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.