Who Do You Think You Are

few days later the owner’s wife came into the office showing off an identical necklace; she too had been told the jade story. While Dorothy was telling her this, Rose was looking at Dorothy’s ash-blonde wig, which was glossy and luxuriant and not for a moment believable, and her face, whose chipped and battered look the wig and her turquoise eye shadow emphasized. In a city she would have looked whorish; here, people thought she was outlandish, but glamorous, a representative of some legendary fashionable world.
    “That was the last time I trusted a man,” Dorothy said. “At the same time as me he was laying a girl who worked in here—married girl, a waitress—and his grandchildren’s baby sitter . How do you like that?”
    At Christmas Rose went back to Patrick’s house. She had not seen Tom yet, but he had sent her a fringed, embroidered, dark blue shawl, bought during a conference holiday in Mexico, in early December, to which he had taken his wife (after all he had promised her, Rose said to Dorothy). Anna had stretched out in three months. She loved to suck her stomach in and stick her ribs out, looking like a child of famine. She was high-spirited, acrobatic, full of antics and riddles. Walking to the store with her mother—for Rose was again doing the shopping, the cooking, sometimes was desperate with fear that her job and her apartment and Tom did not exist outside of her imagination—she said, “I always forget when I’m at school.”
    “Forget what?”
    “I always forget you’re not at home and then I remember. It’s only Mrs. Kreber.” Mrs. Kreber was the housekeeper Patrick had hired.
    Rose decided to take her away. Patrick did not say no, he said that maybe it was best. But he could not stay in the house while Rose was packing Anna’s things.
    Anna said later on she had not known she was coming to live with Rose, she had thought she was coming for a visit. Rose believed she had to say and think something like this, so she would not be guilty of any decision.
    The train into the mountains was slowed by a great fall of snow. The water froze. The train stood a long time in the little stations, wrapped in clouds of steam as the pipes were thawed. They got into their outdoor clothes and ran along the platform. Rose said, “I’ll have to buy you a winter coat. I’ll have to buy you some warm boots.” In the dark coastal winters rubber boots and hooded raincoats were enough. Anna must have understood then that she was staying, but she said nothing.
    At night while Anna slept Rose looked out at the shocking depth and glitter of the snow. The train crept along slowly, fearful of avalanches. Rose was not alarmed, she liked the idea of their being shut up in this dark cubicle, under the rough train blankets, borne through such implacable landscape. She always felt that the progress of trains, however perilous, was safe and proper. She felt that planes, on the other hand, might at any moment be appalled by what they were doing, and sink through the air without a whisper of protest.
    She sent Anna to school, in her new winter clothes. It was all right, Anna did not shrink or suffer as an outsider. Within a week there were children coming home with her, she was going to the houses of other children. Rose went out to meet her, in the early winter dark, along the streets with their high walls of snow. In the fall a bear had come down the mountain, entered the town. News of it came over the radio. An unusual visitor, a black bear, is strolling along Fulton Street. You are advised to keep your children indoors . Rose knew that a bear was not likely to walk into town in the winter, but she was worried just the same. Also she was afraid of cars, with the streets so narrow and the corners hard to see around. Sometimes Anna would have gone home another way, and Rose would go all the way to the other child’s house and find her not there. Then she would run, run all the way home along the hilly streets and up the long stairs, her heart pounding from the exercise and from fear, which she tried to hide when she found Anna there.
    Her heart would pound also from hauling the laundry, the groceries. The laundromat, the supermarket, the liquor store, were all at the bottom of the hill. She was busy all the time. She always had urgent plans for the next hour. Pick up the resoled shoes, wash and tint her hair, mend Anna’s coat for school tomorrow. Besides her job, which was hard enough, she was doing the