I went on with my narrative. The tempo of the Brunsons’ lives slowed down as I talked until, by the time the tea was ready, the dentist and his wife had become as inactive and unfeeling as the china family in Betty’s doll house.

“I can’t wait all day for my breakfast,” called my mother.

“It’s only five-thirty. The fire won’t get hot. Oh, Christmas, Mamma! Why can’t you be like other people?” I had not intended to be harsh, but I had burned my fingers on the metal teapot as I lifted it from the stove and since I was vexed already, the little injury enraged me. No reply came from the bedroom. When I took in her tray, my mother did not look up but stared at the back of her hands. “In the dream, the bones right there felt like they were broken under the sores. It was awful! I don’t know if I can eat anything, thinking about them.”

Nevertheless, she lifted the teacup and drank a little. “Listen,” she said, “it wasn’t Luibka in the dream at all. It was a man, like I said, and he wasn’t a stranger either, but for the life of me I can’t think who it was. Not your father. Not Gonzales. Not Mr. Kadish. Who in the world was the nasty dog?” She named the men she knew: doddering old Mr. Brock at the Hotel, Mr. Henderson, the Fuller brush man who had given her the black tooth-brush, Mr. Greeley, her father, Nathan Kadish. The doctor did not cross her mind.

•

I thought of going to the hospital after school to tell the doctor that my mother could not see him that evening, and yet I reasoned that I could give him no proper excuse, that I might offend him by appearing to be suspicious of him when perhaps he was only acting out of the goodness of his heart. All day I was anxious. I could feel my forehead wrinkle into a frown that did not come from my diligent following of the text of the Aeneid or the Ode. I did not hear my name called out in the Algebra class roll and I elicited from my teacher the remark, “I must be having a hallucination. I could swear someone was sitting in Sonie Marburg’s seat.”