The Love of My Youth_ A Novel - Mary Gordon [47]
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