Finally!

Ellis Levine found his mother on the second floor of the Polo Ralph Lauren store on Madison and Seventy-second, just as she came out of the dressing room. She was wearing white linen pants and a colorful wraparound top. She stepped in front of the mirror, turning this way and that. Then she saw him.

“Hello, dear,” she said. “What do you think?”

“Mom,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“Buying my cruise wardrobe, dear.”

“But you’re not going on a cruise,” Ellis said.

“Oh yes,” his mother said. “We take a cruise every year. Do you like the cuffs on the trousers?”

“Mom…”

She frowned and fluffed her white hair absently. “And I’m not sure about this top,” she said. “Does it make me look like a fruit salad?”

“We have to talk,” Ellis said.

“Good. Do you have time for lunch?”

“No, Mom. I have to get back to the office.” Ellis was an accountant for an advertising agency. He had left the office and hurried uptown because he had gotten a panic call from his brother.

He walked over to his mother and said quietly, “Mom, you can’t shop now.”

“Don’t be silly, dear.”

“Mom, we had a family meeting…” Ellis and his two brothers had met with his parents the weekend before. A difficult, painful meeting at the house in Scarsdale. His father was sixty-three. His mother fifty-nine. The brothers had gone over the finances with them.

“You can’t be serious,” she said to him now.

“I am.” He squeezed her arm.

“Ellis Jacob Levine,” she said, “you are being inappropriate.”

“Mom, Dad lost his job.”

“I know, but we have plenty-”

“And his pension tanked.”

“It’s only temporary.”

“No, Mom, it is not temporary.”

“But we have always had plenty of-”

“Not anymore. You don’t. Not anymore.”

She glared at him. “Your father and I talked, after you boys left. He said we would be fine. All that business about selling the house and the Jag. That’s all ridiculous.”

“Dad said that?”

“He certainly did.”

Ellis sighed. “He was trying to keep you from worrying.”

“I’m not worried. And he loves that Jag. Your father always gets a new Jag every year. Ever since you were babies.”

The salespeople were staring at them. Ellis steered his mother off to one side. “Mom, things have changed.”

“Oh, please. ”

Ellis looked away from his mother’s face. He could not meet her eyes. All his life he had looked up to his parents: they were successful, stable, solid. He and his brothers had their ups and downs-his older brother was already divorced, for God’s sake-but his parents were from an earlier generation that was stable. You could count on them.

Even when his father lost his job, nobody worried. True, at his age, there was no chance he would get another. But they had investments, stocks, land in Montana and the Caribbean, an ample pension. There was no reason to worry. His parents did not change their lifestyle. They continued to entertain, travel, spend.

But now he and his brothers were paying the mortgage in Scarsdale. And trying to sell the condo in Charlotte Amalie, and the town house in Vail.

“Mom,” he said, “I’ve got two kids in preschool. Jeff has one in first grade. You know what it costs, private school in the city? Aaron has alimony. We have lives of our own. We can’t keep paying for yours.”

“You are not paying for me or your father, ” she snapped.

“Yes, we are, Mom. And I am telling you that you cannot buy these clothes. Please. Go back and take them off.”

Suddenly, to his horror, she burst into tears, throwing her hands over her face. “I’mso afraid, ” she said. “What will happen to us?” Her body shook. He put his arm around her.

“It’ll be fine,” he said gently. “Go get dressed. I’ll take you to lunch.”

“But you don’t have time. ” She was sobbing now. “You said so yourself.”

“It’s okay. We’ll have lunch, Mom. We’ll go to the Carlyle. It’ll be fine.”

She sniffled and wiped her eyes. She headed back to the dressing room, head high.

Ellis flipped open his phone, called his office to say he would be late.