Glass Voices

by Carol Bruneau

  Rebecca answers, music blaring behind her. A noise like screeching tires: Robert’s music, a racket that makes her want to hang up.

  “Is Jewel home?” She has to shout.

  “That you, Ma? You don’t have to take my ear off. He can’t come to the phone right now, he’s just got in and he’s…” A snicker. “Can he call you back?” That voice burns her ears. “Everything okay?”

  Someplace in her imagination, the sky oozes. “I’m all right,” she says resolutely, almost ashamed, “but Harry isn’t.”

  When Jewel finally comes on, he grills her with a barbed gruffness. Then, “Hang tight—you hear me?” As if she’s a little girl. “I’m on my way.”

  Putting down the receiver, she trembles, anger a slow but sudden pulse inside. There’s a rawness she hasn’t felt in years, not since Jewel was a boy, when, on occasion, truthfully, she could’ve slipped Comet into Harry’s beer, for pity’s sake. Chopped up a dumb cane plant and put it in his salad. All those times she’d ridden out, done her best, of course, and now look.

  Dumb, dumb as dirt. Dumber than the little white numbers peeling off the phone…

  Someone touches her arm: a nurse. She can go in. The corridor clatters and hums. Hurry hard, the voice inside her croaks, like the curlers Harry watches on TV when there’s absolutely nothing else.

  Lucy barely recognizes the body in the railed bed, a tube taped to its mouth, a string of saliva like a cobweb.

  Harry’s eyes are closed, mercifully, sparing her that stricken look, and his chest moves gently up and down under the sheet, though who can tell if he’s asleep or awake? Sporting a tartan cap, the doctor speaks through a spreading fog, and in the back of her head an alarm sounds. A foghorn, its moan not a warning but a reminder, always a reminder. And suddenly it’s no longer summer, not even summer’s close or the cusp of fall, but winter, as if cold, wet snow is veiling everything.

  “Left hemisphere. Fairly major. Right side paralysis. Three to five days. Ab-so-lutely critical.”

  “Is it very bad?” is all she can ask. The tube in Harry’s mouth makes her look away; it’s as if he’s been invaded by a large plastic snake. Useless, his hands are pale gloves lying on the snowy sheet.

  “Too early to tell,” the doctor says, much too succinctly. “Possibly a clot… The brain swells… Survival depends, Mrs.…”

  Survival? She gazes at the ramparts of Harry’s knees, the steep slope of his belly: like a gull’s view of Citadel Hill in the middle of town, just after a blizzard.

  “All depends on how he comes through the next four or five days.”

  That measurement of words: a louder blast. “Is he in pain?”

  The doctor smiles, the brackets around his mouth matching those around his eyes.

  “He seems to be resting comfortably, Mrs. Caines.”

  Another curl of memory, neither golden nor white: Rebecca’s mother slurring at her husband’s wake: “He’s up there resting where no more shuffering can give him grief,” when anything that fellow’d suffered had been his own doing, and those two not properly married. Others suffered: women losing children, people with horrible diseases and any number of wounds—Jewel, for instance, suffering the daily insult of his wife.

  “Can he hear us?” Her whisper is almost babyish, blotted up by the cubicle’s green curtains. “Harry?” she croaks, stroking a limp wrist.

  “He’s aware of what’s happening,” the doctor murmurs. “His hearing doesn’t seem affected. A good sign. Though, as I said, the next few days…”

  Watching Harry’s face, she slides her fingers over his. They jerk at her touch, but they’re warm. The feeblest squeeze, it feels like the first time a child twitched inside her.

  “His injuries?” the doctor interrupts, and to her embarrassment her face is wet. There’s the tiny cut on Harry’s jaw from the razor.

  “His eye.” The doctor pats the breast pocket of his greens. “His chest?”

  The blue crescent above Harry’s nipple.

  “Your husband’s a vet? First or Second World War?”

  Fixing on the snake—Harry’s breathing tube—she’s confused. How can anyone, especially a doctor, not know?

  “How did he lose it?” His mildly curious look. “The eye?”

  “It was an accident,” she manages. “That’s what they say.”

  “Well. He’s a trooper then. As I said, the next few days will determine—wish I could tell you more, Mrs. Caines, but…”

  How does he know her name?

  A nurse appears; apparently the family’s outside—what family? Whose? It’s as if the room’s an aquarium and she’s swimming through greenish water as someone guides her out into the hall, and, oh yes, there they are. Her family. Their faces bob like pale buoys, three of them. Jewel, Rebecca, and oh Lord, it must be dire because even Robert’s here. Jewel drapes his arm around her; it feels warm and heavy, clammy in this watery atmosphere. Rebecca looks scared, her thin little brows arched in a way that makes her appear to be holding her breath; they’re all holding their breath, even Robert, who watches a spot on the floor as if it’s a sculpin.

  “This is all of you?” a voice interjects, a kindly voice, the doctor’s.

  “Yup,” Jewel replies tersely, as if to say what did you expect, a little league team?

  Lucy nods, nods in time to their pale bobbing faces, an old feeling swarming round her, settling in. A regret she’s had for most of her life now, like a phantom pain, the ghost of a missing limb.

  “This is us, our little clan.” All of us, but… Instinctively, as if this regret might be the thing that pulls her under, that fills her lungs finally so that she can’t breathe, Lucy reaches for a hand. Robert’s. For once he doesn’t pull it away, staring at the windowless door that’s like a hatch between this side of the fish bowl, and the other, off-limits one where Harry is.

  “So granddad makes five,” the doctor says and she nods weakly, because it’s easier than having to explain: Yes, all but…

  “One visitor at a time, sorry,” says a nurse whisking by, then to Lucy, more gently: “Why don’t you go home now, Mrs.? Try to relax, rest.” She’ll need it, in other words. It’s the same as being told not to worry.

  When they finally leave, all together, a tiny pack, shadows stretch across the hospital grounds, the sun a dusky bloom over the buildings. People scurry past as Jewel helps her into the car, Rebecca leaning to buckle her up before sliding in. She’s hemmed between them, Robert alone in the back. But who has the energy to object? Creased with dread, Jewel’s face looks old, as old as his father’s. How can it be? The boy she nursed and bounced on her hip. Thinking back to his birth, no hospital then, only the cold and a nursing sister’s touch. For most of the drive nobody speaks. It’s gotten chilly and, shivering, she tugs her skirt over her knees. Her whole body feels icy now, the way she would after an ocean dip; cramped and trapped there on the seat that’s as hard as a berm and feeling every bump, she might as well be dragged along the pavement.

  Finally, Rebecca breaks the silence. “All we can do is hope, Ma.”

  Her throat tightens, and all she can say is the obvious, which sounds mawkish, trite: “And pray, I guess. Jewel. Rebecca, you too. And Robert.” Under any other circumstances they’d laugh and make jokes, and when they don’t it sinks in how bad this is. Jewel flicks at his nose. Robert’s voice is halting, a shaky hum behind her so low she asks him to repeat himself, a request she instantly wishes could be sucked back like toothpaste up a tube.

  “My girlfriend? When her grandpa nearly croaked?” Why, why do kids speak in questions? The more so when all that’s asked, and offered, is a simple declaration. “Well, they brung him back, and he seen angels, and they had feathers.”

  “Bucky!” Rebecca’s tongue is like one of those fancy choppers advertised on TV. Still, he doesn’t have the sense, poor little bugger, to just
leave it; in that respect, Lucy supposes, he rather does take after his mother.

  “But he seen them, white feathers.” As if the colour is proof. His sigh a swallowed cuss.

  “It’s all right, dear,” Lucy says through the brick in her throat, eyes fixed on the cardboard pine tree swinging from the mirror. A deodorizer, Rebecca’s idea no doubt, since to Rebecca’s nose everything stinks. Try as she might, Lucy can’t detect a single odour, except maybe the smell of Robert’s hair, the smell of unwashed jeans.

  “It’s all right,” she hears herself murmur again, clearing her throat. It’s expected of her, of course. “I almost lost him once, you know,” and as she twists toward Jewel a little despairing laugh escapes. “Well, more than once.”

  Rushing by, buildings, trees and pedestrians make a lush, greenish blur, and with a shock she’s picturing herself alone in the house. Preparing herself sort of the way Mr. Armstrong must’ve for his first giant steps. Jewel must sense it; maybe he can smell it off her the way she can pick up the scent of teenage trouble no matter how many showers a kid takes a day.

  “Come home with us,” he says. “Becky’ll rustle something up for us—won’t you, Beck?” As usual, next comes the buttering-up, never mind that it’s as though Rebecca’s deaf. “She made meatloaf the other day. From scratch.”

  “Congratulations,” Lucy volunteers; what else can she say? The poor darling, as if housekeeping’s an Olympian feat.

  But Rebecca stares stubbornly ahead, her lip twitching slightly. Better to say nothing, nothing at all, so Lucy closes her eyes, the better to hear the tires hissing, a sound like summer rain. Oh please God, let it rain, she thinks wildly, longing for its softness, the way it has of blurring edges. Rain makes it easier to stay inside and concentrate, which she’ll need to do. Her work is cut out now; it digs in sharply, like a little knife poking into her stomach. Nothing for it but to start her vigil, petitioning God, or somebody, to give Harry back. She’s had some practice, and the thought tightens her hope a notch or two, never mind its slippery hold. She might even call the priest as well as the women’s league, have Harry added to the prayer chain. Right, she can just imagine his voice, imagine him rising up, sitting in that chilly chrome bed: Now you’ve got me where you want me, on a frigging chain gang.

  Never mind that Father Whasisname doesn’t look old enough to shave. Wherever two or more are gathered, he says…

  As she thinks it, her hope floats, and Jewel pulls up the street slowly, turning in.

  “You’re sure you won’t come over’t the house?” Rebecca peers at her, and is that a glint of tears?

  “Becky’ll have my head later for droppin’ you off.” Heeead, Jewel says, a word halfway between hid and heed. Instead of glowering, Rebecca strokes Lucy’s arm. Now she really can’t wait to get out of the car; they mustn’t see her cry, any of them.

  “Another time, my dears.” She’s careful to add the s. Always this game of including; sometimes she feels like the president of America, keeping the peace.

  Jewel tugs on her arm, walking her up to the door. “Come on, Ma.” But she knows what she’s up against, needing to be alone. It’ll take all her wits, every ounce of concentration, to retrieve Harry this time, to pluck him back from wherever he’s slipped to. Jewel must know. His eyes swim, that blue a mirror of his father’s good one, a blue so familiar it’s a pearl inside her, no, a sapphire. Her little Jewel, her gem. People aged, of course; the world changed by the minute, they said on TV, but people didn’t, not themselves, not deep inside.

  Hunkered there in back, Robert looks up at her through his mop of hair and setting his jaw, nods. A man-to-man sort of nod that under any other circumstance would touch her funny bone.

  “Well. Don’t forget to eat,” Jewel was bossing her, tender now but cocky, always cocky, towering over her; or was it Rebecca talking through him? “The old man,” he hesitates, “he’s gonna pull through.”

  But that’s the thing with hope, part of her wants to argue: no one can presume.

  “Jeez, Ma…that bloody fence.” Unlocking the door, he doesn’t look at her. “Listen, I’ll get that kid over here if it kills him. Even if I gotta drag his arse out of bed.”

  “It’s okay,” she murmurs, sick of saying so, as an image flits through her head of Robert the last time he let himself be photographed: a school picture, his gawky smile at, what, thirteen? He has Harry’s looks, too, though Jewel denies it. Kid’s got Marryatt written all over him, he’s always insisted, and Rebecca would say amen to that, if amen were in her vocabulary. But she knows different: there’s the bridge of his nose, that grin, and Harry’s build. Harry when she first met him. That loose, loping tautness, though Harry’d been on the short side, lacking the boy’s height. Something about their movement, though—body language, Rebecca calls it—makes it impossible to picture one without seeing the other. Which will make it harder, banish the thought; or easier, she realizes, glimpsing Jewel in the hall mirror. Depending on whether the glass ends up empty, or full.

  He can’t seem to leave, lingering as if she’ll change her mind and come home with them after all, then finally saying he’ll be by first thing, and they’ll go in. “Early. Unless something…” His voice trails off; then that brusqueness again, so much closer to what she’s used to. “You call me, okay? You need anything, gimme a shout.” As if she would do that: stand on the verandah and bellow till the neighbours phoned the cops, the pigs as Robert calls them. So little respect…

  His breath is sour as he pecks her cheek, and then he’s getting back in and they’re driving off. The shapes of their heads the last thing she sees as the car purrs down the little street. Three: such an odd, awkward number, but with a symmetry all its own, a rightness, she supposes, if one likes triangles.

  2

  THE HOUSE SMELLS STALE, as if she’s been away a lot longer. On stove and counter sit the pots and withered cukes, the first round of jars standing in their dingy water. Harry would be disappointed; at least, unlike her, he wouldn’t fret over the waste. All her industry feels like it happened weeks ago now; it’s like turning on the TV at the end of a show.

  Upstairs, the bedspread lies balled up on the floor. In their room, the sheets are rumpled. The only signs of orderly cheer: the small varnished cross above her dresser, her candy dish full of earrings. A vanity. At sixty-eight, at Rebecca’s urging, she’d got her ears pierced. “Ma, if Harry can have his accordion…” The girl at the beauty parlour had promised it wouldn’t hurt, and it hadn’t. But still she felt silly, as if the holes were some sort of pampered stigmata, and Harry’s teasing hadn’t helped: “My wife the Christmas tree; look at the dingle balls on her, wouldja.” But for their fiftieth wedding anniversary he’d handed her a bag from Consumers Distributing: a pair of teeny diamond studs. Harry Caines!

  Removing them, carefully replacing the backs, she sets them in the dish, then slips to his side of the bed, where the Don Noble takes up a chair. Shiny as foil Christmas wrap, its red veneer feels sticky-smooth to the touch. Harry’s scent is all over the pillow: the smell of Old Spice and cigarettes and something else, just him, as she stretches out, closes her eyes. God will excuse her lying down for this; he should, knowing all about her knees. A chill breathes through the screen, the evening’s coolness tinged with fall, and with each wisp of air she tries to imagine him, or someone, listening.

  But it’s hard to concentrate on prayer: her mind keeps lurching back to Harry, not lying on the bathroom floor or in the sterile white bed, but perched on a kitchen chair chugalugging beer and squeezing out tunes one after another, laughing till his molars showed, including the one he’d ended up having pulled. And suddenly there’s his eye, the artificial one, which she can almost picture now, a relic, like a kewpie doll’s, rolling among her earrings, its flat blue lacking the gleam of his right one; and she can even hear him joking, coming home from cleanings and fittings at the doctor’s. How next time he�
��d pick brown and be like a mutt with a mismatched pair: “How’d you like them peepers? Put that in your cup and drink it, dolly!”

  Better, safer, to imagine the marble, Robert’s marble and his baby voice: “Nanny, I waaant it.” Until in her mind it clouds and grows oblong and opaque as a Scotch mint—a mint rolling in a film of blood. Much as she resists, as fast as the mantra of prayer puts up a wall, the memories topple it. And when she glances up at the dark panes, she can almost see them shattering—over and over and over, a wave of diamonds breaking inwards—and Harry holding the razor to his cheek, turning, both of his eyes blazed wide open.

  Oh Danny Boy: if she clamps her teeth and forces air into both ears she can summon his voice and let it fill her head—enough to squeeze out the blackness. Like driving out the enemy, bolting doors—enough to let herself drift off, anyway. Dozing through darkness takes practice, but she has an arsenal of that. Arse-nal, the syllables swagger through her brain, another round of Harry’s voice, as if he’s yelling arsehole, insulting somebody from inside his hospital sleep…

  But sometime in the night she’s shaken awake by crying: her own. Harry? Flinging out an arm, reaching for him… But there’s only the chilly sheet. Her head pounding. The emptiness of the bed a burden, after fifty-five years of sharing it. Somewhere in the dark a truck throttles downhill. By no means is it the first time she’s felt so alone, but now the quiet is like a body falling through space. Or a snowball trundling downhill, gathering weight.