“WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN a delusion and a hallucination?”
Doktor Messerli made a noise that relayed her frustration. And that’s what it sounded like, the click of a relay switch closing a circuit. “Hallucinations are sensory. A person sees or hears or smells things that do not exist apart from his own experience. A delusion, per contra, is a false belief. A conviction that someone adamantly holds despite strong evidence to the contrary.” Anna gave herself the rundown. She’d never heard the voice of God or smelled a vase of ghost roses. “A hypochondriac will convince himself he’s dying though every test proves he’s perfectly healthy. Someone else will swear that the government pursues him. Another person might be steadfast in his belief that the object of his most zealous love returns his deep affection even though she does not.”
“I see.” This hit a little nearer to the nail.
“Are you having hallucinations, Anna?”
“No.”
This time, it was the Doktor who answered with I see.
THE SUN SHONE LIKE a song. The boat skated over silver, glinting water. Anna wore layers but there was a wind and despite the sunshine, she was cold enough to shiver. Bruno saw this and drew her close into him. This was the Bruno she had fallen into a version of love with. Being with the Gilberts brought this out in him. A wonderful, comfortable ease that they could never seem to find when they were alone. Anna was glad in a way she had forgotten how to be. Happiness moved through her body from her head to her mouth to her throat to her chest, down through her belly to the deadbolt room of her pelvis, where she tended to file her grievances with the world.
Anna took the day for what it was: a gift. A present. In the present. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so glad. On the boat, no one sulked. Alexis set her book to the side when Victor gave her a turn on his game. Both were being kind to their younger brothers. Charles and Max darted around the boat pretending they were pirates. The children drank sodas and the grown-ups had beer and everyone snacked on bags of paprika-flavored potato chips. Bruno stole one kiss, then another. Anna let him. She let him again. Everyone laughed and smiled. Everyone enjoyed the lake. It is unfair of me to feel so happy. I do not deserve this. This is a mercy I don’t merit. Anna had a flash of understanding. This is what they mean when they talk about grace. She thanked aloud the god she wasn’t sure she believed in. Anna caught Mary checking her watch four times in the span of thirty minutes. The boat ride lasts two hours, Anna said and Mary replied, Oh.
At every Schiffstation, a few people boarded and a few others disembarked. The Benzes and the Gilberts made a game of guessing who they were. They decided the young, tall man with the shaved head and his female companion with the black-blue hair were on their fifth date and that an older couple on the ship’s port side were British tourists celebrating a fortieth anniversary, and that the thirtysomething woman smoking a cigarette near the prow nursed a broken heart with solitude and sea spray. Or at least that was the conclusion Anna came to.
At the end of the boat trip, their faces sunburned and stung by lake wind, the families took the tram from Bürkliplatz to the Hauptbahnhof and rode the train back to the Dietlikon station, all eight of them. It was near six and growing dark. There was cake and champagne waiting at the house.
Anna couldn’t believe how enjoyable, how perfectly pleasant the day had been. She hadn’t expected it to be. She had forgotten that was possible, if ever she had really known.
She was still engaged in the experience of the day’s supple joy when they came up the hill on Hintergasse past the town square and rounded the corner to Rosenweg. On their right, the church parking lot was filled with cars. If Anna noticed this—which she didn’t—she would have assumed that the church was holding evening services. They passed the little playground, walked toward the house, mounted the steps, and opened the door.
The house was dark. Bruno threw the light switch and, after a half-second pause, almost two dozen people yelled the word “Surprise!”
Christ, Anna thought. They threw me a fucking party.
The architect of this surprise was obvious. Before she could take stock of the guests, before Anna could rightly register the faces of the people who had come into the house without her personal invitation, Mary leapt into Anna’s line of vision. She jumped around and clapped in the manner of a jack springing from his box when the handle’s been cranked.
“Are you surprised? Are you? Did you guess? Look how surprised you are!”