The Glass Case

It was with this end in mind, prowling somewhere in the recesses of my subconscious, that I began to withdraw from the world around me, taking gradual but steady retreating steps from the everyday life of Fair Haven. I saw no point in participating in that world. Out there, the Winter family, all of us, we were a lie. No one saw who we really were, or what we really were. Inside Cedar Hill, I at least knew the truth, but out there was just a reminder of the lie.

We couldn’t exist out there, not really. The lie cut us off, separated us from everyone else, or so I believed. And this particular notion struck a deep chord with me. Slowly, an idea began to form in my mind. I imagined myself as having been enveloped by some sort of glass case, a windowed captivity that segregated me from the rest of the town, forcing me to look on enviously at the world outside, carrying on without me. Gazing out from behind those paned walls, I looked upon the manner in which other people lived as if it were an unattainable ideal, all the while convinced that I would never belong to their kind of life.

My only hope was that the glass case would one day dim its crisp reveal of the world around me, so that I might not be forced to see what was missing in my life. I didn’t want to be reminded of how my lot differed from everyone else’s. I preferred not to see it at all. And soon I didn’t see. Soon the glass did in fact dim.

And what was meant to be an imaginary refuge, a way to endure the life I’d found myself in by shielding me from the alternative, quickly transformed into a prison, one which forced me to withdraw only further, deep into the burrows of the despairing Winter house.

As a consequence, my bedroom, my lone spot in the world, quickly became the scene of this self-imposed exile. Every day, I returned from the brief interruption of school and succumbed immediately to its offering of sanctuary. I closed the second shutter on the window and forgot about the world out there, continuing on without me, indifferent to my absence.

Instead, I chose to live in the safe haven of other people’s imaginations, working my way hungrily through an ever-increasing library of books. I listened to piano music while I read; recordings of haunting sonatas assisted my eager flight to the paged worlds, steadied my nerve, too, during those tentative afternoon hours before the clock turned five. And once it did, I would close whatever book I happened to be reading, place it to one side and wait to find out – was today a good day or a bad day? I held my breath every evening as the key turned, expecting to hear that gaping pause, praying that I wouldn’t.

But when it did come, I was ready. I had the metronome firmly in hand and was only too willing to fall under its spell. As soon as the dial commenced its flurried ticking, I was enthralled. It captivated me, devoured me whole, for measured by that simple action of the dial, all those darker moments in the Winter house seemed to pass with a forgiving ease, and time elapsed with a speedy resolve I came to yearn for.