This fact and others, I withhold.

But I fear I’m letting her down, even by informing my sheltered Mom that a boy thirty-four might be in worse health than poor Dad out there. “Mom? Look, now he’s pushing a shopping cart. What’s the cart for?”

“The cart, darling, is to hold Dick up.”

“Oh. Oooh, boy.”

“That it should be Robert seems particularly unfair,” she goes on. “I don’t know how to ask these things—Yours, it’s a world whose forms I … But, were you and Robert ever … ? Did you two think of yourselves … as more than … ?”

“Just friends. If that’s not a contradiction in terms these days. No, he never found me interesting, in that way.”

“Lucky you,” she whispers, and this shocks me, but I see her point.

She, dreamy, adds, “Someone as beautiful as he, there’s no telling how many …”

“Mom? Did you know that Robert and Angie were ‘a number,’ as the kids are saying now?”

“But … Oh, it’s beyond me, Hartley! First, growing up, I thought there was only one way, ours. And then you’ve taught me over the years to … accept, or try, another. And now he and she! … It’s past me. Or I it.” We sit here, silent. At this moment, I feel as close to Mother as I did to Angie when—free of any topic but art, poverty, sex—we once sat shoulder to shoulder for hours somewhere, with a view of the entrance, waiting for him.

“Your Robert always had lovely manners, and such a striking boy.”

I consider telling her he now weighs ninety pounds. I don’t.

“How is your own health, darling?” This is where our newfound intimacy has been leading yet again. Poor thing has asked me my status three dozen times in that many roundabout ways.

“I’m still assuming I’m negative. One way of saying something positive, Mom. If anything changes, I’ll call you first, okay? Assume the best. You’ve got enough on you. I’m fine but I’m learning. I keep a postcard of Walt Whitman in one corner of my shaving mirror. He was a caretaker during his whole war. I thought he must be ancient till I turned the card over last week. Year younger than me. I’m not that jollied or spiritual. But I’m all right. Sleepwalking, trying to get everything done. Sure am glad to see you—Mer’ Christmas.”

“Yes, you too, dear. —But look how white my own baby’s hair is getting. I don’t dye mine but I certainly wish a person’s children would!”

She redirects a curl around my ear. I pull away. “Tickles. I’m not a baby and it’s not white. Just silver, and only at the temples. ‘Distinguished.’ That’s Nice for ‘exhausted.’”

“Please don’t mind my continually asking. Things change so fast, healthwise.”