Wolf Dreams

 A suburban tract house is not the sort of place that you expect to see an elaborate stained glass window, especially one the size of an entire front picture window. Yet there it was. But then Great-grandmother wasn’t the sort of person you expected to find in a suburban tract house - a split-level one at that. She belonged in a graceful old Victorian house, or perhaps even a little cottage surrounded by flowers, but not a cookie-cutter house in the heart of a cookie-cutter community. She often said that if she had know that Great-grandfather was going to die so soon after he insisted on moving into this architectural monstrosity, she would never have allowed it to happen.

But that had been thirty years ago, and in thirty years, even the roughest edges get at least a little smoother. And so, over the years, the yard and the inside of the house had become more suitable for Great-grandmother, with wall paper and flowers and trees and the old-fashioned furniture she had brought with her when they moved.

One of those more suitable things was the stained glass window. Great-grandmother had had it taken out of the old place, the house she had grown up in, piece by careful piece before they had moved. And once she had settled her furniture and books into the new house, she had restored the window, piece by careful piece, and had it put in place of the picture window that had dominated in the front room. There it glowed with color, bathing the whole room in shades of blue and yellow and red and green.

“Ridiculous!” Great-grandfather had grumbled. “Now I can’t look out at everything going on up and down the street. Besides, you’re just asking for a baseball to get thrown through it!”

“Nonsense,” replied Great-grandmother. “Now the world can’t look in at us as if we were goldfish in a bowl. And besides, if you want to watch the world go by, well, that’s what front porches are for. We used to have one, you know!”

And Great-grandfather had had the sense to know when to stop, and had gone out and bought some lawn chairs to put under the maple tree in the front yard, for when it got big enough to make some shade. Then he decided that he wanted to watch the world go by sooner than that, and had a small front porch added onto the house and called it good. Great-grandmother had sniffed and polished her stained glass window until it shone, and then put up some lacy curtains at its edges.

By the time Kate and Kevin came along, Great-grandmother was resigned to living in the tract house, even without Great-grandfather (although she still talked to him as if he were there).

Kate and Kevin loved to visit Great-grandmother. They only lived a few blocks away, and by the time they were in elementary school and were allowed to cross streets by themselves, they visited her most days after school and on Sunday afternoons, too.

Now, visiting Great-grandmother was truly a labor of love. Great-grandmother, at the age of ninety, was an old-fashioned sort of grandmother. She wasn’t the sort who was round and cuddly. She was sharp and angular. And while she did bake a lot, she also made sure that there were plenty of vegetables on the table that had to be eaten before the cookies and cakes came out. Sitting on her lap was like sitting on a bundle of sticks, and she always smelled of lavender water. She wore skirts, even in the dead of winter, and went once a week to have her hair “done” at Mildred’s House of Hair, where every now and then she had a blue rinse put on it. She wore heavy white stockings and sensible orthopedic shoes and walked with a cane. (Although the cane did have a dragon’s head carved on it.)

Children visiting Great-grandmother were held to the same standards she held herself to. Girls wore skirts or dresses, and never wore tennis shoes, only lace-up leather shoes or buckle shoes, with plain tights or knee socks. Hair had to be neatly brushed, and preferably braided if it was long enough. No perfume, no makeup, and no jewelry other than maybe a locket around the neck, were allowed. And Great-grandmother preferred that her great-grand daughters wore the sorts of dresses she made and gave them every birthday, Christmas, Easter, Fourth of July, and start of school. They were always pretty and lacy and old-fashioned looking, but the girls, especially rough and tumble Kate, were often afraid to wear them for fear they’d spoil them.

Boys had to wear slacks, not jeans, and leather shoes, and button front shirts - and ties. As a result, Kevin was the only one in his class at school who could already tie a tie. Great-grandmother didn’t allow for clip-ons. On Sundays, a suit jacket was added to that. Clean hands, clean face, neatly combed hair and proper manners were always the order of the day at Great-grandmother’s house.

But it was worth it. Both Kevin and Kate thought so. Great-grandmother had a room in the downstairs that was full of wonderful old-fashioned toys, like real china tea sets and dolls with whole trunkfuls of clothes, and metal constructions toys like Erector sets, and stone blocks that could build all sorts of wonderful castles. There were old-fashioned games, like pick-up-sticks, and checkers, and Parcheesi. Great-grandmother was always happy to play a game with them, and she never lost at Scrabble just to make them feel good.

She had a huge bookcase full of old children’s books, too, and could almost always be persuaded to drop what she was doing and read a story or two or three. She told marvelous stories, too, about growing up almost a hundred years ago. (They sat beside her on the loveseat, though, since her lap wasn’t very inviting.)

Great-grandmother was very glad to have them join her in what she was doing, too, and taught them to cook and bake, and gave them knitting needles and crochet hooks and embroidery hoops and patiently sat with them until they understood what to do. All they had to do was be willing to listen. She always had time to spend with them. And when the weather was nice, she was always up for a game of croquet or badminton in the back yard - she usually won, since she was a ruthless player.

One rainy afternoon in spring, when Kevin and Kate were tired of building castles out of the stone construction blocks and attacking them with the toy soldiers, they went to see if Great-grandmother would be willing to read to them from a book of fairy tales that they were currently enjoying. For once, Great-grandmother was busy - if she stopped making the cake now, it would be spoiled, and even Kevin and Kate agreed that this would not be a good thing. After deciding not to help with the baking, they wandered off again to amuse themselves.

“I wish we could go out and play,” moaned Kate, peering out the stained glass window at the streaming world. It looked strange all in red.

“Me, too. We’ve been stuck inside for days!” said Kevin, leaning his head against the window and blowing on a green pane of glass. He wrote his name in the fog and sighed.

“Don’t leave nose prints on the window!” said Great-grandmother crisply, from behind them. She was looking through the kitchen door at them.

“Sorry, Great-grandmother.” Kevin flushed. “I won’t do it again.” He knew he needed to behave, or he would be going home. He didn’t want to go home yet. He grabbed the end of his tie and started to polish the fogged and smudged pane of blue glass.

“Here. If you’re going to clean it, do it right!” said Great-grandmother. She presented Kevin with some vinegar and newspaper. “Now polish that window correctly.” She walked back to the kitchen and the cake.

Kevin had polished windows for Great-grandmother before, so he knew what to do. He had never done the stained glass window before, though, and he made a game of polishing each and every different shaped and colored panel carefully. Kate grew bored and went to the kitchen, where she got a lesson in cake-making from Great-grandmother.

Kevin polished each of the lower pieces of the window, making them shine. Then he got a stepstool from the kitchen and started on the top half of the window. As he polished one particularly odd-shaped pane near the center of the window, he noticed something odd.

When he had been polishing a square red pane, he had seen Mr. Overholt from next door walking down the sidewalk with his dog. The dog had seen a squirrel, run between Mr. Overholt’s legs, and tripped him, landing him in a large mud-puddle. Kevin had thought this was quite funny and had moved over to look at the scene though the blue pane next to the red one for variety. Yet when Kevin looked through the blue pane, Mr. Overholt was standing up, dry, and the little dog was sniffing the maple tree at his side. Kevin looked back through the red pane. Mr. Overholt was in the puddle, pulling on the leash - in fact, Kevin could hear the dog barking. He looked back through the blue pane. Mr. Overholt was standing there, letting his dog sniff the tree. But Kevin could still hear the barking. He looked out the yellow pane on the other side of the blue one, and there was Mr. Overholt, climbing out of the puddle and looking angry. In the blue pane, he was smiling and dry. Kevin shook his head and looked again. The blue pane still showed something different.

Kevin climbed down from the step ladder and hurried to the kitchen door. “Kate, come here for a minute!”

The cake was just going into the oven. Kate took off her apron and said. “I’ll be back in a minute, Great-grandmother!” She laid the apron over the back of a chair and followed Kevin into the front room. “What are you so excited about?” she said. Kevin grabbed her and pulled her to one side, so Great-grandmother couldn’t see them through the open kitchen door.

“There’s something weird about the stained glass window!” he hissed in her ear.

Kate turned to look at him, confused. “Yeah? And? What?”

Kevin dragged her over to the step ladder. “Climb up and look through that funny looking blue pane and tell me what you see.”

Kate did, saying, “You’re being really weird, Kevin. I know you’re bored, but…” She paused and looked through the pane. “Okay, I see Mr. Overholt standing there by the maple tree with his dog.” She shrugged. “So what?”

“Just wait!” said Kevin in a low voice. “Now look through the red one and tell me what you see.”
Kate did as he asked and then said, puzzled, “I see Mr. Overholt, but he’s standing in a mud puddle looking mad, and his dog is barking at something in the tree. I can hear the barking. I could before, too.” She bobbed over to the yellow pane. “He’s mad and wet here too.” She looked back through the blue glass. “But here he’s not!” She looked down at Kevin, who was looking back at the kitchen door and frantically motioning her to be quiet.

Kate stepped down off the ladder and grabbed Kevin, hauling him over to the side of the room by one arm. “Kevin, that pane of glass is magic, or something!” she whispered loudly in his ear.

“I know! That’s why I called you!”

“We should tell Great-grandmother!” said Kate.

“NO!” shouted Kevin. Then he looked around quickly. Then he whispered, “I mean, not yet. What if it’s one of those magic things that won’t work if grown-ups know about it?”
Kate gave him a funny look. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anything like that, Kevin. And anyway, it’s her window. I’ll bet she already knows about it, and if she doesn’t, she should.”

“Look, just let’s keep it to ourselves for now. I want to think about this. That window shows something other than what really happens, and I want to see how it works in case Great-grandmother says I can’t look through it anymore.”

“Wellll….okay, but just for a little while. I’m going back to the kitchen now, before Great-grandmother gets suspicious.”

But to her surprise, Great-grandmother didn’t ask what was going on. She just pointed to the sink full of hot, soapy water and batter covered cooking things, and Kate got busy washing the dishes.

Later that night, when they were at home again and getting ready for bed, Kevin knocked on Kate’s door. “Kate, I think I figured out that window. I watched it a lot while I finished polishing it. The blue pane shows what would happen if good things happen instead of bad, like if you make a different choice. I want to see if we can use it to make good things happen. That would be neat, don’t you think?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know - maybe finding money or something. That would be good, wouldn’t it?”

And Kate agreed.

-She Wolf © 2008