The Glass House

Grace’s voice was gone, and I con­tin­ued: a ghost in the room with her sto­ry of Max.

This was Max’s twen­ty-third day. The suits would come from the insur­ance com­pa­ny. They would call the Veihls in for a meet­ing. Apologies would be prof­fered. Decisions would be made. Machines would cease beep­ing in the evening while she was get­ting ready for work, and Max would be gone when she returned to the room tomor­row. Godiya need­ed to look through the glass one more time because what Max had built in that space was some­thing so beau­ti­ful and ter­ri­fy­ing that some­one should remem­ber it for him.

Godiya pulled the edge of the cur­tain back, walked back to the bed, and brushed the hair back from Max’s fore­head. It was now twen­ty min­utes after eight. She checked her watch, then the win­dow, wait­ing a few min­utes until the “light was about right.” When the beam crest­ed the brown Formica of the adjustable table, she slid the cor­ner of the dark plat­form into the encroach­ing illu­mi­na­tion, moved to the oppo­site side of the table, leaned down, and brought the glass to her eye.

What Max had con­struct­ed on the pine plat­form, whose dark stain mir­rored the semi-ran­dom pat­tern of the cross-cut grain beneath, was a two-sto­ry, three-and-a-half-bed­room house made entire­ly of bro­ken glass. The glass var­ied in thick­ness, type, and clar­i­ty, some bits even bear­ing the brands of the prod­ucts from which they were smashed. Though the lev­els of clar­i­ty var­ied, all includ­ed some fea­ture of obscu­ra­tion pre­clud­ing any vis­i­bil­i­ty to the structure’s inte­ri­or. Some of the pieces had inclu­sions of var­i­ous semi-trans­par­ent col­ors. Others had bub­bles, or thick­ness­es warped by the appli­ca­tion of heat. Small sec­tions were built of shat­tered auto­mo­bile glass with dense frac­tures of tiny shards. The observ­er could see that the house includ­ed inte­ri­or ele­ments, but those ele­ments had no dis­tin­guish­ing fea­tures. Godiya felt Max had tried to cap­ture the con­cept of full trans­paren­cy and total obscu­ra­tion at once and had most­ly suc­ceed­ed to a some­what mys­ti­fy­ing effect. She was com­pelled to keep explor­ing the struc­ture with her eyes while con­sis­tent­ly con­fused by the vary­ing shapes of noth­ing she could define inside. The sculp­ture as a whole was enchant­i­ng in a haunt­ing way, and Godiya would exam­ine its facets at length every time she came to care for Max. It had a strange attract­ing qual­i­ty. Once you saw it, you couldn’t ever quite let the glass house escape your atten­tion. It begged for your inves­ti­ga­tion when you were in its pres­ence. But the real mag­ic of Max’s con­struc­tion could only be seen in the day­light — and only if you were invited.

“This is the key in,” Mrs. Veihl had told Godiya when she hand­ed her the mag­ni­fy­ing glass those five days ago.

So now, on Max’s last day, Godiya brought the mag­ni­fy­ing glass to her eye and leaned over for one last look into Max’s secret world, so she could remem­ber it in the world that would for­get him.

In the far right cor­ner of the sec­ond floor of the glass house was a small dis­tort­ed chunk bro­ken from a blue hur­ri­cane lamp. There was a small droplet-shaped dot of mid­night where the dye blend­ed uneven­ly in the glass. Below the mark was a sin­gle, per­fect­ly clear air bub­ble. This is the key­hole, Godiya remem­bered. She shift­ed her posi­tion and focused through the lens, reveal­ing the inte­ri­or of Max’s house.

The tiny aper­ture pro­vid­ed by the bub­ble gave Godiya a minus­cule range of motion where­by sub­tle adjust­ments of the lens let her explore the inte­ri­or floor­plan. There was the mys­tery. There were no objects inside to explain the shapes shad­owed on the exte­ri­or of the glass. She couldn’t see it, but Godiya was sure Max must have arranged a tiny mir­ror diag­o­nal­ly in the cor­ner of the ceil­ing of the area that would have been the din­ing room adja­cent to the kitchen. When the sun shone on the grain of the dark wood, the mir­ror would reflect those shapes and project them like translu­cent pas­tel specters across the many cracked facets of the house’s exte­ri­or glass pan­els, which would then reflect them back into the inte­ri­or of the rooms.

The inte­ri­or sides of the house’s walls were smooth and clear. She could see no indi­ca­tion of the shat­ter­ing vis­i­ble from the out­side. There was no haz­ing around any of the joints con­nect­ing the shards mak­ing up the house’s sur­faces. Godiya won­dered how the boy got the thing to stick togeth­er. The light inside the house played shad­ows frac­tured into small­er shad­ows swirling around a cen­tral fig­ure, the only thing actu­al­ly “in” the house. She guessed a tiny mir­ror mount­ed in the oppo­site cor­ner caught light from the first mir­ror to cre­ate the spot­light that cut through the shad­ows in a path to the fig­ure of a man sit­ting at a desk read­ing a book. The fig­ure was cut from some sort of laven­der glass with remark­able detail. Godiya could make out lines of wear on the tiny man’s face. His shoul­ders were slumped as if the book were very heavy, and he had been hold­ing it for a long time. There were rum­ples in the fab­ric of the man’s pants where they extend­ed under the table­top. He had long hair and glass­es, and the look on his face was one of deep con­cen­tra­tion and weary sad­ness. Godiya had nev­er seen a fig­urine like this, not in a curio shop, not in a pawn shop, not even in her grandma’s vast array of car­ni­val glass home shop­ping cat­a­logs. She won­dered where Max could have found such a thing.

Though the swirling ghosts inside the oth­er­wise emp­ty house were mes­mer­iz­ing, it was the old man at the desk that cap­tured most of her atten­tion. He looked so sad to her, so lost and over­whelmed by what was in front of him, and it was like­ly that final, tini­est detail of the fig­urine that weighed so heav­i­ly across his face and shoulders.

In clear glass relief through the laven­der of the minia­ture glass book was the sin­gle word: “Truth.”

Satisfied with her exam­i­na­tion, Godiya stretched to set the mag­ni­fy­ing glass back up on the top shelf just so, then lugged the heavy glass sculp­ture to its shelf, shift­ing the base to match its diag­o­nal foot­print so Mrs. Veihl wouldn’t notice it had been moved. She picked the cloth out of its basin and wiped it over Max’s fore­head once more, brushed his hair from his face, and leaned her lips close to his ear.

“I know you’ll nev­er get to hear any­one say this Max, but because this is our last day togeth­er, I want­ed to make sure you did.

“It’s a mas­ter­piece, Max. I could stare into it for­ev­er. It prac­ti­cal­ly com­pels me to do so. It is sweet, and sad, and enig­mat­ic, and beau­ti­ful, and I find myself ever won­der­ing what is so trou­bling the old man. What truth is it that hangs so heav­i­ly on him? I think many, many peo­ple would have had the same reac­tion to your work, Max. I think you would have been a famous artist, a town hero. Everyone would have been so proud of you, which makes me even sad­der. I am so very sor­ry for what hap­pened to you, Max.

“I know you’re still in there, Max, and I wish I could get you out because after look­ing into your glass house I knew that in a few years, I might have loved you. Everyone has ghosts, Max. I love that you put yours on dis­play. What a very brave thing to do.

“I’ve become much too good at good­bye, Max”, said Godiya, and real­iz­ing this made her feel much old­er and more heart­bro­ken than she was ready to be.