by Daniel Stern
“A bunch of people are coming over to the house,” Alec said. “Come on with us.”
Jay started to speak, but Elly said, “We have an appointment.”
“Where?”
“Over on the other side of town.”
The other side of town was the chilly, pine-needle-covered floor of the forest. Just as when it was warm outside it was cooler in the clearing, so now that it was cool outside, here it was even chillier. And if it still possessed the quality of a refuge, it was a more desperately sought refuge. The tone of the overhanging pine branches was darker and there was a constant rustling, a whispering that indicated they were never really alone—always a voice, as the sea had been when they’d first met, a voice saying something in an unintelligible language, or at least in a language to which Elly did not have the key.
This time she held back. It was as if she had thought better of this business of leaving herself and was protecting her vulnerability again. His hands almost made her forget this purpose but she won. He moved and she waited, her tongue inside his mouth, like a thermometer, waiting for the telling spasm that would clamp his teeth over the soft pink flesh of her tongue. In his excitement and happiness, Jay was unaware of the difference between this time and the last.
“God,” she said, “I’m soaked with perspiration. I’ll catch a cold.”
He wrapped his coat around her and held it about her shoulders and they lay there listening to the wind. When Elly began shivering they got up and brushed the clinging pine needles from each other’s clothes. Then they walked to the car quickly and drove to the house.
From the cars parked outside, they could see that there were quite a few guests still there. Justin met them at the door.
“A lot of people here, eh?” Jay said to Justin, noticing suddenly that there were a few pine needles on the back of his coat.
“Quite a few, Mr. Gordon. Less now than before, but still—Mr. Alec was looking around for you. He’s in Mr. Kaufman’s room—the den, I guess it is.”
Elly threw open the den door and almost hurled herself at Alec, who was smoking a cigarette in the large, low-slung chair near the far wall.
“Well,” he said, “well, baby, what’s this?”
She sat on the floor and buried her face in his lap. “I don’t know what to do. I’m afraid. I feel soft, like I could be squashed if somebody squeezed or stepped on me. I love him and I’m so crazy happy and then I’m terrified because I’ve sort of gone away from myself. I’m wide open and I hate it.” He looked down at the hair, with the rust-colored ribbon cutting across it, and thought: So this is what it comes to. If I’d have brought Anny, Jay wouldn’t have come and if—but I didn’t, and Jay did come.
“Maybe it’s the best thing that ever happened to you, Elly. You can’t live with yourself always. There are others and when you love—oh, who am I to lecture you! I don’t know anything myself, but I’ll bet you’ve got a tremendous amount of stuff to give somebody, and if he feels about you the way he seems to, well, you’ll see how exciting it can be to—”
She shook her head and said in a muffled voice, “I’m afraid, I’m afraid.” Then she lifted her face and he saw that there were teardrops, some smudged and others pearled, along her eyelids and cheeks like rain on a flower, and he grasped her by her long hair and pressed her wet face to his chest, knowing himself to be mute and lost.
Jay was playing the “Kinderszenen” of Schumann, wearing a sport shirt open at the throat and a heavy sweater over it, when Elly walked in munching a breakfast apple. She stood behind and to the left of him, looking out of the wall, down the hill, and listened to him. He was really leaning into it. She watched him then and saw his back curve inward and spring straight again as he built the climax. She could see the perspiration that stained his collar. He seemed to have so many fingers, so many hands, everywhere up and down the keyboard. The room rang with the sounds like a struck bell. He is, Elly thought, looking at the tall, slender body seated at the piano, the bobbing head and neck, the long arms and fat fingers, like a wind and I like a sailboat and I have been becalmed for so long. I could write a poem like that, or I could begin to keep a diary again.
He finished and held the last chord overly long, as if reluctant to end it. Then he whirled around on the stool, and Elly saw on his face what was not quite a smile, but the equivalent of a social smile. He was happy and he had whirled around, not because he had heard Elly, as he had not, but out of exuberance and high spirits.
“Hello!” He laughed. “Have you been here? When did you get up? Isn’t that Schumann a wonderful piece?”
“Yes. What is it?”
“‘Scenes from Childhood.’”
“Oh. That’s why you played it with such … such gusto.”
“Well, it’s marked con brio.”
“Oh, yes. With fire. But it was such a cool fire.”
“Sure.” He smiled. “Any fool can play with a heated fire. My way takes talent…. You slept late.”
“No. You got up early. Where do you get all the energy?”
“Children always have energy, and I’m feeling like a child. Look at me. I haven’t dressed like this for years. This is what I used to wear when I was practicing for my Carnegie concert. Sport shirt for freedom and sweater so as not to catch cold when I sweat up. I put these on first thing this morning and came downstairs. After breakfast it suddenly struck me that they were my practice clothes, and I sat down at the piano. That was two hours ago. Do you know, Elly Kaufman, that I haven’t practiced seriously for two consecutive hours in two years? The ballet isn’t serious practice.”
“That’s what I tried to tell you yesterday after the concert, but you said, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’” She made him sound pompous.
“I’m sorry. But I was afraid it was all too good to be true. I’m still afraid you’re too good to be true.”
“With good reason. I am too good. So I’m not very true. I’m so glad you’re playing, Jay. Can I take the credit?”
“You don’t have to. I’m giving it to you….”
“Play that intermezzo for me. The Brahms.”
He played it and she listened quietly. When he had finished, she said, “No wonder everybody has an ‘Our Song.’ Music is perfect for memory because that’s what it is. Time, I guess, made tangible and real. You’re the only person I can talk to about things like this. I mean, music is perfect for remembering, because the other arts all deal with the external world which changes. Music doesn’t have that—it’s music. It’s itself.”
“You’ve got something there. You’re pretty old for eighteen—you know that, don’t you?”
She sat on the sofa next to him. “I’m old for my age, I think sometimes,” she said.
“You understand music.”
She wanted to tell him about music all the time, but couldn’t quite get it out. There were some things …
“Yes, I do,” she said. “And I understand you. Listen, I have a marvelous idea—” She clapped her hands and sang a few gay notes.
“Well?” He grinned.
“Oh, it’s a terrific idea. Oh, I’m a genius!”
“Come on, already.”
“You’ll give a concert here. A little concert and we can invite people from around here. It would get you off to a little start.”
Jay stood up and ran his hand through his already mussed hair. “A concert? In the house?”
“Don’t be a snob. It’s a lovely house for a concert.” She jumped up and followed him.
“It’s not that. Don’t be silly. It’s a lovely idea. Just a little startling. I’m just getting used to thinking about really playing again. A concert. No critics, thank God. On second thought, there’ll be critics. There always are. Just none from newspapers here.”
“You’d have something to work toward—to practice for.”
Rose Kaufman breezed in then, wearing a bright-red house dress. “I’m exhausted. What an evening! First all the people and then the
big mistake. I had to play rummy. I swore by my child’s health I’d quit by one but we played till two just because I was winning. How do you feel, Elly darling?” She bent down to pick up a newspaper Max had dropped on his way out that morning.
“I’m fine, Mom, but Jay and I are talking in here.”
“Oh, excuse me! I’ll come back later.” She paused in the doorway. “No doors to shut,” she said, “only screens and draperies. Mr. John Marron Lang.” She shrugged and left.
“Your mother’s a great artist.” Jay laughed.
“Don’t change the subject—great artist! How about the concert? It would be the best thing for you.”
“I could…. I could.”
“Sure you could.”
Now that she was manipulating him, Jay was less a stranger that she was in love with—had more in common with the other men she loved, like Alec. Her manipulation of Alec had, she realized, resulted in Jay replacing Annette on the trip home, so in a sense she had made Jay for herself. He was her creation and now she was developing that creation. Last night’s crying jag was forgotten.
Jay rippled his fingers down the keyboard. “Why not? All I’ve got to do is forget the last two years and just play.” He grabbed Elly by the shoulders. “You’re fabulous,” he said. “You can’t exist. I must have made you up. Where do you get these wonderful ideas?”
The phone buzzed and Elly took it. “Alec,” she screamed, “it’s for you.” Turning to Jay she said: “You don’t know how wonderful it is having Alec home again and around the house all day. You can’t know.” And Jay felt a twinge of wonder as to how much Elly could concentrate on any one subject, no matter how exciting, before another one came along.
“Yes,” he said, “it must be,” and turned back to the piano.
“It’s a telegram,” she told Alec as he picked up the phone. They said nothing while Alec got his message, Jay thinking it might be Annette, although rather doubtful of this, and Elly thinking it was from her, but, unlike Jay, quite sure of it.
“My agent,” Alec said. He wore his pajamas. One side of his face was red and creased with sleep and his eyes were bleary. “Got a job in a picture starting October first. Also a picture I did a bit in last year is being released. Said it’s a pretty big part in this one.”
“Alec, that’s wonderful!” Jay exclaimed.
“Yes.” Elly kissed his cheek. “Congratulations and wake up.”
Alec rubbed his reddened cheek vigorously and said, “I’m up. I heard Jay playing. Has somebody got a cigarette? … I could have sworn it would have been Anny.”
Elly turned away sharply, picked up a silver cigarette box, flipped open the lid and extended it to Alec. “A job like that is good news, isn’t it?” she said.
He nodded and puffed the cigarette into a glow. “Isn’t anything in this house just a simple wooden box or something?” he said, holding the cigarette box up and looking at it distastefully. “Sure, it’s terrific news…. Where’s Max?” He turned to go.
“Wait a minute, Alec! We’ve got a tremendous idea to tell you. Tell him, Jay.”
“Huh-uh. It’s your idea. You present it.” Jay smiled a little self-consciously and turned away. Alec dropped onto a chair and said, “Let’s have it.”
“Alec, Jay’s going to give a concert. Right here in the house this week. We’ll invite whoever we want to. He’s got the drive to practice and we ought to get him while he’s hot.”
Alec stood up and walked over to Jay. “That’s the best thing I’ve heard in a long time. You know how I felt about your giving up playing. It’s about time the waste was over.”
Jay shrugged. “The waste will never be over with a guy like me, but at least it’ll be a start. Just a start—that’s all it is.”
“That’s enough. I’m really glad…. Where the hell are Max and Rose?”
“Dad’s in town and Mom’s around here somewhere. I’ll get her.”
Elly was gone, and Alec glanced at Jay.
“Well, boy,” he said, “who’d have thought it, eh? The art boys back home, that’s us. Your wife and my family. Screw ’em! How do you feel about all this?”
“You mean Elly?”
“Yeah, Elly and what seems to be moving you along.”
“I feel great. A little bewildered but great. I almost feel guilty about you and Annette, what with all this—”
“Never mind that. You can’t do me any good there, so concentrate on your own good luck.”
Rose appeared, a rather tense smile on her big face.
“What a wonderful idea! We can have it like a catered affair, sort of, and I’ll invite everyone. It’s very nice of you, Jay, to think of something like this in our house. I know Max will think it’s a regular honor.”
“What night will it be?” Elly asked excitedly.
“We’d better wait till Yom Kippur night. How’s that?” Rose asked. But it was not a question. It was settled, with that remark, for the night of Yom Kippur.
“We can have it as a party-concert for the breaking of the fast,” Alec said.
“When did you ever fast, my religious brother-in-law?” Rose laughed.
“That’s true. When did I? Anyway, whoever has fasted can break it at the concert.”
“Do you fast on Yom Kippur, Jay?” Elly asked.
He shook his head. “No, but I’ve been fasting from music a long time and I’ll break that one at the concert.”
Alec returned to his room to dress and Rose vanished to the kitchen to break the news to Mimi and Justin.
“Come on, talented,” Elly said and, holding Jay’s hand, pulled him out of the room. “Let me show you my talent. Or at least my memory.”
In her room she showed him the painting, accompanied by a stream of words: “Remember? Remember the painting in Alec’s place in Los Angeles—the girl, lost in the woods? Well, this is my contribution—a boy. You see, I changed it.”
“Yes, I see. It’s amazing that you could remember it so well after seeing it just once.”
“You mean you’re not going to talk about impasto and chiaroscuro and all that?”
“Nope. The most sophisticated thing I can say about this painting is that it’s nice.”
“Nice! That’s the last thing in the world it is. It’s depressing.”
“You know what Alec said about it, don’t you? How it was a barometer for the way he was feeling when he looked at it—whether or not the kid would ever get out of the woods.”
“Well, what do you think? Is this one going to make it?”
“Sure.” He smiled. “This one’s almost out now.”
“Good,” she said. “I’m glad you liked it. Go practice. You’ve got a concert coming up in a few days.”
“That’s right, I have. But don’t listen.”
When he was gone, Elly took a tube of white paint and squeezed some onto the canvas. Slowly she smeared it over the green forest, over the boy standing trapped among the trees, covering it all with a thick blur of fresh white paint. She played God in this manner for a half hour until the painting was an unrecognizable horror, while from the living room came the sounds of scales and arpeggios played over and over again. There was a faint throbbing in the lump in her thumb, and she waited anxiously, as one waits for a telephone conversation to begin, for the pulsing to develop into a pain, but it did not and finally the throbbing disappeared, leaving only a memory and the sensation of having been loved.
The next day while the family was having a drink before dinner and Jay was upstairs showering, Elly stood in the kitchen listening to Mimi chattering.
Then it happened, worse than ever before. First, it was like a shadow passing across the glass wall she was facing. Then it was like a great whoosh of breath (was this what the sea had been trying to tell her?) blown on the house, clouding up the transparency before her, obscuring the bright sun, and she was gazing at a mirror in which her face was intermingled with Jay’s, and she could not see beyond them. It was because of his face, his lo
ve, that the cloudy unreality was so bad now. She held her breath and fought the stinging back of her eyes so that no tears appeared. Finally it was as before. Behind her she heard, with sudden hatred, the sound of the piano and she thought of Alec carrying his remorse and misery about the house all day and of Jay whose playing seemed to be everywhere and all the time now and she thought, fingering gently the lump in her thumb, What a mess I’m making of my life—all the exhilaration gone—What do I really have, not Jay or Alec or being a dancer? Only you, she thought, and held the thumb with its hidden deformity against the now translucent glass.
Jay descended the stairs, refreshed by his shower, and heard someone playing the piano, probably Max Kaufman. Max had mentioned how he had studied many years ago, but could hardly play at all now. It wasn’t really the shower that had exhilarated him, he knew. Since the planning of the concert had begun, he’d been on air, feeling like shouting to people in the streets as they passed, or grabbing little Mimi and kissing her, doing the most incongruous things he could imagine. It reminded him of the time he had signed his first contract with American Concerts. He and Jeannie had linked hands and run up Fifty-seventh Street, laughing and looking at the people they passed, calling to each other: “Don’t they know? Don’t they understand?” pausing, breathless with laughter, to watch the pigeons whirring and catching the bright sunlight on their wings.
When Jay entered the living room, Max had stopped fooling around at the piano and Elly was there, a drink in her hand—and on her lovely, dark face a look of bewilderment, and in the hazel-eyed stare was mirrored some obscure hurt.
John Marron Lang stopped at the hotel desk and asked for enough change to make the call to New York. He could have called from the room, but hotel rooms made him uncomfortable and he didn’t want Lorraine asking him why he sounded so strange and was he sure everything was all right.
Several people turned to stare at him as he passed. He was an impressive-looking man. Long, loose-boned, he strode across the lobby, brushing a shock of gray hair from his eyes set deep in the prominently boned face. With some distaste he glanced at the brightly colored clothes of the Los Angelenos who lounged about the lobby. It was fall and it seemed a little obscene for these people to dress in the outlandish manner that only the summer vacation might on occasion permit.
