"He was never my grandfather," Linden insisted on correcting.
"In name," she said. "but really more because he was very kind to me. Right from the beginning, he treated me as if I were truly his very own. I never felt unwanted or like some second-class citizen, not with Daddy Winston. as I used to call him."
"Daddy Winston," Linden muttered.
"He gave my mother whatever she wanted. He couldn't do enough to make her happy. He built onto the main house for her, but he was somewhat older than she was, and my mother was never fully accepted by Palm Beach society. We were in the social directory because of my stepfather. but..."
-The Sears catalogue," Linden inserted,
"The Who's Who," she continued. "My stepfather was rich and powerful enough to keep anyone from blatantly snubbing my mother, but she was snubbed nonetheless."
"She was lucky," Linden said.
"Winston died when I was twenty-one, and my mother took up with someone for a few years."
"She knows about all that," Linden said. "Don't you?"
"Not really," I said. "But I'm not here to dredge up any unpleasant memories for you. Mrs.
Montgomery."
"That's nice," Linden said dryly.
She simply held her eyes on me. I felt very selfconscious and looked away quickly. "If you had to list five or six things that you lost when your family lost its wealth and position in Palm Beach, what would be number one in your mind?" I asked her.
Linden looked just as interested in her answer.
She smiled at me and then sat back a moment. "Having no sense of yourself," she replied.
"You mean now, you don't know who you really are?"
"Oh, no." she said. "When we were in all that, when we were part of all that. I never knew who I was, and I don't think my mother did, either. We were defined by what we owned. But those things come and go or fade or go out of style so quickly. No, no," she insisted, "It's only now, only afterward, that I have a sense of myself." She smiled. "It's like being in spotlights or in the headlines. It's glamorous, exciting even, but you never get to look at anything, really look at it, especially yourself.
"My mother used to look in her mirror and wonder what happened to the woman who used to look back. I remember her saying that. I remember it very well because it happened to me. too.
"When the lights went out, we stood in the much dimmer light, but we could see things we had never seen before." she said. "I think we saw the people we had been and lost."
She laughed. "Don't misunderstand me. I'm not against being rich. I've been both rich and poor, and rich is better. I'm just against being so absorbed in the glamour that you forget you're just another member of the human race. Maybe it's easier for that to happen here."
"No cemeteries or hospitals." I murmured, more to myself than to her and Linden, but they heard.
"Yes," my mother said, smiling. "Maybe you understand. I'm sorry. I'm a little tired suddenly." She rose. "It's nice to have met you I hope you'll come by again," she said.
"I'd like that."
"Me, too," she said. She glanced at Linden.
He had been sitting there as much in awe of his mother as I was, I thought. He blinked his eves and nodded.
"Yes, yes." he said. "Go rest, Mother." "Have a good day." she told me.
We watched her go into the house, and then I stood up. I truly felt as if I had crossed a barrier of time. I had cleared away some fog and had a long look at my own past, hidden and buried for so long.
"Well," Linden said.
"Thank you." I started off the patio, but he caught up with me immediately.
"I don't know why she did that." he said. "What?"