The Love of My Youth_ A Novel - Mary Gordon [6]
She has traveled farther, by cab rather than by foot, but Miranda arrives first. The building where Valerie lives is imposing, monumental; it suggests nothing domestic. It’s the kind of place where ancient lawyers, dressed archaically and charging exorbitantly for out-of-date advice, might offer you sherry when you came to prepare your will. How, Miranda wonders, could anyone think of this as home? She presses the brass button next to the name Rinaldi and hears Valerie’s voice, expectant, cheerful, and her heart sinks. I have made a terrible mistake, she thinks, I can run away now and I will be free, and no one will know about it but Valerie, and if I like I need never speak to her in my life again. But then she thinks: I have to give her back the key to the flat. She will arrange for the return of my security deposit. I have no choice.
And besides, Miranda has always prided herself on her courage in facing up to things, and after all, she thinks, at my age it’s important that there not be people I feel incapable of seeing. Adam had hurt her badly. Was it wrong to say he betrayed her? She is suspicious of words like that now, overlarge words she once lived by, words by which her years with Adam had been marked. She feels tender, merciful toward her young self, for decisions made in good faith that turned out badly. When you are young, she thinks, you never believe that courage isn’t enough. That the imaginative, original decision isn’t always the right one.
She enters the cold marble hallway. A glassed-in booth, military looking, as if a man in a police uniform should be occupying it, takes up a third of the vestibule. But it is empty.
Miranda enters the left of the two elevators. Valerie’s instructions on how to get to her apartment once you were in the building were precise but complicated, and Miranda sees now that both the precision and the complications had been necessary. She enters the elevator, a small brass cage inside a box of glass, and presses the button for the third floor. And the second she arrives Valerie opens the gate, Valerie, whom she hasn’t seen in fifteen years, blonde, as she is blonde, but very thin as Miranda knows she is not, in a short, wool loden skirt and brown alligator pumps, the heels so high Miranda can’t imagine walking in them, a fawn-colored silk shirt, a beautifully tied scarf that seems to melt into different shades, different interpretations of red or rust. I could never tie a scarf like that, Miranda thinks. Never in my life. She doesn’t know if this makes her feel superior in relation to Valerie (I don’t have time for that kind of thing) or deficient (I will always look, beside you, inexpert).
“Well, if you’re not a sight for sore eyes,” Valerie says.
Miranda remembers that Valerie’s from Omaha. “How do you say that in Italian?” she asks.
“You’re not here to be educated, you’re here to enjoy yourself. Come in, come in, we’re thrilled to have you.”
Miranda had expected formal rooms, more imposing. Larger, darker furniture, less natural light. But the apartment is as bright as outdoors when she passes through the hall. There seem to be two living rooms abutting each other, both overcrowded with many small upholstered chairs, half rose-colored brocade, half striped white and peacock blue. Every surface is covered with photographs, most in silver frames, or small objects. She sees a bronze tortoise, the size of a walnut, a ceramic cupid