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her.”
    â€œWho knows? Children get attached to the strangest things.”
    Anna realizes she’s stroking Molla’s head.
    â€œI love this dollhouse. It’s stayed the same all these years.”
    â€œYou can have it. You can have the whole thing as your inheritance when I die. Your mother might make a fuss about it, so it’d be best to write a will. Let’s do that right now, while we have a glass of wine.”
    â€œDon’t say that. Don’t say you’re going to die.”
    Anna’s voice portends tears, she can hear them before she tastes them in her throat. They stand quietly for a moment.
    Let’s stay here, Anna thinks. Let’s close the door and decide that the illness has been canceled. Let’s close the door.
    She smells her grandma’s familiar fragrance, the same skin cream that Anna used to spread in a thick layer over her face after her bath to make her grandma laugh. There’s a hint of something new in the scent, musty and dark. The smell of death.
    The horse chestnut trees outside the window, calm and imposing with their brand-new torches of blossom, cast a quivering shadow on the wall. Anna feels a peace which may be an echo from her early childhood. Lying in her baby carriage in the shade taking a nap, that same leafy color drawn on the awning of the carriage. Light, shadow, light.
    â€œGuess what I want to do?” her grandma suddenly says.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œPlay dress-up. Remember?”
    It was one of Anna’s favorite games. She was Bianca. She would put on a dress and they would make up a life for the character. Bianca was a fine lady from Italy. When Anna was Bianca, she knew things that she normally had no inkling of. She would find feelings within herself that she didn’t know she had.
    â€œRemember how when you were Bianca you liked olives, even though you usually hated them?” her grandma laughs.
    â€œI ate them from a plate, with a knife and fork.”
    â€œAnd you clomped around in high heels that were too big for you, talking about stock prices and airports and perfume. If you put on the Bianca dress I’ll see if I can fit into one I haven’t worn since the fifties. That’s one good thing about this cancer. I’ve gotten as thin as I was when I was twenty. Find something that suits you and I’ll make us some lunch.”
    A WALL OF dust motes floats dreamily across her grandmother’s room. Anna stands in the doorway for a moment. The sun’s rays stretch all the way across to the opposite wall. There is no time here.
    The closet is full of old coats, dresses, a couple of men’s shirts. The Bianca dress is black and white; it dangles from a hanger. She doesn’t take it. She wants something different.
    She looks through the dresses, runs her hand over each one—decades hung on hangers. She opens the other closet door. It creaks ponderously. The clothes look old, like they’ve been hanging here forever.
    She takes out one she doesn’t remember seeing before. A pale dress with a generous skirt, maybe from the 1950 s. A wide waistband, a square neckline that shows the collarbones, the skirt abundant with rustling fabric.
    It’s easy to imagine the parties: the room buzzing with expectation. Smiles and small talk and an atmosphere that gradually changes from nervous to boisterous. Some people meeting for the first time, some seeing each other with new eyes, or maybe sharing secret and painful memories. A murmur of voices from the living room, but two people, a man and a woman, don’t hear it, they’re looking at each other, terror and excitement and tenderness knocking around inside them because they know something has begun, they know they can’t go back.
    She takes off her shirt and jeans; the dress slips on easily. It’s a little tight in the bust.
    She feels like someone else in this dress. Did her grandma wear it once or twice a year, to the