Innocence

Let me tell you, I parsed and pondered those words, diagrammed the second sentence in my mind, and worried about what subtext was eluding me this time. Finally, I replied, “You didn’t say that you loved me. You said you loved my innocence.”

“And you are your innocence. It’s as fundamental to you as water is to the sea.”

Although words are the world and were the birthing of the world, there are no words to express what I felt at that moment, no words for the dimensions of my joy, for the great buoyancy that overcame my spirit, for the depth of my gratitude, for the brightness of my hope.

When I could speak, I said, “I love you, too.”

“I know.”

“I’m not just saying it.”

“I know.”

“I mean because you said it.”

“I know. You love me. I know.”

“You really know?”

“I really do.”

“How long have you known?”

“Since we met in the library. You were standing there in shadow by Charles Dickens and you said, ‘We hold each other hostage to our eccentricities.’”

“I think I also said we were made for each other.”

“Yes, you did. But it was when you said the other thing that my heart seemed almost to fall out of me. When we love someone, we’re held hostage by fate, because if we lose that person, then we, too, are lost. When you said we hold each other hostage, you declared your love as clearly as it could be said.”

How strange it is that one can be rendered unable to speak as much by ecstasy as by terror. Fear never silenced me more effectively than this.

At last I said, “Can there be such a thing as love at first sight?”

“The great poets have always said there is. But do we really need poets to convince us?”

“No. Not me.”

“Not me, either.”

Staring through the windshield, I didn’t see the snow or the veiled city. There was nothing to see, nothing worth seeing except her face.

I wanted to touch her, just my hand to her face, but she could not bear being touched, and I wanted to stare into her eyes, but I dared not let her look into mine. Our eccentricities were more than merely peculiarities of our character; they were cruel conditions of our very existence. Our situation should have seemed hopeless, should have reduced me to despair. But regardless of what we couldn’t have together, we could still have our feelings for each other, and at that moment, knowing my feelings were reciprocated was such a grace that my bliss could not be deflated by any arrow.

She said, “We’ve got to return to Walter’s and get the girl.”

“The girl without a name? Why?”

“Everything’s happening so fast. But before we go to Walter’s, I want to see your rooms, where you live.”

“What, you mean now?”

“Yes, now. I want to see where you’ve hidden from the world for eighteen years.”

62

ON AN APRIL NIGHT WHEN I WAS TWELVE, SHORTLY after I finished reading a novel about a lucky coin, Father and I went out into the post-midnight city, where in spite of the faint but lingering odor of automobile exhaust, the sweet smell of spring was in the air, as was the expectation of change, with the trees in the parks leafing out anew.

In the great park, in the pavilion, on the elevated floor of the bandstand, a slant of moonlight polished a penny and brought it to my attention. I snatched it up, neither because we were profoundly poor, which we were, nor because we had much need of money, which we didn’t, but because of the book that I had recently read. I showed it to Father, declared that I had found my own lucky coin, and began to imagine aloud what miraculous benefits it might bestow upon us.

He could always hold his own with me in games of fantasy, but that one did not charm him. In the spring warmth, as we slowly walked the perimeter of the pavilion, gazing out at the meadows pale with lunar frost, at the woodlet guarding its darkness, at the black lake floating the full moon like a raft upon its waters, he told me that there was no such thing as luck. To believe in luck, you must believe that the universe is a roulette wheel and that instead of paying out to us what we have earned, it pays out only what it wishes. But it is not a spinning wheel of chance, it is a work of art, complete and framed by eternity.