The Glass House People (2 page)

Beth leaned over Tom's shoulder to watch out the front window as their car passed the houses on Spring Street. Another moan from Romps made her look down at the seat. He was still panting, so she pulled him onto her lap. Then he heaved. The quick turn onto Spring Street had been too much for him.

"Oh, Romps,
no!
" She tried to push him off in time but could not. He heaved again, his eyes rolling back miserably. And all his lunch, as well as the ice cream cone Beth shared with him at their last rest stop, frothed out onto Beth's stomach. "Mom! Help!" she cried as the stench of partially digested dog food filled the car and the hot vomit soaked through the thin fabric of her T-shirt.

Hannah pulled the car sharply into a driveway, cut the motor, and whirled to look at Beth helplessly. "Oh, no! Not now!"

"Get him off me!" Beth shrieked. "I can't stand it!"

She heard a gurgling sound from the front seat, from Tom, and the thought flitted across her mind that he was about to throw up, too. But then she saw he was laughing, and she snarled at him, furious. "I'll kill you!"

"Beth!" said Hannah. "And Tom! Please! We're here. Hurry, let's get you out and cleaned up somehow. Quickly! I don't want them to see us like this. After twenty years!" Her voice trailed off as the porch door opened and a heavy, white-haired woman stepped out.

Beth felt the sudden panic in Hannah's intake of breath.

"Sorry, Mom. Too late." Beth shoved Romps to the floor, craning her neck to see the woman coming nearer. And she sensed, without actually seeing it, the sudden guilt in her mother's face.

"Hanny? Hanny Lynn?" called the woman in a high, brisk voice. "Is that you?"

Hannah slid out of the car and hurried toward the porch. "Mama? It's me!"

Beth was trying to mop up the vomit, and so she couldn't stop Romps when he struggled out of the car and leaped joyfully up the porch steps. He thrust his vomit-covered nose eagerly against the older woman's legs in welcome.

"Down, boy!" shouted Hannah, pushing the dog away. She hugged her mother. "It's me, Mama."

"So I see." The woman looked distastefully at the stain on her pant leg and wrinkled her nose. "I see."

"It's been too long, Mama." Hannah shoved Romps away again and looked toward the car. "Beth! Come get this animal."

Great, Mom,
thought Beth, still mopping at her T-shirt with the green bandanna she'd had tied in her hair.
I'm half-dead from the smell, and you expect me to
... But she smiled politely as she walked to the steps, Tom behind her, her glance taking in the stone house at the side of the narrow driveway, the large front porch, the thick flowering bushes that shielded the house from the street. "Hello, Grandmother? I'm Beth."

"Hello, dear." The voice was cool, the glance appraising. Beth wondered what the woman was thinking. "And you, young man? Are you the other one?"

Tom ran up the steps behind Beth. "Hi. I'm Tom. Nice to meet you."

Beth glanced at him with surprise. He sounded so composed and mature. She herself felt suddenly ill at ease—though that could be explained by the vomit covering her T-shirt. She didn't often meet relatives stinking like a sewer. Actually, she'd never met any relatives at all.

Grandmother nodded at the door. "The first order of business is baths for everyone, I think. And then we can say all the right things and so on."

Hannah followed Grandmother into the house without a backward glance. Beth and Tom, left on the porch, shrugged at each other. Romps, who had relieved himself against the rosebushes in the side yard, trotted onto the porch. Beth tied his leash to the leg of one of the wrought-iron porch chairs and patted his head before entering the dim interior of the house. "Stay," she whispered. "Good boy. I'll be out to clean you up soon."

Hannah was standing at the foot of the stairs, just inside the front door. Beth nearly bumped into her. "Ohh," Hannah sighed. "It hasn't changed here, not really. It's still just the same."

"Well, what did you expect?" Grandmother pressed Hannah's arm.

"Where are Dad and Iris?"

"Upstairs," said Grandmother. "Your father's been very weak in the legs since his stroke. Stays in bed a lot, though the doctor says he should exercise more."

"He'll be fine again, though, won't he, Mama?"

"We'll talk about everything later. Let's get your girl cleaned up first and bring things in from the car."

"But is he very sick?"

The older woman sighed. "Let's just say your letter was very welcome. Gave him something to get better for."

"Oh, Mama!"

There had been several manifestations of Hannah's identity crisis, but the two biggest changes in her life were her decisions to apply to colleges and to get back in touch with her family in Philadelphia. She'd shown Beth and Tom the letter she was sending and showed them the one she got back the following week from Grandmother. Hannah's letter had begged forgiveness and said she wanted to see them and could they get together soon. Grandmother's letter said that Hannah's father had suffered a stroke and that Hannah and her kids might want to consider visiting before anything worse happened to him. There had been several phone calls back and forth as plans were made for their summer trip. And Beth could see now that her mother was struggling with all sorts of guilt feelings—like maybe her father wouldn't have had a stroke in the first place if she hadn't run away from home twenty years ago? That sort of thing.

Tom hurried back out to the car to bring in some of their suitcases. Beth and Hannah followed Grandmother upstairs. Beth was starting to feel dazed and nauseated from the smell of the vomit that saturated her shirt. Now that she was out of the air-conditioned car, the heat of the late afternoon pressed around her and made her feel weak.

The stairs were steep and narrow. She ran her hand along the polished wooden railing as she climbed. On the landing a fragile wooden knickknack stand held porcelain figurines and some tiny china cups and saucers. The stairs continued up another shorter flight to the right—the heat increasing as they moved up—and then Beth stood in the long, dim hallway. Grandmother led them down the hall into a small room with faded pink-flowered wallpaper. Hannah's smile trembled. "Oh, Mama! It still looks the same. After all this time."

"Not because we're sentimental, I assure you," said Grandmother in a tight voice. "But we don't have money to redo the house every time someone moves in or out."

"Of course not! I only meant—well, it's just funny to see the room again. Like stepping right back in time."

"Well, it's yours. Take it or leave it. You can sleep on the couch if you prefer."

"Oh, no. I'll be fine in here."

Beth hovered near the doorway. Her mother saw her and grimaced. "You're a sad sight," she said, taking a suitcase from Tom. "Here, take this suitcase and go get a bath. The bathroom's just there, across the hall."

"There are fresh towels for you on the back of the door," offered Grandmother as Beth moved across the hall with her suitcase.

Soon Beth had cool water running into the tub. She rubbed herself all over with the thick bar of scented soap, then washed her hair, delighting in the fragrant suds. She loved baths and hadn't felt really clean these past six days of the trip, with only dripping showers at the motels.

Beth dried herself with a thin, faded green-and-white towel, then hung it carefully back on the hook behind the door. She dug in the suitcase until she found a clean pair of track shorts and a not-too-rumpled T-shirt and dressed. She felt hot and sticky again almost immediately. As they'd driven east, the air had grown hotter and heavier with each state. Her mother had told her about the horrible humidity of eastern summers, but Beth hadn't understood till now how limp such thick air made things feel. She dragged a wide-toothed comb through the abundant auburn tangles of her hair and noticed it was much curlier in this heat than it was back in Northern California.

The mirror above the sink was cloudy in the upper left-hand corner and spotted with age. Beth opened the medicine cabinet and stared at the bottles of aspirin, tubes of God-knows-what, little bottles of iodine, yellowed toothbrushes. Everything looked so old, so permanent, so much a part of old people's lives. Only the tube of Crest looked new.

She tried to imagine Hannah as a sixteen-year-old in this house. She would have stood right here before this mirror, putting on makeup or brushing her teeth, but Beth couldn't picture it. Nothing about this house seemed remotely connected to her mother.

"Gotta go, gotta go," chanted a voice softly outside the door.

Beth swung the mirror shut guiltily and hurried to open the door.

"I thought I was doomed," said Tom, pushing past her.

"Wait a second!" Beth balled her soiled clothes up in a towel and picked up the suitcase. "Where's Mom?"

"In with the old man—'Grandad' to us—and Aunt Iris. Big front room at the end of the hall." He pushed her toward the door.

"Where should I put this?" she hissed at him, pointing to the suitcase.

"Top of the stairs. Can't miss it." The door closed firmly; the lock clicked.

The hallway was empty. Through the door at the end of the hall, Beth could hear voices—her mother's and a man's deep rumble. Then a woman's shrill voice, not Hannah's or Grandmother's, rose angrily. "You've no idea what I've suffered!"

Beth hurried down the hall in the opposite direction to the room at the top of the stairs Tom had said was hers. She closed the door behind her and dropped her suitcase on the floor with a great thud, standing silently, an empty feeling spreading through her. Who had suffered? What was going on?

She looked at the room dully, taking in the high old bed, the dark, curved-front dresser with the heavy mirror on the wall above it. Hannah had said her family had owned this house for generations, and the furniture attested to this fact. It was all old and solid. Under the single window was an old-fashioned sewing machine and a little low stool. The walls were papered with a yellowed pinstripe pattern. The feel of this house was so different from the apartment in Berkeley, which was light and airy and furnished with the wicker and glass and Native American print fabrics Hannah loved. Beth tried again to picture her mother living here and failed. She caught sight of herself in the mirror and stared at her wild mane of curly hair. She was out of place here—her track shorts and thin, bare legs seemed almost indecent.

Then Tom opened the door to her room and walked in.

"Hey, don't you ever knock?" she asked, surprised at the way her voice came out sounding shaky. Actually, she wasn't sorry to see him at all.

"I sleep out here," he said, crossing the room. She noticed for the first time that a door led out to a little sunporch. She followed him into the adjoining room. It had windows on three sides.

"You're lucky," she said. "It's a little cooler out here." From down the hallway they could hear the muted hubbub of angry voices.

"They're waiting for you," Tom told her, flopping onto the narrow bed against one long screened window.

"What are they like?"

"Go see." He unzipped his suitcase and pulled out some computer manuals—his favorite reading material these days.

Steeling herself as if for an ordeal, she walked down the hall. Outside the door at the end, she hesitated, then knocked.

Hannah opened the door immediately, relief shining in her face. "Here she is, Dad! Here's Beth!" And Beth was pulled into the darkened, air-conditioned room and found herself standing next to one of the two high old beds that took up much of the floor space. The cool air felt wonderful after the close heat of the rest of the house. Beth breathed in deeply, as if hoping to cool her body from the inside out.

A lanky old man lay under a sheet, his head propped up on pillows, a pile of books and magazines, topped by wire-rimmed glasses, at his side. He fumbled for the glasses, picked them up, and peered through them, then replaced them carefully and held out his hand. "Beth, is it?"

"Hi." Beth leaned over to embrace him, wondering whether she would hurt him. His grip was strong, though, as he hugged her shoulders, pressing her down to sit on the edge of his mattress. He wore a pale blue pajama shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal long, thin arms, fuzzy with dark red hair, the color of her own. The top of his head, however, was totally bald and covered with tiny, blurred age spots. His eyes were as blue as her own, and Beth hoped hers were as piercing.

"So, you're Beth. Hear you had an accident with a dog. I'm your grandad. Glad to meet you at last."

"I'm glad to meet you, too, Grandad," said Beth. She smiled at him and felt her mother beam at them both.

"Hope you'll come up often to talk with me, you and that brother of yours. Don't get downstairs much anymore. Same old company gets boring. You know."

Beth nodded sympathetically, then started at the sound of a dry cough from the corner of the room.

"Oh, hello! I'm sorry—I didn't notice you!" Beth felt her face flush, and even as she spoke the words, she knew she should not have said exactly that.

"Most choose not to notice me, so I'm quite used to it," said a voice from the dim corner by the closet. A figure sat stiffly on a straight-backed chair, looking awkward and uncomfortable. "But eventually I'm introduced."

"I—I'm Beth," said Beth, glancing to her mother for help. But Hannah merely stood by the door, her eyes on Grandad.

"Oh, don't carry on, Iris," said the old man from the bed. "Stick yourself back where nobody can see you and then complain when they don't. Come on out where the girl can see you. Or do you want her to creep back there to shake your hand?"

Beth hurried to the corner even as the woman was struggling to rise from her chair. Beth had thought she was old—possibly even older than Grandmother—but now saw with a shock that the woman was not too much older than her own mother. And she was terribly thin. She grasped the hand Beth held out as if to shake it, but then clutched tightly and heaved herself to a standing position.

"I used to have red hair, too," she rasped, peering at Beth and running bony fingers through her wisps of graying hair. "Not that you'd ever know it now. Red hair, long and curly, just like yours. Poor Hanny Lynn always wished her hair looked like mine. Didn't you, Hanny? Remember the dye—that time? Mama was furious when she caught you."