The Love of My Youth by Mary Gordon

Author:Mary Gordon [Gordon, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-37977-1
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-04-04T16:00:00+00:00

Thursday, October 18

THE VILLA BORGHESE

“We’re at an Age When We Must Take Care Not to Be Embarrassing”

“You see, it didn’t rain, after all, like you thought it would,” she says.

“And you want to see it as a sign of something.”

“No, a sign of nothing. A piece of luck.”

“What would a piece of luck look like? A coin? A shell? A hunk of bread and cheese?”

She enjoys this kind of play with him. It was who they were, people who played in this way. She doesn’t have people now who play in this way with her.

He angles his chin toward a boy and girl in identical black pants and boots, embracing on a bench. At their feet: two helmets, one garnet colored, one emerald.

“And these two, are they lucky? Lucky in their heedlessness?”

“What do you want me to say, Adam? You want to know what I think of them? What they’re doing?”

“Is this the lack of self-consciousness we were saying the other day was so wonderful in the young? I must say I don’t find this wonderful. I don’t understand it. How can she feel so comfortable, her legs wrapped around him, kissing him, then taking a bite of her sandwich, then looking at the trees, then going back to kissing him, all the time squeezing her legs around his waist? What can he be going through? I remember what it was like at that age. Anything could arouse you … an ad for panty hose. I guess it was stockings then. Somebody saying the word ‘stockings.’ And here she is almost fucking him in public. Yet he seems not to have lost his equanimity.”

“You make it sound so ugly!”

“I’d prefer not to be seeing it.”

“You’re embarrassed.”

“I suppose so, yes.”

She thinks of Yonatan, who is never embarrassed. He might not even notice the two young people, or he might embarrass Miranda and the boys by shouting out “Go for it.”

“They seem quite free of it,” she says. “Embarrassment. What a strange thing it is, embarrassment, so powerful, yet no one acknowledges it as one of the important human states. And it’s so physical. The accident of people’s coloring makes it legible, or not. If you’re fair your face turns red, and anyone around you knows you’re suffering. If you’re darker, well, your secret stays with you.”

“I was always far more liable to embarrassment than you. I could be struck dumb by embarrassment. It never seemed to stop you. I’ve got better.”

“Our first date, Zorba the Greek, when I started dancing in the street, after I went home I was terrified that I’d embarrassed you and you wouldn’t want to see me again.”

“No, I thought you were wonderful. Precisely because you seemed so free of embarrassment.”

“If you’ve got better, I’ve got worse. I’m so aware now that we’re at an age when we must take care not to be embarrassing. To dress in a way that acknowledges that some things are past. Think of hair color. You have to do it well, because if it’s done badly everyone has to feel sorry for you for having to dye your hair.

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