He dropped her hand, which didn’t make her move any further away from him. He squatted down, untying and retying his left shoe. Anna had met his father, once, when she had made him take her to the candy store where his father worked. He had introduced her to him, and Anna had been extremely gracious. His father had grunted and gone back to trying to fix the broken cash register.

“You do not know about this,” he mumbled, hearing more than ever how stilted his words were. He straightened up, regretting that he couldn’t go on pretending to tie his shoes forever. “He is a terrible man.”

Anna looked at him, with eyes that seemed like those of some gentle animal unaware of its own claws. “What’s so terrible about him?” she asked.

“Please, I do not wish to discuss it.”

Anna stared at the ground under the streetlamp. She began tracing the cracks in the cement with the toe of her shoe, waiting for an opportunity to say more, unaware that at that particular moment there was nothing on Bill’s mind at all except the movement of her foot (ah, that shoe, he thought, that tiny shoe, the tiny foot inside it! If only—but no, not now). Watching her foot, he succeeded in forgetting what they had been talking about, until, with her foot resting between two cracks (ah, that delicate tracing of that delicate foot! Not to mention the leg it so soaringly became, and then—), she said, “I don’t know what he did, Bill, but you can’t help but feel a little sorry for him, can’t you? I mean, before all this, didn’t you say he had fought in the first war? And then—”

He cut her off, enraged. “I do not—don’t—” (That was right, wasn’t it? He could still picture the little English textbook from when he was nine years old, but naturally with the relevant line in the table gone blank—was it “don’t”? Or was it “donot,” like “cannot”? After five years, he now only forgot the easy things, and then only in moments of utter panic—) “I don’t believe that that is important, Anna.”

(But was that what he meant? Or should he try again? That was one of the blessings of Anna—she would wait and listen while you tried again. Anna’s presence in the world was proof that there was a God.) “Suffering doesn’t earn a person the right to make others suffer,” he heard himself say.

“But it can explain it a little, can’t it?” she offered, suddenly standing still.