A handful of years after my father died, I came home on furlough to visit my mother.

I came home infrequently, although my mother and I remained in our way as close as we ever had been. Simultaneously distant and proximate, where we could share the house at Kitigan for days at a time with little to no conversation, reading, walking. I would sit in my father's study and stare at the bookshelves. My mother would paint.

One evening we drove into the city to attend the symphony: my mother handed me the keys to my father's Jag, which has been mine ever since. I drove in the rain and smelled the musky smell of her fox fur coat, damp against the leather seat.

As we left the hall, I was bumped--it seemed on purpose--by a lanky youth with a shock of white-blond hair. My type, if there is such a thing, and his hands were familiar, as we steadied each other and stepped back. It had been almost a year, but of course I recognized him. A week in a garret in Amsterdam. Coffee, cigarettes. Hard sex, cheap schnapps, fists.

"Vaughn, it's been such a long time. Is this your mother?" he asked, before I could react, and his English was crisp, impeccable. "A pleasure to meet you; I'm Henrik," he said, and had kissed her cheeks and pressed her hand before I could interfere with that either.

Worse still, he invited us both for a late supper at a nearby bistro. I sat in black silence while they ate and he courted and chattered at her.

So different than the young, intense soldier he'd been then. Reserved until broken open, now grown so easy and worldly. Before, he'd held all of himself back, and what had drawn me to him was the idea of how it could be wrung out of him. What I had beat free and coaxed, discovered and devoured, now laid out effortlessly for anyone at all.

All of it vindictive, and done for my benefit. For having left him: not just that I had gone, but had gone that easily, walked out and away without sign, note or word.

As we walked back to the car, my mother was silent. Though Henrik had said nothing outright, of course he'd made all of it clear.

"Yes, a fag," I said to her, because I was young and perpetually angry and Henrik had rattled me.

My mother said nothing. Nothing at all in response, or the entire drive home.


In the foyer at Kitigan, as I helped her off with the fox fur, she turned and slapped me. The first time in twenty years that she'd ever raised her hand.

A ringing slap, harder and sharper for its being so utterly unexpected.

"I don't ever want to hear you say that word again," she said.


It was almost a decade later that I realized she'd meant it. Just that: the word was offensive. Not me, nor the idea that I might be, nor anything like that at all.


I had written Henrik's letter of recommendation to the Services, and less than a year later he was licensed and working.

I didn't see him again after that night, though he knew enough somehow to send flowers to my mother's funeral. It was an elegant spray of crocuses, vibrant yellow and wildly out of season.

A single striking point of color, on that gray and rainy day.


It was the fourth week and three a.m. in the Prince George motel room when I got word that Henrik had been killed. On duty, a routine job in Texas. I wired crocuses to his sister for the funeral, and wrote three notes of condolence, none of which I sent.