handing little dogs out the door to everybody. The doorman. The bellhop. Her hairdresser had one under each arm. But they weren’t hers—they were his own dogs! He didn’t have a free hand to help Elizabeth Taylor. So that desperate man—”
“Ma, we’ve got to get going.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“You hate elevators. The last time we tried that, you wouldn’t walk—”
“Well, the stairs didn’t kill me, did they?”
“I wasn’t parked five flights up. Look, just stand by the window and—”
“I know what’s happening. You’re telling me over and over!”
I raise my hands and drop them. “See you soon,” I say.
“Is it the green car? The black car that I always think is green?”
“Yes, Ma. My only car.”
“Well, you don’t have to say it like that. I hope you never know what it’s like to have small confusions about things. I understand that your car is black. It’s when it’s in strong sun that it looks a little green.”
“Back in five,” I say, and enter the revolving door. A man ahead of me, with both arms in casts, pushes on the glass with his forehead. We’re out in a few seconds. Then he turns and looks at me, his face crimson.
“I didn’t know if I pushed, whether it might make the door go too fast,” I say.
“I figured there was an explanation,” he says dully, and walks away.
The fat woman who passed us in the hallway is waiting on the sidewalk for the light to change, chatting on her cell phone. When the light blinks green, she moves forward with her head turned to the side, as if the phone clamped to her ear were leading her. She has on an ill-fitting blazer and one of those long skirts that everybody wears, with sensible shoes and a teeny purse dangling over her shoulder. “Right behind you,” my mother says distinctly, catching up with me halfway to the opposite curb.
“Ma, there’s an elevator.”
“You do enough things for your mother! It’s desperate of you to do this on your lunch hour. Does picking me up mean you won’t get any food? Now that you can see I’m fine, you could send me home in a cab.”
“No, no, it’s no problem. But last night you asked me to drop you at the hairdresser. Wasn’t that where you wanted to go?”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s today.”
“Yes. The appointment is in fifteen minutes. With Eloise.”
“I wouldn’t want to be named for somebody who caused a commotion at the Plaza. Would you?”
“No. Ma, why don’t you wait by the ticket booth, and when I drive—”
“You’re full of ideas! Why won’t you just let me go to the car with you?”
“In an elevator? You’re going to get in an elevator? All right. Fine with me.”
“It isn’t one of those glass ones, is it?”
“It does have one glass wall.”
“I’ll be like those other women, then. The ones who’ve hit the glass ceiling.”
“Here we are.”
“It has a funny smell. I’ll sit in a chair and wait for you.”
“Ma, that’s back across the street. You’re here now. I can introduce you to the guy over there in the booth, who collects the money. Or you can just take a deep breath and ride up with me. Okay?”
A man inside the elevator, wearing a suit, holds the door open. “Thank you,” I say. “Ma?”
“I like your suggestion about going to that chapel,” she says. “Pick me up there.”
The man continues to hold the door with his shoulder, his eyes cast down.
“Not a chapel, a booth. Right there? That’s where you’ll be?”
“Yes. Over there with that man.”
“You see the man—” I step off the elevator and the doors close behind me.
“I did see him. He said that his son was getting married in Las Vegas. And I said, ‘I never got to go to my daughter’s weddings.’ And he said, ‘How many weddings did she have?’ and of course I answered honestly. So he said, ‘How did that make you feel?’ and I said that a dog was at one of them.”
“That was the wedding you came to. My first wedding. You don’t remember putting a bow on Ebeneezer’s neck? It was your idea.” I take her arm and guide her toward the elevator.
“Yes, I took it off a beautiful floral display that was meant to be inside the church, but you and that man wouldn’t go inside. There was no flat place to stand. If you were a woman wearing heels, there was no place to stand anywhere, and it was going to rain.”
“It was a sunny day.”
“I don’t remember that. Did Grandma make your dress?”
“No. She offered, but I wore a dress we bought in London.”
