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.
The giant arrival board thwapped through a series of numbers as it updated itself. Anna looked at a station clock. In fifteen minutes she could catch a train to Dietlikon. Anna wasn’t ready for that. She cut through the station to the other side.
Ten minutes after that, she crossed yet another of Zürich’s seemingly endless supply of bridges and bore north. All these goddamn bridges. The Doktor would say they symbolized transition, a journey from one state of being into another.
Well, there it is, she said once more to herself. What a funny thing to have believed in, love.
But it wasn’t love. It was a version of love. They are all versions of love. Ten minutes later she was at Nürenbergstrasse. She didn’t even toss Stephen’s house a single glance. She was cured of that.
The last of the letters that Anna wrote but didn’t send to Stephen had been short: If it didn’t mean everything, it meant nothing. If I didn’t matter the most, I mattered the least. She’d hoped it wasn’t true when she wrote it. But now she knew it was. Still, she was glad she’d called, glad he’d answered. And glad that now she understood. Yes, Anna thought. I understand. Heart’s a muscle, not a bone. It doesn’t really break. But muscles can tear. She missed Charles with a desperation that had no name and would for as long as she lived. The rest of my life. And she regretted the fact of her misshapen marriage. All for what? Anna shrugged inside herself. Somehow it didn’t matter. In the space of a day and in the shadow of the shell of the pretense of love Anna had reconciled herself to herself: What’s been done cannot be undone. There was peace in that.
It was near four thirty. It had taken her an hour and a half to cross the city. She’d reach Wipkingen at about the same time as the train going toward Dietlikon.
Anna and Bruno’s first fight on Swiss soil had occurred on that platform. It was a week after the move and Anna hadn’t learned the trains. Bruno had asked her to meet him at Wipkingen station, but she missed the train they’d agreed she’d take. She took the next, but when she arrived Bruno was gone. She didn’t have a phone. She didn’t know how to get back home. So she did the only thing that could be done. She sat on a bench and wept.
When Bruno arrived an hour later—he’d gone back to Dietlikon when she hadn’t shown up and returned to Wipkingen when he didn’t find her there—he was furious. She tried to explain but he huffed and grunted and grabbed her by the arm and told her they were late—for what she could no longer remember—and led her out of the station wordlessly. How angry he was that day. How angry he was last night.
A heart doesn’t subdivide unless it has to, she’d said glibly to Doktor Messerli once. The Doktor had no response.
What a day. Anna felt a present calm. As she neared the station she wondered how Bruno would explain her absence to Victor. He’ll tell him I’m on a trip, and then they’ll go for pizza. That was the most likely scenario. She began to miss Victor as dreadfully as she missed Charles. So many times she couldn’t help but love him less. And now, finally, it shamed her. Shame’s the shadow of love, she thought. And then she thought of Polly Jean and wondered if Stephen’s other daughter would resemble her. She hadn’t told him. She never would. Polly Jean would never know she had a sister.
It had been a day of revelations. Of missed connections. Of hurt feelings. Delusions. Despairs. Bad behaviors. Had she done anything that couldn’t be taken back? Oh yes. Yes, yes, yes.
She thought about Switzerland. Where a smile will give you away as an American. Where what isn’t taboo is de rigueur. Cold, efficient Switzerland. Where the women are comely and the men are well groomed and everyone wears a determined face. Switzerland. The roof of Europe. Glacier carved. Most beautiful where it is most uninhabitable. Switzerland with its twenty-six shipshape cantons. Industrious Switzerland. Novartis. Rolex. Nestlé. Swatch. So often was Zürich ranked as one of the world’s best cities. She thought about that, then conceded that if she hadn’t been so sad the last nine years she might have seen it. She wished upon Victor an attentive Swiss wife. She wished her daughter the freedom to leave, if she ever wanted to.