Todd points to his own face. "This look? Dread and terror?"

"Based on...?"

Todd mouths, "My mother."

"I'm good with mothers," says Henry.

Todd shakes his head.

"Not a good idea? Because she's difficult? Unfriendly? Inhospitable?"

"Very hospitable. Not difficult."

"So we're talking about dread over your cooking? Or something ridiculous like whether I'll like your apartment?"

"If only," says Todd.

"Stupid me. I just got it," says Henry. "Is it because I'm not Jewish?"

Todd says, "No, dear boy. It's because the introduction would go something like, 'Mom, this is Henry. He's my special friend. I may have failed to specify in the past that I am what your friends refer to as a faygeleh'."

Henry whispers, "You're telling me you haven't come out to your mother?"

Todd winces, bites one knuckle for dramatic effect. "Not in so many words."

"She knows. Trust me. Moms know. When you finally sit her down and tell her you've been gay your whole life she'll say, 'I always a.s.sumed so, but you never seemed to want to talk about it.'"

"Here's a confession: I think to myself, Tell her, you coward. You traitor. And then a little voice inside me says, 'She's eighty years old and she has high blood pressure. She's not going to live forever. Why make trouble now?'"

"C'mon. She lives in New York. She must have dozens of friends who have gay children. She might surprise you. She might say, 'Did you think I was so square or such a bigot that you couldn't tell me?' Or-the big one-'that I wouldn't love you anymore?'"

"Then why hasn't she asked me? She's had several decades to say, 'Todd? Is there anything you want to tell me about your s.e.xual orientation? I'll be fine with whatever it is.'"

"Because she's waiting for you to bring it up. She figures if you wanted to talk about it, you'd have done it a long time ago. Trust me. I bet if you told her you were bringing someone home for dinner and I walked in, she'd be very accepting. Possibly even relieved."

"Because that's how it worked out with Williebelle? You just rang the doorbell and said, 'Mom? That marriage, and that wife? It didn't work so great for me, and now I need you to stop giving my telephone number to women you meet in the laundry room and at the bus stop, because I am not attracted to that gender'?"

"Not quite."

"Because, as you claim, all mothers figure it out on their own?"

"No. My brothers figured it out, and one of them, at a Thanksgiving dinner I didn't attend, interrupted her musings about my nice friend Celeste with, 'Cut the c.r.a.p, Mom. Henry's gay.'"

"And you know what my mother would have said to that? 'No, he isn't. Not my Todd. He had girlfriends in high school. And all through college he went steady with Binnie Chamish's daughter.'"

Henry smiles. "We all dated Binnie Chamish's daughter. You still need to say, 'There's an elephant in the room that we've never acknowledged.' And you'll take it from there." Problem on its way to being solved, he asks, "Where does she live?"

"Oh, that," says Todd. "Mortifying revelation number two."

Henry's first thought is, Here it comes, the inevitable deal breaker, the periscope lowered into Todd's as-yet-unrevealed moral abyss-his mother's in a welfare hotel, in a shelter, in a putrid nursing home- "I live with her," Todd says pitifully. "There. Now you know everything."

On balance, the news is a relief: A lawyer knows that good sons don't grow on trees. "Williebelle lived with me for the last two years of her life," Henry reminds him. "And I certainly have no regrets about that."

"Huge difference: You brought her up from Delaware when she was elderly and alone and you gave her a room and made her last years happy and comfortable. Mine cooks and cleans and does my laundry. Then irons it."

"May I ask how large is this apartment that you share?"

"It's big! I was living in a studio in Murray Hill while she was rattling around in a cla.s.sic six on West End Ave., maid's room off the kitchen, closets galore-rent-controlled! A nickel a month, it seemed like. I swallowed my pride and moved back home when my dad died ten, no, eleven years ago."

A goateed man and a woman with ropy red hair to her waist take the table next to them. She is hugely pregnant. Todd interrupts his narrative to smile and say, "Any day now?" Dinner banter ensues-First time here? First baby?-nothing that draws Henry in, but still he watches, recognizing that his life has taken a turn for the gregarious. He waits a polite interval before prompting Todd, "You were telling me about the apartment."

"Excuse us," Todd tells his new friends. "I was just confessing that I lived with my mother. At my age, I have a lot of explaining to do."

"She might as well live with her mother," says the man. "They talk on the phone ten times a day."

"f.u.c.k you," the woman says pleasantly.

"I think that might be our order," Henry says, directing Todd's attention to the counter.

"I see cheese. Those are cheeseburgers. Sit tight. They'll call us."

"The Chirp can be a little slow," says the woman.

"I think Henry here needs to continue our conversation, but best of luck to you," Todd tells her.

"You, too."

Henry murmurs, "Maybe they could move their chairs over, and we could be G.o.dparents to the baby."

"My fault," says Todd. "Sorry. Where were we?"

"Your mother. What's the worst that would happen? She wouldn't love you anymore? She'd kick you out and disown you?"

"She'd still love me."

"But?"

"But I've already disappointed her. I don't have a career she can brag about, or a family, or Little League trophies, or season tickets to anything that would impress her friends. 'What does my only child do? He helps people match table linens to their flatware. Oh, and I just found out-he has a boyfriend. He'll never give me grandchildren, which was the only thing I wanted out of this life.'"

"Are we perhaps exaggerating?" Henry asks. "Are we understudying at the Thalia Krouch School of Dramatic Arts?" He checks his watch. "What time does Mom go to bed?"

"Why?"

"We can get the burgers to go, pick up some flowers on the way, and get it over with."

"As in: 'Mom? This is my special friend, Henry. We're going to listen to music in my room.' That should do it. That was enough to make her deduce that I had girlfriends at Stuyvesant."

"No. You'll say, 'Mom, This is my boyfriend, Henry. I'm dating him. He makes me happy. I hope you can be happy for us, and I hope you won't employ the word f.a.ggy at this juncture, or ever again.'"

"Faygeleh" corrects Todd. He is inhaling and exhaling noisily, drawing the attention of their new acquaintances. "He wants to meet my mother now," Todd explains. "I mean, like drop in unannounced."

"I'm not saying we wouldn't call first," says Henry. "And we can role-play on the way over."

"And you're afraid she won't like this lovely gentleman?" asks the woman.

"It's not him. It's me. She thinks I'm straight."

"No, she doesn't," says the woman.

"We're not married," says her companion. "Try telling that to a mother."

"See?" says Henry.

21. Ma.

FROM THE ELEVATOR they step into a rose-hued hallway. Every few yards, wet paint warnings are taped to moldings.

"Benjamin Moore's Rhubarb," Todd says, then stops, sniffs, evaluates. "I don't think they used the oil-based."

"You're stalling," says Henry.

"You try it! You take a baseball bat and whack a hornet's nest that has been coexisting peaceably under the eaves of your house. See how you like it."

Henry gives Todd's neck a friendly shake. "C'mon. You know you've wanted to have this conversation for decades."

Their destination is 3GG, three doors away. Upon arrival, Todd takes no action except to close his eyes.

"Do we ring the doorbell?" Henry asks.

Todd takes a ring of keys from his pocket and opens the door. Three careful steps into the apartment he calls, "Ma? You up? I'm back."

A little woman, five feet tall and shaped like a Jersey tomato, comes into view. She is wiping her hands on a striped dishtowel and smiling uncertainly. "You must be Henry," she says. She is wearing a quilted bathrobe, mauve and opalescent, which still has its gift-box creases.

"It is, and he made me call," Todd says dolefully. "Lillian Weinreb, Henry Archer."

"I'm the mother," she answers, and takes the hand Henry offers.

"I guess we should sit down," says Todd.

"What can I get you?" asks Lillian.

"Vodka on the rocks," says Todd. "But I'll get it. Henry?"

"Is a cup of tea too much trouble?"

"What a goody-goody," says Todd.

"Put some Congo bars on a plate, hon." Lillian leads Henry into a parlor that appears to be half Todd and half Mom. Its walls are a deep earth brown with stark white trim; the furniture is ice blue sateen. Henry sees Gracious Home in the periwinkle mohair throw and the phalanx of candles on the mantel. An oil painting of a mother, father, and sailor-suited boy hangs above an immaculate white-brick fireplace.

"Your family?" Henry asks, pointing.

"The summer before Todd started school." She motions toward the sofa. Henry sits down, back straight, hands folded in his lap. He notices her slippers, elf wear, toes crescenting upward, embroidered with forget-me-nots. "Toddy! Bring a tray table," she yells.

"You're not his doctor, are you?" she asks Henry.

"Did you say doctor?"

She leans forward. "When your son calls and says he has something important he wants to discuss with you and he's bringing a friend, your imagination can go a little crazy. You think the worst."

Henry offers rea.s.surance at the same time that he is thinking, Maybe Todd does know his mother; maybe her "worst" is a son bringing home a boyfriend.

"Because if Todd felt a lump somewhere, he wouldn't tell me. He'd go to the doctor during his lunch hour, and he'd keep everything to himself until he was in intensive care. That's the kind of thing a mother thinks about when the phone rings after nine o'clock."

"It isn't my place to rea.s.sure you, but-"

Todd enters the room with two mugs, his drink, and a plate of cookies on a tray. "I got you a ginger tea, Ma."

She accepts the mug and asks, "Is it your health?"

"Is what my health?"

"The thing you need to talk to me about."

Todd sits down next to Henry on the sofa and says, "No, it's not my health."

"Are you sure? Because I think you'd hide it from me. You might figure I'd go first so why burden me with bad news."

"Ma, I'm fine. I'm healthy as a horse. My blood pressure is ninety over sixty. My good cholesterol is in the eighties."

Lillian's lower jaw is quivering. "Are you sure?"

"Positive. Call Dr. Gordon."

Henry nods his encouragement.

"Thank G.o.d!" She fans her face and manages a smile. "So now, tell me anything. I won't care. See how health puts everything in perspective?"

Todd says, "Okay. Jumping right in ... First let me say that I can't really explain why it's taken this long-"

"I can tell you why," Lillian says calmly. "You thought I'd be worried day and night because of the AIDS epidemic."

"Jesus," says Todd. "Ma, didn't we skip a major chunk of this conversation?"