The Glass House People (18 page)

Then the door opened softly. "Good morning," murmured her mother, coming in to sit on the edge of Beth's bed.

"Hi."

"I just wanted to see how you and Tom were. You know. After last night." She stroked Beth's hair. "You look lonely, lying here wide-awake "

"I'm just hot."

"Hot and lonely. Don't think I don't know it. And I'm sorry, honey, really I am."

"I'm so sure." She just wanted to lie there with Romps. In peace. Was that impossible, too? "If you were really sorry, you'd pack up and take us back home."

Hannah shook her head. "Look, why don't you work some more on your new window? When will you let us see it?"

"I'll work on it later."

"It's such a wonderful hobby for you," said Hannah.

"It's not a hobby, Mom! It's my life's work." Beth's voice was bitter. "You used to say I had real talent! And you were all for my opening a shop with Ray when I finish school. But now my work is just a hobby. Probably you don't even like Ray anymore, right?" She felt her temper flare but was aware somewhere deep inside that her real anger was at Aunt Iris, not her mother.

"Of course I like Ray," Hannah said mildly. "Though he
is
really a bit old for you."

"Oh, great. You didn't think that when we first went out."

"I'm not going to meddle in your love life, Beth! But I've just been thinking about a lot of things. Being back here puts things in a different perspective, I'm afraid. Makes me remember living here and loving Clifton.... He was just as much older than me as Ray is older than you. Ten years."

"So he was too old for you?"

"Probably. But I didn't know it then." She hesitated. "When you're young and in love for the first time, it's hard to see clearly."

"Look, I'm not in the same situation at all."

"Not exactly," Hannah agreed. "And I hope you end up much happier than I did." She glanced around the room, and her voice grew dreamy. "Still, I
was
happy when I was in this room. I've always loved this room."

"The Lodge," said Beth with a scowl. She stared up at the ceiling. "See that crack, Mom?"

But Hannah wasn't listening. She was staring around the room as if enraptured by it. "I used to come in here," she murmured. "I'd go through his things when he was at work. I just wanted to be near his things, touch them. It was almost like being with him in person. They had this smell to them; all his things did. A wonderful, Cliftony smell."

This was getting embarrassing. Beth traced circles on the sheet with her finger, listening.

"I'd pick up the papers on his desk and run my hands over them—he had held them in
his
hands! Oh, I was lost then. I'd come in when no one was around and look at his clothes in the dresser drawers, crumple them against my face, try to imagine what it would be like to be Clifton. Or to be held by him. Later I knew about
that!
And I'd lie across the hall at night in my room and hear him typing. Everyone else would fall asleep, but I'd be there listening, feeling close to him." Hannah dropped her head into her hands.

"Oh, Mom!"

"I loved him more than I've ever loved anyone, Beth! It's something I'm still not over. Even now, sitting here in this room, he's drifting all over the place. I can feel it. And I get this incredible urge. The pull to—"

"To what?" asked Beth as Hannah jumped down off the bed.

"To snoop! To hold something of his! Oh, Beth, I just wish—" Then she fell silent. Beth watched while her mother moved restlessly around the room. "I don't know."

Beth didn't know, either. She couldn't believe the way her mother was acting. Talk about drifting ... Finally, because Hannah just stood at the dresser staring at herself in the mirror, Beth cleared her throat. "Well, you're lucky he never caught you snooping."

Hannah laughed shakily. "I wish he had. We enjoyed our confrontations." She turned away from the dresser, and her face seemed pale despite her tan. "We were in here together that night—" She closed her eyes. "That was when they found out how much we loved each other. I thought your grandmother was going to kill me."

"Bernard sort of mentioned she was that type," mused Beth.

Hannah's eyes flew open. "What type? What do you mean?" Her gaze was sharp. All the dreaminess of the moment before dissolved.

"Oh, I mean—well, he did! Tom and I saw him the other day at the shop, and we asked him if he thought Aunt Iris had pushed Clifton and he said no, but then he said how Grandmother likes to control people, and then Tom thought maybe Grandmother pushed Clifton herself because she was so mad she couldn't control him...." Her voice dwindled, sounding unconvinced.

Hannah frowned. "I don't like that, Beth. I don't like it at all. You are not to go gossiping about family matters to outsiders! All families have problems, and the problems are to be kept private. You're talking about my mother! Please try to remember that you're part of this family! You're not some detective out to solve a crime! What about family loyalty?"

"Well, what about it, Mom?" Beth clenched her fingers in Romps's soft fur. "Loyalty and devotion aren't really familiar concepts in this house, are they? But okay! I won't talk about anything with anybody. I'll just sit tight and wait till we can get out of here!"

"Fine." Hannah crossed her arms over her chest. She turned and left the room.

Beth stood staring after her for a moment, then flopped back down onto her bed. Family loyalty! She'd start laughing in that hysterical Aunt Iris voice if her mother said anything else about family loyalty. She might start laughing wildly anyway, just from the strain of this horrible mystery that went nowhere. She was actually considering letting out an experimental chuckle when the phone began to ring downstairs.

It would be Mark calling for Tom, predicted Beth, gazing up at the crack on the ceiling. They were working on some thrilling new computer program.

But Grandmother's voice called up the stairs: "Elisabeth? Bernie Clements's girl is on the phone wanting to talk to you!"

She ran down the stairs to the dining room and picked up the receiver from the phone on the little wooden stand in the corner. Tom sat at the breakfast table with a plate of scrapple. Grandmother was finishing a cup of coffee. There was no sign of Aunt Iris.

"Hello!" she said.

"Hi, Beth," said Monica's cheerful voice. "Hope I didn't wake you up or anything. But I was wondering whether you—and Tom, I hope—would come with me to the art museum downtown. They're having a summer exhibit of local artists and some of my pots are in it."

"Wow! You're really in a museum? A real museum?"

"A real live museum!" giggled Monica. "Really and truly. I can hardly believe it myself. It's because I won the city award for high school pottery last semester. So the stuff I made in my art class gets a place of honor."

"I'd love to come. When should we leave?"

"How about now? We can get lunch in the city."

"No problem!" Beth felt lighter suddenly. If ever she needed to get away from Spring Street, it was now. Just knowing an escape was at hand made the heavy atmosphere of the house seem to lift. The tense moment with her mother just now might have happened ages ago. And she was suddenly quite hungry—for the first time, it seemed, in weeks. She'd devour a cheesesteak sandwich and a big, salty Philadelphia pretzel slathered with mustard.

"Great! I'll see if I can get Dad's car. Otherwise we can take the bus." Monica hesitated. "And Beth? Can you let me talk to Tom?"

"Oh. Sure. He's stuffing himself with breakfast, but I'll try to convince him to come talk to you." She motioned for Tom to come to the phone. "Well, you're in luck," she said into the receiver. "He's on his way, though it's a hard thing you're asking of him. A boy needs his food, you know—"

Tom grabbed the phone with a growl, and she ran back upstairs to get ready.

Monica was a much better driver than her dad, Beth noted with relief as they drove down Penn's Pike toward the highway. She was glad Tom hadn't been able to come with them after all; he had already made plans with his computer buddy, Mark.

"Am I a computer widow already?" Monica had joked when she arrived to pick Beth up and found Tom waiting on the porch, a stack of computer magazines on his lap.

"I really would rather be with you," he told her earnestly. "It's just that I promised Mark I'd teach him HyperCard—"

"Say no more," Monica protested, holding up her hand. "I could never hope to compete with HyperCard!"

"Oh, I don't know about that," he said, getting up to hug her good-bye. "She doesn't know a thing about making pots."

Beth had felt a pang as she watched them. They'd fallen into their new relationship so easily. Maybe there would be a letter from Ray today.

Now the two girls drove along the highway toward the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Beth leaned her head back and turned her face to the warm breeze rushing in from the window. The wind on her face blew the last of the Spring Street cobwebs from her mind. Even the memories of last night's scene with Aunt Iris and this morning's argument with her mother faded.

Monica asked Beth about her glasswork. Beth told her about the plans for a shop with Ray.

"Sounds great," Monica said, signaling to exit. She changed lanes carefully and piloted the car down the exit ramp. "I sometimes think I'd like to own a shop, too—or a gallery. But it's too soon for me to make plans for the far-off future. I'm trying to concentrate on my applications to different art schools now. There's this one in New York City that's supposed to be fantastic. But there are also two great programs I'd kill to get into—one's in Portugal and the other's in Paris."

"Europe!" Beth had only ever considered travel in Europe as part of the fantasy in which she ferreted out the secret of the ancient glass colors. "That seems so far away."

"Not to me. Maybe it seems farther from California than from the East Coast. I can't wait to go! Only problem is—my French is lousy and my Portuguese is nonexistent!" She laughed. "There's always the Philadelphia Institute, if Europe doesn't work out. And it's a good school—but I want to travel. You know—see the world and all that. Don't you?"

"Well, I guess it would be fun. I mean—" Beth scanned the street for a parking place as Monica slowed the car. "Ray works full-time at the shop during the days and holds classes there at night, so he probably wouldn't be able to go to Europe."

"So go without him. Live somewhere a year or two to study stained glass—I bet there are lots of great schools. And then set up shop with him when you get back."

Beth caught herself frowning. "You sound like my mom! She's been after me about going to college for months."

"There's a place!" cried Monica, and she applied herself to the task of parallel parking.

The art museum stood at the end of a long avenue of trees. A statue of George Washington flanked by two moose and two buffalo marked the wide steps up to the imposing entrance. As the girls began walking along the avenue, Monica touched Beth's arm. "Well, I don't know about college, but it would be fun if you'd at least think about art school," she said. "None of my friends are into art. Maybe you and I would end up at the same place."

"I think my mom wants me to be an accountant or something," Beth said dourly. "She used to think my art was the greatest thing in the world, but suddenly she got on this self-improvement kick and applied for college herself. Now my art is just a 'hobby.'"

"That's bad," said Monica.

"Yeah."

They climbed the steps and entered the museum. At the information desk in the vast hall Monica asked for a map and consulted it to find the location of her pottery exhibit. The vast corridors echoed as they walked along. "Here it is, I think," Monica said, and led the way into a smaller, high-ceilinged room lined with glass cases.

The room was hushed. A guard nodded at them from her post near the wall. Several visitors were leaning over the cases. Monica hugged herself. "I've got the shivers!" she whispered to Beth. "I can't believe they're looking at my own stuff!"

"Artists probably always feel that way," Beth whispered back. "When they're making a piece of work they're usually not thinking about when it will hang in a museum. They're just into the work itself." At least that's how she felt when she was hard at work on a stained-glass window.

She started walking toward the back wall: "Come on."

But Monica hung back. "I want to look around by myself, I think. You go ahead." She walked over to the side wall where the exhibit began and picked up a pamphlet of information about the artists.

Beth headed straight for the case that had
MONICA CLEMENTS
on a sign on the wall behind it. She leaned over the case and caught her breath.

Inside the case were eight delicate pieces—more like sculpture than utilitarian pots. There was a teapot with a deep rose glaze, a vase with shadowy, translucent stripes in green and gray, a bowl large enough to hold a watermelon. There were two unusual pieces about two feet tall that arched gracefully toward the ceiling and looked more like statues of human figures than pots. Then there were three fat, colorful pots set apart from the others and labeled Hiding-Place Pots. Beth peered at them.

"Those are my favorites," said Monica at Beth's side.

"They're all gorgeous!" Beth turned to Monica, admiration shining in her face. "God, it's so exciting! I can't believe you made these—they look totally professional."

"Thanks! I'm kind of stunned myself. They look a lot better here than they did in the case outside the gym at school." She laughed. "Last time I saw these pots they were wrapped in newspaper in a big Gummi Bear packing box! The people who set up the exhibit knew what they were doing."

"Oh, don't be so modest," said Beth. "Your pottery is awesome. But what does it mean about hiding places?"

"I'll show you." Monica leaned on the case. "Look—see the cracks along the base of that first one?"

"Excuse me, girls. Please don't lean on the cases." The guard was at their side, frowning.

"Sorry!" Monica jumped back.