My father and Freddy and I had agreed a long time before that we would not cry with my mother, would not let her know that we, too, thought she might be dying; by and large we tried not to admit that even to each other. “But you can’t . . .” I began, without knowing the rest of the sentence.

“I can,” said my mother. If tears are memories, then there were memories streaming down my cheeks as my mother spoke, memories making my napkin thick and heavy, memories pouring out of me unstoppably and endlessly. We had been so joyful, a whole family almost wholly joyful. And there we were, she and I, in yet another beautiful place, watching the sunlight and the breeze stir the flowers, and my mother was so calm, so suffused with a light of her own, so beautiful herself in her dark blue suit with the high collar of her fur coat coming up around her face, and the easy words coming to her one after the next.

“And there’s one other thing,” she said to me. “You have to help take care of your father when I’m not here. I know how angry you get at him, and I know how difficult he can be. Of course I know that. But you will have to help him. And you have to encourage him to find someone and get married and get on with his own life. That will be better for you and for him. Whomever he finds—it won’t be me, but it will be someone. He should live for a long time, and he shouldn’t be alone. Try to be nice to her. Try to make her feel loved, and accepted. Try to help your father, Harry, even if you don’t feel like it.” And then with a sudden voice of sorrow, she said across my steady tears, “You are going to be all right. We are having a rough time, but you have a life ahead of you, and it’s going to be a good life. You have to make it a good life. And you will do that, Harry. I know that you will.”

I was not sobbing or weeping; I just sat with tears running down my face, enough tears to fill the large glasses on the table, to water the garden outside, to make up for the rain that was not falling much that autumn. My mother took my hand in hers again, and squeezed it. “I don’t know how much time I have left,” she said. “Maybe very little. Maybe not so little. But I want us, all of us, to have as good a stretch as we possibly can. I want to get all the joy there is left in my life, and I want to leave you with as many happy memories as I can. I’m sorry I had to tell you all this, right now, but now it’s done. Don’t cry yet, Harry. Wait and cry later, if you have to.” She paused and looked out. “Look at that perfect yellow rose,” she said. “A perfect rose, growing right here, in the middle of Manhattan.” And so I looked out the window at the rose, which was indeed perfect. “And Harry,” said my mother, smiling. “Can we please try not to fight, at least for a while? And would you try not to fight with your father and with Freddy? Would you try, at least, not to fight about nonsense?”