The Girl With the Glass Heart: A Novel by Daniel Stern Page B

her fantastic determination to go away to college. The feeling of guilt, one which he was not familiar with, in regard to his family, began to creep into his consciousness. What had they done to her that she wanted to get away so terribly? At this point in his thinking, the early, empty years would return, the years during which (his wife had convinced him by now) he had been remiss as a father, attending instead to his business night and day. Flickering about the edges of this burden of responsibility was the half-admitted realization that what had happened had been just what Rose had wanted: himself away at the plant, Rose in command of Elly day and night with the added weapon of his quite necessary absence to keep him in line.
    He saw now, and tried to explain to Rose that Elly seemed to be living life with them as a war, the giving and taking of land and forces in order to achieve goals. “Let her go,” he said. “She’s been too much with us. An only child. She lies, Rose. She’s too old to lie.”
    “That’s just it. You can imagine how she could run wild out there.” An arm gestured to the great outside wilderness that was the world to Rose Kaufman.”
    “Maybe she’ll learn self-control there. It’s a good school, with all kinds of girls.”
    “Yes. All kinds. And all kinds of men too.”
    “It’s a girls’ school. You’d rather have her with Jerry Wilson? You know a lot what she does with him!”
    “She doesn’t do anything—except neck, I suppose.”
    “I hope so.”
    That did it. Rose threw herself into the shopping and preparations for Elly’s departure with as much vigor and determination as she had displayed in obstructing it. It was necessary for her to abandon all her doubts about Elly’s leaving, in order for her to participate at all. Feelings of horror at the prospect could not simply be laid aside or modified. They had to be replaced with enthusiasm, hope of some sort; otherwise she would break under the strain of the realization of her family’s actions not conforming to her desires. If her wishes could not prevail over reality, then her wishes adapted themselves completely to what was happening around her. Thus, that which occurred in spite of her was felt to have happened because of her. She became quite moral about parents who “hugged their children to death.”
    Only at night did she sometimes awaken and, smoking a cigarette while Max slept soundly, wonder at the emptiness that seemed to wait for her until Elly would return, wonder if they ever did return, once having left, and sensing the beginning of tears in the corners of each eye, impatiently wipe them away. Looking through the door of the bedroom which stood ajar and seeing the large expanse of the living room, a small stretch of the glass wall peeping through the partially drawn draperies, she thought, Who needs such a big house for the two of us? “Max,” she said aloud, “what’s going to be with us?”
    Her husband stirred in his sleep and grunted something, then lay still and silent. She didn’t want to cry. Was she going through change of life? Was she going to be one of “those” women? She’d heard of women going crazy at this time in their life. It wasn’t fair to her that Elly should leave.
    What’s going to be with me? she thought, forgetting to crush her cigarette in the ash tray and letting the room fill with smoke as the tobacco became a long thin ash which was finally cold and crumbled at the touch of her breath when she reached over to shut off the lamp.
The day before she was to leave for Vernon, Vermont, Elly said good-by joyfully to all her friends in town, feeling love for those girls and boys she’d fought with and hated, and for Jerry Wilson a great pity as the voyager feels for the land-held. She was like a girl whose parents had been seafarers and who had died far inland, leaving her to make her way toward some dimly remembered sea. This was to be her first big step toward the coast