Sari Wilson - Girl Through Glass

Sioban leads me to a ramshackle off-campus house, up some rickety wooden back stairs, whispering that she shares the house with five — or maybe six — others. She opens a back door that squeaks mightily in the cold. Then we are in her room. “My own entrance,” she says in her rushed voice, energetic and sheepish at once. I stand in the doorway. She turns on the light: a mattress on the floor, covers askew, a chest with the lid propped open from which stream all sorts of fabrics, blank walls lit with nails from which hang beaded necklaces and earrings, none of which I’ve ever seen her wear. There’s a lamp on the floor and a heavy antique brocaded mirror, the only thing that looks to be of value, propped against the wall. The effect is of a medieval chamber, an idea of comfort and beauty from a more primitive civilization.

She takes me by the hand. This is my moment to back out, to say no, to defend my future against the present — but I do not.

Her hand is long-fingered and moist. “Come,” she says. “Don’t be scared.” She takes off my coat and her own. The cheek with the acne scar is scarlet, from the cold or excitement, I don’t know. Her eyes hum like oil behind glass. She sinks onto the bed. I sink down next to her, and in a second she is naked, and her flesh is so perfect. She moves in her long-muscled limbs, all clavicles and hip and knee, and in her long sheath of that skin that now looks like dusky ash still glowing from a fire. Small breasts, dark nipples, no bra. She stretches out, full of confidence in her nakedness, and pulls me to her. I am overcome with a deep desire for her and, god forgive me, I kiss her breasts. She raises her hips up to meet me. She has not asked me to undress and I have not offered. We acknowledge her body is enough for both of us. Then I do something I never have before — not in those few times I have fallen into bed with a woman. In my twenties, my modern dancer days, gender mattered less than whose bed I could crash in that night. I put my tongue inside of her. She moves against me and I feel her whole body open up. She tastes of salt and ripe flowers. She squeezes my face with her thighs and shudders. When I raise my head, I catch sight of a crumpled sock on the floor next to the bed — a purple sock with red hearts. I stare at it, this fearsome thing, lying there with its careless vanity, then at the young woman before me in her medieval chamber, her body still possessing those long ballerina’s muscles.

I pull away. “I have to go,” I say.

Her face is surprised, even frightened. “No,” she says. “Stay,” she says. “It’s okay. Really, it’s okay.”

The ridiculousness of her confidence sickens and exhilarates me. I am for the first time deeply afraid for myself and what I have done.

Back at my house, I shower and change out of my dance clothes, and call my mother. I catch her at work. “Mom?” I say. “Sorry to bother you.”

“That’s okay. What’s up?” Her voice is generous. Something is going well.

She’s an office manager at a nonprofit in SoMa and often works reception too. I picture her red hair, white roots, flat against her skull, still-attractive face knotted against the phones and computer screen. We talk every few weeks, but this call is off schedule. What do I want from her? I want to tell her about this girl, the terrible kiss, and what followed, and even more — the letter from Maurice. I want to tell her everything. Life has me by the throat, I want to say. I am choking. What if I could tell my mother my secrets? What if I could have told my mother my secrets? But our relationship has always been built on signals and codes sent from neighboring countries.

I take a deep breath. She says, “Hey, did you hear anything?”

“About the Pell?” I say. “Not yet. Bernie is saying after the break. But—” I’m about to tell her about Bill, but stop myself. “I won’t keep you,” I say. “Just tell me — what are you reading?”

Listening to her talk about her latest obsession has always, somehow, helped me, though I know it’s maybe not in the healthiest ways. I can relax into gratitude for not being captive to the same endless desire to search.

“Jung,” my mother says. “Hang on, that’s the other line. It might be my boss.” There’s a click and the line goes hollow. She’s gone and when she’s back, she says, “Sorry—”

“Jung — still?” I say.

“ Again . He says that the soul is mostly outside the body. Isn’t that strange?” Her voice has the same tensile quality I’m so used to, a wire passing overhead, between herself and something or someplace else invisible to me.

No, it makes sense. I take a deep breath. “I don’t know,” I say at last. “I’ve often felt that the inside of me is hollow, waiting to be filled up with what the day brings to me. As if it’s something outside of me that gives birth to whatever’s inside of me. I’ve often been afraid that I’m nothing without these things, totally hollow. I wouldn’t exist.”

There’s such a long pause on the other end that I say, “Hello?” and then she says, “Really? I never knew that. That’s so odd and interesting.”

Then it feels like there is nothing to say. The landline has that porous quality again, and none of the abrupt static of a cell line that could cut us off any minute. Suddenly I am desperate. “Hello? Hello? Mom?”

“I’m still here,” she says.

In early November, Mira’s father appears again. He says he’s been staying with friends while he “figures things out.” But he wants to see Mira. So the Sunday morning after Mira follows Maurice home, her father comes to pick her up. He wears a new long, stylish coat with a fur collar, and his cheeks are freshly shaved and raw-looking. His eyes are rimmed with red.

She climbs in his car — a new silver Toyota. Inside, it smells of leather and air freshener. It strikes Mira that her father is a very neat man. She had not known this about him, exactly, or had not thought it in those terms: my father is a neat man. How has she not known this about him? For how long has he been living in her mother’s messy, upside-down world?

They drive through the silent early-morning Brooklyn streets. The city has slid into a cold late fall. Dead leaves clog the gutters, and the dog shit on the sidewalk has started to freeze into hockey pucks that the boys at school will kick at the girls. The air has finally shed the burned smell. Now it slaps your face and freezes your lungs. The plastic bags in the trees whip in the wind like banners on ghost ships. She watches as a newspaper blows down the street, catching a man in the face.

Her dad asks Mira if she has eaten. She shakes her head. She imagines that he will take her to a restaurant — maybe in Manhattan — where they will eat things she has never eaten before. Maybe quail eggs. Or snails.

Instead, only a few blocks away, on Court Street, he parks the car in front of a storefront restaurant sandwiched between two gated jewelry stores displaying giant gold earrings, necklaces, and bracelets. A battered blue-lettered sign reads: D UT PAV LION. Despite living ten blocks or so from this stretch of commerce, Mira has never noticed the Donut Pavilion, much less been inside of it.

They enter: a harmless-looking drugstore with a lunch counter. It is steamy inside, with smells of frying. Next to the counter is a rack of ancient greeting cards printed with salutations like “I Miss You!” and “From the Moment I Met You. .” and pastel pictures of sunsets, flowers, and butterflies. As her dad climbs onto one of the ripped orange stools, Mira fingers their warped parchment paper and embossed covers. She lingers on a pretty card with a raised yellow sunset reading “Together Forever.”