As a child, I had been obsessed with stories of covered wagons. The Wild West. Wagon trains riding off into the sunset. Children walking all the way to California. They moved so slowly, the wagon trains, that each night they were within sight of the place that they had camped the night before. I hadn’t been able to imagine it then, but now, of course, I understood how one could see easily places that can never be returned to. It could all be right before your eyes.

That evening I recycled the tram tickets, wrapping them in the paper the flowers had come in. Yellow lemony tissue. I threw it all into the bins.

3

There was a problem with my new Swiss credit card. It was cracked a little, just across the security chip. It was almost invisible, the crack, but in the end it didn’t matter that it was so small because I couldn’t use the card to buy things or to make withdrawals at the ATM. I kept having to ask M for money. He’d leave it for me on the counter and I’d use it to buy food or little presents for E when we were out. But I wanted to take things into my own hands as it were, and one morning I wrapped B in his swaddling blanket and set him all businesslike in his stroller and took E’s hand and we rode the tram into Geneva to go to the bank.

I showed my broken card at reception and an assistant led me into a private waiting room that was very white and had a large paper chandelier swanning down into the middle of it. E wanted to touch it and I did too but I told her no. B began to fuss in his stroller and I got him out to nurse him. I had my shirt hitched up and me everywhere out in the room when the assistant came back with the obligatory thimble of espresso and he was so startled that he dropped the cup. Of course this brought the cleaning crew but by then B was finished nursing and I set him smacking his lips and sleepy back into his stroller for a nap. I tucked my shirt back into my skirt and the assistant brought a second cup of coffee and we both avoided looking at each other while I took it and thanked him.

In the end though, there was nothing they could do for me at the bank. They said it like that, in beautiful English, over and over again. The account manager, the director and the managing director of the department. There is nothing we can do to help you. I kept asking to talk to someone else, but in the end there wasn’t anyone else. I spilled my wallet out and picked up all the pieces: my cards, my ID. This is me, I said. But the problem was, I wasn’t on the account. I was tired, B hadn’t been sleeping and I couldn’t, just really couldn’t think through what they were saying to me, the manager, the director and the managing director. For an instant I almost really went toppling over, my vision suddenly blurring, filling with the shapes of their faces, all smiling politely and nodding at me.