ANNA, ON FOUR OCCASIONS since his departure, had taken the S8 to Wipkingen, disembarked, and walked to Stephen’s apartment on Nürenbergstrasse as if nothing had changed. The first time she did this was the day after he left. She went to the door and rang the bell and when no one answered she pretended it was because he was at the market or the laboratory. Other times, she’d stand in front of the building and feign a phone call or check her watch as if she’d told someone to meet her there. Anything to lend legitimacy to her lingering. She would walk slowly around the block. She would close her eyes and imagine that it was a month ago, eight months, a year. Yesterday. The last time she’d done this, Polly Jean was seven months old. What had provoked the trip? Anna could barely recall. The house was noisy. Bruno was cold. Ursula had scolded me for something I’d done. I wanted to return to the scene of the crime. I wanted to return. She left her sons with their grandmother and took Polly Jean into the city and rolled her stroller past Stephen’s apartment. And here is where we invented you, Polly Jean. It was an indulgence she allowed herself, this reveling in her stagnant, inalterable past.
LUNCH WITH MARY WAS pleasant, affable. Their conversation was casual but that was all right because Anna didn’t have the heart for anything profound. Mary spoke of Rapperswil, of Anna’s party, of that day’s German class, of how pretty Anna’s ring was. They ate Gschn?tzlets mit R?sti, a traditional Zürich dish of minced veal and hash browns. Mary had never had it before. Anna had eaten it a hundred times if once. To her it was ordinary, regular, same.
When dessert came Mary gave Anna a birthday gift. “Oh Mary, you really shouldn’t have,” Anna said. Mary’s generosity sometimes exasperated her. She never knew how to respond.
Mary replied, “We’re friends. Practically sisters. Of course I should have.” Anna opened the small, shiny box tied with an apple-red grosgrain ribbon. Inside were a dozen antique handkerchiefs embroidered with Anna’s initials. Mary had done the needlework. The handkerchief on top was baby blue. Anna traced the A with her thumb and the B with her forefinger. She sighed so deeply it sounded like a sob.
“Are you okay, Anna?”
Anna brought the handkerchief to her nose. It smelled like lavender. She closed her eyes and nodded, then sighed again. “You know, I used to do this stuff.”
“Really? You sew?” This admission amused Mary. As if Anna were teasing her, or playing a joke. “It seems like such an un-Anna thing to do.”
Anna opened her eyes. She could understand how it would seem that way. “No, it’s true. I sew. I mean, I know how to sew. I don’t do it anymore.”
Mary’s grin was self-satisfied without being smug. When Anna called it to her attention, the grin became an outright smile.
“What?”
“I like it when I get to see a side of you you’re trying to hide.”
Anna pretended she hadn’t heard this and set the baby blue handkerchief atop the stack of the other ones and changed the subject.
“These are almost too pretty to take out of the box.”
“Nonsense!” Mary said. “What good is a useful object if it can’t be used?”
“NARCISSISM ISN’T VANITY, ANNA. We’re all narcissists to a degree. A measure of narcissism is healthy. But out of balance, what was once appropriate self-confidence becomes grandiose, pathological, and destructive. You have little regard for those around you. You do what you will with a libertine’s abandon. Boredom sets in. A bored woman is a dangerous woman.”
“You’ve said that before.”
Doktor Messerli nodded.
“And?” It was an impatient “and.”
“And there are acts that cannot be unenacted. Outcomes impossible to repair. A narcissist won’t see that until it’s too late.”
“LET’S REVIEW THE TENSES,” Roland said, and the class groaned collectively. This wasn’t the first time he’d given this lecture. “Zu viel Fehler!” Too many mistakes, Roland said. Anna took easy offense at this even though she knew that there was a tipping point in mistake making when blunders stopped being instructive and became simply habitual. A cards-land-where-they-may approach to moving through language, through love, through life. Unflappable passivity in action.
But mistakes, Anna thought. They’re yours. All yours. Your own belong to you and no one else. When she thought about it that way—which she had consciously made the choice to do—she felt noble. As if admitting or laying claim to a failure—even if only to the mirror, in solitude and silently—was itself an act of absolution.