The Girl With the Glass Heart: A Novel

by Daniel Stern

  She seemed to wilt a little.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “That is the way it is. I love Alec any way he comes with any girl he wants. I don’t go for that crap my folks throw around about marrying a shicksa. It’s just that Alec did something—or rather, didn’t do something—that got me mad. It was Annette’s fault—No, I’d rather not go into it.”

  She tied the red ribbon tighter about her head and they walked on. The night was silent around them. Now Jay walked in the lead. She fell behind so that once he took her hand, tentatively, as if they were both lost, and they held tightly to each other’s palms, Elly still lingering a little behind him. She was scared at what she had done—the talk with the young rabbi that had resulted in consequences so far-reaching, it seemed impossible that she could have caused them. Their hands were sticky with perspiration but still they held on until the car was reached.

  On opening the door Jay was plunged into an odor of stale filth that gagged him. He had forgotten that Alec had been sick and, even on remembering, thought he had vomited out the window, not in the car.

  “I’d better clean it up first,” he said.

  He moistened a cloth with gasoline—that pungent odor would be preferable to the smell that would tell the story of the night’s drunkenness to anyone who came near it. He started to throw the gasoline-soaked rag away, but Elly stopped him.

  “If someone threw a match—Poof!” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  He threw the rag into the glove compartment as she clambered into the front seat. The two of them sitting there, as he fumbled with the keys confronted Jay with what seemed to be an accomplished fact. The two of them together. He turned to her, the light from the dashboard illumining only a small section of the dark oval that was her face. She was silent, smoking her cigarette and staring at him with eyes so wide open they seemed almost to be unseeing. Realizing, with a sense of relief, that the fear of rejection was unrealistic, considering what had happened on the terrace earlier, he was about to kiss her, when he remembered her breaking away from the tall, gray-haired figure and running toward him and Alec.

  “By the way,” he said, “you were kissing that fellow who disappeared.”

  “He was kissing me. Sorry to disillusion you if you think I kiss all the men I know.”

  “You can’t disillusion me. In the first place I have no illusions. In the second place, I want to kiss you myself.”

  She crushed her cigarette against the ash tray in a shower of sparks that brightened the interior for an instant, and fell against him, her head on his shoulder.

  “If you kiss me now,” she said quietly, “I’ll kill you.”

  Jay wasn’t sure whether or not he should laugh. There was no hint of a smile on her lips. He said nothing, only held her against him.

  “Don’t kiss me now,” she repeated, almost whispering now. “It’s going to be so strange and we’re going to kiss each other so much and make love so often and know everything that’s ever happened to each of us and we’ll lie in this pine forest. I know far in back of the house and there will be so much touching and I’ll want to hear so much about you and it’s going to be all very quick and strange, so don’t kiss me right now because I’m worried about Uncle Alec—” Jay noticed she called Alec “uncle” for the first time that night—“but I want you to kiss me later and tomorrow and for a long time. But don’t now, not now.”

  She was almost at the point of tears and she didn’t know why. She was profoundly glad that Jay Gordon had come home with her Uncle Alec, but she was terrified that her words to the rabbi had caused Annette to leave Alec. Suppose Alec found out. He would hate her, despise her. But hadn’t she reason to hate Annette, who had seemed so lovely when Elly had run away to Los Angeles, but who had kept Alec from coming to Vernon when she had been in such trouble about the abortion? (Max had told her he’d wired Alec to come but Alec had replied that he couldn’t.) Perhaps if he had come he would have persuaded her father to enroll her at some other school rather than bring her home. Why hadn’t he come? Because of Annette, Elly knew. If she’d left him now, he must have lived in fear of her leaving and so couldn’t feel free to come when Elly had needed him so. Maybe Annette had actually refused to let him go. But, somehow, she couldn’t make that idea stick.

  Jay’s shoulder was hard and comforting. She cried a little, almost inaudibly, trembling slightly, and then stopped.

  “How about now?” she said, meaning the kiss of course, but he only smiled at her and continued driving. He must realize I’ve been crying, Elly thought, and won’t touch me while I’m upset.

  “You’re an honorable man, Brutus,” she said.

  They were all preparing to go to bed when Jay and Elly entered the house. Justin showed Jay to his room but Rose soon appeared to see if everything was all right. When she had left Max arrived.

  “There are some books here, if you want to read. I know you musicians don’t go to sleep as early as we business people. I told Justin to bring you a bottle of sherry. How’s that, all right? Unless you’d like something stronger?”

  “No. Sherry would be very nice as a matter of fact,” Jay said, and left it at that.

  But Max did not leave. “Speaking of sherry,” he said, “Alec tells me he was drunk tonight.”

  Jay nodded.

  “That worries me. He’s really in love with that … with her?”

  “Yes, he really is, Mr. Kaufman.”

  “Look, Jay, call me Max. Look, you’re a nice Jewish fellow, I could tell right away. Couldn’t you speak to Alec? Tell him how much better a nice Jewish girl would be. In Europe they kill off six million of us and here my brother wants to marry a gentile.”

  Jay was repelled by this little man, by his too-quick intimacy (although the same facile warmth in his daughter was exciting) and by his immediate assumption that Jay was on his side against Alec.

  “I’m afraid I couldn’t do that, Mr. Kaufman.” He carefully avoided the first name. “In the first place it would be presumptuous on my part to meddle in Alec’s personal life, and in the second place I don’t share your opinion of what would be best for Alec. He’s a very close friend of mine—”

  “I know. That’s why I asked.”

  Jay ignored the interruption,—“friend of mine, and I wouldn’t want to take advantage of that.”

  “You’re frank and honest, Jay. I hope you’re not insulted by my asking.”

  “No, of course not. I’m sorry I can’t help you.”

  There was a knock on the door and Justin entered carrying a tray of crackers and cheese and a bottle of sherry. He placed the tray on the night table and was about to leave when Rose arrived, bearing a cheese knife and a wineglass.

  “You took that glass from the left-hand cupboard. That’s for Passover, I told you,” she said to Justin, and then turning to Jay said, “and here’s a better knife for the cheese.”

  “Thank you very much,” Jay said, observing the annoyed look on Justin’s face.

  Justin left, followed by Rose. Max started to say good night when they heard Rose and Justin outside the door.

  “Mrs. Kaufman,” Justin was saying, “I’ve asked you over and over to please let me do my job.”

  “I’m only trying to help.”

  “I’d rather you wouldn’t. If I make a mistake I’ll correct it. Please.”

  “All right, I’m sorry. I’ll try.”

  “Thank you. Just please don’t follow Mimi and me around.”

  “All right. I said I’m sorry.”

  Jay couldn’t help smiling, not knowing if Kaufman would be annoyed or not, for from the conversation one could hardly tell who was servant and who employer. Max did not appear to notice the smile, or else he chose to ignore it.

  “Good night, Jay. Things will work out, I imagine. Forget about what I asked you. We’ll have a nice holiday season. Do you go to synagogue?”

  “Sometimes,” Jay admitted.

  “We have a beautiful new temple her
e in Colchester. You’ll enjoy it. A fine chasin and a young rabbi who is our guest here sometimes. A brilliant man. He could have been a success in any field he chose.”

  He seems to have chosen Elly, as well, Jay was thinking, but said: “I’d like to go. I haven’t heard a good cantor in a long time.”

  When he was alone Jay undressed, put on a robe and ate some of the cheese. The room was long, and he wandered around it for a while, munching the cracker slowly. Then he poured a glass of wine and sipped it, feeling the old sensation returning, observing himself slip into the role of the visitor, the uninvolved guest, knowing, as he did so, that it was illusory, that he was involved, but at the same time feeling it best to retain even the semblance of objectivity, of abstraction from his environment.

  He listened for a moment and found the house, or at least the section in which he was, quite silent. Seized with a sudden tension he laughed aloud and waited almost as if he expected an echo. There was none, of course. He remembered Elly’s blurted promises in the car—something about making love in a pine forest. He’d have to stay away from that girl. But why did he feel this absurd exhilaration? He realized now the echo he had expected was Elly, laughing in return. One couldn’t possibly love someone like Elly, could one? The hell one couldn’t, he told himself.

  He went to bed. The moment his body touched the cool sheets, his closed lids became alive with memories. He had lived so much with memory for the last two years that the time of lying in bed before sleep had become a sort of ritual summary, recalling familiar highlights of his life with Jean, of his last Carnegie concert, scenes interspersed with some words culled from reviews of the New York critics. It was the price he paid for moving among the events of his daily life as if only he were real and the others who peopled his days we’re only projections of shadows onto a screen. Beyond Jean’s face, wearing a mildly sardonic smile, and the oddly irrelevant countenance of Chester, his old manager, both now only as real as very well-preserved photographs, were the wide-open eyes of Elly Kaufman and the trembling sweep of dark-blond hair on her cheeks, demanding to be real, to be more than just a shadow on a screen.

  Elly knocked on the door of Alec’s room and opened it almost before he called, “Come in.”

  “Hello, Pasquale.” Alec grinned.

  “Hello, Tony,” she said. “I thought I’d come by. All sober now?”

  “All sober. Much too sober. In fact, a little depressed.”

  “I’ll bet you long for that alcoholic oblivion again.”

  He plumped himself down on the bed and sighed. “No. I’m a little sorry about that. Your father was upset.”

  “Screw him,” she said. “How do you feel about it?”

  “Well, it was inevitable.”

  “No, it wasn’t. It was evitable. Evitable as all hell. You could have brought Annette if you wanted to.”

  “Sure, after that letter I got, I could have brought some homosexuals I know, or a couple of lepers. Young lepers, that is.”

  “Don’t exaggerate. You could have stayed away,” she added, trying anxiously to shift the blame to him.

  He stretched out full length on the bed. “I didn’t want to do that. Life is more complicated than you think, sweetheart. Relations between your father and mother and myself were reaching a dangerously strained point. I have to live, you know.”

  She flopped down next to him and, shoving her face next to him, asked, “Why?”

  “A habit.” He shrugged. “But I don’t intend to live without Ann.”

  “Suicide?”

  “No. She’s got to come back.”

  “Think she will? Give me a cigarette.”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know what to do.”

  She put her arms around him. “Poor Alec. Poor, poor Alec. No, I mean it. I don’t like seeing you this way.”

  “And I don’t like being this way, but I like seeing you any way at all.”

  Her head resting against his chest could have been Annette’s head if he hadn’t been so stupid, he was thinking. He shook the thought away.

  “How has it been, baby? Worse or better than you thought?”

  “Neither. Just as horrible as I knew it would be. I’ve got to get away, Alec. I want to go to Europe.”

  “To Europe? Why there? No, never mind answering that. It was a stupid question. You want to go because you want to go. But you know it’s impossible. Daddy wouldn’t let you go. Not after that business.”

  “I know. I know. It’s so funny about the idea of Europe. I never thought much about it until after I met this boy in New York, name of Steven Burke. I’ve never told anyone about it. He was going to Europe and he had just enough money to get there. I … I stole his money.”

  “Stole it! Why? You don’t need money.”

  “I didn’t keep the money. I threw it into the hotel incinerator. Oh, it sounds so horrible when I say it, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want him to go away, to get away when I couldn’t—couldn’t and still can’t.”

  Alec took his hand from Elly’s shoulder and massaged his chin with it.

  “Did you return it to him from your own money?”

  “I could have done that but I didn’t think of it. I didn’t want to think of it, I suppose.”

  “Elly, how awful! What a thing to do!”

  “Are you angry at me, Alec? I had to tell someone and you’re the only one I can really talk to. Are you angry, Alec?”

  He was silent for a moment. Elly cursed herself inwardly for having told him—there were some things no one could be told, not even Alec.

  “I’m not angry. I just don’t understand some of the things you do, like running off the train and flying to L.A. last year. What are you trying to destroy or run away from? You’re eighteen, baby. That’s a woman.”

  “Nothing’s ever enough, Alec,” she said quietly. “Nothing.”

  Her voice was so soft he could barely hear her. He was sorry she had told him about the incident. He didn’t want the responsibility of knowing she did things like that. He became aware that she was speaking so softly for fear of tears breaking into her voice.

  “You’d better go to sleep, baby. It’s late. Nothing’s ever quite as bad as it seems this late at night.”

  She stood up and looked at him. “Okay,” she said. “Don’t be angry with me.”

  “I won’t. I’ll just be angry with me.”

  “What for?”

  “Millions of things. Good night.”

  She kissed him on the cheek and ran out of the room in a sudden return of vitality. Possibly the incident was forgotten already. He went to bed and fell asleep immediately.

  The glass house lay empty of movements. At three in the morning a light rain fell, agitating the garden, clearing the dust of the day and evening. By five o’clock it was over and the sky was almost completely clear of clouds.

  It was one week before the drunken, precipitous arrival of Alec and Jay at the Kaufman house; the letter of ultimatum had not yet been written and the entire issue of Alec and Annette was still in question.

  The High Holy Days (during which are celebrated the advent of the New Year and the Day of Atonement) had almost arrived. Rose Kaufman’s agitation began. Preparations: food, new and clean clothing, an especially spotless house. Depression: an unfocused, generalized sadness which Rose vaguely attributed to her childhood and the persecution of a stepmother out of “Cinderella.” She infected the entire house with an anxiety, a tension that spread everywhere.

  Each one in the house is affected differently by the approaching holidays. Waking, sleeping, walking, eating, going, coming: all are a little changed, a little odd. Rose’s sleep is uneasy. She tosses and turns as if waiting for permission to awaken and rise.

  Rose wakes, aware instantly of what is to be done. The day crystallizes in her mind, into the house, into preparations. The day is things, objects to be handled, some to be cleaned, others to be discarded. The day is the picking up of yesterday’s loose ends, wh
ich in turn lead to tomorrow’s loose ends. She sighs and rolling over, shuts off the alarm clock so that it will not disturb anyone. She has awakened, as always, a half hour too early. She feels herself to be a delicate mechanism which responds to some stimulus, possibly occurring during sleep, which is too subtle to disturb anyone else in the house, but which forces her to be aware earlier than the others. She is the guardian of the clean sheets on all the beds; of the breakfast, carefully timed so that Elly will not be late for school and Max will be on time at the factory. She has awakened early so that the day will be certain to go well for what she thinks of as “me and mine.”

  She thinks of herself as a nervous person. She realizes, suddenly, that she does not have a headache. She crosses her fingers and hopes for the best. She heaves herself out of bed and, throwing on a housecoat, shuffles to Mimi’s and Justin’s room. The couple who serve as maid and butler, with Justin doubling as gardener, are sleeping soundly. Justin, a tall man whose skinny legs hang over the side of the big double bed, is snoring quietly.

  Rose shakes little Mimi, who wakes instantly, saying, “What, what?” Rose leaves the door open behind her as she heads for the bathroom, planning the holiday shopping list, remembering that the young rabbi from the new temple is coming to dinner that evening, and trying to think of something especially interesting, yet something that could raise no doubts in his mind as to whether it is kosher or not. She is the guardian, and the day is her ward.

  Now Elly wakes. The day is a vague, blurred shape shrouded in the remembered darkness of sleep; here and there, sections are highlighted: the drive leading to school, the faces of a few friends, writing a letter to Alec and Annette, perhaps a game of tennis with Charlotte and Marianne. The day is a dark surface on which a beam of light plays, illuminating and concealing acts—the day is acts—the moving of the body in space to various places and the performing of certain activities there. She moves now slowly toward the remembrance of the preceding day, and sees herself as if she were leafing through a very old photograph album: Elly at school … Elly talking to Professor Lanner (the bastard) … Elly playing tennis with cousin Charlotte while Daddy stands leaning against the new Cadillac.