The Girl With the Glass Heart: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

tied down. Tell me, have you got a girl? Maybe you’ll get married soon. We would all like that for you.”
    Elly listened so hard her heart was pounding and her cheeks were hot.
    “How can I get married in my position? If this picture deal goes through, who knows? There’s a girl. We’ll see.”
    Elly released suddenly the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. She ran upstairs during the silence that surrounded the pouring of a drink. She was unaccountably relieved that Uncle Alec had a girl and might get married someday. But it was a sad relief colored with a feeling of loss. Well, she thought, I couldn’t have married him.
    That night she dreamed that Jerry Wilson and Eddie Roth were speaking Jewish to each other in order to keep her from understanding what they were saying about her, as Max and Rose had done all through her childhood.
The next morning after a quick breakfast they all left for synagogue together. The men wore dark-blue suits, as did most of the other men at the temple. It was an orthodox service and the women sat upstairs and the men downstairs. The air was filled with a continuous murmur. Elly usually liked to sit with her father downstairs and nobody ever objected. Today, however, Rose asked her to stay upstairs with her. As her mother prayed Elly leaned over the railing and watched her father and Uncle Alec pray and talk. They were joined by Harry, who was draped in an expensive-looking, gold-embroidered prayer shawl.
    Elly wiped her upper lip and forehead and squirmed uncomfortably, wishing Uncle Alec would look up so she could wave to him. “Mom,” she whispered, “can’t I go down?”
    “I’m sorry, darling. I just want to give your father and Harry a chance to talk business. They always do while they pray. You can go down in about ten minutes.”
    When Elly started to leave, Rose whispered, “Tell Daddy I said to buy this time.”
    “Okay, Mom.”
    Elly scurried downstairs. As she entered the auditorium the praying had ceased temporarily and an old man in black vestments, with a prayer book in his hand, was auctioning off one of the major honors of the service: the opening, by means of a long plaited cord, of the ark in which the scroll of the Ten Commandments was housed. The highest bidder (the money was used for the running of the temple) rose and, before the entire congregation, opened the curtain which shielded the ark. Later, various scrolls containing the Ten Commandments would be held by leading citizens of the community, who then carried them slowly around the circumference of the auditorium while the cantor chanted and people leaned out of their pews to touch the ends of their prayer shawls to the ark and then raise the thus sanctified cloth to their lips.
    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