In my mother’s Paris, sickness itself seemed aberrant. It was so unlike her to leave a trail of restaurant reservations not claimed, walks not taken, conversations not had. It was out of character for her to suffer in that city, the face of which seemed to say that suffering was gratuitous. In New York we often fought our way through the weeks. In New York it was impossible to pretend that all was pleasure and light. In New York—well, in New York we had raw edges, flashes of anger. In Paris, we regretted nothing; in Paris there was nothing to regret. My mother was never angry in Paris (except, perhaps, if I was very late for an appointment; but that anger soon passed). She was never sad in Paris. She was never overtired after the first two days of jet lag. She was never tense, or irritable.

When my mother was a teenager, her favorite film was Love in the Afternoon, in which a girl has an affair that takes place entirely in a vast suite at the Ritz. My mother dreamed when she was twelve that she would go one day and stay in that suite in that hotel, and when she married my father, he took her there. Is it fair to say that my mother’s life, which has sometimes seemed so easy to those who don’t know her, was more than half the painstaking realization of a plan nearly perfect for herself and for the rest of us? I think it is. My father provided more than the means; my grandparents might have taken her to the Ritz if there hadn’t been a war, and if their taste hadn’t led them to other hotels, and if my grandfather hadn’t died young, and if a thousand other dramas hadn’t interfered. But they didn’t take her there, and my father did. Love in the afternoon, love in the morning, love in the evening: that was my mother’s dream for herself, and so it became my father’s dream for her, too: in the end a family dream for our ever-dreaming family. My mother loved the Ritz, where we always stayed, because it was beautiful; but she really loved it because, for her, being there was an affirmation of love itself.

“Well, here we all are,” said my father, after he had finished checking in, that first night. He turned to my mother. “Back in your hotel,” he said.

“My hotel is suffering from threadbare carpets,” my mother replied with a laugh, looking at a worn patch near the stairs. “But otherwise it seems to be in pretty good shape. Glad to be here?”

We were all glad.

The porter held open the door of the tiny elevator. “Should we go upstairs?” said my father.

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