Eventually, Doktor Messerli opened the window and looked down. Anna was reckless and shaking, her whole body twitching like a muscle with an electrode attached to it. She couldn’t see the Doktor’s expression from three stories up, but her posture was angry and offended. Her glasses hung from her neck on a chain so she, in turn, wouldn’t have been able to make out the wreck that was becoming Anna’s face. As the day grew later it had started to swell. That might have made a difference. If only she could see me! Anna shouted an unintelligible plea. The Doktor cut her off, yelled back. Anna was to stop ringing the bell and leave immediately. The Doktor would phone her after her appointments at the end of the day. If Anna was in crisis then she needed to call 144 and have an ambulance take her to the hospital. Then Doktor Messerli closed the window with a mad, malicious slam. Anna didn’t blame her. But goddammit, I need help now.
Anna’s dread turned hard. Like a stone in her throat or a tumor. Aggressive and inoperable and terminal. The Doktor was firm in her counsel. Dial 144. Wait for me to call you later. Either way? Leave. Now. Go. The slammed window was the day’s most definite answer.
Anna left the office.
IN THE DREAM I am at a clinic with my mother. She is wearing a blue hat and her purse is filled with sandwiches. I can’t help but laugh. This annoys her and she tells me so. When the doctor calls for us, he says I need an operation to fix my eye. I refuse to have it. My mother is angry. She threatens to force me into having the surgery by calling the police. I tell her to go ahead. She storms out of the office. I follow her but it’s dark outside. I look for a while but give up and start for home, and in the darkness I lose my way. When I wake up I have forgotten that my mother is dead. It takes me almost half a minute to remember. When I do remember, I miss her terribly. More than I have in years, than I even have a right to miss her. I know it isn’t, but all seems lost.
ANNA WALKED AWAY FROM Doktor Messerli’s office in a stupor. The Doktor’s rebuke had slapped Anna out of hysteria and into contrition, and almost immediately Anna felt like an ass.
She was halfway down Trittligasse when her Handy buzzed. It was Mary. Anna fumbled, opening the phone. “Anna. I am so sorry I couldn’t talk earlier. I was in the classroom and—”
Anna interrupted. “It’s okay.” It is okay, she thought. Mary will help me. Anna spoke the next words painfully. “I need.” She added no object. She was in need of many things. Help was only one of them.
“What do you need, Anna? Can I bring you anything? You’re at home? Are you feeling better?” Anna tried to answer all the questions at once and the result was gibberish. Mary cut her short. “I’m having a hard time hearing you. I’m on the train. On the way to Dietlikon, actually. Tim’s meeting me. We’re going to that car lot by the Coca-Cola plant—you know where that is?” Anna did. It was just down the street from the train station. Until that point the Gilberts had been using a car-share service. But Mary, just the week before, managed to get her driver’s license (Can you believe it??? I know!!! she said and said again to Anna) and with Tim so often gone and the Gilberts having now settled into a routine, they’d decided it was time to buy a car. “Can we drop over afterward? Are you at home?” she asked again. Anna tried to explain that she wasn’t but the connection was weak and she didn’t think Mary caught it. “Anna, I can barely hear you and we’re about to go through a tunnel. We’ll talk later. I am so glad you’re feeling—”
The call was dropped before Mary could finish the sentence. Anna was left with Mary’s good-intended but poorly timed wish: I’m so glad you’re feeling! If only she knew. There was nothing in these feelings to be glad about. Mary had a driver’s license. Mary was getting a car. Mary was volunteering at Max and Alexis’s school. What else was Mary doing, having, being? When did this happen? Anna was jarred by Mary’s progress. Why her? Anna searched for a pat response of logic or a Jungian truism that would situate (if not soothe) the sting of this defeat. A defeat? Anna self-reprimanded. You really should be happy for your friend. The poetic response to Anna’s dilemma had to do with tribulation molding character the way that fire forges steel and how Anna—Atta girl! Chin up!—would pass through the flames, be purged of her flaws, and then she’d have earned her own grand and good reward. She, too, would learn to drive. She’d buy a car. She’d have a bank account! She’d be happy again. She’d be happy for once. But the regrettable truth came down to all and only this: Anna had already received her reward. Her reward was pain. And her character had already been forged. I’m as good as I’m probably ever going to get.
Anna wandered without aim for the next thirty minutes. The interaction with Doktor Messerli had snapped Anna back from panic. But the outcome of her conversation with Mary served to kick her into the familiar fugue she’d walked away from on Bahnhofstrasse. I’m running in circles. I’m back where I started. That wasn’t quite true. It wasn’t a circle she ran in. It was a spiral. The near parallel arcs give an illusion of sameness. At each turn, though, she came closer to a center. Anna had moved through every quadrant of the emotional spectrum that day. There was no reason to believe that whatever had her in its hands was ready to let her loose. She harnessed her present calm and tried to clear what she could of her mind. She wanted to make lucid decisions while she could. And what she decided next was to go to Archie.
It was a decision that didn’t require much forethought—she was already in the Niederdorf—but one that demanded a humility she might not have mustered but for the nearness of the shop and the ever-encroaching worry that come nightfall she’d have nowhere to go. Present need prioritized this possibility. Despite what had passed between them—perhaps even because of what had happened—she knew that he would absolutely take her in, at least for the night. They’d not spoken since the day at the zoo, and the last time she saw him was Charles’s funeral. She’d go to Archie, he’d give her an icepack and a glass of Scotch and a place to sleep for the night. She did not dare to think beyond that. She looked up to the window of his apartment but it was closed. She’d deleted his number from her phone over a month ago so she couldn’t call. Who memorized phone numbers anymore? Anna paced in front of the whiskey shop for ten minutes before finding the courage to go in. Even then, it wasn’t courage that she rallied, but resignation.
A bell tinkled when she opened the door. A man who she presumed was Glenn stood at the counter. They’d never met. He was shorter than Archie and younger. But Anna could see the resemblance in Glenn’s eyes and in his mussed, russet curls. He was going over an invoice, checking the list on his clipboard against a stack of boxes. Glenn looked up when Anna came in.
“Can I help you?” Yes. Glenn will help me, Anna thought. He’ll tell me where Archie is.
Anna hadn’t planned her words. She couldn’t make a sentence. “Archie. Where?” Glenn narrowed his eyes and studied Anna’s face. His stare was apprehensive.
“Ma’am, he’s not here.” His voice was even and polite.
Anna kept forgetting about her face. “Where’s he?” Anna’s own tone was crippled. She asked the question quickly and from an odd angle of inflection.
“Scotland. Comes back next week.” Glenn looked her over. Her shoulders were hunched and the hand that held her phone trembled. Glenn’s initial misgiving softened into concern for the strange woman in front of him. “Ma’am, is there something I can do for you? Are you okay, ma’am?”
Anna shook her head gently and chuckled. This is pretty funny. So many failsafes, all of them failing. No, there was nothing he could do.
“Sorry?” The laugh was up for interpretation.
“Nothing. I apologize for disturbing you.” Anna stilted her speech to mask her disappointment, but that was all she had to say. Glenn called to her as she walked out the door, but Anna waved him off and kept walking. Outside the whiskey shop, Anna tightened the belt of her coat and wrung her hands. Oh well. Oh well.
It was colder than it had been before she went inside and yet she’d been in the shop for only a minute.
The temperature was shifting as quickly as her mood. She laughed again. There was no other way to respond. Blackly funny, how her day was unfolding. How every avenue of escape was bricked up. How all of her choices were already ticked off an unseen list. Every option was bleak. Now what? She strained the ear of her heart to hear the answer. Nothing called back. Anna attempted to console herself. There, there, she coddled. We’ll figure this out. We will. We will! In plural, she felt comfort. Make it a game, Anna. Play along with this series of unfortunate coincidences. Then again, in chorus, she reassured her selves: There, there. Anna sighed and headed south toward Stadelhofen.
Anna walked to Stadelhofen and then up the hill behind the train station and crossed through the small park behind the Kantonsschule and followed the s-curve of the street and turned left onto Promenadengasse and continued walking until she reached St. Andrew’s Church, Zürich’s English-speaking Anglican congregation. She’d been to this church before, three or four times in the early months of living in Switzerland when she was most lonely for company. But then Victor was born, and caring for an infant superseded her self-indulgent dolors. After that she met Edith and for a while hers was friendship enough. Anna circled the building until she came to the entrance. Why not? She’d walked in this direction without a conscious plan. But in she went. Anna wandered through the sanctuary and into the fellowship hall and down a corridor until she found an office she assumed belonged to the priest. The door was drawn but not closed. Anna pushed it open; she didn’t bother to knock.
Medieval Christianity taught that there were eight, not seven, deadly sins. The eighth sin was despair, and it was the only sin that could not be forgiven. For to despair is to deny the ultimate power and universal reign of God. Despair is complete disbelief, indulgent hopelessness, the repudiation of God’s wisdom, his benevolence, his control. Total depravity, Anna thought. Today’s pain has always been mine. It’s intended just for me.
“I think I need help,” Anna said. Help. It was the first time she’d said the word aloud that day. It didn’t feel as good as she’d hoped and she wanted to retract it as soon as she said it.
The priest looked up from his desk with a start. “Oh!” He’d been typing an email and hadn’t heard her come in. He scanned her face but couldn’t place her as a congregant. He stood and held out his hand. Anna shook it limply. He gestured to an empty chair on the other side of his desk. He didn’t blink at her bruises.
The priest was a short, very round older man with a tan face, a salt-and-pepper beard, and a Welsh accent. “Yes, of course. Let’s talk.” He smiled on her like a grandfather, though he couldn’t have been more than fifteen years her senior. As in the whiskey shop, Anna hadn’t planned what she was going to say. Each of the day’s conversations had swerved in different directions. I need to confess. I need him to take my confession. She wanted to tell her story, her whole story, to someone. Bruno wouldn’t hear it that morning. No one had ever heard it. I’ll tell the truth and he’ll absolve me. Anna took a hard breath and exhaled slowly, finding her courage. I’ll tell the truth. And all shall be well.
But when she opened her mouth to speak, what tumbled out was a question.
“Do you believe in predestination?” They weren’t the words she intended, but they weren’t unfamiliar. She carried this uncertainty wherever she went.
“Do I? Or does the church?”
“You.” She wanted to talk with a person.
The priest leaned back in his chair and considered his response. Anna’s face gave him reason to take her seriously. He didn’t ask her name. “Let’s see …” He thought for a moment longer. “Okay, Miss.” The priest rearranged himself in the desk chair and Anna smiled briefly when he addressed her as “Miss.” “When you were a child, did you ever play with dominos? Did you set them in a line and topple them? Stack them? Push them over?”
“Yes.”
“Of course. All that time spent putting them right, aligning them just so, and then with such a little push everything falls.” Anna nodded. “Think of your life as a long line of dominos, yes? A chain of days and years. Every domino is a choice. This one is where you went to school. Here is the man you married. Here’s the house you moved into. Here’s the roast you cooked for Sunday supper …” The priest mimed setting up dominos with his hands. “Our lives are cause and effect. Even the smallest choices matter. One domino hits the other, and then the next and the next.” The priest tapped the first invisible domino with his index finger and with that, the whole imaginary regiment pitched forward. Anna could almost hear the clink of bone-colored Bakelite as the array unzipped. “It’s God who doles out the dominos. It is we who set them in line and tip them over. We have no control over the particular lot we’re given. But we can choose how to arrange what we have. And we can choose to start over, when everything’s been knocked down and broken. Do I believe in predestination? No. A foreordained eternity effectively puts me out of a job.” He tittered and smiled at Anna, who tried to smile back.
It was a simple, sincere analogy built for a child. A kind truth spoken kindly, a kind man who spoke it. The tears she’d waited on all day finally welled in her eyes.
But as much as she longed to believe what the priest had said, she couldn’t. Accidents that are fated to happen simply will. She’d wanted him to convince her otherwise. He’d come the closest of anyone.
The priest looked at her with sympathy. “Now,” he continued, “can you tell me about the bruises?” Anna sniffed but didn’t respond. He cleared his throat as he opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a file. He thumbed through the pages as he spoke. “I want to help you. But,” he continued as he pulled a sheet of paper from the file, “I’m not sure that issues of doctrinal theology are among your most pressing concerns at the moment.” His paternal voice was so soothing that it shattered her. “Perhaps it might be wisest if you consulted a professional.” He passed the paper to Anna. It was a list of local English-speaking psychiatrists. Doktor Messerli’s name was the fourth from the top. “Or, if you’d rather, I can call for you …”
Anna shook her head though without great conviction. No, no, no.
The priest was waiting on Anna to continue when a knock on the doorjamb caused both of them to turn and look. It was a tall, gaunt man with wide-set eyes. He looked over Anna’s head without acknowledging her presence and began complaining to the priest about church music, organ repair, the choirmaster, the choir, and, in the end, the priest himself who hadn’t answered an email of compelling urgency quickly enough. The man spoke impatiently; his voice was haughty and imperative.
The priest scowled at the man, who Anna assumed was the organist, who was tapping his foot and pulling a face of his own. The priest returned his gaze to Anna with continued sympathy. “I’m so sorry. Please. I’ll only be a moment. Would you like some tea? I will bring you some tea.” Anna blinked and the priest rose and left his office. She could hear him grousing at the organist as they walked down the hall, the click of their shoes on the floor growing less audible the farther away they walked.
Anna waited until she couldn’t hear them anymore and then rose from the chair and left the office and slipped out of the church with the same sad ease she so often slipped out of her clothes.
So there it is. And there, just there, it was.
She walked back the way she came, past the high school, through the slim lip of city park above Stadelhofen, over the walkway, and down the swooping, skeletal staircase into the plaza in front of the train station, moving south toward the opera house and the lake.
She didn’t even think twice once the idea occurred to her.
It was a number she’d never called. What time was it? It was just past three in Zürich. In Boston it was nine in the morning. She sat on the steps of the opera house. The phone rang twice before he answered.
“Stephen Nicodemus.”
She hadn’t rehearsed what she was going to say. There’d been no forethought to this call. It happened so
quickly it was compulsive. She cleared her throat and pressed forward. “Stephen.”
“Yes?”
“It’s Anna.”
“Anna?” She’d surprised him, that was clear. “Anna!” He repeated her name with brightness. Anna’s heart lightened. “How are you?” His emphasis was on the “you.”
“I’m …” She wasn’t going to tell him how she was. She spoke through an imaginary smile. “I’m okay.” There was relative truth in that. Now or never, Anna. Say what you came to say. “I’ve been thinking about you. I wanted to call and say hello. You know?” If he did, he didn’t say so. “I miss you.”
The dominos started to fall.
There was a crackle in the wireless connection. He was four thousand miles away and yet they were once again in the same room. The delay was empirical.
“I know. It was good.” His voice was flat but earnest. Not cold, but matter-of-fact. Good was one of the last things Anna would have called it. Awful? Intense? Vexatious? Igneous? Lamentable? Productive? They had, after all, produced a child, though Stephen had no way of knowing that. But good? What was good about it?
“Yeah.” Anna couldn’t mask the letdown. She kept her words close. Their last conversation had been nothing but a chain of histrionics. The wind forced a hank of hair from its barrette as it had been doing all day. It flapped around her face.
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