Souvenir

I can hear Dove's purr even before I see him. He pokes his head around the door and rumbles in, slipping his head beneath my hand, vibrating with pleasure. His coat is shiny, sleek black, and he has a white crest on his chest. I've found it true what they say about black cats--they are the most loving. And I've found it true what they say about boy cats--they can wrap their female owners around their little finger.

So we sit on the smooth wooden floor, worn down by years of my comings and goings, my hiding and playing, as I read him a story about a wizard who sails on a silken kite to conquer the moon.

The check's graphic showed a laden stagecoach, two cowboys, arcing reins in mid-air and six cantoring horses. My name on the "Pay to the Order of" line: "Twenty Thousand and 00/100 Dollars."

"I sold the chess set," my brother, Bobby, said when I looked up. "To Mr. Morris."

"Was it legal?" I asked. The chessmen were carved ivory, and I knew the laws governing the sale of Asian elephant ivory: You could sell it within your state only if you could prove it was lawfully imported before 1975. My Dad's friend, Zoltan Cernan, had purchased the set and given it to Dad when they visited Hong Kong together in the early '60s. Our family always thought it so like Mr. Cernan--incredibly generous and kind.

Later that day, I called Mr. Cernan's son, Jeffrey, to tell him about the set and why we had to sell it. I needed to tell him what a special gift it was. After a beat, Jeffrey laughed and said, "We had the same set and my father told us it was a gift from your Dad!" Apparently, shopping in Hong Kong, each had fallen in love with the set and its chessmen, the white pieces depicting courtiers and the black depicting warriors. So, each bought a set and, to avoid any spousal repercussions for indulging in such willful extravagance, concocted a tall tale crediting the other for the "gift." They probably never imagined their little ruse would've eventually been found out. And if Bobby hadn't sold it, and if I hadn't called Jeffrey, their strategem would've stayed their joyful little secret forever.

"I found photos of us in the den playing with the set when we were little," Bobby had said. "They were good enough proof to establish the pieces were already here in the early '60s. And Mr. Morris won't be taking it out of state." He nodded at the check in my hand. "That's your share."

I hadn't wanted to sell the set--I don't like parting with anything of our parents'--but I had given Bobby my tacit OK. We needed the money to pay for all the expenses--settling debts, fixing up the house to get it sold, all the rest of the expenses you never imagine you might have to think about one day.

"Have you found the other thing yet?" I asked.

"No. Have you looked in your apartment?"

Of course I had. It was the only thing I wanted. It had no monetary value, nothing like an antique ivory chess set, but I would've given up that check in a finger's-snap to have it back. And every time I came back to the house to help clean and organize, I kept looking for it.

I'd go to sleep thinking about it, hoping its whereabouts would appear in my dreams. I'd talk to friends about it, hoping a suggestion might trigger a memory about the last place I'd seen it. Then I read an article in the Times about psychologists who use hypnosis to help patients retrieve memories. At this point, I was frantic for help and thought, "What've I got to lose?"

So I made the appointment. (My friend, Ira, offered to come with me and sit in the waiting room, just to make sure nothing "untoward," as he put it, happened while I was under.) But I went alone (I wanted to trust the guy), and I thought if I did feel uncomfortable, I could always leave (provided, of course, that the doctor hadn't already planted in my subconscious any suggestion to cluck like a chicken--or worse--at the sound of a bell).

I walked into his office on the Upper East Side and sunk into an easy chair with soft, nubby cloth upholstery. He asked me to close my eyes and relax my toes, my ankles, calves--everything up to my eyebrows. He asked me to imagine my ear lobes softening. He asked me to imagine holding it, then slowly opening it. I could read the handwriting as surely as if I'd been holding it in my hands:

"We took the metro to the Left Bank and wandered into L'Hotel Guy-Louis Duboucheron, down the block from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Le Bar looked so inviting and so cool--we've picked the hottest summer in a century to come to France! Benny ordered a Beefeater Gibson and I had a Brandy Alexander. Thierry, the barman, told us Oscar Wilde died in one of the rooms upstairs. According to Thierry, his last words were, 'Either this wallpaper goes or I do.'"

The psychologist asked me where I was.

"I'm in a small, pink room." The walls of my old bedroom were once pink! (I repainted them to something a bit more psychedelic as a teenager.) And I was sitting in that small, pink room, holding the small, black notebook, the one Dad gave Mom on the plane as they took off on their honeymoon: A beautiful young bride, dark hair and skin, eyes that seemed to change from light green to pale blue and back again, and her handsome, devilish groom who, years later, would spin a tale about a dear chess set.

And Mom wrote all her impressions of being a bride in the most romantic of all cities in that little notebook. Falling into the pleasures of flanerie, lunching at Le Petit Zinc, watching American girls hawk the International Herald Tribune to earn a few francs for their adventures. I'd used it as a private guidebook to the elegant and offbeat during my own year in France--retracing her steps, rediscovering her favorite walks and shops and bars. Experiencing her emotions through my eyes.

I was so elated, I asked the doctor if I could hug him. I bounded back to my apartment, packed up Dove and took a car service to the house. Once home, I let Dove loose downstairs and sprinted up the stairs to my bedroom. I had searched my room dozens of times before, but now I knew the little book was here. I opened my bureau drawers, rummaged through my desk, pulled books off the shelves, got down on my hands and knees and peered under the bed.

Then. Nothing.

I just sat on the floor and felt all my energy seep away. I couldn't understand why nothing had changed--Mom's little black notebook still wasn't here. But I had seen it, right here, in a small, pink room.

I looked around the room and stopped at my closet door. My bedroom wasn't the only pink room in the house--the inside of my closet had been painted pink once, too.

A small, pink room.

I opened the closet and noticed a red windbreaker hanging from the bottom rod. The same one I used to wear spring skiing.

The windbreaker; I sometimes hide valuables in the pockets of jackets. What burglar would think to look there?

I pushed aside the hangers, pulled the windbreaker from the rod and unzipped the kangaroo pouch.

This moment was one I had imagined so many, many times--screaming with happiness, yelling to Bobby, "I found it!" But that moment would wait.

I pulled out the notebook and sat down on the closet's smooth wooden floor. I slowly opened it to a page I'd read countless times before. And I read it to Dove (who can't read cursive):

"There's a small toy store on the Boulevard St. Michel and we fell in love with a silken kite in the window. It shows a wizard climbing a ladder to the face of the moon (and the face looks aghast at this unbidden guest!). It's quite beautiful and way too expensive, but Benny and I couldn't resist. It's hand-painted in French, 'We will be going to conquer the moon.'"