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risen.
    P OLLY J EAN WOKE FOR good around seven thirty. Bruno and the boys were up by eight. The weather was gracious; it was a generous, sunny day. Two well-slept boys rattled the walls of the house with the energy they had stored up overnight, like a pair of batteries, recharged. Anna sent them outside to play in the yard. Charles trotted out the door without a word of backtalk. Victor flopped on the couch and pretended he hadn’t heard a thing. When Anna told Victor once more to go outside the pouting began. He wanted to ride his bike to a friend’s house. He wanted to watch cartoons on the television. He wanted to go upstairs. He wanted Anna to leave him alone. This is when Bruno intervened.
Go.
That’s all it took for Victor to relent. A firm, terse word from Bruno’s no-nonsense lips.
    Charles was Anna’s easiest child. He was pleasant, quick to help, and slow to anger. He minded his manners and was rarely perturbed. He was a happy boy. Victor, by contrast, was rarely purely happy. A good son in his own way, Victor was funny, smart, charming, and occasionally perceptive beyond his years (
Mami,
he once said to Anna,
I will always love you, even if Papi doesn’t
). But Victor was also self-indulgent. He tended toward pettiness and he didn’t like to share. He wasrigid and could not easily accommodate the plans or needs of others. And when he felt slighted, Victor became petulant and ill-tempered. At those times Anna found it impossible to like him very much.
    Victor was his father’s son.
    Of Charles, Anna said to Doktor Messerli, “He has absolutely no guile.”
    “What about Polly Jean?”
    “I don’t know her yet.” Doktor Messerli thought she knew what Anna meant.
    “And Victor?”
    “Victor, I do know.” She was willing to admit nothing aloud but if pressed (and only if pressed very hard) she would have to say that of her two sons, Charles was her dearest. “Of course I love Victor.”
    Anna was sorry in a hundred ways.
    D OKTOR M ESSERLI DREW A diagram. It was a picture of a circle inside of a circle inside of another one. It reminded Anna of Russian matryoshka dolls, or her set of nesting Pyrex mixing bowls.
    “These circles? They’re
you.
The outside circle is the ego. The ego is the suit that your psyche wears. How you are viewed by the world. It is the first part of you that anyone sees.” The Doktor leaned forward and tapped the middle circle with her fountain pen. It left a small but spreading blotch of ink. “This is where your problems lie.” Doktor Messerli traced the circle again, giving it a messy, jagged seam.
    “How so?”
    “Chaos bars the ego from the serenity, the solidity, and the
solidarity
of the self.” Anna wondered if she’d practiced this speech; it sounded lofty and rehearsed.
    “What’s the answer?”
    Doktor Messerli leaned back into her chair. “There is no fit-all answer.”
    “What’s the difference between the self and the soul?”
    “Anna, our time is up.”
    W HORES ,
A NNA ONCE READ ,
make the very best wives.
They are accustomed to the varying moods of men, they keep their broken hearts to themselves, and easy women always ease through grief.
    This thought occurred to Anna unbidden when, in front of the Coop on Industriestrasse, she slipped a two-franc piece into a coin slot, releasing the top shopping cart from its line of brothers. It was a thought called forward by the simple action of shoving a thing into the hole it’s meant for.
    Ursula had offered Anna a ride to the supermarket. This was a gesture of clemency on Ursula’s part, which Anna graciously accepted. She told Bruno she’d be glad to take Polly Jean with her if he’d watch the boys.
Yes, yes,
Bruno said, waving her off and telling her to bring back six large bottles of water, several pots of quark, and three or four dark chocolate bars. In this way Bruno was exceptionally Swiss; Bruno loved candy. Anna took note.
    Ursula pushed the stroller. Anna maneuvered the basket. Polly was