Margaret snatches up the shaving kit and unties the knot with her fingernails, pick pick pick, until at last it comes loose and the belt unrolls, the scissors and razor and brush all stuck in their little slots, gleaming as if they were new. She pulls out the scissors and touches the tip with her fingers, and I think of my bathroom on Cable Beach, and how I kept shaving soap and razor and toothbrush in the cabinet, and how I liked to lean against the windowsill and watch my lover shave, fascinated at his concentration, the series of contortions, the new pink skin revealed in the stroke of the razor, the smell of the soap, his naked shoulders. How, when he was gone, I would sometimes rise in the middle of the night and take the razor from its jar and inspect the blade to see if some tiny hair still clung to the edge, some relic of Thorpe.

An hour passes. Margaret inspects each item, strokes it, sniffs it. She doesn’t cry, she doesn’t say a word. I think it’s too much for tears, too much for her to comprehend all at once like this. Annie sits with her knees to her chest, her arms wrapped around her legs, watching us. At one point she checks her watch and says old Mrs. Thorpe will want her lunch.

“All right,” Margaret says. “I suppose we can come back this afternoon.”

She staggers to her feet, and so do I. The cold and damp have had the same effect on our living flesh as on the leather. For a moment or two, she stands there staring at the bag, the artifacts placed around it. She sets her hands on her hips.

“Coming?” I ask.

She bends down and picks up a bundle of letters and a notebook.

“Coming.”

Old Mrs. Thorpe keeps to her bed, thoroughly senile, next to an array of pill bottles and powder packets. She married young, Margaret explained on the train, but Thorpe’s father arrived only after several years of fruitlessness, like one of those flowers that blooms every century or so. Margaret’s not sure precisely how old she is, but probably ninety-five, God bless her. Now she’s propped against the pillows on what will probably become her deathbed, while Annie spoons soup into her mouth and replies patiently to all her crazy talk. I think of my mother back on Long Island, at the table in the kitchen, drinking her coffee while her chicks fly free.

“Let me do it,” I say.

Annie looks up in surprise. Over by the window, Margaret puts down her cigarette and laughs. “Decent of you, Lulu, but it’s not going to bring him back.”