The Girl with the Glass Heart: A Novel

By Daniel Stern

Elly Kaufman is too young, too beautiful, and too intense to accept life on its own terms; instead, she creates havoc in the world around her
In postwar Indianapolis, young dreamer Elly is navigating adolescence in a tight-knit family. Her search for truth leads her through a variety of experiences—and loves. To a famous architect, she is a symbol of undying youth; to a struggling actor, she is the unspoiled image of creative will; to an ex-GI, she is a thief; to a young musician, she is the source of inspiration. But what will Elly be to herself?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Sep 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781480444133

Daniel Stern

Daniel Stern is director of operations at an entrepreneurial company, a screenwriter who placed in the top four in Project Greenlight, and was a Sundance Lab screenwriting finalist. He lives in Los Angeles.

Book preview

PART ONE

IT SEEMED THAT THE small cubicle could hold no more sound. The voluptuous wave of music filled every corner and washed over Elly, drenching her with loveliness, the sounds of violins and woodwinds made abnormally piercing by the enormous volume at which the phonograph was operating.

Elly lay on the small sofa, her feet sticking out over the edge and, eyes closed, listened languorously. It was a small room, the smallest in the three-room apartment, and with the door shut and only the window open to the September coolness it was like an artificial amplifier launching the music through the open window across the tree-spotted vacant lot to the row of apartment houses on the adjacent block. The room was in almost total darkness with only the hazy reflection of a street lamp outlining the dim figure on the sofa: the dark complexion, the eyes set wide apart in her face, the ash-blond hair falling, it seemed, everywhere—her shoulders, her breasts (quite full for a fifteen-year-old girl), a few strands falling over the side of the bed—and the long, long brown legs, all of her caught in the hypnosis of the sound-world, deep in the darkness of dreams.

Max Kaufman opened the door and stood, the dinning in his ears stilled by the sight of his daughter lying on the sofa, her eyes shut. It was one of the times when the sudden sight of Elly caught his breath, and he felt gross and ungainly, amazed that he and Rose had produced this fragility. She is beautiful, he thought, forgetting for the moment his errand, the silencing of the blaring phonograph. His brother Alec had been like this, lying and listening to music for hours at a time, inevitably provoking their parents’ anger. Why aren’t you like Max! Go out and work, even in your spare time. And to Max they would say: Be like your brother Harry. Don’t just work. Study at night, go to school. No, Elly wasn’t like Max. If there was anyone in the family she took after, it was Alec.

A shout came from the kitchen: Elly! Max moved quickly away from the door as Elly rose and turned down the phonograph. All right, Mom.

For God’s sake. So loud! What’s the matter with you? It’s dark already. You can’t play music—it’s Erev Yom Tov.

All right, Mom. Elly rubbed her eyes and stretched. She was a tall girl. As she raised her long arms above her head and groaned with satisfaction she saw the pencil marks her father had placed on the wall to measure her growth. She wished she had a cigarette.

Rosh Hashana, she thought. What a hypocrite her mother was! This wasn’t New Year’s in September. New Year’s was a freezing wind and the party at Uncle Harry’s house when Dad got a little drunk and danced with Aunt Sarah. She liked going to synagogue twice a year as the family did, but it annoyed her to have her music-listening curtailed, just so the neighbors would know that Rose Kaufman’s family observed every Jewish holiday. She sat down at her desk pushing her hair into place and took from beneath a pile of papers in the center drawer a small book. Written in a large, bold hand on the first page was MY JOURNAL—Elly Kaufman. She began to write.

In the kitchen Rose prepared the holiday dinner. Max sat down and lighted the cold ashes in his pipe. Not here, please, Max, Rose complained. The smell gets in the food and besides it’s a holiday and the neighbors might be able to smell the smoke.

Rose, Rose. In the first place, who cares if they can smell it or what they think? And in the second place, how many times do I have to tell you, on Rosh Hashana you’re allowed to smoke.

I know. Some do and some don’t. My father never smoked on any holiday, whether you were allowed to or not.

Very intelligent.

All right, Max. Rose bent over and opened the stove. The chicken was almost done and the thick gravy smell permeated the air in a moment. She straightened up. Her tall body was fattening out, had been for the last two years. You had to expect that with change of life coming on, Mrs. Klein had told her. She pulled her house dress closer around her hips.

My Queen, she said, gesturing in the general direction of her daughter’s room. Boiled chicken isn’t good enough for the princess—it has to be roasted.

Why not? Besides it’s a holiday. Let it be roast chicken.

It’s the same to me. She turned to him suddenly and determinedly and sat down opposite him, tossing the dish towel over her shoulder, where it lay like a reserve weapon.

Well, she said, have you decided?

I don’t know, Rose. It’s an awful lot of money to borrow.

And an awful lot to be made, if you do it.

Maybe. Maybe not.

That’s you all your life. Afraid to take a chance. You’ll throw money around everywhere, send it to your no-good brother in California every month.

Leave Alec alone. He’s my brother.

So, he’s Harry’s brother, too. Does Harry send him?

That’s Harry’s business.

No, it’s probably Sarah’s business. I’ll bet she doesn’t let him.

"Enough about my brother already. The business is doing fine now. Why is it so necessary to expand now? Later when I have more."

You said yourself, the other night, if you don’t meet these new orders you won’t have more. And you can’t meet them here.

You want to move to Colchester? You’re so anxious?

What’s the big fuss? Fifty minutes on the bus is not so far. The important thing, Max, is that it could mean big things for us. Two factories and two sets of offices.

One office is all I need, he interpolated automatically. Even if I were to build in Colchester, I wouldn’t have to expand the office staff. I’ve been thinking about it. Don’t you think I want to send Elly to a good school? It’ll take money. I was telling Harry last night: I’m a businessman without capital.

So let’s get capital. I mean, my God, we’ve got what every other spare-parts manufacturer would sell his soul for! We’ve got the orders. It’s just a question of being able to deliver.

To deliver, he thought wryly. A few years back it hadn’t been a question of deliveries but just a question of no business. Max Kaufman’s little manufacturing organization (spare parts for tractors) blossomed almost overnight during the war. He began to expand, to employ members of his and his wife’s family; began to relax a little for the first time in fifteen years.

He was twenty years old when he arrived in New York from Hungary. Equipped with the addresses of relatives in Indianapolis, he had, without a second glance at New York, made the journey to the Midwest and, having nothing of the wanderer in him, settled in Indianapolis immediately, taking a job with a second cousin who was now his Chicago representative. He married Rose Hyman three years later.

Years afterward it seemed to him that everything had been perfect, that nothing had gone wrong up until he decided to go into business for himself. Time and again he would blame all difficulty, date all misfortunes from that period. It was a convenient mechanism in his fear for his daughter, his feeling of alienation from his wife.

To compensate he turned more and more to Elly as a manner of turning from Rose, who, on perceiving this, without perhaps understanding it, redoubled her efforts to gain control of the girl, making an issue of any convenient problem that came to hand, from the sudden enormous importance of piano lessons for every young girl to the horror of her daughter being seen necking in some high-school boy’s car.

Rose was saying, Why, even Harry would help if—

If what? Max returned. If you were nice to him, maybe? Last night at his house. I could tell as soon as you walked in. You always get that sort of set look about the mouth, as if you’re going to endure it but from a distance. I don’t know why. Harry and Sarah have always been crazy about you.

Yeah, also from a distance. If he wasn’t so superior.

That’s your imagination. Just because he’s educated is no reason. You sit there in a corner by yourself with that fixed look on your mouth, like a half-smile, but not a real one. Everybody knows. They all notice.

I don’t know why. I try. My God, the chicken’s burning! She snatched the dish towel from her shoulder, wrenched open the stove and breathed a sigh of relief. It’s all right. I better chop the eggs.

You shouldn’t have to try. Rose, Rose, Rose! Just be natural. Be yourself. You can’t remember all your life that Harry got the education and I didn’t. Are we going to hold it against my mother—she should rest in peace—that she could afford to send only one son to college and Harry was the oldest son, so he got it? That would be crazy. What happened, happened. I don’t want Harry’s money or his education.

Who wants it? I just want right now he should lend you part of the money for the new factory and the rest you can get from a bank with him cosigning for you. I want you to ask him, Max. She waved a ladle threateningly.

I’ve dropped it a thousand times, waiting for him to say something. Maybe he’ll bring it up himself.

If he doesn’t you’ll ask. What else? Are you going to send Alec a wire in Hollywood for the money? You’ve given him enough in the last five years to build ten factories.

You exaggerate slightly, Max said with a careful dignity.

All right. She seemed to unwind. I’m sorry. But, Max, let’s build and move away from Indianapolis and the streets here. Let Elly see a tree for a change. Then she won’t hang around with these kids like Jerry Wilson. I worry. A small town is better for a child.

A child she’s not. Have you looked at your daughter lately?

You’re right, you’re right. She looks like a woman already. That’s what worries me. Boys like Jerry Wilson and the ones that hang out at the corner there.

She doesn’t really hang around with them.

She goes to school with the Wilson boy. That’s bad enough. Anyway, Max, take a plunge. She put one large hand on his shoulder. Everything we really need to live I could put in one box and carry it on my shoulders. Really. I mean, what have we got? A moving hand embraced the kitchen. So we’ll gamble and, someday, maybe a house like Harry and Sarah have.

Max scooped a pudgy finger into the chopped-egg salad and licked some of the thick yellow mixture. Where would I be without you, Rose?

Without me you would have gone to school at night and become a lawyer like your brother Harry or an actor bum like your brother Alec. But you’ve got me, so let’s try to make the best of it. Call Harry tonight. All he can do is say no.

We’ll see.

Call!

We’ll see.

Elly sat at her little polished desk and sucked reflectively on a pencil, blackening her tongue slightly. Her diary, or journal, as she chose to call it, had become increasingly more important to her. Here were recorded the details of each encounter with Jerry—the first tentative explorations of kissing, the feeling of superiority (You haven’t read Ode on a Grecian Urn?), the feeling of power when she suddenly opened her mouth while they were kissing in the deep center of the park and she could feel him trembling with excitement—all this, and more, had gone into the little leather-covered book. At the back of her mind as she wrote was always the thought that someday she would meet someone who would understand everything she had written, someone who would read, make no comments but completely understand. It was to this person that she addressed each entry.

She leaned back in her chair and heard from somewhere the faint sound of a radio playing dance music. She took from her shirt pocket a tiny piece of paper folded over many times. It was Uncle Alec’s last letter. She glanced through it quickly, knowing it by now almost entirely by heart. Dear Pasquale, it was headed. He always called her Pasquale and she addressed him as Tony. It was a joke, a charade: Alec, always the actor. She remembered, beneath the muffled sound of the distant radio, his low, harsh, piercing, raucous voice that somehow made the simplest utterance meaningful and convincing. She imagined his voice saying, abstractly, I love you. It was only on holidays that she ever saw him, returning, his tall, skinny body seeming more fatigued than ever by whatever wanderings were implied in his warm smile bright with the realization that homesickness was at worst a temporary malady, that all that was needed as cure was a home.

Somehow Elly didn’t think he would be coming back to Indianapolis for the High Holy Days this year as in past times. Last year the fighting between him and Rose had been awful. Oh, why couldn’t Mother go away for a vacation over the holidays as she was always threatening! Then Alec could come and go to synagogue with Dad and herself.

She began to write:

September 20th, 1946

Sometimes you may wonder how it is with me on a holiday when I’m all alone in my room and I want someone to call me on the phone and hear them say, Hello—how are you?—I love you. With me it’s always a desire for snow on the ground, thick as fur, and the sound of bells ringing, the way they used to when I first went to school.

Snow and bells and the desire for someone to call me to say they love me. It doesn’t matter if the holiday is Christmas, Passover or New Year’s. Always snow and love.

Perhaps you wonder sometimes whether holidays are full of nostalgia for me and whether I remember all sorts of things then. With me there are always two pictures that come to mind.

In the first, I am walking along a street downtown. It is snowing heavily and the bells of a near-by church have begun to ring. With me is a boy; his face at the moment is turned away from me and from the observer (which is you, I guess). I am wearing a coat of dark cloth and I float my eyes in and out of the shop windows gaily decorated with the frills of whatever holiday season it may be (just between you and me I’m pretty sure it’s Christmas).

It is a side street on which we walk arm in arm and we turn, the sound of the bells still with us, onto the large avenue and approach the great church. There is a tremendous excitement in the air and my heart is in my mouth for no reason at all and I’m all aroused and happy.

In the picture I can see the boy’s face now (I guess that means you can too) and he is fine. His face, like mine, is wet with snowflakes and his smile lies on his lips like an unspoken thought. We change our minds and as we turn away from the church (we hadn’t wanted to pray, only to hear the music of the Mass) he is half sad because he is not sure he loves me and I’m half sad because I am sure that I love him, but I think it may be only for tonight that I do.

The sky is clear, the breeze is sharp and we both wear heavy coats. I look like a doll dressed up as a present. As I look now, the figures turn a corner eastward and are out of sight (mine and yours, I guess), always in that gentle, half-sad state of indecision I guess you’d call love.

That’s one way it is with me on holidays, in case you’ve ever wondered.

Another picture that takes shape when I think of holidays is quite different. It is not cold, but cool-chilly, like today. Perhaps early or middle September. I wonder whether to wear a coat or not as I accompany my father to synagogue. The holiday quality is different now. The air is heavy with dignity. Everyone we pass on the street is dressed very carefully and neatly. I enter the synagogue with a silly feeling of doing something proper, something I should do. The chanting of the cantor sounds strange. In this picture, no matter when it takes place, I am younger than I was in the other one. I am a little girl. (I cannot estimate my size in the picture too clearly.)

At first as I watch this picture I am annoyed because there is no breathless half-sadness like there was before. My father prays. I am lonely. I grow more lonely as time passes. My father explains the meaning of the various prayers. I become restless, irritated at having things explained to me. But when we reach one particular prayer I take notice.

This, my father tells me, is Al Tashlechanu, in which we ask God for things, mostly help. It is one of the high points of the service. I am surprised at my father’s tone of voice. It is intense. I am surprised because my father has told me many times that he does not believe in a God but goes to synagogue at the New Year’s and on The Day of Atonement only because other Jews go and he wants to be like them.

We continue praying. My father explains further. His voice is raucous. He sounds a little like Uncle Alec. Al Tashlechanu. In this we ask— and he sing-songs in English—Do not turn from me in mine old age nor desert me when my strength is gone and I am as a child. I look at my father. This picture is now as sad as the first one I told you about. I try to imagine my father, Max Kaufman, as a child. The picture loses its intensity, becomes vague, blurred. The other one joins it in my mind.

Is it a boy and a girl who walk on the Christmas snow at night holding hands? Or is it my father and I who walk while a boy and a girl sit in synagogue saying to God, Do not desert me in my old age when my strength is gone and I am as a child?

That’s how it is with me on holidays, in case you’ve ever wondered. I may be young or old, certain of love or afraid of it, but on holidays it’s always snow and love and the sound of bells and hearing the phone ring and answering and wanting to hear someone say, Hello—how are you?—I love you.

Elly closed the book carefully and placed it under a pile of papers in the drawer. She was embraced by a sadness that was focusless and objectless, a velvet-soft cloud of melancholy that she could almost localize as a heavy, thick feeling in the chest and throat.

How could one feel so sad, she wondered, and yet not upset or desperate? When her mother was sad, or depressed, as Dad called it, she ranted and made such a fuss, or else sat in the kitchen and cried. So many people were sad. Not like Uncle Alec, who had a sad appearance but who was never really anything but happy. His long, thin face with its prominent cheekbones, tapering chin and gray eyes was like a mock-melancholy clown’s face. A little bit like Eddie’s, she thought.

Eddie Roth was a boy who hung around the corner with Jerry Wilson and the others. Only Eddie was strange. His mouth fell open a little and he didn’t talk quite right. He was always looking at the clocks in the store windows and asking you what time it was and could he see your watch. The boys kidded him terribly, especially Jerry. They called Eddie character but Eddie never seemed to notice. Elly supposed he was sort of crazy. Like Alec’s, his face was long and thin and wore an expression of melancholy and in her mind the two faces sometimes mixed, became one.

The door opened behind her. Rose entered and began to sniff. Have you been smoking here, Elly?

Oh, cut it out, Mom!

Rose threw an eloquent arm in the direction of the half-opened door and whispered loudly, Your father. Mmm, I’d like to … Always afraid to do what’s right and what’s best. I never have a peaceful day.

Elly was instantly and furiously embarrassed. She knew every word spoken could be heard anywhere in the house. She made an agonized face and shook her head silently in the direction of the door. When her mother began to speak again Elly stepped to the door and shut it tightly. Cut it out, Mom, she whispered. Dad can hear you. For God’s sake!

If you had what I have to put up with … Listen, Elly darling, wouldn’t you like to move to Colchester?

I don’t know. I really don’t know. Whatever you and Dad think is best.

Rose knew that behind this apparent acquiescence to parental decisions lay enormous reserves of revolt. This was Elly’s currency for immediate peace and with it she bought being left alone.

Well, do you think you’d like it?

How do I know until I’m there? I probably would.

It’s only fifty minutes on the bus. You’ll be living in both places, really. Her tone was plaintive, in spite of the fact that Elly had offered no objections. Rose never trusted those who gave in too easily. She was accustomed to fighting for anything she desired.

Why don’t you speak to your father? Tell him you want to go. It’ll mean a lot to us.

Like what?

More money.

Really?

That’s right. Wouldn’t you like to go away to college?

You know I would, Mom. But the remark was a hopeless one. Max and Rose both disapproved of boarding schools and had let Elly know it as early as when she entered high school. But she said, "All right, I’ll talk to him. Not that it will do any good, but I’ll tell him I’d love and simply adore to move to Colchester, Indiana, population fifty."

Don’t be smart.

I’m not smart. You keep telling me I am but I know better.

So if you know better, why don’t you get better marks in school?

Because I’m too busy hanging around with Jerry Wilson and the kids on the corner. I’ll save you the trouble of saying it.

Don’t do me any favors and don’t save me any trouble. Just do your schoolwork for a change.

Okay, Mom. Elly was tucking her tan beret over her ears.

Where are you going?

Out.

Out where?

Just out.

For a walk?

Yes, for a walk.

Be back in an hour. Harry and Sarah may be here for supper.

Yop. ’By.

The blue-black atmosphere of early evening seemed to sift itself through the buildings across the street toward Elly as she stood on the front doorstep. As always she looked up to see if it was to be mainly a star evening or mainly a moon evening. Tonight seemed to be both. A thin crescent of a moon dominated the sky, but at the outer fringes of the brightness a few stars were scattered. She waited. Nothing happened. Still she waited. A few people passed by as she waited, like puppets in the twilight. Nothing happened.

She was not quite sure exactly when it had left her, but she knew that a year ago at this time it had still been with her. She would be coming home any summer evening a little later than she was supposed to and she was apprehensive as to whether her mother would be up, waiting. She knew there would be no recriminations, no argument—just the click of the lamp, the vision of her mother glancing at the bedside clock and the little stream of light trickling out on the hall floor. Then another click and the floor was wiped clean of light. Then stillness broken only by the heavy regular snoring of her father. She would undress, knowing every sound she made in the small apartment could be heard by her mother awake in her bed. That was the way it always was.

Elly would pause on the doorstep and, checking to make sure no one was around, she would light a cigarette. Then slowly, as in a ritual, she would turn her face upward and the feeling would begin like a beating in her chest, the exultancy as she gazed at stars like diamond-headed nails spat from a workman’s mouth. It was a respiratory ecstasy related at all times to breathing; it expanded her chest until it was infinite and there was a cry preparing itself all the way within her that told of the intimacy between herself, Elly Kaufman and everything else. The building behind her and her wakeful, waiting mother receded into nonexistence. She was related to the dark and this was the only way she could welcome and thank it for protecting her and making the future now instead of a dim possibility. The beginning of tears in the corners of her eyes signified the climax of the wave of feeling in which she was submerged. It would subside and, resting her head against the stone building for a moment, she would crinkle her chin a little in happiness and pause a while before turning back to the house and the waiting, punitive silence.

Now she waited too, but with no real confidence. She had waited too many times already, with no results. The entry in her journal was dated January 12, 1946, but that was only the evening when she’d remembered that she had not been pausing at the doorstep before going in at night. Perhaps it had been the coldness of the Christmas season, but it was still cold in January, and suddenly, as if someone had reminded her of a neglect, she had paused on the doorstep on January 12, 1946, and found she had lost it.

She’d cried a little and the memory of the feeling had been so vivid she was sure it would return if only she waited long enough. But the night air grew freezing, and still no return. Then she was frightened. This could happen to anything you loved if you weren’t careful. And standing there, her nose growing colder and colder, she tried to remember what she had been doing these past few months which had tempted her into betrayal. Mostly, she guessed, she had sort of discovered Jerry Wilson, his long arms, his bright eyes and his persistence—calling the house two and three times a day until her mother embarrassed Elly by telling him to limit himself to one call a day.

It was in these last few months that she had discovered that kisses could be long-drawn-out moments instead of quick brittle pecks. She had gone out of herself more than ever before, perhaps because of Jerry paying so much attention to her. For a boy who was what her mother called a roughneck he was oddly shy and careful with Elly. She was sometimes intensely fond of him and at other times, when he was being a roughneck, teasing Eddie Roth or telling lies to girls about what certain boys had said to them, she hated him. There was in him, she sensed, a great fund of energy that manifested itself only partly in his occasional cruelty. She enjoyed being part of, or even just near, that energy. She had tried time and again to explain it to her mother, but Rose refused to listen. You cheapen yourself when you’re with a boy like that. He’s no good and his family’s no good. So Elly had given up, resorting instead to lies when asked where she had been.

She gave up waiting. She had lost it and there was no longer anything to wait for. She was not quite sure exactly what it was that she had felt in those ecstatic moments. The precise nature of the feeling had grown vague. Perhaps I’m growing up, she thought, and grownups don’t have feelings like that. But that implied that they once had. She tried to imagine her mother or father in the throes of gazing at the sky, throat tied into a knot. It was unimaginable. Uncle Alec, maybe; certainly not Uncle Harry. She checked her lipstick with a pocket mirror and walked to the corner where the boys were sure to be.

Hi, Jerry.

Jerry Wilson paused in his conversation with Rocky. Hi, Elly, he replied. How’s the girl?

Okay, she said, but he had already returned to his conversation after a quick look at her out of the corners of his eyes. She was pleased that he was shy. She leaned against the brick wall of the cigar store and lighted a cigarette. She was on the verge of something and wished she knew what it was. It was like pausing before diving into a lake or pool and suddenly realizing you weren’t sure whether there was any water there or not.

After a few moments Jerry detached himself from the group and strolled over to where she stood chatting to a girl friend, May Evans. Beat it, May, he said smilingly.

What’s the idea? May said in an injured tone.

Beat it, May, please.

Well, that’s different.

Where you been all day, Elly? I was lookin’ for you.

Oh, we’ve been getting ready for the holidays. You know, I had to help my mother around the house.

Oh. We don’t go in for that stuff at home.

Are you Jewish, Jerry?

Sure. I thought you knew. Just that we don’t observe any of that stuff.

Oh.

What do you, get a kick out of that stuff? Synagogue and all that?

"Yeah, kind of. It’s fun and the music’s nice. You like music don’t you? Come on, of course you do."

Well, some. He lounged his tall, skinny boy’s body against the wall, closer to Elly. You gonna be around later?

I don’t know—

He grabbed her arm and squeezed it. Look how strong I am, he said, and squeezed it tighter.

Leave me alone! She laughed, feeling a twinge of anger.

You gonna be around later? he said threateningly, still holding onto her arm.

All right, Jerry, I’ll be here, she shouted. Now will you let go my arm? He dropped it and glanced over to see if Rocky and the boys had noticed the interplay. They had and were grinning at one another. Maybe Mom’s right, Elly thought: He’s a funny boy.

Hey, here comes Eddie. Hey, Eddie, how’s the boy?

Hiya, character.

Eddie Roth had appeared at the corner and Elly knew what would come now—the kidding, the tricks played on the poor half-wit. She couldn’t stay around to watch. I’ll see you later, Jerry.

Hey, where you goin’? You’ll miss all the fun.

Some fun! Why don’t you pick on someone your size?

"My size! Look at him. He’s twenty inches taller than me. What are you, kiddin’?"

I’ll see you later, Jerry. Leave him alone, will you?

All right, boys. Lay off Eddie. Let’s all be nice to him. For Elly. Okay?

They all laughed assent and one boy began to stroke Eddie’s black hair in mock tenderness. As Elly left, Jerry called out, See you here at ten o’clock. She did not reply but waved a hand in consent.

As soon as she left, the boys turned their attention to Eddie.

Hey, character, Jerry said, pointing in the direction in which Elly had walked, how’d you like a little of that, eh? How’d you like it?

Eddie smiled vacantly, crinkling his little eyes until they almost