Love Under Glasse

by Kristina Meister

  She could feel that sea-colored gaze following her as usual, only this time it beckoned with an intense insistence. Riley collected the serving tray and made as if to clean up the outdoor seating area, glancing sharply at Russel as if to hex him if he dared to stop her.

  El backed away from the window and for a moment, looked as if she might just turn tail and run.

  Riley halted a few feet away, one boot on point behind her, and wondered what to say. “So . . . you changing the time of our usual date, or . . .?”

  “I wanted . . .” The girl took a deep breath and scoured the pavement for words. Her voice fragile and hesitant, and she looked as if a gust of hot wind might knock her over. “I wanted to come by and say something . . . to you.”

  Riley propped a hip on the railing and tried very hard not to grin, succeeding only slightly. “A whole something? Well, shit! What will I do with that? Been surviving on a few words here and there all this time. Didn’t even know you had a whole something in you.”

  The girl coughed out a laugh, partially calming the ache Riley felt at seeing her. Wherever this was going, she wasn’t sure she could really stop it, even if she wanted to. She could hear it just in the tone of El’s voice, that tremor of bittersweet confusion and sorrow.

  “I wanna say,” El spat out with a fading smile, “thank you!”

  For a moment, Riley wondered if she’d heard the words properly. She blinked at the two customers sitting at a table and licked her lips. “Uh . . . for what? That thing the other day? That’s nothing. I make it a policy to kick ass on a routine basis—”

  El cleared her throat, and for the first time, looked Riley directly in the face. “No . . . just . . . for existing, I guess.”

  Woefully off her game, Riley tried to frame a word, but realized that for all her affected gallantry, she didn’t have one. There was only one person who ever thanked her for existing and only one yearly celebration of the fact. Those two things weren’t scheduled to align for another two days, so what the hell was this?

  She didn’t have a moment to ask, as El sped through the rest of her whole something. “I mean, because I just wanted you to know that I appreciate you being here, and that I really feel like you add to my life in a positive way, and so I just wanted to say that, so that you know. Because everyone should hear that, and also because I feel like you are picked on a lot, but you never let it get to you, and that deserves recognition.”

  The girl took in a lungful of oxygen and clutched the straps of her pack. Riley’s cheeks were burning; tongue-tied, she managed to nod.

  El appeared to shiver. “Okay. I have to go.”

  All at once, the world returned to full volume. Roused from her surprise, Riley stood up straight. “Wait, what? You’re gonna miss today’s flavor! It smells like peanut brittle.”

  El, however, was already retreating, and something about the look on her face said there would be no more new flavors to try. There was pain there, and loss, two things Riley knew with absolute perfection, no matter who wore them.

  “Goodbye, Riley Vanator.”

  Frowning, she set down the tray. That was too definite for her liking. “Where are you going? Is it Camp Day?”

  The girl let out a shuddering sigh and walked away. In the close air, Riley stared at the spot where she had been standing and felt as if every sinew and nerve was pitched in that direction, all waiting to catch more.

  There wasn’t any more. Elyrra Glasse was gone.

  The rest of the day hummed and buzzed with routine, and as usual, her heart wasn’t in it. Her thoughts wandered constantly. Every time she opened the cooler, a chill went through her. She was glad to clock out and anxious to get home. If there was one thing she needed, it was a Papa Bear Hug.

  The trailer was silent when she returned, but the metal lunchbox was open on the kitchen table, its carefully filed contents arranged in neat little piles around a new addition: her stack of University acceptance letters. She checked the fridge. Three light beers were missing from the weekly six pack. When she glanced out the back window, the warm glow of the shop lamp was like wrapping herself up in a big blanket.

  “Hey there!”

  He wasn’t working, just perched on his steel stool staring at the car guts in front of him with the beer sweating in his hand. He shook himself, and she could see the puffiness in his face, even though his beard was fluffed.

  “Hey, Rye-baby.”

  “Saw the box. You okay?”

  Behind him was one of the beers, unopened. He cracked it and offered it to her. Well, that was good. A two-beer night instead of three. She took it just to keep it out of his hand.

  “Yeah . . . just been . . . thinking.”

  “You wanna talk about it?”

  His gaze sparkled and swam. Riley leaned against the car body and swigged. As long as they were both drinking, doing the same thing at the same time, equals, he could convince himself to open up. The only way was to remind him that there was another person in this with him.

  “She would’a been so proud of you . . .” His voice broke. He wiped greasy hands over his face, making matters worse.

  Riley found a cleanish shop towel and smeared some of the grease away. There was a time she’d been too small to comfort his bulk, but she’d sprouted, and now she could lean over him, wrap her arms around his wide neck and puff warm kisses on his whiskers.

  “Maybe, but you know, she didn’t raise me. You did. And if she was still here, I might have been different.” She shrugged, but kept her hands on his shoulders. “I probably would have been less badass, you know?”

  “Naw. Your momma was a chili pepper.” He sniffed, mustache twitching like an annoyed ginger caterpillar. “Hell, I dunno. Maybe so. Still needs saying.”

  “Okay.”

  “I been thinking about your birthday. Gotta celebrate you being alive. Whatcha wanna do?”

  Suddenly, she was leaning against a railing, watching a sweet, lost girl say goodbye, and something about it didn’t sit right. In fact, it was downright worrisome. But there was nothing she could do now, and the giant in front of her, covered in tattoos and battle scars, was still sniffling like a huge baby.

  That was something she could fix.

  “Dad . . . when did you know? I mean, like, when was the moment that you said, ‘Hey, this woman has her shit together. I gotta grovel at her feet until she takes pity on me.’ Or was there a moment?”

  With a chuckle that sounded like someone pounding an empty barrel, he shifted his weight and beckoned her toward the house with his beer. “That’s easy. Yeah, there was a moment.”

  “Really? That sudden? Just like that?” She trailed in his shadow, like always, only now she could keep up. She was old enough, wise enough, had paid enough attention. Dad didn’t say much, unless it was about his Heavenly Angel, and then it would go on like an opera she never tired of hearing.

  He didn’t even look at the table as he selected a yellowed piece of paper. It was dog-eared, by far and away the most often read. As he began to read, the gravel rolling around in his throat got heavier, and he sagged into a chair.

  “‘People always say that being good isn’t easy. That’s simply not true. It’s the easiest thing in the world, Jerry. It’s as easy as deciding that the hardship you face doesn’t matter to you, that you’re willing to take the roughest road. That’s all. How many times have you already been down that road? You know it so well it’s like it’s written on your eyelids. You know what it means to starve, to be hated, to be beaten, and most importantly to regret what you have done. You know that road. So why does it bother you so much? Why are you so afraid of it that you’d fight it? Why would you hurt someone, kill someone to escape, when you have it in you to be strong? You are strong, Jerry. So you can easily be good. Easily.’”

  He wasn’t reading the gorgeous cursive; he was reciting from memory. There was a long silence. Riley said not one word and dared not even breathe.

  “Your mom . . .” The rumble
became a purr. “Your momma saw me for who I could be. She knew me from day one and the things she wrote always made sense of shit I’d never even tried to understand. No one else did that for me. Not even me.”

  Riley let out her sigh. “And you knew?”

  “Well hell!” He waved as if to vanish the whole table with a magic trick. “I mean here she is, this soulful, brilliant woman and she’s writing to me! I already been rejected, my whole damn life! Knew that road real well. Decided the hardship didn’t matter to me. Took a risk and asked her if she’d mind if I thought romantically on her.”

  “You send her a picture first, you ogre?”

  With a snort like a wild boar, he tipped back into a full laugh. Wiping his face and tugging on his beard, he shed that old familiar sadness and came back to Riley in one mountainous heap.

  “She came to see me the very next week. Dark hair, curves, singing in tongues and looking like she could rip out my guts while putting on lipstick. About shit my jumpsuit when I saw her.”

  “If you had shit yourself, there woulda been hell. Probably only had the one in your size.” Riley sipped the beer, using the green glass to pin down her knowing smirk. “She quake with fear?”

  “Sidled right up to me, shook my hand like I wasn’t about to eat a goat from under a bridge, and started grilling me about my ink, all in the same breath. Your mom . . . she was a spitfire.”

  “I guess I had to get it from somewhere.”

  He drained the beer and cracked his painted knuckles. “But come on! What about your birthday? You wanna go to the junkyard or maybe go over to the park and have a barbecue?”

  “Actually . . . yeah! That sounds rad. Can we take the bikes?”

  “It’s your day!” He got to his feet, and began puttering around the galley kitchen for a plate and cutlery. “Hey, have some dinner! I think I finally got it right. It took me two hours to cut everything up like she used to.”

  An oven-mitt-sized hand lifted a wooden spoon to her lips and dispensed the tamale sauce. Riley nodded in approval.

  “Oh yeah, Dad. That’s perfect!”

  It’s what she always said, no matter how different the tamales were from week to week. How could she know what they were meant to taste like? Abuela’s tasted better, but she had decades on Riley’s father. She took her seat at their tiny two-top and watched as he saw to every detail of presentation like a bear rifling through a beehive. It was a miracle his fat fingers could even wrap the corn husks properly.

  Riley’s hands began automatically reorganizing the letters into their time capsule. Looking over the frail leaves, a kind of bittersweet sorrow washed through her veins.

  He was going to wear them out. They’d fall apart and he’d be even deeper into the hole without a way to climb free.

  “Hey, Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You mind if I borrow these? I promise I’ll bring them back in mint condition.”

  He seemed to give the notion of being without them a moment’s stern thought, and then his face broke like a mischievous Santa Claus in Highland colors. “Sure thing! Your mom had the prettiest handwriting.”

  “She really did.”

  That night, Riley laid them out on her bed and began the painstaking process of positioning and lighting each tinted paper, each swirl of faded pencil, each crease. Once in position, she took a set of triplicate photos with a phone app, converting the missives into PDF. First, she grouped them into an album and zipped them, then she put them on the Cloud, then she uploaded them to the nearest print shop’s online platform and ordered a bound volume, and finally, she emailed them to her herself.

  In a few hours, her parents’ romance was preserved for all time, and she could sit quietly at her machine and scan them into her own memory to fill the space that was shaped like her mother. They joined a hazy image of long dark hair sweeping over Riley’s face and a sensation of happiness and safety, a kind of unspecified joy. These letters were all that was left of her mother’s more tangible qualities and wisdom, but they were extremely rich sources of information. Riley picked and pored, and didn’t stop until her eyes ached and her face was wet.

  Leaning back in the harsh lamp light, she wondered why she had waited so long. She was about to turn eighteen, and this was the first time she’d done this close reading. But wiping her cheeks, she knew it wasn’t really a mystery.

  Fear had kept her from it.

  If she knew her mother at all, then the Heavenly Angel would be something human, something that made mistakes, and most importantly, something that had died.

  Riley got to her feet, and in those cooler wee hours, wandered away from the tiny house, out behind the garage, to the tree stump that was her favorite thinking place. The sky was turning the green that was somewhere between twilight and gold. She hugged her knees and let herself cry.

  She’d never really seen much point in sorrow, being firmly of the mindset that handling the problem was the quickest way out. Complaining and carrying on just slowed her down, but every now and again, she would find a hiding place—in the park behind their old apartment, the back of the pickup, or this stump—and let out every tiny emotion that action couldn’t repair.

  It was that or explode.

  Dealing with her dad’s past, new schools, bullies, keeping her focus on her grades, ignoring all the frivolous things that sucked most teenagers in . . . took resolve. It took guts. It took a stubborn, disciplined calm, and if there was anything her life had been, calm was not it.

  Tires churned the quarry that was their driveway. In the growing light, Riley turned to see the front end of a silver Lexus SUV crawl to a stop, gleaming palest violet. When Mama Glasse tumbled out of the driver’s seat looking irate and spitting obscenities, Riley forgot her private anguish and snuck around behind the automobile.

  The woman stood, arms drawn close to her body, looking around as if the rusted chassis and tractor parts might come to life in this eerie patch of woods and pounce on her. Even this early in the morning, Mama Glasse was perfectly coiffed, made up, pastel and prim. It would have seemed impressive, if Riley could forget the haunted look on El’s face and the rumpled, unloved look of her girly clothes.

  With a mischievous swelling of her heart, Riley smacked the SUV’s fat ass and let out a whoop. “Well, hell! I ain’t seen a car this purdy in all my life! Lemme get a gander under that skirt!”

  Mama Glasse almost leapt out of her heels. Riley met her astonishment with a wicked smile and lounged against the vehicle like Athena at the Parthenon, surrounded by her semi-naked virginal attendants.

  After a few moments of fidgeting and trying to regain composure, Mama Glasse cleared her throat. “You must be Riley.”

  No one had ever made her name sound less lovely.

  “Do I have to be? Sometimes I think it might be better if I’m not.”

  Mama’s nose went up, and Riley knew exactly what she was dealing with. Bullies were never difficult. From the sex-addled minds of teenage boys who couldn’t make sense of their mingled desire and frustration with her blanket rejection, to middle-aged women who wouldn’t place value on human life until they were correctly appraised by divinity experts—bullies did it to assert dominance. They wanted to break people apart into rubble, and then climb that shifting pile to the top. They wanted control in a chaotic universe. They wanted to feed their ego-god with blood sacrifices. The only way to handle it was to figure out what the specific bully needed, and deny it.

  “You think you’re funny, huh missy?”

  “Don’t call me that.” Riley stood up straight and was grateful she still looked the part of the terrifying biker bitch from Sons of Anarchy hell. Crossing her arms, she gave Mama a once-over and put a look of disdain firmly on her face. “Nobody calls me names on my property, because I have a solution for that, and its name is Matilda. That make sense to you?”

  “You have no respect.”

  “Respect is earned. For now, I tolerate you.”

  Ther
e was silence, as Mama considered how to proceed. In the interim, Riley had a chance to center herself, wonder why the woman had come, and realize that she wasn’t at all surprised to see her. She could still hear the emotion in El’s voice when she said “goodbye.” The memory itched like a healing engine burn or a mosquito bite.

  “Where’s my daughter?”

  In a blink, all earthly mysteries condensed into that single one, but oddly, didn’t ruffle Riley at all.

  So Elyrra Glasse had run away? It took a special stripe of character to up and vanish from such a cushy life. As soon as Riley thought that however, the pride was doused by worry. El was small, timid, pretty, and frail. Then again . . . she had broken Jay’s nose. She’d needed help to buy equipment, advice on how to be independent, but she’d been sensible enough to come to Riley for it.

  Pride and a sense of responsibility mingled awkwardly.

  “Shouldn’t you know where your daughter is?”

  “She never went to her meeting with our minister. She was supposed to go there and then go to the ice cream parlor to be picked up. That’s the way we always do it.”

  Ear pitched to every rise and fall of Mrs. Glasse’s voice, Riley listened for fear, for anxiety, for any trace of concern. She found them, but there was something off about her cool demeanor. Once, Riley had seen an interview with her on some religious television program, and had marveled that the waterworks were switched on and off with absolute precision. It was nearly impossible to see Mama Glasse as anything but a robotic salesman.

  “Yeah . . . El came to the parlor, but earlier than usual.” Her eye flicked to the woman’s fingers, loosely folded around her elbow. They didn’t clench or flinch at the revelation. “She was wearing a backpack and hiking boots. Like she was off to summer camp.”

  That rigid face spun her way as if on some kind of demonic mechanized ratchet. “What did she tell you?”