The Glass House (23 page)

The strange man who had kidnapped him was changing their relationship from a bizarre father/son—like a police officer stopping a car that ran a red light—to an older brother/younger brother. Or was it to lover/lover?

The grey-haired freak suddenly stopped mid sentence and stared at Seth.

Seth stared back, then the freak left the room—forgetting to turn off the light.

• • •

Both men were weary. Two spent swimmers adrift on an ocean—of what?

Both knew that they couldn't continue this way indefinitely.

It was their eleventh bout—and both doubted there would be a twelfth.

WJ stared at the young man—a boy really—now handcuffed to the chair across a table from him. The boy's cancer was clearly spreading. His cheeks were a jaundiced, ghastly yellow. His breath was raspy and taken in short gulps, his weakness of limb obvious. But the boy sat proudly in his chair, his mind clearly awake and unaffected by the blight in his body, his eyes dark, clear and piercing. A smile creased his face.

More than ten days of brutal interrogation and the boy still smiled. WJ stood—as much to prove that he could and the boy couldn't as any need to change his perspective or stretch his legs. He tried to find the off beat, to speak when the boy exhaled. Once he found it sound burst from his mouth; “Wherever it is you go when you dream, take me with you.”

“Why?”

“So that I can feel . . .”

“Feel what?”

“Anything.”

He'd said it.

Seth almost couldn't believe it, but there it was—the key that he had in his back pocket that the grey-haired freak was so anxious to get.

He clearly hadn't meant to reveal it, but it had tumbled out of his mouth as surely as his teeth and tongue would have expelled a rotten grape. And there it lay between them, totally changing everything.

“Take me with you!”

“So you can learn how to feel?”

“Yes.”

That single word had removed whatever leverage the luring,
The Institution
charade and finally the kidnapping had gained him. “Take me with you,” WJ said again. No need now to hold back. “Wherever it is you go in your dreams, take me with you.”

Seth heard the echoes from the Old Testament's Book of Ruth—one of the many sections his father had insisted he read, then memorize. But looking at the grey-haired freak he knew that any reverberations from the old book were purely coincidental.

Seth allowed his eyes to roam past the strange man, then he took a deep breath and returned his eyes to him. He centred his voice the way he'd heard his father teach his actors—“Not on the tongue root—that's for scaredy-cats, but on the tip of your tongue so that your lips buzz as you speak and a slight sibilance becomes part of your speech.” He knew that metaphorically the ball was in his court, so he thrashed a hard one at the grey-haired freak. “What's your name!” He was pleased to hear that it came out as a command, not a question.

The man hesitated, then said, “WJ.”

Seth heard his father shouting, “Once your acting opponent opens a point of weakness, get in there and pry it open.”

“That's not a name. I asked you what your name was. So what's your name?”

“As I said, WJ.”

Seth hid his smile. The man's centre was in motion—good. Now how to increase that motion till he split apart. “Fine. You ask me to take you along with me and you won't even be honest with me as to what your stupid name is.”

“My name's WJ.”

Seth received the same mixed signal he had in the previous pronouncements from the man—WJ both was and was not this man's name. “What's your Christian name?”

More hesitation, then, “Bill.”

Again a truth and a nontruth. “William, isn't it?”

“Okay. William.”

“And the
J
?”

“Why do you need to know this?”

“Why do you need to be able to feel?”

Something heavy and silent sat between the two men. WJ crossed to the table and took his seat. “Enough about my name.”

“Why is your name such a fucking secret?” His father's stories about his Russian grandfather popped into his head. Apparently he had two famous sayings: “I don't trust white people” and “never smile long enough that a stranger can count your teeth.”

When Seth had first heard these statements he'd asked his father if his grandfather had been an African Canadian. His father had laughed—not a common thing for him. “Why are you laughing, Father?”

“Because your great-grandfather had skin so white it was almost translucent.”

“Then why—”

“He meant English people. He didn't trust English people.”

Old Torontonians,
Seth had thought at the time, then asked, “And the teeth-counting thing?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

But as Seth stared at the grey-haired freak across the table from
him, he guessed that his great-grandfather was talking about identity. The power of hiding one's identity—just like the
J
in WJ. “Is the
J
an initial for your middle or family name?” His demand came out in older brother/younger brother—good.

“Middle.”

A truth—but why hide a middle name? “Tell me, then—everyone has a stupid middle name. It's a Caucasian parent's last free kick at the can.” Father to son—even better.

“Jennings.”

“The
J
stands for Jennings? So you're a William Jennings? As in William Jennings Bryan? William Jennings Bryan the Scopes trial loser, three-time presidential candidate—each time slaughtered at the polls? That kind of William Jennings? And your last name, William Jennings?”

“Connelly. Now take me with you.”

“Just like that?”

“Yes just like that—take me with you.”

Seth realized how the power had shifted. William Jennings' last statement had clearly been in son/father.

Seth's smile broadened. “Do you dream, William Jennings?” That said father/son. Him the father, WJ the son.

WJ turned away, a wild look on his face.

“Don't even think of lying to me. Do you dream, William Jennings . . . Connelly?”

“No.” Younger brother talking to older brother.

Flat truth.

“Is that important?” Son begging a father.

“If you can't dream, you can't learn to feel—simple as that.”

“Then teach me how to dream.”

“Dream, so you can feel like the monk in the Duomo?” Seth demanded. And before W. J. Connelly nodded, Seth knew he had it, had it all: the syn website, the monk, the look of glory on the boy's face—on
his
face. So that's what he had in his back pocket that William Jennings Connelly was so desperate to get. Desperate enough to create the fake clinic. Desperate enough to kidnap him and keep him cuffed to the gurney all those days.

“Teach me. Please teach me.”

Good,
Seth thought again;
in very young son/father. Very good—got you!
“You have to dream first.”

“You've said as much, so teach me how to dream.” Young son/father. For the briefest moment, Seth thought of telling WJ about his two novels,
The Dream Chronicles,
which he'd left on the hard drive at the University of Victoria library, because there was a full explanation there of how to dream—how to waking dream.

“Please, I'll give you anything you want.” Lover/lover. “Anything!”

Enough health to see my fiftieth birthday,
Seth thought.

Seth looked down. A large red stain was growing at his crotch. The bloodstain didn't surprise him—the fact that he'd peed his pants without knowing it did. Sudden sharp pain in his gut caused him to drop his head to the table.

“Blood,” WJ said—Father/son.

“Get me some real medical help if you want me to teach you how to dream.” Seth saw WJ hesitate. “A dead man can't teach you anything. Get me some real help!”
Shit,
he thought, I said it in
son/father, shit!

“And if I do?” Clearly older brother/younger brother.

“I'll teach you.”

“When?” Father/son.

“After you take me to the ancient tree, I'll teach you how to dream.” A scream of pain came from his mouth.

“The ancient—”

“The tree as old as Africa.” And as he said those last words, the pain simply took him. And he retreated to the only world he trusted—the world of dreams—and hoped to hell that it would take him to the clearing and then to the great glass house.

SETH FORCED HIS HAND UP
into his dreamscape, his marker for knowing that he was awake in his dream. He moved his hand forward and he glided forward. Then, sensing something above him, he stopped. He turned his hand upward and his dreamscape turned skyward. And there it was.

The black speck.

It had been up there for a long time—longer than Seth could remember, at least as far back as the cold day they'd buried his mother. But lately it had stopped being a speck and was becoming a bird. A high-flying bird—circling, patiently.

And as it circled he heard the cracking, like when it was winter and he was a boy walking home from school stepping on the ice-covered puddles. Oozing, frigid water coming up over the top of his boots. He knew where he was. He had left the clearing and was making his way to the glass house. He thought that the cracking came from the glass house. Terrified, he broke into a run. He rounded the last bend in the path and was relieved to see that the great glass house was fully intact. Not a pane cracked or missing, not even a shard of glass on the ground. The figure in the door whose face he'd never seen, clearly waiting—waiting for him?

It was then that he heard the call of the great bird for the first time, no longer a speck but a condor, its wingspan well over ten
feet across, floating on the air in lazy circles, the centre of which—the apex—was him. And he understood what the cracking was. His cancer had finally broken through the wall of his bladder and was now alive in his bloodstream. A hungry entity—a searching, gliding thing. A water moccasin, its blunt snout poking into every crevice as its agile body sluiced down the slides of his arteries—looking, always looking, for a weakness to nose its way in.

And when it found one, the great bird would narrow the radius of its circling and slowly descend—for him.

He startled into waking—or was it another dream? Yes, he'd slid from the glass house and found himself on an isolated rocky outcropping surrounded by astoundingly tall leafless trees, every branch of which was occupied by birds. All completely, unworldly silent. They were grouped together by species, and much to Seth's surprise as he looked at them their collective names came to his lips. On the lowest branches were the birds of sympathy: a charm of goldfinches, an exaltation of larks, and a pitying of turtledoves. Above them the birds of judgment: a cast of hawks, a scold of jays, and a parliament of owls. And above them, hunched, the birds of evil: a conspiracy of ravens, a deceit of lapwings, and a murder of crows. And on the tallest tree on its highest branch, the birds of death, the ironically named: flight of condors.

And he knew, beyond knowing, that if he couldn't get back to the glass house and find a way to stay there that this tree-encircled rocky plateau would eventually be his place of ending—his death.

Then he saw them, the swans, and knew that his death was far nearer than he'd ever thought. Hundreds of them slowly, majestically moving towards him—encircling him. What were they called?

Ah yes.

A lamentation—a lamentation of swans.

Then the trees and the birds were gone and the space was empty except for a single Joshua tree—or was it a gas lamp post? Seth couldn't tell because it kept moving back and forth between
the two, sliding—worlds forcing themselves to align—but the one thing did remain constant and unvarying: the hanging boy, his fingernails blackened, his hands missing the baby finger on each, desperately trying to loosen the noose around his neck. Screaming.

SETH AWOKE WITH A START.

He went to rise and found himself attached to two IVs and surrounded by bleeping medical monitors. Behind one he saw a woman dressed as a nurse—or maybe she was a nurse. The equipment in the room was certainly the most elaborate medical stuff he'd seen since he came to the San Francisco Wellness Dream Clinic.

He tried to calculate how long ago that was—and couldn't.

“Welcome back.”

It was the woman in the nurse's getup.

“Where was I?”

“Pretty far away, but we stabilized you.”

“Are you really a nurse?”

The woman looked at him oddly, then said, “Yes, I think so. Are you really a patient?”

Seth ignored her comment. “What's happened to me?”

“Your body almost gave up the fight.”

“Fight?”

“That's what cancer is. You went into severe shock, and we almost lost you. That thing in your right hand is a morphine drip. Just press the red button when you're in pain and it should relieve it. If you use the morphine a lot we'll add a Benadryl drip.”

“Why?” Seth, despite himself, was warming to this woman.

“Because the morphine causes severe itchiness in most people.”

A truth.

She put on a pair of glasses and leaned over him to read the monitor above his head. The pencil in her breast pocket fell to the bed. Seth covered it with his hand. As he did he caught a reflection of himself in her lenses and couldn't believe what he saw. His face was round and puffy. Bags hung beneath his eyes, surrounded by large black circles.

He gingerly moved his hand up to his face and felt the puffiness there. “What's happened . . .”