Read Online The Girl With the Glass Heart: A Novel by Daniel Stern - Free Book Online
Authors: Daniel Stern
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chosen for him against his will. Especially when I said that, it was as if she could see right through me and the lie as well. As if she were repeating to herself mockings—( I don’t often stay at a client’s home while working ) — as if she had heard Lorraine and himself arguing, endlessly fighting, until finally she came out with it. Unsatisfied, I’m unsatisfied, stabbing him instantly with guilt, for what can make one more guilty than being called on in a deep need, sexual or otherwise, and failing.
It was as if this girl-woman with her steady gaze were accusing him too (after Lorraine, would all women accuse him silently?), saying, “A great big man like you. Look at the size of you, and your wife’s unsatisfied. You never stay at a client’s home while still working on plans, but after the endless turmoil at home the call from this Kaufman in a little town outside Indianapolis comes and you run to pack your bags to get away from the accusations for as long as you can.” He knew he would have to explain this sudden flight to the analyst Lorraine had procured for him three months ago.
But it was, of course, ridiculous about this Elly Kaufman and her steady stare. It could have been everything from wide-eyed admiration (if she had heard of him. Lorraine insisted that he made too much of his reputation. His success had been slow and steady, unlike that of some of the other men he knew, but his prices were higher than those demanded by many more famous men) or it could have been just a great interest in what he had been saying. What would a girl like that know about sexual inadequacy? It was his wife’s term; in encasing his problem in her words and voice he was able to remove himself, for a while at least, from the anguish implicit in any thinking of it.
He was sitting in an upholstered chair placed near the window covered with an awful flower pattern that made him wonder just how much he was going to have to contend with when he furnished the house. He wondered how old the girl could be; she was contradictory in every way—a girl-woman, and her beauty was fragile-robust. She must be about nineteen, he figured, and she didn’t know a damn thing about him, but just the same when he remembered her stare he felt a little shiver in the groin. I must be getting old, he thought; only the old think about very young girls. He stood up, flipped the glowing tip of his cigarette off the end of the butt and out of the window, and dropped the stub into an ash tray. He looked at his hand and thought, I’ve got to stop that clenching of the hands. Maybe that’s what she was staring at. He slipped under the sheets and thought, Well, tomorrow I’ll work.
And he did work, hard, thinking of nothing but the house—not of Lorraine, nor the girl, but only of this house that was to be his best. Elly was away at school most of the time he was at the apartment, and in the late afternoon and early evenings, especially after construction was begun, he was out at the house checking on the day’s work.
It was made pleasant for him at the Kaufmans’. He had even been invited to the wedding of one of Mrs. Kaufman’s nephews. Lang had been raised a Methodist, a faith with which he had no great sympathy any more. This was his first extended contact with a Jewish family in the Midwest. He had known several in New York and he was surprised at how little difference there was between them and the Kaufmans. There seemed to be little, if any, regional effect. He was glad he had come, and if Lorraine’s letters sounded a trifle petulant, this made him gladder still to be here.
Once, when the house was nearly completed, he thought of the girl, remembering how he had characterized her as a girl-woman and her loveliness as fragile-robust. It seemed to him that evening that the house, springing as it did from the actual earth near the summit of the hill, was like that. The great panes of glass, glistening with a crystal upward flight, had a
It was as if this girl-woman with her steady gaze were accusing him too (after Lorraine, would all women accuse him silently?), saying, “A great big man like you. Look at the size of you, and your wife’s unsatisfied. You never stay at a client’s home while still working on plans, but after the endless turmoil at home the call from this Kaufman in a little town outside Indianapolis comes and you run to pack your bags to get away from the accusations for as long as you can.” He knew he would have to explain this sudden flight to the analyst Lorraine had procured for him three months ago.
But it was, of course, ridiculous about this Elly Kaufman and her steady stare. It could have been everything from wide-eyed admiration (if she had heard of him. Lorraine insisted that he made too much of his reputation. His success had been slow and steady, unlike that of some of the other men he knew, but his prices were higher than those demanded by many more famous men) or it could have been just a great interest in what he had been saying. What would a girl like that know about sexual inadequacy? It was his wife’s term; in encasing his problem in her words and voice he was able to remove himself, for a while at least, from the anguish implicit in any thinking of it.
He was sitting in an upholstered chair placed near the window covered with an awful flower pattern that made him wonder just how much he was going to have to contend with when he furnished the house. He wondered how old the girl could be; she was contradictory in every way—a girl-woman, and her beauty was fragile-robust. She must be about nineteen, he figured, and she didn’t know a damn thing about him, but just the same when he remembered her stare he felt a little shiver in the groin. I must be getting old, he thought; only the old think about very young girls. He stood up, flipped the glowing tip of his cigarette off the end of the butt and out of the window, and dropped the stub into an ash tray. He looked at his hand and thought, I’ve got to stop that clenching of the hands. Maybe that’s what she was staring at. He slipped under the sheets and thought, Well, tomorrow I’ll work.
And he did work, hard, thinking of nothing but the house—not of Lorraine, nor the girl, but only of this house that was to be his best. Elly was away at school most of the time he was at the apartment, and in the late afternoon and early evenings, especially after construction was begun, he was out at the house checking on the day’s work.
It was made pleasant for him at the Kaufmans’. He had even been invited to the wedding of one of Mrs. Kaufman’s nephews. Lang had been raised a Methodist, a faith with which he had no great sympathy any more. This was his first extended contact with a Jewish family in the Midwest. He had known several in New York and he was surprised at how little difference there was between them and the Kaufmans. There seemed to be little, if any, regional effect. He was glad he had come, and if Lorraine’s letters sounded a trifle petulant, this made him gladder still to be here.
Once, when the house was nearly completed, he thought of the girl, remembering how he had characterized her as a girl-woman and her loveliness as fragile-robust. It seemed to him that evening that the house, springing as it did from the actual earth near the summit of the hill, was like that. The great panes of glass, glistening with a crystal upward flight, had a
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