Boys Life

was never far from my hand, though. One morning I woke up, after a dream of the four black girls calling my name, and I rubbed my eyes in the winter sunlight and I picked up the feather from where I’d left it on the bedside table and I knew I had to. Not call them, but go see for myself.
    Bundled up, I rode Rocket under the Zephyr tinsel to the gingerbread house on Shantuck Street. I knocked at the door, the feather in my pocket.
    Miss Blue Glass opened the door. It was still early, just past nine. Miss Blue Glass wore an azure robe and quilted cyan slippers. Her whitish-blond hair was piled high as usual, which must’ve been her first labor of the morning. I was reminded of pictures I’d seen of the Matterhorn. She regarded me through her thick black-framed glasses, dark hollows beneath her eyes. “Cory Mackenson,” she said. Her voice was listless. “What can I do for you?”
    “May I come in for a minute?”
    “I am alone,” she said.
    “Uh… I won’t take but a minute.”
    “I am alone,” she repeated, and tears welled up behind her glasses. She turned away from the door, leaving it open. I walked into the house, which was the same museum of chintzy art it had been the night I was here for Ben’s lesson. Still… something was missing.
    “I am alone.” Miss Blue Glass crumpled down onto the spindly-legged sofa, lowered her head, and began to sob.
    I closed the door to keep out the cold. “Where’s Miss Gre-the other Miss Glass?”
    “No longer Miss Glass,” she said with the trace of a hurt sneer.
    “Isn’t she here?”
    “No. She’s in… heaven knows where she is by now.” She took off her glasses to blot the tears with a blue lace hanky. I saw that without those glasses and with her hair let down an altitude or two, she might not look nearly so… I guess frightful’s the word.
    “What’s wrong?” I asked.
    “What’s wrong,” she said, “is that my heart has been ripped out and stomped! Just utterly stomped!” Fresh tears streaked down her face. “Oh, I can hardly even think about it!”
    “Did somebody do somethin’ bad?”
    “I have been betrayed!” she said. “By my own flesh and blood!” She picked up a piece of pale green paper from beside her and held it out to me. “Read this for yourself!”
    I took it. The words, a graceful script, were written in dark green ink.
    Dearest Sonia, it began. When two hearts call to each other, what else can one do but answer? I can no longer deny my feelings. My emotions burn. I long to be joined in the raptures of true passion. Music is fine, dearest sister, but the notes must fade. Love is a song that lives on. I must give myself to that finer, deeper symphony. That is why I must go with him, Sonia. I have no choice but to give myself to him, body and soul. By the time you read this, we shall be…
    “Married?” I must’ve shouted it, because Miss Blue Glass jumped.
    “Married,” she said grimly.
    …married, and we hope in time you will understand that we do not conduct our own chorale in this life, but are conducted by the hand of the Master Maestro. Love and Fond Farewell, Your Sister, Katharina.
    “Isn’t that the damnedest thing?” Miss Blue Glass asked me. Her lower lip began to tremble.
    “Who did your sister run off with?”
    Miss Blue Glass spoke the name, though speaking it seemed to crush her all the more.
    “You mean… your sister married… Mr. Cathcoate?”
    “Owen,” Miss Blue Glass sobbed, “oh, my sweet Owen ran off with my own sister!”
    I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Not only had Mr. Cathcoate gone off and married Miss Green Glass, but he’d been catting with Miss Blue Glass, too! I’d known he had parts of the Wild West in him, but I hadn’t imagined his south parts were just as wild. I said, “Isn’t Mr. Cathcoate kind of old for you ladies?” I put the letter back on the sofa beside her.
    “Mr. Cathcoate has the heart of a boy,” she said, and her eyes got dreamy. “Oh Lord, I’ll miss that man!”
    “I have to ask you about somethin’,” I told her before her faucets turned on again. “Does your sister have a parrot?”
    Now it was her turn to look at me as if my senses had flown. “A parrot?”
    “Yes ma’am. You had a blue parrot. Does your sister have a green one?”
    “No,” Miss Blue Glass said. “I’m tellin’ you how my heart has been broken, and you want to talk about parrots?”
    “I’m sorry. I just had to ask.” I sighed and looked around the