Friend of My Youth

it.
    People on the boat hadn’t recognized it. About half of the thirty or so passengers were Canadians, most of them from around Toronto, but they hadn’t recognized it. “My mother sang Zerlina,” Averill said during her first conversation with the professor. “In
Don Giovanni
, in 1964.” She had been ten at the time and remembered the occasion as one filled with glory. Apprehension, flurry, crisis—a sore throat cured by yoga. A peasant costume with a ruffled pink-and-gold skirt over piles of petticoats. Glory.
    “Honey, Zerlina is just not a household word,” Bugs said to her afterward. “Also, professors are dumb. They are dumber than ordinary. I could be nice and say they know about things we don’t, but as far as I’m concerned they don’t know shit.”
    But she let the professor sit beside her and tell her things about himself every morning. She told Averill what she’d learned. He walked the deck for one hour before breakfast. At home he walked six miles a day. He had caused a certain amount of scandal at the university a few years ago by marrying his young wife (his dimwit wife, said Bugs), whose name was Leslie. He had made enemies, stirred up envy and discontent among his colleagues with his dalliance, and then by divorcing his wife and marrying this girl who was one year younger than his oldest child. From then on, certain people were out to get him, and they did. He was a biologist, but he had devised a sort of general-science course—he called it a scientific-literacy course—for students in the humanities: a lively, unalarming course that he hoped would be a modest breakthrough. He got the approval of the higher-ups, but the course was scuttled by members of his own department, who devised all kinds of cumbersome, silly requirements and prerequisites. He retired early.
    “I think that was it,” Bugs said. “I couldn’t keep my mind on it. Also, young women can make very frustrating mates for older men. Youth can be boring. Oh, yes. With an older womana man can relax. The rhythms of her thoughts and memories—yes, the rhythms of her thoughts and memories will be more in harmony with his. What puke!”
    Down the deck the young wife, Leslie, sat working on a needlepoint cover for a dining-room chair. This was the third cover she had done. She needed six altogether. The two women she sat with were glad to admire her pattern—it was called Tudor Rose—and they talked about needlepoint covers that they had made. They described how these fitted in with the furnishings of their houses. Leslie sat between them, somewhat protected. She was a soft, pink-skinned, brown-haired girl whose youth was draining away. She invited kindness, but Bugs had not been very kind to her when she hauled the needlepoint out of her bag.
    “Oh, my,” said Bugs. She threw up her hands and waggled her skinny fingers. “These hands,” she said, and got the better of a fit of coughing—“these hands have done plenty of things I am not proud of, but I must say they have never picked up a knitting needle or an embroidery needle or a crochet hook or even sewn on a button if there was a safety pin handy. So I’m hardly the person to appreciate, my dear.”
    Leslie’s husband laughed.
    Averill thought that what Bugs said was not completely true. It was Bugs who had taught her how to sew. Bugs and Averill both took a serious interest in clothes and were attentive to fashion, in a playful, unintimidated way. Some of their best hours together had been spent in cutting up material, pinning it together, getting inspirations.
    The caftans, the loose tops that Bugs wore on the boat, were patchworks of silk and velvet and brightly patterned cotton and crocheted lace—all from old dresses and curtains and tablecloths that Averill had picked up at secondhand stores. These creations were greatly admired by Jeanine, an American woman on the boat, who was making friends zealously.
    “Where did you find those gorgeous things?” said Jeanine, and Bugs said, “Averill. Averill made them. Isn’t she clever?”
    “She’s a genius,” said Jeanine. “You’re a genius, Averill.”
    “She should make theatre costumes,” Bugs said. “I keep telling her.”
    “Yes, why don’t you?” said Jeanine.
    Averill flushed and could not think of anything to say, anything to placate Bugs and Jeanine, who were smiling at her.
    Bugs said, “I’m just as glad she’s not, though. I’m just as glad she’s here. Averill is my