The Moment She Was Gone

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This is for my beloved wife, Dragica Dimitrijević-Hunter, who nursed it along patiently and devotedly — and finally blessed it. My eternal thanks and enduring love.

My mother phones me the moment Annie is gone.

It is two o’clock in the morning.

I know at once who is calling and why. Nobody but my mother ever calls me at two in the morning, and then only to tell me that my sister is gone again.

The family gathers in the early morning hours. I get there last because I live in Chelsea, all the way downtown, and my mother’s apartment is on West End Avenue and Eighty-first Street. They are already talking about what to do when I come in. My sister-in-law Augusta offers me a cup of coffee, and then we go in to join the others in the living room.

My mother is sixty-three years old, but she still skis and she still travels and there are many people who find her attractive. When I look at her, I see a thin, hawkish-faced woman with piercing green eyes and short brown hair she tints auburn. She is wearing tonight a brocaded silk robe she bought in Tokyo three summers ago, and red velvet slippers with gold trim, from Bergdorf’s. My mother is very proud of her tiny feet. She tells everyone she knows, over and over again, that she has truly tiny feet and then immediately informs them that she once played Alice in a touring company of Alice in Wonderland, as if her tiny feet had been responsible for her getting the role.

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