“That’s part of life, part of what you’re keeping up with,” said my mother. “But what you can’t do is to sit back and get distracted and let the world pass you by. There’s not enough time for that. Stop long enough to make your experiences your own, but don’t get so lost among them that you miss everything else. And don’t end up having them alone.”

• • •

Freddy and I flew from Nice through London, and Bernard came to Heathrow with a suitcase he had packed for me. Though I felt already that he was a stranger, I held him tighter for that. I didn’t know when or how I would see him again; I didn’t know what place he held in this new world order to which I, too, was a stranger. When the fixed center of your life comes under siege, you scurry around collecting all the other love there is, hoping that in some great balance the fragmentary affections will add up to more than the monolithic one. It doesn’t work; Bernard had never been a great love, and in the vacuum of my mother’s illness he was altogether weightless.

But he and I stood at the airport like two overgrown boys, and Freddy looked at once jealous and embarrassed. “We’d better go or we’ll be late for the plane,” Freddy said nervously.

Bernard held my chin in his hand for a moment. “It’s all going to be fine,” he said. I might have preferred it if he had said, “I love you,” but though Bernard had said that in the past, it was not a remark that he produced under pressure.

“How fine can it be?” I asked, and Bernard shrugged helplessly. He would have liked to reassure me.

“I’m sorry, but we’re going to be late,” Freddy said, and pulled on my sleeve.

“I’ll come back as soon as I can,” I promised Bernard.

“I’ll be here,” he said. “Call me when you land.” And he kissed me very gently on the forehead.

Then Freddy and I headed off through passport control, and in the dim gray light we set off for New York. It was in the same dim gray light that we arrived in New York. My father had sent Robert with the car. My indecisive luggage (how long was I staying? what would I need? what seasons might pass before I found myself back in London, able to pack again?) was piled in the trunk along with Freddy’s two bags, and we set off toward Manhattan.