The Glass Forest

by Cynthia Swanson

  “The kids would hear the hoot, and the talk would stop and I’d do it again and someone would say, ‘Did you hear that?’ And someone else would answer, ‘That’s just some old hoot-owl; it can’t hurt you.’ And someone would say, ‘Let’s go find it.’ So they’d trudge near me but before they could get close enough to see me, I’d run to another tree and do it again. And they’d stand where I originally was and someone would say, ‘It flew off—we’re not going to find it,’ and someone else would say, ‘Wait, be quiet!’ And they’d all be quiet and listen and sure enough that hoot would come again, and someone would say, ‘This way!’ And they’d all tramp near me, breaking branches and making a hullabaloo and I’d wonder, do they not understand that if I really was an owl, I’d want nothing to do with all that racket?”

  Ruby can hear in her own voice that she’s become caught up. Telling a story makes her feel less sad. Not long ago, Ruby’s mother made the observation that once you got her going, you’d never guess she was a quiet girl. “Put you with the right company, Ruby,” her mother said, “and you’re a different person.”

  “I’m sure you can guess how this goes. By the time we’d been through the routine a few more times, we were so deep in the woods nobody except me knew the way out.”

  She reaches for Shepherd’s hand. He hesitates not even a second before clasping hers. This is the sort of thing she loves about Shepherd—how he never hesitates.

  They stand and begin to ramble through the underbrush, Ruby savoring the feel of his dependable hand in hers.

  “Those kids were so stupid,” she says.

  “They were just kids, Ruby,” he replies, and she worries he might let go of her hand. But he doesn’t.

  “I know that,” she says. “But I couldn’t help myself. By then I’d have tired of the game and stopped hooting, but nobody knew how to get out of the woods. Somebody would inevitably cry. Somebody else would say the first somebody was being a baby. Then there’d be arguments about what makes someone a baby and what doesn’t. Some kid would say that anyone who wasn’t scared was stupid.

  “Eventually, after they’d turned in circles for a while, the streetlights would come on over on Stone Ridge Road, and someone would notice, and with shouts of relief they’d make their way out. There’d be cheering and rejoicing. There’d be slapping of mosquitoes on bare arms and legs. And then the mothers would start hollering for kids to get on home and soon everything would be quiet.

  “That,” Ruby concludes, “is when I would finally make my way out of the woods.”

  He looks at her. “I can picture it. You’re a good storyteller, Ruby.”

  She says thanks and then reminds him she has to get back and wait for her uncle’s call.

  They turn left and approach a narrow space between the wide trunks of two elms. They drop hands to pass through, but he stays right behind her and she can feel his breath on her neck.

  “I did that at least once a week all summer long,” she tells him. “But I wonder if those kids recall it differently. ‘Remember that old hoot-owl in the summer of fifty-three? Remember how we never found that thing, no matter how many times we looked?’ ”

  “Nineteen-fifty-three,” he murmurs. “So long ago.”

  She turns to face him. “Do you think it was wrong, leading those kids on?”

  Shepherd tilts his head thoughtfully. “I suppose in some ways it was,” he says. “But it’s not your fault you were smarter and braver than them, Ruby.”

  “No,” she agrees. “It’s not my fault.”

  Ruby never asked to be Ruby.

  6

  * * *

  Angie

  Paul followed me to the cottage and picked up the telephone. While it rang on the other end, he glanced at me.

  “Angel . . . would you mind . . . I need a little privacy here.”

  I felt my mouth pucker into a frown. What did he have to say to Ruby that he couldn’t say in front of his wife?

  Paul didn’t notice me scowling. He was hunched over the desk, his hand cupped around the receiver. His voice was low, offering soothing whispers over the line.

  I took a few steps back, but I didn’t leave the room. Instead, I hovered in the shadows, straining to hear what Paul said to Ruby.

  As he hung up I ducked back by the bedroom door. I hadn’t realized that I’d been creeping forward, step by small step, in an attempt to overhear him. I hadn’t caught much of anything—just a few mumbles of “Yes, sweetheart,” and “Don’t worry, Ruby,” and other such platitudes.

  I moved into the living room. “What did she say?”

  “Probably the same thing she told you.” Paul reached for the yellow pages on the bookshelf next to the desk. “I have to get out to New York right away.”

  “Yes. We all do.”

  Paul turned to me. “All? What do you mean?”

  “You, me, and PJ, of course.” I couldn’t believe he’d consider going without me. We were a family, after all—and during a crisis, families stick together.

  Paul sighed. “I don’t know what it will be like there,” he said. “I don’t know what will be expected of me, and how Ruby will be. On the phone, she sounded . . . well, you talked to her. Not like her true self.”

  I had no answer for this. I’d met the girl only once. I had no idea what Ruby’s true self was like.

  I thought about my first glimpse of Ruby at my wedding reception. I recalled Ruby’s lanky, awkward body, her chest flat as a board and her long legs sticking out uncomfortably below the knee-length hemline of her blue taffeta dress—its length too long for a schoolgirl, too short for a woman. Ruby wore low heels that matched her dress, and I wondered if it was her first time wearing them. I remembered how Ruby’s face lit up when she spotted Paul, and how, despite the heels, the girl had quickened her steps toward her uncle.

  “Ruby!” Paul had cried. He left my side, striding across the dance floor to embrace the girl in a bear hug.

  I recalled my sting of jealousy—and how I had chided myself about it. For heaven’s sake, Angela, I thought, this is your husband’s only niece. Of course they adore each other.

  It won’t be long, I assured myself, before he feels that close to my family, too.

  Remembering it now—a year later—I tilted my head tenderly at Paul. “You shouldn’t go to New York alone,” I said, touching his sleeve. Through the fabric, I massaged his upper arm, feeling the muscles underneath. “We should be together.”

  “Angie, I really don’t think it’s a good idea.” He shook his head. “I’ll have to focus on Ruby’s needs. I’ll have to . . . grieve, I guess would be the right word. I can’t do that if I have to think about you and PJ, too.”

  “Of course you can,” I said. “PJ and I won’t be in the way. I’d be there to help.” My hand lingered on his arm. “You and I—we’re in this for better or for worse, right? Mine is the shoulder you can cry on, Paul.”

  He smiled tenderly. “It’s a long way down to your little shoulder, Angel.” He looked out the front window toward the bay.

  I reached up and turned his face gently toward mine. “If you don’t take me,” I said, forcing him to look me in the eye, “I’ll buy my own ticket and follow you there.”

  Annoyance flickered across his face but quickly disappeared. “I wouldn’t put it past you, Angel.”

  I slid my arms around his neck and pressed the length of my body against his. “Trust me, Mr. Glass,” I whispered. “You won’t regret it.”

  7

  * * *

  Silja

  1942

  In the few days between accepting Henry’s proposal and their wedding, Silja experienced frequent moments of panic and self-doubt. But she kept them to herself. All brides-to-be are nervous, she told herself. It would be fine.

  More than fine. Beyond her wildest dreams—just like Henry said.

  They were married at the city clerk’s office in Manhattan. Silja wore green. Her friend Johanna, who had forgiven Silja for their miss
ed date and was caught up in the romance of it all, agreed to be Silja’s witness. One of Henry’s buddies from his company, a fellow named Bill Something-or-Other, stood next to him.

  They did not invite Silja’s mother. In fact, as of yet Silja had failed to mention Henry to her mother at all.

  Following the ceremony, they parted from their friends on the street corner—replete with warm wishes from Johanna and cries of “Hubba hubba!” from Bill. And then they took the subway uptown to the Hotel Seville, where Henry had booked a room.

  • • •

  It was what she’d been waiting for, Silja told herself as she undressed in the hotel room’s bathroom. She put on the rayon negligee she’d bought at Woolworth’s for three dollars, using money her mother gave her for incidentals. As she slipped the matching bed jacket over her shoulders, Silja was certain this wasn’t the type of incidental her mother had in mind. The negligee was mint green with a lacy bosom and a midthigh hemline. She hadn’t worn anything so short since childhood.

  This was what she’d dreamed of, at home in her lonely single bed. And those times she sat on the subway, her eyes closed, her knees pressed tightly against one another. So why was she scared? She couldn’t say. But her legs felt shaky as she opened the bathroom door and peered into the room.

  Henry lay on the bed, the lamp beside him dim. He was shirtless, only a sheet covering him from the waist down. When he saw her, his face broke into a smile. “Come here,” he said, sitting up.

  Silja walked across the room, her heart pounding. At the bedside, he placed his hand just above her left breast. “Your heart is racing,” he said. “It’s okay, baby doll. Calm down and come on in.”

  He threw back the sheet and she saw that under it, he wore nothing.

  She’d never seen a naked man before. Fatherless and brotherless, Silja lived in an intimate world inhabited only by her mother, herself, and the Finnish immigrants—only females, of course—welcomed by Silja’s mother as others had once welcomed her, boarding with the Takalas until the young women got on their feet in the new country.

  During the summers, on hot Brooklyn evenings, the Alku men would gather in the courtyard in their undershirts and carpenter pants, their broad backs glistening with sweat as they smoked and drank beer. As the boys Silja’s age matured, they joined the men. Sitting on the fire escape above, Silja and the other Alku girls would giggle, whispering about Tavho’s sleek, muscular shoulders, about Olavi’s puny build, which all the girls agreed would look better with a work shirt covering it.

  Henry was the first man Silja had ever seen with no clothes at all. His legs were long, his torso narrow but powerful, his stomach flat. His erection, emerging from a mound of dark pubic hair, took Silja by surprise. She’d never seen one before, not even in pictures. She’d had no idea it would be so veiny and red, as if all the blood in his body was concentrated in that one area.

  “That’s quite a pretty outfit,” Henry said. “Now take it off.”

  Her hands shaking, Silja let the jacket and gown fall to the floor.

  She’d long ago accepted the fact that she didn’t have an especially attractive face. She thought of her looks as simply a fact of who she was, no different from her smart brain or her Scandinavian heritage. But her body, she knew, was just right—full in the bosom and hips, nipped in the waist. Not that anyone saw that usually; the green pencil skirt and matching sweater she’d worn the day she and Henry had their first date was the tightest outfit she owned. And no one, save her mother when Silja was a small girl and needed help bathing, had ever seen her fully unclothed.

  But now she was married. And being nude in front of each other was what married people did.

  “Hot damn.” Henry let out a soft whistle. “You are one sexy cookie.”

  He reached out a hand and drew her onto the bed. She took off her eyeglasses, set them on the bedside table, and turned to face him.

  She tried not to worry about what might happen next. She knew it might not be easy, that it didn’t always work out the first time. She’d heard such things whispered at Hunter, had overheard conversations among girls who had done it. Girls who were married like Silja was now, or engaged and pressured by a fiancé to go all the way before he shipped out.

  And then, of course, some girls were simply fast. They saw no reason to save it for one particular boy; they moved from boy to boy like changing hats or gloves. In another life—a life in which she didn’t have a bright and tenacious mind, not to mention a mother’s encouragement to better herself—Silja knew she might have become such a girl herself.

  If it’s not going in, the girls would murmur to one another at Hunter, use Vaseline. So Silja had a little jar in her pocketbook. When it turned out just that way—Henry pushing, Silja trying to relax—she hesitantly suggested it to Henry.

  “I’ve never heard of that,” he said. “But if it will help, let’s try it.”

  Silja slipped out of bed, retrieved the Vaseline, and asked him to turn his head. When she got back in, they tried again. Henry’s girth startled her; it seemed impossible that such a thing was designed to fit inside her. But the girls were right; the Vaseline did help. Henry found a rhythm; Silja heated up and moistened, responding to his thrusts. She clung to his back and pulled him tightly against herself. She felt sweat glistening on his body where it met hers.

  Silja had never felt so close to another person in her life. She was shocked that the act made not just her body but also her entire being feel interwoven with Henry.

  She wanted it to go on forever, but then he was done, crying out so loudly she wondered—but didn’t care—if the people in the next room heard them. He collapsed on top of her and then rolled to the side. “My baby doll,” he whispered.

  Silja snuggled against him, wrapping both of them in the top sheet and cocooning her body against his. She knew he had to rest. She breathed slowly in and out, calming her own racing heart.

  She couldn’t wait to do it again.

  • • •

  After their wedding, instead of sharing meals or going sightseeing as they’d done when they first met, when he came into Manhattan they rented a hotel room. Henry paid for the rooms and signed the registers, “Mr. and Mrs. Henry Glass,” in his block-shaped penmanship. The clerk would smile at Henry in his uniform, nod toward Silja beside him with her ring flashing on her finger, and tell them to enjoy their stay—which Henry assured him, they certainly would. Riding the elevator, they held hands.

  And every time was as good as the first. She adored running her hands all over his skin, touching every part of him. Feeling the hair on his arms, his chest and legs. She even enjoyed the feeling of his penis as she held it. The first time she reached out tentatively to stroke it, she was astounded by his reaction, as if her hand gave him as much pleasure as being inside her did.

  He moaned and slid closer to her. He placed his hand around hers so they were both holding his pulsing member.

  “Put it in your mouth,” he directed her.

  She stared at him, astonished by the request. His eyes softened. “Do it, Silja,” he said. “Please. I’ll do anything for you if you do.”

  He placed one hand on the back of her head and gently pushed her face toward his lower body. She drew a breath, then put her lips around him. Grasping her hips, he turned her so she was lying below him. On his hands and knees, he thrust his mouth toward her lower lips. She was shocked at how it made her feel—like a jolt of electricity coursing through her. They fell into a rhythm, tongues and fingers moving until both of them were spent.

  Silja was amazed at herself. She’d been unaware that people even did such things. And here she’d done it as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  Well, she was married now. Henry—beautiful, perfect Henry—belonged to her and no one else. She had rights to his body that no other woman ever would; nor would any man besides Henry ever lay claim on hers. Not for the rest of their lives.

  “I’ll never regret this,” He
nry whispered as they lay together, slack with fulfillment. “Baby doll, marrying you was the smartest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

  8

  * * *

  Angie

  My first view of New York City was through the window of a 707. The day was clear, the sky a bright blue. “A perfect afternoon for landing in New York,” the pilot said over the intercom. “Look out the left side of the airplane, folks, for a wonderful view of the Manhattan skyline.”

  I peered through the tiny oval-shaped window, unable to wipe the grin off my face. Flying was every bit as exciting as I’d always imagined it would be. I easily picked out the Empire State Building rising above the other buildings in the center of the city, and I thought it was probably the Statue of Liberty that I was seeing on its own little island in the distance.

  I fastened my safety belt, as instructed by a stewardess over the intercom. Snuggling PJ to my chest, I pointed out the sights to the baby as the plane descended. I kept my voice low so I wouldn’t disturb Paul, who had been reading magazines and chain-smoking during the entire flight. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as a leggy, pouty-lipped stewardess came through the aisle and gently reminded Paul that all smoking materials needed to be extinguished for landing. Paul stubbed out his cigarette in the armrest ashtray and gave the stewardess—who, despite the curves inside her form-fitting uniform, had the chubby-cheeked, fresh face of a twelve-year-old—a warm smile.

  I frowned, then turned back toward the window, reluctant to let Paul see my jealousy.

  • • •

  No one was meeting us at LaGuardia Airport. There was no one who could meet us, because who did we know in New York except for Paul’s family? No one, that was who.

  I knew Paul had flown commercially only a few times himself, but he handled the experience like a seasoned traveler, knowledgeably reading the terminal signage and leading me to the baggage claim. After we fetched our luggage, he said he’d see about renting a car. I sat with the baby on my lap, looking around. Everything at LaGuardia—from the fast-moving luggage conveyor to the orange molded plastic seat I sat on—was modern, bright, and hard. I felt as if I’d landed in another country entirely, not even in America anymore.