My mother and I are sitting in her private room at Sandstone,where she is now a permanent resident. Heavily sedated, she hasher sunglasses on and keeps touching her hair and I keep lookingat my hands, pretty sure that they're shaking. She tries to smilewhen she asks what I want for Christmas. I'm not surprised athow much eʃort it takes to raise my head and look at her. I'mwearing a two-button wool gabardine suit with notched lapels byGian Marco Venturi, cap-toed leather laceups by Armani, tie byPolo, socks I'm not sure where from. It's nearing the middle ofApril."Nothing," I say, smiling reassuringly.There's a pause. I break it by asking, "What do you want?"She says nothing for a long time and I look back at my hands,at dried blood, probably from a girl named Suki, beneath thethumbnail. My mother licks her lips tiredly and says, "I don'tknow. I just want to have a nice Christmas."I don't say anything. I've spent the last hour studying my hairin the mirror I've insisted the hospital keep in my mother's room."You look unhappy," she says suddenly."I'm not," I tell her with a brief sigh."You look unhappy," she says, more quietly this time. Shetouches her hair, stark blinding white, again."Well, you do too," I say slowly, hoping that she won't sayanything else.She doesn't say anything else. I'm sitting in a chair by thewindow, and through the bars the lawn outside darkens, a cloudpasses over the sun, soon the lawn turns green again. She sits onher bed in a nightgown from Bergdorf's and slippers by NormaKamali that I bought her for Christmas last year."How was the party?" she asks."Okay," I say, guessing."How many people were there?""Forty. Five hundred." I shrug. "I'm not sure."She licks her lips again, touches her hair once more. "Whattime did you leave?""I don't remember," I answer after a long time."One? Two?" she asks."It must have been one," I say, almost cutting her oʃ."Oh." She pauses again, straightens her sunglasses, black RayBans I bought her from Bloomingdale's that cost two hundreddollars."It wasn't very good," I say uselessly, looking at her."Why?" she asks, curious."It just wasn't," I say, looking back at my hand, the specks ofblood under the nail on my thumb, the photograph of my father,when he was a much younger man, on my mother's bedside table,next to a photograph of Sean and me when we were bothteenagers, wearing tuxedos, neither one of us smiling. In thephotograph of my father he's wearing a six-button doublebreasted black sport coat, a white spread-collar cotton shirt, a tie,pocket square, shoes, all by Brooks Brothers. He's standing nextto one of the topiary animals a long time ago at his father's estatein Connecticut and there's something the matter with his eyes.
