The Glass Forest

by Cynthia Swanson

  * * *

  Ruby

  Today her father’s body will be put in the ground.

  Ruby is in her room in the birdcage with the door closed. She stands by the window, looking out. She’s watching Uncle Paul, who is on the patio reading a newspaper and smoking. He looks agitated, like somebody waiting for a train that’s fifteen minutes late.

  He grinds out his cigarette and folds the paper, putting it in his pants pocket. He stares into the forest, then hunkers down on one of the metal patio chairs, his head lowered and his hands on the back of his neck.

  Ruby has never seen Uncle Paul curl up his long body this way. His posture reminds her of atomic bomb drills at school. They still do the drills a couple times a year. In elementary school, they watched a short movie featuring a turtle hiding in its shell. Then they practiced hiding themselves. In high school, there’s no movie, but they still practice what to do. Duck and cover. That’s what Uncle Paul looks like he’d doing on the patio—ducking and covering.

  During the drills, you were supposed to duck and cover under your own desk, but the girls sometimes crawled over to be with their neighbors. If the teacher reprimanded them after the drill, they said they didn’t want to be alone. They felt safer ducking against each other.

  In the cafeteria after the first drill this school year, a few boys said the girls could come under the boys’ desks if they wanted protection. “I’ll keep you safe . . . and warm,” Jerry Krouse told Emily Bruno. He made motions like he was feeling up the air, and all the boys laughed.

  “Gross, Jerry. I’ll stay with my friends, thank you very much.” Emily pranced off, her ponytail bouncing behind her.

  Ruby understood how Emily felt. She wouldn’t want to duck and cover with any of those disgusting boys either. She wouldn’t mind the company of a girl, though.

  She wouldn’t mind having a friend.

  Except Ruby knows none of the girls want to be near her. “The girls at school think I’m weird,” Ruby once told her father, explaining why she didn’t bring friends home. He hadn’t asked, but they were talking about friends—her father said Uncle Paul was his best friend, always had been. “All they talk about are boys and clothes,” Ruby said. “And I don’t know how to talk about that stuff. If I try starting a conversation about anything else, they look at me like I have two heads.”

  Her father shrugged. “You don’t need friends,” he replied. “You just look out for yourself, Ruby, and you’ll be fine.”

  Looking back—that conversation was more than six months ago—Ruby realizes it’s the last heart-to-heart talk she had with her father. That is, if you can call it heart-to-heart—the sort of discussion where her father, based on his own experience, told Ruby how to feel and what to do. Her father gave a little piece of himself. And back then Ruby thought that meant they were talking heart-to-heart.

  But now she sees it differently.

  • • •

  Uncle Paul steps into the kitchen. Once he’s gone, Ruby opens the window and leans out. She smells the earth in the backyard.

  She thinks about dirt and what it would feel like to be six feet underneath it, in a tiny little box. One you can’t stand up in, can’t move around in. It would be even more confining than being under those little desks at school.

  Of course, she knows her father won’t feel that. He won’t feel anything ever again.

  But still, she imagines it. What it would be like if her father woke up. If he felt the darkness around him, the enclosed space. If he raised his hands and pushed against tufted, satiny material—nothing but the best—and felt the hardness above it, the wooden box. And then he’d know, surely, that above the box was earth, shovelful after shovelful. And no matter how hard he beat his fists and how loud he yelled, he’d never get out.

  His world has been reduced—smaller by far than it’s ever been. And now he’ll never escape that pitiful, circumscribed den.

  21

  * * *

  Angie

  As I was hanging up after speaking with Mrs. Hawke, Paul turned around to stare at me from the patio. He rose and stepped inside. “Who were you talking to, Angie?”

  His low, stern voice told me it would be best to lie. “It was my mother,” I said, crossing the kitchen and turning on the stove. “She was just calling to check on us.” I melted butter in the pan and added the raw egg mixture, then turned to him and smiled. “Breakfast in just a minute.”

  Paul, apparently accepting my explanation, sat at the bar and waited for me to put a plate in front of him.

  The service for Henry, he told me as we ate, was to be held at the funeral home. “They weren’t religious,” Paul said. “Henry was never all that serious about Catholicism, even back in California when we went to Mass every Sunday. And Silja grew up in some Finnish church—I can’t remember what it’s called, but from what Henry’s told me, everyone went to the same church. Religion is pretty much the same thing as heritage, I guess, if you’re Finnish.” He shrugged. “Anyway, after Silja’s mother died and they moved away from Brooklyn, I don’t think Silja ever went to church again.”

  I couldn’t fathom this latest information. Like so much in Henry and Silja’s world, a dearth of religion in the home was something with which I had no experience.

  “What about Ruby?” I asked. “She’s never gone to church?”

  Paul glanced toward the hallway, but there was no sign of Ruby; she hadn’t come out of her room for breakfast. “Maybe when she was small, back in Brooklyn,” he said. “But to my knowledge, not since.” He stood up from the bar and popped the last piece of bacon into his mouth. “So it seemed simpler to do the service at the funeral home.”

  • • •

  In the car, I held the baby on my lap and gently rubbed his back. Ruby curled into the corner of the backseat and said nothing, as usual. As we drove along the narrow, hilly streets into the center of town, I glanced at the homes and small stores. We passed bakeries and stationers, tailor’s shops and cobblers. The businesses were stuck into small, squat buildings with dusty-looking display windows and dingy signs advertising their names. Most of the houses were narrow frame structures, two or three stories high, in need of fresh paint and roof repair. They had steep pitched roofs, gingerbread trim along the gutters, and sagging front porches.

  “Up that street, that’s where Henry and Silja used to live,” Paul offered quietly, nodding in the direction of a side street. Its sign read LAWRENCE AVENUE.

  Ruby did not turn her head.

  Near the train tracks and the Hudson River, we turned onto a main road and Paul sped up. As we passed into the next town south, I looked out the side window at the river. Row upon row of ships—dozens or more—were anchored in the distance near the other shore.

  “What are those ships?” I asked Paul.

  “Reserve warships, mostly,” he said. “Government uses them for grain storage and the like, then puts them into service when they’re needed.” He slowed for a curve in the road. “The locals call it the Mothball Fleet. People take their speedboats up and down between the rows, pulling water skiers. It’s less choppy in there, compared to the open water of the river. Smooth as glass in between the ships, from what I understand—perfect for waterskiing.”

  I nodded, twisting my neck to keep looking at the ships as we drove by. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Ruby leaning against the car door. Her head was ducked and her eyes were closed.

  I stared at the vast river. Though I knew it was significantly smaller than Lake Michigan, somehow the Hudson felt larger than the lake I was so accustomed to. The river seemed disconnected from its shores, like a distant relative one has heard of but never met.

  Maybe, I thought, it was just because I was in a car. Perhaps if I stood on the banks of the Hudson, dipped in my toes the way I’d so often dipped into Lake Michigan, shielded my eyes as I looked across the water at that silent, distant fleet—perhaps then the river would feel as safe and familiar as my lake at home did. />
  I shook my head. I didn’t know if the river had sandy banks anywhere, if it had parks or beaches, places for picnics and games. Nonetheless, I couldn’t shake the disconcerting feeling that if I touched a foot into that river, I’d fall in headlong and drown.

  • • •

  There were about a half-dozen cars in the funeral home lot. Right away I spotted Jean Kellerman’s Chevrolet. Uh-oh, I thought as I stepped out of the Ford.

  The funeral director met us at the door. “I’m sorry there are . . . intruders,” Mr. Wagner said to Paul. With his small eyes darting about, he reminded me of a nervous rabbit. “I can send for the police, if you like. They could keep a watch on things and escort anyone you don’t want to be here off the premises.”

  Paul shook his head, his eyes steely. “Let them do what they want,” he said to Wagner. “They can’t hurt us.”

  Cradling PJ against my body, I followed Paul, Ruby, and the funeral director inside.

  A small crowd had gathered, mostly men but also including Jean Kellerman, who tried to meet my eye; I looked away. As one, the group approached Paul with murmured sympathy, followed by requests for, “Just a few words, Mr. Glass.” Most had notebooks like Jean’s, pens poised. Two men held up cameras, but Mr. Wagner stepped in front of us just as their flashbulbs went off.

  Paul took my elbow on one side, Ruby’s on the other, and brushed past the reporters and photographers. Mr. Wagner hastily accompanied us into the main room. He spoke sharply to the people in the vestibule, then shut the door.

  Paul strode to the front of the room and glanced at Henry’s casket, nodding his approval to Mr. Wagner. He moved to the back of the room and lit a Lucky Strike. Mr. Wagner stood next to him, and the two spoke in hushed tones, heads bowed toward one another.

  Babe in arms, I walked toward the casket, which was placed on a raised dais with a large mixed bouquet of flowers on a pedestal to the side.

  I peered inside the coffin. PJ, curious, tried to push himself out of my arms, reaching toward Henry’s lifeless body. I recoiled and pulled the baby back, snuggling him against my breast. He became interested in the floral bouquet, and I shifted so he could just touch the tips of the tiger lilies and sprays of baby’s breath.

  I studied Henry, laid out in the mahogany coffin lined with ivory satin. In death, Henry’s resemblance to Paul was not as strong as I remembered. Henry’s coloring was off, more orange than ruddy-brown, and his hair was parted crookedly on the right. Still, his lanky body in the blue suit was identical to Paul’s. Same thin frame, same long legs and arms.

  I had a sudden image of Paul without clothes on. At home, when it was just the two of us in the cottage—not counting the baby, because he was a baby, after all—I adored looking at Paul undressed. During the warmer months, late the previous spring and through the summer, he’d often walked around the cottage naked. He would move from bed to shower with no clothes on, and then, when he was done, he’d dry off and come into the tiny kitchen, not even a towel wrapped around his hips, to accept the cup of coffee I had ready for him. He’d stand at the living room window, sipping his coffee as he looked at the bay, his perfect hips and buttocks in full view from the kitchen, where I was cooking breakfast. It was hard to concentrate on making toast and eggs; I found it nearly impossible to draw my eyes away from his exposed backside.

  Holding the baby, standing beside Paul’s brother’s casket, I felt my face redden at my improper thoughts. I turned my back on Henry and scanned the room for Ruby. I expected the girl to come forward and inspect the casket, as Paul had.

  But Ruby did not approach the dais. Instead, she stood near a side wall, far apart from Paul, Mr. Wagner, and me. Her patchwork purse was slung across her body and rested against one hip. Her arms were crossed over her chest and her face was blank, as if she were deliberately trying to clear her mind of all thought and emotion.

  I walked over to the girl. “Ruby?” I said softly. I wanted to reach out and touch Ruby’s sweater sleeve or brush her hair back from her face—anything to have physical contact. But Ruby’s eyes, staring straight ahead and refusing to meet mine, told me to keep my distance.

  “Can I get you something?” I asked. “A cup of water, perhaps?”

  Ruby shook her head and looked down at her shoes.

  I didn’t know what else to do. I crossed the room and stood next to Paul, ready to greet mourners as they came into the room.

  22

  * * *

  Ruby

  In that stifling space, staring straight ahead of her, not at the front of the room where there’s a coffin and not at the back of the room where there are living people, Ruby tries not to think about anything. But it’s impossible, of course, to stop the mind from wandering. To stop thoughts from creeping in.

  She doesn’t believe in a conventional heaven, but she knows dead people are present. If you think warmly about the dead, they can be a comfort—it’s almost as if your warm thoughts give them a live, warm body again. When you think pleasant thoughts about the dead, it feels like they’re right next to you, breathing the same air you breathe. It’s something Ruby has done with her grandmother for years. It’s something she could do with anybody she loves who has died.

  She could imagine her father now that he’s dead. But she doesn’t.

  Instead, she thinks about Grandma’s funeral, which was held at the Finnish Lutheran Church in Brooklyn. Ruby’s grandmother had a locket she wore every day, a silver one with photographs of Ruby on one side and Ruby’s mother opposite. Before they shut Grandma’s casket, the pastor asked Ruby’s mother if she wanted the locket.

  Her mother shook her head no. The pastor gently touched her arm. “Tytär,” he said. “I would advise you to take your äiti’s jewelry. It does her no good in the ground, but it’s a keepsake for you and your own little tytär —” and here he looked at Ruby with sympathetic blue eyes. “If you don’t take it, Silja,” he urged, “I believe you’ll regret it later on.”

  Reconsidering, Ruby’s mother nodded. The pastor removed the locket from Grandma’s neck and handed it to Ruby’s mother, who put it in her pocketbook.

  In all these years, Ruby has never seen her mother wear that locket. It rests untouched in her jewelry box. Nonetheless, Ruby thinks the pastor was right. She’s glad the locket is still around.

  How sad her grandmother would be—not about the locket sitting in a jewelry box; Ruby knows Grandma wouldn’t care about that—but by this recent turn of events in the family.

  If there was a heaven, Grandma would be there, because she never did a bad deed in her life. In Hebrew, a bad deed is called an aveira. When Ruby lived on Lawrence Avenue, one of the neighbor girls told her this. The girl’s name was Sarah and she was the only kid in the neighborhood who was Jewish. Ruby and Sarah got along because neither had siblings and because Ruby was the only kid who was half Finnish, which in that neighborhood was almost as kooky as being Jewish.

  “An aveira is kind of the opposite of a mitzvah,” Sarah told Ruby. “But not exactly, either, because a mitzvah can be anything good that you do, but an aveira is a specific sin.”

  “Like what?” Ruby asked. “What specifically?”

  “Oh, things like withholding charity from the poor,” Sarah said. “And silly things out of the Bible. Things people don’t even do anymore. Like building an altar with stones cut by metal.”

  Ruby thought about that, and then she asked, “What about murder? Would murder be an aveira?”

  Sarah nodded and said yes, of course it would.

  Sarah moved away from Lawrence Avenue before Ruby did. Her family moved to New Jersey. Sarah and Ruby promised to write to each other and maybe even visit, but they never did. Which is unfortunate, because since then Ruby hasn’t made a single other friend her own age.

  If Grandma had been Jewish, she wouldn’t have been the aveira type. She surely would have been the mitzvah type. She would be in heaven, looking down on all this with sadness.

  What about
Ruby’s father in heaven?

  Nope. Not a chance.

  23

  * * *

  Angie

  I stood slightly behind Paul, holding the baby, smiling shyly at the mourners as they came into the room. They nodded politely in my direction but failed to speak to me. I heard more than one whisper to a companion, “That’s his young wife,” or other similar lines.

  Paul didn’t introduce me to anyone. It was almost as if he’d forgotten I was there. I felt resentment building, but—hearing my mother’s voice in my head—I reminded myself that peevishness was not appropriate, nor was it becoming.

  The reporters and photographers weren’t permitted inside. But others came in—primarily men, but there were a few women, too. Most were middle-aged or older. They wore dark suits or dresses; the men took off their hats and held them humbly in front of their middles. Paul shook hands, nodded, spoke a few quiet words to some of them. Words that I didn’t catch.

  Once in a while, someone would walk in and Paul was less friendly. I saw how he stiffened at the sight of one man who looked about Paul’s own age—a burly, balding fellow with dirty fingernails and scarred hands who seemed uncomfortable in a suit and tie. The man, who was alone, didn’t hold out his hand to Paul. He merely brushed his way inside, finding a seat toward the middle of the room.

  After that, Paul turned to me—so he did realize I was there, after all—and told me to go sit down. “That front row, sit there. It’s reserved for family,” he said. “Go get Ruby and tell her it’s time for her to sit down, too.”

  I obeyed. Ruby, saying nothing, followed me to the front row. We sat in silence, except for the baby babbling to himself and playing with my rosary.

  At ten o’clock, Mr. Wagner closed the double doors to the room, and he and Paul made their way forward. Paul took the seat next to me. Mr. Wagner, at the front of the room, cleared his throat. “Thank you for being here,” he said to the gathering—about twenty-five people, I estimated.