The Glass Factory (22 page)

Now I’m going to find out what on earth Samuel Morse is doing with the university’s incubator space. But the workday’s over. Long lines of bloodless workers tramp listlessly up their front walks and sit down to tainted meals. The unbearable funebrious rhythm of it all makes my head pound with profound, abysmal melancholy. So I put Antonia to bed and veg-out in front of the TV because I simply can’t think anymore. The show’s in color, with a lot of quick close-ups of isolated fragments of female flesh, but these qualities alone are not enough to hold the plot together for me.

I wonder if this is what Shakespeare had in mind when he wrote:

When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rime
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights;
—Something something something—
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow …

Damn it, I used to know the whole thing by heart.

One too many kicks in the head.

And I keep getting phone calls from beer-bottle-opener nose and other anonymous voices pretending to be asking after Antonia’s condition but really just trying to make me squirm. Oh, it is getting to me, but the feeling it’s engendering is rage, not fear. But you can’t say, “One more call and I’ll slit you open like a carnival pig and make sausages out of your intestines” to a county detective. So I tell him he’d better start going through regular channels or he’ll regret it, legally. He tells me he
is
going through channels.

Don’t they realize I know the law? Maybe I’m giving them more credit than they deserve, thinking that Morse must be behind everything just because he knows my history and is smart enough to exploit that knowledge. He may not even know I’m out here yet. Maybe it’s just some local dweebs who don’t like what I’m doing. Strictly bush league. That would be nice.

Jim Stella also calls a few times, trying to get ahold of me. When I finally relent and take his call, he says, “Man, sex is just like telemarketing: a two percent response is as good as it gets.”

That’s only one in fifty. “More like one in a million,” I say, and hang up.

Colomba tells me to stop answering the phone and go to bed. But I can’t sleep. Every time I hear the phone my heart jumps. See, I used to get middle of the night calls so often I got sick of them. Then one night there came a 3:00
A.M.
phone call that I never answered. The next day my roommate’s best friend had committed suicide. And I still wonder if that call was him asking for a last chance at help. I think about that.

Motherhood has also changed my sleep patterns. I went from sleeping through fire alarms to being able to detect a change in breathing patterns two doors away. And now I’m lying here, listening. Hearing sounds. Every time I start to drift into dreams a twig snaps somewhere in the county and I spring awake. It goes on like this through the faceless hours until I accept and give up.

Antonia’s asleep. Otherwise I’m alone. I sit on the bed and whisper, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

I don’t want to go to a priest with this, I choose to confess directly to God for sins I have committed with weapons and pain, for sometimes following the path of violence, and for having violent thoughts—and the desire to kill, because I cannot go before the Lord with such a sin.

God gives us good and bad, but the day I was told I had no life left I ripped all the pages from the calendar of my life, and the sleeping giants chained beneath my skin awoke, and broke free. I could never bind my demons as well as God does it.

A life is a flash of light that streaks across the sky, then burns out and fades forever.

But when I see ugly souls living in comfort on the bodies of their prey, I ask why. I ask the birds and the fish, they know what God wants. Why do the flesh-eaters live, and grow old, and powerful? What’s the point of serving God when the killer’s refrigerator is always full, his bar is always stocked, his skin is smooth, while his victims fill their empty stomachs with bitterness. Yet they both end up the same in death.

The meat packers go hungry, the fruit pickers go thirsty. The murderer hides his face, and kills in the dark. I must shine a light on that face, see what others cannot see, seek out what others cannot find, and yank the victims from the jaws of the wicked.

But the disease, the disease is powerful, it sticks to my skin like mire. Those who hate me did this: I want to laugh as I destroy them cruelly and savagely. God says it over and over, and I still don’t follow. Yet He keeps back my soul from the pit, and has saved me from many a violent and sudden death. Can I clean the oceans alone? Close the hole in the ozone layer all by myself? Make apples ripen on the vine? Feed the children?

Their poisons have seeped into the sunken earth and dissolved the bonds holding the dark forces prisoner. They don’t know what they’ve awakened …

My penance? I’ve done enough penance for one life.

It’s still dark when I take a shower, but it’s starting to get light as I put on some jogging clothes and go for a walk.

There’s an odd peace over the houses. Even the stacks have ceased their belching for a spell, and the crisp, clear light of dawn almost cleans the air. I walk all the way to the twenty-four-hour deli on Main Street, get what passes for bagels out here and donuts for the family, pick up the early edition of the newspaper and walk back. Alone, awake before the rest, I check once more on Antonia and then put up a pot of government-issue water for coffee.

The sun is beginning to shoot through the trees as I sit down to a warm cup of real coffee and try to find solace in how fucked up the rest of the world is. It doesn’t work. The last president’s son has just landed an exclusive oil contract in a country we went to war to liberate. Gee, I wonder if the president needs a daughter? I’m sick of working for a living.

The NYPD now thinks the traditional police lineup is more likely to produce false identifications than newer methods, and critics of the “genetic fingerprint” say that DNA analysis does not accurately pinpoint identity.
Now
they tell us. For all I know, I could turn out to be someone else.

Even Long Island is getting more violent. A teenager from Levittown was fatally stabbed in the parking lot of the Tri-County Shopping Mall, and yesterday a varsity lacrosse player from Rocky Point was shot to death on the beach a few miles east of here. Guns? Knives? This was supposed to be suburbia.

And
there’s an interview with Morse in the business section. A sample:

Q: Does it ever go smoothly with transitional management? Are they cooperative or do they resent taking orders from newcomers like yourself?
A: Executives are human, too. When I take over I try to understand that someone who has given twenty to thirty years of service to one company, and has worked his way up to the executive management level, would probably shoot anybody who tried to take his job away from him. But most of that is ego, and money usually patches things up …

Hmm …

Well, the world’s a total mess and there’s nothing I can do about it, except clean up one little corner of it. Now for that Morse incubator site.

I turn the key and the car dies. Oh, crap!
Not now.
This is Long Island, you might as well cut off my legs. I fume and despair for a moment before I remember a suggestion my doctor made awhile back that seemed pretty crazy at first. I call a tow truck and get him to drop me in town, where I shell out three-quarters of what Gina lent me for a new bicycle, with tire pump, water bottle, biking shorts, helmet with rear-view mirror attachment and a baby seat and helmet. I figure it’ll serve the dual purposes of working off some tension and perhaps making me a little harder to follow without being really obvious—like a car crawling along behind me at 12 mph.

Feeling brittle as a sheet of glass from lack of sleep and fortified with three cups of Spanish coffee, I bike all the way up to the hospital to see Dr. Wrennch. He’s not in today, so I make an appointment for tomorrow, then I head for campus. Now you might think bicycling on Long Island would be a healthy pleasure, but not when you’re stuck biking uphill behind a car that hasn’t been tuned since
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
was the number one draw on the vaudeville circuit. Even the main drag of the well-to-do town of Running River has enough commercial traffic to mimic the air quality of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel at rush hour. I’m just catching my breath from the stoker when along comes a truck pulling yard landscaping equipment for all the fancy homes north of Route 25A that spews a thick cloud of carbon monoxide up my nose and into my lungs, then a truck with Jersey plates delivering fancy furniture does the same, followed soon after by a truck with pool-cleaning supplies, one delivering heating oil and—
¡chusa!—a
cesspool cleaning service,
five
trucks savage my delicate respiratory system and what’s supposed to be clean air in order to service the wealthy quicker. And I have to pull off to the shoulder, risking collapse, coughing up crud until blood comes.

Some college kids packed seven to a Camaro drive by and one shouts, “Nice helmet!” while another says, “There’s something about a Spandex butt,” before they’re gone ’round a curve in a bubble of laughter.

I channel my rage into a loud “Grrrrrr!” And a guy stopped in a car stares at me. I look at him: “Whatsamatter, you never heard a woman growl before?” He looks straight ahead until the light changes, peels out with a screech. Gina was right. I’ve got to switch to decaf.

I lock the bike to a pole in front of the Administration Building. Naturally I have to run into Frank Schmidt, who seems to have a permanent public relations smile frozen on his face. “Hey, Filomena, how’s it going?” he asks. Well, he remembers my name. It’s probably his primary job skill. But I’m here to see Katherina. She’s in a staff meeting, and a mere forty-five minutes of my life ebb away forever before she’s out.

“Coffee?” she asks.

“Sugar free or unleaded?”

She looks at me, raising one eyebrow.

“Just cold water,” I say, using the cooler. I am not in shape for this kind of haul under ideal conditions, much less while breathing in enough carbon monoxide to rival a mid-Manhattan traffic jam, and I wander into Katherina’s office on rubbery legs and collapse on one of her drafting tables. She pulls over a high cushioned stool for me.

“Try this,” she says. “It’s much more comfortable.”

“So how’ve you been?”

“Oh, okay. Where’s the kid?”

“She’s at home with her aunt.”

“She design any buildings yet?”

“As a matter of fact she was just playing with blocks and some of her cousin’s old cars this morning, spreading them out on the floor, and she says to me, ‘That’s a city—but it’s not a city,’ like she wants me to know she’s only pretending.”

“Sounds like she already knows the difference between image and reality. Some of our top administrators don’t even get that. I’d say she’s a genius.”

“Thanks. Maybe I should put her on the case.”

“You know, I meant to tell you, I remembered something else: I’ve got a living witness to the Shore Oaks fire.”

“You
do? Who?”

“This plant,” she says, pointing to a four-foot potted palm with a pinched stem and four withered brownish leaves.

“Thanks.”

“I’m serious. This plant is one of the sole survivors of the fire. They pulled it out, and when the Foundation moved to the third floor, Pamela Moore left this down here with me. It was doing okay ’til Frank Schmidt tripped over it and I had to repot the whole thing. I suppose I should really take better care of it, after all, it is the last living witness to the fire.”

“Let me ask you something, since you brought it up,” I lower my voice. “Why would anyone want to burn down Shore Oaks? Insurance?”

“It’s state property, Filomena, there’s no insurance.”

“Oh yes, of course. The state insures itself. How about to make the property valueless so it could be bought at low cost?”

“Now there’s an interesting possibility.”

“But I didn’t come here to ask about that.”

“You didn’t?”

“No, I’m—” I look out her office door. I lean closer to her. “I’m interested in the incubator site. You know where I can get a floor plan?”

“I can’t give you a detailed plan, but I can show you on the campus map.”

“You can?”

She looks at me as if I’ve insulted her. She hits a key on her computer and calls forth the menu of all the publications she has worked on this year. It’s a huge list. In a few minutes she has isolated the file, clicked it on screen, and forwarded to the map. She scrolls down and over to the South Campus buildings, highlights the area and doubles the size to fill the screen. It’s just a loose conglomeration of black outlines, like what Antonia spills out of her box of building blocks.

“That’s too small. Can you print it out and enlarge it on the Xerox machine?”