I never saw my mother without hair. During the entire period of her illness, she wore wigs outside, and turbans around the house. She hated those turbans; my father told her that she looked like Gloria Swanson, but though she laughed, she told him he was being ridiculous, and believed that to be so. My father, too, was kept away from her humiliation. She would close the bathroom door when she was changing from wig to wig or from wig to turban, and she slept in those turbans as well. “I’d rather you not remember me bald,” she said, “and once you saw it, you’d remember it.” How much she looked at herself without hair I was never to know, but for the rest of us her baldness was little more than a verbal construct. It influenced all of our lives, and she and my father were to develop elaborate routines around it. He would intercept coat-check girls lest they tip the wig forward; he would walk between my mother and the wind when they were outside; but he would also pretend not to know that my mother was, in fact, hairless, and if her turban ever slipped in the night, I think he contrived not to see it.

• • •

“You have to get back and start working on your recording,” my mother said one afternoon. “You’ve already missed enough. You have to keep your engagements for next month.”

“I’ve canceled a couple of performances,” I said. “My agent has been negotiating for me. But if I let it go much longer, I’m going to get a reputation I can’t afford. It’s beginning to get tricky.”

“It’s OK,” said my mother. “I love having you here, but I’ll be fine without you for a little while. I don’t want my illness to take over your work.”

“I’m thinking about flights,” I said. Bernard and I had spoken every day about when I would return.

“Flights,” said my father. “Always off on another plane. My son the jet-setter. It’s not as though you were going to forget how to play the piano if you stayed here for a little while. You could pick up next month. There are pianists who could fill in for you, if you really wanted to arrange that.”

My mother put her hand on his arm. “Let go, Leonard,” she said.

• • •

Helen came over to help me pack. “You’ll be glad to see Bernard,” she said as we counted socks.

“I’ll be glad to get out of here,” I said. “To get back to real life. I have to say I wish Bernard were a little more clued in. He’s trying to be nice about all the stuff going on now, but as for understanding—” I let the thought slide.

“Have you tried to explain it to him?” asked Helen.