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didn't answer the phone at all. When we finally spoke again, she canceled the trip—out
of sympathy and probably weariness, not anger—and that was pretty much the end.
That same year my mother lost a breast to cancer and my father had a heart attack. On
each occasion I traveled urgently to Tucson, a place you can't get to from anywhere in
less than a day. I thought they were goners then, both of them, one right after the other,
but they pulled through, and after they were both recovered and able, they moved to
the suburbs of Atlanta, near my brother and his family. They'd been there maybe a year
and a half when my father called to tell me my mother's cancer had returned, this time
in her liver, and that she would shortly be dead. That was December 30, 2000; on New
Year's Day I was on a plane to Atlanta, and for twelve days I, along with the rest of my
family, waited for the inevitable.
I hadn't been in contact with Catherine much and I think we'd seen each other only
once, for an afternoon in Los Angeles, after the Istanbul trip went down the drain. But
I called her every day I was in Atlanta; make of that what you will, but obviously I was
unable to face my mother's death without the other important woman in my life. She
promised to fly to New York for the funeral, a declaration that staggered me. I hadn't
asked her because I had no standing to.
She kept her word. We met for a drink the night before the funeral. I showed her a
draft of the eulogy and she said she loved it, and offered one or two changes, which I
didn't agree with but made anyway.
Throughout most of the next day she was by my side, holding my hand, and that
night we had dinner together, just the two of us. There was a moment at the end of the
evening when we stood looking at each other in front of my apartment building and I
knew I could have asked her to come upstairs and spend the night, but I didn't. She re-
turned to Los Angeles the next morning; I spoke to her on the phone, and she was just
a bit distant. A month later, not long after Valentine's Day, I got the letter that said she
was marrying someone else.
After Billy's wake, Catherine and I sat at a restaurant on the beach and watched the sun
go down.
“We only see each other at funerals anymore,” I said, and we both laughed.
Our conversation, which began with mutual apologies for bad behavior long ago, was
startlingly easy and warm, but I was nervous. I joked again and said that from the mo-
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