The Girl With the Glass Heart: A Novel

by Daniel Stern

  She flopped down on the sand and dug her fingers in deep. She imagined Jay’s face for a moment and was sorry she had told him about Danny and everything, but he could never use it against her. He would never see her again. The night was murmurous and she closed her eyes and stretched. She was Elly. This was herself on a beach. There was no ambiguity here. Her flesh was her flesh. She was seventeen and alive in her stomach, everywhere that could be touched. The wind was stronger now and the long beat of the sea became less even, less regular, as did Elly’s breathing. I’d better not, she thought. Someone might come. But she returned anyway, to the old ritual—the old self-love masquerading in her fantasies as the recapitulation of the loving of others. It was strange on the beach and she opened her eyes a few times to reaffirm that she was alone and unseen. Tense, she flung an arm over her eyes and thought in the darkness, as if it were her own original thought, and brand-new at that: To live is to exist always on the brink of freedom. What a sad thought! She visualized Jay Gordon. He was good because he had been aloof, had not defined himself and therefore could be manipulated with ease by the sensual fantasy. As the wave of feeling drenched her she lay back, eyes covered by an arm, either perspiration or the beginning of tears in the corner of her eyes, and was angry with herself in a tired way. When will it stop? she thought. Will I always, even when I’m married? She became aware that the ocean was transmitting nothing to her now. Nothing but a steady meaningless roar.

  Well, there was the journey to New York before the final return. She rolled over and rested her closed eyes on her arm, feeling the gritty sand on the lids. She felt sleepy. She could hardly feel her legs. The sound of voices coming closer joined the sea-sounds. Someone was laughing. She turned over on her back again, her arm blotting out the sky. New York, soon. All she wanted, she thought, as the wind blew the voices and the sounds of the nighttime and the sea closer, all she wanted before the long, cold, glass-enclosed winter was a season of spring for the heart.

  New York under a blanket of foot-soiled snow was a revelation to Elly (feeling as she did that she was recovering from some sort of illness) and it was like a great sanatorium. She and her cousin Charlotte had lunch the first day at the Café Français in Rockefeller Plaza while watching through the glass the skaters perform arabesques of freedom in the cold sunlight.

  They took a room at the Sherry-Netherland (Max Kaufman having booked their reservation by phone from Colchester) and proceeded to see the town. The theater the first night, making the mistake of picking a musical, with many dancers, the sight of whom upset Elly so that she spent the entire second act in the lobby waiting for Charlotte.

  To Charlotte it was a shopping trip. To Elly it was merely a pretense to put off her return. She dragged Charlotte down to the Times Square area and ran her through the human congestion at the most crowded time of day. She loved being buffeted by men, by fat women laden with bundles; loved the neon lights, obscene in the glaring daylight, the pigeons in Duffy Square, squatting on the snow. Then suddenly, she’d turn to Charlotte and say, “Let’s get out of here. It’s filthy,” and run off to catch a cab to upper Fifth Avenue and a small, gaily striped awning covering a restaurant at which they would recuperate over lunch.

  Then, a trifle quieted, they would stroll down Madison Avenue and pick out (as well as their own personal items) a tie for Max (Charlotte’s idea) and something for Uncle Harry (Charlotte’s idea).

  As the days passed, Elly began to feel panicky. Her reprieve was running out. One night Charlotte awakened and, finding Elly’s bed empty, quickly dressed, ran down and across the street to the park, only to realize the impossibility of finding her in New York at three in the morning. Then her eyes fell on a hansom cab, a white-haired old man in the driver’s seat, and inside, Elly, dressed in blue jeans and sweat shirt, sitting there, tears streaming down her cheeks, unsobbing, still.

  “Elly Kaufman, what’s the matter?”

  “I don’t want to go home, Charlotte. I want—Dear God, I want—” And a burst of sobbing obliterated her words.

  Charlotte held her young cousin, feeling profoundly protective, and asked, “But what’s so terrible about home and about school and everything?”

  Elly turned on her swiftly.

  “What do you—just exactly what do you know about me?”

  “Why, nothing, Elly dear, nothing.”

  “Then leave me alone.” She ran from the hansom across the street to the hotel. Reaching the deserted sidewalk she whirled around and seeing the insubstantial-looking skyscrapers that rimmed the park and beyond them, looking southward, the faint neon tingeing the gray sky, she thought: Nothing will ever be enough. Thought this with a panic and a confusion and then: I’m spoiling Charlotte’s vacation. Why do I have to spoil everything? I was so happy today and now—Wherever I am is no good after a while—or if it is I ruin it. Anywhere—school, home, this visit to New York.

  Charlotte reached the sidewalk. She took Elly’s arm and walked her to the elevator.

  “Have you ever read ‘Dover Beach’?” Elly asked. “It’s by Matthew Arnold.”

  “Huh-uh. Why?”

  “Never mind.”

  A half hour later Elly was asleep. Charlotte lay awake, wondering about her curious cousin. She left her bed quietly and tiptoed to the dresser on which Elly kept a few of her books. Running a finger over them she came to the Collected Poems of Matthew Arnold. She turned to “Dover Beach” and ran over it quickly, having no taste for poetry herself. On finishing it she was none the wiser as to what Elly had meant by referring to the poem. She turned back to her bed, leaving the book open at the end of the poem, the words a bit of black and white in the darkened room:

  … For the world, which seems

  To lie before us …

  So various … so new,

  Hath really neither … certitude,

  Nor peace, nor help for pain….

  In the morning neither of them mentioned the incident. They were to visit a friend of Charlotte’s mother in Washington Square that afternoon, having put it off as long as possible. It took Charlotte all of lunch and the cab ride down to Washington Square to feel at ease with Elly again. On her part Elly was bitterly regretting having exposed herself to Charlotte. There should be, she felt, a secret core in people that no one should ever be permitted to see. Within this core were the thoughts and acts one could hardly explain to oneself. And last night she’d gone out of control with a stranger there to see (Charlotte, like everyone else, was a stranger) and she felt violated. They barely spoke a word in the cab. As they were about to enter the house, Elly begged off, saying she’d take a walk in Washington Square Park and wait there for Charlotte.

  Seated on a bench near the arch, she scraped acquaintance, in the easy manner she had, with a dark, intense young man named Steven Burke.

  “And I’m Jeannette Rosental,” Elly said, “spelled R-o-s-e-n-t-a-l. No ‘h.’”

  He acknowledged the unusual spelling gravely and asked, was she a New Yorker? No, she was from Chicago. Really, why, so was he! How odd!

  “I’m here,” he said, “on my way to Europe. Italy.”

  Elly was instantly and furiously envious. Her first reaction was a desire to attract Steven Burke. She shook her long hair until it framed her cheeks closely and smiled at him, a long steady smile.

  “How exciting! I haven’t been there, except for when I was four or five and you can’t count that. It must be wonderful to travel.”

  “As a matter of fact I haven’t traveled much either except when I was in the army, and you can’t count that. I’ve saved just enough money for about three months and then back to my father’s store.”

  “Oh, then you’re not going to become a fashionable expatriate. I’m glad to hear someone’s coming back.”

  “I have to. I’m going to school.”

  “What school?”

  “Pharmaceutical. Dad owns a drugstore.”

  Elly encouraged him to speak of himself. She did this so well tha
t an hour later, Charlotte forgotten, they were continuing the conversation in the Jumble Shop, where the serious young man carefully counted his money and ordered two Manhattans.

  “I have to be careful, you see. It’s not that I don’t like to spend money, especially on lovely young girls—” Elly smiled at his fumbling attempt at a compliment—“it’s just that I’ve calculated exactly what I need for three months in Europe and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get back again.”

  “Why the mad urge to go to Europe?”

  “Don’t you ever want to go?”

  “Not especially.”

  “I was there in the army—Italy and Germany. I decided then to go back as a human being, not as a rifle-carrying automaton. It means everything to me.”

  There was something in his painful sincerity and in his single-minded determination to perform one specific act, to visit one place in the world, that made Elly hate him. He was so clear. Such apparent clarity would ordinarily make her suspect a he, but that was impossible here.

  “I’ve never been able to desire anything that strongly,” she said simply.

  They left shortly afterward and walked. The afternoon mixed in Elly’s mind with other afternoons on other streets and walks with other boys and men, all of whom, it seemed, had known just what they wanted. Could it be what the poets called a “search for love” that set her off from these clearly directed people? What was she forever waiting for? A breath. A cool-warm breath to stir a clarity of life within her.

  Suddenly it was Steven’s breath within her mouth and it was evening. Where had the day gone? Had she told Charlotte where she was? In the movie and now in Steven Burke’s hotel room. It was a tiny room with one leather chair on which she sat. Steven was sitting on the arm and awkwardly bending over to kiss her. Why on earth had she come here? She didn’t want this boy with his intense brown eyes, who carefully counted every penny because he had one great desire. As the kiss broke, the thought came that perhaps his desire for the planned trip was quite ordinary and seemed so complete and intense only when compared with her own lack of focus.

  “Couldn’t you have taken a nicer hotel room?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “The boat sails tomorrow. What’s the difference for one night?”

  He was speaking of more than his trip and the hotel room, Elly knew. It was his way of asking her to sleep with him. (What’s the difference for one night?)

  She stood up and began to unbutton the jacket of her suit. She was wearing no blouse beneath it.

  About an hour later she lay quietly, feeling a little ill. Steve was in the bathroom. She could hear the sound of running water. She hated him now. She felt used: he was leaving tomorrow while she was lost, face down in some cold desert where the sand was like ice and there was no sun, just a cold moon. Not that she ever wanted to see him again—

  She caught sight of his jacket draped over the chair and giggled. His money was in that inside pocket. All his money. His three months in Europe. His heart’s desire. She could scare hell out of him. She slipped out of bed and padded to the chair. Swiftly removing his wallet, she placed it in her pocketbook. She went to the window and leaned her hot cheek against the frosty glass.

  The bathroom door was opening and she scurried back to bed. “It’s cold,” she said, thinking, I’ll give it to him downstairs and laugh. But by the time they were downstairs he had not yet discovered the loss and he was saying: “You don’t mind if I put you in a cab, do you? I have to get up pretty early.” So it was just a night to him, as it was to her. The bastard!

  She entered the cab and sat there paralyzed. She saw his hand nicker toward his jacket. Instantly she said, “I have it. The Park-Sheraton, please. Good night, Steve.”

  “Good night, Jeannette.”

  Twisting around as the cab rounded a corner, she saw him walking back to the hotel, both hands safely encased in his trousers pockets.

  “Make that the Sherry-Netherland,” she told the driver. On the way to her room she passed, near the service elevator, the door marked INCINERATOR. She disposed of the wallet there, as if this had been her purpose from the beginning. Charlotte was asleep. In the bathroom Elly was sick. She cleaned up and took a steaming bath. When her bath-warmed body touched the cool sheets, she fell instantly into a thick, dreamless sleep.

  She woke while Charlotte still slept. Leaving a note saying she’d be back about two, she went downstairs and had breakfast in the hotel dining room. Sipping her coffee she wondered if Steven would go to the police. Even if he did he could never find her. She hoped there was no Jeannette Rosental from Chicago staying at the Park-Sheraton. She was sorry now for what she had done.

  A long drag on a cigarette soothed her. She had a bad moment when paying the check. Holding the dollar bill in her hand she had an instant of panic. This passed and she walked down Fifth Avenue for a few windy blocks. A cab took her as far away from the hotel as she could get. She alighted at the Battery. The air was bitter and wet. She crossed the street under the Elevated structure and emerged at the railing under a sky which had been threatening but which was now shifting its cloud masses and allowing sunlight to stream through.

  She had forgotten her galoshes and her shoes were spotted with snow. Hearing the chains clank on a near-by tug and smelling the rank, pungent odor of the harbor, Elly looked out at the curve of the island.

  I’m an inland girl, she thought, and this is marvelous. This is the end of land. No more solid substance existed as the basis of life, a few inches from her feet. She looked over the railing and saw sand and silt leading to the water. Somewhere, a few feet from her, was the final grain of sand that marked the end of a continent. Behind her stretched the whole of the land mass called a country. Any beach is an ultimate, in a sense, she thought. Always the end of land. She remembered the lake where her family used to spend their summers. Lakes were prisoners, puddles for children to poke around in. If from somewhere she could find the strength, instead of turning around, to go forward; get on a boat; go! What then?

  Perhaps this is why I wanted to come to New York. Perhaps I saw myself standing here; perhaps I wanted to confront myself with this finality, this end of land, as if the entire land behind me, as far as California, was only a shadow I cast. If only I could think of it as the beginning of water rather than the end of land. She removed the red ribbon that confined her hair and the wind flung the dark-yellow strands over her cheeks, into her lips, across her wide-open eyes. She tried to see her reflection but that was silly. River water was too turbulent. I am beautiful, she thought.

  She turned her back to the water and the wind and tried to push away the thought of Steven Burke, turning from the water as she was, and returning home, as she was. After a while the thought didn’t hurt quite so much. People did worse things to one another every day.

  She would go back now and tell Charlotte they had to leave, fly home that night. They had three days to go on their vacation and she knew Charlotte would be upset; Elly hoped she would cry, but doubted it. Charlotte never had before. Not, at least, when Elly could see. At any rate, Charlotte would be angry and yet would obey Elly. She always did. Their premature return would serve as Elly’s revenge for having been exposed before her cousin the other night in the hansom, defenseless, depressed and in the grip of tears.

  By the time she reached Fifty-seventh Street Elly felt fine. She was suddenly very hungry, as one is after an illness, after a severe fever, and she stepped into a drugstore for a sandwich and a Coke. Life wasn’t really so bad after all.

  Her red hair ribbon was gone. She’d probably lost it at the riverside. It was perhaps hanging on the railing, a piece of brightness on the grimy iron; or perhaps it floated in the water itself, dropped by her careless hands, carried like a mute message from Elly to whatever destination the now harbor-confined, but always moving, waters might have.

  PART FIVE

  LIKE A BURST OF HYSTERICAL laughter, the car sped even quicker, suddenly, than it had been moving alo
ng the winding cliff road. The early-autumn day was dying, slowly. Impatiently Jay Gordon pushed Alec’s foot from the accelerator. Alec resisted feebly and then, exhaling a sigh that filled the car with alcohol fumes, he desisted. Jay slowed the automobile considerably and held the wheel steady with one hand. Reaching over Alec’s unsteadily breathing form, Jay opened the large window and the small wind-breaker, hoping that more air might help sober his friend who insisted on interfering with his driving. Jay had no desire to face a wrathful family, holding in his arms an errant, drunken brother. Luckily Alec had given him a letter from Max, in which instructions as to how to reach the house were stated clearly. Follow the cliff road to … The letter which contained the instructions contained, as well, an ultimatum.

  Jay had been a little embarrassed at having the letter thrust on him, but Alec had said, “Don’t be a jerk. You know all about us. You may as well read it.” So he had read it, as quickly as possible, finding himself rather amazed at the callous, casual manner in which Max Kaufman, of whom Alec had always spoken with such love, disposed of Annette: We would all love to see you but you’ll have to come without her. I’d like to put the blame all on Rose but I can’t. I want you here without her or I’m afraid not at all.

  He must have made a wrong turn somewhere. He should be within sight of a large landscaped garden near the top of the hill, but as he looked, Jay saw only the rocks and stones that rimmed the cliff. Then turning a shoulder of rock, he looked above him and saw the house, a glass toy, on top of the cliff, growing from the cliff, lighted from within, a bright dreamlike thing, unreal in the setting of the thick odor of flowers Jay could now smell and the bluish air of the oncoming night.

  Jay slowed the car deliberately to a crawl. The murmuring of the autumn evening, the cool wind against his forehead, the tremulous sound of crickets, of leaf rubbing against leaf (which was, to Jay, quite as exotic as the glass house, being city born and bred), produced in him a quiet gladness that he had accompanied Alec to his home for the holidays. The very difference of the surroundings—the country and the glass house—from anything he usually knew—his apartment in New York, his mother’s place in New Jersey or Alec and Annette’s place near the beach—made him feel a sense of strength, as if here nothing could be demanded of him that he could not fulfill. Having, as he felt, no life of his own any more, save the public life of the transient ballet accompanist, and certainly, since his divorce, no private life, he could see himself here visiting Alec’s rich brother Max and his lovely daughter as the eternal visitor, the spectator. The man whose life was like a trick glass they used at parties, into which other people’s lives could be poured, and yet somehow these lives always dribbled away, leaving the glass empty, waiting.