The Girl With the Glass Heart: A Novel

by Daniel Stern

  Alec had half leaped and half fallen from his chair as she plunged, and he grabbed hold of her legs while he shouted something to those milling about behind him. “Don’t pull her!” Max shouted. Soames, the photographer, fought his way to the front door and outside. He ran to the broken wall. Elly was slumped almost exactly half in and half out. She was breathing, he saw, and, motioning Alec not to touch her, he felt underneath her abdomen to see if she was caught. She was not; the flesh moved freely but his hand came away wet and red. I’d forgotten it was so bright, he thought. Grasping her under the armpits, he called, “Lift her slowly—up, straight up, or you’ll slash her.” Alec, his face contorted into a horrible mask, grasped Elly’s legs and lifted up slowly. Soames exhaled deeply: she came away freely and he handed her (she was not limp, he noticed, but rigid) gently in to Max and Alec. They carried her, stepping ever so slowly like slaves carrying a queen on a palanquin, to a sofa and laid her down, Max mumbling something, Alec silent, his bony face stiff in grief.

  “Is she breathing?” somebody cried, and no one answered him.

  Rose was slumped in a chair in a half faint, but at this cry she struggled to her feet and dropped at the side of the couch. “Yes,” she answered. “Yes.”

  “Don’t touch her,” Alec said. “Don’t move her.”

  “I called an ambulance,” Lanner said and turned away immediately.

  Elly’s dress was torn at the middle and matted with blood; her arms were pinpointed with scratches and cuts and her face was slashed deeply on the cheeks and the forehead. Her eyes were open and staring and her scalp was a mess of bloody hair. Soames removed the figure which she still clutched in her hand.

  “Why did she do it? Why did she do it?” Rose said over and over again, her voice rising now and then to a scream and then subsiding to a steady mumble.

  Jay stood behind the couch staring down at her, his fists clenched tightly at his sides. Behind him Carl, with closed eyes, said something quietly in Hebrew.

  When the ambulance arrived, a druggist from town whom Max hardly knew was cleansing some of the cuts on Elly’s face. He had elevated her feet to alleviate the shock she was apparently in, and now and then held a damp cloth to her lips. She had not moved once.

  “The two doctors I asked tonight couldn’t come,” Max told the druggist at least three times. “Two couldn’t come.”

  Jay forced Rose to drink two shots of brandy, one after the other. The couch was surrounded by the guests, who stood around not knowing what to do but who knew they could not leave before the ambulance arrived. Some of them had put on their coats, as the house was filled with the chill night air blowing in through the ruined wall. The druggist wrapped Elly in his coat. When he touched her to do this, she trembled a bit, this being her first movements outside of an occasional blinking since they had laid her on the couch.

  The interne, a small man with a wispy mustache which he smoothed nervously as he spoke, strode in behind two attendants, a slender Negro and a husky white man. “Please, in the other rooms, please,” he said to no one in particular, and no one moved. He looked Elly over quickly and decided she could be moved. As the two men eased her onto the stretcher, Soames’s companion, Green, grabbed his friend’s camera and snapped a picture before they moved her again. Soames saw this, grabbed Green’s arm and pulled him into the kitchen.

  “What’s the matter?” Green asked, wiping his face with his free hand. “You were busy helping out so I figured I’d get a shot since you couldn’t.”

  “You ghoul! I suppose you figured it would spice up the article?”

  “Well, look, it happened. The kid cracked up. I can’t make it unhappen.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t have to make money on it.”

  “Jesus, I should have known. You stood up when she left the table today. A goon like you standing for a lady. I should have known. You fell for the kid.”

  “That’s none of your business. Give me the camera.”

  “You know, we can call this partnership quits right now,” Green said.

  “That’s all right with me. Give me my camera.”

  “How about the expenses I laid out for this trip? I won’t get it back if there’s no article.”

  “I’ll send you a check. Are you going to give me that goddamned camera?”

  Green handed it to him and Soames smashed it to the floor and stepped on it heavily. Then he walked out, leaving Green to chew on his hand reflectively and wonder if Soames meant it about breaking up the partnership. He certainly hadn’t. He was sorry now he’d snapped the damned picture. Bending down, he started to gather the pieces of the camera together and then thought: What the hell! and followed Soames back to the living room. The house had emptied fast and only a few stragglers were left, gathering their coats and hats.

  Jay sent Rose with Alec and Carl and lingered a few moments, absently watching Soames gather up his equipment, the last one to leave the house. He remembered, suddenly, that Annette hadn’t arrived and that she most likely would be there soon. Justin and Mimi had gone on to the hospital and Max was riding in the ambulance. When he left, the house would be empty. He glanced around and saw on a chair near the door a pocketbook which he recognized as Elly’s. Perhaps there would be a pen in it and he could leave a note. Hearing the whirring of an automobile motor, he thought: I must hurry. He rummaged through the pocketbook and found no pen. In a panic of fear that he would be left, he grabbed a lipstick, unscrewed the top and scrawled on the naked front glass wall in large letters ELLY HURT—CITY HOSPITAL, and throwing the lipstick to the floor he ran out, his throat raw and burning with controlled tears. Before he stepped into the car he saw, below, the road crawling with cars moving as slowly as holiday travelers caught in a traffic crush.

  Doctor Mennen, a big man of about sixty, straightened up and rubbed the small of his back hard with his clenched fist. The nurse smiled understandingly, and he bent over the still form of the bed again.

  “Elizabeth,” he called and waved his hand in front of her eyes. She blinked but otherwise gave no response. “Say something, won’t you, Elizabeth? My name is Dr. Mennen. Albert Mennen. Is there anything you want to say?”

  No answer.

  “It must have been quite a shock and concussion, Doctor,” the nurse offered.

  “They were a half hour picking the glass out of her—her scalp was full.” He shook his head. “No, it’s not just that. There wasn’t that much of a concussion to do this. There’s a name for this but I’m too old to know it. I don’t keep up with that stuff…. Rub my back a little, will you? It’s killing me.”

  The nurse complied while Dr. Mennen gazed at Elly’s stiffened limbs. She was so little she had to rub up rather than down.

  “Is Klein around? No, he wouldn’t be here this late. Look, get him on the phone, will you?”

  There was a knock at the door. The nurse shrugged despairingly. “It’s the family again. They want to see her.”

  “Not before Klein gets here. Stall them and then call him.” The nurse slipped out and closed the door swiftly behind her. Her hair is so soft, he thought. It’s a shame they had to shave it on the side like that. He tried to adjust the bandage so that it hid the shaved portion of her head a little more, but couldn’t do much with it. What a crash that must have been! he thought. He had seen the house often while driving, but, unlike Dr. Klein, the psychiatrist, he was unacquainted with Max Kaufman personally, so he had never been invited to visit. Maybe I will be invited now, he thought. Dorothy, his wife, would like that. He sat down to wait. He would have liked to smoke a cigar, and he knew the girl couldn’t notice, but it might annoy the family. He chewed a piece of gum instead.

  Dr. Klein, a slow-talking man who, although he had been at the hospital longer than Mennen, was considerably younger, arrived in fifteen minutes as he had promised the nurse.

  “I heard about the whole thing from my wife,” he said to Dr. Mennen. “Someone who had been at the party called her a half hour ago.” He
touched Elly’s body in several places. “How long has she been stiff like this?”

  “Since the accident, I understand. Certainly since entering the hospital. She said nothing and responds to nothing. She’s barely moved.”

  “Not at all, eh?”

  “What do you call that, Klein, where they don’t move—years at a time, sometimes.”

  “Catatonia. I don’t know if that’s what it is or not.” He sighed. “Elly Kaufman … I played tennis with her one day. I’ll tell you what it is has happened to her—I’m not going to examine her more closely while she’s cut up like that—” he pointed to where one of the clean white bandages was staining again—“a psychotic breakdown. She’s quite out of contact.”

  “I knew it was something like that, although I’m one of the old-fashioned ones who refuse to give you boys your due.” Dr. Mennen laughed heavily.

  “Yes,” Klein said. “Well, where’s the family?”

  “Miss Phillips took them into the waiting room at the end of the corridor.”

  “I’ll talk to them—I know Kaufman. You can take off if you’re ready to go, but give me a rundown on the wounds.”

  “She’ll be all right. We’re going to give her a transfusion. She lost a lot of blood. They’re getting the stuff now. I guess I’ll hang around and take care of that before I go. But there’s no serious damage there.”

  “All right. Thanks. Good night, Mennen.”

  In the waiting room they were all silent now. Rose had quit screaming and sat on the edge of her chair, moaning a little, spasmodically. When Dr. Klein entered she stood up.

  “Hello, Max,” Dr. Klein said.

  “Well, Klein,” Max said, “I didn’t expect you, but now that you’re here, I expect you.” There was a singsong of grief in his voice. “Does a normal person throw herself like that? I knew it, I knew it!”

  “Sh-h, Max,” Rose said. “Let the doctor talk.”

  “You’re right, Max. I’m glad you thought of it first. She’s—let’s say she’s had a breakdown. She’s a very sick girl. She’s lost some blood and they’re giving her a transfusion, but she’ll be recovered from all that in a month or so.”

  “What about the breakdown?” Alec asked. “She didn’t move a muscle or make a sound.”

  “She’s not in contact.” Klein chose his words carefully. “She doesn’t know what’s going on. It’s an extreme form of what’s usually referred to as a nervous breakdown. Let’s … let’s think of it that way.”

  “You mean a sanitarium, Klein, and all that?” Max asked.

  “Not necessarily. I don’t know yet. We’ll see what kind of care she needs. But I wanted to tell you myself and tonight. We’re friends. She’ll need continual care. I’ll continue to see her while she’s in the hospital.”

  Rose raised her head from her cupped palms. “So, if she needs continual care, we’ll give it to her. She won’t stay this way forever, will she?”

  “I can’t know. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. We always hope, but—”

  “Thanks, thanks, Klein.” Max took his hand. “I’m glad you saw her. Can we go in?”

  “They’re going to give her a transfusion. Perhaps after that. We’ll see. I’ll have the nurse bring in some sandwiches.” He closed the door behind him softly.

  Alec grasped Max by the shoulders and hugged him tightly, pressing his cheek against Max’s bristly beard. Then he released him and Max said, “You knew her better than any of us—better than her own father and mother. Why did this happen? Why?”

  “Don’t talk as if she were dead, Max,” Rose whispered. Her voice had gone quite hoarse from all her screaming.

  “Why, Alec?” Max repeated.

  Alec killed his cigarette on the floor with his heel and walked to the window. “Why, why?” he echoed. “I remember when she ran away to our place in California. I remember thinking about her fantastic wildness. But that’s not why. I remember thinking the kid couldn’t stand just being a human being. She used to say—oh, she said it to me a couple of times—Nothing will ever be enough. Can you figure it out? Nothing is enough. I had to quote her a line from a play I was in, about living always on the brink of freedom…. We should have seen the signs!”

  “But what’s to see?” Max burst in. “It’s all so hidden. Who knows what to look for?”

  “You saw she was unhappy at home.”

  “So what do you do with every kid who’s not happy at home? Give them a suitcase and tell them to go? I thought, Now, with Jay … Rose and I thought—”

  Jay had been standing staring at the door. At this, he turned and spoke. “It was what attracted me to Elly from the beginning, this reaching for the moon—the out-of-the-world quality. Especially me, someone who’d given up just about everything.”

  The nurse brought in a tray and placed it on the table next to Rose. There were sandwiches and a pot of steaming coffee.

  Jay turned to Alec and said, “She fell in love with me and then said I hadn’t given her anything, only taken.” There was wonder in his voice.

  Alec nodded. They were like the suspects in a murder mystery, adding up the total for their guilt or innocence. “I know,” Alec said. “She cried and told me she was afraid of being in love with you, that she lost herself somehow.”

  Rose whispered hoarsely, “She’s lost herself good now,” and began to cry dry hacking sobs as if there was nothing left to make tears with.

  Max put a plump little hand on her trembling shoulder. “Rose, darling,” he said, “if what Klein says is right, then we’ll just have to devote ourselves to taking care of her.”

  She nodded weakly. “Better she should have died.” She wept.

  “Shah, shah, Rose! Shah! That’s a sin.”

  “You’re right, Max,” she said. “You’ll stop working. Who needs you to work? And we’ll take care of her.”

  “So I’ll go in half a day,” he said, sitting on the arm of her chair and rocking her a little.

  “Eat something,” Rose said, and poured the coffee into the flowered cups. “Carl, come.”

  Carl, who had been sitting silently on the sofa, stood up and accepted a sandwich and coffee. Jay had black coffee and Alec ate a sandwich, washing it down with quick gulps of coffee so that his skinny neck showed his Adam’s apple bobbing clearly. The others looked at him suddenly, remembering his fast like a lie that had been told one about a friend. No one mentioned it.

  Jay stopped sipping his coffee and said, “My God, Alec! I never told you. Elly made me wire Annette. This afternoon it was, about you fasting, and I never told you she was coming.”

  Alec shook his head. “She did that, eh? And I told her off in the garden about that. But there’s nobody home now. I sent Mimi and Justin to sleep at the Marlowes’ when we got here.”

  “I left a message. She’ll come here.”

  “Could be any minute!” Alec said excitedly.

  Rose said to Max, “Maybe some day she’ll come out of it.”

  “Maybe,” Max said hopelessly.

  Alec put his coffee cup down and picked up his coat. “I think I’ll go downstairs a while and wait for Anny.”

  “Alec,” Max said. “About our trouble—do what you want about the girl. You can count on me. Can’t he, Rose?”

  Rose nodded dumbly.

  “If I hadn’t told you what the poor girl had done, tonight, it might have been different,” Carl said.

  “And if I hadn’t told Elly I knew and that I hated her—yes, I said that to her out in the garden when I told her I knew what she’d done—Who can measure how much any of us had to do with her sickness?”

  “Yes,” Carl said. “After God, it’s the one big mystery.”

  “Maybe before God,” Alec said, his dislike of the man reviving, and he walked past him to the door. “I’ll be downstairs for a while waiting for Anny.”

  Max nudged Rose and she looked up at him, then at her brother-in-law. “Bring her up,” she said and then looked away.

  Jay walk
ed down the corridor with him. “I have to breathe through my mouth,” he said. “I can’t stand the hospital smell.” They walked slowly. “You know,” Jay told Alec, “you know how much she did for me.”

  Alec threw up his hands. “God, what a night! If I—if you—then we would have—you know—Sure I know. One word—everything. You were dead before—you’re alive now. You were a jerk pounding the piano for dancers—you’re a pianist now who just gave a recital. Max would have backed you. Maybe he still will. Everything was what she gave you.”

  Two nurses in stiff white uniforms were passing by. One of them was speaking of a friend who was pregnant and whose husband was overjoyed by the development. Jay was silent until they had passed by, then he said, “Then I don’t have to say it. I haven’t cried yet, but I usually do. I’m not like you. You rant and rave and make speeches when you’re miserable. Maybe some day she’ll get better.”

  “You going to hang around the rest of your life and wait?”

  “No,” Jay said. “She gave me too much to do.”

  “Look, Jay—” Alec made a downward gesture with his hand as if emphasizing a point that had been opposed—“it wasn’t for Elly, this love business. She couldn’t sustain it. She came to me that evening all torn apart—the giving was too much for her. I assumed she’d slept with you then, and if there was any such thing, I think she was really in love with you. I’m not saying that’s what broke her finally. You can’t feel responsible. I suppose she’s been a sick girl for a long time, but I think somebody like that can have a flash—oh, a moment or a few days or I don’t know how long—of loving, deeper and better in the going out to someone else than any of us can. But, of course, she couldn’t sustain it. The rest of us settle for less and hold it up pretty well. But isn’t it strange, Jay, and isn’t it wonderful that a kid like that—that fantastic, wide-eyed, long-haired beauty of hers was no accident—with her reaching for everything at once, can help those of us who settle for what we can get, kidding ourselves that our bread is cake and our water is wine? It’s too bad you had to be the one—although not really—but love isn’t for us and certainly wasn’t for Elly. I stink and you stink and everybody we know stinks. We think we’ve grabbed love and then we use it like we use anything we could buy in a store. Love is for … maybe for somebody who knows who they are and what they want, as clearly as that glass wall she crashed through used to shine sometimes on a very bright day. It’s for somebody who knows what it is to be human. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t know anybody with that much strength. You’re right: I don’t cry. I rant and rave…. Don’t go back to the house tonight. We’ll all stay in a hotel in town.”