(Anna had never considered the correlation, but as they sifted through this part of Anna’s past the parallels were evident and the correspondence clear: I’ve traded sewing hems for sowing hims. Anna grinned on the inside. There was comedy here. Clarity, too. Bias. Pattern. Seam. She could have simply told the Doktor that she was good at word games, and that would have been true, too. But that confession would have wrung out another one: that her wittiest moments were her slyest and most often they served her in the way the ink serves the octopus. Smoke screens, she hid behind them. Dart. Edge. Bolt. These days, needle had become need. A pleat was now a plea. But Anna startled herself as she thought through this. In this case, these weren’t clever comebacks or coincidences. There were the bad, bald facts, and they aligned exactly.)
“Did your mother teach you to sew?” The Doktor’s question snapped Anna back into the room. When Anna didn’t immediately respond, the Doktor asked again. This time, the inquiry forced a dimming memory forward. Anna was young. Six or seven. She could no longer say. The afternoon in question had been as hazy as was her current recollection of it. That afternoon. It had been late enough in the day that when the light cut through the window it hit the room at an angle and the air’s dust and floating motes appeared as playful and lovely as tiny flakes of snow. Anna’s mother was stationed at her sewing machine, a now-obsolete Singer she’d inherited when her own mother died. She was crafting pillows for the sofa from the most beautiful velveteen fabric Anna had ever seen before or since—soft as down, it was the color of burgundy wine still in its cask. Anna, in tandem, sat in all seriousness on the floor at her mother’s feet and busied herself over the body of her teddy bear, fitting soft, purple remnants to its form with safety pins. Later, Anna’s mother took her on her lap and together they stitched those scraps into a tiny skirt, Anna’s hands atop the fabric and her mother’s hands on top of hers guiding both through the motion of the needle’s piston punch. When Anna’s father came home from work he kissed his girls and asked about their day. There was a roast in the oven and the air whirred with the steady, supple buzz of the ancient Singer and an indeterminate tune Anna’s mother was fond of humming. It was a benevolent afternoon. But the fact of that day had long dissipated. In its stead, a metastasized wistfulness that, if she dwelt too long on it, devoured Anna with despair. Of course her mother taught her how to sew. And it made her just as sad as almost anything else. A pleasant husband. A darling daughter. A faithful wife. What a happy home.
“Can you tell me a little more?”
Anna could, but didn’t.
“Anna, have I never asked? Where did you grow up?”
She had asked. Anna had dodged the question. Anna ran her fingers through her hair and tousled it, as if the act would shoo the memories away. “Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters.”
It was one of the few times Anna disagreed with the Doktor openly, to her face and aloud. Most other contentions took the form of lies. “No. It doesn’t.” Where you were is never as relevant as where you are. Anna fully believed this.
TO ANNA’S RELIEF NO one wanted to play games, so the suggestion was forgotten and the party lumbered on. Archie still hadn’t left. Anna wondered if Bruno knew he was there. She had no doubt he remembered his name. Fifteen minutes later everyone crowded into the den and sang “Happy Birthday.” Ursula brought in the cake. Anna was half blush, half fume. Please go home, Archie. Please go home, Karl. Please go home everyone. Anna couldn’t breathe. There were too many people in the room. Archie kept far away from Bruno. This was a mercy. Anna ate half a piece of cake and went outside. She’d been to more parties in the last three weeks than she had the entire year. She was tired of watching people stand around rooms and talk.
David was standing in the driveway smoking his pipe. Anna was disappointed. She’d hoped to be alone for just one minute. The air had turned very chilly very quickly after the sunset and Bruno and his friends hadn’t come back outside once the cake was served. Instead, he’d taken them into the basement for a reason that didn’t hold water (to show them this or that, Anna wasn’t listening closely when he said it). She could hear them, though, and see their silhouettes through the tempered glass of the basement window. Anna knew her husband. His motive was transparent and entirely Swiss: he didn’t want to interact with anyone he didn’t already know. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Anna averted her eyes and looked back to the basement window, flush with the ground, and thought of Doktor Messerli and labyrinths and mazes, the symbolism of the mumblings of subterranean shadows. David shrugged gently as if to say This is your house, I am your guest, there is no interruption here. Anna shrugged back at him and sat on the porch steps. She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t have anything to say.
David smoked and paced and whistled an ominous tune in a minor key that Anna had heard before but couldn’t place. When he began to speak, it was apropos of nothing and directed at no one. “The French, we are expert at many things. Food and philosophy. Wine. Desire.” David winked and Anna smiled thinly. “But the best lovers are so often the worst liars, Anna. It’s a universal law.” David offered a single sagacious nod and said nothing further.