Hausfrau (31 page)

Anna pointed to the kitchen. “Help yourself.” Edith set the chocolate and the flowers on the coffee table and took both the bottle of wine and her blasé attitude into the kitchen. Anna tried to be offended. Being offended would distract her. But Anna wasn’t ready to be distracted yet. There were pains she still needed to feel.

Edith returned with a single glass of wine. “Oh, did you want one?” Anna shook her head no as Edith plopped down on the couch’s opposite end and let out a protracted sigh. As if she’d just done something difficult. As if being in Anna’s presence was almost too demanding to bear. She made the worst small talk. “I’m sorry I haven’t been by.” Anna told her it was fine. “The girls. I took them to Paris. We’d planned it months ago.” Edith trailed off.

“I know,” Anna said, her voice empty of affect.

Edith nipped at her wine. “So. I’m still seeing Niklas.”

“Are you.” It wasn’t a question.

Edith cleared her throat. “Yes. Thrilling as ever.” Anna returned an odd, inquiring series of blinks and wondered why if it was so thrilling did Edith speak of the affair so parenthetically. “The whole ruse of it, Anna. Ha! I feel like a spy! So scheming! I love it! And it’s not just about the sex. It’s not even mostly about the sex.” Edith bit her bottom lip. “How about that?” The realization surprised her.

It hadn’t been just about the sex with Anna either. “Where do you go?” Anna didn’t really care. They were words to decorate the air. That was all.

“To fuck? I dunno. Lots of places. Many places. His apartment. A hotel. At the house—well, just once at the house—how forbidden! We had a weekend on the Bodensee three weeks ago.”

“What did you tell Otto?”

“I told him I was going away with Pauline.”

“Who’s Pauline?”

“Nobody. She’s imaginary. I invented her. But if it ever comes up—which it won’t—I know Pauline from one of the clubs I lie about belonging to.”

“Okay.” Anna chewed on a fingernail. “How do I know her?”

“Silly Anna,” Edith feigned exasperation. “You don’t. She’s one of
my
friends. You’ve just heard me talk about her. But only a little.” Anna nodded an assent.

The room was almost entirely quiet but for the sound of wine being swallowed, the whisper of twill rubbing against twill as Edith crossed then uncrossed then recrossed her legs, and the rustle of the blanket under which Anna shivered.

“What do you think would happen if Otto caught you?”

“If he caught me?” Edith repeated Anna’s question. “I haven’t thought about it. I don’t plan on getting caught.”

“Edith?”

“Mmm-hmm.” Edith telegraphed a waxing boredom. “What would you do if one of the twins died?”

“Jesus, Anna. Are you serious?” Anna shrugged. Edith sipped her wine once more and put on a cheeky face. “Good thing I have a spare, I guess.”

“Edith?”

“What is it now?”

“You really aren’t a very good friend.”

Edith looked into her wineglass. “I know,” she said. It was an admission without scruple or reproach.

S
HORTLY AFTER BEGINNING THEIR
affair, Stephen attempted to end it. “You’re surrendering to an attack of ethics now?” Anna asked. She was naked when she asked it.

Stephen hung his head and looked away from Anna as he buttoned his shirt, as if dressing himself was an act of contrition. “I’m just not sure this is a good idea.”

Of course it’s not,
Anna thought, but said, “Of course it is!” Stephen squinted and tilted his head. He was waiting for an explication. She sighed. “Don’t you like me?” She had wanted to say “love.”

“Of course I like you.” He said it plainly. The way someone would announce his fondness for a sandwich or a pair of shoes.
Yes, it tastes just fine. Most certainly they fit.
Any other woman might have understood this as a signal. Anna took it as a challenge.

“It’s because I’m married?”

“Well, you are. It’s adultery.”

“Well then it’s a good thing we’re adults,” Anna said. And then, “What’s that have to do with anything?” It had everything to do with everything, but Anna underplayed it. She didn’t care. Her marriage had stopped mattering.
Well, it’s starting to not matter, that’s enough.

Anna found the loophole they were looking for. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Technically you’re not the adulterer. I am.” Anna eyed Stephen with a deliberately threadbare gaze. She waited, but he didn’t counter her argument. They sat together on the edge of his bed in a near reverential silence for almost a minute before Anna dressed and left.

On the train ride home, as Anna relived the day’s lovemaking in her mind, she realized, in retrospect, that it had been more tentative than usual.

“I
N
G
ERMAN
,
AN ACTION
that is done by one’s own self to one’s own self requires a reflexive verb. A reflexive verb is always accompanied by an accusative personal pronoun. To get dressed. To shave. To bathe. To clear your throat. To catch cold. To lie down. To feel either well or poorly. To fall in love. To behave. You are the object as well as the instigator. You do these things to yourself.”

T
HE KETTLE HAD LONG
since whistled itself empty when Bruno came back into the kitchen and took it off the burner. Anna opened her eyes and watched his boots shuffle around
her head. Her own feet were hot in her shoes. They’d landed against the radiator when she fell. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep.

Anna tried to rearrange her feet and attempted to push herself up from the floor but she didn’t have the muscle for it. She made a noise that couldn’t be interpreted as words. Bruno stepped over her and moved to the sink. He turned on the water, then turned it off almost as quickly. Anna tried once more to rise. “Stop,” he said. It was an aggravated command. He crossed over her two, three more times, moving with purpose. Anna didn’t know what he was doing. She heard a drawer open and close and the faucet being turned on again, then off once more. Then Bruno knelt down by her head. Anna flinched against his approach. “Stop it,” he repeated, and reached his hand toward her trembling face and laid a wet, cool cloth to the bruised side of it. “Hold this.” Anna did as he told her. “Come on.”

He put his hands under her arms and against her deadweight managed to turn her over and sit her up. She moaned as he leaned her against the same wall he’d thrown her into. “Does this hurt?” Bruno held her by the jaw and turned it toward better light and ran a finger along the ridge of her nose, which was still bleeding.

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t feel broken.” It was a clinical statement. “Put your arms around my neck.” Bruno took one of her arms and hooked it over his shoulder. Anna followed suit with the other one. “Stand up,” he ordered, even as he was pulling her to her feet. He put an arm around her waist and held her as she steadied herself. The room jerked and Anna dropped the washcloth.
“Come on.” Anna didn’t have a choice but to follow him as he led her out of the kitchen and into the bathroom.

Bruno flipped down the toilet seat and positioned Anna on top of it. “Can you sit up?” Anna shook her head no, so Bruno angled her sideways and, as in the kitchen, leaned her against the wall. Anna would have laughed but for the ache in her ribs.
So much of me has been so frivolous,
Anna thought.
So very laughable. Ha, ha.
Anna was light-headed and loopy. She let her weight fall into the green tiled wall. She was suspicious of the architecture of the room but had no choice other than to trust it.

Bruno turned his back to her, put the stopper in the drain, and ran water into the tub. Anna asked again where the children were; Bruno had told her but she’d forgotten. Bruno didn’t answer. Instead he swiveled back around to face her. He reached for Anna’s left foot and removed her shoe and her sock and then set her foot back down. He repeated the process with the right foot. Then he helped her stand.

Her legs were jelly; she put her hands on his shoulders for support. Bruno unfastened her jeans, unzipped them, and pulled them down. “Step out.” It was a tedious procedure but Anna did it without falling. Next came her panties. Anna wore a black thong with a satin bow. Under the circumstances, her underwear seemed obscene. Between the pain and her remorse, or a variable combination of the two, Anna started crying again. Her sweater was more difficult to remove. It caught on her nose as Bruno pulled it over her head. “Hush,” he said again. It was not meant to console her. Anna wasn’t wearing a bra. Bruno helped Anna into the tub with the same lack of ceremony with which he’d undressed her.

“Is it warm enough?”

“No.” Anna reached to adjust the faucet but Bruno pushed her hand away and did it for her.

“Better?”

Anna nodded.

Bruno wet a washcloth and wrung it out and began to dab away the blood on Anna’s face. He parted her hair. She was still bleeding where her head had hit the wall. “It’ll be okay,” Bruno said. He was looking at the floor when he said it.
He’s hurt me more than he meant to,
Anna thought. She reached around to touch it but Bruno stopped her. “Lie down.” He leaned Anna slowly back into the now-warm water before turning it off. He pushed her farther down. “We should wash your hair,” Bruno said, reading her thoughts. The water around Anna’s head turned pink.
It’s like he’s baptizing me. I’m washed in the blood.
Anna didn’t know if she’d been baptized. She never asked her parents and they never said one way or the other so she assumed she hadn’t been. Bruno and Anna had baptized all three of their children, but they’d done it simply out of custom and for the benefit of Ursula, who’d urged them to. Bruno sat Anna back up and gave her a perfunctory shampoo. He rinsed her hair with the handheld sprayer. Anna winced against the pressure of the water and the sting of the soap.

“You’re fine,” Bruno said as he took her face in his hand and, as in the kitchen, turned it back and forth to look at it in the bathroom’s strong light. “You’ll have a bruise.” Anna blinked. Bruno reached behind himself for a towel and rolled it into a neck bolster and then he helped her lie back once again. He stood and looked down on her in the bath. Anna closed her eyes and fished the washcloth out of the water and put it over her face. The light was so bright that she imagined her every
guilt was visible. “You’ll be okay,” Bruno said a final time as he left her alone in the bath, flipping the light switch as he pulled the door shut.

This was as close to an apology as Anna would get.

D
OKTOR
M
ESSERLI TRIED
,
ONCE
, to explain Jung’s concept of the shadow to Anna. “In the physical world a shadow is the dark shape that forms behind anything that light shines upon. A place where light—at present—isn’t. In analysis we equate consciousness with light. Therefore, unconsciousness finds its parallel with darkness. Simply, the shadow is formed of what a person doesn’t consciously know about herself. The self’s unattended aspects. Places where consciousness—at present—isn’t.”

“The dark parts. The sinister parts.” Anna bowed her head.

Doktor Messerli hemmed. “The unknown parts. The shadow isn’t inherently negative. But yes, a negative shadow is very destructive. It will rarely be experienced as an intentional response or a rational force. It is an unconscious reflex. You don’t control it. What stays in shadow controls you.”

Doktor Messerli spoke with slow, dire counsel. “The result of not working toward consciousness is isolation. Instead of real relationships you’ll have imagined ones. The less embodied you are in your conscious life, the blacker and denser your shadow will be. You have no wish to succumb to a negative shadow. And yet”—Doktor Messerli weighed the outcome of every statement that might possibly follow—“the effect of a compulsion is rarely positive. What conscious person would jump into a shark-infested sea? Who would eat glass? Who
would shiver when she could so easily be warm? No conscious person would.”

“So it’s bad.”

Doktor Messerli pulled back. “Not exactly. The shadow’s potential to destroy is undeniable. Lightning might strike a house and set it ablaze. But harness the electricity and the same house can be illuminated with the turn of a switch. Consider a vaccine. Included in the serum is a small amount of the disease. Light needs the dark. It is the order of the universe. What would thaw in the spring if we didn’t have a winter to endure? Consciousness is conditioned against its absence, Jung wrote. Amputate the serpent’s tail and the power to heal lies within.” Anna nodded. She tried to understand.

“All self-knowledge begins in the shadow’s black rooms. Enter those rooms, Anna. Address the shadow face-to-face. Ask your questions. Listen to the answers. Respect the answers. The shadow will tell you everything. Why it is you hate. Who it is you love. How to heal. How to sit with sadness. How to grieve. How to live. How to die.”

W
HEN
A
NNA FIRST BEGAN
to journal, her writing was intentionally rough. Doktor Messerli had challenged her to write like that, automatically and without judgment and self-editing. Anna was to let her thoughts flow unimpeded. In a rare instance of concession, Anna took the Doktor’s advice and did as she counseled her. The resulting entries were hurried and overblown and her handwriting was illegible. But this was how it was done, she was told, and this is how she would try to do it. And it was good to have a place to let it all loose. The page was her sole confidant.
My soul confidant,
she thought. After
Charles’s death, Anna’s prose slowed and her already abstract logic grew more nebulous.

And what is a Swiss flag but a white cross swimming in a sea of red? I’ve no place to go but insane. Like trying to find your glasses without your glasses: impossible. Like a cell phone’s incorrect predictive text: wrong, wrong, wrong. Like massaging a broken bone: it’s done because it must be done. A blessing, a curse upon me. I merit every ache.

I want nothing more to do with my life.

A
N HOUR AFTER LEAVING
her alone in the bathroom, Bruno returned to help her out of the tub. The water had cooled. Anna had unrolled the towel underneath her head and used it to cover herself, out of shame and shivering alike. She had worked the whole dark hour on willing her mind to empty. She hadn’t succeeded, but the attempt filled the time and distracted her from the pain.