THE TIME FOR KISSING

My mother never calls me, so I call her. I make the call on Sunday nights. She answers right away, and I know exactly where she is. She spends Sunday evenings in what is called the library, though it only has two bookcases in it, and those hold more plates than books. Mother sits in the flowered chintz armchair, which matches the curtains. Bacon the dog is lying on his green pillow next to her feet. The walnut table beside my mother holds an ashtray, a small porcelain Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, and her drink, which is Scotch. Next to her chair is a standing lamp, and her feet are up on the upholstered footstool, which also matches the curtains. On her lap is the newspaper, which is folded back to the TV section. She is holding a cigarette in one hand, and the TV remote controller in the other. When the telephone rings she is interrupted.

“Hello, Mother?” I say.

“Who’s this?” she asks warily, unwilling to commit herself.

“It’s me,” I say, “Susannah.”

“Oh, yes,” she says, and if I say nothing, she pulls herself together and adds, “hello.”

“How are you doing?” I ask.

“Fine,” she says, faintly peevish.

Mother is seventy-one years old, and has lived alone since Harry died three years ago. When he retired they began spending most of their time in Southampton. They sold the big shingled house on the beach, where we spent our summers as children, and moved to this smaller one behind high privet hedges. When Harry died Mother sold the apartment in New York as well. At first she planned to spend a night or two in New York during the winter, but now she hardly ever does.

“What have you been up to?” I ask, “anything exciting?”

“I don’t know what you call exciting,” she says, touchy. “We had the Garden Club meeting on Wednesday. There was a bridge party at Wah-Wah’s on Thursday. That’s about it.”

“How was the Garden Club meeting?”

“All right. Though I don’t know how Bambi Johnson got herself elected president, the woman is the very worst executive I’ve ever heard of. Most of the members won’t speak to her any more. She ruined the benefit last year, single, handedly.”

“Well, at least she’s good at something,” I offer, but Mother won’t have it.

“Good at what? What do you mean?”

“Ruining the benefit,” I say, but I know she won’t laugh, and she doesn’t. My mother suspects my offerings. There is a pause, and I have the feeling that she has turned the television set back on, low, so I won’t hear it.

“Do you want me to call you back?” I ask.

“What? No, why?” she says.

“I thought you might be in the middle of something.”

“No, nothing a tall.”

“Well, I just wanted to check in with you. We’re all fine,” I say, since my mother hasn’t asked, “except the garden is a nightmare with all this rain. There are slugs all over the place.”

“It’s getting pretty bad,” she says ambiguously; I’m not sure if we’re talking about the slugs or something on her program.

“How’s Bacon?”

“Bacon’s fine,” says my mother, animated at last. “He’s right here at my feet, snoring his head off. Eats like a pig. Keeps me awake all night, and sleeps all day.” She is devoted to the dog.

“The reason I called was to tell you that I’m coming out next week to see Linda, and I thought I’d spend the night with you.” Linda is a friend I grew up with in Southampton.

“What day?”

“It would be Tuesday.”

“All right,” she says neutrally. “I’m out to dinner, though.”

“That’s fine,” I say, “I’ll spend the evening with Linda.”

When I hang up, I go back into our bedroom. The sight of it is a relief: cool and spare and muted; there is no chintz in my house. John is already asleep, lying like a friendly boulder in our bed. He goes to sleep early, though it doesn’t last: later, in the small, deadly hours of the morning he will be awake. But now he is fathoms deep, and I move quietly, turning off the light on his side of the bed. I go into my bathroom to undress, and while I brush my teeth I look at the small photographs on the wall next to the mirror. There are pictures of John, of our children, Nat and Amanda, my sisters, Kate and Joan, my friend Linda, a few other favorites; they are like amulets, emblems of my life. There is one of Mother, taken at a party, years ago. She has her hands on her hips; she is wearing a rose-colored dress with big puffy sleeves, and laughing.

I climb into bed next to John. Our sheets are cotton, and solid white, not the scratchy flowered Porthault linens I grew up with. John’s legs are warm and solid. I turn my back, get out my book, and press myself against the length of him.

My father was well-born, impecunious, and wonderful to look at. It is easy to see why Mother married him, and easy to see why she divorced him. My father talks with a little tiny smile hovering about his mouth: he is already charmed by what he is about to say. Most other people find him charming, too. My sister Joan told me that women used to call up and ask for him. Mother would say, “Would you like to leave a message? This is his wife.” The other woman would say, “His wife?” In spite of my father’s charm, he is hard to live with. He is now on his fourth marriage, and each wife is richer than the last. My mother was the first, and she had no money at all. When I was three, the fourth child, my mother divorced my father and married Harry Satterthwaite. Harry had lots of money, and we moved to a big duplex apartment on the corner of Park and Seventy-ninth Street.

We all hated Harry: me, my sisters, Joan and Kate, and even Ted, our older brother, though he pretended to be above our concerns. Harry was only ten years older than my mother, but when I was little he seemed from a different age. His skin looked as if it had been put in storage: his cheeks were smooth and ancient, as though their living was over, and he had loose, thick rolls of flesh underneath his chin. The top of his head was bald, with brown spots on it. There were deep gullies from his nose to the corners of his mouth, and his teeth were yellow. His clothes were beautiful: soft leather loafers, cashmere jackets, silky cotton shirts. A man called Edwards, whom we also hated, came in the mornings to look after Harry’s clothes and polish his shoes. When Ted acted like a stinker Joan would ask him when Edwards was going to start coming in to look after his moldy moccasins, his torn sweaters and stained Madras jackets. This made us collapse with laughter, but Ted could not answer without either aligning himself with us or with Harry, so he would punch us.

One evening at dinner Harry said loudly, “There will be no more chewing with open mouths at this table.” I was six, and had just recently been allowed to eat with the grownups in the dining room. We all preferred the big white-tiled kitchen, where we ate with Sally, the cook, when there were dinner parties. The dining room was large and gloomy; at the windows were tall gray curtains that swooped back halfway down, and the table was long and dark and shiny, with a glass chandelier over it. In the middle of the table were two silver pheasants, fierce and spiky. Still, it was a privilege to sit there.

When Harry made his announcement my mother didn’t say anything, she went on buttering a roll as though she hadn’t heard. She wore her light brown hair in a shoulder-length page boy, turned under at the ends and parted on the side, with a narrow velvet ribbon holding it smoothly in place. At dinner she wore a cashmere sweater over her dress, with the arms loose over her shoulders like a cape. Mother always had a certain look to her: slim and smooth and polished, her linen dresses ironed, her hair neat. It seemed lovely to me, effortless and silky, as though my mother, just by being, happened to be perfect.

We looked at each other out of the corners of our eyes, and Joan kicked me under the table. Joan was three years older than me. She remembered living with my father, and she was unbelievably brave. She now sat up straight at the table, holding the heavy silver fork easily, and looked back at Harry with interest, as if she were going to discuss it with him. “Why on earth not, Harry?” she might say. I always felt as though Joan were a seawall between me and the waves, breaking the shocks for me.

“It’s disgusting, and I won’t have it,” said Harry, gaining confidence. He picked up the heavy crystal glass and took a courageous swallow of Scotch. I watched his throat move as he swallowed. The lump in it rose sluggishly, suddenly bobbled, and then disappeared mysteriously, as his short neck vanished and he lowered his head. “You,” he said, looking at me. I wondered if he knew which one I was. He often confused us, calling us by each other’s names. Joan and Kate were the easiest to mix up, as they were close to the same size, and they looked alike, with their round faces, sleek honey-colored hair, and blue eyes. “Did you hear what I just said?” said Harry.

I nodded, fearful, but kept on eating. It didn’t occur to me that I was doing anything to bring on this attack; Harry’s temper seemed unrelated to the real world. My big linen napkin was on my lap, where it was supposed to be, my silverware was on the plate as I ate, my milk had not slipped over the rim of the glass when I set it down, but clearly I was in for it, whatever it was.

“Well, stop it.” He glared at me. “Leila, do you see what that child is doing?” he said loudly to my mother. She glanced briefly up at me, and down again at her plate. It was pot roast and carrots. “Hmmhmm,” she said, and addressed the meal.

“I am in earnest,” said Harry, and leaned forward in his mahogany chair, gripping the arms with his hands. His chair and mother’s had arms; the rest of us were left defenseless from the sides. Harry looked at me again, and I wondered what name he would use. “Susannah, leave this room,” he said, and he waved his hand briefly, a high, short, weak wave, not as though he really expected me to leave. He looked down at his plate at once, and began sawing away at the pot roast. When he started talking again it was a sort of warning grumble, a retreating storm. “You can finish your meal in the kitchen, and don’t come back until you have learned properly how to eat your food. It’s disgusting, watching someone else’s dinner wallow around in their mouth.”

I didn’t move, because I still wasn’t sure what was going on, and he didn’t sound serious. Harry looked up and saw me. “Didn’t you hear me?” he said, and looked down the table at my mother again. She was staring with a look of intense concentration at an empty space on the table, as if she had gone mad.

“Can’t find it,” she announced. “Don’t know how they lose it. There it is.” Underneath the table she found the bell with her toe and pressed. The door to the kitchen swung open and Harry fell silent as Maureen came in. “Could we have some more water, in the pitcher, and I think we’re ready for seconds, Maureen.”

When Maureen left Joan said, “Mother, I—” and I knew she was trying to run interference for me, but at the same time Harry said, “Leila.” He was really angry now.

“Susannah, you heard Harry,” my mother said, without looking up. “Finish your dinner in the kitchen.” I slid off the scratchy needlepoint seat and picked up the heavy plate carefully, trying to keep the carrots from rolling off.

After dinner I went up to Joan’s room. Kate and Joan were lying on the beds, and Ted stood in the doorway, not committing himself.

“He’s such a pig,” Kate said. She was two years older than me.

“I am in earnest,” Ted said querulously, and drank from an imaginary glass.

“Just pass me some more of that whisky,” said Joan, “and I’ll be even more earnest. I’m earnest and thirsty, all at the same time. I’m thirnest. I’m earsty.” She threw herself back on her bed and let her tongue hang out, rolling her eyes whitely. “This is really earnest,” she announced. She was still wearing her school uniform, a dark plaid jumper and a white blouse, and her green knee socks were rolled down to her ankles. Her loafers, which were scuffed and dull, hung moronically off her feet.

“Biscuit likes carrots,” I offered. Biscuit was our big apricot poodle, who could be counted on to appear noiselessly under the kitchen table and dispose discreetly of unwanted items.

“Maybe he’d like Harry,” said Kate, “maybe we could feed Harry to him.”

“Ooof,” said Ted, wrapping his arms caressingly around his stomach. “Poor Biscuit.” This started us all laughing, and we began to imitate Biscuit making various responses to the offer of toasted Harry. While we were doing these hilarious things Mother came along the hallway, getting her glasses. She walked with her head slightly down, as though she were watching her neat small shoes, with rosettes on the toes. Mother was going back down to play backgammon with Harry in the library. She looked in at us but did not say anything.

“Hi, Mom,” Ted said easily. He was her favorite. She paused and smiled.

“Having a good time?” she asked, and Ted, who had no conscience, grinned and nodded. “What are you all up to?” she asked, which made us laugh harder, as we imagined actually telling her. Her smile now included us all, and she laid her rare approval on us, on Ted lounging in the doorway, grinning, Joan and Kate rolling goofily on the beds, me holding my stomach on the floor, on all of us as we had frozen in our poses, miming the disgusted response of a poodle to the offer of her husband.

I arrived in Southampton around noon that Tuesday. I had told Mother I’d be there before lunch, but unless I arrived early she’d go out. Later she’d tell me I had said I was coming after lunch.

The house is made of whitewashed brick. It was built in the thirties, on part of a bigger property that had been split up. Like all Southampton houses it has a luscious velvet lawn, and those dense hedges. There are a few perfunctory flower beds, but Mother doesn’t like gardening herself. She has Johnny Rubetti put in the garden for her, and every year he plants the world’s most boring display of yellow, pink, and orange—dahlias, marigolds, and zinnias.

Mother was in the summer room, at the back of the house. The room was originally an open porch, then it was screened in, and now it is glassed in. It’s meant to feel like part of the garden, so it’s furnished with uncomfortable garden furniture, things that could, though they won’t, be rained on. There are rattan sofas with flowered plastic-covered cushions and big porcelain elephants with flattened backs as end tables, and on the brick floor are woven straw rugs. When Joan first saw it she asked Mother, “Why don’t you get some plaster gnomes, too?”

Mother was sitting in the comfortable chair, talking on the telephone. I waved, and she blinked at me in a friendly way, but went on talking. I went to the window and looked out. Johnny had been at work: there were the zinnias, starting up. The lawn was very lush, a deep, dense green like a mat, and that brilliant electric color made me think of our old house on the beach. We used to spend all our summers here in Southampton. Our house was huge: gray shingled, with white trim, and its roofs were thick with gables and dormers and clusters of brick chimneys. At the back of the house there was a lawn, and in the front there was the wide white beach, and beyond that there was the wide gray ocean, and beyond that there was Spain.

We children slept on the top floor, and all our windows looked out on the ocean. The rooms were small, with sloping eaves and rickety white-painted furniture: we loved them. The floors were painted a shiny gray, the white curtains blew in and out of the windows, and the air in our bedrooms at night was full of salt and freedom. Alone up there we were in our own country; we knocked messages on the walls, we had water fights, we slept in each other’s rooms. No one knew what we did, only the maids came up there.

If we felt, during the winters in New York, as though we were members of the Underground, violent subversives whose activities were secret, we felt during the summers as though the liberation had come. In that wild salt air, the wind off the sea blew our tangled hair back off our faces as we rode our bikes up and down those narrow lanes, to the beach club, to the tennis club, to our friends’ houses. We had our bikes, we had our friends, the days were long, and Harry came out only on the weekends. There were no rules that we cared about: don’t put your wet bathing suits on the bed, be in by six or call. We had never heard of drugs, and the wickedest things we ever did were watching the boys smoke behind the beach club house, playing strip poker in whoever’s house had no parents in it on rainy days. Sometimes we took surreptitious snorts out of someone’s bottle at a beach party: a disgusting mixture of everything in someone’s liquor cabinet, so that no one bottle would be diminished.

It wasn’t so much what we did but the spirit in which we did it. In New York we had to obey Harry if he made one of his petulant announcements, but in Southampton we barely looked at him. We walked past him to say good night to Mother as though his chair were empty.

“Who’s that girl won the junior tennis tournament?” Harry asked us. While he was still talking, still in the middle of his sentence, Joan turned and asked Kate a question in a low voice, which neatly removed them both from general conversation. This left me and Ted, neither of whom played tennis. This, plus the fact that I was five years younger than the girl (whose name I knew perfectly well), absolved me from answering. Ted looked intently into the middle distance, as though he were trying to remember the girl’s name. Harry waited, watching us all, for a response. “Know who I mean?” he continued, “blond, kind of a cute girl? Think she’s Jewish. Pretty sure she’s Jewish. She go to the beach club or not?” At this point Joan and Kate very quietly asked my mother something, politely not interrupting Harry’s conversation with the rest of us. I discovered a truly interesting bite on my leg. Ted continued to look deeply into the middle distance; if pressed by Harry now he would slowly shake his head, as if to show a respectful ignorance of the entire issue. Harry never acted snubbed, and he would finally turn his questioning to my mother. “Think she is. Think the whole family is,” as though this were some sort of remarkable deductive leap. “Got to ask Bobby Woodward what’s going on down here.”

Mother ignored it all, Harry’s efforts and our own rudeness, her blond hair smoothed back from her forehead in the velvet ribbon that picked up a color from her flowered linen dress. She had so many of those velvet ribbons, in so many beautiful colors; they lay in a neat jewel-like coil in the top drawer of her dressing table. No matter what dress she wore, one of her ribbons was the right color.

The summer that I was fourteen the others were away. Joan and Kate had gotten jobs on the Cape, and Ted was traveling in Europe. I missed them, especially Joan. It was not hard for me to keep up the glass wall that we had erected between ourselves and Harry, but, alone, it was more obvious that I was doing it. When Harry asked, “Where are you going tonight?” and looked directly at me, there was little I could do but respond. I delayed, of course. I took as long as I could to chew my food, and then I took a drink of milk, as though I could not possibly answer a question without a rinsed and perfectly empty mouth. Answering Harry, I looked ingenuously at Mother, as though the question were hers.

“The dance at the beach club,” I said.

“Who with?” asked my mother.

“Everyone,” I said, “we’re all going.”

“In whose car, though?” persisted Harry.

“Whose car?” I asked, frowning, as though it were not quite clear what he meant.

“Who is driving you to the club, and who is driving you back?” asked Harry.

“Oh, driving,” I said innocently, as though I had thought he had meant some other, vastly similar, activity. “I don’t really know. Someone is picking me up. I’ll get a ride back.”

Harry looked at my mother, leaning forward in his chair, his gray eyebrows raised.

“Don’t be in too late,” Mother said warningly.

“Oh, I won’t be,” I said, with conviction. “It’s just a dance.”

They were never up when I got home. Every night of the year, after dinner, Mother and Harry each took another glass of Scotch, went into the library, and sat down at the backgammon table, where Harry believed he always won. At eleven o’clock Harry looked at his watch and said, “Time, gentlemen,” and my mother said, “Well, it’s a good thing. I’m about ready for the sandman myself,” and they went up. We came home whenever we wanted.

After the dance some of us went down to the beach, where there was a fire. I got home around one-thirty. My ride dropped me off on the road, so the car wouldn’t wake up Mother, and I walked up the driveway toward the house. It was a soft, bright night, with high clouds moving fast under a swollen white moon. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel the presence, beyond the house, of the wide empty beach, and I could hear the long rolling waves, with their sleepy endless rhythm: skirling crash, and pause. In the moonlight the slate roof shone, and the chimneys were black: the house looked wonderful, like a castle full of secrets.

The house was usually dark except for a light in the back hall, by the kitchen, and I would go up the back stairs to my room. But that night the back hall was dark, and there was a light in the front hall and one in the library. I wondered if Harry and Mother were still playing backgammon, or if they had simply forgotten to turn off the light. I stepped into the front hall, pulling the door quietly behind me so it wouldn’t slam. The living room was dark. I could see reflected gleams from polished things—mirrors, mahogany, porcelain. There was no sound, but I had the feeling someone was in the library, and I didn’t want to go and see who it was. I started quietly toward the stairs, and had set my foot on the bottom step when I heard my name.

“Susannah?” I didn’t want to break the late-night silence myself, so I went to the door and looked in at him.

“I’m home,” I said.

Harry was sitting in the wing chair by the fireplace. The backgammon board was still out on the table, and there was a bottle of Scotch and his glass. He’d been smoking cigars, and the air was dense and fumy. He leaned back in his chair and folded his legs, in their pink trousers, at the ankle.

“Well,” he said, smiling a little. “Home a bit late, aren’t you?”

“No,” I said. I didn’t know what time it was, but I wasn’t going to begin with an admission.

“I think so,” said Harry, gleefully, “I think so.” He waved his hand at me. “Come in and let’s talk this over. I think your mother wouldn’t like this, your coming in at this hour.”

I wasn’t crazy to have Mother hear what time I’d come back, so I moved in and stood in front of the cold fireplace. Harry was wearing an ascot tie, and it had come apart. The knot was still tight at his neck, but the flowing part was rucked up and hunched to one side, and his thick neck was exposed. I had never seen Harry’s clothes messy before.

“I don’t think your mother ought to hear about this,” Harry said in a raspy whisper. His voice was blurry with Scotch. “What do you think?” He put his drink down carefully and put his elbows on the arms of his chair, steepling his hands and cocking his head at me. I didn’t say anything.

“What do you think, Susannah? Do you think your mother should know what time you came in tonight?” He made a show of pulling up his sleeve to look at his watch. “Quarter of two! Quarter of two in the morning!” He looked up at me. “Do you think she’d be glad to hear that?”

I stood in front of the cold fireplace, my hands crossed over my stomach.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said, leaning forward and putting his hand out. “Let’s make a deal.” He gave me a big glassy smile. “A deal? Okay?” I waited. “We won’t either of us tell her.” He held out his hand to shake, so I put mine out. He took hold of it in his big, puffy one as though he were shaking it, and at once put his other hand over the back of it. My poor fingers were trapped between those swollen cushions of flesh, these old damp pads moving slowly back and forth on my skin.

“I think we could keep a little secret from your mother, don’t you, Susannah?” Harry was smiling at me now, the skin around his sunken eyes dense and white and grainy, like a lizard’s throat. “Come sit down next to me, Susannah,” he said, pulling me off balance, partly onto his lap. “We can be better friends than we have been. We can keep a secret, can’t we.” His smile was getting broader, it was quite friendly, and I half fell against his thin old legs in their soft cotton pants.

Falling into the chair against him, I struggled, but halfheartedly. I was used to his clean pink skin: I had had to kiss Harry good night since I was a baby. I’d been enfolded by his sagging arms before, I was used to the smell of him. Part of me was ready to fall against him again, unwillingly but dutifully, just the way I did saying good night, as though it were right. And I might have stayed there, I think, out of obedient habit, if he had kissed me the way I was used to, the way he always had. Instead, Harry put his hand on my thigh, my poor young thigh, under my wraparound Madras skirt, and he slid his damp, soft flesh up my leg. His breathing had changed, and he was still smiling but his eyes looked glazed. I was still off-balance, trying to pull myself back, sitting half on the arm of the chair and half on his lap. I could see his face, his neck starting to swell and turn red, and his eyes looking boiled. My poor leg, my poor, private adolescent thigh that didn’t at all need touching, was aching, flaming with mortification. Then I struggled in earnest, writhing like a crazy-woman, at the thought of his moist old flesh, the secret horror that must be hidden in those soft cotton pants. When I got my balance, and struggled back onto the arm of the chair, I pushed his hand away as if it were made of poison, as if it would make blisters, as though it were a black spider creeping up my skin. I tried to get up, and he grabbed my hand and tried to pull me down again, thrusting out his lips—his lips!—as though the sight of them would change my mind, and I would soften, and lean over, and put my own on those bloated, liver-colored things.

But I had turned crazy. I felt as though I were wrestling with an octopus, soft, slimy, and underwater: I couldn’t breathe. Wrestling, we knocked the lamp over, and when it crashed I fled. I left Harry in the dark library, with the smashed lamp on the floor, and I ran out into the hall. Up on the first landing I stopped, to listen. I heard myself, all my blood vessels open and roaring, my heart thundering along like a locomotive, but no noise from Harry, and no crackling of an electrical fire. I hoped he was dead. I hoped he would have a heart attack there alone in the stinking, disordered library. I took off my shoes and went on up to the third floor where I was safe. I slept in Joan’s room, with the door locked.

In the morning I came down very late to breakfast, to make sure I wouldn’t see Harry. My mother was sitting alone at the glass-topped table. She was wearing a cotton shift printed with soft collapsing roses. It had modest slits up the sides, and little bows at the tops of them. Her shoes were rose colored, and so was her hair ribbon. She looked up at me briefly and down again at her breakfast on the pink linen mat in front of her.

“Good morning,” she said, “Did you have a nice time at the dance?”

“Yes,” I said. The breakfast room looked right out onto the ocean. There was an angry swell that morning, and the water heaved itself mutinously up on the beach.

“I gather you saw Harry when you got home,” my mother said. She was spooning a boiled egg from an eggcup with sprigs of flowers all over it. She was concentrating hard, scooping out the rubbery white with a little egg spoon.

“Mmhmm,” I said.

“I gather he wasn’t very well,” Mother said. Her mouth was turned down at the corners with what looked like disgust but was really concentration, as she scraped the insides of the shell with her spoon. “I gather you had a difficult time.” She looked at me but I didn’t say anything. “If he stays up late he gets very tired, and sometimes someone has to help him out.”

I poured Cheerios into my flower-sprigged bowl, and covered them with cream. I ate them slowly, concentrating on the dry, grainy crunch, saying nothing. When I was finished I stood up. “I’m going to Elaine’s,” I said. Elaine was, of all my friends, my mother’s least favorite. Mother always found a reason for me not to go to her house. That morning she nodded without looking up, the corners of her mouth still fastidiously turned down, and said, “Be back by lunch or call.”

My mother was wearing a flowered linen dress that morning, and her hair ribbon matched the tulips. When she put down the telephone, I started toward her chair to kiss her hello. Our kisses aren’t much. There is no hugging, in fact there is not much contact at all. We take each other by the upper arms, lightly but firmly, as much to hold ourselves clear as to pull ourselves together. Then we place cheek against cheek, and we kiss the air. Still, I like these embraces. I like holding Mother’s thin, cool body in my arms, just for a moment, smelling her soft skin. I know it’s only a symbol, but it’s a symbol of something I like. Sometimes I think I will tell her that, that I like kissing her. Sometimes I think I will take her into my arms and hold her, hug her like a child.

I leaned over to kiss my mother. I could smell her faint perfume as I bent over, but instead of reaching her cheek up toward mine she turned it away from me and held up her hand.

“I’ve stopped kissing people,” she announced.

But it was too late. I couldn’t stop myself, I was leaning over, with my hands out for her shoulders. Without them to brace myself I fell forward, onto my mother, in her chair. To my horror, I collapsed on top of her, struggling not to, struggling not to fall onto her thin old legs, her frail body, but finding myself in a ghastly moment of writhing face-to-face embrace. It was terrible. We were touching everywhere, breast, shoulder, rib cage, hands, our arms pushing each other frantically away, and my face brushed against hers anyway, horribly, as she had just asked me not to do. I pulled myself away from her as though I were burning her—I hadn’t meant to force myself on my poor mother—and I stood up, my face flaming, mortified.

“Good heavens,” I said inanely, a phrase I never use. “Are you all right? I didn’t mean to fall on top of you.”

My mother looked disgruntled and disordered, and she put herself back together, smoothing her skirt and patting her hair. “I’m fine,” she said severely.

I moved away from her. “So you don’t kiss anyone?” I asked, trying to sound casual and amused.

“No,” Mother said, lighting a cigarette. “I’ve never liked it. Harry’s dead, and I don’t have to kiss anyone now. I don’t have to and so I don’t. My time for kissing is over.” Mother settled back in her chair and crossed her narrow brown legs.

“So that’s that,” I said, smiling, but she wouldn’t smile back.

“That’s that.” She took a long drag on her cigarette in its filtered holder.

It sounded so final. I couldn’t think of anything to say, and I couldn’t think of what to do with my hands. I felt off-balance and humiliated, and as I stood there, to my horror I felt my eyes begin to sting, the inside of my nose draw tight. I shook my head, but I could not keep it from happening: I began to cry in front of my mother, which was something I had never done. Out of shame I turned my face away.

I stood with my back to her, with my hands covering my face, my shoulders shaking, and I wept and wept and wept: a grown woman. My mother sat in the chair behind me and smoked. I heard her inhale. If she were to say anything I knew it would be, “Crying never helped.” I hoped that she would say nothing, rather than that, and she did.

As I wept I thought of the things I had planned, sometime, to tell her. I had always thought that sometime we would sit down together, at peace, and she would lay on me her rare favor, and we would talk. I would tell her everything: about Harry, about my life, about how it has been for John and me, and the troubles we’ve had with Amanda, and the times I have thought of divorce and despair. I had thought that this would happen, and now I could see that it would not.

There were things I had wanted to ask her, too: what it was like for her, what it was like being married to my charming, impossible father, and how it was to marry instead someone with money, who could help her bring up her children.

Her four children, who laughed at her husband behind her back, who cut her cruelly out of their lives, who made their own secret and vivid lives up without her, who frightened her so that she did not dare look at them, so that she did not dare ask them for anything, for fear they would deny it. And how it would be for her now, alone, in her small house with the velvet lawn, with her thin, dry, sleek legs, her beautiful velvet hair ribbons and her Cavalier King Charles spaniel, now that she has given up kissing people.