I will not forget the image of my mother entering the restaurant that evening. Our table is at the end of a long corridor of tables, commanding a view toward the door. I saw in the dim distance that my parents and Freddy had arrived, and I watched the rituals of coat-check, and then I saw the owner guiding my family toward the table. On other occasions, I had come to meet my parents, and had sat at that table, and had watched my mother walk down that aisle, maintaining her particular elegant composure and her social smile, asking the owner after his family and about how business was at the restaurant. That day my mother walked like someone newly blind. She was wearing a black-and-white wool suit that seemed to be too big for her, and her walk was almost loping. Her arms hung strangely and uselessly at her sides. It was not, as usual, that she did not pay attention to the other people at the restaurant; she did not see them. Her eyes were only partly open, and she blinked constantly, as though she were staring into a very bright light beyond which there were only indistinct shadows. As for the wig, if you had never before seen my mother, you would not have paid particular attention to that wig; it looked like hair, and it was not unbecoming. But it did not look like her hair. It hung down onto her shoulders like a dead weight. A few flyaway strands had blown over her face, and others were lying on the wrong side of her head. She was no longer herself, and she knew this.

My mother had never suggested to me that I come home for her birthday that year. My mother at that stage carried her illness outside of her, as though it were a bag of groceries she was never to be allowed to put down. She had found already that it was impossible to give the bag, or its contents, to anyone else. It took all her energy to keep holding it, and for the first time she had too little wherewithal even to appeal to the rest of us. My mother had stopped giving voice to her demands. She was so upset that she depended on us only in the wordless way that you depend on shelter. She needed for us to be at her beck and call, but she had nothing particular or specific or meaningful to ask of us. In other years, she had not asked me to come home for her birthday because she liked being surprised, and I had come most years, but not every year, because I wanted to be able to surprise her. But that year she had not asked me to come home because it had not occurred to her.

“Hello, Harry,” she said when she got to the table and saw me. “I thought you were in London.” She sounded puzzled and neutral. “I thought you had some meeting about your recording this week.”