The Love of My Youth (12 page)

And so Sylvia is given the task: that Miranda must understand she, too, is involved in something greater, older, far more important than herself. But after talking to Miranda she says to her husband: It’s all right, Henry, she’s a serious girl.

She takes Miranda to Bergdorf and buys her a gray cashmere cardigan, which thrills Miranda because it is, she thinks, her first serious garment, the first garment that acknowledges her seriousness; it is her passport into the adult world.

They are both serious, Adam and Miranda, but in different ways, about different things. He is serious about music. She is serious about changing the world. Ever since she heard of the black girls killed in the Birmingham church she has determined she will devote herself to the eradication of the evils of the world, particularly evil caused by prejudice. They believe that it is possible that their seriousness will bear fruit.

And so for Adam and Miranda these are years of happiness. Perhaps a dream of happiness. A dream of life. Of loving and being beloved. Of desiring and being desired. Of knowing and being known. The world they see now, loving each other, is larger than they thought, but it has a place for them. Nothing terrible happens to them individually in the years 1964, ’65, and ’66; the sorrows of the world are public, far from them, part of the lives of others. Much of what they have been told to believe about what is called morality, they come to understand, does not, because of their love for each other, apply to them.

Later when she thinks of that time (two decades will go by during which she refuses to think of it), it seems to her that it was always early spring, the air moist, still with traces of the end of winter, but a sun insistent, white in a light sky. Breaking through.

Love, love, love. My love loves me. The love of two young bodies. Hours lying in grassy spaces, cold seeping through their clothes, the cold ignored. Half hours stolen in her bedroom when her mother is at the dentist. Kisses in the movies or on the New York subway where they believe they are invisible. And the discussions formed around an ethical problem, a question of honor, which is called respect. Where can you touch my body, at what point will it properly be called a violation? Where can I touch yours?

They don’t believe there is anyone they can ask for help or advice about these things. None of Miranda’s friends has a love like hers and Adam’s. They might date, they might even go steady, but Adam and Miranda know they will be together all their lives, and because of his music and because she is determined to bring greater justice to an unjust world, they stand for something greater than themselves. And their families are part of the understanding, the understanding of that thing known as ADAMANDMIRANDA MIRANDAANDADAM. So where they can touch each other’s bodies becomes part of a larger question: it involves the houses they were born in and the music of three centuries.

Months and months of talking, and finally the words are hers. “We love each other. Setting these limits is false to our love.”

In this decision they know they have crossed a barrier; they are on the other side of something, alone in a country of their own invention. A crossing unimpeded by regret.

In the summer of 1965 she takes the train to Harlem every day to tutor ten-year-olds, who do not love her, or who extravagantly adore her, while he increases his lessons with Henry Levi. (Three times a week in summer … where does the money come from? He is afraid to ask.) On the summer evenings, they meet in Central Park and lie in the grass in each other’s arms and share the sandwiches that his mother has packed for both of them. Sometimes they watch Shakespeare or listen to a symphony.

It isn’t true that the weather was always one way; it didn’t need to be; they loved all kinds of weather. And, no, it can’t be right that they were always happy. Certainly there were problems with her family. Her father, playing the jilted lover (Why don’t we ever see you? Am I wrong or are they paying your bills now?). And her mother, regretful, supplicating: “I was hoping we could see a movie or perhaps one day I could meet you in New York.” They are right, these parents; they have lost their daughter. Most particularly to Adam’s mother. Though they do not know that the daughter and the boy are lovers. Or they do not admit, even to themselves, that they know. It is, after all, 1964, ’65, ’66.

What they don’t understand is that they have lost their daughter, not just to a boy, and not even just to his family, but to music, which is to say to the whole idea of the past, a past beyond immediate ancestors, beyond America.

When this time is long behind them, and, no longer young, they try to understand their past, they find it hard to remember how they spent their days. What did they do in all the time they were together? They can say,
Well, there was sex …
but how many hours did that take up? They did, somehow, put in their days. They both look back on them as days when they believed that they were happy—and Adam, having had more unhappiness than Miranda, will do this far more often.

The way Adam’s days were spent was shaped by the fact that he was trying to become a serious musician, and that happened by accident. The only boy child in a clutch of nine girl cousins, he was bored at the large family gatherings in the house of his grandparents in the Bronx and so he disappeared with his grandfather, bored also, into the back room, where Sal Sr., born in Calabria, listened to the Texaco opera hour. To the operas of Verdi, Rossini, most particularly Puccini, which were to him as accessible as the musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein were to his children and their wives. He saw that his grandson loved music as he did, closed his eyes as he did, tapped his little feet in the Buster Brown shoes (inside them, the image of the blond boy and his dog), then walked to the piano and somehow (
Miracolo
, the child is not yet five) and picked out the tune,
Là ci darem la mano
.

“He plays by ear,” the grandfather said, with a pride he had never before had occasion to call up. Adam would make his way to the piano, which he loved better than his aunts, his cousins, his too expressive grandmother, but not his grandfather, with whom he shared the music. The large unaccommodating black piano was not a fine instrument; rather it was a sign, a necessary sign in a certain kind of upwardly striving house. It was opened rarely; mostly it is something to put the pictures of the children on (graduation, wedding), then the grandchildren (christening, first communion). But for five-year-old Adam the looming black complexity was the fresh green bosom of the brave new world.

“Play this, Adam, play that.” They sang snatches of songs for him; he was their trick dog, their magician. “Body and Soul,” “America the Beautiful.” He played whatever they sang. And they didn’t have to say anything to his mother, she already knew. His mother, besotted, drenched in love for her son, saw that he needed piano lessons. At seven he was taken (this is luck, but there is always a place for luck) to a woman Rose knew from church. Lorraine Capalbo, who gave piano lessons. Who was, though frustrated, a real musician. She demanded a great deal from Adam, in whom she saw a gift, the fulfillment of a dream she had given up for herself. Conservatory trained, she married after the war, moved to White Plains, had three children, boys, none of whom had an ear for music, all of whom lived for sport. She taught Adam for five years; he was the jewel in the crown of the yearly recitals she presented in her living room. When he turned twelve, she passed him on (this rite of passage coinciding, though of course she didn’t know it, with his first wet dream) to Henry Levi, whom she knew when she was young and serious and with whom she was still hopelessly in love.

And so at twelve, Adam entered the world of serious music, and anyone who was part of his life must be part of that world as well. His mother, shyly ignorant, but eager, tried to learn. His father came to his performances, paralyzingly ill at ease. His sister worshipped him and at night thanked God that she was the sister of a brother who did this thing she could not do and thanked God that she didn’t have to do it. Music.

So Miranda, loving Adam, must be brought into this world.

It is not her world. Her world is based on dreams of justice. But there is time for both, because of all the hours Adam must be away from her, studying, practicing, and Sylvia Levi has told her it is important “to keep up her own interests but be ready when called upon to put them down.” Sylvia Levi is a phlebotomist. She draws blood at the laboratory of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. Committed to the belief that Henry’s music was more important than anything she could accomplish, she found for herself a profession that would always be in demand but that would not be so demanding that she couldn’t drop it at a moment’s notice. Sylvia is not only skilled but charming, and so she is allowed to accompany her husband when he travels for performance dates. She suggests that Miranda keep her eye open for a similar career, but Miranda, though admiring of Sylvia, does not wish to follow her lead.

It helps that Adam’s mother shares Miranda’s dreams of justice. It turns out that they had a connection anterior to the one created by Adam; they both worked at the local headquarters of Bobby Kennedy’s senatorial campaign. They must, they reckon afterward, have been standing quite near each other holding signs when Mr. Kennedy drove by, waving. So there is a place for Miranda in Adam’s house not only as his girlfriend, but also as Rose’s political comrade, long desired. Rose’s friend.

Miranda’s mother would like to be her daughter’s comrade, companion, friend. She would like to sit at Rose’s kitchen table, peeling, slicing, talking about the world. She sees the desirability of what her daughter is moving away from her to approach; she understands the lure of the smells, the laughter, above all the music Adam plays. Adam understands that Miranda’s mother responds to his music in a deeper way than anyone in his family, who love him and love the music not for itself but because it was made by him.

To Miranda’s mother, as to no one else, Adam can speak about his fears. He can’t seem to do it in his house where people seem to come in and out at all hours as they never do in Bill and Harriet’s, where no one would ever think of dropping in without calling first. Miranda’s father, too well bred to say it, believes what his ancestors believed, and thinks his daughter is in the grips of a foreign influence. And so while Miranda’s parents are mourning the loss of their daughter, Miranda is celebrating the accession of the world.

She would never say aloud that she prefers Adam’s house to hers, the smells of food that are insistent as opposed to the decorous anonymity of what emanates from Harriet’s kitchen. The scent of strong coffee like a canopy inches below the ceiling of Adam’s house. Sometimes, like a dark thread through a lighter fabric: the smell of roasting nuts. Certainly she would never say to herself that she prefers Adam’s mother to her own, that she is happier with Rose than with Harriet. But somehow, especially most Sundays, she is at Adam’s house more than her own.

She will admit to herself that she has more to say to Rose than to Harriet. But it’s simply, she says to herself, that we have more in common. In fact, they do share two passions: their desire for a just world, and their love for Adam, whom they see as infinitely gifted, infinitely valuable, under their protection. This focus is a beam that they fix their joint gaze on, a gaze marked by its qualities of steadiness, of unswervingness. They do not ever discuss the fact that this shared focus, this shared guardianship, makes them feel safer, certainly less alone. This watchfulness; this hopeful vigilance. Adam will be a great pianist; the world will be more peaceful and more just.

Miranda is particularly happy in Rose’s kitchen, occasionally slicing a carrot or a piece of celery (Just sit, Rose says, just sit and talk to me), getting juice or milk for Adam’s little sister, Josephina, called Jo after Rose’s favorite literary character, Jo March. Jo is ten, and Miranda is her goddess. She believes Miranda can teach her everything in the world she needs to know. She is perfectly willing to do anything Miranda suggests or even hints at because Miranda is beautiful and intelligent and kind. She loves Jo’s brother, and Adam loves her and Jo, who has since her birth found in her brother, Adam, sustenance and shelter. They have provided for each other unquestioning, unquestioned love. And Miranda basks in the drunken adoration of the younger girl. As a younger sister of a tall, plainspoken, and athletic brother, it is she who was meant to take up the stance of adoration, awe. But she never felt those things directed at her.

She is charmed that Adam’s grandparents speak with accents. They pinch her cheeks, and the grandfather sings her snatches of songs whose words she doesn’t understand. The grandmother loves to braid Miranda’s hair, saying it’s like silk, like honey. Overawed by her Protestantism, the grandfather calls her a princess; the grandmother calls her a treasure, but she whispers in Miranda’s ear that Adam is a good boy but all boys are dirty and they only want one thing and she must keep her legs closed tight. Miranda blushes, but nods to make Nonna think that she agrees, although she certainly does not.

Miranda, daughter of Bill and Harriet, Americans for generations, now takes her place in the Old World. And in Adam’s other world, also an old world, the world of Henry and Sylvia Levi, the world of tragedy and beauty, history and high, high stakes. When Adam takes his lessons in the apartment on Riverside Drive on Saturdays during the school year, Sylvia takes Miranda to the Frick (to which Harriet would love to go with her daughter, but is afraid to offer), for pastries at Rumplemeyer’s, and to accompany her when she buys Ombre Rose perfume at Bendel’s, classic pumps at I. Miller’s, creams from a lady named Florica. (Is she Russian, Mrs. Levi? Miranda asks, excited. No, Miranda, no, Romanian. In Romanian her name means “little flower.”) And on her fingertips Miranda takes the powdery rose scent of the cream. She rubs it into the inside of her wrist; she doesn’t spread it on her cheeks, because Sylvia says Miranda is too young to need it now, but should remember in the future.