Homer & Langley: A Novel - By E. L. Doctorow Page 0,15

of us, who could transmogrify instantly into the sinuous skein of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” He would insist, for example, that when prehistoric man discovered that he could make sounds by singing or beating on something or blowing through the end of a fossilized leg bone, his intention was to sound the vast emptiness of this strange world by saying “I am here, I am here!” Even your Bach, even your precious Mozart in his waistcoat and knee britches and silk stockings was doing no more than that, Langley said.

We listened patiently to my brother’s ideas but said nothing and, when nothing further was said, went back to our lesson. On one occasion Mary couldn’t quite suppress a sigh, which sent Langley mumbling back to his newspapers. He and I were competing for the girl, of course, but it was a competition neither of us could win. We knew that. We didn’t talk about it but we both knew we suffered a passion that would destroy this girl if we ever acted upon it. I had come dangerously close. The little movie theater was right under the Third Avenue El. Every few minutes a train would roar overhead and on one occasion I pretended I couldn’t hear what Mary was saying. Still playing with my left hand, I took my right hand off the keys and pressed her frail shoulder till her face was close to mine and her lips brushed my ear. It was all I could do not to take her in my arms. I was almost made ill by my heedlessness. I atoned by buying her an ice cream on the way home. She was a brave but wounded thing, legally an orphan. We were in loco parentis, and always would be. She had her own room up on the top floor next to Siobhan’s and I would think of her sleeping there, chaste and beautiful, and wonder if the Catholics were not right in deifying virginity and if Mary’s parents had not been wise in conferring upon her frail beauty the protective name of the mother of their God.

HOW LONG MARY ELIZABETH lived with us I don’t quite remember but when I was fired from my job at the little movie theater on Third Avenue—the talkies had come along, you see—Langley and I sat down and agreed there was no call to keep her with us anymore—really it was more for our sake that we came to this decision—and allotting the necessary sums from our diminishing resources, we sent her off to the Sisters of Mercy Junior College in Westchester County, where she would study music and French and moral philosophy and whatever other educative things would assure her of a better existence. She was grateful and not too sad, having learned from her grandmother that as an orphan she should expect to be trundled off from one institution to another in hopes someday of finding a permanence that would answer her prayers.

Her gentle touch at the piano was something I should not have questioned. She was feeling her way through music as through life, a parentless child trying to regain a belief in a reasonable world. But she did not make others feel sad for her, nor did she allow herself to be as self-involved as she had every right to be. She was staunchly cheerful. When we had walked together to the theater, she held my arm as if I was escorting her as a man escorts a woman. She matched her gait to mine, as people do when they are couples. She knew I was proud of my ability to get around town and when I made a mistake, intending to cross the street at the wrong time, or stepping on someone’s heels—because I tended to walk with the assurance of a sighted person—she would stop me or steer me with the slightest pressure of her hand. And she would say something as if what had just transpired had not happened at all. That Buster, she would say—as if she hadn’t heard the horn that had blown or the driver who had cursed—that Buster, he’s so funny. He gets into these scrapes and just barely escapes with his life and the expression on his face never changes. And you know he loves the girl and doesn’t know what to do about it. That’s so sweet and dopey. I’m glad it’s still playing. I could watch it forever. And you play just the