I paused in my recollection, so long that Freud gently asked, “And then?”

“When I had that…feeling,” I said, referring to the pulsing, “I thought maybe I needed to—” To pee, I was about to say. “To go to the bathroom.”

I had hurried out of the auditorium, I told Freud, side-stepping along the row of seats, all those middle-aged knees. I could feel my father’s gaze burning into my back, reproaching me, but I kept speed walking, my shoes thudding on the carpet, past the usher and along the hallway and by the water fountain and through the bathroom door.

The stalls had been empty save for the first, where a woman in orthopedic shoes blew her nose loudly. “Psssssss,” I heard her say, beckoning the pee, and after a moment there was the responsive tinkle. I walked fast to the far end and put toilet paper on the seat and tried to squeeze out some pee myself, but I could hardly do so, it was so swollen. I reached my fingers down to touch the hot sleek pillow, and this felt good, like some relief. The woman flushed and moved to the sink, I pulled the skirt of my dress farther up my legs and continued to press my fingers inside as an image of Werther, clutching his head, floated before me. The woman washed her hands, the door swung closed behind her, I continued to press into the softness until it began to clench and unclench and clench and unclench and a raw yelp escaped from somewhere deep inside. The sound bounced back from the walls of the bathroom stall.

“By the time I returned to my seat,” I said, “Werther had died, and the opera was over.”

Freud’s hands were still on my forehead. I felt sudden panic that, in recounting the story, I’d begun to touch myself—had I? I grabbed for the top of my pants underneath the blanket and found them still buttoned. My fingertips were dry. Okay.

But I had wanted to.

Could I?

No. Stop.

“What was it about Werther that so aroused you?” Freud said, interrupting.

“It was…” But I couldn’t say. Not because I was withholding something, but because I didn’t know. The only thing I could think was: His ass. And also: Maybe he reminded me of you. “I don’t know,” I said, and after that I didn’t speak.

Minutes of silence. Then Freud spoke.

“Did your parents often bring you to the opera?” he said. He was coaxing me. I would be coaxed.

“No,” I replied. “That was the first time.”

They went somewhere every Saturday night, I told him—this was before they’d begun their tradition of hosting weekly dinners—and would leave me at home to eat microwaved meals with the sitter. They went to dinner, to the theater, to a lecture, to visit colleagues—and, sometimes, to the opera. On these occasions, they would listen to the sound track all week in preparation, and I’d be alternately entranced and repulsed by the voices streaming out of the speaker. Mostly, I tried not to listen, because doing so would make me think too much about the moment they would leave. I always stood at the window after they’d walked out the door, in a cloud of my mother’s perfume, looking down at the street below, waiting for their tiny heads to emerge from under the awning of our building. I would watch them hail a cab. I would watch this dollhouse version of my father open the door for my mother. I would watch her delicately lift her dress to step inside and my father step in after her. Then the door would close, and the cab would leave, and I would strain at the window until I could no longer see the taxi’s two bright red eyes.