Frosted Glass
a novel
by
Michael J. Vaughn
John P. Rutledge, Editor
For my feminine side, Anne Gelhaus.
And for Robert S. Pesich, coyote laureate.
FIRST EDITION
2002
ISBN 1-929429-75-4
THIS LITERARY WORK WAS CREATED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, IS
COPYRIGHT Ó 2001 BY MICHAEL J. VAUGHN (DEAD END STREET, LLC, EXCLUSIVE
LICENSEE) AND IS REGISTERED WITH THE UNITED STATES COPYRIGHT OFFICE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ALL COVER ART WAS CREATED BY HOLLY SMITH
(BOOKSKINS.NET) AND IS COPYRIGHT Ó 2002 BY DEAD END STREET, LLC. THIS WORK HAS BEEN FORMATTED BY DEAD END
STREETâ WITH THE AUTHOR’S EXPRESS PERMISSION.
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Your old life was a frantic running from
silence.
The speechless full moon comes out now.
–Rumi
Chapter One
A Vague Egyptian Myth
I never should have gone to work that day. If the onset of my period were not enough, I
arrived at my desk and saw all those pictures of Maisey and Tanner looking
cuter than children should be allowed, attacking me with their weed-like
youth. Especially the one of Maisey on
her first soccer team, grinning loose-lipped at the photographer as she cradled
one of those undersize pee-wee soccer balls.
Thus mesmerized by my own charming DNA, I
was an easy setup for Derek, the sweet young intern from Santa Clara
University, when he leaned into my cubicle, proffered a Van Dyck still-life of
doughnut holes and asked, “Would you like one, Miz Lowiltry?”
That was when I lost it.
The signal making its progress through my
forest of brain cells carried clear instructions: my mouth, vocal cords and
related equipment were to produce the words, “Thank you very much, Derek,”
after which I’d deliver one of my finest anchorwoman smiles, and my hand and
arm muscles would gracefully extract two or three of the little fatballs for
later consumption. These were simple
instructions. But somewhere in the
miniscule gap between the words “Thank” and “you,” my face began to rumble and
quake like the Hayward Fault, a hundred little Richter tics that gathered into
one humongous seismic wave. Right there
in the office – my office – I began to gush tears and emit strange animal
noises, smack dab in the middle of the nine a.m. foot traffic.
I ignored young Derek’s quickly fading
smile and stumbled to the nearest possible refuge – the women’s room. Shielding my face from the four-basin-long
mirror, I slipped into the handicapped stall, where I knew there would be hand
railings should I need to drag myself up from the floor.
I settled onto the toilet lid, slid the
door latch into its slot and reached into the black plastic dispenser for T.P.
as flimsy as rice paper. It was enough,
however, just to have something to apply to my leaking face. It was then that I began to reflect on the
powers of visualization.
My company had sent me two months before to Akron, Ohio, where I took
part in a seminar entitled “Visualization for Success.” The seminar leader was
Hank Scallion, a tall, lanky Jimmy Stewart type with blinding horse teeth and
long balletic fingers. With perfect Iowa
diction, Hank instructed us to close our eyes and form a picture of our
dreamed-of success. He then asked us to
tuck that image away in our memories, so we could pull it back out whenever
great anxieties or disappointments reared their malicious donkey-heads.
I do not imagine that my own inner
hologram was the kind that Mr. Scallion had in mind. Mine was a high wall constructed entirely of
thick glass bricks. The bricks were
transparent but packed with deceptive little bumps and grooves, allowing my
co-workers and colleagues only the vaguest image of my real self, an amorphous
but polite, thoroughly professional woman.
If they wanted to try and chip it away with vodka gimlets and
insinuating questions at some cheesy fish-market restaurant with nets hanging
from the walls and black-and-white photographs of guys named Oscar and Leon
hoisting two-hundred-pound swordfish in Baja California or Gloucester,
Massachusetts, well tough shit, Pocahontas.
These bricks come down for no one.
If they ever caught half a second’s reflection of the real Sandy they’d
tuck it into their snide little brass-button Harvard blazers for future
use. Forget it! My stuff on this side,
your stuff over there, and just try to make me out.
There, on my porcelain throne, I stared
into the moss-green neutrality of the stall door until it fuzzed out brick by
brick into a solid column of crystal.
After a few minutes, the blood stood back from my face and my breathing
leveled out at a standard Tuesday morning in-out in-out.
“Sandy? Are you all right?”
The glass bricks rattled as Shanili
tapped her knuckles on the opposite side.
For a few seconds I considered the childish belief that if only I held
my breath and slowly lifted my feet from the floor, perhaps she would give up
and go away. But she’d probably gotten
the whole story from Derek, and wouldn’t leave me alone until she was sure I
wasn’t sawing away at my wrist with a car key.
Okay,
I thought. This is where the real professionals hang tough. Think about it, girlfriend – a little sobbing
fit, that’s all. It is still possible
for you to save a little dignity here.
Just dream up some goofy little story, like maybe your favorite cousin
from Athens, Georgia got killed in a train wreck last week and it just so
happens that she was absolutely nuts about doughnut holes. No, that’s not going to work. Let’s try an
image. It’s you and Hank Scallion, and the two of you are sitting astride a
pair of tall, lovely, snow-white camels in front of the Sphinx. While Hank tries
to suck the spinach salad out of his big teeth you forge a connection with that
graceful, serene stone face, pulling all those millennia of solidity and
balance into your own expression. I am
calm. I am enigmatic. I am unfigureoutable. Now smile for the camera, honey. Wipe your weepin’ eyes and o-o-pen that stall
door.
I should have known better. A vague Egyptian myth had no business going
up against Shanili’s chocolate-pudding eyes, possessed of more compassion than
sixteen and a half Mother Theresas. At
the first glimpse of her concerned expression, her artfully furrowing brow, I
collapsed onto my throne and let out a torrent of oh-so-personal,
oh-so-embarrassing minutiae. Expressed
as a free-verse poem, it might have gone something like this:
Five
years we were together
five
years
and
we had so much
and
we were going to get married
at
least that’s what it seemed like
I
mean, you don’t take a girl from thirty-four to thirty-nine
you
don’t take her to the edge like that, Shanili
you don’t spend a
hundred and three Sunday mornings eating French toast with a woman
and
then
He
knew, right?
He
had to know
(gasp,
gasp)
the
way I doted on my nieces
pictures
all over the fridge
and
the way I looked at big-eyed slop-footed puppies in pet-store windows
and
smiled that special smile
at
women pushing baby strollers
down
Lincoln Avenue
And
I said,
I
hope our child has your eyes and my nose
and
certainly your hair
because
mine is uncontrollable sometimes
and
I’ve tried that new henna conditioner but it just doesn’t
I
mean, I know he’s a guy
but
what does he want?
Billboards?
Cue
cards?
Infomercials?
A-a-a-a-and
(gasp,
sob)
Dumped!
El
Dumpo!
The
Big Dumparissimo
and
I am so alone, Shanili
I’m
so alone
and
I want to be a mother
I just want to be a Mom.
You get the idea. And I suppose
I could have limited my space-shuttle launch to a single victim, but as word
got out that a destroyed marketing director was conducting a full-gonzo
emotional meltdown in the handicapped stall, an outbreak of urinational need
swept through the female office population.
Before I knew it, I found myself reciting my confessions to a dozen
multi-ethnic faces gathered outside the stall, painted in expressions of
sisterly sympathy.
I suppose I should have been grateful for
all this Goddess-worship around my toilette du tears, but even as my feminine
exterior filled up and smoothed out, my Wharton-educated, business-suited
hardass self was back in Akron, conjuring one last bit of visualization with
Hank Scallion. Hank was flossing now,
the Sphinx had turned into Mount Rushmore, and there at the feet of my lovely
snow-white camel lay the remains of my glass-brick wall, shredded into
powder-light piles as a squadron of Mexican gardeners marched our way, leaf
blowers in the ready position.
Hank chucked his floss at them, yelled “Gudyam!”
(which I suppose was Egyptian for “Giddyap!”) and disappeared in a flurry of
camel-hoofs. It seemed like a good idea,
so I followed.
Photo by MJV
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