TONIGHT, THIS ROOM AT MY AUNTS’ SEEMS LIKE HOME.
I have found an anchor for my soul. It’s in the music I love to hear, though I cannot perform it well.
Who makes the woeful heart to sing?—to use the phrase of an old Methodist hymn. It’s not Jesus. Another Jew. I blaspheme. Jonathan. But the heart, my heart, must beat erratic, if it is to beat at all. I embrace my irreverence, my perversity, my failures, my lopsidedness, that I may be lukewarm, that I may blow first hot, then cold. My inconsistency and uncertainty. The depth of my sorrow and the height of my hope.
I can love. And I do love. Jonathan B. Green. Let me write his name again: J. B. Green. J. Bernstein Green. Jon Green. His name is verdant as the earth. His hair is like flame. I’m crazy as a jaybird.
And he?
I know nothing of what he feels. But how could he play the piano like that if he didn’t know my heart? Subtle as my mother, but masculine. Perhaps he doesn’t know he knows me. Even the pressure of his hand when we shook hands—perfect.
I am thirteen years old! Not the age of a college graduate at all. Emotionally, I am thirteen, throwing stem glasses on the floor on a dare! But emerging into the beginnings of my adult life in spite of that. What was I in college? Nothing but a giant child. So sheltered and innocent I was disembodied.
I think of the Negro waiters made visible by their white coats. I relish the image of the interior of the restaurant. Its darkness ignites me. I could lick my finger again to see if any of that grainy cheese sauce is left under the nail. I think of Manet’s boudoir portrait of naked Olympia, lounging on a sofa, the dark servant behind her melding with the dark background. Flowers emerging. She staring boldly out of her frame. My eyes and ears are opened; my tongue has awakened—shrimp, horseradish, sweet, warm cheese and cherries. Ought to give me a bellyache! But it won’t. I savor every mouthful again.
Before, I have been all mind. Smart enough, but so stupid.
I pause to read again what I’ve written.
AH, I SEE WARNING flags: I am enchanted by his music (as I was with Darl). I don’t really know him, nor he me (as it was with Donny). Too much faith and trust on my part in the Don relationship, that anyone could love anyone of goodwill. Too encompassing! I have grown more cautious. Simply more sensible, perhaps?
But Don did/does speak to my soul in his own way: his kindness. Kindness made colorful with wit. I needed Don’s kindness, his willingness to sacrifice almost everything—I saw it in his devotion to Cat. And Darl would have died to protect me. I wanted a chevalier.
Is it so easy to transfer love? As from Darl to Don?
It is if you’re thirteen.
It is if love is only need.
But love is pleasure and delight, too. Wine and warm cheese sauce.
Make me fly!—that’s what the little girls begged Timmy Beaton to do.
And I will require it of any husband: make me fly. And he may require the same of me.
Will I someday, an old woman of sixty, look back on these ruminations and muse, “How on fire I was then.” Shall I ask, “And who was this Jon Bernstein—was that his name—Jon Green?” And “Did she (I) notice that Jon is a sort of variation on Don, and that Don starts with D, like Darl. And whatever became of him? Of them?”
But tonight I am not that forgetful creature of sixty. I am young and growing into my maturity, albeit belatedly. I shall have my life. My hand closes on it as surely as my fingers grip this pen. As surely I took up a cocktail fork this night, in a dark and seductive restaurant. (After I made the mistake of first using my digits and trying to cover up my lack of sophistication.)
How do I dismiss the warning flags? Darl and Don—who else were they, besides transcendently musical and supernaturally kind? Was there some lack in them as well as in myself? Darl was not weaned from his mother. His parents. And Don?
I don’t know.
We reached out to each other on such a sad day, when Kennedy was killed.
I feel sad again. And Ellie? Is she troubled for herself or for me?
But I will not. I will not go sad.
I must note, briefly, that I was a coward today. I left the building when the bomb threat came. But is that being a coward? It’s sensible. Probably Cat would not have stayed behind if I had not announced I was in love with Jonathan Green. She was refusing to abandon whatever was left of her ship. But why had she carried the gun to school in the first place? Her purse was heavy with it when we left the house.
I hope Cat will forgive me my fickle heart—or is it head?—my betrayal of Don. Ellie would.
Probably Cat will understand it all better than I do. I should never have told her Jonathan was hunchbacked and then dismissed such an attribute as a mere figment of my imagination. I cringe now at my cruelty.
SO SIMPLE, BLEAK EVEN—the interior of a practice room. Stark and bare. I go through a door. We are just a piano and two thin people in a bleached room. One male with red hair and skinny arms. One female, flat-chested, with blond hair. It is only the music itself that is glorious and complex. Encompassing and fulfilling.
Perhaps Jonathan is really only an emblem. Not the person himself but the promise that there may be such a person for me. One whose essence speaks to mine. He inspires in me a faith in life. Life has treasures. There are fine restaurants where adults sample new food, are curious about each other, without compulsion.
Independence, not engagement. Perhaps not even marriage. Just feeling. Nothing official. Ellie is my friend who understands the power of passion. She is not a college student settled in marriage. Not represented by a white blouse and a tweed skirt. She is a woman aflame with red.
What will come of my rush of joy? I feel incandescent, not red. And my flare of brightness has its dark streaks. I look at Don’s paintings hanging around me in this room. They interest me. I feel sympathy for the soul that emanated them. But I am detached. Kind Don, prescient Don, who gave me permission in advance:You can stop this anytime you want.
Tomorrow I think the students and Christine are planning a sit-in. Gloria, my confidante, implied as much. I want to know Gloria, short and busty, I want to know all of them better. I have to work tomorrow. I can’t possibly participate. I would stop them, if I could. Would I have the courage for protesting if I could go? I don’t have to decide that. But I should quit this switchboard job. I’ve finished school and I should move on to find work that represents me. That promises the future.
Now I’m going to fold up this loosely woven summer blanket and put it away on the closet shelf. And, Don, forgive me, I must take down your paintings in this room. I will set them on the floor, turn their faces to the walls. The mind is a room. On my blank wall, I will imagine the bold stare of Olympia, engaging the world. Naked and unafraid.
For now, good night, dear old Self. I’ll dream of pheasants, softly fluttering. Raising their heavy bodies into the air.