She sang with me in the car, at the top of her lungs, with all the windows down. She danced with me in the living room. She taught me the value of crying to a good love song, laughing wildly at whatever struck me as funny, and losing myself completely in a Jane Austen novel. She taught me how to deliver a joke with perfect comedic timing. When other kids met my mom, they always told me I was lucky.
Since she’d checked out months ago, and Dad was too busy handing over accounts at Miller Communications, I had to figure out how to coordinate a move. Dad would leave me lists of things to handle, and I would grit my teeth and make myself do what he expected. Luckily, the hotel agreed to pack our house, and we gladly let the movers in to wade through the months of jumbled sadness that had built up. We didn’t even apologize or feel awkward. As I sat on my bed and watched a stranger pack my room, I silently wished that he could pack up the mess in my head, too. Maybe send it out to be cleaned and my thoughts would come back all starched and stain free. Or fold my heart into a small box and tape it shut.
We didn’t sell our house because it was too full of Wyatt’s memory. We just left most of our furniture and locked the door behind us. Dad had traveled alone to Chapin several times, and he came back the last time with a peace in his eyes. He’d bought a house built in 1918 by one of the original town big-wigs. The house, on Pine Ridge Drive, was basically in the middle of things—a short walk for Dad to work and an easy drive to school for me. Dad banked everything he had on Mom feeling at home there.
I hated leaving my two closest friends, Allie and Krista, who had stuck with me through the darkest days. When I was wracked with an unending supply of tears and pain, they would sit quietly and stroke my hair and rub my back. They wouldn’t even talk, and I appreciated their wisdom in that.
But a large part of me was relieved to leave Canning Mills. I couldn’t bear the heavy looks from students and teachers, or the forced weekly meetings with the school counselor. I’d found it hard to breathe in my classes. Teachers understood. I’d been a statue in a desk in a classroom. It was the best I could do.
I’d grown addicted to talking to Wyatt since he died…and not his ghost exactly. It felt very flesh and blood to me. He warmed the space that I occupied. I could hear his voice. At night I left him notes under my pillow which I believed with every fiber of my being that he read.
I knew he was in the Jeep with me on the highway headed west. His voice startled me out of the dazed, tunnel vision that I was feeling. There was silence…and then there was his voice, deep, gentle and quiet.
“Don’t be afraid, Meg,” he said.
“But I am afraid,” I murmured to the emptiness. “What if they think I’m damaged goods? What if I can never meet the eyes of another human being again?”
“You’ll be fine, Meggie, and I’m here if you need me.” His warm voice lapped against the windshield, and made my eyes close for a second.
I tried to ignore the other sound—the sound that was not Wyatt’s voice, the one sound I dreaded most—the ringing that glass makes just before it bursts. The tinny warning you get, if you’re sensitive enough, that somewhere something is getting ready to shatter. Maybe I’m the only one tuned in enough to the vibrations of breakable things…maybe it was just because my body resonated with the same frequency.
I used to love to wet my finger and run it around the rim of my mom’s wedding crystal. If I achieved just the right speed and pressure, I knew I could break that glass. A couple of times, I did break that glass, and there was heck to pay.
Being called the glass girl pushed me headlong into an obsessive study of the bizarre properties of glass. There’s this old expression—“clear as Pittsburgh glass”—that I’ve always loved. Pittsburgh was pretty famous long ago for being home to glassmakers who made flint glass, a perfectly clear crystal. My weird interest in researching glass wasn’t seen as anything out of the ordinary, just a Pittsburgh girl loving a Pittsburgh claim to fame.
I found it odd that glass is both crystal and gel in nature. The gel parts want to be crystal but they are failures. The whole piece of glass is like one congested traffic jam of frustrated particles. They’re in constant motion, but it’s a slow, angry motion of particles that don’t like each other very much but find they have to live together forever. Nobody gets where they want to go, and to top it off, the whole thing can shatter at any moment if the circumstances are just right. Glass, by its very definition, is failing at its highest calling, and yet look what we’ve been able to do with it. Not too shabby for a fragile failure.
Cheap glass is the easiest to break, of course, because cheap glass has tiny fractures in it already. It’s got faults and those faults allow for bigger vibrations. Pressure from without loves faults within. Also, the simpler the shape, the faster the break. Nothing fancy…no embossing or fluting or lead.
I was pretty young when I came to what I thought was a perfectly logical conclusion:
1. All glass will break.
2. I am made of glass.
3. Therefore, I will break.
When we pulled over for the night in Hays, Kansas, I was relieved. We’d been driving all day and my entire body ached for a hot bath and some room to stretch. Dad pulled into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn on I70, and as I followed him, I let my eyes graze the unremarkable, impossibly flat land around us, and I thanked the powers that be that he wasn’t offered a job in Kansas. I carried my bags up, following my parents, to the room. At the top of the concrete stairs, Dad paused long enough to hand me a key card, and point with his chin toward a door. Then he and Mom continued to the next door and he fished out another key.
“Sorry, Meg,” he said. “They only had king-sized beds left, so I got adjoining rooms for us.”
Once in my room, I ripped the comforter off the bed because of the report I’d seen a few years ago about the disgusting things found on them, and then I dug in the cabinet drawers until I found the hotel stationary to doodle on. Why do cheap hotels give you stationary? Is it so you can write your loved ones a nice little note before you slit your wrists? Mom kept knocking on our adjoining doors, telling me to unlock mine, but I didn’t want to. I liked the separation, so I pretended I couldn’t hear her.
She’d been surviving on tranquilizers for so long now that I wondered if she knew where she was half the time. The sound of her voice, which used to be such a comfort, now just made my stomach hurt. I’d spent the last two days in the car thinking about her relatives who have suffered from severe depression. It seemed to rear its ugly head every so often in her family. Her family was full of artist-types—writers, musicians, dancers. My mom is a painter. Something about the creative brain seems prone to too much ruminating on life. They’re a danger to themselves.
Before Wyatt’s death, the most tragic story in my family was about my mom’s sister Leslie who committed suicide because she had untreated post-partum depression. She hung herself with one of those baby bouncy swings that you mount in a door frame. She wrapped the canvas straps around her neck and then sat down on the floor. All she had to do to save herself was to stand up, but she didn’t—she sat on her kitchen floor until the breath was all gone from her. When her husband got home from work that night, he found his dead wife and his baby girl crying next to her.
Needing a distraction, I reached for the phone to call Allie. I asked her what was new in Canning Mills. Apparently nothing had happened since I left—two whole days ago. She tried to make things interesting with gossip, but the fact is we never really know any good gossip about anyone. So the conversation turned into another extended remix of “goodbye” and “I’ll miss you so much.”
As I watched the sun set behind the Best Little Honky Tonk in Kansas which shared a parking lot with the Holiday Inn, I started thinking about my last session with Robin. She loved to talk about staging my grief. To her, it was fundamentally important that I know where I am on that list at all times. God forbid, I lose my place or spend too long in #3 when I’m surely suppo
sed to be in #4 already. What I wondered the most was what Wyatt went through after he died. I believe there’s life after this…I just don’t know what shape that life takes. So did he die with his feelings and memories intact? Did he grieve?
I think if he did, he would’ve grieved most for me and then next for a girl named Constance. He’d been in love with her since the seventh grade, but was always too nervous to ask her out. He had girls clawing each other’s eyes out to get to him, but he only really wanted Constance.
I know that because I used to watch him when he would try to call her. Because of the layout of our house, you could stand at the top of the staircase that led to the basement and secretly watch pretty much all the activity in that room by looking at the reflection in the windows. It worked best at night when the basement lights were on and the glass lit up like a movie screen. I’d sit on the top step and watch Wyatt pace back and forth holding the phone and talking to himself, waving his hand around frenetically. He practiced the words he would say to Constance once he worked up his nerve to dial her number, which he’d had memorized for years. He’d make me so nervous that I’d feel like puking myself.
Sometimes he’d go through with it, and I could tell when she answered because he’d suddenly stop and get very still, and sink down to sit on the floor. He’d smile and breathe so quietly that I feared he’d forgotten that he needed oxygen more than he needed Constance. His voice would change…no more wryness, just gentleness. He loved her. I wonder if he ever got to kiss her. I think if he’d lived, he would’ve tried to marry her one day. I told her that at the funeral and she cried. I thought it would make her happy…but her face twisted and she just cried. Maybe the lost opportunity was more than she could bear.
I asked Wyatt once what he liked about her…I mean he could have anyone. He said that he liked the way she smiled at people, and how she was kind to everyone, and how she didn’t mess up “significant silence with a bunch of useless words.” He said he liked her because she was still a good girl. There wasn’t a single guy at Canning Mills High who tried to brag about being with her because it was just so obvious that no one had. And he said I should remember that what guys really wanted was a sweet, pretty girl who was just his alone.
Next to me and Constance, I guess Wyatt probably was most sad about never getting to go to Penn. He’d been accepted and given a scholarship. He planned to major in Anthropology. He wanted to unearth something really grand somewhere. He’d always been a digger and a finder. Wherever we went, he would poke around at the ground, pulling things up and taking them home. He had boxes and boxes full of arrowheads, and minerals, and petrified wood. He was fascinated by ruins of old forts and bunkers and battlegrounds. He loved to think about the people who’d walked on the ground before us.
I smiled remembering Wyatt’s many boxes of treasures, and closed myself in the tiny bathroom to take a bath and brush my teeth. The Honky Tonk must be the only show in town. The parking lot filled with trucks whose drivers ran to get into the place so they could form one of their line dances. A group of them snaked around the corner of the building. They were all dressed in what looked like cowboy Halloween costumes, and the band was so loud that I could see the building vibrating with the bass.
“I’ve died and this is cowboy hell,” I whispered to no one but Wyatt.
I opened the door between our two rooms and called goodnight to my parents—who were too tired to even acknowledge me. Then I lay down and began another long night of worrying about Chapin, Wyoming.
Dear Wyatt—
Is the way I feel now the best I can hope for? Have I gone through the textbook grieving process? Did I forget to feel the “anger step” or is that one going to hit me with a vengeance when I’m not expecting it? The “pain and guilt” step is one I’m most familiar with, unfortunately. I’m sure if you knew the truth of what I did the morning you died, you’d hate me. Maybe you know, and you do hate me.
If I had to put the way I’ve felt into words, I’d say it was like a monster eating me alive. The sick part is that the monster choked on me and I got stuck—couldn’t get out of him and couldn’t just end it either by throwing myself into his acidic gut. Sometimes the darkness of the monster would creep up so fast that I’d have to run to a bathroom before I embarrassed myself by throwing up or fainting. Night was the worst because there was nowhere to run. I had to face the quiet of the house and the dark, and the terror squeezed the breath out of me.
Robin said there’s this stage called “the upward turn.” Dad’s in this one now. He’s making plans again and calming down and organizing life. I think I sort of bounced through this one. It was barely perceptible—just a rock skipped lightly over water. I woke up one morning and felt like cleaning my room and I craved pepperoni rolls. I thought of a movie I wanted to see. I was able to take a deep breath without gagging or yawning.
I’ve yet to hit the stage where hope returns. I’m not holding my breath. I miss you, Wyatt. I don’t want to move without you. It feels like we’re leaving you behind.
Love, Meg
After three long days on the road, we were weary. We were ready to get home…whatever that meant. I’d felt nauseated for the last half hour. I told myself it was altitude sickness, but I knew better. We were pulling into our new town, and my nerves were rebelling, starting in my stomach. So far Chapin looked like a cool little town, in a Wild West postcard sort of way. I’ve never spent much time in the mountains. We’re ocean people, I guess, because we have a beach house on the New Jersey shore.
Dad stopped at a sign and pulled into a slow left turn. He had to brake hard to keep from running right into a moose standing in the road. I laughed out loud for the first time in a year. I caught a glimpse of Mom’s eyes in her rearview, and she smiled a little, too. Dad rolled down his window and winked at me. He waved his arms at the moose hoping to get him to move on. A man walked out of the store and greeted Dad, then patted the moose on the rump to send him on his way.
As we drove on, Dad tapped his brakes twice, and then pointed his hand out the window. I glanced in the direction he pointed and saw the Hotel Wyoming sitting on a hill. It seemed massive but was somehow dwarfed by the mountain scene behind it. The hotel looked European, white brick with a shocking red tiled roof. The grounds around it were impeccable; amazing considering this town was raised up out of sagebrush flats. Before we left Pittsburgh, I scanned the Internet for pictures of Chapin and found historical photos that made it look like a town sprung up from an area wiped clean by a huge tornado. I was sort of amazed to see how lush everything was now—proof that the settlers of the West were determined enough to make something out of nothing. The only reminder of the way the town used to look was the light coating of dust on everything.
I expected to see swinging doors and hitching posts downtown but really it just looked like any small town, simple and straightforward. The main street was wide, with shops lining an old sidewalk. The important businesses—the bank, a hotel, a pharmacy—stood proudly on Main; while the lesser shops like an old boot repair store called “John Wayne’s Repair” sat like afterthoughts in small wooden buildings directly behind the central businesses.
We wound through the little downtown area, past restaurants, studios, and gift shops. I saw crowds of people; most were tourists who stopped occasionally to take pictures. This was definitely a cowboy town and these cowboys looked authentic…nothing like the wannabes I’d seen at the honky tonk in Kansas. At one outdoor café, I saw two or three tables with high school kids joking around. A couple of girls turned at the sound of my Jeep, hoping I was someone else, I’m sure. They didn’t recognize me, assumed I was a tourist, and turned back around. What a bizarre life—to share your town with thousands of strangers.
We took a left onto Pine Ridge Drive, and I realized we must be getting close to the house. We drove another three blocks and then turned down a very narrow stone drive. The house, surrounded by trees, sat far enough back from the road that you wouldn’t
know it was there. Dad pulled the truck off to the right under a carport. Mom followed and I pulled in behind them. I didn’t look at the house right away. It all seemed too much. Dad knocked on my window, and I rolled it down slowly.
“We’re home, Meg,” he said softly. “You’re going to like it, I promise.” His brown eyes were tired but hopeful.
I opened my eyes and saw my mom walking toward the house. She wasn’t smiling but somehow she didn’t look as anguished as she had for months. The lines in her forehead had relaxed a bit and her eyes seemed clear. I took a deep breath and opened the Jeep door. I stared at the ponderosa pines and the neighboring houses. Chipmunks were darting around, checking out the new neighbors. I could hear a stream—water cascading across smooth stones—and it sounded like a soundtrack that made this moment even more dramatic, if that was possible. The air was cool and crisp, so I took another deep breath and another. It was intoxicating, and I couldn’t shake the dizziness pulling at me. The smell of the trees—what was that? Christmas? I thought of all the years Mom stubbornly refused a fake Christmas tree so that our house would smell like this. She was right—it is a perfect scent.
Finally, I turned toward the house and my breath caught in my throat. It’s hard to explain the feeling that little house created in my heart at that moment. I loved it more than anything I’d ever seen. It was small; didn’t waste space. It was painted a perfect sunshine yellow. The trim was this beautiful creamy white that made the yellow seem that much brighter. The large picture windows were antique glass. I’d always wanted to touch antique glass, and now I’d be able to look out on the mountains through the wavy lines.
Glass Girl Page 2