“Didn’t he go to the same high school?”
Mary nodded her head yes. “Like I said. We didn’t say a word.” Mary exhaled. “We were just so stupid and thoughtless. This girl didn’t deserve the treatment we gave her. And we weren’t terrible ourselves, I don’t think. Just so destructive. One destruction fueled the next one. We weren’t thinking. We should have been. But we weren’t. Can you understand that?”
“Mary, this is all my fault.”
Mary slid to the edge of her chair and reached for Anna’s blanket and smoothed it down and around her body like she did with her children when she tucked them into bed, mothering her. “What is, honey? And of course it isn’t. I’m sure of it.” Anna wasn’t brave enough to continue.
“Anna,” Mary cooed. “You can tell me anything.” Anna believed that yes, she probably could.
But knew without a doubt she wouldn’t.
KARL CAME TO THE house just once after the funeral. He and Bruno and Guido were going to a ZSC Lions game. Bruno wasn’t home from work. Ursula had taken Victor and Polly on a walk. Anna was dressed, but shabbily. Karl knocked a timid knock.
“Hallo, Anna. How are you touching?”
Anna looked both through and past him. He could have guessed how she felt, he didn’t need to ask. But asking was customary. Responding was optional.
“Come in,” Anna said and showed him into the living room. Karl stepped through the hall and into the house. Anna had been watching a game show on television. 5 Gegen 5. Five against five others. It was a Swiss version of the American program Family Feud.
Karl wasn’t sure what to do with his hands, so he pushed them as deeply into his jacket pockets as he could and then looked to Anna for a cue. Anna shrugged and motioned him to a chair as she shuffled back to her seat on the couch. They spent the next five complicated minutes pretending that neither had seen the other naked.
Anna hadn’t turned the TV off. One of the teams was made up of members of a Burgdorf yodeling club and the other a women’s floorball team from Winterthur. The question—asked in Schwiizerdütsch—was, as near as Anna could tell, “Name a favorite ice cream flavor.” The top response, chocolate, had already been given. One of the women on the floorball team answered “Strawberry!” It was second to last on the list. Anna stared at the television with bloodshot eyes and wondered whether pistachio was on the board. It wasn’t.
“You must never, never, never tell Bruno.”
Karl nodded. It was solemn and small. Then the two of them sat in stillness. Outside, the sun set so quickly it was almost audible.
IN THE BACK OF her notebook, Anna kept a running list of potentially useful German phrases. Mum’s the word! A thousand thanks! Don’t mention it! Ah, but there’s a catch. No ifs, ands, or buts! Ready, set, GO! Good things come in threes! When in Rome! Do you have a toothpick? An eye for an eye. By the skin of my teeth. Where is the drugstore? Where are the trains? How are you doing? I’m doing well! I’m great! I’m pretty good! I’m okay. I’m miserable. I am sick. I need help.
IN A SESSION BEFORE Charles’s death, Doktor Messerli attempted to instruct Anna in the difference between a reason and an excuse. She split these hairs in an Anna-like way.
“I suppose,” Anna conceded dully. She wasn’t exactly listening.
The Doktor frowned but pressed ahead to make her point. “You’re unhappy? Fine. You have grounds for occasional sorrow. Swiss customs still elude you. Yours is a difficult marriage—all marriages are difficult, Anna, even the good ones—and you have few friends and no pastimes. Your children are young. They’re demanding. All of it is difficult. But,” Doktor Messerli continued, “for every reason you present to justify your sadness, you offer a tandem excuse that serves no purpose other than to prolong your misery. ‘I cannot change the intractable Swiss,’ you whine. ‘There’s nothing I can do to make Bruno more attentive’—Anna, have you tried just simply asking him for more attention?—‘I am too shy to make friends,’ ‘Taking care of an infant requires all the energy I have.’ There’s nothing you can do to change your life? That’s the biggest excuse of all.” Anna couldn’t disagree.
Doktor Messerli softened. “Let’s work on this, Anna. Just this. That will be enough. You move like a refugee in a war ghetto when, truly, you have every Allied power at your command. There is no reason to live like this.” Anna nodded. There wasn’t. “A successful life. Anna. I want you to succeed.”
In Anna’s half-attentive state she heard “secede.”
21