With Carla weeping in the background, Sam put through the call to Rome. Weezy, named Luisa for Alberto’s mother but always called by Tina’s baby name for her, said her mother had been alone in the car, making the trip over the mountains back from their summer place, which she had gone to open; the car evidently skidded out of control in the rain; there was no need for them to come over; her mother would be cremated and interred later when Tina returned to Rome; her father had gone to claim the body. Weezy seemed calm and tried to comfort her grandmother, who kept saying, “You girls will always have a home here with your grandfather and me—you know that, don’t you?”

Then Sam put in the call to Tina in New York. He told the operator to make it person-to-person, because if Tina were out, he didn’t want to speak to the young man she was sharing the apartment with.

There was another example, he thought angrily; as soon as that situation had been discovered, he had written to Marguerite and told her what he thought of it, of how she had brought up her children to have no decent respect for morality and appearances. That had resulted in an incomprehensible reply from Marguerite saying that Tina was well of age to make her decisions, that she was a graduate student and teaching assistant at Columbia making her own way, that she was the most moral and upright person she knew, and that she, Marguerite, wasn’t going to interfere and tell her daughter what to do or make her feel guilty about the way she led her life as had been done to her.

That day, in New York, Tina answered the phone and heard of her mother’s death.

Wordlessly, she heard out her grandfather until, stunned, she slammed down the receiver, cutting him off. She looked wildly around at the turmoil in the room and sank down on a disheveled mattress that was set on the floor. All around were piles of Duke’s clothes, her books, their mugs of cold coffee, boxes of Kleenex and crackers, records, a hair dryer, a carton of cigarettes, and some rolled-up posters. It broke on her in waves of revulsion that in such a mess she had heard the news of her mother’s death.

How often as a child had she heard the story of how she had been willed into existence by her mother despite the difficult pregnancy and the doctor’s prediction of miscarriage. For three months her mother, her veritable lifeline, had lain motionless, fed intravenously and obstinately wanting the birth. Tina was born beautiful and christened Umbertina for a great-grandmother—to give her strength in life, her mother said.