The Glass House People (6 page)

There were no books in the room and no television. No signs of anything personal lying around. What could Aunt Iris do in there all day? Beth edged toward the stairs, halting in midstep as Aunt Iris rose from her chair and limped to her dresser. She stood in front of it, her arms braced on its surface, leaning toward the wall. Toward the space where the mirror should have been hanging. Beth turned to hurry downstairs, but Aunt Iris's brittle voice stopped her.

"Elisabeth."

Beth whirled around, but Aunt Iris was still standing facing the wall. How could she see her when there was no mirror?

"I was—um—just going down to look up something in the phone book," she said. "And then I'll see if Grandmother needs help getting dinner." She shifted from one foot to the other.

"Very charitable of you. But my mother needs no help concocting her mountains of food."

Beth waited a moment, but Aunt Iris didn't turn around or say anything else and, grateful, Beth hurried down the stairs.

She went straight to the little mahogany phone stand in the corner of the dining room and checked the phone book quickly, jotting down an address. Then she slipped out the front door onto the porch. Fresh air—she needed fresh air. And she needed Ray!

Hannah was on the porch, alone in the glider, kicking sporadically with her toe to keep moving. "Hello, sweetie," she said when she saw Beth.

"Well, if it isn't the prodigal daughter." Beth's voice sounded weak.

Hannah patted the glider seat. "Come listen to these course descriptions! Mills has a lot to offer."

"I need to write a letter to Ray."

"Just for a minute, honey. It's fascinating!"

So Beth sat next to her mother and listened indifferently as Hannah read from the catalog about English courses and economics courses and botanical excursions into the Sierras. "They have a wonderful art department, Beth," Hannah added. "Maybe you could apply to Mills next year and we'll be students together!"

"Lay off, Mom." Beth kicked the porch floor to set the glider in motion again. "Listen, there's a glass store on Wannamaker Road. Can I borrow the car and go there? I want to buy some glass."

"Poor Beth. Are you going crazy? We'll ask Grandmother if you can set up a little studio somewhere. Then we can get the glass tomorrow. It's a good thing you brought your tools."

She wouldn't be caught dead traveling without her tools. "I don't see how you lived here, Mom. Or wasn't it so deathly dull here when you were young?" She saw her mother's frown and amended: "Younger, I meant."

But Hannah's frown deepened. "Deathly dull!" She snorted. "Oh, that's rich."

"What's rich?"

"It was so exciting around here, Beth, that I ended up having to leave."

"What do you mean?"

Hannah shook her head and began turning the pages of her catalog again.

"Come on, Mom! Can't we forget some of this closed-mouth secrecy stuff? If I have to live in this house for the whole summer, at least I should know what went on here."

"You need a course in logic," said Hannah. "And I thought you liked mysteries."

"Only in books, Mom!"

Hannah sighed. "I know it must be frustrating for you and Tom. It's just—it's just that I don't know what to tell you."

"How about the truth?" Beth asked. "For starters. Is that so hard?"

"Well, what if I don't know the truth? For starters."

Beth bit the inside of her mouth in frustration. "Look, I asked if it was so deathly growing up here. And you said—"

"I know, I know." Hannah hit the porch floor with her toe and sent the glider shaking back and forth. "I said that was rich—because, well, because it's ironic. Deathly! It's because our lodger died that I ran away."

Beth twisted a strand of long red hair in her fingers. Despite the heat and humidity of the afternoon, she felt a sudden shiver pounce between her shoulder blades. But she kept her voice light and casual. "Come on, Mom. I want the whole story."

Hannah turned to Beth. "The whole story? I don't know the whole story, Beth. I know only my own version—and you'll hear something different from everyone else. That is, if you can get them to talk about it. Oh, it's bound to come out sooner or later. And I guess I would rather you heard my side first."

"Your side?"

Hannah sat back on the glider. She pushed mightily with her toe again and the swing rocked wildly. "It's a long, awful story."

"I can take it."

Hannah lowered her voice, and Beth had to lean against her to hear at all. "Iris had a boyfriend once, Beth. He was our lodger. A wonderful, handsome, loving,
perfect
man named Clifton. There! I never thought I'd be able to say that name again without crying."

"You mean because he died?"

"Oh, Beth! Because I loved him, too. And he loved me—he was only marrying Iris because he had said he would—before he fell in love with me. He pitied her, you know, because she limps."

"Why didn't you two just run off together?"

"I told you! Because he felt sorry for Iris. Everybody always felt sorry for poor Iris! But"—and here Hannah bent close to Beth's ear, her breath hot—"then Iris found out. She found out he really loved
me.
"

"Then why did you run away, Mom?" Beth felt a shiver along her backbone again. "I mean, it was too bad for her, but, so what?"

Hannah's voice was the merest breath of whisper against Beth's cheek. "So? So I thought Iris killed him, Beth."

"You
thought?
" Beth gasped, and the sound was a shot in the stillness of the porch.

Hannah sank back against the glider cushions, limp. "But she blamed it on me." Her voice was still a whisper. "I couldn't stand it—believing all the time she'd murdered him herself. I had to get away from here."

"Mom—" Now Beth could barely find her own voice. She stared at her mother. Hannah's face was pale, and the hands she had folded loosely in her lap were trembling. "What about your parents? Didn't they stand up for you?"

"Mama's always taken Iris's side," murmured Hannah.

"But we're talking about
murder!
I mean—" She broke off abruptly. "Unless—oh, Mom! You don't mean that Grandmother believed what Iris said? That
you
killed that guy—Clifford?"

"Clifton." Hannah looked up from her hands, and Beth was shocked by the pain in her face. "Yes, Mama believes I killed Clifton. Daddy took my side then—but I don't know anymore."

Beth's imagination leaped into action: There would have been guns going off—where? Maybe out in the backyard at midnight. And Hannah had gone out in her nightgown to see what the noise was. And then she found Clifford, no, Clifton, dead! Shot through the heart—and no one there but her and the body. And then Iris came running out, and she told everyone that
Hannah
must have shot him....

"Well, I hope you told them you had nothing to do with any murder!"

"Of course I did," said Hannah. "I did nothing but defend myself for weeks, but I knew I couldn't keep on living in the same house with people who thought I was guilty. They had no proof of anything—the police were never involved—but my life was miserable. I don't know if you can imagine, Beth. I
loved
him. I had to get out. I knew when I left that they'd see my escape as confirmation I had killed him, but at the time I didn't care. I left a letter telling them I was innocent and that I thought they were all perfectly horrible for driving me away."

"I should hope so! I'm surprised you ever came back at all!"

"Oh, well," murmured Hannah. "Things change."

"Things don't change
that
much!" said Beth staunchly.

"They do, sweetie. I've had twenty years to do a lot of thinking. And now I'm not too sure about anything anymore. That whole time is so fuzzy in my head—I guess I'm able to come back now precisely
because
I'm not sure about anything anymore."

"What do you mean, Mom?" Beth's voice rose wildly. "What are you talking about?"

Hannah sighed wearily and stopped the glider. "I mean that I've started wondering whether Iris was right. That's all."

"That's
all?
" screeched Beth, but Hannah walked slowly back into the house, and the screen door closed behind her.

Beth jumped off the glider and raced after her mother, grabbing her elbow just as Hannah started up the stairs. "Tell me what you mean, Mom!"

"Sshh!" Hannah tore her arm out of Beth's tight grasp. She looked apprehensively over the banister down into the empty living room. The sounds of running water and voices from Grandmother's soap opera filtered up the stairs from the kitchen. "Wait until Tom comes home from his walk," she whispered more gently. "We can talk later."

Beth's whisper was harsh. "You didn't kill anybody! How can you even think such a thing?"

"Later, sweetie." And she continued up the stairs, leaving Beth on the bottom step.

Beth sat on the low swing under the elm tree and clutched the blue pen tightly. She tried to keep the swing steady by bracing her feet on the grass. She balanced her notebook carefully on her lap, a fresh sheet of scented notepaper on top.

Dear Ray,

Oh, why haven't you written? I am going totally crazy here without you! This household is driving me up the wall. Grandad is up in bed most of the time, and Grandmother is in the kitchen cooking mounds of food while she watches soaps on a little portable TV—it's one of the rare modern things in the house. Everyone eats here the whole day long—I'm sure I'd be gaining tons if I ate all the starchy, meaty things she serves. Tunny thing is, I hardly ever feel hungry anymore.

Maybe I'll end up a skeleton like my Aunt Iris. She looks almost as thin as this girl I knew in school who was hospitalized last year with
anorexia. But that sad girl never gave me the creeps the way Aunt Iris does. It's not just the skin and hones or the aunt-from-hell raspy voice—it's more a kind of horror. Like, why did she let herself GET this way? And is it catching?

My mom sits around all day planning her brilliant college career. And Tom just mopes and goes on long walks with Romps. Everyone around me seems like a stranger. And I've got this sick feeling in my gut because I need to see you, and you're not here! Talk about melodrama!

But it isn't just melodrama—it's real. And let me tell you, it doesn't help that the man I love hasn't called or written and is three thousand miles away! Oh, Ray, I long to hear from you. Please write NOW!

Love,
Beth

After dinner, Hannah led Beth and Tom upstairs and motioned them into Beth's room. "We can talk here," she said, closing the door.

Beth and Tom flopped down on the bed, and Hannah sat next to them. For a long moment no one spoke. Then Tom cleared his throat. "Beth's been telling me some really bizarre things, Mom."

"I'm going to tell you two a story, okay?"

"I get nightmares if I hear scary bedtime stories, Mom," said Tom in a fake baby voice.

Hannah pleated the sheet between her fingers and began softly. "It's the story about Clifton Becker. He was twenty-seven when he came here. A few years out of college and gorgeous. Curly blond hair, a body like a Greek statue—"

"But with arms, I hope," said Tom, then fell silent when no one laughed and Beth glared at him.

Hannah's voice was dreamy. "He came to live here in this room. We rented it out for extra money. The other lodgers had been single women—one was a nurse at the hospital, the other was a secretary someplace, I don't remember. They seemed old and boring. But then Clifton came—and everything changed around here." Hannah's eyes swept the room, seeming not to see it as it was now, with Beth's books piled on the dresser, her clothes draped over the chair and the sewing machine, but as it once had been.

"Yes, this was Clifton's room. He had studied biology in college but wanted to be a writer. He worked at the zoo doing all sorts of odd jobs as assistant to the zookeeper—and then spent the evenings and weekends working on his novel. I'd always ask him to let me read parts of it, but he kept telling me to wait until he could give me an autographed copy. So I'd sneak in here sometimes when he was at work and read it! I've always wondered what happened to that novel. It was really good—science fiction. After he died, no one wanted to go through his things. We left everything until his parents came to collect it. He had a big typewriter out on the sunporch—a funny old-fashioned one that he used at night. I could hear it across the hall in my room, and it would keep me awake. He asked me once if it bothered me, but I told him no. I liked to hear it, you see. Liked knowing he was so close."

There was a long pause. Clifton was suddenly real to Beth, as was the girl who had been Hannah, listening late at night from her room down the hall. The room seemed full of Clifton's presence. When Hannah did not resume her tale but sat picking at a piece of lint on her shorts, Beth prompted her.

"So you got to like Clifton, Mom?"

"Like him?" Hannah's head rose; her voice was startled. "Oh, Beth! I loved him more than I've ever loved any man. More than I loved your father, even."

"Sounds like a major crush, Mom!"

"Beth! It wasn't a crush! No one could ever compare! Clifton was a—a god."

"Then what's all this about how maybe you killed him?" asked Beth in a low voice.

"You couldn't have!" said Tom. "You thought all those years it was Aunt Iris—and you must have been right. You wouldn't think she killed him, if you didn't think there was a good reason to believe it!"

Hannah held her hand up sharply. "Sshh! I don't want anyone to hear us talking like this. I did not say I killed Clifton. I said Iris has always said I did, and I've come to wonder whether I might have after all. It was hard to tell what really happened."

"Come on! You'd
have
to know if you had killed someone, Mom!"

"No, Tom. Not the way it happened."

Beth stared at her mother, and the memory of a dream she'd had as a child popped into her head—a dream about driving on a country road with her mother at the wheel, and suddenly knowing she was going to steer the car right off the road and over a cliff. Beth had grabbed the wheel and tried to jerk it out of her mother's hands, but Hannah was stronger than Beth and held on tight. Beth cried out, "Mom! You'll kill us!" But when Hannah looked at Beth she was laughing wildly, and the crazy look in her eyes told Beth that killing them was exactly what her mother had planned all along.