Who Do You Think You Are

bread and pâté. Presumably that would keep her quiet, so that Rose could overhear what was being said.
    “I never eat at parties.”
    The woman’s manner toward her was turning dark and vaguely accusing. Rose had learned that this was a department wife. Perhaps it had been a political move, inviting her. And promising her Rose; had that been part of the move?
    “Are you always so hungry?” the woman said. “Are you never ill?” “I am when there’s something this good to eat,” Rose said. She was only trying to set an example, and could hardly chew or swallow, in her anxiety to hear what was being said of her. “No, I’m not often ill,” she said. It surprised her to realize that was true. She used to get sick with colds and flu and cramps and headaches; those definite ailments had now disappeared, simmered down into a low, steady hum of uneasiness, fatigue, apprehension.
    Fucked-up jealous establishment.
    Rose heard that, or thought she heard it. They were giving her quick, despising looks. Or so she thought; she could not look directly at them. Establishment . That was Rose. Was it? Was that Rose? Was that Rose who had taken a teaching job because she wasn’t getting enough acting jobs to support herself, was granted the teaching job because of her experience on stage and television, but had to accept a cut in pay because she lacked degrees? She wanted to go over and tell them that. She wanted to state her case. The years of work, the exhaustion, the traveling, the high school auditoriums, the nerves, the boredom, the never knowing where your next pay was coming from. She wanted to plead with them, so they would forgive her and love her and take her on their side. It was their side she wanted to be on, not the side of the people in the living room who had taken up her cause. But that was a choice made because of fear, not on principle. She feared them. She feared their hard-hearted virtue, their cool despising faces, their secrets, their laughter, their obscenities.
    She thought of Anna, her own daughter. Anna was seventeen. She had long fair hair and wore a fine gold chain around her throat. It was so fine you had to look closely to make sure it was a chain, not just a glinting of her smooth bright skin. She was not like these young people but she was equally remote. She practised ballet and rode her horse every day but she didn’t plan to ride in competitions or be a ballerina. Why not?
    “Because it would be silly.”
    Something about Anna’s style, the fine chain, her silences, made Rose think of her grandmother, Patrick’s mother. But then, she thought, Anna might not be so silent, so fastidious, so unforthcoming, with anybody but her mother.
    The man with the black curly hair stood in the kitchen doorway giving her an impudent and ironic look.
    “Do you know who that is?” Rose said to the suicide woman. “The man who took the drunk away?”
    “That’s Simon. I don’t think the boy was drunk, I think he’s on drugs.”
    “What does he do?”
    “Well, I expect he’s a student of sorts.”
    “No,” said Rose. “That man—Simon?”
    “Oh, Simon. He’s in the classics department. I don’t think he’s always been a teacher.”
    “Like me,” Rose said, and turned the smile she had tried on the young people on Simon. Tired and adrift and witless as she was, she was beginning to feel familiar twinges, tidal promises.
    If he smiles back, things will start to be all right.
    He did smile, and the suicide woman spoke sharply. “Look, do you come to a party just to meet men?”
    W HEN SIMON WAS FOURTEEN , he and his older sister and another boy, a friend of theirs, were hidden in a freight car, traveling from occupied to unoccupied France. They were on their way to Lyons, where they would be looked after, redirected to safe places, by members of an organization that was trying to save Jewish children. Simon and his sister had already been sent out of Poland, at the beginning of the war, to stay with French relatives. Now they had to be sent away again.
    The freight car stopped. The train was standing still, at night somewhere out in the country. They could hear French and German voices. There was some commotion in the cars ahead. They heard the doors grinding open, heard and felt the boots striking on the bare floors of those cars. An inspection of the train. They lay down under some sacks, but did not even try to cover their faces; they thought there was no hope. The voices were