Hannah’s fingers played against her sweet pea as if she were playing an instrument. Her eyes hadn’t left Mildred’s face. Her mouth was open slightly.

When Mildred got no response, she continued: “Could I call you Hannah?”

Chaplin could see his mother dialing years off herself as she looked at Mildred. “Call me Lily,” Hannah said.

“Okay,” Mildred said, which made Chaplin love her. “Have you had lunch, Lily?”

“What a funny thing to ask me,” Hannah said, staring at her son as she said it. It woke him up; he had slipped into a dream, a sandstorm around him, scarves over his face, holding perfectly still.

Men were unloading the car and, he now saw, a truck behind it. His mother’s luggage: Two buckled steamer trunks with sagging leather straps around them, stacks of corrugated boxboard, hatboxes, parcels covered in brown paper with sticky-looking stains on their bottoms, and several open-ended sacks with apparel falling out. There was a giant oak wardrobe with a shattered door that swung open as it came off the truck, revealing shadowy forms that could be pelts or taxidermy or sacks of grain. She was staying. She was talking to his wife.

Hannah said, “I brought you both some presents.”

“That’s thoughtful, Mum, but you don’t have to.”

He saw a ripple go across her perfectly pleasant face. “Nonsense.” She toddled back to the car, her weight shifting from knee to knee as she walked.

“I didn’t know your mother was coming,” Mildred whispered.

“I want you,” he whispered.

“Shh,” she said. “Is her name Lily?”

“Yes. No, no, it’s her stage name from— We can excuse ourselves for just a minute.”

“No, Charlie. Your mother.”

“It will only take a minute,” he said.

“Luckily, the house is big enough for her.”

“The house—we shouldn’t have her there,” he said, mouth gone dry. Mildred now looked at him the way she did when he spoke French to her. She had become bossy and sure of herself, Chaplin thought, since her pregnancy. His mother was bent over her parcels, rooting through them and casting aside small items he couldn’t quite make out.

“She’s nice, Charlie. She’s different than how you said.”

“You don’t know about her.”

“She’s fun. I thought she had a cockney accent.”

“No,” he said. “She always spoke well. She’s not fun.”

“She is. Really.” And then Mildred laughed one of her Saint Lawrence the Divine laughs. With confidence, she continued, “She’s your family. Of course we’ll have her.”

“Here they are, my loves.” His mother paced back toward them, legs bowed as if she were walking around a drainpipe. “Presents,” she announced.