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losing your mind?
    Dr. Z. said, Of course, isn’t everyone?
    Dr. H. said, Not those who have already lost their minds.
    Lucky at last, said Dr. Z.
    Fritz was in his office, idling at his computer, an email to a colleague about a seminar at Texas A&M the following December, an appeal for an urgent contribution from the Democratic Party, a reminder from his editor of a luncheon with booksellers still some months away. He put his hand on his stomach. He rolled it over the excess flesh. He should lose weight. He should take his bike out into the park. He should sleep better. He could feel the ache behind his eyes, a mark of his predawn tossing in sheets. He had tried to wake his wife but she resisted, so far into her own Ambien sleep she had left him stranded in the bed they shared. The radiator in the apartment was turned up too high. The room was hot. It was too cold to open a window. The heat was controlled in the basement. It was like a sauna in that bedroom.
    All he had ever wanted was that his children should be happy. Fritz was an honest man: that was not all. He had also expected a certain giftedness, an extraordinary ability in something, music, art, mathematics, scholarship. He had not wanted ordinary children. But then no one wants ordinary children. Fritz understood: if some children were to be extraordinary then most had to be ordinary. For now, all he wanted was Anna talking on the phone to a friend, her lilting voice filled with the sound of light rainfall on the moving river.
    Later he listed certain disappointments: Anna gave up the piano and the flute. Anna was not a reader, a real reader, like he had been, like he still was, although she was an A student, he knew she worked hard but learning wasn’t as easy or natural for her as it had been for him. Anna was not a chess player. He had tried. Anna was not a dancer. He knew it after the first recital. Anna was not an athlete. She tried out for teams but didn’t make them. Anna was dear to him, but not extraordinary. At least she had not yet discovered her gift.
    And what if she had no gift? It mattered to him. It didn’t matter to him. It shouldn’t matter to him, on that point he was clear.
    Anna received an email from her roommate. When are you coming back? Never, she wrote in return. She thought about never. Never was a beautiful word. There was Peter Pan in Never Never Land. There was a way that never was just like forever. It was a verdict, an end to so many questions. It was better than next, or soon, or eventually. It was firm, solid, definite. Never, she was never going back.
    Anna wore a shirt she had taken from her father’s drawer. It was a blue shirt, soft with tiny white buttons. She rolled up the sleeves just over her wrists and opened the shirt so that her breasts just peeked out, a shy promise, a diversionary tactic. There were small white scars on her arms. There were newer dark lines. There were thin cuts that still leaked red blood onto the bandages she had tenderly placed there. At night she listened to the music that intruded into her ears through the wires attached to her laptop. She didn’t think about the future. She didn’t think about her old friends. She didn’t consider her old ice skates resting on the closet floor. She floated in the sound as if she were a fall leaf torn from its branch in all the unremarkable ways of leaves and wind and seasons.
    Beth was at lunch with an older colleague: her colleague’s daughter was pregnant. This would be the first grandchild. It makes me feel old, said the colleague, but the way she said it, the smile that flickered across her face, sent another message. It was like the lighthouse bell ringing off the shore, all is well, all is well. The rocks may be dangerous, the passage to the port uncertain, the winds strong, but no crash has occurred tonight, the moon is out, the waves are calm, calm now, if not tomorrow. A pressure formed in Beth’s head. Anna,