It was only when the portrait was complete that I realized that, except for the bent shoulders and the thinning hair, I had been describing myself.
My mother looked away, covering her face with her hands. I saw her shoulders quiver. A suspicion nibbled at the fringe of my mind, rejected instantly with a spasm of horror.
"Mom! What is it? Who was he?"
I was shocked by the agony of pain in her eyes.
"Oh, Paul!"
I put my hands quickly on her shoulders and shook her gently. "Tell me," I said. "You've got to tell me."
"I can't!"
I was young but I felt very mature and protective and able to take anything. "You don't have to hide anything from me," I said.
Haltingly, she told me about my father and about the brief days she had known him, the short interval of love on which she had built a lonely life. She pleaded with me to feel no bitterness toward the man who was my father. He had given her all he could—love, tenderness, understanding, even a child. She believed that he had really loved her and she had never blamed him for staying away from her. It was the only thing for him to do. She revealed that he had sent her letters in the first months after he left her. She had written at last to tell him that it was better if she dropped out of his life completely. She had not told him about the child.
When she had finished, I felt only pity and love for this woman who had suffered loneliness for the better part of a lifetime in exchange for a love held only for an instant, who had shielded even her bastard son from the truth that might hurt him, who had lived with her memories and her illusion of a life that was, in its own small way, complete.