My cheeks were leaner than they had been before the beard. The flesh was pink, compared to the tanned nose and forehead. It felt as if Carlitos were a pile of hair in the wastebasket and a scattering of whiskers in the sink. The person getting on that plane the next morning would be Charlie.

I felt a deep sadness. It wasn’t for my mother—that was not yet real to me. It was something else. I felt as if everything about my life since I got off the bus in San Miguel ten years before had been one long, listless dream, that the life I’d thought I’d been building was always temporary, an illusion, something I’d invented to cover up that ceaseless longing, and I’d just been waiting for Arch to wake me up so I could go on living.

three

After we boarded, Arch sent me back to the bedroom. It’s quite a feeling, taking your shoes off and crawling under the covers of a queen bed at cruising altitude. One could get used to it.

When I woke, I came out to find Arch in a reclining chair, scratching notes on a legal pad. He motioned for me to sit down across from him.

“Good nap?”

“Yes,” I said.

He pointed at my face and stroked his own cheek.

“It’s nice to see your face again, by the way,” he said. “I mean, all of it.”

“I wanted my mother to recognize me,” I said.

“I thought of that,” he said. “I was afraid you might take it the wrong way.”

“Glad I figured it out on my own, I guess.”

Arch straightened the papers in front of him and slid them into a calfskin briefcase.

“We’ll drive straight out to the farm,” he said. “Your sister will be there. She goes by Dolly. She’s in the fifth grade at Ensworth. I thought you might want to bring her a get-to-know-you gift. I had my girl pick something up.”

My girl, I thought. I remembered hearing Nancy Haltom refer to my mother with the same words, and I thought of how to people like the Haltoms and the Creighs, servants and assistants were possessions, no different from houses or cars or private jets.

“I should have brought her a painting,” I said.

“Maybe you can paint something for her while you’re in town.”

“So what am I giving her?”

“A silver heart necklace from Tiffany’s.”

“My mother used to love those blue boxes,” I said. “What kind of kid is she?”

“She’s beautiful,” he said, as if that were all that mattered.

“I don’t doubt it,” I said. “How is she handling everything?”