will be consequences?
NOW SHE SLIPS into bed, not wanting to disturb him, switches off the bedside lamp, turns to him, as, usually, reflexively, he turns to her; and she kisses him, sleepily; and he wakes, and kisses her, yet very sleepily; and they ease apart. Glynnis customarily sleeps facing the edge of the bed, on her right, partly hugging herself: a childhood habit never outgrown. Except for infrequent restless nights and more frequent bouts of nighttime sweating, she is a quiet, even inert sleeper: heavy-seeming, in sleep, as a dark quivering pool rises to meet her and enclose her, her breath oddly quickening as a cascade of images, primarily faces, rush at her . . . some of them recognizable, the faces of her friends (though distorted, distended, as in a fun-house mirror) but most of them the faces of strangers (yet so striking in their vivid, hallucinatory detail, she cannot believe they are but mere fictions of her unstoppered imagination): rush at her like a speeding landscape in which she is passive, frozen, an uncomprehending witness. Yet it is not nightmare, nor does it ever lead to nightmare; simply a sleep of exhaustion steeped in alcohol . . . through which she makes her way, drifting, dropping, sinking, an element dense and porous as water that yields, always abruptly, another place . . . ah, but she is barefoot, and the floorboards are cold, and an odor as of stale food permeates the air, and drink . . . someone has spilled wine on the tablecloth, Ian said, a pity, do you think it will come out, our beautiful tablecloth, Ian said, but the brass chandelier shines and the candelabra with their tall graceful candles, the afterimages of the flames reflected in the mirror above the sideboard and in the glass walls and sliding door, and in the kitchen the bottoms of the copper pans shine like miniature moons and the hanging plants in the window quiver spiderlike with their own secret life and why, Glynnis thinks, why is Marvis so barely civil to her the latter part of the evening, unsmiling and unresponsive and Glynnis has always been so nice to her, generous at Christmas, careful not to be, not even to seem, condescending, what do they want, these black women, the women as mysterious finally as the men, what do they want from us we seem incapable of giving? . . . but Glynnis and Ian are at the door saying good night to their friends, Glynnisâs warm cheek is being kissed, and she kisses in return, happily, greedily, Denisâs liquorish breath in her face, and she laughs, and winces, and pushes him away, or is it another man, a stranger, she pushes away, as a woman she does not recognize stands on her tiptoes and kisses Ian good night, no, it is Roberta, or is it Meika, it is Roberta, but her hand is skeletal and cold so that in fright Glynnis drops it but shows no alarm, her facial skin tight as a mask showing no alarm, I love you both, I love love love you both, I drown in all of you.
AND THE DOOR is closed, with care, in the glass wall.
Itâs an instinct now, with the McCulloughs.
Living in a glass house, after all.
On her bare drifting feet Glynnis traverses the many rooms of her house, these rooms that, though some of them appear unknown to her, are nonetheless hers, and her responsibility; in one of them, cavelike, cavernous, she discovers her daughter sleeping or the child they assured her was hers sleeping a babyâs intense trembling sleep so deep she cannot be wakened; and how am I responsible, Glynnis protests, what am I to do? And in another room, in which the walls come together at a peculiar slant and the ceiling presses low and the air is humid, as in a greenhouse, there are Ian and Glynnis, the McCulloughs, in bed, beneath familiar covers, turned from each other in the privacy and loneliness of sleep and their bodies curled inward, coiled, like the bodies of soft creatures whose shells have been prized off them; and each is the otherâs twin,
NOW SHE SLIPS into bed, not wanting to disturb him, switches off the bedside lamp, turns to him, as, usually, reflexively, he turns to her; and she kisses him, sleepily; and he wakes, and kisses her, yet very sleepily; and they ease apart. Glynnis customarily sleeps facing the edge of the bed, on her right, partly hugging herself: a childhood habit never outgrown. Except for infrequent restless nights and more frequent bouts of nighttime sweating, she is a quiet, even inert sleeper: heavy-seeming, in sleep, as a dark quivering pool rises to meet her and enclose her, her breath oddly quickening as a cascade of images, primarily faces, rush at her . . . some of them recognizable, the faces of her friends (though distorted, distended, as in a fun-house mirror) but most of them the faces of strangers (yet so striking in their vivid, hallucinatory detail, she cannot believe they are but mere fictions of her unstoppered imagination): rush at her like a speeding landscape in which she is passive, frozen, an uncomprehending witness. Yet it is not nightmare, nor does it ever lead to nightmare; simply a sleep of exhaustion steeped in alcohol . . . through which she makes her way, drifting, dropping, sinking, an element dense and porous as water that yields, always abruptly, another place . . . ah, but she is barefoot, and the floorboards are cold, and an odor as of stale food permeates the air, and drink . . . someone has spilled wine on the tablecloth, Ian said, a pity, do you think it will come out, our beautiful tablecloth, Ian said, but the brass chandelier shines and the candelabra with their tall graceful candles, the afterimages of the flames reflected in the mirror above the sideboard and in the glass walls and sliding door, and in the kitchen the bottoms of the copper pans shine like miniature moons and the hanging plants in the window quiver spiderlike with their own secret life and why, Glynnis thinks, why is Marvis so barely civil to her the latter part of the evening, unsmiling and unresponsive and Glynnis has always been so nice to her, generous at Christmas, careful not to be, not even to seem, condescending, what do they want, these black women, the women as mysterious finally as the men, what do they want from us we seem incapable of giving? . . . but Glynnis and Ian are at the door saying good night to their friends, Glynnisâs warm cheek is being kissed, and she kisses in return, happily, greedily, Denisâs liquorish breath in her face, and she laughs, and winces, and pushes him away, or is it another man, a stranger, she pushes away, as a woman she does not recognize stands on her tiptoes and kisses Ian good night, no, it is Roberta, or is it Meika, it is Roberta, but her hand is skeletal and cold so that in fright Glynnis drops it but shows no alarm, her facial skin tight as a mask showing no alarm, I love you both, I love love love you both, I drown in all of you.
AND THE DOOR is closed, with care, in the glass wall.
Itâs an instinct now, with the McCulloughs.
Living in a glass house, after all.
On her bare drifting feet Glynnis traverses the many rooms of her house, these rooms that, though some of them appear unknown to her, are nonetheless hers, and her responsibility; in one of them, cavelike, cavernous, she discovers her daughter sleeping or the child they assured her was hers sleeping a babyâs intense trembling sleep so deep she cannot be wakened; and how am I responsible, Glynnis protests, what am I to do? And in another room, in which the walls come together at a peculiar slant and the ceiling presses low and the air is humid, as in a greenhouse, there are Ian and Glynnis, the McCulloughs, in bed, beneath familiar covers, turned from each other in the privacy and loneliness of sleep and their bodies curled inward, coiled, like the bodies of soft creatures whose shells have been prized off them; and each is the otherâs twin,
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