She leaves the bathroom and stashes the notebook between the mattress and the box spring of her and Wilson’s bed, and then she stands for a minute, trying to remember what it was she’d been in the middle of doing before this. Dinner! She was going to order dinner. She doesn’t have the patience anymore to look for the menu; her mind is racing with images of Isabelle’s drawings, and her eyes feel dry and wide with hope. She’ll just call the place and order from memory, she thinks, and she’ll ask Isabelle and Wilson if there’s anything special they’d like to order tonight; she feels like celebrating. She hurries down the hall to Isabelle’s room, so distracted by her excitement that she bursts into Isabelle’s room without first knocking. “Isabelle!” she cries, and then she stops. Her daughter had been facing the bookshelf when Ruth entered, but whirled around at the sound of the opening door; Ruth now finds herself face-to-face with a blindfolded child trying too late to rip the blindfold—really a winter scarf—from her eyes, caught underneath the earmuffs on her head. “Isabelle,” Ruth repeats, quiet this time, puzzled.

Isabelle has pulled the blindfold over her head and drops it to the floor. Her face is red, the earmuffs now around her neck. She glares at her mother.

“I’m sorry,” Ruth says. “I should have knocked.” She feels herself wither under Isabelle’s gaze. She should have knocked, she thinks. Of course she should have remembered to knock; Isabelle has always insisted on it. Ruth stands lamely, unsure of what to do. For a minute, she can’t remember why she even came in, and then when she does remember, it doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Isabelle isn’t going to want anything special; she probably won’t want anything at all, just as she didn’t want breakfast this morning. She looks at the blindfold on the floor, the fuzzy white earmuffs. Maybe her daughter is planning on going blind and deaf as well as mute, Ruth thinks bitterly. She looks at Isabelle, her wet hair kinky and wild, her eyes like ice. Ruth feels her own eyes begin to burn, and she lets them drop. “I’m sorry,” she repeats quietly, and, quietly, she leaves the room.