The Love of My Youth by Mary Gordon Page B

about this with him; he wants her to say something about his life. That it is all right, the way that he has lived it. Something has lifted, but not entirely. To give him what he wants, that understanding, would require a giving over of an old grievance. And she isn’t ready for that yet.
    He takes her into Santa Maria della Vittoria, a church that in its overembellishment does not please her. Gold and marble: the materials of wealth and power. Everything she has devoted her life to being against. Why would he think this is something she would like? But then, why would he know what she would like? They haven’t seen each other for nearly forty years.
    He leads her to the front left side, to Bernini’s Saint Teresa. “Is this not worth it?” he asks.
    “Worth what?”
    “A life.”
    “It’s not a question I have to consider. Which is why I live as I do.”
    He sees that she’s unmoved. He is angry with himself: he knows this isn’t the kind of thing she likes. Her taste always retained something of the American Puritan: she liked bare hills, slate skies, pastures fenced with stones. He should have led her up to this; taken her first to something plainer, more austere.
    Her resistance angers him. This is his favorite place on earth, and he won’t allow her to spoil it for him. He wants to say: This is greatness, this richness, this celebration of life, the gold rays, the flow of the fabric, what is done with marble that seems so light it can’t be stone, her abandonment, the sharpness of the golden arrow, the sweetness of the angel’s face . But he thinks it’s better to say nothing.
    She wants to say, She’s having an orgasm . But she won’t. She focuses on the entirely relaxed foot, surrounded by plain air, the only plainness in the room.
    “I like the pleased face of the angel,” she says. “But those guys on the balcony looking on: what creeps.”
    “Just looking on, the donor’s family leaving no mark. Bernini’s life left a mark. He won’t be forgotten. Do you really mean that it doesn’t matter to you whether your work will be known after you die?”
    “I never imagined it would. I just wanted to do something that would help people.”
    “I wanted to make some kind of mark. For a time I thought I would. That my work would be remembered. That I would move something forward, maybe a quarter of an inch, and people for whom music was important would know. Is it really true that you never had such thoughts?”
    So I was right, she thinks to herself with a grim pride. He is talking about himself. His acknowledgment of it softens her; perhaps she can begin to be a little kind.
    “Never. Your life has been harder than mine.”
    “Yes, I think it has.”
    She’d like to say, I’m sorry , but she doesn’t think they know each other well enough for that. Not after all this time. Not yet.
    “My Lucy, my daughter, is in for the same kind of difficult life. Trying for the perfection of a form, knowing perfection is impossible but trying, exhausting herself, over and over. Is that my doing?” He leans on the marble rail that keeps Saint Teresa from her onlookers.
    “It’s a form of narcissism to think of that. We can’t take the credit for our children. We can, I suppose, take blame.”
    “Your children, what do they want for their lives?”
    She looks at the sculpture that she thinks her children will probably never see because they will have no impulse to. She knows that he would think her children “mediocre,” uninterested in perfection. They want to be happy. They want in some way to change the world, but their ideas are vague and connected to their ideas of personal happiness. They want justice. They care deeply about the fate of the earth. But whatever they want … well, she knows they don’t want it enough to interfere with the enjoyment of their lives. And the fate of art … this means, she knows, exactly nothing to them. She erases, as soon as it appears, the impulse to feel