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

against the glass, staring down the field of the long, long afternoon. There was a terrible twinge within him, seeing her. It was as if he had been away tor years, leaving in the living room a child, and returning to find a woman, staring hopelessly at what might be the bright day, or a vague hint of his reflection in the glass that surrounded them. The sight of her long legs made him harden himself. They would hang the draperies and go away from here. Then he felt like a fool. She would probably scream if he touched her. What the hell was he thinking of!
    They worked in silence, except for his instructions to her and a bit of joking, mostly from Elly and rather tense wit at that. Lang felt dizzy standing on the top rung of the ladder. He had lost all sense of time. The girl might have been there five minutes or five hours. She smelled of lilacs. The afternoon sky was clouding over and the sun disappeared and reappeared with some regularity.
    “I hate it when the clouds get thick,” she said. “It makes me kind of depressed.”
    They were finished and he descended and tested the drawstrings. It was quite dark in the room until he opened them again. Elly was still on the stepladder and Lang was hoping she wouldn’t say anything. He was afraid that she would utter some word or combination of words that would touch some depth in him that had prompted the never-to-be-mailed letter to Lorraine. She spoke. She turned to him and, looking down, said, “I want to thank you. You’ve made us very happy. Myself, more than Mom or Dad. This house is going to change everything for me.”
    Good God, did he believe in magic? He was relieved that these weren’t the words. “Yes, I know,” he said, “the girl in the house in the hill.”
    “I wrote a letter to my cousin in New Haven yesterday. I said—I don’t know if she’ll understand. You can see I’m a bug on being understood—‘Dear Joan,’ I said, ‘the heart is made of glass. And now my house is made of glass.’”
    Lang pulled the drawstring and the room was dark again. They were the words all right, or close enough to them to do the job. It was Lorraine who was moving him toward Elly, Lorraine placing his arms about her waist and lifting her from the ladder in one movement. She was light and kissing her was feathery at first; she was only an idea, an idea of a younger girl to whom he was as much a man as his height and strength seemed to indicate; but then her flesh and his became quite real.
    Is he going to? Elly thought. And will I if he wants to? They were running, it seemed to her. No, they were walking, arms tightly entwined, and Elly was surprised to find there were no sheets on the bed and almost laughed, a little hysterically. She hadn’t been expected, there were no sheets and, as in her fantasy alone in her bed, he rested his face on her breast and his great hands were clenching and unclenching. And then his hands big enough for each one to encompass a breast opened her blouse and her wide, wide skirt and she was as wild and abandoned as when she fled screaming with laughter from the boys chasing her after school, and then over his shoulder she could see past the open door of the room an undraped portion of glass wall and the shadowy reflection of something strange and she remembered fleetingly the horrid thing in school in the play they read: the beast with two backs , only it wasn’t horrid at all and there was the clenching and unclenching of his hand on her shoulder.
    They were both silent for a long while. Elly felt that he was tense beside her, knew he was angry with himself, was afraid he had done something terrible to her. But he hadn’t at all. She lay there, one bare foot dangling over the bed (she had kicked off one of her ballet slippers earlier), with her skirt spread high on her bare thighs and she was fine. She felt as relieved as on receiving a gift so long delayed that she had almost given up hope of it. There was no question of