Who Do You Think You Are

same things she had always done, and doing them under harder circumstances. There was a surprising amount of comfort in these chores.
    Two things she bought for Anna: the goldfish, and the television set. Cats or dogs were not permitted in the apartment, only birds or fish. One day in January, the second week Anna was there, Rose walked down the hill to meet her, after school, to take her to Woolworth’s to buy the fish. She looked at Anna’s face and thought it was dirty, then saw that it was stained with tears.
    “Today I heard somebody calling Jeremy,” Anna said, “and I thought Jeremy was here.” Jeremy was a little boy she had often played with at home.
    Rose mentioned the fish.
    “My stomach hurts.”
    “Are you hungry maybe? I wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee. What would you like?”
    It was a terrible day. They were walking through the park, a shortcut to downtown. There had been a thaw, then a freeze, so that there was ice everywhere, with water or slush on top of it. The sun was shining, but it was the kind of winter sunshine that only makes your eyes hurt, and your clothes too heavy, and emphasizes all disorder and difficulty, such as the difficulty now, in trying to walk on the ice. All around were teenagers just out of school, and their noise, their whooping and sliding, the way a boy and girl sat on a bench on the ice, kissing ostentatiously, made Rose feel even more discouraged.
    Anna had chocolate milk. The teenagers had accompanied them into the restaurant. It was an oldfashioned place with the high-backed booths of the forties, and an orange-haired owner-cook whom everyone called Dree; it was the shabby reality that people recognized nostalgically in movies, and, best of all, nobody there had any idea that it was anything to be nostalgic about. Dree was probably saving to fix it up. But today Rose thought of those restaurants it reminded her of, where she had gone after school, and thought that she had after all been very unhappy in them.
    “You don’t love Daddy,” said Anna. “I know you don’t.”
    “Well, I like him,” Rose said. “We just can’t live together, that’s all.” Like most things you are advised to say, this rang false, and Anna said, “You don’t like him. You’re just lying.” She was beginning to sound more competent, and seemed to be looking forward to getting the better of her mother.
    “Aren’t you?”
    Rose was in fact just on the verge of saying no, she did not like him. If that’s what you want, you can have it, she felt like saying. Anna did want it, but could she stand it? How do you ever judge what children can stand? And actually the words love, don’t love, like, don’t like, even hate, had no meaning for Rose where Patrick was concerned.
    “My stomach still hurts,” said Anna with some satisfaction, and pushed the chocolate milk away. But she caught the danger signals, she did not want this to go any further. “When are we getting the fish?” she said, as if Rose had been stalling.
    They bought an orange fish, a blue spotted fish, a black fish with a velvety-looking body and horrible bulging eyes, all of which they carried home in a plastic bag. They bought a fish bowl, colored pebbles, a green plastic plant. Both of them were restored by the inside of Woolworth’s, the flashing fish and the singing birds and the bright pink and green lingerie and the gilt-framed mirrors and the kitchen plastic and a large lobster of cold red rubber.
    On the television set Anna liked to watch “Family Court,” a program about teenagers needing abortions, and ladies picked up for shoplifting, and fathers showing up after long years away to reclaim their lost children who liked their stepfathers better. Another program she liked was called “The Brady Bunch.” The Brady Bunch was a family of six beautiful, busy, comically misunderstood or misunderstanding children, with a pretty blonde mother, a handsome dark father, a cheerful housekeeper. The Brady Bunch came on at six o’clock, and Anna wanted to eat supper watching it. Rose allowed this because she often wanted to work through Anna’s suppertime. She began putting things in bowls, so that Anna could manage more easily. She stopped making suppers of meat and potatoes and vegetables, because she had to throw so much out. She made chili instead, or scrambled eggs, bacon and tomato sandwiches, wieners wrapped in biscuit dough. Sometimes Anna wanted cereal, and Rose let her have it. But then she