Over all of it, like the arms of God, arched the flowers. I have never seen flowers like that, before or since. I had told the florist that I wanted lilies and roses, and he had thrown in delphiniums and a few other flowers I knew less well. I had told him twice that peonies were my mother’s favorite flowers, and he had promised to have some selected especially for the party. I had not told my mother about the peonies; they were to be like a private letter. When she saw pink peonies, she would know that the party was not only her party for me, but also my party for her. These peonies were like great pink cabbages; they were like upholstery; they were like feathers. They had in them pinks that faded and grew into each other, a pale pink like laughter and a medium pink like sunrise and a deep pink that could have been the color of truth. Roses, of course, possess a multitude of petals, but a rose opens itself up and in the end leaves you with a fine core of pistils and a stamen, its petals strewn around it. You can get to the center of a rose; the petals run out, like anything else you can count. But peonies—there is no end to the petals once a peony finally gets going. That tight bud of a peony is like the clown car at heaven’s circus, the petals, then, the smiling faces that pour like infinity into the ring. A peony begins to open and then the petals keep piling from the center, and there is no end. Also, peonies have, still, their season. In this era of forced and artificial growing of things, so many flowers are with you in spring and autumn and winter and summer, but peonies have their month and then are heard from no more. How right my mother was, to say that the tablecloths should be dark red and the rooms lit with candles—because these winter assumptions seemed like only a becoming modesty before the June splendor of the peonies. I had promised my mother that the party would not be flashy or ostentatious, and everything about it was restrained except these flowers, which were as unabashed as the Ritz Hotel.
“It’s the most beautiful party I’ve ever seen,” Helen said to me as we walked through. I was in a haze, or a daze. “Come on,” she said, and led me to the top of the great sweeping staircase. And there we stood, and greeted the guests as they arrived, in ones and twos and sixes and sevens. It was as though each of them were escorting a memory. Friends from my childhood came in, people I had known since just after I was born. Elementary school walked before me, and high school, and summer camp, and college, and conservatory. Friends of my parents who had never changed came and reminded me of a life I had once led and of the life I had once supposed I would lead. Friends I had met through Helen came. Friends from England and from Russia and from Germany and from other countries came, piano friends, to remind me of all the adventures I had had in the ten years previous. People I knew too well and people I hoped to know better filed in, in troops and tangles. Nick showed up; I’d invited him but had never had a response, and I’d assumed he wouldn’t come. “God, Harry,” he said as he looked around. “Helen! Christ!” he said. “You look like—wow!” And then he drifted off into the galleries. “God, is this your life?” he asked, and then laughed; from the corner of my eye I could see him starting to pick up one of the waiters. Bernard also came. He had told me that he wanted to come, but he had said until the last minute that he might make it or might not. We had continued to talk from time to time by phone, and I was very pleased when he arrived. I introduced him to Helen at the top of the stairs. “I hope we’ll get to chat later,” he said, as he politely moved into the big gallery, where he spotted some other friends who had come from England. All the people at my party were dressed as well as they could be; some looked beautiful, the others closer to beautiful than I had seen them before. The soft light, turned pink as it reflected off all those peonies, made each one look calm and joyful. I continued to greet the arrivals, while the air behind me echoed with delight.
Exactly an hour after the party began, Helen put her hand on my arm. “Look,” she said, and I looked down the long sweeping flight of stairs. I saw my mother. She was wearing just what she had said she was going to wear, but now that the dress was off the hanger it seemed—not more elaborate, because it was as simple as a paper bag—but more elegant than anything that anyone else had worn. I had told my mother that there was an elevator to get her to the second floor, where the buffets were, but every guest had proceeded up those stairs and my mother had apparently decided to do the same thing. My father and Freddy walked just behind her, but she was, for the first time in weeks, not leaning on my father’s arm. Later I learned that she had eaten nothing for two days because she wanted to be sure that she had no further digestive problems, but if the lack of food had made her weak, something else had made her strong. I did not move from my place at the top of the stairs; I stood there with Helen and waited. One step at a time, regal as the Queen of Sheba, my mother climbed that staircase. The long rope of pearls swung slightly as she walked, as though it were telling time. She had a smile on her face, a smile as much of her eyes and her hands and her shoulders as of her mouth, a smile of love and of triumph, a smile that reminded me more than anything of the smile she had in her wedding picture, the smile of being glad in every ounce of her being to be where she was. Friends were still arriving, and several walked up the stairs with her. I couldn’t hear them clearly from where I stood, but I saw her throw back her head when she laughed at something one of them had said; and as friends of mine arrived, I heard her greet each of them by name. When she finally got to the top of the stairs she kissed me and she kissed Helen. She was not out of breath, though she leaned for a moment on the top of the banister to steady herself. Then she looked around and her eyes followed the lengths of the galleries in either direction. She took a glass of mineral water from one of the waiters. “I’m going to find a place where I can sit,” she said. I told her there were some chairs in the far gallery on the left. “What a beautiful party, Harry,” she said.
• • •
Helen said to me at one point that evening, “You know what you should do? You should go and lock yourself in the bathroom for a minute. Just for a minute. Clear your head. It’ll make it easier to remember what’s happening.” But though I set off in that general direction, I was derailed by friends, and spent the evening orchestrating and breaking down conversations. From time to time I would go to the room at the end, the one with the four great bunches of peonies, where my mother was sitting and holding her quiet court. All my mother’s friends were in that room, and some of my oldest friends. Everyone was speaking softly, not about anything of great moment, and there was a quality to the light in that room like nothing I had seen before, and in that light everyone seemed to be young, and my mother’s face had that freshness that it had held in my childhood. When I went into that room I saw that my mother had been right, that the tablecloths and the food and the champagne and even the peonies had almost disappeared in the face of these tides of love. My father looked sad much of the time, but my mother had a look I had not seen in a long time, not the Lake Como reckless look, but something simpler than that, as simple as her black dress with the bright flowers on it. She had gone to this party determined to keep up the front of fun for me and for her friends and for my friends and for Freddy’s friends, but in fact, she was no longer keeping up a front at all. She stayed for almost three hours, longer than she had been out in a crowd in months. When she left, she did it almost silently. “I can’t stay any longer, Harry,” she said to me. “Robert’s going to drive us home. I hope you’re having a good time. I’ve had a lovely time. Just lovely, Harry. It’s the most elegant party I’ve ever been to. The best party.” And she went off to take the elevator down.
• • •
Helen stayed with me most of the time, though she occasionally drifted off, and once I turned around to spot her on the other side of the room talking to Nick and Bernard. At the sight of the three of them I gave in to a sadness that had gone away until then. I stared at Nick and for a split second I wanted him to come up to me and push me back against one of the tall urns, as he would have done four months earlier.
For a minute, I felt a terrible sense of loss, a sheer physical emptiness that I thought only Nick could fill. Bernard, standing beside him, looked like the livable past. I wanted to take his hand and go into the garden and eat some of the nicer hors d’œuvre and talk about everyone; I wanted to ask him what he thought of all my New York friends, as though they were a display I had mounted for him. I wanted to fall into the safe world Bernard and I had occupied; when I looked at him I felt a nostalgia twice as strong as my passion for Nick. And then Helen. What I felt for Helen was effortless. Helen looked to me like a life preserver, and I wanted to sail away with her held securely in my arms.
“Look who I’ve introduced to each other,” she said to me with a laugh when I approached. Nick had just slapped Bernard around the shoulders by way of response to a passing remark. I talked to them all for a minute, about something that was little more than nothing. Then I took Helen and headed with her toward one of the buffet tables.
“I love you, Helen,” I said.
She shook her head. “No, you don’t,” she said. “It would be lovely if you did, but you don’t.” She smiled at me, a sad smile. “Where’s your mother?” she asked. I said that my mother had just left and I said that I hoped everyone was having fun. I said that I hoped she, Helen, was having fun. “Listen,” Helen said. “Maybe someday you will.”
“I will what?” I asked.
“Love me,” she said. “Or have fun. Or both.” And then someone else came along to greet us, and we lapsed into sociability.
• • •
I have been looking at the photos from that party. There are seven pictures of my mother, the only seven pictures that were ever taken of her in a wig. She is laughing in most of them, though in one she is staring out with a look that is not quite a look of laughter. She is with her laughing friends. The other pictures—there must be four hundred other pictures—show the friends and the flowers and the pinkness of the light. There are a lot of pictures of me, and I am laughing in all of them. It’s easy to remember that my watch was broken, that I always felt that I was neglecting someone, that my mother was ill, that Nick was flirting with Bernard, that Helen told me I didn’t love her. It’s easy to remember all those things. It’s harder for me to remember how I came to laugh so much and for so long. The pictures of me at that party seem as remote as the pictures of my mother, but I know myself well enough to know, looking at them, that I was not pretending. I can tell, looking at them, that I, too, must have had a wonderful time at that party; it must have been one of the happiest events of my life.
I remember an ordinary day uptown, some years ago, before my mother got sick, when she said to me, “I look in the mirror in the morning and I see a fifty-year-old woman. When I was your age, I thought that by the time I was fifty I would have turned into a whole different person, a whole different kind of person, a fifty-year-old person. Now I look in the mirror and I see a fifty-year-old woman looking back at me, and I wonder, how did I get to be fifty? And I don’t understand why no one ever told me that I would just go on being myself, that I would just eventually find the same me aged fifty, with grown children and a marriage and houses to run and the essence of my life behind me.”
I remember that I was bewildered, because no one at that time seemed more clearly adult to me than my mother. I think that she must have spoken that day in a voice edged with fear and regret, because when I recall those words they seem to me to be the saddest words in the world. Some days, I myself feel so old, so full of knowledge that would once have eluded me; but on other days I feel young, and seeing the face of someone past adolescence, I feel a sinking terror, a fear that my mind will never catch up with my body, that time is sliding away from me, and that I am not changing as quickly as the moments do. Lately, those days have come to dominate. I look at the photos of myself from that party and this is what I see: I see a young man in the middle of a party as stunning as the feast day of an ancient king. I see him surrounded by many friends and a few lovers. I see him looking as though he is entirely in control, negotiating his family and overseeing the waiters and making introductions; he is evidently the master builder who has constructed everyone else’s delight. I see him utterly at ease, and clearly very happy. I see someone of vast competence, looking out at me from clear confident eyes. I look at him and I wonder who this young man is, not yet thirty, so sure of himself and of the world. I wonder what it would be like to be on top of the world like that, to have so much of what youth dreams maturity might hold. I look into his clear blue eyes and I envy him, because he is so full of laughter, because he seems not to know about or not to mind the effort life is, because he has the face of someone who has all the things that I have always wanted, but who couldn’t possibly care less about them.
IX
INSIDE THE SHELL
Three days after the party we went up to the country for the weekend. The weather was clear again; indeed, the weather that month was as impeccable as though our lives were being filmed. My mother had ordered all the food, as always; she could not cope much with the oven or the stove, but she could do quite a lot sitting down, and Freddy and I did the rest at her direction. We talked about the party, and she told me what a splendid party she thought it had been. I asked her what she had thought of the food, tomatoes and all, but she said that she had had nothing to eat. “Half a glass of water,” she said. “That was all. I was afraid I might have problems. And once it began—I wasn’t hungry. But everyone told me how delicious the food was.”
Later that afternoon, she said, “Your CD is really very good.” She sounded almost surprised. “The Rachmaninoff sounds strong, like you mean it. And the Schubert is very poetic, very light. That’s your best piece, that Schubert.”
“Do you remember that day?” I asked. “I called you from the recording studio before I played. You were going in for a treatment.”
“Yes,” she said. “That was when they had me on Agent Orange. You sounded terribly tense; I didn’t think you’d play well that day. But I was wrong.”
• • •
On Saturday afternoon, my father set up the card table near the door to the terrace, as he often did, and my mother started a jigsaw puzzle of a painting by Monet. I stood behind her and watched her sorting the edge pieces from the center pieces for a little while, then came around the table and knelt at its far side. “I love Impressionism,” my mother said, “but Northern Renaissance is a lot easier in a jigsaw puzzle.” I made a mental note to try to find a good puzzle of a Northern Renaissance painting to give to her. For a while neither of us spoke. My father and Freddy were sitting on the terrace talking about a medical question raised in the paper, on which they strongly disagreed. “Your friend Nick came over and introduced himself to me,” my mother remarked casually.
I was instantly on the defensive. “Well, then, there he is. I guess you didn’t talk to him for long, but even so, you’ve got to admit that he’s charming and smart and very attractive,” I said.
“I’m sure he is,” said my mother, joining two sections of the edge of her puzzle. Her eyes were focused down, on some mostly blue pieces she had grouped together. “Harry. Charming and smart and attractive is all very well. But maybe you should look for nice for a change?”
I snapped back. “I’m pretty nice,” I said. I don’t know why I said that.
My mother looked at me, and she reached out her hand and put it on mine, on the edge of the table. Her voice took on that softness again. “Oh, yes, Harry,” she said. “You are. You’re one of the nicest people I’ve ever known.” And she looked straight at me, as though it were she who needed to hold on to what she was saying, to help her remember me.
I stood up then, because I was determined not to cry in front of my mother. I went out onto the terrace. Perhaps it seemed brusque. Freddy and my father were still debating. “You’ll never win with Dad,” I said. “You’re in a losing battle.” My mother called out her ag
reement from inside.
• • •
On Sunday, we had breakfast on the terrace. There was melon and there were fresh berries and there was newly squeezed orange juice. My mother had made something eggy and delicious with blueberries and cinnamon, one of her breakfast specialities, and bacon. There was cake, and there was a fresh brioche. There was a variety of cheeses. The table was set with the breakfast china, with the pattern of yellow ribbons waving on it, and various serving dishes. My father had picked a handful of wildflowers that morning, and had put them in a blue jug, and they were at the middle of the table. Freddy had his camera, and he wanted to take pictures, since this typical Sunday would not be many more times repeated, but my mother refused to be photographed with the wig. “You’ll have enough of those pictures from the party,” she said, and settled the matter.
The weather had continued cinematic. “Look at all this,” said Freddy, gesturing at the sunlit food.
“We do live beautifully,” I said into the air.
My mother laughed. “Have you boys just noticed?” she asked.
“No, but—” I paused.
“Come on, Mom,” said Freddy.
“It’s not so hard,” my mother said in her soft voice. “Living beautifully is not so hard. So many people—” she began. She looked across the table for a minute. “We’d live more beautifully if someone replaced that chipped sugar bowl,” she finished. “Does anyone want another slice of brioche?”
• • •
In the afternoon, she did the crossword puzzle with a blue felt-tip pen. “Do you know what I did?” she suddenly volunteered.
We all turned around.
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