59 Glass Bridges

by Steven Peters

  I take a shaky step forward. Then another. I stop.

  “Read something,” Willow says softly, over her shoulder.

  Mechanically, I comply. I pull out the piecemeal New Testament and flip to the book’s end. I begin to speak.

  “Then I saw the lamb… looking as if….” I stop. No, not this. I put the book back in my pocket.

  The table is bare, but for a facedown picture frame and Willow’s bouquet of crabgrass. I sluggishly make my way up to the space Willow vacated and set the tattered Bible down beside Willow’s offering. That feels more right, somehow.

  I don’t lift the picture frame to see whose face is on the other side. I don’t approach the coffin.

  Instead, I turn to Willow. She is pointing at something outside, and the hoarseness of my voice when I ask her, “What do you see?” surprises me.

  Willow turns to face me. She is smiling now. “Don’t worry,” she says. “You’re almost there.” Then she bounds out from between the pews and throws her arms around me.

  Despite myself, I hug her back. I realize that I’m crying.

  Willow leads me to the window, which was bright and cheery one train car back. I’m surprised to see frost rimming the pane now, but not nearly as surprised as I am to see buildings flash by outside. “The city,” I croak. “What happened to the countryside?”

  “In and out the window, as you have done before,” Willow says quietly. “I’d say welcome back, but that’s not exactly comforting, is it?”

  I sit down on the wooden pew, but I look out of the window instead of facing forward. Willow takes the seat beside me. “We’re still in the maze,” I say and I feel Willow nod.

  The streets outside look frozen. The sidewalks are frost-rimmed and snow sits atop the street lights. I point out of the window and I say, “Can we reach those streets?”

  “Yes,” Willow answers. “For all the good it will do.”

  “How do we get out?”

  “One step left,” Willow says. “We find the forest.” I hear sorrow in her voice and I turn to look at her, but when she lifts her eyes to meet mine she still smiles. “Here,” she says, “breathe on the glass.”

  I do as she asks. After I’ve fogged up the windowpane, Willow leans over my body and draws a circle in the fog. Then she scrapes a curved line into the circle’s centre and two dots for eyes. “A smiley face,” she says. I don’t comment on the sadness that still tinges her voice.

  We sit in silence after that. It feels like hours, though perhaps only minutes pass. I look at Willow’s smiley face on the window and then I shut my eyes. I only open them again when a sound like bing-bong plays over the train car’s speakers, interrupting the soft dirgeful music to herald our arrival at a new station.

  “Did you look in the coffin?” Willow asks, as the doors slide open.

  I shake my head and stand to disembark.

  • 39 •

  A WEEK BEFORE MY SIXTEENTH BIRTHDAY, I sat with my Grandmother at her kitchen table. With liver-spotted hands, she pressed gherkins into brine solution. With heavy oven mitts, I sealed the hot jars after she finished. A small pyramid of mason jars stood on the table between us, waiting to be processed in the canner. The smell of vinegar and pickling spice dominated the kitchen.

  I sat gingerly on the wooden chair and didn’t make eye contact with her, my mood vinegar. I had bitched about the chore—‘back talked,’ as she said. I might’ve broken a lamp.

  She’d broken out the wooden spoon, a punishment I hadn’t endured since my childhood. I contemplated darkly that maybe spankings counted as abuse.

  My Grandmother, though I’m sure she noticed my dark mood, didn’t comment. Instead, she handed me jars. I squeezed them shut. I stewed in my seat and favoured my left buttock.

  I was often angry at sixteen, and not always capable of identifying why. That was the year after my grandfather’s death. That was the year my parents finalized their divorce. I don’t know if either was the cause, but they were easy scapegoats.

  I recall the school counselor’s expression melting from faux concern to faux understanding. He stroked his bleached-blond goatee and nodded sagely at the ceiling fan. “Oh, your parents got … divorced.”

  Recreation, at sixteen, was a Discman and heavy black headphones that made my ears ache after twenty minutes. I listened to whatever music my parents wouldn’t approve of.

  My Grandmother, I’m sure, knew that if I hadn’t been pickling with her, I’d be shut away in my room. Lights off. Music blaring.

  She’d learned how to bully me into having fun.

  The afternoon sun made my Grandmother’s pickles glow like molten gold. I shook the mason jars as I set them down and watched the gherkins and garlic swirl, nuclear-yellow snow globes. I stared out of the kitchen window, at fat bumblebees bouncing against the glass and languishing atop the raspberry bush. I recall dandelion heads, yellow and white, polka-dotting her shaggy lawn.

  When my Grandmother slowly got up from her chair to place the laden jars in boiling water, I remembered to be angry. I adopted a scowl and screwed the last jar lid on so tight, I imagined she’d never get it open. My Grandmother put a gnarled hand on my hair and said, “Sharpie’s in the drawer.”

  My Grandmother creaked from the kitchen. She moved more slowly than she had in my youth. Her once-bleached hair was now mousy grey. She also wore more cardigans and sweaters, though she never complained about being cold.

  I used the red felt marker to adorn each jar’s brass lid with the date. I was also supposed to write a ‘P’ for pickles—omitting it was my minor rebellion.

  When my Grandmother returned, she plunked a new mason jar in front of me, and held its twin in her left hand. The liquid inside the jar caught the setting sun. I finally looked at her. “I have to label more?”

  Silently, she unscrewed the lid of her glass and lifted the threaded mouth to her lips. She gulped it like water, and then motioned for me to do the same.

  I sprayed the liquid across her pyramid of pickle jars, as the corn whisky scraped down my throat. My eyes streamed at the shock of hard liquor, and my Grandmother laughed a hearty, throaty laugh at my expression.

  “Happy birthday,” she grinned. “I didn’t want to die before you had your first drink.”

  “Ugh, what is it?”

  “White Lightning, boy. Granny’s own moonshine. Kind of feels like full circle, doesn’t it? Finish your jar. It’s good for you.”

  My Grandmother and I sipped in silence. That’s the gift I remember—a toast at the kitchen table over mason jars, to sixteen years and sixteen more. She didn’t make me drink the whole jar.

  • 40 •

  WHEN WE DISEMBARK, it’s to more disappointment. More hallways. We may as well have stayed in those infernal office buildings. Though Willow doesn’t seem put off.

  “Up ahead,” Willow says, and points. “This corridor will split in two. Both halves go straight, but one curves slightly left, one slightly right.”

  “And which way takes us out of this maze?”

  Willow sighs. She’s tired of me asking are we there yet.

  She’s right. Within minutes, we arrive at the fork.

  I’m surprised at the decrepit state of the floor. The floor tiles, on both paths, are curling at the corners and cold concrete is showing beneath them. Entire tiles are missing, and others are smashed to pieces as if hit by a jackhammer. The walls of both corridors are streaked yellow from ancient water leaks and a want of cleaning. A thick carpet of dust coats the floor, whereas the path we came from was relatively clean.

  “Does nobody travel this way?”

  “Many do, but it’s not a road that most take if they can avoid it.”

  “And can we avoid it?”

  Willow shakes her head, “’Fraid not. But I’ll help you through it. You’ll be fine.”

  I examine both paths, wonder if one is easier or shorter than the other. Then I consider my frayed and flimsy shoes. These tiles are going to hurt.


  Willow looks at me, apparently understanding my hesitation. She gives me a small smile, and tilts her head towards the paths as if asking ‘which one?’

  I turn the question back on her, “Which path is better?”

  Willow arches an eyebrow, purses her lips. “That’s a matter of opinion.”

  “Which is less—” I’m lost for words, so I just gesture to the paths.

  “Rocky? Winding? Torturous? Both are, in many places. Both can also be smooth, and when the going gets good we’ll move at a decent clip and we won’t even think about the other path. But honestly, whichever path you pick will get us out eventually.”

  “The end of the maze.”

  Willow looks at me expectantly.

  I breathe out slowly, resigning myself to blisters and cut feet. “All right,” I say. “Right. Let’s go right?”

  Willow shrugs and sets off down the path. I watch where she walks, though she doesn’t seem concerned about foot placement or avoiding sharp edges. She leaves no footprints. Oh, to have ghost soles.

  I stumble dozens of times within the first ten minutes, and the path I’ve chosen displays no evidence of easing. Hidden pitfalls snag my sneakers, send me into a half-run half-trip, no matter how slowly I walk. Willow, after a time, takes my hand. I trip less often, then—but why? Can she see the path? Does she have surer footing than me? Or has our corridor smoothed?

  “Some people avoid these paths,” I say.

  “Many, actually.”

  “How?”

  Willow looks at me, runs her tongue over her teeth as she thinks. “This labyrinth isn’t exactly teeming.”

  That’s true. I guess the best way to avoid it would be to never get trapped in the first place. The figures we’ve seen are few, and those all seem to be local denizens. Even Willow—I have a hard time imagining her outside of the labyrinth. I wonder if she’ll be able to escape with me, and what would await her on the other side if she did.

  My feet become bruised. I can feel cement beneath my left foot, where the rubber has torn wide open, exposing me to the cold floor. Every step sends a little jolt through my legs and up my spine.

  I marvel at Willow’s easy gait, carefree smile. Perhaps ghosts don’t feel pain.

  • 41 •

  THE PATH EASES AS WE REACH ANOTHER BRIDGE, wrapped in glass panes and offering a view of the longed-for outside. The windowpanes are tinted yellow, lending an eerie haze to the street below, the adjacent buildings, the stalled vehicles.

  The building that we’re leaving has a facade of dull stonework, with square windows in square walls. It makes me think of bottom lines and cubicles. The building that the bridge spills into is no better, despite having wider windows and a few more storeys. Almost every blind is drawn and the building feels uninviting, if not downright hostile.

  The sky overhead sputters snowflakes onto our bridge. I whine, “I thought we’d left the winter behind.”

  The turgid clouds swirl like my Grandmother’s brine solution, and fat yellow flakes dive-bomb the asphalt. Slush and water droplets worm their way down the glass, leaving slender yellow streaks in their wake. The street below us glistens gold through the tinted panes, and it reminds me of White Lightning.

  Willow and I start across the bridge, and we almost reach the far side when I stop.

  There are figures beneath me. They are translucent to the point of invisibility, and I can only just catch shapes as they move. Their movements are difficult to catch, and even more difficult to interpret. Like a gust of wind blowing a spider thread that only momentarily sparkles in the sunlight, so too do these ‘people’ flicker in and out of my vision.

  I stop and stare hard at the road, and Willow looks at me in surprise.

  “You can see them, then?”

  The ghosts—if that’s what they are—are so close to invisible that they make Willow look solid by comparison. Her features, while vague and indistinct, are at least recognizable: flat blonde hair, thick eyebrows, rose-dusted lips. If Willow is a ghost, the figures below me are just whispers.

  “Yes, I can see them.”

  No snow melts on the echoes beneath me. They seem impervious to the weather, and to my presence fifteen feet above them, cocooned in yellow glass.

  I continue my thought, “But they can’t see me.”

  “I don’t know about that, but I’m sure you’re no clearer to them than they are to you.”

  “Is everyone else dead?” I turn sharply. “Nuclear winter, some Rip Van Winkle story, weird mutated owls? You say I’m not dead, but then what the hell is this?”

  Willow laughs, “You may not be the most excitable person I’ve ever carried through this maze, but you’re certainly the most stubborn. No, they’re not dead. And neither are you. The labyrinth just has a way of … clouding one’s vision.”

  “What if we break the glass?” I say quietly, repeating my thought from long ago. “What if we smash this goddamn tunnel and jump down there? Fifteen feet onto concrete—that’s a broken leg at worst.”

  Willow’s smile turns down at the corners, a small hint of sadness. “It won’t solve anything,” she says. “You can’t cheat your way out of here. You can’t take a weed whacker and flee the cornfield, all you’re going to find are more ears.”

  I’m not terribly disappointed—or surprised—by the answer. The maze has been strange enough to make me suspect that this might be the case.

  “And the ghosts down there will melt like whispers as you get close. There’s nothing tangible. Not yet. Because you won’t have made it out. Listen to me—” Her grip tightens on my hand. “—you’ll just be another ghost.”

  I return the squeeze, but my fingers sink through hers and I wind up balling my fist. I retract my hand and stare at the street for a while longer.

  And then I wonder about being a ghost in a maze. I wonder how that works, and how I would feel, trapped here forever. What might I be prepared to do, if I was lonely enough? Wouldn’t I want to keep company, any company, close by for as long as possible, especially if all it cost me was a little white lie?

  • 42 •

  IN MY LAST YEARS AS A HIGH-SCHOOL STUDENT, I more or less lived with my Grandmother.

  My father became a ghost, after the divorce. He wandered halls now haunted by missing picture frames and a distinct lack of decor. His humour deflated and his writing dried up. His speech, once filled with puns and non sequiturs that spilled into amusing stories, now tapered off into oblivion before his sentences could conclude, as if his thoughts weren’t worth the effort of voicing.

  My mother, though, seemed better. I saw her less often, but when I did, she was smiling. She also seemed to have a better relationship with my Grandmother, her ex-mother-in-law, after the divorce. She made special visits, and always brought food—store-bought Danish sugar cookies in a tin, homemade minestrone, melting ice creams from the shop thirty minutes away. My mother and my Grandmother would sit side-by-side at the kitchen table, their heads tilted in amicable conversation, cookies forgotten on a plate between them.

  I skulked into my Grandmother’s house, threw my duffel bags full of CDs and clothes onto the bed that I had long before come to think of as my own. I smuggled posters into her home adorned with pentagrams and men in black eyeliner and slathered them atop her inoffensive wallpaper. My Grandmother never commented on the posters, but with every return visit her walls were once again tastefully stripped clean. I took this intrusion as a challenge, amping up their obscenities every time my father ditched me there.

  I didn’t leave my room when my mother arrived. I watched her silver Chrysler roll up from the window, and saw her emerge in pinstripe suits and pleated skirts. New job, probably. Not that I cared.

  After each of my mother’s visits, I would slink from my bedroom, and walk to the front door. I was unconscious of the act until my Grandmother smacked my wrist with a spoon.

  “Bloody waste,” she snapped. “And I won’t abide it. You, whipped dog, staring at the door handle,
tail between your legs, whimpering. Oh, don’t you snarl.”

  I folded my lips over my teeth and backed towards my bedroom, but she shook her head, angrier than I’d ever seen. She wielded her wooden spoon like a fencing épée and advanced.

  “Get outside, catch some butterflies, pick a berry, or help me mow the lawn, I don’t want your shit any more than his and you have even less reason, she’s coming to see you, you know.”

  My Grandmother snarled in run-on sentences, something I’d never seen before. I shrank under her tidal wave of words. Enough sank in for me to feel some shame.

  “Come on,” she said, grabbing a fistful of my black T-shirt. “We’re building a damn birdhouse.”

  And we spent a strangely relaxing evening, doing just that.

  When my mother next came to visit, I sat at the table with her and my Grandmother. She probably asked all the questions parents are supposed to ask, but I don’t remember. I just remember her smiling at me.

  My Grandmother gave her a tour of the birdhouse we’d built together (which no birds had moved into), of the lawn that I’d mown (made more enjoyable by a riding lawn mower), and of my sorry attempts at a tree fort (a wooden pallet, roped to a tree branch). My mother marveled at each as if I’d single-handedly constructed the Taj Mahal.

  At the last stop on our tour, my Grandmother threw her withered hands in the air, an act of mock incredulity, and said, “Oh cut the shit, Cynthy. It’s not very good, Christ. A piece of wood in a tree.” Then she stumped back into the house, leaving the two of us alone.

  My mother didn’t look at me. She looked up. And without a word, she kicked off her high heels and left them abandoned in the grass as she began to climb. I followed, slowly, mutely.

  The world around was painted yellow and gold, constructed of paper and wood. Fat leaves drifted down to the already crunchy forest floor. And we sat atop my stupid tree fort pallet, me in a black hoody, my mother in business dress.

  I held my mother’s hand as we walked back to the house—something I hadn’t done since I was a child. My Grandmother sat outside of the front door, asleep on her rocking chair, her distillery bubbling away beside her. On the porch table sat three cold mugs of herbal tea and a plate of my mother’s store-bought cookies.