Hausfrau Read Free Page B

retreated to his office most nights. Left alone, Anna would either read or watch television or put on a jacket and take an evening walk up the hill behind the house.
    The house, when Anna was alone inside it, often assumed a pall of unbearable, catatonic stillness.
Has it always been like this?
Anna would be lying if she’d said it had. They’d shared good times, Bruno and she. It would be unfair to deny it. And even if he barely tolerated what he called her “melancholic huffs” or her “sullen temperaments,” Bruno too, if pressed, would have admitted a love and fondness for Anna that, while often displaced by frustration, held an irrefutable honor in his heart.
    I T WAS JUST THE previous Monday that Anna steeled and sent herself to school for the first time since college. The class at the Migros Klubschule was called German for Advanced Beginners. This was the course intended for anyone pre-equipped with a minor to moderate knowledge of the language but who lacked a rigorous understanding of grammar and a nuanced usage of syntax.
    Migros is the name of the largest chain of supermarkets in Switzerland and Switzerland’s biggest employer. More people work for Migros than any Swiss bank worldwide. But Migros is bigger than supermarkets alone. There are Migros-owned bookshops, Migros-owned gas stations, Migros-owned electronics outlets, sports stores, furniture dealers, menswear shops, public golf courses, and currency exchanges. Migros also governs a franchise of adult education centers. There isn’t a Swiss city of significant population where at least one Migros Klubschule doesn’t exist. And it’s not just language classes they offer. You can study most anything at the Migros Klubschule:
cooking, sewing, knitting, drawing, singing.
You can learn to play an instrument or how to read the future with tarot cards. You can even learn how to interpret dreams.
    D OKTOR M ESSERLI , AT THE onset of Anna’s analysis, asked Anna to pay attention to her dreams. “Write them down,” the Doktor instructed. “I want you to write them down and bring them to our meetings and we will discuss them.”
    Anna protested. “I don’t dream.”
    The Doktor was undeterred. “Nonsense. Everyone dreams. Even you.”
    Anna brought a dream to her next appointment:
I am sick. I beg Bruno for help but he won’t give it. Someone films a movie in another room. I am not in it. A dozen teenage girls kill themselves for the camera. I don’t know what to do so I do nothing.
    Doktor Messerli arrived at an immediate interpretation. “It’s a sign of stagnancy. The movie’s being made and you’re not in it. This is why the girls do not survive. The girls are you.You are the girls. You do not survive. You are ill with inaction, a patron sitting passively in a dark theater.”
    Anna’s passivity. The hub from which the greater part of her psychology radiated. Everything came down to a nod, an acquiescence, a
Yes, dear.
Anna was aware of this. It was a trait she’d never bothered to question or revise, which, through the lens of a certain desiccated poignancy, seemed to be its proof. Anna was a swinging door, a body gone limp in the arms of another body carrying it. An oarless ocean rowboat.
Am I as assailable as that?
Yes, it sometimes seemed.
I have no knack for volition. My backbone’s in a brace. It’s the story of my life.
And it was. The very view from her kitchen window looked out upon it. Triangulated by the street and the apple trees and the path that led up the hill an invisible marquee flashed over a secret door that led into that same dark theater she dreamed of. Anna didn’t need to see it to know it was there. The titles changed but the films were all of a sort. One week it was
You Could Speak Up, Have Your Say!,
the next it was
You’re No Victim, You’re an Accomplice.
And
Not Choosing Is Still a Choice
was held over for years.
    Then there were the children. Anna hadn’t longed to be a mother. She didn’t yearn for it