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Her cataracts have thickened. She requires that the figures be read aloud. Each time he mentions the “power” and the document she must sign if she would exercise it, she chortles. What has he against those damn pickaninnies?
    When I knock, the door opens at once. I enter. The companion, really a nurse, Mrs. Leahy, shows me in and withdraws. Her room is beyond Mrs. Storrow’s bedroom. I always knock on Mrs. Leahy’s door first. This is our custom; Cousin Emma has never liked to rise from her chair. She chuckles over my name: Maximilian Hafter Strong. The great-grandson of her father’s uncle, named after her father, the judge. Why? Did my parents, the professor of agriculture at a Rhode Island state college and his librarian spouse, think it droll to bestow such a large name on a tiny baby, did they like its exotic ring, like some explorer of the Amazon? Her own Maximilian and Hugh were alive when this Max was born; the Christmas cards regularly received and acknowledged so long as the librarian lived were the only commerce between them. None other was offered or sought. In the end, it was she who summoned me into her presence. Out ofboredom. How many times since then has she told me the story, how many times has she turned the matter over in her mind?
    Although it lacks of noon, I mix gin-and-tonics in purple Venetian tumblers. She likes them half-gin and half-Schweppes. Never mind the hour, she says, here the sun is always over the yardarm. The silver, glass, and china are hers, brought from Commonwealth Avenue, together with the Queen Anne and Chippendale pieces, silk rugs, and flower paintings. The hospital bed Mrs. Leahy cranks up and down is the only alien object. That is a recent acquisition; it marks Cousin Emma’s last visit to Phillips House. That’s the field of her battles with cancer: both breasts lost and it’s not over.
    The chocolate mints are in the blue Canton dish beside her. She eats them quickly and offers me the last one. Take it, I am not dead yet. I can send Leahy to buy more.
    I laugh. From the sideboard I take a package I think I have managed to conceal until then. Lindt miniatures, dark chocolate, bittersweet. Cousin Emma’s favorite, purchased at Cardullo’s in Harvard Square. She points to her cheek and waits for my kiss. Another round of drinks, it’s Sunday, the time to indulge. I cheat artfully, only pretending to pour gin in mine. This too is one of our customs. How else will I manage to do the work I have set aside for the afternoon?
    Lunch. Mock turtle soup, turkey hash, and baked apples. Mrs. Leahy fetches the splits of champagne from the closet fridge, and also pills on a little silver dish. Mrs. Storrow drinks Veuve Clicquot when it’s not time for cocktails. Corks reverentially twisted by the waiter leave the bottles with amere sigh. He serves the food and waits on a chair in the corridor until she rings. Except when asked, Mrs. Leahy takes meals in her own bedroom; it makes Mrs. Storrow nervous to watch her eat, she is so slow; besides, she doesn’t like having that Irish woman at the table. She points out that I eat fast, like a Hafter. More champagne. Leahy must fetch it, she won’t have me rummaging in the bedroom. Past the cloud of the cataracts she squints at me. Thoughts and questions are left unspoken. They crowd her room like souls of the dead. Does she like this distant relative? Blond with brown eyes, that’s the Hafter in him, but thin; the resemblance stops with the coloring. Longing for her own sons rises like nausea. She listens to me talk about the summer’s vacation in Italy. Como. Belluno. Udine. Expatriate Americans. She will not say: Why are you alive, why were they not born later, like you, a young man who hasn’t been to any war?
    Mr. Storrow and she took a villa on the Lago di Garda every summer until he died, she informs me; quite unusual, as Mr. Storrow was most fond of ocean sailing. The boys spoke Italian, like little natives! Later, there were