ANNA EYED HER HUSBAND. Bruno seemed to have let his jealousy go. The past two weeks had been spent without incident. They were getting along. They’d gone to market together, worked in the yard together, gone out to dinner as a family, and even went to a movie they’d both wanted to see. No further mention of Archie was made. But the merry, expansive man who showed himself at the Gilberts’ had been replaced by the sullen, disgruntled husband who Anna knew too well.
And why shouldn’t he be disgruntled? Anna upbraided herself. Just because he doesn’t know what I’m doing doesn’t mean I’m not doing it. During the last two weeks Anna tried to step back, to stand apart from herself, to evaluate her most recent choices and to weigh their benefits against their costs. It had been a close call. Who’s Archie? Bruno asked. A no one, Anna replied. And he was. She barely knew the man. Is this the hill I want to die on? she asked herself. No? Then don’t die on it, woman.
But was the call really that close? Were the incident drawn on a map, Bruno’s moment of suspicion would have been no nearer to the fact of the matter than a suburb is to city center. When Anna thought about it that way, the damage seemed minimal, all the way around.
Like that, Anna bounced between consequence and choice.
And in the end, the ball landed on the side of no harm, no foul. I am a good wife, mostly, she self-proclaimed. Everyone’s safe, everyone’s fed.
Anna kept seeing Archie.
“When you were a girl, what did you want to be when you grew up?” Doktor Messerli once asked.
Anna gave a plaintive answer. “Loved. Protected. Secure.” She knew that wasn’t what the Doktor meant.
The Doktor tried another approach. “What did you study at university?” Anna flushed. She didn’t want to say. “Tell me.”
“Home economics,” Anna whispered.
IT HAD HAPPENED ALMOST two years earlier. It was four days before Christmas. A Wednesday. Anna had taken the train into the city. A reluctant voyage, it was a next-to-next-to-last shopping trip, a chore in which she was only marginally invested.
The weeks that immediately precede Weihnachten in Zürich are entirely tolerable. The streets teem with shoppers whose smart, bright coats appear even smarter and brighter against the drab gray landscape of Zürich’s usually snowless Decembers. From sooty roasting drums, dark-skinned men scoop hot chestnuts into thin paper sacks. A seasonal candle-making tent stands near the Bürkliplatz Quaibrücke. And for a time, if you found yourself on the Bahnhofstrasse after sundown there was the delectation of strolling beneath the shine of champagne-colored twinkle lights and a one-kilometer stretch of seven-foot-long tubular bulbs. They pended from cables stretched taut between buildings and above the catenaries supplying power to the city’s electric trams and were controlled by software that varied the scintillation according to levels of human activity in the street underneath. The array was modern—too modern, in fact. Enough people hated them that the city eventually returned to a more traditional display. But Anna’s boys loved it. Even Victor, who was easily bored and for his age notably jaded, allowed himself the indulgence of childlike captivation, wonder, awe.
Anna had spent the day traversing Zürich’s entire downtown from west to east on foot, and the trimmings of the holiday season—lovely as they were in smaller doses—began to feel excessive, unnecessary. Still, she shopped. At Piz Buch und Berg she found Bruno’s Christmas gift, several close-scale hiking maps of cantons Graubünden and St. Gallen and a guidebook of suggested treks through the Swiss Jura. At the Manor on Bahnhofstrasse Anna fought aggressive crowds to pick out a modest twin sweater set that she thought might make a nice, thought-that-counts kind of gift for Edith.
Chagrin had begun the day. Bruno had put her in a mood that morning for a reason she’d managed to forget. But the feeling, whatever it was, gnawed on her like teeth. She hashed and simmered, an all-day stew on the stove. She was lonely and remote. Anna was lonely and remote everywhere she went.
“A LONELY WOMAN IS a dangerous woman.” Doktor Messerli spoke with grave sincerity. “A lonely woman is a bored woman. Bored women act on impulse.”
ANNA TURNED HER GAZE from Bruno to the window. Kanton Aargau was made fuzzy by the handprints on the glass and the speed of the train. Victor and Charles squabbled over an action figure Anna had carelessly forgotten to make sure they brought two of. Bruno threatened to take it away if they couldn’t settle their disagreement. Ursula fell asleep halfway to Mumpf. Her thin, wheezy snore was barely audible over the train’s natural noise. The boys laughed; Anna shushed them. Bruno rolled his eyes and said, “She sleeps too much, my mother.” Bruno was a devoted son, but he was critical on occasion, not just of Anna, but of all the women in his life, Ursula and Daniela included (though Anna most of all).