The Glass House People (15 page)

"Wait a minute, Hanny Lynn. Hold on." He tried to raise her to her feet, but she stayed on the floor, her hands over her eyes. He knelt on the porch floor at her side and tentatively touched her thin, bare shoulder.

"This is all news to me, Hanny. I like you a lot. I think you're a nice girl. Young woman. But—"

"You don't know how I've longed for you," she whispered. "The first minute I saw you, I fell in love. You're like a god or something—I love everything about you. Your curly hair. Your body—"

"Hanny Lynn!"

"Every time I see you with Iris, well, my heart shrivels up just a little bit more. I've longed for you to touch me. And now, at last..." Her voice trailed off.

"Now at last what?" he asked wildly. "What do you mean?" He tried again to raise her to her feet, and this time she let him. They stood facing each other in front of the glider, her head tipped up. He was shaken by the pure light of desire he saw in her eyes. The air around them was fragrant with jasmine. Did Hanny and Iris share the same shampoo? Was it the scent of the jasmine growing at the side of the house? Or had Hanny Lynn been dipping into the perfume he'd given Iris for Christmas? He wouldn't put anything past her. He shook his head as she moved closer and put her arms around him.

"
You
know," she said. "You know you know. I've thanked God every time I've seen you look at me over Iris's shoulder when you held her, and she never knew your heart was with me. I thank God for every wink you've given me—every time you've let me know there is something for me to live for. That there is a chance. That there's hope!"

"Oh, Hanny Lynn, no. You've got it wrong." This was amazing. But he had to let her down gently. "I really do love Iris, and I want to marry her."

She smiled up at him, her mouth gentle. "I know you feel sorry for her—we all do. She's been coddled all her life because of her limp. It's natural you would want to take care of her. But there's no reason to go through with this, Clifton. You can't marry someone just because you feel sorry for her. You need to marry for love!"

How could she be serious? He didn't feel sorry for Iris at all. She was a strong, brave, talented woman, and he wanted more than anything to spend his life with her. Hanny's theatrics must be some bizarre practical joke she'd cooked up for a lark. Bernie was right: she had been reading too many teen romances. But maybe Bernie was in on it, too! He remembered now he'd once heard that Bernie was a great one for practical jokes. How to respond to something so ludicrous? That he didn't love Iris—that he loved, instead, this long-legged, stringy-haired little girl not even out of high school? Absurd! His mind told him how ridiculous the whole situation was even as his arms went up to hold her against him as she clung, face upturned, ready to be kissed.

How long they stood there he couldn't have said, but after a while he sat down on the glider again and it seemed somehow natural—or if not natural, then inevitable—that she would cuddle beside him, curled up with her head on his lap. He stroked her hair, not saying a word. She looked up at him, wide eyes brimming with joy.

Then a lovely, bright, flutelike voice, his own Iris's voice, reached his ears. She and her mother were walking up to the house, screened by the cover of bushes. In a split second Clifton thrust Hanny Lynn off his lap and leaped to his feet. Even before Iris and Mrs. Savage reached the top of the porch steps, Clifton was at Iris's side, helping her up the steps, reaching for her packages, holding her close. He felt his heart racing as if he had just narrowly escaped from some very great danger.

And what of Hanny Lynn? He darted a glance over at her where she stood, cornered now by her irate mother, who demanded to know why she hadn't been ready to leave when they were. Her look was contrite, but he knew that was purely for her mother's benefit. As he ushered Iris ahead of him through the screen door into the dimness of the house, he looked back once. And he met Hanny Lynn's wide blue gaze and her sexy, blatant wink.

Dear Ray,

I've been feeling pretty low. The tension around here is so draining—worse, even, than the horrible heat. We spent a day in the historic district, which was a relief, but now I keep thinking about history—not about America's history, but how families are connected to each other by bloodlines that stretch backward in a chain through time. How weird it is that we're all links on a long chain, like it or not. And I
don't
like it. This family of mine seems so complicated. It makes me wish for the legendary happy family—you know, parents who love each other, two kids, a dog, a house in the country with a picket fence....

Beth stopped writing. This wasn't the right tone. Ray wouldn't want to hear about her family problems. "You've got to go with the flow, sweetheart," she could imagine him saying. He'd drape one muscled arm across her shoulders in one of those spine-tingling hugs and lead her back to the worktable. He'd put a glass cutter in her hand. "You're an artist," he'd say, as he'd often said before. "And you're good. But you've got to concentrate. Don't let anybody get you down. Keep smiling."

But Beth didn't feel like smiling. She dropped her pad of notepaper, then kicked off against the grass and sent the old swing soaring. She pumped hard, wishing she could just fly off the swing and over the house, away from everyone inside. She'd fly back to California, find a house with a white picket fence and a perfect family, and move in with them.

It was funny to think she more or less had had that sort of family when her father was alive, even though the house they lived in was shared. Her father and mother looked happy in the pictures she had of them. There was a great photo of them standing in the chicken pen with their arms around each other. Her father carried Tom in a baby pack, and Beth was in the foreground, about two years old and a bit out of focus, laughing and throwing chicken feed. She liked that picture. They all looked so nice. The fence around the chicken pen was regular wire mesh, but if it were white picket, the legend would be almost perfect. Two kids. A house not really in the country—but when the mist came down on the Berkeley hills, civilization seemed miles away. Only the dog was missing in that picture. They didn't have Romps then.

Beth pumped the swing higher. Romps lay in the flower bed in the side yard, sleeping. He was old now, and Tom had changed from a cute thing in the baby pack into a dewy-eyed thing in love with Monica. Old Computer Brain—Beth still couldn't believe it. It was not that she had anything against love. But it did seem remarkably inappropriate that both her mother and her brother seemed to be falling in love while living with a family almost
destroyed
by love. Ray would say it was ironic. Beth let the swing slow, then scuffed her bare feet in the grass to stop. Damn that Clifton Becker! Everything was his fault.

When Beth and Tom entered the candy store later that afternoon, they found Monica struggling with an armload of boxes. "Hi!" she greeted them, depositing her armload onto the glass-topped counter. "Wouldn't want to buy a couple pounds of Gummi Bears, by any chance? Fresh shipment."

"How about one of your homemade doughnuts?" asked Tom. "I'm only going to buy the things touched by your own hands."

Beth rolled her eyes, but Monica laughed. "Oh, good. Then maybe you'll buy a couple of my pots, too."

"You sell pot?" he bantered. "Sorry, lady, but I make it a point not to dabble in drugs. I don't want my grandmother to think she's right about California boys!"

"I'm a potter," she told him, laughing. "I'll show you sometime. But they don't come cheap."

"Nothing about you is cheap," Tom said in his deepest voice. "I find you extremely valuable."

"You're a potter?" Beth asked before Tom could burst into a love song or something. "I'd love to see what you do."

"Beth's an artist, too," said Tom. "But the family genius stops there. I did, however, win a coloring contest at Pizza Plaza when I was eight."

"True talent!" Monica grinned at him, then ripped open the boxes of Gummi Bears and dumped the loose candy into the big bin. She dropped a metal scoop in on top of them and shut the lid. "What kind of artist are you?" she asked Beth. "Do you paint?"

"No. I work with stained glass. I'm going to open a shop with my boyfriend when I finish school next year."

"Wow! Can I see your stuff? Maybe we can get together soon and show off for each other!" She handed Beth and Tom each a doughnut. "Here. On the house."

"You're not going to make any money if you keep giving us freebies," Tom chided her.

"My dad would kill me if I charged Hannah Savage's kids one cent!" she said. "He told me last night that as far as he's concerned, the sun rises and sets in your mom's eyes. I wish I had a boyfriend who said things like that to me!"

I have
, thought Beth, remembering Ray's thin face and intense gaze as he'd hugged her and said she was the best teenage glass artist he'd ever seen. She waited indulgently as Tom dropped to one knee on the wooden floor and declared with passion that the sun rose and set in Monica's baby browns.

The shop door opened and a pack of little kids rushed in. "The movie starts in three minutes!" one called to Monica. "We need stuff to eat in there! Quick!"

She smiled at Beth and Tom, then shrugged. "Duty calls, I guess. Can we get together later?"

Tom nodded eagerly. "Sure! I'll call you before dinner and we'll set something up."

Beth remained silent, unsure whether he was planning a date or something that would include her.

"We wanted to talk to your dad for a few minutes," Tom told Monica. "Is he home?"

She had turned to the group of little kids but looked back now, curious. "He's upstairs. Looking for the bills he hasn't paid, or something. But why?"

Tom shrugged lightly. "We just wanted to talk to him."

"About Mom," added Beth.

Monica looked at them quizzically. "Want to know whether he'll be able to provide for your mother in the manner to which she's become accustomed?"

Tom glanced at Beth.

"Come on!" a little boy begged Monica. "Now it starts in two minutes!"

Monica shook back her dark hair. "That's what disapproving parents in books always ask the callow youth who comes to court their innocent daughter."

"Don't worry," said Beth. "We're not Mom's parents, and we don't mind at all if she dates your dad! We just want to ask him what Mom was like in high school."

"There's only one more minute!" shrieked a little girl.

Monica shrugged and waved a graceful hand at a door marked "Private" just inside the storeroom. "Through there and up the stairs. But don't blame me if you get lost in the rubble."

At the top of the narrow flight of stairs was a closed door. Tom rapped softly. Bernard's booming voice welcomed them: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!" They pushed the door open and stepped into the Clementses' living room.

Beth immediately saw that when Monica had said "chaos" she had not meant mere disarray. Beth stared at the incredible mess before her and thought perhaps this room was the very definition of "chaos."

"Well, hello!" cried Bernard from his seat at a desk by the window. "Come on in and sit down!"

At first glance Beth thought the curtains were drawn, but then she realized the light was obscured by the piles of unfolded laundry on the bookcases under one large window and by towering stacks of old newspapers on a radiator under the other. Bernard jumped up from his desk. "Just step over everything," he said cheerfully, and Beth and Tom waded toward him, past bundles of mail on low tables, stray socks, a broken alarm clock, a phone off the hook—Beth stared at it a moment before realizing it wasn't even plugged into an outlet.

Two cats twined themselves around and through the room's wreckage. There were lots of things for them to rub up against before they reached Beth's legs: droopy potted palms in wooden tubs, a floor lamp leaning to one side, several boxes of books. When the cats reached Beth, she knelt down to pat their heads and they purred in welcome.

"Great to see you!" Bernard shoved some stray papers off the couch. He didn't seem to care that they fluttered onto the floor. "What a nice reason to take a break. There's nothing worse than paying monthly bills, unless it's doing yearly taxes. You know what good old Ben Franklin said, don't you? 'Nothing is certain in life except death and taxes.' Or something like that."

"We don't want to interrupt," Beth said politely. "We just wanted to ask you a few things about Mom."

"No one I'd rather talk about!" Bernard moved a pile of library books off the couch, sidestepping quickly as the books tumbled onto the floor. "Why don't I get us something cold to drink? Soda? Lemonade? I might even be able to offer you some ice—if there is ice. Monica keeps after me, but I always forget to refill the trays." He grinned cheerfully.

Beth and Tom said they'd have lemonade. They settled back on the couch to wait for him to return. "Mom should see this place," whispered Tom. "She'd never call me a slob again!"

Bernard returned with their drinks and a paper plate of cookies. He set the refreshments in front of them on a box, then pulled a cushion off the couch. He settled himself comfortably on the floor with the cushion at his back, stretched out his long legs, and took a sip of lemonade. "Ahh, this is the life. Now, what can I tell you two about lovely Hanny Lynn?"

Tom and Beth looked at each other. Beth spoke first. "We heard that you and Mom dated in high school. We just wondered—well, you know. What she was like at that age?"

He raised his brows. "Writing her biography, are you?"

"We're just nosy." Tom grinned.

"It's more than that," Beth admitted. "She's never told us much of anything about her past, and now here we are—sort of surrounded by it. We're interested."

"The woman with a past," murmured Bernard. "It's usually best not to ask people about their pasts. Especially women. That's what I've learned." Then he winked at them. "Just a joke! So, seriously, what can I tell you? We dated only about a year—informally. Her parents were pretty strict, so we didn't really go out much. Sat out on her porch a lot. And we were together as much as we could be at school. I graduated a year before her. But we were friends for years before that—since she was in kindergarten. I've always known her. The candy store kid always gets to know everybody, one way or another."