19 Love Songs. David Levithan

Hearts swimming above napkins and hopscotching the paper towels.

      I can’t help but pick one up, feel the red paper between my fingers. Already, the heart in my hand is forming a personality in my head. This heart—a little squat, a little heavier on the left side—is a bit slower than the rest, but he tells good jokes. I name him Bruno. (I don’t know where the name comes from; it’s probably the dog or cat from a house I once lived in, the name all that remains in my memory.) Immediately, Bruno makes two friends, Sally and Lucy. They talk a valentine language, but luckily I can translate it into English.

      This is how my mother finds me nearly an hour later: at the kitchen table, building a jungle gym for my new friends. Celery for a slide. Broccoli to climb. Carrot sticks at fort-making angles. Bruno still has center stage, but the cast of characters has grown to at least a dozen. I believe I know them well.

      “Happy Valentine’s Day!” my mother says.

      Years later, I will remember her voice. I will remember the way she said it. With chime-like clarity, announcing that this is indeed a special day, and that even though I have done nothing to deserve it but be myself, it all belongs to me.

      In my haste to get lost in the heart-world I’ve conjured, I’ve forgotten to put out the envelopes Jason left. I’ve stashed them in a corner, by the gremlin-grumbling base of the refrigerator. Now I scoot down from my chair to retrieve them. I have not touched the larger pink envelope I found with my name on it on the kitchen table. I knew to wait until Mom woke up before opening it.

      My mother goes to the cupboard and reaches for something on a shelf I can’t imagine ever being able to reach. A few hearts fall as the door swings, but they make a soft landing. Two red-wrapped boxes emerge in her hands. I wonder how long they’ve been up there, and at the same time I could just as easily believe they’ve appeared at this very moment.

      It is just the two of us, giants in the world of hearts. It is just the two of us, together in a small kitchen on a Sunday morning. It is just the two of us, and now I am handing over my twelve envelopes and she is handing over the red-wrapped boxes, accompanied by the pink-clad card.

      It is a trick I’ve learned, to feel as if a card is for me even if it’s really addressed to the person I am that day. This is the only way I stop myself from falling through the fabric of everyday life. When I was a child, I could make myself believe that the words and the love behind them were always meant for me. Especially if I saw the expression of love in the eyes of the person who was giving the card to me.

      As my mother opens her envelopes, I can see I’ve given her a whole pack of Star Wars valentines, providing each character with his or her own elaborate autograph. The card for me, meanwhile, has a pack of walruses on it, making the shape of a heart on an ice floe. (I have to look closely to make sure they’re not Wookiees.) In the first red box my mother has given me, I find a red scarf. In the second red box, I find a pair of red mittens.

      When you get older, red becomes more complicated, just as hearts become more complicated. But back then, the world was far from a bloody, angry, embarrassing thing. Red had one meaning, and that meaning was love. There in the kitchen, I wrap myself in it, I clothe myself in it, and I’m sure that my smile is just as red as the mittens, and the heart in my chest is just as red as the scarf.

      My mother holds up a card with a masked figure on it. The caption reads, May you HUNT up a BOUNTY of HEARTS.

      “I think this is my favorite,” she tells me. “Boba Fett’s a real romantic, isn’t he?”

      I have no idea what she’s talking about, but I nod earnestly, which only makes her smile more.

      “So what shall we do with our Valentine’s Day? Maybe some valentine waffles to start?”

      She has a heart-shaped cookie cutter at the ready, and uses it to force some Eggos into the holiday spirit. As she does, she hums a song I don’t know. I want to sing along, but I can’t. Most of the songs I’ve learned in school involve grand old flags and amber waves of grain. None seem to apply to this moment.

      She tries to shape the butter into hearts, but it doesn’t quite work. The syrup, however, allows itself a heart-shaped pour. I almost don’t want to eat the waffles, they seem so loving.

      I think my mother senses I’m on the verge of giving the waffles names. “Go ahead,” she says, now making two for herself. “Before they get cold.”

      She turns on the radio, and we’re serenaded by commercials and forecasts. Sitting at the kitchen table, I am reminded how households with only two people have a different kind of gravity than others. We need the background noise, because otherwise the burden is entirely on us. And at the same time, there isn’t that much of a burden, because we are used to the two-person rhythm of things, the constant awareness of one another without much needing to be said. We are the only objects exerting any gravitational pull on our attentions. The pull has some slack to it, some give.

      After the waffles are gone, I head back to my room and play some more with the hearts, letting them explore the Millennium Falcon and some sketches Jason has made of the Death Star.

      As I do this, my mother washes the dishes, then goes to her room to do other things I don’t notice. When she emerges again in my doorway, she has a bottle of pink liquid in her hands.

      “How about a strawberry bubble bath?” she asks.

      I am not going to argue with that. I watch, hearts in hand, as she draws the bath, checking to make sure the water isn’t too cold and isn’t too hot. When it’s just right, she pours the pink in, and I watch the bubbles race to the surface. She leaves me alone to submerge myself into strawberry-scented oblivion. My thoughts wander, but not to a place where I can follow them. I turn the bubbles into peaks, into clouds that I toss into the air. It doesn’t occur to me to wash myself. It’s as if I believe the steam will evaporate me into being clean.

      From the bathtub, I can hear my mother walking around the apartment. Every now and then, she asks if everything is okay, and I let her know I’m good. Finally she suggests it might be time for me to get out of the tub. I have already used the tap to add more hot water, and the bubbles are starting to wear thin. So I rise from the tub, a foamy tempest, and then towel myself off and get dressed in a red shirt and green jeans. I wish I had red socks and sneakers, too.

      I remember this. I remember all of this.

      The next thing I remember, we are walking in the zoo. I know we must have talked about going there. I know we must have driven. But those were everyday acts, and I’m sure I didn’t even hold on to them at the time they were happening. The zoo, however, is different. I have been here before, with other parents, on a field trip. And I’m sure Jason has been here before, too, since his mother doesn’t offer much in the way of tour guidance. Instead she brings Valentine’s Day with her. I remember her pink scarf. I remember my red mittens. I remember us making our way to the mother panda and the baby panda, and I remember the story my mother tells me about how they’re going to spend Valentine’s Day. After everyone’s gone—after even the guards go off to do other things, like check the giraffes—the pandas are going to have a party, just the two of them. They are going to sip pink lemonade through bamboo straws and share heart-shaped chocolates they’ve ordered all the way from China. I listen to her tell me all this, rapt, and then ask her wonder-filled questions: Will they play music at this party? Do they give each other cards? Are the chocolates the kind with fillings, or are they chocolate through and through? Do pandas like the peanut butter ones the best, like I do? My mother has an answer for each and every question.

      I watch the pandas and smile. Even though they’re chewing bamboo, even though they aren’t really paying attention to us, I know their secret plans. Even though I know they’re bears, just like the bears you have to be afraid of in the woods, when I look at them, all I can see is softness. I want to give them valentines. I want to buy them red licorice for their party, even if it ends up being from CVS, not China.

      At eight, I still let myself believe, because it’s more fun and welcoming to believe. The older I get, the more I will feel I have to assert my logic, the