Then she had the gall to say it, not actually say it say it, but intimate it say it, you know? I don’t believe you’d be very happy in Charmington, she said, all Grace Kelly, all French Riviera, this Giselle Jeanteau Cadoux St. Montpellier Vichy sympathizer.

Oh, I said, and why is that?

Just a hunch, she says.

A hunch. Six million and she suspects mice in the basement.

Tell me something, I said. Is Smarmyngton a restricted community?

And she tittered.

Ha ha ha ha.

Just like that. I kid you not.

Not at all, she said. It’s just that you’d be the first, she said. And who really wants to be the first of anything, she said, unless you’re a Lindbergh?

A Lindbergh.

Clever of her, no? His position before the war? Really, very clever of her, I have to hand it to her. Saying it without saying it. Probably smoothing her lederhosen as she said it.

Ardsley, Armonk, Scarsdale, Rye. I’ve referred people to those towns, she said. People from the city. People like you, she said. Can you believe that? Perfectly nice towns, she said. And the trains go there.

Matthausen, Bergen-Bilsen, Treblinka. Little Levittown barracks communities and the trains went there, too, I said.

She didn’t care.

Shame our paths won’t cross, she said. Su-Su says you’re such a smart dresser, too. Never a thread out of place she says. Always dressed to the nines she says. Your armor, she calls it. That Su-Su. I could see her blue eyes glow like a bottle of toilet water on that one.

Yes, that Su-Su. What the hell is that all about? My armor. Thin as a martini-glass stem she is that Su-Su. New Look? She never heard of it. Try No Look.

I can refer you to another real estate professional, she said, a colleague.

No, Frenchie, that wouldn’t be necessary, I may have said, or something similar. All I know is I was standing at this point. My toes throbbing. Throbbing. Knocked the chair smack into the filing cabinet. Scared the pigeons off the ledge even.

And then she wished me well. Giselle Jeanteau Cadoux St. Montpellier goose-stepped through her Emily Post for tips on Polite Contempt and Socially Acceptable Kiss-Offs. I’m sure you’ll be very happy wherever you end up, she said, brisk, perfunctory, like a teacher who’s betting there won’t be much of anything next to your name in the yearbook but has to say something.

Wherever I end up. Like I’m a dog, a cur. What, a German shepherd?

I wanted to slam the phone down. I wanted to break an eardrum. I was squeezing the receiver with such force that the veins in my hand stretched the freckles so wide they looked like dotted swiss.

And then she said, as if she hadn’t said enough already, as if she hadn’t kept me on the phone for so long that now I’d have to get a cab it was raining so hard and my open toes would be ruined thirty-five dollars down the drain, she said, oh, oh, Mrs., before you go, I do want to say how sorry I am.

For poodle skirts, I said.

For your loss, she said.

My what, I said. My what?

Su-Su told me, she said.

I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what else Su-Su told her about me.

My age? Where I hide my good jewelry? What?

And then it hit me.

Su-Su told her. Her good friend Su-Su told her. Her bestoffriendsSu-Su told her what she had no business telling her. Only half what she had no business telling her, truth to tell. So she hadn’t shared so much as cooking sherry with the Gabriel von Aufterheids at the Park’s Reichstag Revival on Ye Olde Wolf’s Lair, had she?

You haven’t spoken with Sunny for some time, I take it, or you would know what you were talking about, I said, because even Mrs. Park would have told you, I said.

I don’t understand, she said.

Do you mean? she said.

Yes, I said.

He? she said.

A boy? she said.

He lived?

Yes, I said, He lived, I said. He’s alive, I said. He was alive all the time, I said. He was very small and there was too much fluid and they couldn’t hear his heartbeat.

Oh, she said.

Oh, oh, oh, she said.

What a blessing, she said. And then, after a moment, such a long moment, what a blessing for you and your husband, she said.

Yes, I said, unable to keep my shoulders from dropping into the word, my anger falling off me like a stretched stocking. The way she said blessing. Out of nowhere. I pulled the chair back and fell into it the way you would after climbing five flights. Something in the way she said blessing. You’d think it was Mazeltov, a weary Mazeltov. From a stranger. This stranger. I could feel crescent moons of tears pooling on my lower lashes. Yes, I said. Yes it was. It is, I said. I had to tilt my face to the blotter or my mascara would have streaked my cheeks like a Japanese watercolor. It’s surprising how loud teardrops are when they’ve got something hard to hit.

On the other end, choked inhales, little watery baby breaths.

She said, I wasn’t so blessed, I lost mine, and I can’t have more.

Oh, I thought.

Oh, oh, oh, I thought.

That poor woman, I thought. She lost hers and she can’t have more. And what she means is she can’t have any, ever. And maybe that’s why she had to say it the way she said it, fast, like she was running for a train, forcing it all out in a single breath.

I held mine waiting for her to catch hers.

From When All Is Said and Done. Copyright 2006 by Robert Hill. All rights reserved.