The Girl With the Glass Heart: A Novel (2 page)

Somehow Elly didn’t think he would be coming back to Indianapolis for the High Holy Days this year as in past times. Last year the fighting between him and Rose had been awful. Oh, why couldn’t Mother go away for a vacation over the holidays as she was always threatening! Then Alec could come and go to synagogue with Dad and herself.

She began to write:

September 20th, 1946

Sometimes you may wonder how it is with me on a holiday when I’m all alone in my room and I want someone to call me on the phone and hear them say, Hello—how are you?—I love you. With me it’s always a desire for snow on the ground, thick as fur, and the sound of bells ringing, the way they used to when I first went to school.

Snow and bells and the desire for someone to call me to say they love me. It doesn’t matter if the holiday is Christmas, Passover or New Year’s. Always snow and love.

Perhaps you wonder sometimes whether holidays are full of nostalgia for me and whether I remember all sorts of things then. With me there are always two pictures that come to mind.

In the first, I am walking along a street downtown. It is snowing heavily and the bells of a near-by church have begun to ring. With me is a boy; his face at the moment is turned away from me and from the observer (which is you, I guess). I am wearing a coat of dark cloth and I float my eyes in and out of the shop windows gaily decorated with the frills of whatever holiday season it may be (just between you and me I’m pretty sure it’s Christmas).

It is a side street on which we walk arm in arm and we turn, the sound of the bells still with us, onto the large avenue and approach the great church. There is a tremendous excitement in the air and my heart is in my mouth for no reason at all and I’m all aroused and happy.

In the picture I can see the boy’s face now (I guess that means you can too) and he is fine. His face, like mine, is wet with snowflakes and his smile lies on his lips like an unspoken thought. We change our minds and as we turn away from the church (we hadn’t wanted to pray, only to hear the music of the Mass) he is half sad because he is not sure he loves me and I’m half sad because I am sure that I love him, but I think it may be only for tonight that I do.

The sky is clear, the breeze is sharp and we both wear heavy coats. I look like a doll dressed up as a present. As I look now, the figures turn a corner eastward and are out of sight (mine and yours, I guess), always in that gentle, half-sad state of indecision I guess you’d call love.

That’s one way it is with me on holidays, in case you’ve ever wondered.

Another picture that takes shape when I think of holidays is quite different. It is not cold, but cool-chilly, like today. Perhaps early or middle September. I wonder whether to wear a coat or not as I accompany my father to synagogue. The holiday quality is different now. The air is heavy with dignity. Everyone we pass on the street is dressed very carefully and neatly. I enter the synagogue with a silly feeling of doing something proper, something I
should
do. The chanting of the cantor sounds strange. In this picture, no matter when it takes place, I am younger than I was in the other one. I am a little girl. (I cannot estimate my size in the picture too clearly.)

At first as I watch this picture I am annoyed because there is no breathless half-sadness like there was before. My father prays. I am lonely. I grow more lonely as time passes. My father explains the meaning of the various prayers. I become restless, irritated at having things explained to me. But when we reach one particular prayer I take notice.

“This,” my father tells me, “is Al Tashlechanu, in which we ask God for things, mostly help. It is one of the high points of the service.” I am surprised at my father’s tone of voice. It is intense. I am surprised because my father has told me many times that he does not believe in a God but goes to synagogue at the New Year’s and on The Day of Atonement only because other Jews go and he wants to be like them.

We continue praying. My father explains further. His voice is raucous. He sounds a little like Uncle Alec. “Al Tashlechanu. In this we ask—” and he sing-songs in English—“Do not turn from me in mine old age nor desert me when my strength is gone and I am as a child.” I look at my father. This picture is now as sad as the first one I told you about. I try to imagine my father, Max Kaufman, as a child. The picture loses its intensity, becomes vague, blurred. The other one joins it in my mind.

Is it a boy and a girl who walk on the Christmas snow at night holding hands? Or is it my father and I who walk while a boy and a girl sit in synagogue saying to God, Do not desert me in my old age when my strength is gone and I am as a child?

That’s how it is with me on holidays, in case you’ve ever wondered. I may be young or old, certain of love or afraid of it, but on holidays it’s always snow and love and the sound of bells and hearing the phone ring and answering and wanting to hear someone say, Hello—how are you?—I love you.

Elly closed the book carefully and placed it under a pile of papers in the drawer. She was embraced by a sadness that was focusless and objectless, a velvet-soft cloud of melancholy that she could almost localize as a heavy, thick feeling in the chest and throat.

How could one feel so sad, she wondered, and yet not upset or desperate? When her mother was sad, or depressed, as Dad called it, she ranted and made such a fuss, or else sat in the kitchen and cried. So many people were sad. Not like Uncle Alec, who had a sad appearance but who was never really anything but happy. His long, thin face with its prominent cheekbones, tapering chin and gray eyes was like a mock-melancholy clown’s face. A little bit like Eddie’s, she thought.

Eddie Roth was a boy who hung around the corner with Jerry Wilson and the others. Only Eddie was strange. His mouth fell open a little and he didn’t talk quite right. He was always looking at the clocks in the store windows and asking you what time it was and could he see your watch. The boys kidded him terribly, especially Jerry. They called Eddie
character
but Eddie never seemed to notice. Elly supposed he was sort of crazy. Like Alec’s, his face was long and thin and wore an expression of melancholy and in her mind the two faces sometimes mixed, became one.

The door opened behind her. Rose entered and began to sniff. “Have you been smoking here, Elly?”

“Oh, cut it out, Mom!”

Rose threw an eloquent arm in the direction of the half-opened door and whispered loudly, “Your father. Mmm, I’d like to … Always afraid to do what’s right and what’s best. I never have a peaceful day.”

Elly was instantly and furiously embarrassed. She knew every word spoken could be heard anywhere in the house. She made an agonized face and shook her head silently in the direction of the door. When her mother began to speak again Elly stepped to the door and shut it tightly. “Cut it out, Mom,” she whispered. “Dad can hear you. For God’s sake!”

“If you had what I have to put up with … Listen, Elly darling, wouldn’t you like to move to Colchester?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know. Whatever you and Dad think is best.”

Rose knew that behind this apparent acquiescence to parental decisions lay enormous reserves of revolt. This was Elly’s currency for immediate peace and with it she bought being “left alone.”

“Well, do you think you’d like it?”

“How do I know until I’m there? I probably would.”

“It’s only fifty minutes on the bus. You’ll be living in both places, really.” Her tone was plaintive, in spite of the fact that Elly had offered no objections. Rose never trusted those who gave in too easily. She was accustomed to fighting for anything she desired.

“Why don’t you speak to your father? Tell him you want to go. It’ll mean a lot to us.”

“Like what?”

“More money.”

“Really?”

“That’s right. Wouldn’t you like to go away to college?”

“You know I would, Mom.” But the remark was a hopeless one. Max and Rose both disapproved of boarding schools and had let Elly know it as early as when she entered high school. But she said, “All right, I’ll talk to him. Not that it will do any good, but I’ll tell him I’d
love
and simply
adore
to move to Colchester, Indiana, population fifty.”

“Don’t be smart.”

“I’m not smart. You keep telling me I am but I know better.”

“So if you know better, why don’t you get better marks in school?”

“Because I’m too busy hanging around with Jerry Wilson and the kids on the corner. I’ll save you the trouble of saying it.”

“Don’t do me any favors and don’t save me any trouble. Just do your schoolwork for a change.”

“Okay, Mom.” Elly was tucking her tan beret over her ears.

“Where are you going?”

“Out.”

“Out where?”

“Just out.”

“For a walk?”

“Yes, for a walk.”

“Be back in an hour. Harry and Sarah may be here for supper.”

“Yop. ’By.”

The blue-black atmosphere of early evening seemed to sift itself through the buildings across the street toward Elly as she stood on the front doorstep. As always she looked up to see if it was to be mainly a star evening or mainly a moon evening. Tonight seemed to be both. A thin crescent of a moon dominated the sky, but at the outer fringes of the brightness a few stars were scattered. She waited. Nothing happened. Still she waited. A few people passed by as she waited, like puppets in the twilight. Nothing happened.

She was not quite sure exactly when it had left her, but she knew that a year ago at this time it had still been with her. She would be coming home any summer evening a little later than she was supposed to and she was apprehensive as to whether her mother would be up, waiting. She knew there would be no recriminations, no argument—just the click of the lamp, the vision of her mother glancing at the bedside clock and the little stream of light trickling out on the hall floor. Then another click and the floor was wiped clean of light. Then stillness broken only by the heavy regular snoring of her father. She would undress, knowing every sound she made in the small apartment could be heard by her mother awake in her bed. That was the way it always was.

Elly would pause on the doorstep and, checking to make sure no one was around, she would light a cigarette. Then slowly, as in a ritual, she would turn her face upward and the feeling would begin like a beating in her chest, the exultancy as she gazed at stars like diamond-headed nails spat from a workman’s mouth. It was a respiratory ecstasy related at all times to breathing; it expanded her chest until it was infinite and there was a cry preparing itself all the way within her that told of the intimacy between herself, Elly Kaufman and everything else. The building behind her and her wakeful, waiting mother receded into nonexistence. She was related to the dark and this was the only way she could welcome and thank it for protecting her and making the future
now
instead of a dim possibility. The beginning of tears in the corners of her eyes signified the climax of the wave of feeling in which she was submerged. It would subside and, resting her head against the stone building for a moment, she would crinkle her chin a little in happiness and pause a while before turning back to the house and the waiting, punitive silence.

Now she waited too, but with no real confidence. She had waited too many times already, with no results. The entry in her journal was dated January 12, 1946, but that was only the evening when she’d remembered that she had not been pausing at the doorstep before going in at night. Perhaps it had been the coldness of the Christmas season, but it was still cold in January, and suddenly, as if someone had reminded her of a neglect, she had paused on the doorstep on January 12, 1946, and found she had lost it.

She’d cried a little and the memory of the feeling had been so vivid she was sure it would return if only she waited long enough. But the night air grew freezing, and still no return. Then she was frightened. This could happen to anything you loved if you weren’t careful. And standing there, her nose growing colder and colder, she tried to remember what she had been doing these past few months which had tempted her into betrayal. Mostly, she guessed, she had sort of discovered Jerry Wilson, his long arms, his bright eyes and his persistence—calling the house two and three times a day until her mother embarrassed Elly by telling him to limit himself to one call a day.

It was in these last few months that she had discovered that kisses could be long-drawn-out moments instead of quick brittle pecks. She had gone out of herself more than ever before, perhaps because of Jerry paying so much attention to her. For a boy who was what her mother called a “roughneck” he was oddly shy and careful with Elly. She was sometimes intensely fond of him and at other times, when he was being a roughneck, teasing Eddie Roth or telling lies to girls about what certain boys had said to them, she hated him. There was in him, she sensed, a great fund of energy that manifested itself only partly in his occasional cruelty. She enjoyed being part of, or even just near, that energy. She had tried time and again to explain it to her mother, but Rose refused to listen.
You cheapen yourself when you’re with a boy like that. He’s no good and his family’s no good.
So Elly had given up, resorting instead to lies when asked where she had been.

She gave up waiting. She had lost it and there was no longer anything to wait for. She was not quite sure exactly what it was that she had felt in those ecstatic moments. The precise nature of the feeling had grown vague. Perhaps I’m growing up, she thought, and grownups don’t have feelings like that. But that implied that they once had. She tried to imagine her mother or father in the throes of gazing at the sky, throat tied into a knot. It was unimaginable. Uncle Alec, maybe; certainly not Uncle Harry. She checked her lipstick with a pocket mirror and walked to the corner where the boys were sure to be.

“Hi, Jerry.”

Jerry Wilson paused in his conversation with Rocky. “Hi, Elly,” he replied. “How’s the girl?”

“Okay,” she said, but he had already returned to his conversation after a quick look at her out of the corners of his eyes. She was pleased that he was shy. She leaned against the brick wall of the cigar store and lighted a cigarette. She was on the verge of something and wished she knew what it was. It was like pausing before diving into a lake or pool and suddenly realizing you weren’t sure whether there was any water there or not.