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loved each other and we had some high old times. I realize that these are unusual wishes but you are a strong girl and I know you will respect them. I love you, dear. I always did and I do now, more than ever.
    As for my will, it is at the bank in a safety-deposit box along with another letter that I wrote a long time ago and never gave you. Please forgive me.
    Love,
    Mother
    The part about cremation and no eulogy didn’t surprise her. Mother loathed funerals and that’s why she always volunteered to make the lunch, to avoid the sermon and the crappy eulogy, which always went wide of the mark, usually pitched too high. She thought of Mother slipping off for a tryst in Branson with someone named Raoul. Barbara had been there once with Oliver. It was the only trip they had taken. A geezer resort where the face-lifted stars of yesteryear go on singing their hits like demented robots, eyes glazed, a sort of mortuary of pop music. And she thought Mother had gone to St. Louis to visit a cousin with a lingering illness. Mother lied. But Andy Williams? Mother loved choral music. She adored Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s St. Matthew Passion . She had never shown an interest in crooners before.
    Barbara pulled the sheet up over Mother’s face as she had seenpeople do in movies. And she reached for the phone to call her son Kyle and she saw the tiny red light blinking on the answering machine. “You have one unheard message,” said the lady’s voice. “Sent today at 1:29 a.m.” Then a click and a gravelly man’s voice.
    â€œHey, Precious. Couldn’t sleep after I got your message on the machine. Sorry I wasn’t here. Guess you’ve turned in. Gimme a call in the morning, okay? I saw a great deal on airfare to London and I thought maybe we could do that trip to Italy if you like. Fly to London in September—take a train to Rome. Let’s do it.”
    Barbara stood by the dead woman’s bed as the man talked to her.
    â€œI don’t know how we got this old, kid. But like you said, after you turn eighty, you’ve gotta live fast. Anyway, I’m sitting here thinking about you. How long does your answering machine let me go on? I forget. Maybe I’m just talking to the wall. Hey, it wouldn’t be the first time, right? I was trying to figure out today when our anniversary is—I mean, do you date it from when we first met? Or is it when we got together again? Now there would be an anniversary. Does Hallmark put out greeting cards for that? Ha ha.—Thinking of you on our Special Day when you and I went all the way—huh? Ha. I think I saved the room key. Listen, I know I’m just nattering on here but what the hell. I’m not the sort of guy who writes things down. So the way I remember is if I tell someone, and who can I tell, right? You. So here I am, yakking into your answering machine. I remember you brought chocolate-chip cookies. And we got into bed and then you got up to use the bathroom and it was the first time I’d seen you without clothes on since the Dyckman Hotel in December of 1941—and you hadn’t changed a bit. This tall slip of a girl getting up out ofbed like a goddess rising from the ocean waves and all of a sudden that day in 1941 came back so clear, I could smell the floor wax. Nineteen forty-one. December. The Friday before Pearl Harbor. We went to the dance at Fort Snelling and that colonel made a pass at you and we got the hell out and walked along the river and talked, and we stopped and kissed and I told you that my brother was the night clerk at the Dyckman and you said, ‘Let’s go.’ So we caught the Hiawatha streetcar and you were quiet all the way downtown and up to the room and we sort of groped around in the dark and you said, ‘Not so fast.’ I remember what you said, you said, ‘I wish I could make this minute last for a whole day.’ And then you rolled over on top of me and