Chapter 19: The Exhibition, Again

On Saturday my furniture stood in a gallery on the harbor, and I had chosen every wall of it.

The cabinet sat in the middle of the room again.

Behind it the windows looked out at the Sound, gray and flat under a pale sky.

The gallery owner had called me on Friday morning, the day my receipts passed a million views.

"I'll give you the big room," she had said. "Name the date."

I named Saturday at two, the same hour as before.

At one thirty the door opened, and Gwen came in pushing a wheelchair.

My mother wore her good blue cardigan and had her hair set, and her left hand lay in her lap with a scarf folded over it.

"They let me out," Edith said, with half her mouth. "Four hours."

"Mom."

"Don't cry on the cabinet."

I knelt in front of her chair, and she put her good hand on my cheek.

"It's beautiful," she said slowly. "Sylvia, it's beautiful."

"You haven't looked yet."

"I looked at you."

The gallery owner brought the printed card to the door, and I read it before she set it in its stand.

[With love and thanks to Gwen, to my mother, and to Calvin, who never changed his number.]

Calvin read it over my shoulder and said nothing.

He wore a charcoal suit and a tie I had never seen.

He had not stopped looking at me since he walked in.

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