The exterminator is just putting back the contents of the cabinet before hers; Isabelle presses her toes into the floor and her back as hard against the cabinet as she can. She wraps her arms around her knees, each hand grabbing the opposite wrist and locking tight.

“Isabelle, you need to get out of the way,” she hears her mother say. Isabelle stares at the red tiles of the floor, blurring the lines between them with her eyes; she will not look up. “Isabelle,” she hears again. “What has gotten into you today?”

“I can move on to the next cabinet,” the exterminator offers. Isabelle can see his boots on the floor now before her, one pant leg caught up in a tongue.

“No, you can’t.” Her mother sounds angry now. “Isabelle,” she says. “Move out of the way, please, right now.”

Isabelle breathes deeply through her nose. She can feel her nostrils flare, and she tightens her grip around her wrists. Her jaw is beginning to ache.

“Isabelle.” Her mother is hissing now, her voice sharp and quick. “I’m sorry,” she says to the exterminator, and Isabelle can hear her footsteps coming across the tiles. She shuts her eyes, tight, withdrawing into herself. She feels her mother’s grip firm on her arm, trying to make her stand up; she clings even more tightly to her knees. “Isabelle.” Her mother’s voice seems distant now, belonging to a world different from the one Isabelle has entered into. She can feel the tiles sliding beneath her and her mother’s hands firm beneath her arms, and then she feels the tiles give way to carpet and then wood, and it splinters her bottom, but she does not yield. She does not uncurl herself, and she does not open her eyes, she will not open her eyes to see the world seeing her reduced to this, this cruel, silent rock of a child dragged across a floor.

II

The phone rings four times before it’s answered; Wilson can hear a dog barking and the shriek of a teapot beginning to whistle, the unmistakable sounds of his mother’s house, before his mother finally speaks. “Hello?” she says. The familiarity of her voice always strikes him; every time they speak, it is as if he had forgotten what she sounds like, and to hear her is like remembering a good forgotten memory.

“Mother,” he says. “It’s Wilson.”

“Wilson!” she says. “I was just making tea. How are you?”

“I’m fine,” Wilson says. “How are you?”

“Oh, well, it’s frightfully cold, and poor Teddy cut his paw on the ice and the salt on the driveway hurts him dreadfully—can you hear him?—and I’ve got some French cousins coming this afternoon, and some of them might stay the weekend, but I never know what anyone’s doing.”

“How is the horsewoman working out, what’s her name?”