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she wanted to say, was home. She didn’t say it. Anna is stranded, she wanted to say, but she didn’t. If she said it out loud it would be true. If she didn’t say it out loud it would still be true. Also the Vita Sackville-West memoir she was reading had suddenly lost its luster. It seemed manipulative, false. That she could talk about and did.
    Fritz considered. Had he been overly seductive with his daughter, had he tried to keep her for himself, such things are possible. He had to ask himself hard questions and answer them bravely. Was his own fear of failure, the one that had been with him ever since he had learned that people fell off high wires and crashed into the dirt and that the best of safety nets ripped and that there was no time of night or day when the smell of blood wasn’t in the waters— Deutschland ü ber alles ? Had his daughter absorbed his fear and made it her own?
    Beth, back at her desk in her office, a photo of her two children in a silver frame sitting to the left of her computer, wondered if she should have stayed home, could the Neanderthals who carped at mothers who hired help, mocked those who didn’t work at the school fair, who had no time for tea parties in the afternoon, were they right after all? Had she neglected the most important work of her life, for this desk, for this title, for her own selfish needs? Yes, and yes, and yes, she accused herself. But there was a defense: she made the defense. She picked up the phone to make an appointment with Dr. Berman to talk about the situation. Dr. Berman returned her call some hours later and said she couldn’t see her. It didn’t matter who was paying the bill. She was Anna’s doctor. She could recommend someone for Beth. Beth was not interested. Beth was not the kind of woman to let tears fall, certainly not in the office, not with students apt to knock at her door, not at home either, not in front of Fritz who ought to be crying too but probably wasn’t. She put the book she was teaching and a batch of student papers in her black bag and left the office early. She would talk to Anna herself.
    When she got home she found Anna was out. Anna was siting in the park.
    She was smoking. Passersby glared at her as if she didn’t know that smoking was dangerous. So what, thought Anna, so, so what?
    That evening at dinner Fritz said to his daughter, What is it you want to do? Anna did not look at him. She was stabbing her fork into her peas. Stop that, said Fritz. Anna said nothing. What is the matter with you? he shouted. You have food and clothes, a nice room, parents who love you. The Nazis aren’t chasing you. The slave hunters aren’t trying to return you to your master. You don’t have cancer, or multiple sclerosis. You’re not blind or deaf. You have all your limbs. You don’t owe vast sums of money. You have not been arrested for any wrongdoing I know about. For God’s sake grow up.
    Fritz was afraid to look his wife in the eye. She would be appalled at his outburst. But in his chest he could feel relief like a sailor sighting shore. There, he had said it and he was right. He hadn’t said she was spoiled and selfish and peculiar. He had edited out those thoughts. He had said enough. Anna took another stab at her peas. The sleeve of her shirt, her father’s shirt, slipped into the curry sauce on the shrimps delivered from the Indian restaurant on Columbus Avenue.
    Anna jumped up and ran into her room. She took off the shirt and threw it into the hamper in her bathroom and turned around to see her mother entering the door. Her mother saw the cuts on her arm, a lineup of cuts, a few bandages wrapped all the way around the forearm where the cuts had been particularly deep. Her mother quickly closed the door. What she had seen made no sense. Who had hurt Anna?
    Once when Anna was in third grade her best friend told her she wasn’t her best friend anymore. Anna had refused