The Girl With the Glass Heart: A Novel (23 page)

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, which 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.

She throws herself out of bed and draws the curtains wide apart. Her pajama top is gaping but she doesn’t care if anyone sees her breasts. Of course there is no one to see them, except perhaps Justin, but he wouldn’t be in the garden this early. She almost wishes there were someone to stare at her so that she could look offended and swiftly close the curtains. Her mouth is dry and she licks the corners of her lips. The day is to be the last of summer school at Crofts. The beginning of a miserable two-week vacation and the High Holy Days and perhaps (she hopes so) Uncle Alec returning. The day, then, is hope—agitation for a letter to Alec from her parents. The day is not quite as black as yesterday and tomorrow. Because the day is now, it is most mysterious. The past and the future are such simple concepts for Elly. They are simply memory. She remembers the past and she remembers the future. The past, of course, is recalled, because when the present becomes too horrible, too confining, a prison, then the past may be invoked, like the key. The past is freedom and so must be remembered. The future too is remembered, because she has lived in her mind every instant of it: the trip to Europe, the love affair on board ship, the book written and published, the symphony written and performed, the husbands of other women stolen and returned. Having, in imagination, experienced all these adventures, Elly then has a great nostalgia for them. Thus the future is remembered.

She buttons her pajama jacket and goes to the bathroom. The door is closed. Who on earth is up this early? She walks into the living room and peeks out past a corner of the draperies down the hill, past the formal gardens swimming in the early-morning sunlight, to the two squirrels gamboling at the foot of the large apple tree. She stiffens herself and imagines her eyes growing cold, trying to print the scene on her eyeballs, as if the eyes are a camera. There should be music, she thinks. Nothing is ever appropriate. Professor Lanner, she imagines herself saying, I am not here by choice, but merely because I was caught trying to be free, to struggle from this spider web they call family life in America. Therefore, Professor Lanner, I’ll thank you not to be insolent to me. Perhaps you’ll be lucky next term and I will not be assigned to any of your classes. Let us hope for the best. In her mind his face is growing a trifle embarrassed and he is opening his mouth to speak when the bathroom door swings open and her mother appears, flecks of toothpaste on her wide chin.

“It’s about time,” Elly says.

“Why didn’t you use one of the bathrooms upstairs if you’re in a hurry?”

“I was too lazy.”

“Of course. Look at the time you went to bed.”

“You look. I’ll brush my teeth.”

Elly slams the door and washes briskly. The day has begun officially in her consciousness, as she picks the fine particles of sleep grit from the corners of her eyes.

Mimi was making breakfast, looking blowzy and tired as she yawned and said, “How do you want your eggs, Elly?”

Elly looked scornfully at the little woman with the freckled nose. “I told you time and again, call me either Elizabeth or Miss Kaufman.”

“Sorry. I thought you meant that only for when company was around.”

Mimi sounded not sorry at all, and Elly wondered what revenge one could practice on the maid. She was too stupid, Elly decided. Revenge demanded a certain amount of intelligence on the part of the victim.

“I want two yellow eyes staring right at me from the plate, so I can stick my fork in ’em and mutilate the pupils.”

Mimi shuddered and turned away. Justin had entered from the back door and heard Elly’s remark. “Don’t scare Mimi like that, Elizabeth,” he said, smiling. “She won’t get a thing done all day if you do, and today’s going to be a son-of-a-gun of a day. Besides you don’t want to mutilate any pupils. You’re a pupil yourself.” He laughed heavily at his witticism.

“Very funny,” Elly said, sipping orange juice, but there was no malice in her voice. She liked Justin. Max and Rose joined her and Elly hurried through her coffee. She ran down the hill while Max got the car from the garage. It was a bright September day. At the bottom of the hill they passed the workmen arriving to work on the tennis court.

“It’s going to be nice,” Max said as they drove down the long slope. “I’m going to play a lot myself. Harry told me Charlotte’s fiance, Jerry, is a good tennis player. I’ll ask him over to teach me how to play.”

“That’s a good idea,” Elly said, thinking: And what’s more, Professor Lanner, you’re probably nasty to me because you’re attracted to me. You’ve sublimated your desire for my body into a hatred of
me
. He looked, in her mind’s eye, as if he wanted to say something, so she allowed him to say, characteristically enough: My dear Elly, a little psychology is worse than none.

“… for dinner,” Max was saying.