The Love of My Youth_ A Novel - Mary Gordon [50]
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.
Everyone seems to think of Miranda as Adam’s wife, though they are only sixteen, seventeen. They don’t know of their secret life, the real life of husband and wife, stolen treasures (half hours in Miranda’s bedroom, in darkness on a beach, once, daring, on the Levis’ couch when they are in Paris for two weeks and Adam and Miranda are assigned to water the plants, feed the cat). Do the Levis understand that they are providing an opportunity for illicit love between teenagers? Most likely they do.
Each time they make love, Adam and Miranda are convinced that they are doing something entirely unlike what has been done by those before them who would say they are doing the same thing. They are utterly ignorant of all but the most rudimentary sexual technique; but it doesn’t matter, simply having sex is a source of ecstatic astonishment. The idea of enjoying it more, this is nothing they can comprehend.
It is he who pays the price of public shame, the semicriminal forays into the drugstore, purchase of that item for which there so many names, all of them unappealing: condoms, Trojans, rubbers, Baggies, bags.
Together they make their college plans; she will go to Wellesley and he to Boston University because Henry believes in a larger education than a conservatory provides: history, the sciences, the plastic arts. And his old landsman, Rudolph Stern, teaches there and yearns for a gifted pupil who will make his name. So Henry says this is just the right place for Adam; he will get special attention rather than having to fight for it as one among many. He will be introduced to a larger world, but will be protected, sheltered. It is required that the artist be protected; in his turn he must be vigilant to protect his own gift. And Miranda will be there to see it all, but not so close that her lovely body will distract him too much from the demands of his music.
They leave Hastings only three days apart; Adam needs to be in school early for auditions. Rose invites Miranda and her parents for a farewell supper, excruciating for Miranda. She has her place in Rose’s house beside Rose in the kitchen, always within sight of Adam, perched in Jo’s adoring regard, somewhere to the left of Sal’s sight, where most of the world seems to go on