She told me how once she was in a famous night club in a famous city when a famous person, a prince of the royal blood, had stared very intently at her for a long time and had finally got up and started to lurch in the direction of her table when his friends had made him sit down and behave himself.
I could see that all the counts and dukes who liked to marry people like Constance Bennett would want also to marry her. But the counts and dukes were not here on board this glorified cargo boat that was carrying us all peacefully across the mild dark waves of the North Atlantic. The thing that crushed me was that I had never learned to dance.
We made Nantucket Light on Sunday afternoon and had to anchor in quarantine that night. So the ship rode in the Narrows on the silent waters, and the lights of Brooklyn glittered in the harbor like jewels. That boat was astir with music and with a warm glowing life that pulsated within the dark hull and poured out into the July night through every porthole. There were parties in all the cabins. Everywhere you went, especially on deck where it was quiet, you were placed in the middle of movie scenery--the setting for the last reel of the picture.
I made a declaration of my undying love. I would not, could not, ever love anyone else but her. It was impossible, unthinkable. If she went to the ends of the earth, destiny would bring us together again. The stars in their courses from the beginning of the world had plotted this meeting which was the central fact in the whole history of the universe. Love like this was immortal. It conquered time and outlasted the futility of human history. And so forth.
She talked to me, in her turn, gently and sweetly. What it sounded like was: "You do not know what you are saying. This can never be. We shall never meet again." What it meant was: "You are a nice kid. But for heaven's sake grow up before someone makes a fool of you." I went to my cabin and sobbed over my diary for a while and then, against all the laws of romance, went peacefully to sleep.
What Merton wants is a happily ever after. On a dream voyage across the Atlantic, he meets the love of his life. They spend days in each other's company, and he burns for her in his cabin at night. At the end of this ocean crossing, Merton declares his love for her, and, if he was writing the fairy tale ending to a Hollywood love story, she would throw her arms around his neck, the music would crescendo, and they would kiss passionately on the lido deck. (That could also be the conclusion to an episode of The Love Boat.)
We've all grown up with these tales. We all want happily ever afters. What this little passage from The Seven-Storey Mountain teaches, however, is that fairy tale endings don't really exist like this. They are fabrications, taught to us when we are very young, and they lead us, in adulthood, to broken hearts, broken relationships, broken marriages, broken families, broken lives.
The reality of love is that it is work. Hard work. If you are lucky enough to meet the love of your life, you can spend years getting to know each other. You will get on each other's nerves. Maybe not speak to each other for days. There will be shouting. Sometimes, Prince Charming will turn back into the frog for a while. And Cinderella will end up sweeping out the fireplace again. Those are the hard, day-to-day facts of love. And, after all that struggle, it may not conclude with a happily ever after. That's why Disney princess movies usually stop at the wedding scene instead of the golden anniversary.
It is the eve of Independence Day in the United States. A celebration of the founding of the United States. Usually, there are parades and community picnics and fireworks. Everyone wears red, white, and blue clothes, and we imagine America is the greatest place on Earth to live.
Of course, this one-day love affair with patriotism is a little like a happily ever after. It ignores things like the genocide of Native Americans and institutionalized racism. Black people dying in the streets as they just go about the business of living their lives. LGTBQ people whose inalienable rights are still being assailed in Supreme Court cases. I live in a land deeply divided. White supremacists marching into state capital buildings, toting automatic rifles. A President who tear gasses peaceful protesters at a church in order to stage a photo op, who wants to mobilize the military against his own people. And a pandemic that is raging out of control while the rest of the world seems to have a handle on it.
Independence Day isn't about who we are as a people. It's about who we could be. A shining example of hope for the entire world. We aren't there yet. Like every happily ever after, there's hard work to be done. We have to face some ugly truths about our past and present, make drastic changes, in order to have a future where we really are what we claim to be: the land of the free and home of the brave. For every one of our citizens, indigenous and immigrant.
So, I will barbecue hot dogs tomorrow. Shoot off some fireworks. Maybe even feel a little patriotic, not for who we are right now, but for who we could be. Because our fairy tale isn't done yet. Right now, we're at that place in the story where everything seems at its darkest. The glass slipper is lost. Aurora Rose has pricked her finger on a spindle. Snow White has eaten the poison apple.
There's work to be done. Difficult work. Change is painful. Always. But we can be better. I still have enough optimism to believe that our story could have a happily ever after. Martin Luther King, Jr., marched for that. James Baldwin wrote for that. Dennis Banks went to Wounded Knee for that. Marsha P. Johnson picked up a brick for that.
And Saint Marty gives thanks for all of them.
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