I didn’t press the issue. When he pulled into the driveway on Stone Ridge Road, no cars were there. “Ah,” Paul said. “No cops. We’re lucky, it seems.”
Lucky. It was a word that meant nothing. I leaned back in the seat, baby in my arms.
“Come in with me,” he said, reaching for my hand. “Please, Angel.”
I glanced at Ruby, in the backseat. She shook her head slightly.
“The baby is almost asleep,” I whispered—and it was true; he was drowsy in my embrace. I didn’t shift to take Paul’s hand. Instead, I said, “I can’t move; I’d disturb PJ. You go get what you need, Paul, and we can be on our way.”
He seemed to waver, as if deciding whether or not to pressure me further. I kept my eyes locked on his, letting him know I wasn’t going to change my mind.
Ruby watched our exchange. Paul turned and met her gaze. Neither of them said anything, but their eyes were fixed on one another.
Finally, he stepped away from the car. He hurried up to the house, unlocked it, and went inside.
I looked back at Ruby. “Smart,” she said.
Paul was gone only moments, and when he returned, his hands were empty. He strolled calmly, whistling. It was as if he’d gone inside for a missing tie or pair of cuff links.
He sat in the driver’s seat and shifted to look at Ruby. “Here,” he said, reaching over to hand her a shiny object. “I found this inside. I think it belongs to you.”
As Ruby took the item from him, I saw that it was a battered, tarnished Zippo lighter.
Paul reversed out of the drive and drove away. None of us looked back.
• • •
At the airplane gate, I settled into a seat with the baby on my lap. Ruby watched me, then glanced at a nearby clock.
“You have a good fifteen minutes until you board, Aunt Angie,” she said. “I’m going to take a walk.” She turned toward Paul. “Want to come with me, Uncle Paul?” she entreated. “Please?”
Standing near the window, watching planes arriving and departing, he turned to face us. He jiggled his hands in his pockets. He looked uncomfortable—as if he wanted not just to walk, but also to break into a run and flee the scene.
“A walk,” he replied. “Okay, sure.”
Ruby leaned toward me. “Don’t say anything,” she whispered. “This is good-bye and good luck.” She kissed the baby on the top of his head. “I’ll be in touch when I can.” She stood up and motioned to Paul.
He patted the baby’s head, then ran two fingers across my cheek. Smiling his white-toothed, movie-star smile, he said, “Back before you know it, Angel.”
I kept my eyes down and didn’t say anything. I watched them stroll away side by side, looking as if they didn’t have a care in the world. Two identically tall, lean figures. Both of them wily as foxes, uncontrollable as birds.
• • •
PJ began to fuss, and I reached over him into my handbag, to retrieve the bottle I’d prepared at the motel. Once I arrived at the airport in Milwaukee, I’d have little to do. My mother, always organized and ready for every situation, would have everything PJ needed. I would be able to sit back and enjoy the drive to Door County, with PJ safe in my mother’s arms.
My mother would take over. And I could stop being the grown-up.
I stuck the bottle in the baby’s mouth and closed my eyes, lost in thought. When I opened them, someone was seating himself next to me. I glanced to my right, and then gave a small cry of shock.
It was Dr. Shepherd.
“Mrs. Glass.” Dr. Shepherd extended his hand. “I’m glad to see you again.” He had on a dark gray fedora, a gray suit, and a modest blue button-down shirt. He looked ordinary. Like he could be anybody. A man who would blend in with a crowd.
“How . . . why . . .” I stammered. “What are you doing here?” I glanced around. “Did you follow me?”
He nodded slightly.
“Why would you do that? What do you want from me?”
PJ turned his face toward the doctor, causing the bottle to slip from his mouth and formula to dribble down his chin. He let out a loud cry; I turned his head gently and put the bottle back between his lips. He reached both chubby hands up to clutch it, his gaze on Dr. Shepherd. I dabbed the spilled liquid from PJ’s chin.
Dr. Shepherd met the child’s eyes. “Certainly his father’s son, despite that fair hair of his.”
I nodded. There’s no denying Paul’s genes in our child. He has the mousy brown Doyle hair, but other than that he’s the spitting image of Paul.
“What will you tell him, as he grows?” Dr. Shepherd shifted in his seat, leaning toward me.
“What will I tell him about what?”
“About his father.”
I pressed my lips together and didn’t answer. Instead, I asked, “Did Ruby tell you I’d be here? Did she get Paul to walk away before my flight left, so he wouldn’t see you?”
Dr. Shepherd nodded again. “She did.”
We sat silently as the baby finished his bottle. I hoisted him to my shoulder to burp him, then looked at the doctor over the top of PJ’s head.
“Dr. Shepherd.” I took a breath. “I’m so sorry about Silja.” I hesitated, then put my hand on his arm. “And your child.”
65
* * *
Ruby
None of them looked back at the birdcage as they drove away. And Ruby was glad, because she knew what she’d see and she didn’t want Aunt Angie to see it. Or maybe Aunt Angie wouldn’t have seen it, because the spark was so tiny.
On Sunday night when he told her the plan, Uncle Paul told Ruby how he was going to set it up. And he’s so smart, Uncle Paul—his plan was to lay it out in her father’s bedroom, using kerosene and a string. He’d drill a small hole in the door, thread the string to the front entryway of the house, where he’d light it just before he left.
It would all work, Uncle Paul said, in such a way that he could start it slowly, with just a flick of Ruby’s Zippo.
Just a tiny flicker and then he was outside and they were gone before anyone could notice. Not the neighbors, and certainly not Aunt Angie.
• • •
Uncle Paul said that the birdcage would explode—the birdcage and everything in it, including the evidence Ruby told him was somewhere inside. Her father’s fastidious drawings of the Shelter. And the letter Uncle Paul had written to her, expressing his desire to be with Ruby and no one else.
Evidence that Ruby insisted she’d searched and searched for, but never found. Evidence that Uncle Paul also tore the house apart looking for, after he took Aunt Angie to the motel.
Uncle Paul said it would look like a meteor hit from the inside. It would be too late for anyone to do anything except watch the birdcage go up in a massive cloud of smoke and flames.
Where did he learn to do something like that? The war, maybe, or somewhere in all his travels. Who knows?
When it comes down to it, Ruby doesn’t know much about Uncle Paul.
She supposes she should stop calling him Uncle now. She knows that’s not how he wants her to think of him.
• • •
What she does know about Paul is that he’s clever. He knows how to get out of a situation and disappear. And that’s a skill Ruby needs right now. Like a magician, Paul can make her vanish.
Later, if necessary, Ruby can make him vanish. She’s quite capable of that.
It wouldn’t be the first time, would it?
66
* * *
Silja
1960
When she got home on Monday evening, she felt nauseated—again. She ran for her room and dropped her pocketbook on the bed. She dashed into the bathroom and knelt in front of the toilet. It was only after she’d flushed and stood up that she saw Henry standing in the doorway.
“What the hell?” he asked.
“Stomach bug,” she said simply. “Going to lie down for a bit.” She tried to brush past him.
He held out his arm, blocking
her way. “Stomach bug, my ass.” He pushed forward, forcing her toward a corner. “I came in here today looking for a bar of soap. We ran out in the other bathroom. And what did I find?” He thrust open her vanity drawer and shook her diaphragm case at her. “What the hell is this, Silja? No, don’t tell me—don’t say a goddamn thing. I know what it is. And apparently it didn’t work as well as you’d expected it to.” He shook his head. “You must be quite the Fertile Myrtle, Mrs. Glass,” he said. “Two unplanned pregnancies in a lifetime. And how many lovers?” His eyes narrowed. “Or maybe this isn’t the first one.”
She shook her head. “He’s the first,” she said. “The one and only.” She gripped the edge of the vanity. “Henry, I want to be with him, and he with me.”
“Who the hell is it?”
“No one you’d know.”
“Tell me his goddamn name, Silja!”
Silja sighed. “His name is David Shepherd. He’s a good man, Henry, a gentle soul—”
“David Shepherd?” Henry’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve heard that name. He’s that smart aleck who writes letters to newspaper editors. Goes around libeling patriotic Americans. And why does that punk Shepherd write those letters? Because he’s a goddamn Communist, that’s why!” Henry’s face was red from hairline to neck. “For Chrissake, Silja!”
Silja shook her head. “That’s simply not true,” she said, trying to keep her voice even. “He’s just a good man who loves me, and I love him back.”
“I don’t give a goddamn who you love, Silja. You’re my wife. You’re married to me.”
“But this isn’t a marriage,” she pleaded. “It hasn’t been one for a long time. Even you’d have to admit that, Henry. Please,” she went on hastily. “Please, Henry, be reasonable. Grant me a divorce and move on.” She mustered a smile as a desperate plan came to her. “I’ll set you up,” she proposed. “I’ll buy you a big old house like the one we had on Lawrence Avenue. You can fix it up. You can live as you like, do as you like.”
His expression was stark and stony-eyed. “You have got to be kidding me,” he said slowly, enunciating each word. “Not in a million years, Silja, is that how this will play out.”
He stepped toward her, and she backed up. In the small space, she had nowhere to go.
He hit her hard on the left cheek. The blow knocked her down, into the corner by the toilet. Her eyeglasses flew from her face and onto the tiles.
“You goddamn whore!” Henry hit her again. She flinched, making herself as small as she could against the cold porcelain.
He grabbed her arm and pulled her roughly until she stood. “Get moving.”
“Henry, stop,” Silja cried. “Please, just stop and let me go.”
“Fuck you, Silja.” He pushed her the length of the hall ahead of him. Tears streaming down her face, she wobbled on her heels as they made their way toward the sliding door to the backyard.
He kicked the back of her knees. “Take your shoes off.”
She looked at him questioningly.
“Just do it, dammit!”
Obediently, she bent down and slipped one high heel, then the other, off her feet. She tried to swing around with the second one, aiming for his eye, but without her eyeglasses she missed by a mile, batting the air next to his shoulder instead.
Henry laughed cruelly. “Nice try,” he said, easily knocking the shoe out of her hand. He prodded her back. “Go.”
He held fast to her elbow as they wound along the dirt pathways through the forest. “Henry, please,” she pleaded. “Please let me go.”
He didn’t reply. They came to the clearing where the bomb shelter was.
Silja looked around. “What are you going to do?” she whispered.
He glared at her. “I’m going to put you down there,” he said. “I’m going to put you down there and lock you in and you see how long you last without anyone knowing where you are.” He shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t know what I’m going to do after that,” he said, and his voice was conversational, almost confessional. “So how handy is it to have someplace to store you while I figure it out?”
“Please,” she whispered again.
He didn’t reply. He gripped her arm as he rolled away the boulder that half-covered the opening. One-handed, he leaned down to twist open the round metal door. Only someone with his strength and know-how would be able to do that, Silja thought.
She’d underestimated him. How could she have been so foolish? So blind?
As he turned to guide her down the ladder, she tried one more time to pull away. It was her last chance and she almost made it. She slipped through his grip, but he was faster than she. He grabbed her again, this time around the waist.
“Get the hell down there!” he yelled, pushing her from behind.
They were the last words Silja heard. She fell headfirst into the darkness.
67
* * *
Ruby
So many times in the past week Ruby has tried to imagine what it was like for her mother in those last few moments. How terrified she must have been. How myopic she must have felt as he marched her outside—without her eyeglasses, his grip on her arm tight, able to see only a few inches in front of her.
Did she try to run? Try to escape? Ruby suspects she did. But he would have given her no chance.
“I didn’t mean to kill her,” Ruby’s father said when he told her what happened. “I just meant to put her down there for a while, until I could come up with a plan. But she . . . ” His dark eyes transformed to narrow slits as he looked past Ruby, through the sliding glass door into the opaque, unruly woods. “Well, let’s just say she got what she had coming.”
“How?” Ruby whispered. “How is it possible she had it coming?”
Her father turned toward Ruby. “Her activities were questionable. That’s all I’m going to say about it, Ruby. It was business between your mother and me.” He opened a kitchen drawer, taking out a pad of paper and a pen. “But the police wouldn’t see it that way.”
He thrust the pad and pen toward Ruby. “You need to help me cover this up,” he demanded. “We need to make it seem like she ran away.”
He looked at Ruby with that hooded, blunt expression of his—and, for the first time in her memory, she was afraid of him. Usually she thought of him as just a lonely, mildly crazed man, like someone out of an Albert Camus novel—more a character in a made-up story than an actual person. Frightening in theory, but ultimately harmless.
But now she realized she hadn’t seen him for who he truly was. He was more predictable than that. He was like a plant adapting to changing conditions. Growing longer roots, maybe, or sturdier seeds. If conditions changed—if he felt his world was threatened—he wouldn’t hesitate to make changes to remove the threat.
She should have seen it sooner. Her mother should have seen it, too. But Ruby couldn’t blame her mother; she was blinded, after all.
Ruby could try to outwit him, but what if she failed? Would he do to her what he’d done to her mother?
“Here’s what you need to do, Ruby,” he said. Then he explained what he wanted from her.
She needed more time. But in order to stall, first she had to ensure his trust. She had to demonstrate loyalty to him.
So she did what he said.
She forged a note from her mother. That part was easy; she’d known for years how to replicate her mother’s handwriting. Once, long ago, her father had told her—he learned this through his crime detection course—that people generally imitate the handwriting of the first person who teaches them to write in cursive. Ruby had learned first from her mother, not from the teachers at school. So it was little surprise that Ruby’s handwriting was so similar to her mother’s.
The cops hadn’t figured that out when Ruby was questioned the other day. If they suspected it, they’d have asked Ruby to produce a handwriting sample. But it was probably just a matter of time before they went down that path.
After writing the note, Ruby p
ut on her mother’s car coat—her father didn’t ask her to do that; Ruby wanted to wear it—and drove her mother’s car to the train station, with her father following in his truck. In cover of darkness Ruby parked the MGA in her mother’s usual spot in the depot parking lot.
She got out and glanced around, and she was pretty sure no one except her father was watching her.
She dropped her mother’s keys into the coat pocket. In the dark, desolate evening Ruby walked up the hill as if she were going to the old house on Lawrence Avenue. But of course she didn’t go to that house, because that’s not where her family lived anymore. When the truck pulled up to the curb, she hopped in.
Her father’s hands shook on the steering wheel. “You really want to know what happened?” he asked. “You want to know why she deserved it? I’ll show you when we get home. I have a newspaper in my room, from a week or two ago. I saved it to show some of my friends. Letter to the editor, written by one of those Commie freaks. It’s all about how the things people like me say are hateful, how our message is extreme. Nothing could be further from the truth—we just want our country back, that’s all.” His eyes narrowed. “Goddamn Commies. And you know who that goddamn Commie was, the one who wrote the letter?” He hit the brakes sharply at a red light and turned to Ruby. “You know who?”
“No,” Ruby replied. “Who?”
“Your mother’s lover, that’s who. Your mother was cheating on me. I know I said earlier that it was none of your business—but I’ve thought about it, and it is your business. You have a right to know that your mother was unfaithful to your father—and with a goddamn Commie lowlife.” The light turned and Ruby’s father pressed down the gas pedal. “If I ever get my hands on that bastard, I’ll tear him from limb to limb.”
Ruby didn’t answer. They sat in silence the rest of the way back to the birdcage.
Inside, she hung her mother’s coat in the closet and asked her father if he’d like some tea.
The Glass Forest Page 31