Sunset Park

movie that sets the tone for this generational split, and that is what she will be tackling today, that one scene, in which Fredric March presents his high-school-age boy with his war trophies, a samurai sword and a Japanese flag, and she finds it unexpected but entirely appropriate that the boy shows no interest in these things, that he would rather talk about Hiroshima and the prospect of nuclear annihilation than the presents his father has given him. His mind is already fixed on the future, the next war, as if the war that has just been fought is already in the distant past, and consequently he asks his father no questions, is not curious enough to learn how these souvenirs were obtained, and a scene in which one would have imagined the boy wanting to hear his father talk about his adventures on the battlefield ends with the boy forgetting to take the sword and the flag with him when he walks outof the room. The father is not a hero in the eyes of his son—he is a superannuated figure from a bygone age. A bit later, when March and Myrna Loy are alone in the room, he turns to her and says: It’s terrifying. Loy: What is? March: Youth! Loy: Didn’t you run across any young people in the army? March: No. They were all old men—like me.
    Miles Heller is old. The thought comes to her out of nowhere, but once it settles in her mind, she knows that she has discovered an essential truth, the thing that sets him apart from Jake Baum and Bing Nathan and all the other young men she knows, the generation of talking boys, the logorrhea class of 2009, whereas Señor Heller says next to nothing, is incapable of making small talk, and refuses to share his secrets with anyone. Miles has been in a war, and all soldiers are old men by the time they come home, shut-down men who never talk about the battles they have fought. What war did Miles Heller march off to, she wonders, what action has he seen, how long has he been away? It is impossible to know, but there is no question that he has been wounded, that he walks around with an inner wound that will never heal, and perhaps that is why she respects him so much—because he is in pain, and he never says anything about it. Bing rants and Jake whines, but Miles holds his tongue. It is not even clear to her what he is doing in Sunset Park. One day early last month, just after he moved in, she asked him why he had left Florida, but his answer was so vague— I have some unfinished business to take care of —it could have meantanything. What unfinished business? And why move away from Pilar? He is so obviously in love with the girl, why on earth would he have come to Brooklyn?
    If not for Pilar, she would actively worry about Miles. Yes, it was a little disconcerting to be introduced to someone so young, a high school girl in her funny green parka and red woolen gloves, but that sensation quickly wore off when one understood how bright and pulled together she was, and the best thing about this girl is the simple fact that Miles is devoted to her, and from Alice’s observations during Pilar’s visit, she believes she was looking at what is probably an exceptional love, and if Miles can love someone in the way he loves this girl, it must mean the damage inside him is not systemic, that his wounds are specific wounds in specific areas of his soul and are not bleeding into other parts of him, and therefore the darkness in Miles does not prey on her mind as it did before Pilar lived among them for those ten or eleven days. It was difficult not to feel some envy, of course, watching Miles as he looked at his beloved, talked to his beloved, touched his beloved, not because she wants him to look at her in that way but because Jake doesn’t do it anymore, and foolish as it is to measure Jake against Señor Heller, there are times when she can’t stop herself. Jake has brains, talent, and ambition, whereas Miles, for all his mental and physical virtues, is completely lacking in ambition, seems content to drift through his days without passion or purpose, and yet Miles is a man and Jake is still a boy, because Miles hasbeen to war and has grown old. Perhaps that explains why the two of them seem to dislike each other so much. Even at the first dinner, when Jake began talking about interviewing Renzo Michaelson, she felt that Miles was ready to punch him or pour a drink over his head. Who knows why Michaelson provoked that response, but the animosity has continued—to such a degree that