The Girl With the Glass Heart: A Novel (4 page)

This was an honor Max avoided over Rose’s loud objections. He hated to be conspicuous. When Elly whispered her mother’s message to him he sighed and shook his head. “What does she want?” he said. For appearance’s sake, Max made one offer while the bidding was in its early stage and sat back while others took it from there. He did not look up at Rose.

Suddenly Elly felt stifled as she watched her father and his two brothers bend over their prayer books, rocking slowly to and fro. She slipped out of the pew and ran up the aisle and out the door. The street was deserted except for a few boys playing ball on the sidewalk.

She tucked her hair under her red ribbon and walked to the corner. She knew she couldn’t stay long, but she wanted to see Jerry and explain how, in the excitement of Uncle Alec’s arrival, she had forgotten their appointment of the night before. Then she would run back to the synagogue before the service was over.

Jerry was having his shoes shined when she reached the corner.

“Hi!” she said, feeling again that strange quality of anger and warmth at the sight of him, arrogant and secure on his perch above the shoeshine boy.

“Hey, Elly,” Jerry said, descending and flipping the boy a coin. There was no one else on the corner. The morning was quiet. “Let’s take a walk, hey,” he said.

“Okay, Jerry.”

They strolled slowly toward a near-by park. When they were almost there he slipped his arm around her waist. In the park the monuments and statues brooded all about them as they flopped down on the grass laughing at something Jerry had said.

“Why’re you so nice now and so different other times?” Elly asked.

“When am I different?”

“Oh, you know, on the corner with the boys and that poor kid Eddie.”

“Oh, that. I don’t know. You can’t be soft, you know. You’ve got to be able to take care of yourself.”

“Am I soft?” she asked.

“Yeah, you’re soft.” He laughed, poking her gently in the stomach.

She pulled away quickly. “Don’t do that,” she said.

“All right.” He leaned over and kissed her.

She moved her lips under his as if she were speaking in her surprise. When it was over she said, “I have to go,” and got up, brushing at her skirt.

“Don’t go.”

“I have to.”

Leaving the park, Elly observed the statues apparently observing her and thought it strange that their blank white eyes could not see her. She told this to Jerry, who grinned but did not seem to understand. Her cheeks were flushed from the kissing. Before they left the park she applied fresh lipstick.

“By the way,” Jerry said, “Eddie Roth wanted to talk to you. He said for you to meet him here under the big statue at three o’clock today. How about it?”

“Okay,” she said. “What about?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

She left Jerry at the door of his house and returned to the synagogue alone. She slipped in beside her mother, who wanted to know where she’d been. “Just outside,” she whispered.

In front of the temple later the family gathered: Harry and Sarah, both the darkest members of the family, and looking, oddly enough, quite alike; Alec, skinny and singular, and Max and Rose, both heavy and authoritative in manner. Elly stood near Alec. She knew the tableau well. This arrangement was for funerals, holiday services,
bar mitzvahs
, the family standing around too neatly dressed to be really comfortable.

“Come up to our place,” Sarah suggested.

“No, come by us,” Max said. “Rose has whisky and spongecake already prepared.”

There was a general murmur of agreement and they began walking. When they reached the house Elly started to run and called out, “I’ll be back soon.” Before anyone could object she was gone.

Upstairs, coats were thrown on the beds and they all sat in the living room drinking and munching spongecake.

“So, Alec,” Harry said, “I hear you might be in a movie in New York.”

“Might be.”

“You spend all this time trying to get into movies in Hollywood and now to New York?”

“That’s what
I
said!” Rose exclaimed.

“Well, that’s the way it goes,” Max said.

“I don’t need any defense.” Alec rose and filled his glass. “You all know I’m in a tough field.”

“Tough!” Harry exclaimed. “Impossible! Acting—my God! Why don’t you take a job with Max, Alec, or in my office? Mama would have liked for you to work with us.”

“I’m worth as much to Max’s factory or your office in Hollywood or New York as I would be here and you know it. I’m not cut out for anything except my own field.”

“All right,” Harry said, throwing up his hands, “all right.”

“Have a piece of spongecake, Harry,” Max offered. “Rose baked it.”

“I don’t know how she finds time to bake,” Sarah said as her husband accepted the cake, “with Max and Elly on her hands.”

“You make time,” Rose replied. “Max is nothing. He’s never home. It’s Elly with the schoolwork and all that’s such a problem.”

“She’ll be all right,” Alec said. “She’s a lovely girl.”

“Oh, she’s lovely all right. Rose is only afraid she’s too lovely.”

“Sure,” Rose said. “Where do you think she is now? You think I know? With boys maybe.”

“That’s nothing so terrible.”

There was a murmur of agreement. Rose went to the kitchen and Harry glanced quickly at Sarah. She followed Rose.

When the women had gone, Harry accepted a cigar from Max and said, “If you still want to open the new factory in Colchester you can have half the money from me.” He exhaled sharply as if he had been saving the words for some time.

Alec turned from the window where he had been daydreaming and looked at his older brothers.

Max was on his feet. “Thanks, Harry,” he said. “I guess I’ve been waiting for that to make up my mind for me.”

“Okay,” Harry said. “For the rest of the money I’ll cosign a note for you. You see, Alec, your brother is such a good business risk I’ll even sign a note for him.”

“I always knew he was,” Alec said quietly.

“Rose,” Max bellowed happily. “Sarah, Rose, come in here.”

Sarah appeared, Rose following, wiping her hands on an apron.

“We’re going to—” Max began, but Harry interrupted.

“I’m lending the money for the new factory.”

Half the money, Alec was tempted to add, but the ensuing tumult changed his mind.

“Everybody stays to dinner,” Rose announced. “Maybe the last time you’ll all have dinner in this apartment. If Max builds, we’re moving to Colchester.”

“I’ll call Charlotte and tell her to come over,” Sarah said.

The dining-room table was opened. Only Elly’s absence held up the beginning of dinner. Finally they began without her, in an atmosphere of festivity. The front door opened and Elly entered, jacket in hand, her pale face streaked with tears.

“What’s the matter, Elly?”

“We’ve got some wonderful news.”

“What happened?”

She disappeared into her room and shut the door behind her.

“Leave her alone.”

“Go see what’s the matter.”

“No, I’ll go.”

“Let me talk to her,” Alec said loudly and clearly. “She’ll talk to me. She hasn’t seen me in a long time.” He dropped his napkin on the table and left the room.

“An
actor
,” Rose whispered to her sister-in-law.

When Alec opened the door, Elly was seated at the desk, her diary opened before her, slowly writing something. Alec closed the door, walked toward her silently and placed his long, slender hands on her shoulders. She recognized the touch and in one movement convulsively slammed the diary shut and, turning, threw her head on Alec’s chest.

“What’s the matter, dear?” he asked.

She stood up and walked to the sofa. She wiped her face with a handkerchief, extracted from her pocketbook. “Why are people so cruel? I swear I’ll never see him again, no matter what. I mean I suppose it’s nothing so terrible, but I don’t know—” This tumbled from her lips as she stared into her handkerchief.

“Tell me,” Alec said, seating himself beside her.

“Well, there’s this boy, this Eddie Roth, who hangs out at the corner and he’s kind of—well, retarded, you know, like a halfwit only not quite, and this boy, this Jerry—Momma hates him, she always told me he was no good—he makes fun of Eddie all the time. I just saw Eddie in the park. You know what they told him? They told him that I was crazy about him and I asked to meet him in the park today at three o’clock. I never in my whole life said anything like that to Jerry. Jerry told me Eddie wanted to tell me something. That’s why I went just now. He sort of stood there and when I told him they’d lied, that he was a nice boy but I didn’t want to go out with him, he stared at me for a long time and didn’t say anything. Then he began to cry and you know what he said? He said—I could hardly understand him he talks so funny—he said while he was crying and all, he said, ‘I thought maybe you loved me.’ My God, Uncle Alec, it’s not my fault! Oh, wait till I get Jerry Wilson. No, I’ll never see him again!”

Alec held her to him while she sobbed a little. “Listen, baby,” he said, “the world is like a great big rock in the ocean (
she’s so much like I was and maybe still am
) and we’re all hanging on. The minute you’re cruel to someone it’s like pushing them off the rock. Some people need only a very little push because they haven’t got too good a hold on it. Like this Eddie fellow (
and me and you
).”

“But what can you do?”

“I’ll tell you what you can do, baby. You can find your own kind of people and stick with them. People who aren’t always trying to push somebody or other off the goddamned rock into the ocean.”

She pulled away and wiped her eyes with her grimy hands. “Then Mom was right about Jerry and how it was degrading to see him.”

“Apparently she was right this time, baby.”

“I love you, Uncle Alec.”

“And I love you, Elly, darling. Now wash your face and come inside and hear the
good
news.”

“What good news? What happened?”

“You’re moving away from Indianapolis, to Colchester. Uncle Harry is helping Dad build the new factory. Isn’t that marvelous?”

She twitched a little smile. “Yes, it is. And I think you gave me wonderful advice, Uncle Alec. Really wonderful.”

“Aren’t you excited about moving and everything?”

“Sure I am. I guess it’s a shock and coming after this awful business.”

She’s another one of the difficult ones, Alec thought, gazing at her wide-open hazel eyes. I got away and have stayed away, at least so far. What’s going to happen to her? Elly and me. The sad cases of the Kaufman family. God knows I have little enough strength, but she may have even less. Annette would love her….

Suddenly he wished he were back in Los Angeles, away from everything that had always stifled him here—wished he were back with Annette, drinking dark beer in some bar rather than eating the spongecake of his childhood with his brothers.

“Remember,” he said, brushing back the dark-yellow strands from her eyes, “find your own kind. That’s the only way. Now you wash your face and then come on inside.”

He turned to leave, and then turned back. “You’d like Annette. Maybe I’ll bring her here once.”

“Is she your girl? I’d love to see her. Is she like me?”

He shook his head. “No, baby. No one’s like you.”

While she was washing her face the thought came: How will I know my own kind? If it’s not family, then it’s awfully hard to tell who is and who isn’t your kind. It must have been nice in the olden days when families were gigantic and people hardly knew anybody except their own families. On the other hand it might have been horrible, like a big trap.

They were finished with dinner when she entered the dining room. Seeing them all there before her, her eyes traveling swiftly from one to the other, she threw a hand to her mouth with a little semi-hysterical laugh, thinking, They’re all like Eddie. They think I love them, too. Only they wouldn’t cry, because they wouldn’t believe me if I told them I don’t. Uncle Alec is right: I’ve got to find my own kind.

Alec was fiddling with the radio and Max was pouring drinks when the doorbell rang. To avoid explaining her tears to the gathering en masse, Elly ran to answer it. Cousin Charlotte, Harry and Sarah’s daughter, had arrived, too late for dinner. “Hi,” she said. “I’m starved.”

Elly looked at her tall bony-faced cousin and, as if Alec had enabled her to make judgments, had given her a standard of measurements which she had really always possessed but had been unable heretofore to phrase clearly enough, she thought, Not my kind.

Sarah, over Rose’s protests, took Charlotte into the kitchen for a cold dish, refusing to let Rose cook again. Max finished pouring the drinks. Holding a cigar in one hand and his drink in the other, Harry said, “Let’s drink to the new factory and more and more factories all over the Middle West.”

“Please, Harry. One at a time. You’re not drinking, Alec boy,” Max said.

“I just had one, thanks.”

“But this is a toast.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to drink to the new factory,” Harry interpolated.

Rose was staring at Alec, and Elly saw this with a growing fear. She knew the look—the preface to a thousand scenes. She felt her stomach crinkle with nausea.

“What’s the matter?” Rose said, her voice already a little shrill. “You’re afraid Max is risking his money? You’re afraid your checks won’t come on time, or maybe stop altogether?” In the ensuing silence the waltz being played on the radio seemed thunderous.

“Rose!” Max said.

“Why else would he act so smart about Harry lending you the money and the bank loan and everything? He has nothing except what you send him.” She was almost shouting now.

Harry spoke: “I didn’t mean anything like that, Alec.”

“I know,” Alec said.

“You know.” Rose stood closer to him. “Then why do you try to spoil the best thing that’s happened to us in years? Why?
Why
?”

“Stop it, Rose,” Max said, at the same instant as Elly called, “Mother!” Charlotte and Sarah appeared in the doorway looking startled at the shouting.

“I’m sorry if I haven’t been properly enthusiastic. I worry about Max, that’s all.”