The Glass Flame

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “There was nothing else he wrote me that would help,” I said. “Only that if something happened to him it would not be an accident.”

  He let the matter go, seeming to suppress the inner anger that had driven him close to an outburst. I didn’t know him anymore, I thought in sad relief. He had become a stranger—stronger, harder, more determined and impatient, just as I was a stranger to him as David’s wife. Now I could dispel an old mirage.

  “I’ll show you your room,” he said abruptly. “Dinner will be at eight tonight. Usually we follow local custom and dine earlier, but Lori is away, and this is Lu-Ellen’s day off. It’s hard to find household help these days, and Lu-Ellen is a recently acquired treasure. So we don’t interfere with her plans. But tonight we’re on our own.”

  I stood up, willing enough to be alone for a time. Only the innocuous was safe to talk about now.

  “I’m looking forward to seeing your house tomorrow by daylight,” I told him. “I couldn’t see it very well as I came in, but you’re obviously near the very top of the mountain.”

  “Right,” he said. “It’s a house everyone can see for miles around.”

  There was a ring of pride in his voice, and I couldn’t help my words. “King of the Castle?”

  “There’s no king and no castle. But the mountains know the house is here.” He sounded curt, putting me in my place.

  I regretted my flip remark. It was the sort of thing I had learned to use with David—defensively. But Trevor would never be king of any castle. He was more like a soaring eagle, and only an eyrie high on a cliff would be right for him.

  “It has the feeling of a big house,” I said, “judging by the spaciousness of this kitchen.”

  “It’s middling, I suppose. Not all that many rooms. This ground level is the top floor. The house drops down the mountain from here and spreads out.”

  I carried my mug to the shining stainless-steel sink and ran water into it. Above were countless cabinets built of handsome mountain birch, with double windows in the center that looked out upon a last fading streak of color in the sky.

  The sound behind us was hardly more than a whisper. I turned to look toward the doorway at the far end of the room just as a woman in a wheelchair came into view. The hallway down which she had rolled was uncarpeted, so her rubber-tired wheels moved easily onto the bare wood floor of the kitchen. She sat looking at me with a curious, almost challenging stare.

  Trevor smiled at her. “Nona,” he said, “this is Karen Hallam, David’s wife.” And to me: “This is my aunt, Miss Nona Andrews.”

  I had known nothing about an aunt, but there was no reason why I should. In the days when Trevor came as a young man to my father’s house he had seemed to exist only within our orbit. I hadn’t been curious about what and where he came from. It had been enough to look and listen and adore him in the present.

  She held out a hand that was small, with fragile bones, and when I went to take it I found her grip surprisingly strong. Her skin was brown from the sun, so her incapacity, whatever it was, apparently didn’t keep her indoors. She was probably in her mid-sixties and her graying hair had been twisted into a long braid that hung over one shoulder with shorter wisps hanging free about her face.

  I knew I was staring, but I couldn’t help it, and her bright, challenging gaze indicated that she didn’t mind, that perhaps she was accustomed to people who stared. A long gown of a rather muddy mustard color encased her small body, and about her neck were hung strands of beads, brown and yellow, green and red—all made of seeds, gathered, I suspected, from local fields. But it was her eyes that were her most arresting—and unsettling—feature. They were totally green and very large, so that when she widened them the whites showed in a disconcerting way. Perhaps she recognized their power and didn’t choose to waste it on me, for she swept pale lashes downward as her look narrowed and became a little sly. There had been an enormous curiosity in that first stare, but now she was hiding it.

  “David’s wife,” she said in a voice that sounded brittle, perhaps from age, perhaps because she disapproved of me and had no welcome for me here.

  I took back my hand and glanced at Trevor as he moved toward the hall.

  “We’ll leave everything to you, Nona,” he said. “I was just about to show Karen to her room.”

  The woman in the wheelchair nodded and rolled herself skillfully across the big kitchen. I had a feeling that she was determined not to like me even before she’d seen me, and she dismissed me now with a shrug. Clearly David had not ingratiated himself here.

  “Lu-Ellen fixed everything before she left, and the room is ready,” she said over her shoulder to Trevor.

  Out in the wide hallway he picked up my bags. “Lori hasn’t a domestic bone in her body, so it has been up to Nona and Lu-Ellen to keep things running. Nona is a superb cook.”

  “But—how does she manage?”

  “Better than you might think. She’s able to do most of the things she used to before the car accident. Mainly because of sheer determination and an unwillingness to face more operations that might not succeed. She can stand and move about quite well with her crutches, or when she holds onto something. Sometimes I think the wheelchair is hardly more than a prop that gives her a power she doesn’t hesitate to wield. She can drive a car, and she even gets out in the woods to collect all that stuff she hangs around her neck.” His words were uncritical because of the affection in his voice.

  Nona might be interesting to know, and I hoped she would like me better, if I had to stay here more than a few days.

  As Trevor went ahead and I followed, my photographer’s eyes searched out details of the house. This upper floor was bisected by a wide, uncarpeted hallway of handsome marquetry. On my right as I moved along were closed doors, and on the left, separated by open, plant-filled partitions, was a dining room, unlighted now, except for radiance from the hall. Farther on, bookcases lined both sides of the passageway, and at the end I could glimpse a huge living room that stretched the width of the house, fronting on the mountains. Ceiling-to-floor glass panels would allow the view to dominate by day, but we turned off before reaching the big room that must be the heart of the house.

  Stairs were always interesting in Trevor’s houses, often combining the grace of the old with modern materials. Here the curve that led to the lower floor was eighteenth century, but a Lucite waterfall chandelier hung at the top, and the banisters were a gleaming black above shining metal posts. Trevor led the way down steps carpeted in soft gray-blue. The lower level was not under the upper section of the house, but ran on along the hillside under its own roof. Not, perhaps, an economical way to use space, but far more interesting than the usual contained cube.

  Down here the hallway was carpeted in the same blue-gray, and I gathered that the movements of Nona’s chair were confined to the upper floor. The hall ran past more closed rooms, ending where a door stood open. Trevor touched a soundless switch just inside and gestured me ahead, following with my bags.

  The room was generous in size, though not excessively so, and everything about it invited me to rest and let my worries and weariness go. Pale green wallpaper, sprigged with white, enfolded the space, and a four-poster bed that somehow managed to look modern wore a figured spread in green and gold, with a brief matching flounce around the top. A small, neat dressing table offered numerous intriguing drawers and cabinets, as well as a mirror that folded out. Two armchairs had been pulled before a stone fireplace and a table by the bed held books between carved bookends, with a good lamp for reading. Draperies of pale gold were drawn against what was undoubtedly another view of the mountains.

  “It’s a lovely room,” I said. “Though I’d thought fireplaces in bedrooms went out with the Victorians.”

  “The chimney is shared by my bedroom on the other side of the wall,” Trevor said. “I enjoy a fire on a chilly night. That’s Crab Orchard stone, from over on the Tennessee plateau. It’s beautiful stone, and wherever I could I�
�ve used it for the house.”

  His tone had warmed as he spoke of the work he had put into the house, and I glimpsed for a moment the Trevor I remembered.

  “Of course,” he went on, “the woods always offer plenty of fuel in fallen trees. I hope to experiment eventually with solar heat.”

  “I’ve been inside so many of your houses,” I said, “but this is the first time I’ve stayed in one. Thank you for putting me up.”

  He ignored my thanks. “Look at the ceiling,” he said.

  I obeyed and saw that the beamed ceiling slanted upward toward what must be an outflung peak of roof, and that an oblong of skylight had been set into it just above the bed.

  “You can cover it over by pulling that cord on the wall,” Trevor said. “If you don’t care to have the sky watching you.”

  “I shan’t pull it,” I told him. “When it’s not raining, I’ll lie in bed in the dark and watch the stars.”

  His smile was slight. He was still holding back. “That’s what it’s for. I’m glad you understand.”

  “I’ve never been able to see the stars from my bed, come to think of it. Certainly not in New York.”

  He lifted my larger suitcase onto a rack and held up the smaller bag. “Your camera equipment?”

  “Yes, I couldn’t travel without it.”

  “Your bath is over there.” He gestured. “I think everything’s here that you’ll need. Come upstairs a little before eight. Earlier if you want to look around.” He seemed in a hurry now to get away.

  “Perhaps I can help Nona?”

  He shook his head. “She wouldn’t welcome that.”

  There was a moment when we stood looking at each other rather strangely. As though questions had suddenly churned up between us and could not be spoken. I didn’t know what the questions were that he would have asked me: I didn’t even know what questions I might have asked him, yet I knew that certain words must be said quickly unless he was to move even farther away from old friendship. No matter what I’d been telling myself, I knew suddenly that I didn’t want that. As always, David had damaged whatever he touched, but once Trevor Andrews had been my friend, and I wanted to hold to that old, harmless relationship. Yet I mustn’t speak dangerous, upsetting words. Not words that had to do with David. Something more honest, something that reached back to a more innocent time.

  “Trevor, thank you,” I said.

  A faint surprise crossed his face, and I hurried on.

  “Not for now only. For that time I was never able to thank you for, when my father died and Mother went to pieces. Everyone was around trying to comfort her. No one thought of me except you. You helped me get through that awful funeral because I knew you felt about him as I did. We’d both loved him, and you held my hand and stayed by me, and I will always be grateful. I missed you when you went away.”

  I hadn’t meant to say that. It had surfaced out of old longing and loneliness. In any case, my words hadn’t reached past the guard he seemed to wear. I hated the roughening of his voice as he answered me.

  “I’m not that man anymore. No more than you’re the young girl I remember from those days.”

  “Perhaps that’s regrettable.” I tried to sound light and casual in order to hide the small hurt that stabbed through me. “I wonder what happened to us?”

  He paused in the doorway. “I think you know,” he said, and went away.

  I closed the door after him and stood looking about a room that I didn’t see because my gaze had turned wholly inward. I hated what I had done. I had offered him a tiny bit of my heart out of that long-ago time, and he had not only refused it, but had stung me with those strange words: I think you know. But I had no idea what he meant. What was there to know?

  I stepped to the light switch and let the room blink into darkness. Then I flung myself down on the bed and lay on my back looking up at a sky of darkest, deepest blue. It had stopped raining and the wind had blown the glass dry.

  From a distant part of the house came the sound of someone strumming an instrument I didn’t recognize and singing softly. Mountain music, I thought, and caught the tune, “Down in the Valley.” This was a mellower, more golden sound than a guitar. Not a beat to dance to, as it slowed and grew more plaintive, more sad. As I lay there listening, the music drifted wistfully into an accompaniment to that old heart-breaker, “Barb’ra Allen.”

  Far above me stars twinkled into view here and there.

  A phrase Trevor had used echoed in my mind. He had said “my bedroom,” not “ours.” Meaningless, of course. In a generously built house husband and wife often had their own retreats. Yet I felt saddened, somehow. I wanted him to be happy.

  What I didn’t want was to think, to feel. All I wanted was to be cool and calm and far removed from any fire. I lay very still, allowing all that vast universe out there to engulf me. My existence in this tiny speck of space was inconsequential. Tomorrow it would be important again. Perhaps even tonight when I left this room it would once more swell to its painful mortal size. But for now—for this moment—I would shut it all out and listen to the silence of the stars.

  I would not think of Trevor. I would not think of David, or of a house that had exploded.

  It was terrible that when I closed my eyes I saw only flames.

  Two

  Since that moment when I’d closed my eyes, only to imagine flames, the climate of the house had changed. The evening and that disturbing dinner were over. I had returned to my room to lie beneath the skylight again, to sleep. Yet now I knew certain terrible facts that I’d been ignorant of before.

  A misty shimmer illumined the skylight, erasing the stars. Morning had come and the mountains were out there waiting for me. Painful experiences lay ahead, but for a little while I wanted to be free. I slipped from my bed and went to the long golden draperies that covered one wall, pulling them open by their cord. Sliding glass doors let in a crack of cool air. I stepped out onto the deck that ran across the front of my room and past the master bedroom next door, my flowery robe blowing in the breeze.

  Beyond the protective rail a sheer cliff of rock dropped to a stand of pine trees that descended the hillside in graduated heights. To my left and above, where the house rambled along the mountain, stepping up to the higher floor, I could see another great semicircle of deck cantilevered over the mountain. There were lounging chairs up there, where one could lie in the sun far above the world.

  But it was the distant view that held me spellbound. The mountains were true to their name this morning, smoking with mists that filtered into overlapping folds, thickening here, blowing away there, to let the great ranges stand free, blue-green against the sky, and very close. Here and there patches of red earth stood out against the green, and where roads were visible the yellow center lines made strips of color.

  I returned to my room and dressed hurriedly in warm gray slacks and a yellow pullover sweater. Then I slung my camera bag over one shoulder and opened the door softly. It was only six-thirty and the house was utterly still. The day ahead of me would be a hard one, filled with more horror, more pain, so I would take this small space of time to refresh myself. Again with my camera as a companion.

  The stairs, with their soft blue-gray carpeting, made no sound under my feet and the upper hall was empty, the Lucite, strands of the chandelier hanging quiet. The only door whose location I knew was the front one, and I unlocked it and went outside to breathe deeply of pine-scented air. Now, by daylight, I could make out something of the structure of the house.

  From this area of garage and turnabout, its upper, ground-level section gave an effect of stone walls crouching low, with a wide overhang of shingled roof that sheltered and concealed. Viewed from this side it was one of Trevor’s secretive houses. If one moved only a short distance away it might have been taken for part of the mountain. Except in the kitchen, there were no windows overlooking this utilitarian area, and I remembered how Trevor treasured wall space in his houses, using windows generously
where there was a view, but allowing for paintings to be hung on walls to warm an interior and give it life.

  It was this outer aspect of his houses that had sometimes defeated me as a photographer. Shots that cut up a Trevor Andrews house could never show the freedom and grace of the whole. Nevertheless, I took my 35-mm camera from the bag and set the stops for this misty light. At home I’d have used my view camera, but that was larger and required a tripod, so I hadn’t brought it on this trip. My bag contained only extra film, two or three special lenses and filters, and a light meter.

  The sun was just beginning to break through behind me, sending straight beams between the branches of trees, so that the shadows were interesting, and I took several shots.

  Above the point where the house dropped to its lower level and spread out along the hillside was a low sustaining wall banked with orange chrysanthemums. When I walked over to it I found I could look down upon the roof that pitched upward, with its slanting skylight set into my room. Mine seemed the only room with a skylight, though I could see others that had high clerestory windows set close to the ceiling, to let in light without interfering with inner walls. From here the house seemed formless, though not unshapely in its rambling along the hillside below me. Formless in the sense that an outcropping of rock might stand upon a mountainside, integrated with the earth, yet with a strong character of its own.

  As I followed the retaining wall, I saw that an open space had been left below in a pocket between the mountain and the lower house. In this early light the little patch of space was still shadowed, but I could make out the unexpectedly charming picture it formed. The water of an irregular fishpond gave back a gleam of silver light from the sky. Nearby a dwarf pine stood guard beside a stone temple lantern, and a stone bench invited one to tranquil contemplation. It was a lovely spot. Some other time I would take the steps carved into the hillside at a farther point in the wall and go down there. But now I wanted a wider, more distant view of the entire house.