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that the very template of sanity? At least of continuity, which was one of the hallmarks of sanity.
    Only once in the presence of a patient did I have a mental lapse: of a patient’s white-and-gray rendering of the hospital cafeteria, I had involuntarily thought, “The Garden of Grief,” and I said, “It’s a wonderful garden,” when I had intended to say it was a wonderful
painting.
Rendered in neutral tones of ash and char, the painting had been the opposite of a wonderful, colorful garden, but I found consoling beauty in its vision. Another time—not with the patients—at a bookstore near Lincoln Center, I had looked at the array of appealing book covers and said, “What beautiful flowers.” Was
displacement
what I was after? A displacement from extended grief? Moving my work from Iowa City to New York had helped me leave some portion of sorrow behind. Not enough.
    A new international symposium—in Egypt—had been organized to honor Thom, and I agreed to travel to Cairo to greet the group. I was glad to go, glad to have a mission, a new direction, a small but new duty to perform. I wore the memory stick like a shield over my heart.
    After traveling alone from New York to Paris, I joined one of the scientists whom I’ve already mentioned in passing, our old friend Gabriel Plum the Sherlockian Brit, for the second half of the journey from Paris to Cairo. From the moment I hugged him at Charles de Gaulle, I found his tweedy aroma to be unexpectedly comforting. I’d always liked Gabriel, how a certain warmth and wit shone through his dry manner. Once aloft, we chatted brightly, then settled into moments of pleasant silence, as only old friends can do. From the window of the huge jet, I was admiring the ruggedness below of the mountains forming the spine of northern Italy when Gabriel leaned over and said quietly but with a certain British briskness, “I say, Lucy, suppose we get married one day?”
    I burst into laughter, thinking he was making an old-friend joke.
    Unperturbed, he went on. “Why not? We’ve known each other forever.”
    A tremor of grief wobbled my chin, and I bit my lower lip.
    With smooth aplomb, Gabriel transitioned into a question. “Could you fly a plane this size? What’s the biggest airplane you ever flew?”
    “Corporate jet,” I answered. “And you?” It pleased me to remember that Gabriel was also fascinated with flying. “What are you flying these days?” Since I’d moved from Iowa to New York, I hadn’t flown much.
    “Yes,” Gabriel answered; he sighed. “Nothing hot, the new Cessna.” He reached over and squeezed my knee. “For all your playing of Penelope,” he said kindly, “Thom is a Ulysses who will never come home.”
    What I liked about Gabriel—he seemed as articulate and debonair as Tony Blair, the British prime minister who sent his troops to Iraq. Gabriel was more cynical, though.
    Yet he had made me laugh. That spontaneous burst had let some daylight into my dark world.
    On the difficult first day in Cairo, though I was exhausted from travel, I was scheduled to speak a few words of welcome to the symposium convened to continue Thom’s work. Arriving a bit late, I walked straight to the podium. From just the corner of my eye, I caught the peripheral movement of the Egyptian host—a drapery of white robes—rising in a gesture of respect. The other scientists remained seated; they knew me well: an ordinary wife of a revered man. Determinedly, I grasped the edges of the speaker’s stand. As I looked at the ELF team, I realized again that Thom was not only absent but dead; I pressed his memory stick—my talisman—against my breastbone to give me courage to speak into that void. Should I give the memory stick to them? Make a grand splash? There had been no sign. No revelation had occurred on the road to Now.
    “Because this is the year 2020,” I said to them. Then stopped. My voice brought to mind an antique china doll, plain and white—the type