ANNA’S MOST RECENT APPOINTMENT with Doktor Messerli would have been the day before, but she’d canceled. I shouldn’t have canceled. I need her. She’s only ever tried to help me. Yesterday was a century ago. What would I have said to her? They would have talked about Polly Jean’s birthday and how sad Anna was and Anna would have asked whether Doktor Messerli thought the pain would ever go away. Doktor Messerli would have listened with compassion and responded as she so often did: Vhat dooo yooo sink, Anna? Anna checked the time on her Handy. It was a quarter after one. Doktor Messerli would be in her office. Anna could go there. She could tell her it was an emergency and the Doktor would see her. Of course she would. Wouldn’t she? Is this an emergency? It wasn’t a nonemergency, Anna was sure. It was already past lunchtime. Anna would have to figure something out. The Doktor would know what to do. Yes, that’s it. I’m going. It was a reasonable, competent decision to have made.
Anna turned in several circles before she found her bearings and began the march toward Doktor Messerli’s office. Now, I must go now, she thought, though she was already on her way. The closer Anna came to Trittligasse the faster she walked. A knot in her stomach tightened like a python around a pig. It was a caution Anna didn’t heed. She walked faster. Now. I must go. Now. Panic began to replace the determination that had steered her from Utoquai to R?mistrasse. She ran the last quarter kilometer to Doktor Messerli’s office, stopping only to peel herself off the ground after she tripped on the cobblestone steps at the west end of the street. She scraped her palms and ripped the knee of her stockings. She flashed back to that day in Mumpf, when she ruined her tights in the Waldhütte where she and Karl first fucked. How did I become this? She didn’t need to speak it aloud. Every atom of Anna moaned. Her face throbbed and her soul reeled and she couldn’t catch her breath.
By the time she reached Doktor Messerli’s office, Anna was so manic that she wouldn’t have been able to pass a sobriety test. She lurched. She could barely stand. She pressed the buzzer once and then decided once was not enough so she hit and hit and hit it as if she were clobbering a nail with the heel of a shoe even as she pulled her Handy from her pocket and attempted to reach the Doktor on the phone. It was beyond rude, Anna knew, the phoning and the buzzing alike. The Doktor was in a session. Appointments are sacrosanct, not to be interrupted. Anna knew she’d be pissed. But the day waned with every passing second and as Anna’s options grew fewer, her worry simply grew. On the walk to Zürichhorn she had repeated it like a mantra: I will be okay, I will be okay. But by the time she fell on the cobblestone steps her cadence had stuttered and her incantation became Will I be okay? She had lost all talent for self-consolation. When the Doktor’s phone went to voice mail, she went from frenetically poking the buzzer with her finger to maniacally pounding the door under the force of her fist. Let me in, let me in, let me in, dammit.
Eventually, Doktor Messerli opened the window and looked down. Anna was reckless and shaking, her whole body twitching like a muscle with an electrode attached to it. She couldn’t see the Doktor’s expression from three stories up, but her posture was angry and offended. Her glasses hung from her neck on a chain so she, in turn, wouldn’t have been able to make out the wreck that was becoming Anna’s face. As the day grew later it had started to swell. That might have made a difference. If only she could see me! Anna shouted an unintelligible plea. The Doktor cut her off, yelled back. Anna was to stop ringing the bell and leave immediately. The Doktor would phone her after her appointments at the end of the day. If Anna was in crisis then she needed to call 144 and have an ambulance take her to the hospital. Then Doktor Messerli closed the window with a mad, malicious slam. Anna didn’t blame her. But goddammit, I need help now.
Anna’s dread turned hard. Like a stone in her throat or a tumor. Aggressive and inoperable and terminal. The Doktor was firm in her counsel. Dial 144. Wait for me to call you later. Either way? Leave. Now. Go. The slammed window was the day’s most definite answer.
Anna left the office.
IN THE DREAM I am at a clinic with my mother. She is wearing a blue hat and her purse is filled with sandwiches. I can’t help but laugh. This annoys her and she tells me so. When the doctor calls for us, he says I need an operation to fix my eye. I refuse to have it. My mother is angry. She threatens to force me into having the surgery by calling the police. I tell her to go ahead. She storms out of the office. I follow her but it’s dark outside. I look for a while but give up and start for home, and in the darkness I lose my way. When I wake up I have forgotten that my mother is dead. It takes me almost half a minute to remember. When I do remember, I miss her terribly. More than I have in years, than I even have a right to miss her. I know it isn’t, but all seems lost.
ANNA WALKED AWAY FROM Doktor Messerli’s office in a stupor. The Doktor’s rebuke had slapped Anna out of hysteria and into contrition, and almost immediately Anna felt like an ass.
She was halfway down Trittligasse when her Handy buzzed. It was Mary. Anna fumbled, opening the phone. “Anna. I am so sorry I couldn’t talk earlier. I was in the classroom and—”