we ate them with bowls of coffee, the French way, all three
us together. My mother had dressed in her best and was
like a fit young woman temporarily inconvenienced by a
leg. It must have taken a lot of will, but I guessed that was
95
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 Odon. 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 Sixi&me. It may be the most Parisian
street in the whole of the city. Narrow, diverse, slightly seedy,
flanked by tall plaster fa.ades, 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. Chbvre 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, self
consciously. 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 the waiter
brought the bill and we asked him to call a cab for us. We rode
back to the Avenue Rapp in silence. We all went to bed without
saying much.
I woke early on the fourth day of the new decade. Heard Joe in
the kitchen, talking French. I went in there and found him with
a woman. She was young and brisk. She had short neat hair and
luminous eyes. She told me she was my mother’s private nurse,
provided under the terms of an old insurance policy. She told
me she normally came in seven days a week, but had missed
the day before at my mother’s request. She told me my mother
had wanted a day alone with her sons. I asked the girl how long
each visit lasted. She said she stayed as long as she was
needed. She told me the old insurance policy would cover up to
twenty-four hours a day, as and when it became necessary,
which she thought might be very soon.
The girl with the luminous eyes left and I went back to the
bedroom and showered and packed my bag. Joe came in and
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 to go.’
‘You think?’
I nodded. ‘Last night, at Polidor. It was about saying goodbye.
She wants to be left in peace now.’