The Girl With the Glass Heart: A Novel (28 page)

On his way to the breakfast room a door opened and Elly appeared suddenly, as if there was no one else in the house.

“Hello, love,” she said.

So it’s not a fantasy, he thought. “Good morning, Elly,” he replied, playing it safe for the moment.

She wore a rust-colored frock with a bright yellow sash, and her hair was gathered by a rust-colored ribbon. Taking his hand she said, “Have you had your breakfast yet?”

“No, and I’m starved. I don’t usually eat much in the morning, but I’ve got a feeling I’m going to turn over a new leaf today.”

“Well, autumn’s the time for turning leaves.”

“
Doubles entendres
before breakfast. How do you do it?”

“I sleep well. Always. Did you?”

“Perfectly. What a bed!”

Jay was pleased it was going so well. He wished, though, that the rhythm in his chest would stop. He’d never known that love was so physical. He would have given anything to regain the easy familiarity he’d had the evening before. What had happened while he slept to destroy that and leave him tense and excited, on trial?

“Yes, the beds in this house are fantastic.”

“You use the word fantastic the way Italians say
fantastico
,” he said with a flair and a gesture that made her laugh, and he realized thankfully that the dry tired laugh he’d heard on waking had not been Elly’s.

The dining room was in a flurry of activity. Max sat in a low chair. In front of him was a still lower coffee table over which he now and then bent for a sip, while keeping his eyes still attached to the papers in his hand.

Rose and Mimi had apparently just finished dusting the room, and Mimi made one appealing gesture to Justin, who was placing scrambled eggs on the table, and left the room. Rose and Max greeted them simultaneously.

“Good morning.”

“Sit down. Eat.”

“Did you sleep well?”

They were seated, and Rose threw herself heavily into a chair.

“Oh,” she said with a sigh, “it’s so heavy in here.” She tapped her chest. “Always on the holidays I get so depressed—you know, a low feeling. Yom Kippur more than Rosh Hashana, but I have it now too.”

“Always on the holidays,” Max echoed. “I don’t know what to do. If I could have them canceled I would.”

“Don’t talk foolish, Dad,” Elly said. “You know Mom loves that feeling…. Where’s Alec?” She heaped eggs on Jay’s plate.

“Not up yet,” Justin said as he left the room.

Rose shook her head. “He’s so fresh, that Justin. He’ll never learn how to behave when there are guests. Have some more eggs, Mr. Gordon.”

“No, thank you. I’d like some more coffee though.”

Elly watched him sipping his coffee and thought: What ridiculous hands for a pianist! The fingers were short and stubby, the nails rather unkempt, the cuticle ragged. She had a sudden desire to manicure his nails, although she usually hated to do her own. Something was pulling her toward him, and it made her angry, since it was nothing she could control. A picture leaped into her mind and was gone as suddenly, a picture of her and Jay. She shut it out angrily, largely because of how nonvolitional the image had been. She didn’t want to think things like that at the breakfast table. She was wishing Alec would get up, when he materialized, lighting a cigarette in the doorway. I wonder if I wished him here, she thought.

“Hi, Alec!” she called, and he came to her and kissed her on the cheek, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke all around her head, as if to hide the kiss. Then he sat down and ate an enormous breakfast, saying very little to anyone.

“What time are we due at Shule, Max?” he asked, as he poured a second cup of coffee.

“In about a half hour.” Max raised his head from some papers he was marking.

“Max, darling, you shouldn’t do that on Rosh Hashana,” said Rose. “Put the papers away.”

Max sighed and obeyed. “Forgive me, Mr. Gordon,” he said. “You can take the man out of the business, but you can’t take the business out of the man.”

Alec was thinking that it was such a pleasantly cool day when he realized that inside the house you could never know the feel of the weather. There were no windows and the entire house was air-conditioned.

“How is it out?” he asked Mimi, who was clearing up the cluttered table.

“Awful warm,” Mimi complained. “Considering the time of the year, it’s awful warm, Mr. Kaufman.”

“Thanks,” Alec said, and watched Mimi depart. She had thick, superficially unattractive legs like Annette. What the hell was he going to do about Annette? He pushed back his chair and said to Jay, “Well, how about a walk?”

“Won’t be time,” Rose said shortly.

“In the garden?”

“In the garden there’s time.”

“Elly?”

“All right.”

Mimi was right. It was unseasonably warm. The great hickory tree that dominated the garden seemed to exude warmth. The sun was not bright but had veiled itself behind the few thick cumulus clouds.

Alec stumbled over a croquet mallet and, picking it up, said, “Come on, baby, I’ll spot you and Jay points and still beat you.”

They played, and Elly proved so good that (although Jay could hardly play at all) Alec was forced to give up.

“It’s a good thing for actors to eat humble pie every now and then,” Elly said. “Otherwise they’d be impossible.”

Alec smiled. “Being an actor is impossible anyway.”

“Oh, we’re feeling sorry for ourselves this morning,” Jay said, wishing instantly he could retract the words.

“I think so. Or, rather, sorry I came.”

“Don’t be, Alec.” Elly touched his arm.

“I’m not making myself very clear. What I mean is, I made the wrong choice.”

“You mean you should have stayed there?” Elly asked.

“No. There was a third choice. I could have disobeyed Max and come here with Annette. Then we would have seen if Max would throw us out of the house.”

“Well,” Jay remarked, “it would be interesting to see.”

“Don’t be a wise guy. If I had brought Annette you wouldn’t have been here to see anything.”

“That’s true,” Jay mused, suddenly made aware of how essential Alec’s misery was to his new excitement.

“But you’re here now, Alec, and I’m so happy that I won’t let you be miserable,” Elly told him.

“That’s nice, baby,” Alec said. “That’s nice.”

And she meant it at the moment. A half hour later, however, when they were driving to town and to synagogue, she had forgotten everything but that something oddly disturbing was happening to her. Who was he, this musician, this man she had met at a party, that he should be removing her from herself, like a shell being hollowed out, and placing within, instead, himself? They sat together in the car and she let her arm rest on his leg. He made no sign to show that he noticed it.

Suddenly Elly felt annoyed. Was she falling in love? Everybody was so concerned with love all the time. It degraded her, she felt, to think that she too, like everyone else, was interested mainly in love, love, love. All the songs, all the movies, the books—must she be the same as they were? Jay moved his leg under her hand and she drew her breath in sharply. Then he was motionless as the car rolled along the road, Max and Rose providing most of the conversation.

They were still talking when they entered the solemn structure of the synagogue. Those who were accustomed to being awed, the synagogue could awe; even for the skeptical, the tall, brownish pillars with scenes of the Holy Land painted around them, the high vaulted ceiling, the velvet-curtained sanctum which sheltered the ark of the Ten Commandments, and above all the almost continuous buzz of prayer, interrupted now and then by the sudden wail of a particularly zealous person: all this could impress and awe the religious and nonreligious alike, for it was as much a human ritual as an extrahuman ritual. Jay, for example, whose parents had passed on to him no religious sense at all, found himself holding his breath as he walked down the aisle with the Kaufmans. Elly and Rose had to sit upstairs, as the synagogue was Orthodox and, although Jewish women had long since proved themselves the masters of their families, in the house of worship they were still relegated to an inferior position.

Here Max Kaufman relaxed in a special manner that never happened elsewhere. Perhaps because of the memories of prayer in the Old Country with his father slapping him when he did not pray fast or clearly enough. “Say the words right,” his father would whisper and little Max would try. Then listening to his father he would hear an apparently meaningless blur of words and wonder why he couldn’t just mumble the way his father did. Perhaps it was these memories or their subtle shadows that allowed Max to lean his unprepossessing figure against the wooden seat back, drape his prayer shawl around him and, opening his prayer book, sing along with the cantor
sotto voce
, feeling comfortable and secure. The entire experience had very little to do with God.

Alec loaned Jay a prayer shawl which hadn’t been used since Alec was thirteen, and its newness embarrassed Jay. Not that he wanted to appear pious, but it seemed to him that several old men turned and stared at him as he threw it around his shoulders. Alec himself wore none and glanced at his prayer book only now and then.

A mixed choir of small boys and older men stood on a few raised steps before the cantor. A heavy man in a black robe led them and sang in a deep bass voice. Max turned in the pew and nudged Jay.

“Pretty good music, eh? He’s a trained musician, the leader. He gets two thousand just for the High Holidays.”

Jay nodded and smiled. “Quite good,” he whispered, aware that Max might not know whether he meant the money or the music.

Max smiled. He was pleased. It was important to him that visitors such as Jay Gordon should be impressed with their synagogue and services, although it was a once-a-year affair.

Alec shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The perspiration was forming inside his collar and the ceaseless murmur of the congregation was getting on his nerves, so he was relieved when the cantor took over the solo portion of the service. All this was a betrayal—his very presence in Colchester without Annette was treachery. He stared at the book before him, but the Hebrew words became a blur. There were a couple of attractive girls standing upstairs and he distracted himself for a few moments by staring at them.

Upstairs, Elly stared down at the men, remembering the services of the years before, glad to be there again, wondering why it was she was so drawn to the ritual of which she understood almost nothing and pleased that Jay was there. She saw his lips moving and wondered if he knew the Hebrew prayers. There was a commotion downstairs and she saw her Uncle Harry shoulder his heavy body past some people standing in the rear and hurry down the aisle as if he had been running. Actually he had taken his time and, as always, was annoyed at Max for being so punctual. Max hadn’t missed the opening service for ten years and Harry had been late each year.

Soon afterward, Sarah sat down next to Elly and whispered, “Move over, Elly darling.”

Elly slipped out of the pew and said, “You get in there. I may have to leave for a while.”

Sarah sat next to Rose and, after an exchange of greetings, settled down to a casual inspection of the people she knew who were present. Neither of the women ever followed the prayers very closely except when Elly, and all others whose parents were alive, were shooed out of the Shule while Max, Rose, Harry and Sarah stayed to intone the prayer for the dead, which only those whose parents had died were allowed to chant.

Elly’s foresight in sitting on the aisle paid off when she saw Jay leave his seat, whisper something to Alec and walk up the long aisle to the door. She instantly scampered downstairs, to find him lighting a cigarette at the top of the high stone steps that led to the street.

“Hi,” he said when he saw her. “I thought I’d get some air. It’s awfully hot in there.”

Elly held up a cigarette for him to light. “I never learned much Hebrew,” she said, “but isn’t it all goddamned beautiful? The music for me is as good as the Bach Magnificat.”

“I wish you wouldn’t mention things like the Bach Magnificat.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, I played a performance of it last year in Carnegie under Cowley.”

“I love Cowley.”

“Anyway, mentioning it here brings the whole outside world which—Well, of course you couldn’t know, but this excursion, this crazy junket with Alec at the last minute and your home here, is all quite out of my world. The Magnificat is too real, too familiar.”

“We’re pretty real here.”

“Maybe, but not too familiar. Anyway, I’ve been pounding
oom-pahs
for the last two years while ballerinas were involved with the beauty end of it. I’m not in the beauty business anymore.”

“Sometime I want to talk to you about that.”

“Elly, there are several thousand things I want to talk to you about. You know you look like a great big leaf with that brown skirt and ribbon.”

He was split asunder and there was nothing he could do about it. It was why he had left the synagogue. Suddenly something had welled in his throat, like vomit, only made of love instead of soured food.

Elly smiled. “That’s too bad. This is the season when leaves die, you know.” She stepped toward him. “What’s happening?” she asked suddenly, as if she were a police inspector. “What’s happening? I have a right to know.”

He almost said, “What do you mean?” getting as far as the what, but he knew—or hoped he knew—what gave her eyes their curious stare at that moment and her voice its crazy flutter. He shrugged and exhaled smoke.

“I’ve been trying to figure it out ever since I woke up.”

“But why me too?” she asked, and there was in her questioning almost a plea for mercy, as if to say, Well, why should this terrible event befall me? I’ve done nothing. And then she sort of straightened herself up and said, “That’s silly. I knew something was going on last night when we went for the car. I fell asleep hating you for whatever it was that was going on. Listen, there’s a pine forest far in back of the hill. No one ever goes there but me. I want you to see it.”