Exactly an hour after the party began, Helen put her hand on my arm. “Look,” she said, and I looked down the long sweeping flight of stairs. I saw my mother. She was wearing just what she had said she was going to wear, but now that the dress was off the hanger it seemed—not more elaborate, because it was as simple as a paper bag—but more elegant than anything that anyone else had worn. I had told my mother that there was an elevator to get her to the second floor, where the buffets were, but every guest had proceeded up those stairs and my mother had apparently decided to do the same thing. My father and Freddy walked just behind her, but she was, for the first time in weeks, not leaning on my father’s arm. Later I learned that she had eaten nothing for two days because she wanted to be sure that she had no further digestive problems, but if the lack of food had made her weak, something else had made her strong. I did not move from my place at the top of the stairs; I stood there with Helen and waited. One step at a time, regal as the Queen of Sheba, my mother climbed that staircase. The long rope of pearls swung slightly as she walked, as though it were telling time. She had a smile on her face, a smile as much of her eyes and her hands and her shoulders as of her mouth, a smile of love and of triumph, a smile that reminded me more than anything of the smile she had in her wedding picture, the smile of being glad in every ounce of her being to be where she was. Friends were still arriving, and several walked up the stairs with her. I couldn’t hear them clearly from where I stood, but I saw her throw back her head when she laughed at something one of them had said; and as friends of mine arrived, I heard her greet each of them by name. When she finally got to the top of the stairs she kissed me and she kissed Helen. She was not out of breath, though she leaned for a moment on the top of the banister to steady herself. Then she looked around and her eyes followed the lengths of the galleries in either direction. She took a glass of mineral water from one of the waiters. “I’m going to find a place where I can sit,” she said. I told her there were some chairs in the far gallery on the left. “What a beautiful party, Harry,” she said.

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