The children behaved well, though Victor momentarily reverted to pouting; he hadn’t wanted to play with a girl. He hadn’t wanted to come at all. Anna frowned at him and Victor took his usual sulky defense and muttered something about having a mean mother and ordered her to stop looking at him.
“Victor.” Bruno’s voice carried a warning in it and Victor responded with a near inaudible Yessir or Jo, Anna couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter. Bruno was agreeable enough that night to defend her. She was gratified. Max and Charles laughed at a series of in-jokes and distractions, behaving like the best of friends. Alexis sat and ate. She wore a blankly compliant expression. Biddable but frigid. Not exactly passive, but not exactly not. Anna recognized the expression and felt a pulse of compassion. I know this girl, Anna thought. I’ve been her.
“THE FACE ONE WEARS as an adult is a mask that’s cut to fit in her youth.”
There are many kinds of masks, Anna thought. Theater masks and Halloween masks and surgical masks and fencing masks and diving masks and wrestling masks and ski masks. Welding visors and face cages, blindfolds and dominos. And death masks.
The Doktor continued. “Every mask becomes a death mask when you can no longer put it on or take it off at will. When it conforms to the contours of your psychic face. When you mistake the persona you project for your living soul. When you can no more distinguish between the two.”
THE S3 JERKED SHARPLY as Bahnhof Dietlikon came into view. It was the architecture of the track and it happened every time the train from Stettbach pulled in. It didn’t matter how often it occurred; it always startled Anna. Anna was in a window seat, resting her head against the glass when the train made its usual sudden move. She bumped her forehead, gave a yelp. A teenage boy sitting across from her sniggered. He had a mean, rude face. They locked eyes for an uncomfortable three or four seconds before his Handy rang and he broke the gaze. He answered it, got up, and moved to a different bank of seats. Of all the events in the last hour, it was this that embarrassed Anna most.
Anna stayed on the train. When she left Archie’s apartment she’d been gripped by an indulgent desire to do something she’d always wanted to do but never took the time for: to ride the full length of a line, both ways. In this case, to Wetzikon, the S3’s eastern terminus, then back the way she came to Aarau, the city at its western end, before returning to Dietlikon. The trip would devour the afternoon. I don’t know why. I just want to. Does it matter? Anna sassed herself. She phoned Ursula from Stadelhofen, apologized, and told her she’d forgotten that she’d scheduled an extra analysis that afternoon and promised she’d make it up to her any way she could. It wasn’t entirely a lie; Doktor Messerli said it once, twenty, a hundred times: Analysis happens whether the analyst is present or not. The dinner with the Gilberts wasn’t until that evening. Anna had time.
The sex had left her agitated. No, Anna thought, vulnerable. No woman watches herself bleed without being reminded that there’s little but skin and a collection of thin vascular membranes holding her together. And the bright, basic daylight made the blood all the more startling. It hadn’t embarrassed her. It had exposed her. Archie’s precoital prattle hadn’t helped. It unsettled her, how easily she buckled under his insistence, his commandeering whisper. But vulnerability’s a magnet that always attracts assault. Some weaknesses beg to be seized.
Anna spent the train ride caught in alternating cycles of self-seeking, self-seething, and silence. The metaphor wasn’t lost on her. Passenger. Passive. I am not the engineer of my life. On track or off. It’s what I’m trained in. Anna could not help but smile at these very apt puns.
In their most recent analysis Doktor Messerli pressed Anna to consider the source of her passivity. What did Anna think lay at the root of the problem? Did Anna know? Had she ever thought about it? Anna had tried to lie. Of course I’ve thought about it. But she hadn’t. Not really. It was just something she knew about herself. That was it. What more was there? The Doktor called her out, told her no, she hadn’t thought about it, neither deeply nor superficially. For, if she had she’d see what the Doctor saw.
“Passivity isn’t the malady. It’s the symptom. Complicity is but one of your many well-honed skills. When it pleases you, you are quite practiced at defiance.” Anna took the statement as an affront and, as if to diffuse the truth of the Doktor’s conclusion, accepted it without rebuttal. Childish, she knew, but gratifying in the moment. By the time Anna’s train reached Wetzikon she realized that was exactly the kind of manipulating Doktor Messerli was accusing her of. It wasn’t passivity at all. It was an iridescent scheming, a mannequin made up to resemble a timid, yielding woman. “Where did this come from, Anna? What might have caused this?” Anna said that she was afraid she didn’t know.
“That’s exactly right. You are afraid,” the Doktor said, and then she said no more.
IT WAS AN ALTOGETHER enjoyable evening at Tim and Mary Gilbert’s house in Uster.