Sophie Cotterill does not remind me that my mother, Henrietta Wolfe, née Thompson, passed away in 1764. Sophie understands about talking to a person you’ve lost: how the person listens if you speak to them as they did while they lived. But she likes to tease me. She likes to grab my writing pad and scribble postscripts to my mother: Your son continues to regret the cutting short of his leave in Paris, 1752. That is a mighty long time ago, Henrietta. Could you not teach him any better how to let things go?

I used to try and explain to Sophie how worn out I had felt, how that lost leave meant everything to me. Ten years of hard soldiering from the age of thirteen. Then, in Paris, a reprieve, ever so fleeting—Sophie still thinks I mean it was a holiday. I never convinced her it wasn’t leisure but much-needed leave, crucial to any military man for his cultural development. An enlightened general treats culture as part of his work! He can’t get ahead at all unless he knows how to carry himself with sophistication. I wanted to learn the minuet. I made surprising progress despite the curtailment of my leave. I mean, I never learned the steps to great perfection, but at least no one mocked me…I even met La Pompadour! But even then, in the glory of being young and up-and-coming, I glanced in La Pompadour’s mirror and found myself staring at an ancient, broken man. Two of my visible teeth had broken like biscuits…

“Why not just talk to your mother, instead of writing?” Sophie says. “Do you imagine she can’t hear you?”

“I’d like to think she can—but…”

“You and your mother are odd, Bigbad. Weird. Close but not warm-close, more like frozen together. Can’t be pried apart. Totally fucking English.”

Out she swaggers—before noon she’ll scour a hundred filthy sinks. I wish I still possessed the capacity to love I owned in my early days. I might be a better companion to her and to myself. As soon as she’s gone I grasp my pen and pad like someone addicted to the written word, which I suppose I might be. How else is anything to be pinned down or even half understood?

Dear Madam, I begin.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4.

AROUND NOON.

Casse-Croûte Diane. Montreal, Quebec

WRITING TO MY MOTHER HAS always been part duty, but I do feel unburdened by it.