“He’s in his mother’s neighborhood and decides to drop in. Though he has the keys to her apartment, he’ll ring the vestibule bell. If she doesn’t answer, he won’t let himself in. She could be napping, resting, taking a bath, just wanting her privacy. She’s walking up the steps of her building’s areaway when he’s coming down the block. ‘Mom?’ he yells from across the street. She doesn’t look his way. ‘Mom, Mom?’ he yells, crossing the street. She reaches the sidewalk, holding on to the wall and then the short iron fence on top of it to get there, stops, takes a deep breath, and starts down to Columbus Avenue. Probably has her hearing aid turned off or else not in. He starts to run after her, then thinks follow her, see what she does for a while, he’s always been interested and has never done it before, maybe because this is the first chance he’s had. So he follows from about fifty feet behind. If she sees him hell say he just rang her apartment bell, she didn’t answer, he didn’t want to disturb her by letting himself in if she was home, and was heading now to Broadway to catch the subway or bus. She walks slowly. Every three buildings she stops to rest. She looks at the sky or the tops of buildings while she’s standing still, to the sides, a couple of times behind. He doesn’t wave and she doesn’t seem to notice him or not as her son. One time he pretends to tie his shoe when she looks at him, another time when she turns his way he actually has to tie that same shoe. She’s carrying a small canvas shopping bag and she probably has her handbag in it. She has on the black sneakers he convinced her to buy a few years ago to make walking easier, or they could be a second pair. Black slacks, shirt and jacket and with her hair handsomely combed and pinned back, so she could be dressed for going to just about anywhere: a movie, stores, a stroll. Near the end of the block she stops and looks at the second-story window of the building she’s in front of. She smiles and waves to it. The window opens, a woman’s head sticks out. ‘How are you, Marion?’ his mother says. ‘Fine, thanks; nice day for getting out, I’d say. How is everything?’ ‘All right, considering. I thought I’d do a little shopping.’ ‘What I should do with the weather this nice. And the family?’ ‘You know — you hear from them and you don’t. And yours?’ ‘As well as can be expected.’ ‘The same thing?’ his mother says. ‘But worse.’ They chat for a few more minutes. He sits on a stoop, takes a book from his jacket pocket and pretends to read while listening to them. His mother tells her to try to come for lunch tomorrow or the next day. ‘Nothing elaborate; we’ll talk.’ ‘The next day I can make it.’ ‘Then I’ll see you there at noon if I don’t see you on the street before then, dear.’ She waves, Marion waves, and she goes to the corner. She looks left and right, then across the avenue as if she’s only now deciding which way to go. Left, crosses the street, stops at the third store along Columbus, goes inside, comes out with an ice cream cone, strawberry it seems, sits on the bench in front of the store and eats it. He looks in the window of a children’s toy and clothing store next to the ice cream shop. If she sees him and calls out his name he’ll say ‘Mom, oh hi, I was in the neighborhood, stopped to look at all the nice things in that store for Olivia and Eva, not that I’d ever buy anything — way too expensive — but I was on my way to see you. In fact I was going to call you at the corner phone there in about ten seconds. I guess I would have got nobody home.’ A young woman and her daughter sit beside her, filling up the bench, the girl right next to her. ‘Hello,’ she says to the girl. ‘You know, I once had a little girl — you’re around what, seven, eight?’ ‘Six.’ ‘Six? My, how much more grown up you look. And what am I talking about? I’ve a granddaughter your age and had two your age before they grew up and became big. But my daughter when she was six had long dark hair like yours and was slim and pretty like you too and she also loved ice cream cones. What’s your favorite flavor? I bet I can guess.’ ‘Flavor?’ ‘What ice cream cone do you like best?’ her mother says to her. ‘Vanilla.’ ‘Say it to the lady, and in a loud clear voice; don’t be shy or intimidated.’ ‘Vanilla!’ ‘I’ve told her a hundred times: If there’s anything I can do to prepare her for the adult world, it’s that. I won’t have her — you know, mealy.’ ‘My granddaughter too. But that was my favorite flavor when I was six,’ his mother says to the girl. ‘Till I switched to strawberry — I don’t know why I did — and it was my daughter’s favorite flavor all her life. Vanilla was.’ The two women talk while the girl eats her ice cream and looks at the traffic and people passing. The talk quickly gets into large families — the woman came from one, so did his mother—‘The Jews years ago and the Irish forever,’ his mother says, ‘nothing insulting intended’—and then their voices gradually get lower and he hears the words ‘breasts … breast-feeding … warm compresses on them to draw the milk up, and also drinking dark beer and stout.’ His mother’s giving advice—‘I nursed all mine for more than a year and nobody thought I had the equipment for more than two months’—but it must be for someone the woman knows, for her breasts don’t seem like a nursing mother’s and her stomach’s flat, and where’s the baby if she has one? Maybe at home with a nanny or someone, and he could be all wrong about her breasts. A woman he knew who he thought was almost flat chested, and when she took off her blouse the first time, ‘Oh my goodness, gosh, I had no idea, not that it should mean that much or I’d feel any different to you if they weren’t so large, but still…’ and went up to her from behind and put his hands around her on them. She still had her bra on and when she unhooked it and slid off the shoulder straps and twisted her head around to kiss him, breasts and bra fell into his hands. Palo Alto, back of a house by the train tracks, twenty-three years ago. The woman and daughter stand up; the two women shake hands. His mother finishes the ice cream in the cone, bites off a piece of the cone, looks around before spitting it into the paper napkin he didn’t know she was holding, drops the napkin and cone into a trash can beside the bench and continues down Columbus. She still stops every forty feet or so, sometimes a deep breath. A young woman passing her looks at her standing still, stops a few feet away to look back at her, goes back and says ‘Is everything OK?’ ‘Yes, thank you. Just resting, but I can make it fine to where I’m going, dear.’ ‘You’re sure you’re OK?’ ‘Positively. You’re a sweetheart for asking.’ Sidewalk’s now crowded because of a row of vendors near the curb and the enclosed restaurant patios jutting out from the buildings. Her eyesight’s not good and she refuses to wear her glasses outdoors, so there’s even less chance she’ll recognize him now. She does, he’ll say ‘Mom, why hi, I was just over your place, rang the outside bell, no response, so I let myself in — I hope you don’t mind — and when I saw you weren’t home, thought you might be on Columbus or in one of the stores here and came to look for you. If you weren’t, or I couldn’t find you, I was even going to walk to Broadway to D’Agostino’s and Fairway, the two other places I thought you might be. Like to stop in for a coffee or snack someplace, on me?’ She crosses the next street and goes into the supermarket at the corner. He follows her, picks up a basket by the door, puts a few beers in it from the cases stacked at the front of the store, too good a buy, loses her, looks up the nearest aisle, goes to the entrance and looks up the first aisle and sees her at a meat counter looking at what’s there. She takes out a chicken — whole, parts, he can’t tell — puts it in her cart, some beef — cubes for stew, looks like — at the dairy section gets cottage cheese, yogurt, two or three different foreign cheeses, goes down an aisle and gets scouring powder, big box of laundry detergent — how’s she going to carry it all? Probably will have it delivered — Brillo, silver polish, floor wax, then several cans of tuna, seltzer, marmalade, English muffins, lettuce, carrots, radishes, scallions, bananas, kiwi, a cantaloupe. ‘You think this is ready?’ she says to the woman who weighs the produce. The woman taps and smells the cantaloupe and presses its ends, says ‘Think I know what I’m doing? I see the regular man doing it, I do it. But he’s off today, so don’t go by me.’ ‘Let’s say if you were thinking of buying it-would you?’ ‘You’re asking me that, customer to customer, I would, ‘cause it’s a great buy, and I’d keep it in a warm spot for a few days, but not the stove, you know? Now the bananas,’ weighing them — his mother puts the cantaloupe back—‘yours are good, you could eat t