as angry as she felt.

L
inda knows, of course, that the gorgeous male waiting for her, holding the elevator door open with his left hand, cannot be moving into apartment 201. This is not the way life works. There are many possible explanations for the boxes stacked around his feet—he may be helping a friend move in, his girlfriend, perhaps. Someone equally blond and statuesque who will be Linda's new next-door neighbor, and Gretchen will point out that she is a sister, after all, and force everyone to be nice to her. Their few male guests will feel sorry for her, oppressed as she is by all that beauty, and there will be endless discourse on the tragic life of Marilyn Monroe.

The door slides shut. Linda reaches for the second-floor button, but so does he, and they both withdraw their hands quickly before touching. He takes a slight step backward, communicating his willingness to let her punch in the destination. She does so; the outline of the button for the second floor shines slightly. It is just below eye level. She watches it closely so as not to look at him, and she can feel him not looking at her. They share the embarrassment of closely confined strangers. The elevator does not move.

Linda is upset because she is nervous. This nervousness is in direct proportion to how attractive she finds him. She is very nervous. She tells herself sharply to stop being so juvenile.

He reaches past her and re-presses the button. “It's always like this,” Linda tells him. “When you're in a hurry, take the stairs.”

He turns slowly and looks at her. “I'm Dave Stone,” he says. “Just moving in.”

“Linda Connors. Apartment Two-oh-three.” So he will be living here. He and his girlfriend will move in together; they will both be neighbors, but she will still be a sister, and no one will be allowed to rip off another woman's man.

The elevator groans and shudders. It begins to lift. “I'm transferring up from Santa Barbara,” Dave says. “Have you ever been there? I know how this is going to sound, but you really do look familiar.”

“Nope.” The elevator jerks twice before stopping. Linda is expecting it and is braced against the side. Dave stumbles forward. “Maybe you've confused me with some movie star,” Linda suggests. “A common mistake.” She gives the door a slight push to open it. “My roommate Lauren says I have Jack Lemmon's chin,” she adds, and leaves him struggling to unload his boxes before the elevator closes up and moves on.

Inside the apartment Linda gets herself a glass of milk. Her mood now is good. She has stood next to a man, a strange man, and she has talked with him. She actually spoke first instead of merely answering his questions. And she tells herself, though it is hard to ever be sure of these things, that nothing about the conversation would have told him this was difficult for her.

The truth is that men frighten Linda. The more a particular man appeals to her, the more frightening he becomes. Linda knows almost nothing about men, in spite of having had a father practically her whole life. She believes that men are fundamentally different from women, that they have mysterious needs and assess women according to bizarre standards on which she herself never measures very high. Some years back she read in “The Question Man,” a daily column in the
San Francisco Chronicle,
that men mentally undress women when they pass them on the street. Linda has never recovered from the shock of this.

One of Linda's roommates, a red-haired woman named Julie, is curled up with a book. It is a paperback entitled
The Arrangement.
Julie likes books with explicit sex. Julie already knows she is destined to be some married man's lover and has told Linda so. Linda reads Jane Austen. For fun.

“Have you seen what's moving in next door?” Julie asks.

“I met him. Big, blond . . . his name is Dave.”

“Chiseled features,” says Julie. “That's what you call those. And he's not the only one. There's a little dark one, too, and a couple of brothers who haven't arrived yet.”

Four of them. And four women inside Linda's own apartment. There seems to Linda to be a certain inescapable logic at work here. She pictures a quadruple wedding (where she is the only one technically entitled to wear white, but no one need know this) and then life in a cozy suburban quadruplex. It is only with some effort that Linda remembers that Dave did not really seem to be her type, being unquestionably more attractive than she is. “Not my type” is the designation Linda applies to men who pay no attention to her. It is an infinite set. Those few men who are Linda's type she invariably dislikes. She drinks her milk and makes the realistic decision to forget Dave forever. They'll always have their elevator ride. . . .

•   •   •

WELCOME TO
Comparative Romance I. You have just experienced the Initial Encounter. The point of view is female: We shall be sticking to this perspective through most of this term. And we shall access only one mind at a time. This gives a more accurate sense of what it would be like to be an actual participant. It is not uncommon for those inexperienced in the process of absorption to have an uncomfortable reaction. Is anyone feeling at all queasy? Claustrophobic? No? Good.

Then let me make a few quick points about the Encounter and we will return. You must remember, owing to the time required by Transmission and Processing, that these events are not current. We are involved here in a historical romance. The location is the city of Berkeley, before its secession. The year, according to local calculation, is 1969, a time thought by some to have been critical in the evolution of male/female relationships. Can anyone here provide a context?

Very good. In addition to the war, the assassinations, and the riots, we have a women's movement which is just becoming militant again. We have many women who are still a little uncomfortable about this. “I believe in equal rights for women, but I'm not a feminist,” is the proper feminine dogma at this time. To call oneself a feminist is to admit to being ugly. Most women are reluctant to do this. Particularly on the West Coast.

Are there any questions? If not, let's locate ourselves and Linda at Encounter Number Two. Are we all ready?

Well?

I'm taking that as an affirmative.

•   •   •

LINDA MEETS DAVE
again the next morning on the stairs. He is returning from campus and invites her in for a cup of coffee in exchange for her advice in choosing classes. She is on her way to the library but decides it would be more educational to see the inside of apartment 201. She has an anthropological curiosity about men living together. What do they eat? Who does the dishes? Who cleans the toilets? Her hands are cold so she sticks them into the opposite cuffs of her sweater sleeves as she follows Dave back up the stairs.

Her first impression is that the male sex is much neater than the sex to which she belongs herself. Everything has already been unpacked. There are pictures on the walls, tasteful pictures, a small print of Rembrandt's thoughtful knight, the gold in the helmet echoing the tones of the shag carpet, a bird's-eye view of the Crucifixion, a bus poster which reads
WHY DO YOU THINK THEY CALL IT DOPE?
The dishes all match; the avocado Formica has been sponged so recently it is still wet.

Linda is so busy collecting data she forgets to tell Dave she doesn't really want coffee. He hands her a steaming cup and she notices with dismay that he has not even left her room to soften the taste with milk. She uses the cup to warm her hands, smells it tentatively. “Did you know,” she asks him, “that in Sweden they have a variation on our bag ladies they call ‘coffee bitches'? These are supposed to be women who've gone mad from drinking too much coffee. It gives you a whole new perspective on Mrs. Olsen, doesn't it?”

She hears a key turning in the door. “Kenneth,” says Dave, and Kenneth joins them in the kitchen, his face a little flushed from the cold air, his eyes dark and intense. Kenneth gives Linda the impression of being somehow concentrated, as if too much energy has been packed into too small a package.

“This is Linda,” Dave tells Kenneth.

“Hello, Linda,” Kenneth says. He starts moving the clean dishes out of the drainer and onto the shelves. “I love this place.” He gestures expansively with a plastic tumbler. “We were right to come here. I told you so.” He is sorting the silverware. “I've been over at Sproul, what—half an hour? And in that time I got hit with a Frisbee, someone tried to sign me into the Sexual Freedom League, I listened to this whole debate on the merits of burning New York City to the ground, and a girl came up out of nowhere and kissed me. This is a great place.”

“What was the pro side of burning New York?” asked Dave. “I've got relatives there.”

“No more blackouts.” Kenneth puts a coffee cup away, then takes it out again immediately. Linda sees her chance.

“Take mine,” she urges. “I haven't touched it. Really.” She gives Dave an apologetic smile. “Sorry. I meant to tell you before you poured. I hate coffee.”

“It's okay,” he says evenly. “I'll never ask you over for coffee again.” He turns to Kenneth. “Tell Linda what happened last night.”

“Oh, God.” Kenneth takes Linda's coffee and sips at it. He settles into the chair next to her, leaning back on two legs. Linda decides she is attracted to him as well. She looks away from him. “Last night,” he begins, “this guy came to our door looking for a friend of his named Jim Harper. I said we were new to the building, but I didn't think there was a Jim Harper here.”

“I don't know a Jim Harper,” Linda says. “In fact, you're practically the only men. Except for—”

“So he says Jim Harper might be living under an alias and have we seen any little brown guys around. I say, ‘Is he a Negro?' and he says, ‘No, he's just a little brown guy.'”

“So,” Dave finishes, “Ken tells him we'll set out some snares tonight and let him know in the morning if we've caught anything. Who are the other men in the building? Are they little and brown?”

“There's only one. Dudley Petersen. And no. He's middle-aged, middle-sized, medium coloring. We think he's a CIA agent, because he's so cunningly nondescript and he won't tell us what he does.”

“You could live your whole life in Santa Barbara without anyone coming to your door looking for small, brown men,” Kenneth tells Linda. “I love this place.”

Linda does not respond. She is thinking about Dudley. Last summer he'd gone to Hawaii for two weeks—on vacation, he said, but she wasn't born yesterday. She knows a Pacific Rim assignment when she sees one. He'd asked her to water his ferns. Apparently she'd been overzealous. She wouldn't have thought it possible to overwater a fern. There'd been bad feelings on his return. But while she had access to his apartment she'd found a shelf of pornographic books. Quite by accident. She'd brought them downstairs and shared them with her roommates. Really funny stuff—they'd taken turns reading it aloud: “He had the largest hands Cybelle had ever seen.” . . . “‘No,' she moaned. ‘No.' Or was she saying ‘More. More?'” . . . “Her silken breasts swelled as he stroked them. She drew his head down until his mouth brushed the nipples.”

It all reminded her of an article the
Chronicle
had once run in the women's section. An expert in female psychology (an obscure branch of the larger field) had argued that small-breasted women were using their bodies to repress and reject their femininity because they would rather be men. Under hypnosis, with the help of a trained professional, these women could come to accept themselves as women and their breasts would grow. This happy result had been documented in at least three cases.

What had struck Linda most about the article was its very accusing tone. Men liked women to have large breasts; it was highly suspect, if not downright bitchy, the way some women refused to provide them. Linda feels Kenneth looking at her. Mentally undressing her? Why, even as they speak, Dave and Kenneth are probably asking themselves why her breasts are so small. Because she is cold and nervous, Linda has been sitting with her arms crossed over her chest. Now she deliberately uncrosses them.

“When do the rest of you arrive?” she asks distantly.

Dave looks himself over. “I'm all here,” he says. “This is it.”

“No. Your other roommates. The brothers.”

There is a moment's silence while Dave and Kenneth drink their coffee. Then they both speak at once. “We couldn't afford the apartment just the two of us,” Kenneth says, while Dave is saying, “The Flying Zukini Brothers? You mean you haven't met them yet? You are in for a treat.”

“They're here already,” Kenneth adds. “God, are they here. They have presence, if you know what I mean. Even when they're not here, they're here.”

“Go home while you can,” advises Dave. “Go home to your small brown men.” His eyes are just visible over the tilted rim of his coffee cup.

Footsteps stamp at the doorway. There is a sound of keys. “Too late,” says Dave ominously as the door swings open. Two clean-cut men in T-shirts which show their muscled arms try to come through the door together. They catch, in charmingly masculine fashion, at the shoulders. They are nice-looking, but somehow Linda knows the quadruple wedding is off. No one would take the last name of Zukini anyway, not even if they hyphenated it.

“I got a car!” says the first of the brothers through the door. “I mean, I put the money down and it's sitting in the basement. I drove it home!” He accelerates into a discussion of RPMs, variations in mileage, painless monthly payments. Man talk. Linda is bored.

“Linda, this is Fred,” says Dave. “The other one is Frank.”

“You want to go see the car?”

“I got a class.”

“Good thinking.”

Linda shifts from one foot to the other, feeling awkward and grateful for Fred's noise, which makes it less obvious. She wants to say something intelligent before she pushes her way through the clot of men blocking the door, and the longer she puts it off the more awkward it becomes. She gives up on the intelligent part. “Thanks for the coffee,” she says to Dave. She narrowly misses Fred's fist, which has swung good-naturedly past her ear and settled into Kenneth's shoulder.