submerged these feelings in favor of a steadily growing anticipation of life on the hill. It was doubly pleasant for her at this time, as her mother was too absorbed in altercations with her father to notice such things as how long she practiced at the piano.
Kaufman’s first architect proposed a reasonable price, Kaufman felt, for a fine, workmanlike house.
Rose Kaufman exploded. “All right, I’ll kill myself. I won’t have any more troubles. This is no life, with a husband who has one daughter and who buys all that expensive land and then builds a house like a bungalow.”
“What’s the matter with these plans? What do you want, a castle with a moat we should have to swim across to go in and out? Feldman is a good architect and the price isn’t too much.”
“You know we talked about John Marron Lang.”
“Lang from New York? That was just talk, I should hope.”
“I’ll get pictures of Lang houses. I’ll show you. You build a Lang house and they take pictures and publish them.”
“We’re going to live in a house, not a book.”
She brought pictures. She talked. She persuaded Elly to plump for the Lang house. Elly saw the pictures in the big book that Lang himself had designed. The vision was hers almost immediately. At first it was the girl on the hill that she was to be. Now superimposed on her profound hopelessness of contact with the outside world was the dream of a magnificent isolation. To look out on the world from within a glass house would be to open limitless hope. She begged her father to have Lang do the house.
One day, on her way into the dining room for dinner, she encountered her mother leaving the room, her eyes red-rimmed, her heavy face twisted by a grimace which was an attempt at control.
“Where are you going, Mom?”
“Nowhere.”
“Aren’t you going to eat?”
“No. Go inside. Everything’s on the table.”
“Oh, come on in, Mom.”
But Rose was not to be persuaded to have dinner or breakfast or lunch the next day. By dinnertime Max relented. He called Lang that night, while Elly and her mother toyed with their coffee cups on the kitchen table and tried to listen. “A hunger strike I had on my hands here. As if it was a movie, not a serious thing like a house. I’ll meet you at the train, Mr. Lang. Wire me when you’ll arrive.”
On hearing this, Elly threw her arms around her mother and hugged her. Rose held her off at arm’s length and said, “I hope you realize the sacrifice your father is making for you. Don’t forget life is obligations. Remember them.”
Elly’s outburst of affection curdled to a sour taste under her tongue. As she walked through the apartment it occurred to her that if any sacrifice was being made by her father, it was at least as much on her mother’s behalf as on hers. The expectation no longer pulsed and paced her breathing. She floated through the house like a ghost, past all the drab curtains on the windows, the depressing faded-brown chairs with their tiresome curved wooden legs, the red-velvet scarves which seemed to be over every bureau and bookcase. The rooms were of the past, not for now .
At any rate, the new life was on its way irrevocably. Elly’s first sight of Lang revived the delight. She stood with a group of friends across the street from their apartment house and, trying to maintain an air of indifference while the others nudged one another and commented, watched her father help Lang with his bags.
John Marron Lang was a powerful man of about six feet three inches in height, topped with a great splash of white hair. Elly noticed immediately his hands, big and encrusted with calluses but with short stubby fingers. There was nothing delicate about him, Elly thought, except the pictures she had seen of his houses. They were an incongruous combination of rock-strength and flights-of-glass transparency.
“Elly,” her father called, catching sight of her in the group, “give me a hand here, will you?”
She ran
Kaufman’s first architect proposed a reasonable price, Kaufman felt, for a fine, workmanlike house.
Rose Kaufman exploded. “All right, I’ll kill myself. I won’t have any more troubles. This is no life, with a husband who has one daughter and who buys all that expensive land and then builds a house like a bungalow.”
“What’s the matter with these plans? What do you want, a castle with a moat we should have to swim across to go in and out? Feldman is a good architect and the price isn’t too much.”
“You know we talked about John Marron Lang.”
“Lang from New York? That was just talk, I should hope.”
“I’ll get pictures of Lang houses. I’ll show you. You build a Lang house and they take pictures and publish them.”
“We’re going to live in a house, not a book.”
She brought pictures. She talked. She persuaded Elly to plump for the Lang house. Elly saw the pictures in the big book that Lang himself had designed. The vision was hers almost immediately. At first it was the girl on the hill that she was to be. Now superimposed on her profound hopelessness of contact with the outside world was the dream of a magnificent isolation. To look out on the world from within a glass house would be to open limitless hope. She begged her father to have Lang do the house.
One day, on her way into the dining room for dinner, she encountered her mother leaving the room, her eyes red-rimmed, her heavy face twisted by a grimace which was an attempt at control.
“Where are you going, Mom?”
“Nowhere.”
“Aren’t you going to eat?”
“No. Go inside. Everything’s on the table.”
“Oh, come on in, Mom.”
But Rose was not to be persuaded to have dinner or breakfast or lunch the next day. By dinnertime Max relented. He called Lang that night, while Elly and her mother toyed with their coffee cups on the kitchen table and tried to listen. “A hunger strike I had on my hands here. As if it was a movie, not a serious thing like a house. I’ll meet you at the train, Mr. Lang. Wire me when you’ll arrive.”
On hearing this, Elly threw her arms around her mother and hugged her. Rose held her off at arm’s length and said, “I hope you realize the sacrifice your father is making for you. Don’t forget life is obligations. Remember them.”
Elly’s outburst of affection curdled to a sour taste under her tongue. As she walked through the apartment it occurred to her that if any sacrifice was being made by her father, it was at least as much on her mother’s behalf as on hers. The expectation no longer pulsed and paced her breathing. She floated through the house like a ghost, past all the drab curtains on the windows, the depressing faded-brown chairs with their tiresome curved wooden legs, the red-velvet scarves which seemed to be over every bureau and bookcase. The rooms were of the past, not for now .
At any rate, the new life was on its way irrevocably. Elly’s first sight of Lang revived the delight. She stood with a group of friends across the street from their apartment house and, trying to maintain an air of indifference while the others nudged one another and commented, watched her father help Lang with his bags.
John Marron Lang was a powerful man of about six feet three inches in height, topped with a great splash of white hair. Elly noticed immediately his hands, big and encrusted with calluses but with short stubby fingers. There was nothing delicate about him, Elly thought, except the pictures she had seen of his houses. They were an incongruous combination of rock-strength and flights-of-glass transparency.
“Elly,” her father called, catching sight of her in the group, “give me a hand here, will you?”
She ran
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