My parents had planned a trip to Italy to celebrate the end of the chemotherapy, and in the hospital we had all assumed that it would be canceled; indeed, in the hospital we had thought it unlikely that my mother would ever again travel as far as Madison Avenue. But her new softness was built upon an unfathomable strength, and she was all for going on this trip. “We can come back through London,” she said. “I can meet Bernard, and see what you’ve done with your house.” My father worried that she would tire herself, but she shrugged this off. “It will be a good, relaxing trip. All of us could stand to get away for a little while.” Once or twice she let slide a little phrase of melancholy. “I think this will probably be our last family trip,” she said. “I want to enjoy it, and I want you and Freddy to enjoy it. I want you to have as many happy memories as you possibly can.”

Then I withdrew back into Bernard and London. “It’s not our last trip,” I said defiantly. “And we already have plenty of happy memories.”

• • •

It was not to be our last trip, but it was to be our last trip to Europe, our last grand tour, our last journey in our own high tradition. We met in Paris, at the Ritz, on a clear August day, almost exactly a year after that fateful weekend when my mother had asked me to remember her only as she had been until then. She seemed to be free without her wig; she had new jewelry, heavy earrings and a cuff bracelet with rubies that my father had bought her, which went with her new look. “Very modern,” she said as she ran her hand along her hairline. Sometimes she talked about how we were on our last trip, but she mostly tried not to do that. “I might keep my hair short,” she said. “Not this short. But I might not grow it down to my shoulders again.”