The Girl With the Glass Heart: A Novel (22 page)

What kind of person, he wondered, knows that flowers smell differently the evening before an unseasonably warm day? He leaned his face into the breeze and inhaled. The sweetness was a little sickening, but it had a loveliness. Perhaps she wasn’t telling the truth. But he could never know. Flowers—in fact, anything outside of his city experience—were beyond him. She’s thirty-three, he thought, and I’m eighteen. He returned to the living room, where the couple, Mimi and Justin, were setting a small table for Alec.

Rose was being magnanimous in what she felt was her victory, the proof of which was Alec arriving alone.

“How do you like the house, Alec?” she asked, shooing Mimi back to the kitchen and pouring the coffee herself.

Questions, Jay thought. How much of our conversation is questions? Why did you come here? Of course Mrs. Kaufman’s question was rhetorical.

“It’s fabulous, Rose. You and Max have come a long way. Harry may have doubted it, but I always knew Max would make it.”

“Max. Max didn’t make it. I forced him. We’d still be broke if I didn’t make him gamble.”

Max laughed. “I owe it all to Rose. I should let her pay the taxes too.”

“Drink your coffee, Alec,” Elly said. “It’s getting cold.”

“Listen to the girl. She’s getting maternal, already,” Alec said, and could have bitten his tongue off immediately. But perhaps that business was forgotten by now. Anyway, Rose had never known.

“That’s me,” Elly said. “I’m a born mother. You want to be my son?” And then seeing Max start to rise from his chair, she relented and said, “Have some coffee, Jay.” She poured a cup for him, thinking, If I want him I’d better take him soon. He kissed me back. I felt it. He looks frightened.

“Don’t forget about the car,” Alec said. “Would it be safe there all night? Around the back is where it is.”

Max shook his head. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable.”

“I’ll get it.” Jay stood up. “I’ll put it in the garage.”

“You don’t know how to bring it around the front way. I’ll show you,” Elly said.

She was on her feet and moving toward the door when Rose called: “It’s getting late, Elly darling.”

She turned, nearly at the door, feeling herself poised on their loving looks, like a queen held aloft on a palanquin by slaves—the image was quite clear in her mind—and she said “There’s no school tomorrow” very quietly and walked out, leaving the door open behind her.

Feeling extremely awkward, Jay followed her, wondering at the manner in which she controlled situations which had so little to do with her at all. She was already standing at the point where the gardens ended and the plateau began to slope into the hill. They walked almost side by side, Elly leading by a few steps. Jay watched her feet, small in their red ballet slippers like little animated good-luck charms.

“It should be tomorrow already.” He sighed. “It seems I’ve been here so long.”

She glanced up at him. “It
is
tomorrow. It’s after midnight. You must feel at home here, then.”

He stooped and picked up a broken tree branch and, finding it strong, he used it as a cane. “I’m always like that. Every town on tour became home so quickly that my wife sensed it and it used to annoy the hell out of her.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, I guess—there I go again, I guess—she felt it made me too independent of her. She hated my career. Wanted me to settle down, give up concerts. I did.”

“That’s horrible. Is that why you wouldn’t play that night at Alec’s place?”

“I did play.”

“But you didn’t want to.”

“No, I didn’t want to. I don’t particularly want to tell you all this about myself either, but I am.”

“We’re
simpatico
,” she said.

“I guess so. What was your trouble—the trouble you were hinting about at the beach?”

“I’d just been expelled from school.”

“That
is
trouble.” He exhaled. “You go to school near home now, don’t you?”

“Yes. I hate it. This damned desert. If I’d been your wife, I wouldn’t have hated your work. I’d love to travel the way a concert artist does.” (The capitals of the world, Jay thought wryly.) “You shouldn’t have given it up. Ever. I used to try to play the piano but I had a nasty experience and it sort of ruined playing for me. I had this teacher, quite an old man, and he tried to make love to me—I was only fifteen at the time—and it scared and sickened me so that I just can’t play.”

“That’s quite a thing,” Jay said, feeling his words ineffectual. “You don’t try to play at all now?”

She shook her head. “Wanna give me lessons?” she asked, smiling.

“Sure, as long as I’m here.”

For the first time in over a year Elly was truly aware that she had died. She was sorry for it, but to admit it now would make it much worse. They were walking along the rear road now and the car was a dim blue shape up ahead at the side of the road.

“Alec was really drunk,” Elly remarked.

“They don’t come much drunker.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“So am I, but it’s not our fault. He’s in a spot with Annette and he doesn’t know what to do. I’ve been there myself and I know how he feels.”

He paused to light a cigarette for Elly, feeling the tension mount in her as she puffed and wondering what it was. He lighted one for himself too, although he didn’t feel like smoking.

“What do you mean, you’ve been there?” she said viciously. “Have you had Alec’s kind of trouble?”

“No, I only meant I’ve had the kind of problem that paralyzed me so that I couldn’t do a thing except get roaring drunk.”

“Well, he got himself into it,” she said. “Now he’s stuck. If he wants her back, that is.”

“He wants her back.”

“Then he can’t have us.”

“Us?”

“The family.”

“I don’t believe Alec thinks of you and the family together that way. There’s you and there’s your mother and father.”

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 here 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.