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Nat waited for her, with an old movie or an invitation to a gallery opening, even tickets to the opera, she could handle anything. She loved to study, had a reason for it now: her life as a doctor would enable her to keep him happy. To keep him.
    Franny rose to the top of her class. She chose internal medicine, and began to see patients more than just once, nice to meet you, jotting down notes, patient X. She began to take over cases, to know people’s names, their smells, their nightgowns and bedside reading. Time slipped by, and she tried to ignore the sense that Nat’s antics were becoming more desperate than joyous. His songs of sadness began to seem repetitive and indulgent to Franny. Come to the hospital with me, she wanted to tell him, when he played his most popular song, “Tears Like Snow,” for the seven hundredth time. I’ll show you pain, Franny thought.
    Anna’s death had changed something in Franny; everything seemed precarious. Franny vowed that Nat’s sloppiness, his hangovers and his songs, would not stand in her way, or throw off the equilibrium of her carefully balanced life.
    Pierre regarded Franny critically. He wore thick glasses and a long shirt with a belt around it. Franny’s head had been massaged and shampooed, and a floral smell rose from her hair. “Nothing drastic,” said Franny. “I’m getting married in August.”
    “The eyebrows, is what concerns me,” said Pierre.
    “Eyebrows?”
    Pierre stood back, squinted, and then stood close again. He smelled of mint and cigars. “Tweezers!” he cried suddenly. A girl in a red smock rushed over. “You know,” said Franny, “I really don’t think…”
    “Shhh,” said Pierre. “Be calm.” He breathed in slowly, lifting his palms, and then breathed out, dropping them. “You see? Yes?”
    Franny nodded. The girl began to rub a hot lotion around her eyebrows, and Franny closed her eyes. Before long, the girl’s fingers stopped, and Franny could smell Pierre again, feel his breath on her eyelids. She breathed in once, then out, and she felt a terrible pain as Pierre pulled eyebrow hairs from their sockets.
    “Ouch!” Franny covered her eyes with her hands. She began, slowly, to cry.
    “Oh dear,” said Pierre, a hint of distaste in his voice. “My, my.”
    “I’m sorry,” said Franny, “it’s not the eyebrow.”
    “This girl,” Franny heard Pierre whisper to Arlene, “she needs a nap, I think.”
    Arlene drove back to the house with bits of foil in her hair and her lips pressed together. At the gates to the house, she stopped. “Take a nap, now, will you?” she said. Franny nodded, and climbed out of the car. Arlene reversed so fast that Franny’s shoes—Pappagallo sandals, which she had bought to fit in with the Westchester crowd—were covered with dust.
    Nat and his father were out sailing—the slip at the dock was empty. Franny stood by the water. The breeze smelled of salt. Franny could still see Anna’s face: the small chapped lips, eyes filled with shock at the pain that would not leave her. I don’t think I can do this, Anna had said. Can I let go now? And, will everything be here when I am gone?
    It will never be the same world without you, Franny had promised, and she had been right. Anna, her green eyes.
    Franny walked in the door of the house and up the stairs to the guest room. The bed had been made, sheets pulled taut. Franny did not unmake the bed, but lay down on top of the coverlet. As soon as she closed her eyes, Franny drifted to sleep.
    In her dream, the front hallway of her childhood home. Texas heat, bearing down, a new jigsaw puzzle spread before her. A tall glass of lemonade, the smell of baking earth. A slant of sunlight on the wooden floor. All the blue pieces together first, the cardboard edges rough on her fingertips. She can hold only three pieces in one small palm. Her feet are bare. Uncle Jack watches TV in her parents’ living room. He is the only doctor in town, but he has taken a