disappointment in her children. That, she has always believed, can only be destructive. It is something she will not allow.
His daughter, Lucy, is studying the violin with a master teacher. Her Benjamin is in Nepal, hoping to make a documentary film about the Tibetans. Jeremy is working for a foundation that is trying to teach environmental consciousness to inner-city children. He says he is thinking of law school, but he has made no moves in that direction. She knows that if she says these things to Adam, he will pretend to think it’s fine. But he will think that Lucy has chosen the better part. So she only gives the barest outlines of their plans, suggesting that their fates are more fixed than they are.
“Their lives sound much more open than Lucy’s.”
Does he mean this, or is he condescending? No one speaks about the vanity of parents, that it is almost impossible to hear even the slightest criticism of your children without the impulse to take a knife to the speaker’s heart. She will give him the benefit of the doubt: that he is speaking out of his worry for his daughter.
“But I know you wake up every morning grateful for your daughter’s gift.”
“Yes. Yes and no. I worry for her. What she’s already given up. What she will have to give up. What might not come to fruition. Serious music is growing less and less central to what’s considered important in the world. And yes, I think, unless people like Lucy lead a certain kind of life, give up a certain kind of life, a certain way of living, the world will be poorer. So she is, in a way, a sacrificial lamb.”
“A sacrifice to an ideal of greatness.”
“To a possibility.”
“And if she decides it’s not for her?”
“Then she decides,” he says, bowing his head toward the marble woman, concentrating, though Miranda doesn’t know it, on the relaxed and undemanding foot.
Wednesday, October 10
THE VILLA BORGHESE
“What Have We Given Up for an Ideal of Health?”
She has a meeting that begins, unusually, at ten o’clock; they agree to meet for a short, early morning walk.
The day before had been a disappointment to the both of them; each had found the other wanting; both telephoned their spouses, flush with the pleasure of being able to speak critically, yet truthfully: to make the point that really, there was no danger. “I had forgotten what a pedant he could be,” she told her husband. “What did we do in the days before we could invoke the term ‘politically correct’?” he asked his wife.
She has got to the balustrade before him. She sees him coming to the top of the staircase, that his pace is slow, and that he stops to catch his breath, holding his hand to his chest. She has noticed that she has had to alter her pace to accommodate his. Another way of saying it: she had to slow herself down. She remembers being impatient with his slowness, yet sometimes dependent on it: her safety valve, her brakes. Sometimes when she was most in love, his slowness was arousing to her, a promise of large leisure.
She pretends not to see him; she looks away. But now it is she who’s been too slow. He sees that she has seen him.
Seeing him leaning heavily on the stone banister, stopping to catch his breath, she feels drenched in a wave of sorrow. How ridiculous, she thinks, keeping alive the grievances of nearly half a century, even the irritations of the day before. With a new acuteness, she feels in the bones of her back the two words “time” and “past.” She thinks of a hymn her mother sang sometimes … did her mother miss churchgoing, was it another of her capitulations to her husband, the strength of whose assertions she never could resist? She hears her mother’s voice, “Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away; they fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.”
An incredible cliché, the river of time. But she thinks of the grievance she has cherished against Adam, and all of a sudden she wants
His daughter, Lucy, is studying the violin with a master teacher. Her Benjamin is in Nepal, hoping to make a documentary film about the Tibetans. Jeremy is working for a foundation that is trying to teach environmental consciousness to inner-city children. He says he is thinking of law school, but he has made no moves in that direction. She knows that if she says these things to Adam, he will pretend to think it’s fine. But he will think that Lucy has chosen the better part. So she only gives the barest outlines of their plans, suggesting that their fates are more fixed than they are.
“Their lives sound much more open than Lucy’s.”
Does he mean this, or is he condescending? No one speaks about the vanity of parents, that it is almost impossible to hear even the slightest criticism of your children without the impulse to take a knife to the speaker’s heart. She will give him the benefit of the doubt: that he is speaking out of his worry for his daughter.
“But I know you wake up every morning grateful for your daughter’s gift.”
“Yes. Yes and no. I worry for her. What she’s already given up. What she will have to give up. What might not come to fruition. Serious music is growing less and less central to what’s considered important in the world. And yes, I think, unless people like Lucy lead a certain kind of life, give up a certain kind of life, a certain way of living, the world will be poorer. So she is, in a way, a sacrificial lamb.”
“A sacrifice to an ideal of greatness.”
“To a possibility.”
“And if she decides it’s not for her?”
“Then she decides,” he says, bowing his head toward the marble woman, concentrating, though Miranda doesn’t know it, on the relaxed and undemanding foot.
Wednesday, October 10
THE VILLA BORGHESE
“What Have We Given Up for an Ideal of Health?”
She has a meeting that begins, unusually, at ten o’clock; they agree to meet for a short, early morning walk.
The day before had been a disappointment to the both of them; each had found the other wanting; both telephoned their spouses, flush with the pleasure of being able to speak critically, yet truthfully: to make the point that really, there was no danger. “I had forgotten what a pedant he could be,” she told her husband. “What did we do in the days before we could invoke the term ‘politically correct’?” he asked his wife.
She has got to the balustrade before him. She sees him coming to the top of the staircase, that his pace is slow, and that he stops to catch his breath, holding his hand to his chest. She has noticed that she has had to alter her pace to accommodate his. Another way of saying it: she had to slow herself down. She remembers being impatient with his slowness, yet sometimes dependent on it: her safety valve, her brakes. Sometimes when she was most in love, his slowness was arousing to her, a promise of large leisure.
She pretends not to see him; she looks away. But now it is she who’s been too slow. He sees that she has seen him.
Seeing him leaning heavily on the stone banister, stopping to catch his breath, she feels drenched in a wave of sorrow. How ridiculous, she thinks, keeping alive the grievances of nearly half a century, even the irritations of the day before. With a new acuteness, she feels in the bones of her back the two words “time” and “past.” She thinks of a hymn her mother sang sometimes … did her mother miss churchgoing, was it another of her capitulations to her husband, the strength of whose assertions she never could resist? She hears her mother’s voice, “Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away; they fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.”
An incredible cliché, the river of time. But she thinks of the grievance she has cherished against Adam, and all of a sudden she wants
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