Boys Life

crazy that night?
    I remembered the voice of Miss Green Glass: It’s that song, I’m tellin’ you! He goes insane every time you play it!
    And Miss Blue Glass, answering: I used to play it for him all the time and he loved it!
    A small glimmer began to cut through the darkness. It was like a single shard of sunlight, as seen from the bottom of murky water. I couldn’t make out anything by it yet, but I knew it was there.
    “Miss Glass?” I said. A little louder, because she’d increased the volume and was starting to hammer the keys as if she were playing with Ben’s fingers: “Miss Glass?”
    She stopped on a bitter note. Tears had streamed down all the way to her chin. “What is it?”
    “That song right there. Did it make your parrot act strange?”
    “No! That was a vile lie of Katharina’s, because she hated my favorite song herself!” But the way she said it, I knew it wasn’t true.
    “You’ve just started givin’ piano lessons again, haven’t you? Have you played that song very much since… oh… the green parrot died?”
    She thought about it. “I don’t know. I guess… I played it at church rehearsal some, to warm up. But because I wasn’t givin’ lessons, I didn’t play the piano much at home. Not that I didn’t want to, but Katharina”-she couldn’t help but sneer the name-“said my playin’ hurt her sensitive ears, that vicious man-stealer!”
    The light was still there. Something was taking shape, but it was still a long way off.
    “It was Katharina this and Katharina that!” Miss Blue Glass suddenly slammed her hands down on the keyboard with such force the entire piano shook. “I was always bendin’ over backward to appease almighty Katharina! And I loathe and despise green!” She stood up, a skinny, seething thing. “I’m gonna take everythin’ green in this house and burn it, and if that means parts of the house, the very walls, well, I’ll burn those, too! If I never see green again, I’ll smile in my grave!”
    She was working up to a frenzy of destruction. That was a sight I didn’t care to witness. I had my hand on the doorknob. “Thank you, Miss Glass.”
    “Yes, I’m still Miss Glass!” she shouted, but she was crying again. “The one and only Miss Glass! And I’m proud of it, do you hear me? I’m proud of it!” She plucked the pale green farewell letter from the sofa and, her teeth clenched, she began to rip it to shreds. I got out while the getting was good. As the door closed behind me, I heard the curio cabinet go over. I’d been right; it did make a terrible crash.
    As I pedaled home, I was trying to put everything together in my head. Snippets of the quilt, the Lady had said. The pieces were there, but how did they fit?
    The murder of a man no one knew.
    The green feather of a dead parrot, there at the scene of the crime.
    A song that caused a second parrot to curse blue blazes in German.
    Dr. Lezander, the night owl who hated milk.
    Who knows?
    Hannaford?
    If the green parrot had died at Dr. Lezander’s office, how had one of its feathers gotten to the lake?
    What was the link between the two parrots, the dead man, and Dr. Lezander?
    When I got home, I went straight to the telephone. I called the Glass house again, my fears of tragedy pushed down out of sheer necessity. At first I thought Miss Blue Glass wasn’t going to answer, because the phone rang eight times. Then, on the ninth ring: “Yes?”
    “Miss Glass, it’s me again. Cory Mackenson. I’ve got one more question for you.”
    “I don’t want to talk about Benedictine Arnold anymore.”
    “Who? Oh, not your sister. Your parrot. Besides this last time, when it died at Dr. Lezander’s, was it ever sick before?”
    “Yes. They were both sick on the same day. Katharina and I took them both to Dr. Lezander’s office. But that next night her damn bird died.” She made a noise of exasperation. “Cory, what is this all about?”
    The light was a little brighter. “Thanks again, Miss Glass,” I said, and I hung up. Mom asked me from the kitchen why I was calling Miss Glass, and I said I was going to write a story about a music teacher. “That’s nice,” Mom said. I had discovered that being a writer gave you a lot of license to fiddle with the truth, but I’d better not get into the habit of it.
    In my room, I put on my thinking cap. It took a while, but I did some sewing with those snippets of the quilt.
    And I came to this conclusion: both parrots had been at Dr.