Hausfrau (35 page)

It was a simple, sincere analogy built for a child. A kind truth spoken kindly, a kind man who spoke it. The tears she’d waited on all day finally welled in her eyes.

But as much as she longed to believe what the priest had said, she couldn’t. Accidents that are fated to happen simply will. She’d wanted him to convince her otherwise. He’d come the closest of anyone.

The priest looked at her with sympathy. “Now,” he continued, “can you tell me about the bruises?” Anna sniffed but didn’t respond. He cleared his throat as he opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a file. He thumbed through the pages as he spoke. “I want to help you. But,” he continued as he pulled a sheet of paper from the file, “I’m not sure that issues of doctrinal theology are among your most pressing concerns at the moment.” His paternal voice was so soothing that it shattered her. “Perhaps it might be wisest if you consulted a professional.” He passed the paper to Anna. It was a list of local English-speaking psychiatrists. Doktor Messerli’s name was the fourth from the top. “Or, if you’d rather, I can call for you …”

Anna shook her head though without great conviction.
No, no, no.

The priest was waiting on Anna to continue when a knock on the doorjamb caused both of them to turn and look. It was a tall, gaunt man with wide-set eyes. He looked over Anna’s head without acknowledging her presence and began complaining to the priest about church music, organ repair,
the choirmaster, the choir, and, in the end, the priest himself who hadn’t answered an email of compelling urgency quickly enough. The man spoke impatiently; his voice was haughty and imperative.

The priest scowled at the man, who Anna assumed was the organist, who was tapping his foot and pulling a face of his own. The priest returned his gaze to Anna with continued sympathy. “I’m so sorry. Please. I’ll only be a moment. Would you like some tea? I will bring you some tea.” Anna blinked and the priest rose and left his office. She could hear him grousing at the organist as they walked down the hall, the click of their shoes on the floor growing less audible the farther away they walked.

Anna waited until she couldn’t hear them anymore and then rose from the chair and left the office and slipped out of the church with the same sad ease she so often slipped out of her clothes.

So there it is.
And there, just there, it was.

She walked back the way she came, past the high school, through the slim lip of city park above Stadelhofen, over the walkway, and down the swooping, skeletal staircase into the plaza in front of the train station, moving south toward the opera house and the lake.

She didn’t even think twice once the idea occurred to her.

It was a number she’d never called.
What time was it?
It was just past three in Zürich. In Boston it was nine in the morning. She sat on the steps of the opera house. The phone rang twice before he answered.

“Stephen Nicodemus.”

She hadn’t rehearsed what she was going to say. There’d been no forethought to this call. It happened so quickly it was
compulsive. She cleared her throat and pressed forward. “Stephen.”

“Yes?”

“It’s Anna.”

“Anna?” She’d surprised him, that was clear. “Anna!” He repeated her name with brightness. Anna’s heart lightened. “How are you?” His emphasis was on the “you.”

“I’m …” She wasn’t going to tell him how she was. She spoke through an imaginary smile. “I’m okay.” There was relative truth in that.
Now or never, Anna. Say what you came to say.
“I’ve been thinking about you. I wanted to call and say hello. You know?” If he did, he didn’t say so. “I miss you.”

The dominos started to fall.

There was a crackle in the wireless connection. He was four thousand miles away and yet they were once again in the same room. The delay was empirical.

“I know. It was good.” His voice was flat but earnest. Not cold, but matter-of-fact.
Good
was one of the last things Anna would have called it. Awful? Intense? Vexatious? Igneous? Lamentable? Productive? They had, after all, produced a child, though Stephen had no way of knowing that. But
good?
What was good about it?

“Yeah.” Anna couldn’t mask the letdown. She kept her words close. Their last conversation had been nothing but a chain of histrionics. The wind forced a hank of hair from its barrette as it had been doing all day. It flapped around her face.

Stephen sniffed. “Anna. I cared about you, you know that.” He paused, not knowing what next to say. “You understand?” It was a question Anna heard as an imperative:
You. Understand.

“Oh.” Anna’s mouth had been an open vowel all day long.

The conversation shifted. Anna willed it so. It was the quickest way out of the burning building, the least embarrassing, the one whereby she’d save the most face. She asked about his experiments, his work, what he was doing with himself. Stephen let it shift. He told her about his research. He also told her he’d gotten married and his wife was pregnant with a baby girl. It wasn’t a cruel statement. Stephen didn’t intend it to be and Anna didn’t understand it as such. Still, a door closed.

It wasn’t me. It was never me. It will never be me.

It hit her like a sledgehammer. The myth upon which the last two years were built. She was mistaken. As if she took the wrong bus. Or picked up someone else’s drink at a party.

So there it was. It was there.

Stephen returned the questions. Anna said nothing but
Fine, fine, we’re all very fine.
She wasn’t going to tell him about Charles. What good would that do? She absolutely wasn’t going to tell him about Polly Jean. Still, she spoke slowly in the way that she did on that first day and tried to draw the conversation out as far as it would stretch. She could hear him nodding and checking his watch over the phone. Even he knew he hadn’t told her what she wanted to hear. “Anna, I need to go. I’m late for a class.”

Okay, Stephen.
It was an entirely deferential statement.

“But it’s good to hear from you. I’m really pleased you called.” And that was that.

That’s that. She’d been wrong. A mistake that masqueraded as love. A self-deceit now almost two years old. It could walk and speak in full sentences.
Mine!
it hollered. It never learned to share. Anna had called Stephen. And now she knew.
He was polite, upbeat, and genuinely glad to hear from her. But he was as removed from their affair as the Atlantic Ocean is vast and two years are long. They were good for a season. But seasons change.

And now I know.

She rose from the steps and smoothed her skirt and looked around before deciding where next to go. She walked through Bellevueplatz, where in summer, the city of Zürich erected a Ferris wheel and where, during the World Cup, the city would install enormous screens and bleachers so that everyone could come together and cheer on the Swiss team.
Hopp Schwyz!
was the cheer.
Go Switzerland!
Anna walked to the middle of Quaibrücke, the bridge that spanned the Limmat from Bellevueplatz to Bürkliplatz. When she reached the middle of the bridge she turned south to face the Alps. She watched them for a minute, as if they might move.
Mountains, you mean nothing to me,
Anna thought, though she knew that wasn’t true. They did mean something to her. But it wasn’t anything good.
The Alps are the door I’m locked behind.
How tired she was of feeling like a prisoner. A swan paddled in circles in the water below her. His feathers were gray and matted and he was honking and snarling at his own wave-warped reflection.
Even the ugliest swan is still more beautiful than the loveliest crow on the fence,
Anna thought. And then she thought:
It is time to get off the fence.
And then with a lack of consequential concern, she took her cell phone from her pocket and tossed it in the cold, drab water. It was an impulsive act and the exact right thing to do. Anna felt lighter than she had in months. She clapped her hands back and forth in the manner of washing them clean and said to herself,
Well, that’s done.

A hook released from its eye. A door opened. An eerie, luminal shaft of light brightened the exact spot where Anna stood.

It was time to go.

“A
VERB
’
S MOST BASIC
form is its infinitive,” Roland said. “It isn’t finite. Its possibilities are not yet exploited. Someone, give an example of an infinitive verb …”

“Leben,”
Nancy said.
To live.

“Versuchen,”
Mary said.
To try.

“Küssen,”
Archie said.
To kiss.

Every verb had a hundred likelihoods. Others were shouted out.
Fragen.
To ask.
Nehmen.
To take.
Lügen.
To lie.
Laufen.
To run.
Sein.
To be.

“Anna?” Roland looked to Anna for a word. She held a dozen in her mouth but settled on one.
Lieben.
The infinitive form of love.

For,
Anna thought,
if love is not infinite or eternal? Then I want nothing of it.

A
NNA WALKED AT A
casual, intentional pace.
It’s time to think about the future,
she thought.
It is time to think about thinking about the future.
Anna entered the Hauptbahnhof at the concourse. On Wednesdays it became the site of an enormous farmers’ market. Over fifty vendors set up stalls. Local growers, wineries, artisan cheesemakers, sausage sellers, crêpe makers, bakers—the list of merchants was long and varied. Anna tried to go every week. She bought organic olive oil and summer
sausage made from highland cattle and as a usual treat she’d buy a cone of candied almonds or a
Schoggibanane.
At Christmastime, the hall was packed even more tightly with booths and stalls of seasonal foods and crafts all crushed around an enormous Christmas tree. That day the hall was empty and the stalls were gone. Everything echoed. A wind blew through. It made her cold.

And yet Anna lingered in the open emptiness comforted by the clipped, hollow complaint of her footfalls on the floor of the great, vacant room as she crossed it. She paused beneath the station’s guardian angel, that strange one-ton sculpture made from god knows what that pended from the ceiling beams.
Christ, she’s ugly,
Anna thought. It was installed ten years ago. Anna and the angel had lived in Switzerland for almost the same amount of time. She was pinheaded and faceless and clothed in a painted-on pushup bra and minidress. Her wings had holes in them. Her patterns were mismatched. And she was fat. Anna had read that the artist intended the angel’s lusty, robust form to evoke an equally full-bodied femininity, an attitude native to women who don’t give damns what others think. Modern art for modern women. Little wonder Anna couldn’t stand her. Nor did she care for the installation on the other side of the room: twenty-five thousand tiny lights arranged in a tight, three-dimensional square and hanging from the ceiling. They pulsed in shifting patterns of color, design, and depth. The tiny lights dimmed, then beamed, then stalled, then strobed. The effect was hypnotic and omniscient. The way light sometimes was.

As in the night before. How the kitchen had never seemed starker underneath the overhead fluorescent bulbs. No room
had ever been so bright as that, Anna decided. Nothing stayed in shadow. It was awful. The Doktor had warned this was the most usual side effect of coming into consciousness, and the Doktor had been right.

Anna watched the luminous box above her. It pinkened. It yellowed. It blanched.
Oh, Anna. A single lifetime and yet so many lies.
The lights turned blue.
I wonder which one’s the worst?
Anna had never asked herself. But the answer was easy.

I’ve never been nearly as alone as I always say I am.

The truth was, there were people Anna could call. People she might reach out to. Her cousin Cindy, for example. As children they’d been as inseparable as sisters. Anna might have swapped her number for Stephen’s in her Handy’s contact list, but she didn’t throw it away. It was at the house somewhere. She could find it. Nevertheless, Anna hadn’t phoned her in years. And there was an aunt on the other side of the family with whom Anna had kept in moderate touch. Two years ago she passed through Zürich on a European tour and spent a weekend with the Benzes. Anna had almost forgotten that.
How did I almost forget that?
And the girls from the old neighborhood. They’d not spoken in almost two decades, but they grew up with one another and their families had been friends. An unexpected phone call to one of them would barely merit a blink. Even perhaps Anna’s favorite teacher, the high school librarian who one day found Anna hiding in the stacks, Anna’s rotten inner dejection attempting to consume her. She blotted Anna’s tears and bought her a soda and said (Anna remembered this perfectly),
Honey, you don’t ever need to feel as terrible as this,
which, in that moment, was enough. Anna had kept in touch with her through college. She came to Anna’s
parents’ funeral. She attended Anna’s wedding. It had been over a decade but she could call her, couldn’t she? Of course she could. Anna could call any of these women.

But Anna’s phone was at the bottom of the lake. Calling, in any case, is hardly the same as confiding in. In most ways it was easier for Anna to bear her own burden than to share it. The effort she’d need to explain it was greater than the weight of the woe she’d be confessing, she told herself. Walling herself off circumvented the risk of real closeness between two people and the eventual, unavoidable loss that always accompanies love. Liberating herself from the concern of others served a sinister purpose as well. There were fewer people to whom Anna was accountable. It’s the easiest way to lie and not get caught: make yourself matter to no one.

The lights pulsed pink again, then white, whiter, whitest. Anna really was alone. She’d orchestrated it herself. But the lie of all lies was that her solitude had been inevitable. Obligatory. Foreordained. All other falsehoods were just arms of that same starfish.