The Girl With the Glass Heart: A Novel

by Daniel Stern

  What did a woman like the solid, broad-boned girl think of him at first sight? It was too bad one couldn’t just ask her. He settled back in his seat and tucked away the sketches. Lang liked departures. They made him less tense than arrivals. Across a furze-covered field the airport defined itself against the late-afternoon sky.

  Annette paused in the doorway of the plane, poised on the hostess’ bright smile, and running her eye over the vacant seats deliberately chose the one next to the gray-haired man she had spoken to on the bus and who had been so friendly.

  “Hello,” he said, “I seem always to have your window.”

  “Not really,” she said. “The one in the bus was yours. Besides these don’t open.” She lighted a cigarette, pursing her red mouth around it in an incongruously delicate gesture while Lang thought, listening to the beginning buzz of the motors, There’s still time to get off, time to forget about this wild idea born because I made love to a kid in a house I’d just built, time to forget that she was the only one with whom I ever felt like a man, time to forget about wanting to be a man and go back to work and Lorraine and her damned sarcastic laughter. But there was no more time—they were airborne and the little red light on the side of the wing nearest him told him there was no more time. Of course he could disembark in Indianapolis and get a plane going east and wire the Kaufmans, but he knew that he was only playing with the ideas and that he was as committed to this flight as iron was to a magnet, and quite as irrationally.

  A man in front of them was nudging his companion and laughing at something Lang couldn’t hear. He turned to Annette and said, “Why is it laughter sounds more lonesome on a plane than anywhere else?”

  “I don’t fly that much,” she replied, “and I wasn’t listening to them. The last thing in the world I want to think about now is loneliness.”

  “It’s nice that you have a choice,” he said quietly, and she turned and stared at him as though she had not really seen him before.

  Far beyond the hill, even halfway toward town, the approaching cars could hear the faint sounds of the party, wind-borne. Even before the house could be glimpsed, adumbrations of the party could be felt: the dim glow of the Japanese lanterns reflected against the overhung sky and, coming closer, the tinkling sound of a piano, playing popular songs in the high register, the whir of motors as Justin drove cars to and around the garage. It all gave the arriving guests the impression of a much bigger party than it actually was. There were only about forty people invited and probably thirty-five or thereabouts would attend. It was the briskness of the wind that carried sound so well and gave the evening its air of busyness, of events happening and about to happen.

  Elly walked swiftly past her parents, who stood at the door welcoming the latest arrivals, and into the living room. Jay was at the bar and she said, “I’ll have one.”

  “Hello,” he said. “You look beautiful. Is this the same girl that wore blue jeans and a gruesome T-shirt this afternoon?”

  “I hope not,” she replied, and spilled her drink just before it reached her lips. None of it touched her dress however. Jay slid another one from the triangular grouping of highballs and looked at her. She wore a cocktail-length pink, or orange, dress—Jay couldn’t tell which—and her hair was brushed to a sheen and hung about her shoulders and framed her face a little too perfectly—as the evening wore on, Jay knew that the strands would separate and touch her forehead, her cheek, fall more loosely on her bare shoulders.

  He touched the flesh of one shoulder and said, “Hey, you shouldn’t be the nervous one. I’m the one who needs false courage.” He raised his glass and, smiling at her, said, “I’ve been trying to touch you all day. You’ve been somewhere else. How long has it been since we complained that we love each other? Seems like a long while. I feel like complaining again.”

  “I’m sorry, Jay. I’ve been feeling funny.” Where’s Alec? she was thinking. Why isn’t Alec here?

  Green filled a glass with gin, sipped it and said, “Here’s how!”

  Elly and Jay nodded politely.

  “Some day—tomorrow, I think, after this nightmare—I mean this lovely dream of a concert—is over, I’m going to tell you what you’ve done. Do you know I can’t even remember too clearly what the hell I’ve been doing these last two years, running around the country with the ballet and all that. I’ve got my Christmas gift from you, early this year—Jay Gordon, all wrapped in the nice, shiny tuxedo he wore when he played his first recital in Carnegie Hall. In case I forget to thank you around Christmas time, thanks, Elly.”

  “What are you going to give me?” Elly asked, knowing that she was playing a game, that it wasn’t real, no matter how real it seemed to this strange young man.

  “Haven’t I given you anything?” Jay asked, feeling a little sick in his stomach at the distance in her voice.

  “No, you’ve taken.”

  Carl stood next to her and, excusing himself for interrupting, said, “May I speak to you for a moment, Elly?” She shook her head. “I’m talking to Mr. Gordon.”

  “Just for a moment.”

  The urgency in his voice and face were clear enough to Jay for him to say, “It’s all right, we’ll talk—”

  But Elly cut him short by saying, “Not now. Later, Carl.”

  He turned away, more sure than ever about where his duty was. She would never tell his secret. And if she did—He moved off in search of Alec.

  “You should have spoken to him. He seems upset,” Jay said seriously.

  “Everybody’s been upset around here these last few days.”

  “I haven’t. But that’s because I’ve taken so much from you, I guess.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic. I can’t stand sarcasm. My mother’s sarcastic.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m nervous about playing and you seem so cold.”

  “Don’t be nervous about playing. I’m a crazy little bitch—don’t pay any attention to me. And, God, you’ve played so many concerts in your time—” There was a cracking within her as of ice breaking and there was an unexpected flare of warmth inside, as one might feel who had died and was allowed for a moment to catch sight of a place where one had once been happy, or good, or loved. She wanted to cry out to him to hold her just there where she was (as if it was a place or a time through which she moved rather than a condition of feeling), not to let her slip back, but the sense of herself was too strong and she realized he had been speaking to her.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you, Jay.”

  “Stop saying you’re sorry every other minute. I said crazy little bitch or not I’m happy with you—and I’m a guy who’d given up the idea, the word, all of it. That’s why it’s tough when you’re angry and I don’t know why.”

  “I’ve never been less angry in all my life. Play well.” She kissed him on the cheek, lightly, and he knew she was gone from him again.

  The room was filling now and the bar was crowding. “You’ll play about eleven,” Max said to Jay, glancing at his watch. “We’ll set up the chairs back there and you come out from this doorway.”

  “That’s a while yet, Mr. Kaufman,” Jay said.

  “That’s true,” Max said, wiping his heavy face with a handkerchief. “You see these people? Well, it gives me a kind of funny feeling to think that so many of them in some way or another depend on me for their source of income. Still I pride myself that most of them like me for myself.”

  “I like you for your daughter.” Jay grinned nervously.

  “Yes, I know.” Max lighted a cigar and puffed intently. “I know. Well, she’s prettier than I am.” He glanced at Elly to make sure he would not be overheard. “Are you in love with her? She’d kill me if she heard me ask you that.”

  “Yes. You can tell, can’t you?”

  “It’s not hard. She is too. For the last week she’s been better than I’ve seen her. Of course today she’s worried about Alec and she’s not herself. But I’m very glad. Even her mother has been feeling better since you a
nd Alec got here.”

  Jay started to reply, not quite sure what he wanted to say, but it was something uncertain about Elly, when Soames came along to ask Max about setting up for the pictures of the concert, and Jay turned instead to his half-empty glass, remembering with a sudden palpitation that these people were all assembled here to hear him play. It’s been only two years, he told himself. Hold on. Hold on.

  Carl found Alec miraculously alone at the far end of the crowded room near the portion of the glass wall that turned suddenly into solid wood. He was refusing a drink for the third time.

  “Don’t you think fasting includes not drinking, Dr. Warschauer?” he asked, waving a tubercular-looking hand at Carl to sit down.

  “Like the whole idea, that’s up to you. I fasted today, also, but at sundown I ate dinner.”

  “Yes, but I’m not a religious man. There’s the paradox. Can’t you understand that a man, when he’s struggling for will, and when he finds something that he can will, has to go ahead and do it no matter how irrational it seems? I was just lucky that I dropped the Torah in Shule the other day—don’t be shocked, I don’t enjoy abusing objects that are sacred to some people—but everything I’d heard about the imposing of self-punishment came back to me and I decided to fast, to will to fast, and I’ve felt more peaceful since then than I’ve felt in a long time. I guess I owed you that speech for being rude today in the garage.”

  “I understand more than you would think. But I can’t sit here all night. I came over here to tell you something. I don’t like you, Mr. Kaufman—”

  “Thanks for coming over and telling me.”

  Carl ignored the interruption. “I think you’re a weak man, but that’s beside the point.”

  “Hear! Hear!” Alec grinned.

  “I think you should know that it was I who advised your family to lay down the ultimatum to you. They consulted me as their rabbi and were very upset about that girl. I thought about it and didn’t quite know how to advise them—”

  “But young Dr. Warschauer found a way, eh?”

  Carl looked straight ahead and not at Alec. “No,” he said, “someone else found a way for me. It’s hard to talk with all this noise but … I can’t masquerade and say that I found it in my own conscience—”

  “God, you do sound like a rabbi! I hadn’t noticed it before.”

  “… in my own conscience to destroy your happiness. It was your niece who finally insisted on it.” He restrained himself from heaving a sigh of relief and was aware that his face must be quite red.

  “My niece? Elly? What are you talking about? We’re as close as—”

  “I’m sorry. It’s true.”

  “What do you mean she insisted? She doesn’t own you.”

  “She did then. No, I’m not in love with her. I’d told her something about myself that could be damaging to my life here. And she—she threatened to disclose it unless I did what she wanted in that matter.”

  Alec sat quite still in his chair. “That little girl?” he said half aloud. “Elly?”

  “I had to and I felt you should know. I’m sorry. And I don’t think it’s necessary to tell what it was Elly knows about me—it might seem quite laughable to you, but it couldn’t be more desperate to me.”

  “I don’t want to know,” Alec said softly. “Go away. Just go away now. This is a weak man telling you to go away.” When he looked up Carl was gone into a tangle of legs and bodies, but Alec spoke as if he were still there. “What would Elly have against Annette and me? Why?” The whole idea was flecked with horror—something unclean. He stood up, a little shaky on his legs. I’m weak, he thought. I should have eaten something. But not eating was my strength. He elbowed his way to where Elly stood watching Soames taking a flash-bulb photo of the garden through the exposed glass wall. It was a difficult shot and Soames did not notice Alec’s intrusion.

  “Elly,” Alec said, “go into the garden. I’ll be right there.”

  “But why in—”

  “Get into the garden. Far in. Now go.”

  His jaw was so tensed, Elly saw, that the veins stood out on the left side of his throat, so clearly defined that it seemed painfully vulnerable. She stepped from him, craned her neck, as if to avoid seeing something frightening, like the sight of blood, or someone striking a child, and began walking toward the door and then, free of human obstruction, she ran the last few steps and out of the door.

  In the garden Elly was one fragrance among many, the wind whipping the flowers, making them tremble and sway. Elly knelt near a freshly cut hedge and breathed the sickly sweetness until it brought the moisture from beneath her tongue. She knelt there in a mindless stupor, too terrified to think until Alec said, “Stand up.” She stood up and he said, “Is it true—” and she began to nod her head before he had finished—“what Warschauer just told me? That you forced him to tell Max—well, you know the rest. Did you?” Elly nodded again. Her hands were tightly clenched at her sides and she noticed suddenly that she had worn too much perfume—the odor was lilac and was too heavy for lilacs, she thought.

  “Why? You liked Annette—and you know I depend on Max for support. Why did you make me choose?” The iciness was gone from his voice, replaced by a raucous agony. His voice was hoarse as he said, “Baby, to me—Alec.”

  He waited and she said nothing. She was thinking, That’s not what he’s angry about. It’s only a cover-up. It’s Jay of course. He felt betrayed from the beginning because I was in love with Jay. But for an instant the muddiness with which this thought was coated cleared and she realized the nature of her betrayal.

  “And how could you threaten the man? A secret is a secret. You can’t use people like that. What’s happened to you, baby? Did you want to ruin me?”

  If he asked one more question she would scream and they would all come and she would—of course, she would finally tell them what she had wanted to tell them about Mr. Larkin, her old piano teacher, but had been too afraid, only she would tell it about Alec. He tried to make love to me. But she didn’t have to because he did not ask another question. He grasped her arm and said, “Answer me!”

  “Because she hated me—she was jealous of me—she wouldn’t let you come when I was in trouble at school and if you’d have come maybe I wouldn’t have had to come back here and I could have been free—”

  “Hated you—” and he stopped. It was so tangled. He should have gone when Max wired him to help but hadn’t because he couldn’t face Max’s questions about Annette (it was like a child’s notebook of questions and answers designed to lead to the one right answer) and because of that fear, months later, halfway across the country, he had lost Annette.

  “I could hate you now,” he said quietly, “if my own hands were clean.”

  She heard his footsteps and did not look up until the front door slammed. She clasped her hands over her ears and shut out the party noises and then, pressing and releasing her hands, she made an accordion effect of the sounds of laughter and conversation until they seemed something else; perhaps a faulty phonograph record which could be smashed at will. She was shivering but, unable to admit she was that disturbed by what Alec had said, she allowed herself to become aware that the wind had subsided somewhat and left in its place a biting cold that was numbing her hands. She touched a flower and was surprised to find it was not of an icy temperature or texture.

  I guess flowers don’t get cold, she thought; they either bloom or they die.

  Through a little peephole of glass made by drawing one fold of the draperies aside, Ralph Lanner observed Elly standing alone in the garden. To the group with which he stood he gave the impression of merely glancing absently outside now and then. But he had seen Alec grasp Elly and then leave, had seen her touch the petal of a flower and continue standing there. He was remembering what she had said to him the other day in the bar in town, something about manufacturing conflicts and making capital of them—vindictive, she had said. It was a picture of himself he liked, but sometimes
felt unworthy of. He was afraid that he was much too sentimental for the kind of man he wanted to be, Mephistopheles in the classroom. He had been attracted to Elly the moment she walked in, embarrassingly so. She had been wearing a soft-textured sweater which outlined her full breasts in an extremely sensual manner, and Lanner had found himself instantly more aroused than he had ever been in a classroom. From that day on he had baited her mercilessly and she had played along with the mock battle. But he had noticed a certain disorientation in her responses at times, answers which were not even remotely germane to the questions—and had, in fact, once remarked to a friend, “She’s crazy, that Kaufman girl.” What must the private life of such a girl be like? His cheeks suddenly burned when he remembered that she had reviled him before the pianist from New York. He saw Elly leave the garden slowly and he dropped the curtain gently against the glass wall and, excusing himself, walked to the door as she entered.

  “Hi,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you. We’ve been having an argument and I need the textbook for Philosophy Three—you know, the one you took with me last term. Could you let me use yours for a moment? You know me—I have to prove every point.”

  Barely audibly, Elly said, “In my room. I’ll—”

  “No, don’t bother, don’t leave the party. I’ll get it. In your bookcase, I suppose. Down this way—up past that bathroom? Thanks.” And he moved away swiftly.

  The room was being reorganized now, for the music. Justin and Mimi were busily setting the last rows of chairs in place. A flash bulb went off, casting a nightmarish glow over the room and as quickly wiping it away. Max was at her side. “Why hasn’t Lang arrived?” he said, more to himself than to her, and then moved off busily. “Or Annette,” Elly said aloud, “or Steven Burke, and Danny and little Lois.”