There is never a good time for bad news. Sarah called from Barcelona.

            “Hello.”

            “Hi. I’m glad you answered.”

            “Where are you?  This connection is lousy.”

            “I’m in Spain with Marco.”

            “Who’s ‘Marco’?”

            “Um… this Italian guy I’ve been seeing.”

            “Okay…” I let some silence pass, but Sarah wasn’t forthcoming. I guessed this was one of those times when I just had to drag it out of her. “Is there something…?”

            “Promise you won’t say a word to mother.”

            “Come on, Sarah, you know darn well...”

“Promise!”

            “Okay, okay. I promise. Now what…” She burst into tears.

            “I’m too young… I can’t… I’m too young...”

            “Whoa. Wait a minute. Back up here. What’s… Are you…?”

            “I’m too young and I’m not strong enough and I really don’t love him and I’d be a terrible mother and, oh God, I don’t know, I just don’t know anymore…”

            I felt out of my depth, talking to my baby sister about this stuff. “Is this guy… Marco… is he the father?”

            “It doesn’t matter. It’s over. It’s gone. I’m not even going to tell him. I’m telling you. I took care of it.”

            I didn’t know where to begin. My little sister, the princess from the rowboat, was calling me from Barcelona at age 18 to tell me that she’d had an affair and an abortion.

            “What are you going to do next?”

            “Oh, God bless you, big brother. You always ask the right questions, eventually.” 

            “Thanks, I guess. Sounds like a big decision.” 

            “Yeah. It is. One of my paintings was accepted for a student show at anAcademy in Montparnasse. I really want to go there, too. I mean, the south of France is great and school’s been great, and bumming around Europe with Marco and all, but I would love to be a real painter—in Paris—you know what I mean?”

            Did I know what she meant?  Boy, I sure did. If it had been anyone else but Sarah I would have been drooling with envy.

            
            “I vote for Paris.”

            
            “Yeah, I was kind of thinking that already. Thanks, as usual.”

            
            “You’re welcome, as usual.”

            
            “What about you, brother? When are you going to leave home for good?” She laughed at her teasing remark, but she meant it and I knew she meant it. My little sis was coaching me, pushing me to can my “man of the house” act and stop ruminating myself into a stupor. But I wasn’t ready to leave. Not just yet. During the silence as I thought about these things, the voice of the Spanish operator interrupted us.

            
            “I’m out of change. I gotta run. Catch ya later. Ciao.” Those were the last words I ever heard her speak. She continued our ritual of whoever was away from home writes letters. She proudly informed me that her canvas won honorable mention at the show and she was given a scholarship to L’ecole des Beaux Artes. The creative energy in Paris was perfect for Sarah. She lived and worked in a narrow atelier not far from the famed Bateau Lavoir, Picasso’s old studio. Her letters were full of optimism and she claimed to be finding an original force in her work. She joked about her new obsession with Dalmatian figs and red wine. But as time wore on, her letters became shorter and less enthusiastic. She finally admitted that she felt physically weak, and it was making her mind weary. The abortion and her tumultuous romance with the mercurial Marco had emotionally wiped her out. In one of her last letters, she admitted that merely standing before her easel had become too draining. Marco left her for another woman. Then she stopped writing. Several weeks passed without a word. I had to do something.

            I hesitated in front of the door, which was painted bright red, in sharp contrast with the dreary hallway, lit only by a bare bulb on one of those twisty timers common to European buildings. I couldn’t raise my knuckles to knock. All I could think was, “Why red?” When no one answered, I began combing the neighborhood, struggling with my phrase book French, asking everyone about Sarah. I took a room in a pension on the corner and hung out at the café across from her courtyard entrance. I asked everyone on her street about her. A couple of people said they’d seen her around but not recently. For three days and nights I overdosed on coffee, slept fitfully, and never saw her, coming or going. I visited nearby hospitals and the local police station to no avail. The American embassy was no help. My final confrontation was with a bent, old lady with a grey moustache in a mourning dress and droopy stockings. I blocked her way as she was entering Sarah’s courtyard entrance. She defiantly jutted her chin with its hairy mole up into my face. “Q’est-ce que vous voulez?” She demanded. I had memorized the sentences I needed for my purpose, “Je cherche mon souer. Elle s’appelle Sarah. Elle habite ici.” I pointed up over her shoulder to Sarah’s window.

            She looked at me as though I was making this story up to burglarize the place or sell drugs to her grandchildren. “Vous êtes Englais?” This question came up all the time but I just couldn’t lie. “Non, je suis Americain.” She snarled and spat near my feet. She shuffled quickly past me into her place and phoned the gendarmes. It must have been a slow crime day because the police arrived in one minute, sized up the situation and warned me, in words I couldn’t translate but instantly understood, that I was very close to arrest and deportation. After one more fruitless night, I left my number with the concierge and the owner of the café, walked three blocks to the big avenue, and hailed a taxi for de Gaulle airport.

            I landed at JFK on a standby flight in less than eight hours. Mother had enough on her mind, so I struck a deal with a gypsy cabbie to take me through the city and up to Putnam County. It was after midnight when we pulled up and all the lights were on in the house. I could see mother framed by the kitchen window, hunched over the table. I paid the driver and headed up the steps, bracing myself for whatever was to come.

            Mother sat still, silent, staring at nothing. I reached across the table and took a crumpled piece of paper from her trembling hands. I spread it open with my fingers and read her scribbles. “Sarah   Internal bleeding   30 Sept   2100   9 PM?” We both sat there, unmoving, blankly staring into the worn wood of the hundred-year-old oak table between us. I noticed my nails were filthy. A siren wailed on the far side of town. My addled brain grasped at only one fact: I had been there, probably only blocks away.

            As I stood on the platform looking down the curving tracks to where they disappeared into the trees, I couldn’t help thinking of Paul Simon’s line, “Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance.” For me, it meant my sister was coming home. Sarah hated black, but I wore it out of respect for mother and, I confess, to facilitate a sympathetic response from the station porter. The driver of the hearse admitted on the phone that he was too old to lift heavy objects, so I knew we’d need assistance. I handed the paperwork directly to mother. I never inquired about the details. Everyone else I’ve ever talked to has always wanted to know the minutiae of the last hours of their beloved. I just knew it wouldn’t do me any good. I guess father’s leukemia turned me into a bit of a fatalist. I can’t remember how we arrived at the decision that there would be no ceremony, no memorial, and no invitations. Mother and I put her to rest alone, together.

            In my initial grief, I had wanted to tear up Sarah’s letters into tiny, unreadable pieces, but I didn’t, thank God. Those letters were to my heart what the earth was to my feet. I did little else but read them over and over for I don’t know how long. For several weeks Mother and I sleepwalked through meals and soap operas, letting the mail and the trash pile up, our infrequent steps echoing in the cavernous, empty house. The weather was getting colder, further reducing our ambition to go out. We lived on pizza and Chinese to go. I only left the property when we ran out of toilet paper or coffee.

            Finally one Sunday I went to Mass for the first time in years, hoping to find some good, old-fashioned mercy and hope, but the service was in English, and left me nostalgic and confused. I felt no comfort or solace anywhere. I was unable to leave my seat to partake of the Body of Christ. The sunlight refracted by the stained glass windows fell painfully on my eyes. I left early.

            After five months of sleeping and crying in the hollow corners of our acre, the arrival of an early spring told me it was time to make a move. I had an urge, but no plans. The evolution of my mother’s heart had carried her to a similar state of mind, and one night, without planning it, we sat across from each other at that venerable table for the first time since that night.