The Glass Forest

by Cynthia Swanson

  I took Ruby awkwardly in my arms. “Are you all right?” I asked.

  Quietly—so quietly that I almost didn’t hear her—she whispered, “I trust you, Aunt Angie.” Then she pulled back from me and nodded. “I’m all right,” she said, loud enough for Paul to hear.

  “Ruby, you should sleep,” Paul said, rubbing his own eyes. “I brought you a suitcase with some clothes. And your toothbrush. I’m sorry if I didn’t know what else you’d need; maybe you can borrow makeup and all that from Angie.”

  Ruby and I glanced at each other. I wore makeup, but Ruby didn’t; we could tell that about each other just by looking. But Paul wouldn’t know such a thing. Men didn’t know such things—even men who proclaimed to be artists, men who were supposed to notice beauty and details.

  We all settled into bed—Paul and I in the bed by the door, Ruby in the one next to the bathroom. Paul took me in his arms and kissed me chastely on the cheek. “I can’t wait to be home with you,” he said, taking one of my breasts in his hand. He rubbed my nipple and murmured, “Can’t wait . . . ”

  Despite myself, I felt my body responding. My nipple hardened in his fingertips, and I felt a tingling between my legs.

  How can it be, I wondered, that the body can want what the mind knows is wrong?

  “We’ll be there soon,” I whispered to Paul. I slipped out of his grasp and turned onto my side, facing away from him. He slung his arm around my waist and kissed my neck. Soon I heard him snoring deeply in my right ear.

  But I couldn’t get to sleep. I tried lying still and breathing evenly, hoping sleep would find me. But every time I closed my eyes, they popped open again.

  I gingerly unfolded myself from Paul’s embrace and sat upright. Turning toward Ruby’s bed, I saw the girl staring at me.

  We locked gazes but said not a word. I gave her the slightest nod of my head, and she silently rose from her bed. Her grandmother’s shawl was spread across her bed, and she draped it around her shoulders, on top of the baggy sweater she wore over her nightgown.

  Rising and slipping on my robe, I motioned toward the door. Ruby followed me outside. We sat in two lawn chairs outside the room, leaving the door ajar. The night was clear and crisp, the October air chilly. Both of us sat cross-legged, our feet under ourselves in our chairs. We pulled our outer layers more tightly toward our chins. We could see the baby in his crib, but not Paul.

  “So you couldn’t sleep either, huh?” I asked.

  Ruby shook her head. “I’m glad you were awake. I need to talk to you.”

  She leaned in close.

  62

  * * *

  Ruby

  “What is it, Ruby?” Aunt Angie asks. “Tell me.”

  Ruby glances around the corner into the motel room, then back at Aunt Angie. “You need to get Uncle Paul to send you home tomorrow,” she whispers. “You and PJ. He still has the airplane tickets for tomorrow afternoon. You need to convince him to put you and PJ on that plane.”

  And then Ruby closes her mouth and blinks. She almost never cries. She barely recognizes the feeling of tears for what they are. She reaches into the neckline of her nightgown and fingers her mother’s sapphire necklace.

  “What about you?” Aunt Angie asks. “Where will you be?”

  Ruby looks at Uncle Paul’s car, parked in front of them. Its bumper gleams in the moonlight. “I’ll be here,” she lies. “Waiting to see what else the police want from me.”

  Aunt Angie doesn’t say anything. Then she asks, “Wouldn’t it be better if I stayed, too? I think you need the support, Ruby. I think you need . . . ” She looks up at the starry sky, then back at Ruby. “You need a mother nearby, Ruby.”

  If only it were that easy. Ruby shakes her head.

  “It’s going to get tricky,” she says. “Please, Aunt Angie.” She recognizes desperation in her own voice. “If you can’t get on that plane for yourself—or for me—will you do it for PJ?”

  Ruby tilts her head toward the crib just inside the motel room. “You got a beautiful baby out of all this, Aunt Angie. The most important thing is to keep your beautiful baby safe.”

  She hesitates, then goes on. “My mother and Dr. Shepherd were expecting a child. But not anymore. That baby won’t ever have life.”

  Aunt Angie stares at her and asks why not.

  Ruby shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. It won’t happen, that’s all. I don’t want to talk about it.” She looks away, then back at Aunt Angie. “You have some things that are mine,” she says quietly. “My mother’s photographs. My father’s letters from Uncle Paul, and his drawings. You have those things, don’t you?”

  Aunt Angie nods. “I’ll give them back to you,” she tells Ruby, starting to rise. “They’re in the baby’s suitcase.”

  Ruby puts her hand on Aunt Angie’s arm, and she stops and sits back down. “No,” Ruby tells her. “Leave them where they are. That’s actually a perfect place for them.” She thinks about it for a minute, and then adds, “If you can do it without Uncle Paul noticing, move the photo album to your pocketbook. But leave the other things where they are.”

  Aunt Angie tilts her head, looking at Ruby curiously. “Why would I do that?”

  “Because I’m asking you to.”

  Aunt Angie breathes in and out slowly. “There was an envelope in your mother’s jewelry box,” she says. “I wanted to open it, but I didn’t. Now it’s gone.”

  Ruby nods. “My mother’s photograph album was in that envelope. I took it. And then I gave the album to you, because I knew it would be safe with you.”

  Aunt Angie takes this in and doesn’t reply.

  Ruby shifts in her seat, leaning closer to Aunt Angie. “Do you have . . . there was another letter, too.”

  Aunt Angie gives her a long, level look. “I have that one,” she says, and Ruby can tell she’s trying to keep her voice even. “And that letter is exactly why I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave you here alone with Paul.”

  Ruby understands why Aunt Angie feels this way. But she says, “I’ve trusted you, Aunt Angie. Now you have to trust me. I know how to handle Paul.” She leans in and goes on, “That letter, it’s evidence. It implicates Uncle Paul, or at least raises suspicion. Uncle Paul thinks my father found it. He thinks it’s somewhere in the house.” She gives Aunt Angie a beseeching look. “Please—you cannot tell him you have it.”

  Aunt Angie’s mouth puckers into a frown. “I have no intention of trusting Paul with anything right now.”

  “Well, that’s wise,” Ruby replies.

  She doesn’t tell Aunt Angie what Uncle Paul suggested when he told Ruby his plan. Uncle Paul said they would get out of this whole mess a lot easier if they didn’t have to worry about Aunt Angie.

  “What about PJ?” Ruby had asked him.

  Uncle Paul shrugged. “We’d keep PJ with us. You could pretend he’s yours.”

  Ruby admits she was tempted. It was an appealing notion, after everything that’s happened.

  But it wouldn’t be right. So she told Uncle Paul they shouldn’t do that. “PJ belongs to Aunt Angie,” she insisted. “They need to stay together, and they need to stay safe.” She put her hand on his arm. “Please, Uncle Paul.”

  He frowned. “I’ll think about it,” he said. “I need to make the plan, Ruby. Let me handle it.”

  She nodded, not because she agreed but because she knew arguing with him would get her nowhere. She felt chilled, touching his arm. She drew her hand away.

  Now, next to Aunt Angie in the darkness, her body so close Ruby can feel everything about it—its vibrancy, its innocence—her heart is heavy for Aunt Angie. If she gets safely back to Wisconsin with PJ, Aunt Angie will have to live with the knowledge of what’s happened.

  Ruby knows a lot, but one thing she doesn’t know is what it’s like to believe someone loves you and then learn he doesn’t. Whatever else Ruby might not have, she knows from which corners of her world love finds its way to her.

  So she tells Aunt
Angie she’s sorry. Truly sorry.

  Aunt Angie is silent for a moment, and then she says, “Ruby, you know where your mother is—don’t you?”

  Slowly, Ruby nods.

  “Will you tell me?”

  Ruby ponders the question, though she already knows the answer. Before Uncle Paul told her his plan, she wouldn’t have considered it. When Ruby gave Aunt Angie the photograph album, when she let Aunt Angie in on even the smallest detail, she had no plans to tell Aunt Angie everything. Not then and not ever.

  But now Ruby knows it’s the right thing to do. There is something about trusting Aunt Angie completely that makes everything that was terribly wrong start to feel absolutely right.

  So she leans toward her aunt. Their heads together, whispering in the cold October evening, Ruby speaks.

  • • •

  When Ruby is finished, Aunt Angie sits back and stares at her. “Holy Mother of God,” she says softly. She clasps her hands together, making a fist in her lap. “We need to go to the police. You can tell them bits and pieces, Ruby. You don’t have to tell them everything. They’re already searching the house—”

  “No, they’re not,” Ruby says. “Uncle Paul made that up. To get you to leave. It was me on the phone, pretending to be the cops.”

  Aunt Angie grimaces. Then she says, “Even so—the police can help us, Ruby.”

  Ruby shakes her head. “We don’t need the police. What we need to do is convince Uncle Paul to let you get on that plane. And we need to pretend we never had this talk.”

  “Ruby—”

  Ruby stops her by putting her hand on Aunt Angie’s arm. “Aunt Angie,” she says earnestly. “Please believe me when I tell you I’m not in danger. But you and PJ are. That’s the important thing.”

  She takes her grandmother’s shawl from around her shoulders and places it in Aunt Angie’s lap. “I want you to have this. Take it home with you. Keep it safe for me.”

  “Ruby.” Aunt Angie looks her in the eye. “Thank you. That’s sweet of you, honey.” She looks up at the stars overhead, her fingers playing with the shawl’s fringe.

  Ruby smiles, but she also shivers, chilled without the shawl despite the warmth inside Shepherd’s sweater. Aunt Angie rises and takes her hand. “Let’s get you back inside,” she suggests. “I’ll try to sleep, too, but mostly I need to think about all this.”

  63

  * * *

  Silja

  1960

  Silja’s second pregnancy made her not only nauseated at odd hours, but also as emotional as a teenager. She reminded herself of some melodramatic young star—Natalie Wood’s Judy in Rebel Without a Cause, maybe, weeping at the drop of a hat over the despair that had become her life.

  Alone in her bedroom at night, Silja cried hot, fat tears of frustration. She wrapped soft sheets around her body, leaned back against the pillows she’d so carefully selected for their advertised promise of maximum comfort. She blubbered into tissue after tissue, her nose itching and her eyes spidered red.

  She wished she could run—take Ruby and David, take her body with David’s child growing inside it. Just disappear, like she used to dream of doing before she had her house, before she loved David. But even if it were possible—and she knew it wasn’t—she would lose everything if she left. Her home, her job—everything she’d worked so hard for. It wouldn’t be fair.

  Henry was the one who deserved to lose. Not Silja.

  One night as she lay sobbing, willing her flip-flopping stomach to calm down, there was a light tap on her door. She wiped her eyes and put her glasses on. She rose from the bed, drawing her robe around her body. She wasn’t showing, not yet, but it was only a matter of time.

  She opened the door to find Ruby standing in the darkened hallway. “What is it, honey?” Silja asked. “Are you all right?”

  Ruby nodded. “Yes. But are you?”

  Silja glanced behind the girl. Henry was nowhere in sight—probably out in the woods, out in his silly bomb shelter. She drew Ruby into her room and closed the door.

  “I thought I heard something in here, so I came to check on you.” Ruby regarded Silja carefully. “Have you been crying, Mom?”

  “Oh, Ruby.” Silja sat on the side of the bed. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  Ruby put her arm around Silja’s shoulder. “Remember when we used to snuggle up together?” she asked. “Back in the parlor on Lawrence Avenue?” She squeezed Silja’s shoulder. “You always made me feel better if I was sad,” she said softly, coaxingly. “Maybe I can make you feel better now.”

  “That’s sweet, Ruby. Thank you.” Silja sniffed, and then broke out in fresh sobs. “I just don’t know what to do!” she wailed. “I’m at the end of my rope, Ruby, I—”

  She cut herself off, shaking her head. “You should go,” she told the girl. “I appreciate your concern, honey, truly I do. But I can’t burden you with this. You don’t need or deserve to hear about adult troubles.”

  “Mom. Look at me.” Ruby tilted Silja’s chin so they were eye to eye. “Tell me what’s going on. Maybe I can help.”

  “You can’t. There’s no help. There’s no solution.”

  “Just tell me, okay?”

  Silja couldn’t stop herself. Like faulty car brakes too long unattended and finally giving out entirely, Silja’s heart rolled past the point of control. She took Ruby’s hand in hers and spilled everything. She told her teenage daughter about her lover’s baby, who would be born the following spring—unless Silja did something about it soon. She knew there were places she could go, a doctor she could see. Her own physician was the premier gynecologist in the city. He would, she was sure, be able to recommend someone reputable for a woman of means like Silja. She couldn’t be the first woman in his practice who’d been in such a predicament.

  It was possible, of course. But Silja couldn’t bear the idea. Aborting David’s child was the last thing she wanted to do. But she didn’t see any other options.

  “I only wish David and I could get married,” Silja said. “I wish Dad would grant me a divorce, so I could marry David. But he won’t.” She bit her bottom lip, feeling bitterness rise in her throat.

  Ruby sat quietly, her hand still in Silja’s, appearing deep in thought. “There has to be a way,” she said finally.

  Silja shook her head. “There’s no way. There’s no solution. At least, none that I can see.”

  Ruby squeezed her hand. “Mom, I don’t want you to worry,” she said. “Try not to worry, okay?”

  64

  * * *

  Angie

  We all rose early, unable to sleep soundly in the small, unfamiliar space. After we’d eaten breakfast, again brought by room service, Paul wiped his mouth with his napkin, pushed himself back from the table, and stood. He looked down at me and said, “I need you to come with me to the house. I forgot some things.” He nodded toward his niece. “Ruby can stay here and keep an eye on PJ.”

  I was so startled I didn’t know what to say. Finally, I asked, “What about the police? Won’t they be there, searching?”

  Paul shrugged. “We’ll have to take that chance. There’s something I need from there. If the police are there, I hope they’ll let me in and let me . . . take it.”

  I asked why he needed me to come along.

  “Because I do,” he said. “Just trust me, Angel, that’s all.”

  He gave me the soft, dreamy-eyed gaze I knew so well. Or thought I’d known, anyway.

  I pressed my lips together. “I have a different idea,” I said. “You still have those plane tickets, right? Why don’t you put PJ and me on that plane today back to Wisconsin?” I put my fingers on his hand, splayed on the table, and let them rest there. “There’s so much to think about here,” I said gently, massaging his hand. “You could focus better if PJ and I were out of your hair.”

  He closed his eyes, then opened them. “I don’t want to be separated from the two of you.” He put his other hand on top of mine, so my one hand was sandwi
ched between his two. “I’d be lost without you, Angel.”

  If only it were true. If only I believed him.

  “Paul,” I pleaded, my voice as gentle as I could make it. “I’ll feel so much better at home, away from all of this. And I have faith in you. I know you can clear everything up if only you can concentrate on it. Then you and Ruby can join the baby and me back in Door County—you’ll be there in no time at all. I’m sure of it.” I gave him my best big-eyed, cajoling look. “Please, Paul.”

  I waited, my eyes locked with his. He stared at me, then turned toward Ruby, who seemed intent on her half-finished eggs and toast. She must have felt his eyes on her, because she lifted her head. For just the smallest moment, their eyes met. Neither spoke. Then she went back to her meal.

  He turned back to me. “All right,” he said. “I’ll phone your parents and let them know you’re coming home today after all. Go pack your things and the baby’s in one bag. You can use the big one—I’ll take my small case back.”

  • • •

  I focused on packing, hunched on my heels with my back to Paul while I removed his things from the larger bag and transferred PJ’s items in. The packet of letters and drawings was safely wrapped in a layer of clean cotton diapers that I buried at the bottom of the bag I’d take home with me. I slipped Silja’s photograph album into my purse.

  Ruby asked if she could take a walk while she waited for us. “I won’t go far,” she promised Paul. “No farther than the motel office. I’ll just enjoy the view of the river.” She smiled at him. “Okay?”

  He grimaced but acquiesced. Only a few minutes later she returned. And then we were on our way, my things and PJ’s in the suitcase placed in the Ford’s trunk.

  “I still need to go back to the house,” Paul said nonchalantly as we drove away from the motel. “Remember, I said I left something there.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Paul said, “I can’t tell you, Angel. I’m sorry, but some things are personal.”