“Frost,” she said. “How thoughtful.”
“I know how much you like poetry,” Claire said, “and since he’s reading one at the inauguration tomorrow . . .”
“Do you know ‘Master Speed’?” Birdy asked.
She didn’t wait for Claire to answer.
“A sonnet,” she continued. “ ‘Two such as you with a master speed, Cannot be parted nor be swept away, From one another once you are agreed, That life is only life forevermore, Together wing to wing and oar to oar.’ ” She smiled. “I think I’ve got that right. At my age, I’m not always so sure.”
“It’s beautiful,” Claire said.
“I believe that’s on his wife’s grave,” Birdy said.
“Well, I hope you enjoy these poems,” Claire said. “It’s the latest collection.”
“I’m sure I will.” She placed the book on the small table beside her chair.
Relieved, Claire heard Peter coming back inside.
“What?” he said when he entered the room. “You haven’t opened the champagne yet?”
“We couldn’t toast without you,” Birdy said.
Peter picked up the bottle and placed the white napkin over it.
“Eighty years old, Birdy,” he said as he turned the cork. “And still the prettiest mother on the block.”
“Well, still the oldest anyway,” she said, obviously pleased.
To Claire she added, “Poor Peter. All the other mothers would be outside organizing games of tag and jumping rope, and his mother was inside cooking or knitting or—”
“I won’t hear it,” Peter said. “You were fine. The best.”
The cork opened with a small sigh, and Peter filled the three glasses.
“To my lovely mother,” he said, holding up his glass. “Happy eightieth birthday, Birdy.”
They all clinked and sipped, and then Claire excused herself to get ready for the party.
Up in Peter’s old room, she sat on the edge of his bed and began to cry. Wing to wing and oar to oar. Was her mother-in-law telling her that Claire needed to understand that? Did Birdy know about Miles? Claire wished she had the courage to ask her mother-in-law these questions directly. But the old woman intimidated her.
Sighing, Claire found herself for the second time today wanting to call her old roommate. Rose had told Claire once that men had affairs to stay married, and women had affairs to get out of their marriages. Rose should know. She had always dated married men. In fact, her husband had been married when Rose started seeing him. Before him, a married doctor named Monty bought her Chanel No.5 and silk stockings. An actor took her dancing at the Copacabana and for steaks at Peter Luger. The Italian businessman gave her a tennis bracelet, a thin circle of gold studded with glittering diamonds. At the time, Claire had been slightly horrified at Rose’s behavior. Don’t you think about their wives? she’d asked. Don’t you worry about . . . I don’t know, your soul? Rose had laughed at her. She’d stood back and held out her slender wrist with the diamond bracelet shining on it and said, No, Claire. I don’t.
Vivien stretched out on top of the twin bed. The bedspread was ivory chenille, with some faded pattern on it, now just a few curlicues of color. A mobile of the solar system hung from the ceiling, the planets moving ever so slightly in the drafty room. Each planet was a different color and different-sized sphere, and Claire tried to remember which was which. She used to know a mnemonic saying to help her remember their correct order. My very excited mother just . . . Just what? Ordered pizzas? But no, there wasn’t a planet that started with O.
Peter had told her how he and his mother spent all day one Saturday painting these Styrofoam balls, making sure they were sized right and then hanging them on wire in the proper order. They’d use a coat hanger to make Saturn’s ring, he’d told Claire. That was what his mother liked best when he was a boy—spending the day with him, just the two of them. Other boys would be outside playing street hockey or basketball, and Peter would want to join them. But the way his mother looked—so happy, he’d said—when they did projects like this used to keep him inside with her. They’d built the solar system, a replica of the Titanic out of matchsticks, a skateboard from an old piece of wood attached to one of his old roller skates.
Claire reached up and touched Mars, painted a faded red.
Peter could point to each sphere and name it and tell her their names. In fact, he had done that very thing the first time she’d come with him to visit his mother. This was before they got married, when she thought he was the most remarkable person she’d ever known. While his mother slept down the hall, Peter had snuck in here and they’d made love, each squeak of a bedspring stopping them for a moment, each sigh choked on. Afterwards, he had stood naked right there below the mobile and set those planets spinning. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars . . .
“Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune,” Claire said into the empty room, remembering.