Green Glass Riches


Green Glass Riches 
Kelly Danielson 

[Ilntil she turned twenty, Anna 
lived a of 

hfe. Like one that's three-mch thick, 
corner-fringed, pictureless, coverless, with 
miniature black words scrawled on white 
onion-thin sheets, dusty and unreadable. But 
one with potential. Potential if you're 
vacationing in the bathroom with saturated 
bubble-bath-hair, immersed in a tub excreting 
the underneath emerging water, and there's a 
George .Winston CD beckoning you to become 
familiat with the wind, the seasons, the world. 
Potential if you qecide to explore, wander and 
discover, and don't have deadlines. But no one 
saw the potential or opened Anna Lint's 
hardback: the red-stitched, neatly-bound, 

' diljgently-written six-hundred-paged-or-so 
book to 
even take 

"But something happened a glance. 
Until she to Anna Lint that 
turnedtransformed her into a twenty.

butter-glazed croissant, all Anna 
curved and twisted, bent Lint. The 

and flipped up, served atop name 
a china saucer ... " itself 

doesn't 
provoke 

interest; plain and simple, like white bread. But 
something happened to Anna Lint that 
transformed her into a butter-glazed croissant, 
all curved and twisted, bent and flipped up, 
served atop a china saucer. That something 
was Robert LeMur. Rob, Robby, Ra-bear, Ra-
Beart, Robo: her love, her husband, the man 
who opened her book and wouldn't let it close. 

She saw him and she knew they would be 
together. They married when she turned 

twenty-four, exactly four years after their 
marriage was arranged. By Anna. Anna 
would say by fate. That "master plan" stuff 
doesn't really exist, her mother told Anna after 
she informed her parents of her future 
destination. Oh, Mommy, she responded, 
you'll see. Four years later her parents said 
they guessed they'd been wrong. 

And that was that. 
Anna liked Robert, grew to love Robert, 

because of what he did to her. Did to her, not 
for her. He did it to her on the ten-thousand-
dollar Oriental crimson and gold rug in the 
living room, did it atop the sheets, clothes, and 
scattered scraps of papers strung along the 
mattress upstairs, did it to her against the walls 
in the dining room, the walls along the 
staircase. Her head pounding, banging, 
smacking not from the sex, from the wine. A 
bottle of it a day, once a week. 

He'd give it to her on a Sunday, granting 
her the freedom to drink it whenever she 
wanted during the coming week. She picked 
Tuesday. Always. Tuesday was a blah day, 
worse than Wednesday, because it hadn't yet 
reached the hump. When she thought of 
Tuesday, Anna thought meatless chili. 
Tuesday had the beans and the noodles, the 
tomatoes, but something was missing: the 
meat and chili wasn't good at all, wasn't even 
worth eating, without brown hamburger to fill 
it up. 

So to cover her blank-tape Tuesdays, she 
filled her body scarlet-red in the afternoons and 
Robert filled her body creamy-white during the 
nights. That was the only way she'd have it. 
And she never would have guessed that before 
she met Robert. Never would have guessed 
either the way she adored it when she finished 
the bottle and he flung it across the room, the 

11 



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leaves filled with ancient ideas about the way 
things should be, about the way her life would 
be. But she couldn't read him; she didn't even 
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiisee the 

words, just"She felt them when his 
felt them body pushed her buttons, 
sometimes.like those on a hand-held She felt 

kitchen mixer, and twirled them on 
her all up inside. It made Tuesday 

her feel all gooey and nights when 
sticky, all dizzy and she had her 

lightheaded ... " emerald 
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!l!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!green glass 
container on the table, cork popped, and a glass 
in her hand. She felt them when his body 
pushed her buttons, like those on a hand-held 
kitchen mixer, and twirled her all up inside. It 
made her feel all gooey and sticky, all dizzy 
and lightheaded, chocolately sweet, gushing out 
unintelligible words half-unknowingly. 

When he's gone it'll be alright, she always 
thought, alright as long as I have my bottle. 
There's something of him in that bottle. That 
was what she thought at first, and then she 
thought yes, yes they'll say, that crazy woman 
thinks her dead husband is perfectly accessible, 
sitting on the kitchen table inside that bottle. I 
can see the mental guards now, laughing at the 
lunatic woman in bed eight who worships a 
green glass container because she thinks her 
used-to-be husband's going to float out of it. 
Crazy woman. Mentally marble-headed 
woman. That was what Anna's mind 
whispered every time she thought of Robert 
dying or leaving. 

But they wouldn't laugh. They wouldn't 
laugh or smirk or say a syllable, the mental 
guards or the neighbors, they'd just wonder 
what that bottle was. Everyone'djust wonder 
what was so special, so unique about that 
inexpensive object, but she would never tell. 
Because it was their bottle, all green and red 
and fine or all empty and scattered and pieced 
apart, it was their bottle whether they were 
together or not. 

And no one would ever understand. No 
one could ever understand that it gave her life, 
and whether she knew it or not, gave him life, 

too. And they'd never comprehend that the 
bottle, each identically sized and filled bottle 
that somehow all mentally emerged into one 
bottle, Anna and Robert together gave it life. 
But that was how it was. 

And that was that.O 

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