best of circumstances. I realized that. Then it didn’t seem to
matter so much. It will always be an arbitrary date. It will
always leave me wanting more.’
We sat quiet for a spell.
‘How long?’ Joe asked.
‘Not long,’ she said.
93
We said nothing.
‘You don’t need me any more,’ she said. ‘You’re all grown up.
My job is done. That’s natural, and that’s good. That’s life. So let
me go.’
By six in the evening we were all talked out. Nobody had
spoken for an hour. Then my mother sat up straight in her
chair.
‘Let’s go out to dinner,’ she said. ‘Let’s go to Polidor, on Rue
Monsieur le Prince.’
We called a cab and rode it to the Od6on. Then we walked.
My mother wanted to. She was bundled up in a coat and she
was hanging on our arms and moving slow and awkward, but I
think she enjoyed the air. Rue Monsieur le Prince cuts the
corner between the Boulevard Saint Germain and the Boulevard
Saint Michel, in the Sixime. It may be the most Parisian
street in the whole of the city. Narrow, diverse, slightly seedy,
flanked by tall plaster faqades, bustling. Polidor is a famous old
restaurant. It makes you feel all kinds of people have eaten
there. Gourmets, spies, painters, fugitives, cops, robbers.
We all ordered the same three courses. Chkvre chaud, porc
aux pruneaux, dames blanches. We ordered a fine red wine. But
my mother ate nothing and drank nothing. She just watched
us. There was pain showing in her face. Joe and I ate, selfconsciously.
She talked, exclusively about the past. But
there was no sadness. She relived good times. She laughed.
She rubbed her thumb across the scar on Joe’s forehead and
scolded me for putting it there all those years ago, like she
always did. I rolled up my sleeve like I always did and showed
her where he had stuck me with a chisel in revenge, and she
scolded him equally. She talked about things we had made her
in school. She talked about birthday parties we had thrown, on
grim faraway bases in the heat, or the cold. She talked about
our father, about meeting him in Korea, about marrying him in
Holland, about his awkward manner, about the two bunches
of flowers he had bought her in all their thirty-three years
together, one when Joe was born, and one when I was.
‘Why didn’t you tell us a year ago?’ Joe asked.
‘You know why,’ she said.
94
‘Because we would have argued,’ I said.
She nodded.
‘It was a decision that belonged to me,’ she said.
We had coffee and Joe and I smoked cigarettes. Then th,
brought the bill and we asked him to call a cab for us. We
back to the Avenue Rapp in silence. We all went to bed
saying much.
I woke early on the fourth day of the new decade. Heard
the kitchen, talking French. I went in there and found
a woman. She was young and brisk. She had short neat hair
luminous eyes. She told me she was my mother’s private
provided under the terms of an old insurance policy. She
me she normally came in seven days a week, but had is
the day before at my mother’s request. She told me my
had wanted a day alone with her sons. I asked the girl hov’lq
each visit lasted. She said she stayed as long as she
needed. She told me the old insurance policy would covert
twenty-four hours a day, as and when it became
which she thought might be very soon.
The girl with the luminous eyes left and I went back to
bedroom and showered and packed my bag. Joe came io
watched me do it.
‘You leaving?’ he said.
‘We both are. You know that.’
‘We should stay.’
‘We came. That’s what she wanted. Now she wants us t0F
‘You think?’
I nodded. ‘Last night, at Polidor. It was about saying
She wants to be left in peace now.’
‘You can do that?’
‘It’s what she wants. We owe it to her.’
I got breakfast items in the Rue Saint Dominique again