Signal 001: The Woman Behind Glass

The last time I saw Merle “M.T.” Thomas, she was standing behind glass, looking at me like I was visiting from the afterlife.

The room off her carport, a little cave of 1950s glass and water damaged plywood her father would not have recognized, though he had built the house for her back when the road still believed it was country. Yellow brick. Low roof. Long yard. Two small dogs once, then one, then none. A white Buick in the drive like a leftover appliance.

Merle stood inside the glass and looked through me. Not at me. Through me.

Whatever could have been neighborly in her had gone inward by then. Her eyes held on to nothing for too long.

The country had changed around her. Trees had come down. Houses had gone up. Children close enough for strangers to hear them singing on humid nights. Voices crossed yards without bodies attached.

Everyone believed they lived private. The big mistake.

The other was believing that listening in on private lives ever made anything clearer.

Part of Closer. Sharper. Stranger. — a serialized Southern Gothic in fragments.