The Girl With the Glass Heart: A Novel (32 page)

“I wouldn’t call it a stinking cultural whatcha-may-call-it. Some pretty good dancing, I thought,” Jay replied.

“You don’t have to be polite, Mr. Gordon, just because you’re from New York. These road companies are no Martha Grahams. We of the hinterlands expect that.”

“In that case I think you got more today than you expected. I liked it.”

“Well, it’s nice of you to say that, anyway,” Lanner said, refusing to allow Jay any simple sincerity of motive.

Elly was trying to isolate what it was in Lanner’s voice that made it so patronizing. He seemed to arch his voice at the person to whom he spoke, intent on creating the impression of
double entendre
, even in the most simple of statements. It was a quality Elly hated. Finally a waiter took their order.

“So you don’t find it too bad, here in the sticks?” Lanner filled the silence that fell after the drinks had been served as if he, as the visitor, felt the obligation.

“Not too bad,” Jay said pleasantly.

“You know, there’s only one thing more exasperating in a visitor from the big city than being intolerant of small-town ways, and that’s being tolerant of them.”

“The question of tolerance never occurred to me, Dr. Lanner.”

“Oh, it’s just that your determination not to be superior is a little superior. But perhaps you’re trying to be nice because you like one of our girls.”

Elly saw what Lanner was doing, saw that Jay was under attack, and her first impulse was to remove herself from the situation. She shut the voices out and, running her index finger along her thumb, she felt that the swelling she had noticed the other day had developed into a hard little lump. She pressed it hard, almost hoping to feel some pain. If it was a growth, she thought, it was probably nonmalignant. It was nice to have it there, like a friend who couldn’t possibly leave her unless she chose to force it to leave. She pressed it gently and closed her eyes. She hoped it wouldn’t disappear overnight. It was something she would tell no one about. After all, there were people who nursed emotional wounds without disclosing them. Well, this was her wound, although, pleasantly enough, without pain. That’s what she wanted—a wound without pain. She tried to feel out its shape, but it wasn’t clearly enough defined. Just a lump. The thought that Jay was under attack by Lanner intruded on her consciousness. She came to the surface of the self-imposed anesthesia and heard them talking.

“I’ve heard that you gave up a very promising career a while back. It’s to be expected, I guess, that you would bury yourself in a place like this.”

“Dr. Lanner, I’m only visiting here until the end of the week.”

“And,” Elly put in, “he hasn’t given up anything. I don’t know where you get your information, but Jay has been accompanying dancers instead of giving his own concerts, that’s all.” Her anger was growing. “You can be vindictive to your pupils—that’s all right—but Jay is our guest.”

“I’m not—” Lanner began, but Elly continued:

“You’re a nasty person—always manufacturing conflicts and then cashing in on them.”

She was amazed at her courage. It wasn’t the liquor. It must have been the more and more withdrawn look on Jay’s face that had frightened her into making the counterattack. And perhaps somewhere involved was a feeling that Lanner was doing what she could possibly do to someone else, except she had thought that she was the only one who felt imprisoned here in Colchester.

“Elly,” Jay was saying, “I’m sure Dr. Lanner didn’t mean any—”

“No,” Lanner interrupted, rising unsteadily, and it occurred to Jay that he had been drinking before joining them. “No, she’s probably right. And people from the big city do something to me—as if I was a farmer. It’s the way my wife—” he bent over Jay and breathed in his face—“it’s the way my wife likes to think of me. Just a hick professor in a hick town. Why should you have the luck to be free?”

“Nobody’s free, Professor Lanner.”

“Young man, I teach philosophy. I have also read Immanuel Kant, and I know that whatever it is one Kant or can do—a tired joke, sorry—no one is free. However, since Miss Kaufman feels I’m nasty, et cetera, I’ll wait for the proof that no one is free—that is, my wife, at the bar. Good-by.”

“Elly, why were you so hard on him?”

She grasped his hand. “I wanted to defend you suddenly. And it felt good. I’m glad I did.”

“I’m glad you feel that way, but—I don’t know, he was a little high and—”

“He’s that way when he’s sober, too. Don’t worry about him.”

“No.” Jay glanced at the crowded bar where Lanner sat sipping his drink. “No, I think it’s too late to worry about him.”

I actually made the effort, Elly was thinking, to leave myself. I left myself to defend him. So that’s what it is to be in love. You have to leave yourself.

On the way out they met Alec and a group of people among whom was Renée Kert. Elly looked straight at her and waited, while the others all babbled hello and this and that about the concert. The dancer returned her stare for a moment and finally turned away.

“A bunch of people are coming over to the house,” Alec said. “Come on with us.”

Jay started to speak, but Elly said, “We have an appointment.”

“Where?”

“Over on the other side of town.”

The other side of town was the chilly, pine-needle-covered floor of the forest. Just as when it was warm outside it was cooler in the clearing, so now that it was cool outside, here it was even chillier. And if it still possessed the quality of a refuge, it was a more desperately sought refuge. The tone of the overhanging pine branches was darker and there was a constant rustling, a whispering that indicated they were never really alone—always a voice, as the sea had been when they’d first met, a voice saying something in an unintelligible language, or at least in a language to which Elly did not have the key.

This time she held back. It was as if she had thought better of this business of leaving herself and was protecting her vulnerability again. His hands almost made her forget this purpose but she won. He moved and she waited, her tongue inside his mouth, like a thermometer, waiting for the telling spasm that would clamp his teeth over the soft pink flesh of her tongue. In his excitement and happiness, Jay was unaware of the difference between this time and the last.

“God,” she said, “I’m soaked with perspiration. I’ll catch a cold.”

He wrapped his coat around her and held it about her shoulders and they lay there listening to the wind. When Elly began shivering they got up and brushed the clinging pine needles from each other’s clothes. Then they walked to the car quickly and drove to the house.

From the cars parked outside, they could see that there were quite a few guests still there. Justin met them at the door.

“A lot of people here, eh?” Jay said to Justin, noticing suddenly that there were a few pine needles on the back of his coat.

“Quite a few, Mr. Gordon. Less now than before, but still—Mr. Alec was looking around for you. He’s in Mr. Kaufman’s room—the den, I guess it is.”

Elly threw open the den door and almost hurled herself at Alec, who was smoking a cigarette in the large, low-slung chair near the far wall.

“Well,” he said, “well, baby, what’s this?”

She sat on the floor and buried her face in his lap. “I don’t know what to do. I’m afraid. I feel soft, like I could be squashed if somebody squeezed or stepped on me. I love him and I’m so crazy happy and then I’m terrified because I’ve sort of gone away from myself. I’m wide open and I hate it.” He looked down at the hair, with the rust-colored ribbon cutting across it, and thought: So this is what it comes to. If I’d have brought Anny, Jay wouldn’t have come and if—but I didn’t, and Jay did come.

“Maybe it’s the best thing that ever happened to you, Elly. You can’t live with yourself always. There are others and when you love—oh, who am I to lecture you! I don’t know anything myself, but I’ll bet you’ve got a tremendous amount of stuff to give somebody, and if he feels about you the way he seems to, well, you’ll see how exciting it can be to—”

She shook her head and said in a muffled voice, “I’m afraid, I’m afraid.” Then she lifted her face and he saw that there were teardrops, some smudged and others pearled, along her eyelids and cheeks like rain on a flower, and he grasped her by her long hair and pressed her wet face to his chest, knowing himself to be mute and lost.

Jay was playing the “Kinderszenen” of Schumann, wearing a sport shirt open at the throat and a heavy sweater over it, when Elly walked in munching a breakfast apple. She stood behind and to the left of him, looking out of the wall, down the hill, and listened to him. He was really leaning into it. She watched him then and saw his back curve inward and spring straight again as he built the climax. She could see the perspiration that stained his collar. He seemed to have so many fingers, so many hands, everywhere up and down the keyboard. The room rang with the sounds like a struck bell. He is, Elly thought, looking at the tall, slender body seated at the piano, the bobbing head and neck, the long arms and fat fingers, like a wind and I like a sailboat and I have been becalmed for so long. I could write a poem like that, or I could begin to keep a diary again.

He finished and held the last chord overly long, as if reluctant to end it. Then he whirled around on the stool, and Elly saw on his face what was not quite a smile, but the equivalent of a social smile. He was happy and he had whirled around, not because he had heard Elly, as he had not, but out of exuberance and high spirits.

“Hello!” He laughed. “Have you been here? When did you get up? Isn’t that Schumann a wonderful piece?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“‘Scenes from Childhood.’”

“Oh. That’s why you played it with such … such gusto.”

“Well, it’s marked
con brio
.”

“Oh, yes. With fire. But it was such a cool fire.”

“Sure.” He smiled. “Any fool can play with a heated fire. My way takes talent…. You slept late.”

“No. You got up early. Where do you get all the energy?”

“Children always have energy, and I’m feeling like a child. Look at me. I haven’t dressed like this for years. This is what I used to wear when I was practicing for my Carnegie concert. Sport shirt for freedom and sweater so as not to catch cold when I sweat up. I put these on first thing this morning and came downstairs. After breakfast it suddenly struck me that they were my practice clothes, and I sat down at the piano. That was two hours ago. Do you know, Elly Kaufman, that I haven’t practiced seriously for two consecutive hours in two years? The ballet isn’t serious practice.”

“That’s what I tried to tell you yesterday after the concert, but you said, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’” She made him sound pompous.

“I’m sorry. But I was afraid it was all too good to be true. I’m still afraid you’re too good to be true.”

“With good reason. I
am
too good. So I’m not very true. I’m so glad you’re playing, Jay. Can I take the credit?”

“You don’t have to. I’m giving it to you….”

“Play that intermezzo for me. The Brahms.”

He played it and she listened quietly. When he had finished, she said, “No wonder everybody has an ‘Our Song.’ Music is perfect for memory because that’s what it is. Time, I guess, made tangible and real. You’re the only person I can talk to about things like this. I mean, music is perfect for remembering, because the other arts all deal with the external world which changes. Music doesn’t have that—it’s music. It’s itself.”

“You’ve got something there. You’re pretty old for eighteen—you know that, don’t you?”

She sat on the sofa next to him. “I’m old for my age, I think sometimes,” she said.

“You understand music.”

She wanted to tell him about
music all the time
, but couldn’t quite get it out. There were some things …

“Yes, I do,” she said. “And I understand you. Listen, I have a marvelous idea—” She clapped her hands and sang a few gay notes.

“Well?” He grinned.

“Oh, it’s a terrific idea. Oh, I’m a genius!”

“Come on, already.”

“You’ll give a concert here. A little concert and we can invite people from around here. It would get you off to a little start.”

Jay stood up and ran his hand through his already mussed hair. “A concert? In the house?”

“Don’t be a snob. It’s a lovely house for a concert.” She jumped up and followed him.

“It’s not that. Don’t be silly. It’s a lovely idea. Just a little startling. I’m just getting used to thinking about really playing again. A concert. No critics, thank God. On second thought, there’ll be critics. There always are. Just none from newspapers here.”

“You’d have something to work toward—to practice for.”

Rose Kaufman breezed in then, wearing a bright-red house dress. “I’m exhausted. What an evening! First all the people and then the big mistake. I had to play rummy. I swore by my child’s health I’d quit by one but we played till two just because I was winning. How do you feel, Elly darling?” She bent down to pick up a newspaper Max had dropped on his way out that morning.

“I’m fine, Mom, but Jay and I are talking in here.”

“Oh, excuse me! I’ll come back later.” She paused in the doorway. “No doors to shut,” she said, “only screens and draperies. Mr. John Marron Lang.” She shrugged and left.

“Your mother’s a great artist.” Jay laughed.

“Don’t change the subject—great artist! How about the concert? It would be the best thing for you.”

“I could…. I could.”

“Sure you could.”

Now that she was manipulating him, Jay was less a stranger that she was in love with—had more in common with the other men she loved, like Alec. Her manipulation of Alec had, she realized, resulted in Jay replacing Annette on the trip home, so in a sense she had made Jay for herself. He was her creation and now she was developing that creation. Last night’s crying jag was forgotten.

Jay rippled his fingers down the keyboard. “Why not? All I’ve got to do is forget the last two years and just play.” He grabbed Elly by the shoulders. “You’re fabulous,” he said. “You can’t exist. I must have made you up. Where do you get these wonderful ideas?”