“All I need is to be free of my childhood.” I pressed my nose against his arm.

“Acting as if it didn’t exist,” he said, “isn’t the same as being free of it.”

He gently twisted his arm free and tried to make eye contact with me.

“I’m not going to call,” I said.

“You grew up in the midst of a conflict, but that doesn’t mean that it’s yours,” he said.

“When did you become a psychologist?”

“I’m your boyfriend.”

“But you think I need to be in therapy.”

“I don’t know . . . maybe. What do you think?”

“I don’t have time for psychoanalysis.”

“Signe, I didn’t say that you should start therapy, just that you should call home—”

“Two times three hours a week, a monologue on a couch . . . I don’t have those hours. Or the money. Besides, I have more faith in a behaviorist approach. I am a rat. I have learned that contact with my mother produces frustration. Ergo: I stay away from her.”

“You aren’t a rat.”

“She’s a lever. When I press it, I get a shock. And I want you to stop being Skinner.”

“I’m not Skinner.”

“You want to put me in the laboratory again.”

I twisted away from him and rolled over onto my back to stare up at the ceiling. It was stained yellow from cigarette smoke and time.

“I should paint,” I said.

“What?”

“The ceiling.”

“Why?”

“Why does one paint a ceiling?”

“You’re changing the subject.”

“I’m done talking about it. I have been done with it for many years.”

“Are you going to spend money on this shabby bedsit?”

“The landlord will cover the cost, for sure.”

“But we aren’t going to live here, are we?”

“Why not? It’s cheap.”

He laughed. “And after a while it will be pretty crowded.”

“It’s still just a lump of cells.” I twisted toward him again, caught myself in time—stop it Signe, you know what he wants and he loves you, why are you pushing like this, why do you keep insisting?

I laughed softly, to emphasize that it was a joke, and hugged him.

But he didn’t return the hug. “I want you to call it something else,” was all he said.

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

“Sorry.”

“And call Iris. Iris, not your mother.”

“I would rather lie on a couch six hours a week.”

“It’s cheaper to call home.”

“I don’t want anyone to know yet. Not her, not Daddy, not your parents.”

“But I want to tell people.”

“Not yet. Please. We don’t know yet how things will go.”

“Fine. We’ll wait. But you can still call her.”

“Maybe.”

“Think about it. I just want everything to be fine when the baby comes.”

“I’ll think about it.”