“Thanks,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Thank you.”

“You know, I will miss him too.” When Lucas didn’t answer, she said softly: “I’m so glad you had him for your father.” She reached over and touched his leg again. “It will make you a good father, too.”

She smiled at him. “A good daddy.” She said this in her perfect American accent, the one she could call up easily at any time, the one she used for the voiceovers, for the ads, sometimes for a part, if she was supposed to be playing an American. She also used it occasionally at social gatherings, mostly when she didn’t like the people she was talking to.

He had been amazed by this the first time he heard it. She was transformed for him, a different Jeanne, a woman he didn’t know, not the woman he was falling in love with. It had excited him, actually, just as the new body she was beginning to have now excited him. He had asked her to keep talking that way after they got back to his apartment—to talk that way to him while they made love.

And she’d started to. But then, when he began to move inside her, she stopped.

“Where’d you go, Jeanne?” he’d whispered, making his own accent broad, midwestern, the way he’d said “movies.”

“Je suis ici,” she breathed.

“Yes,” he said, rocking in her slowly, his elbows on either side of her head, her knees touching his shoulders.

“Oui,” she answered softly. Or he thought she answered. But she was starting to come then, and afterward it occurred to him that it might have been just a noise of pleasure she was making on account of that.

23

When her mother came back from Frieda’s, she seemed distraught to Sarah, her sorrow renewed, or deepened somehow. She had clearly been crying—her eyes were reddened, the lids swollen. For a moment Sarah felt a twist of jealousy: her mother had shared her sorrow with Frieda in a way she hadn’t, or wouldn’t, with her own daughter. It felt too familiar, this exclusion from the world of the grown-ups, and for a moment the old resentment of that touched her again.

But after all, she told herself, Annie must feel easier mourning with Frieda—someone her own age. Frieda, who had perhaps loved Graham in some of the same ways Annie did. (She had asked Frieda about this once, when she was still young enough to be insensitive to the pain it might cause Frieda. This was in the period when she was closest to Frieda, when she occasionally spent a weekend night at Frieda’s house, baking or doing a picture puzzle before watching Saturday Night Live, which Frieda called “our favorite.” She couldn’t remember how she’d phrased her question, but what she wanted to know was whether Frieda’s relationship with Graham was as private, as much a secret, as her parents’ relationship seemed to her.

Frieda had laughed, and said she didn’t think so. “We were younger, you know. We were awfully young.” Frieda’s face had looked sad in a way that made Sarah aware of how long ago it had been. Anyway, Frieda had said then, love was always different. What she had said exactly—and Sarah never forgot this—was “Love isn’t just what two people have together, it’s what two people make together, so of course, it’s never the same.”)

After Sarah had fixed her mother another cup of coffee, after her mother had drunk it—slowly, not talking much—she set it in its saucer and said, “You know, I think I’m just going to go back up to Vermont.” She looked across the table at Sarah. She was frowning, anxious-looking, as though Sarah might not give her permission. As though she were someone who had permission to give, which startled Sarah. “Do you mind, sweetie? I really need to be alone, I think.”

“You don’t need to go all the way to Vermont to be alone, Mom. God, I’ll go. I can change my flight. It’s not a big deal. I mean, this is your house. You ought to be able to be as alone as you want right here.”

They argued it back and forth, but finally Annie convinced Sarah that she actually wanted to be in Vermont, in exactly that place. That she wanted the more complete aloneness of the country, the cottage. “Plus, you’re not obliged to do anything up there,” she said. “You can just sit outside and look at the water, or the trees, and not feel you’re wallowing. No, no, no, no: you’re in nature.” She rolled her eyes dramatically for Sarah. “You’re noticing things.” Her voice exaggerated the words, and she smiled at her daughter, at her own little joke.

While her mother went upstairs to pack, Sarah made her a sandwich and wrapped a few of the cookies left over from the party. Annie came back down and set a small, overnight-size bag on the table.

“That’s all you need?” Sarah asked. Something about it seemed pathetic to her. Her mother, so reduced.

“Yeah,” Annie said. “I have a couple of changes of clothes up there.” She put the sandwich and cookies in at the top of the bag. “Daddy does too, actually.”

“Oh,” Sarah said. “Still?” She should have offered to help with that while they were all up there, she was thinking.

“Yes,” Annie said. “I haven’t done a single chore there this year.” She laughed, humorlessly. “Not even put the screens in this summer.”

“But it’s not worth it now, is it? The screens, I mean.”

“No. No, I won’t do anything until next year.”

“And maybe next year Lucas or I could help you,” Sarah said. “You need to ask, Mom. We want to be useful to you.”

Annie looked over at her, and Sarah watched her face soften, some tension or sorrow easing. “You are,” she said. “You always are. Even just your being here now is a help.”

They walked together down to the curb, talking about the party: how well it had gone, the various people who had come and what they’d said to one or the other of them. Sarah was aware of her mother’s slow responses, of her own busy chatter. She said, “God, that Rosemary what’s-her-name took it hard, didn’t she?”

“Oh?” Annie said. She turned away from Sarah to open the passenger door on the old Citro?n and toss her bag in.

“Oh, yeah.” Sarah nodded. “She was starting to get weepy at the bookstore, I noticed. And then at the house, she had to go upstairs at some point—I saw her actually fleeing the room.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Annie said, her voice somehow cooler than Sarah would have expected.

“Yeah. Did you know her well? You and Daddy?”

“Well, pretty well,” Annie said. “He might have known her a little better than I did.”

Sarah nodded. After a moment, she said, “It’s just, you know, he was so important to people. It feels good to know that, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Annie said.

They stood there awkwardly for a moment. It had started to sprinkle lightly. Finally Sarah said, “So, the party didn’t help, it seems like.” She had put her hand gently on her mother’s arm.

“No, it didn’t. It sort of . . . brought it all back, I suppose.”

It occurred to Sarah that she’d never seen her mother look so tired, not even right after Graham had died. Then there had seemed to be a kind of a fuel of disbelief that fed her, that gave her a strange fragile energy. “Well, for me too,” she said to her mother. “But I thought it was a lovely . . . send-off, I guess you’d say.”

“Oh, it was! You and Lucas did a wonderful job.”

“And Jeanne, don’t forget. And Bill and Peter and Erica.”

“Yes. All of you. I’m very grateful.”

“And you, Mom.” Sarah put her hand to her mother’s cheek for a moment. “Here at the house. You did too. It was just lovely. I felt he was . . . Well, he would have been pleased. He would have loved it.”