The Love of My Youth_ A Novel - Mary Gordon [37]
She does not think of it as September 7, 1964. She thinks of it as the first day of junior year.
Four years later, September 7, 1968, she won’t consider wearing something uncomfortable. In 1968, she will wear what is easy or amusing; no one she speaks to at that time will be able to consider once again wearing stockings and a girdle, which will, by that time, have become as unthinkable as a whalebone corset, a bustle, a parasol. Miranda and her friends will be proud of wearing garments others have worn before them. They will hide any designer label, anything with a recognizable name.
But of course she does not know this. It is September 7, 1964, the day she must audition for the Glee Club. It’s not an ordinary audition for the Glee Club; she’s already in the Glee Club, anyone can be, almost anyone who can sing in tune. But it’s different today. Today she’s auditioning for solos, and everyone wants a solo, and she’s only a junior, and juniors never get solos, but she knows she’s right to try for this because she knows she’s right to say to herself, I have a good voice.
How does she know? Because her friends tell her, and so does Miss McKeever, the music teacher, whom she doesn’t trust because Miss McKeever is too eager, too enthusiastic, too needy of Miranda’s friendship. And Miranda is ashamed for her that she, an adult, should visibly need so much from someone like Miranda, who is still used to thinking of herself as a child.
Nevertheless, she knows her voice is good.
What she doesn’t know is: what is meant by “good”?
To whom should she compare herself? Most important: Joan Baez. She knows her voice is not as beautiful as Joan Baez’s. She wonders if, one day, with study, with discipline, it could be, but this is something she tells no one.
Miss McKeever tells her that this year the Glee Club’s solos will be taken from Brigadoon. So with the part of her babysitting money left over after she bought the Pendleton jacket, she buys the original Broadway cast album of the show. She chooses the original Broadway cast, with people she’s never heard of—David Brook and Marion Bell—instead of the record accompanying the film, with people she has heard of and likes very much: Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse. Because she knows that Broadway is more important than Hollywood and the original cast is always the best. How does she know this? It is one of the things she and her friends seem to know, which allows them to mark themselves as superior to others of their cohort who are considered superior—cheerleaders, athletes—but who do not know this kind of thing.
In her room, with the doors closed, when she is sure her father is at work and her mother is out shopping and her brother is practicing with one of his many teams, she sings the words to the songs.
“The heather on the hill.”
“Come to me, bend to me.”
She is embarrassed at her own yearning to sing these words to a living person. “Come to me, bend to me, kiss me good day! Give me your lips and don’t take them away.”
She has not yet been kissed.
At night in her bed she dreams of it. Her arms around a boy’s strong body, his arms around her. Leaning against strength that will allow her to feel what she has never felt but imagines, through reading and the movies, is delicious: the luxury of weakness.
To be allowed to allow whatever will be bound to happen.
The music of Brigadoon is not the kind of music she believes in. She believes in folk music. She wishes the solo were going to be “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” or “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” Or a song that evokes the great emotions of simple people—“Long Black Veil” or “Silver Dagger.”
But when she wakes from sleep, the words on the screen between her sleeping and her wakefulness are “Give me your lips and don’t take them away.”
Adam takes a second shower after breakfast. His white long-sleeved shirt is already soaking wet. He is nervous; he is mortified. This