We were both getting dressed at my apartment. Helen had bought a suit of fiery pink watered silk and black velvet for the occasion, and she had amazing shoes with large black rosettes on them. I had had a suit made of dark blue worsted with an almost imperceptible stripe; it was double-breasted, and the trousers had narrow legs. But I had had a hard time choosing a tie; and in the end I had settled not on something new, but on a tie that my mother had given me in my Christmas stocking when I was perhaps eleven years old, a tie with a tiny pattern of bridles and stirrups and prize ribbons on it, a tie she would have bought in Paris on one of those long Paris shopping afternoons that made her forever young. It was the first truly beautiful tie I had ever owned, and I had kept it for all these years, and it had never faded and (miraculously) it had never been spotted, and it had remained in perfect shape and condition. The deep violet of the prize ribbons was as rich as it had been that childhood Christmas morning when I had opened the box, and the elaborate turnings of the bridles and stirrups were still as exquisite and intricate.

I had assumed that my mother would give all her finery a last outing, but when I had gone uptown a few days before the party she had said no. “I’ve had my super-diamond days,” she had said. “Look at me,” she had gone on, and I had looked at her. “I’m wearing a wig. I’ve lost weight. I can’t wear anything that presses against my scars. I can’t wear makeup. I can’t wear high-heeled shoes, because my sense of balance is completely gone. I’d look like a clown in a dress that was too much dress with diamonds all over the place.” I had interrupted her but she would have none of it. “I’ve got a very simple dress and my double rope of big pearls and the earrings your father gave me this Christmas. It’s a cocktail party, Harry. A big cocktail party, with a buffet supper, but still really a cocktail party. I’m going to wear what’s appropriate for me to be wearing to a cocktail party right now. Everyone I care about who’s coming to this party has seen me all dressed up before.” And she had shown me the dress she was planning to wear, a simple, loose black dress with trails of brilliant flowers falling down it, like fresh snowflakes or chance tears, flowers in red and blue and pink. On the hanger, that dress had looked like nothing, like a shapeless bolt of silk, like a dressed-up bathrobe. My mother had watched my face. “Harry, it’s appropriate,” she had said.

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