The older girls seemed able to remember the order of the dance steps. Kay watched them hard, baffled by their ease and earnestness, trying to copy what their arms and feet did, but she was unable to shake off a sense of dazed confusion. There was dust on the mirror walls and on the hardwood floor. What was she doing here? It seemed to go on for a very long time, over and over again, one-two-three-jump.

There was mention of a recital. It filtered through to Kay, that charmed, important word. Recital. Like ice in a pitcher of water. The class was perfecting a dance routine called “The Wedding,” and Kay’s sister, Joan, was appointed the bride, a deserved tribute it seemed. Everyone else was to be a brides-maid, except for Kay who was given the role of flower girl. She had no idea what this meant. She’d seen her mother cover her hands with flour when she made pie crust, smooth it on her fingers and palms, rub it into the rolling pin and on the pastry board.

A small berry basket filled with torn-up bits of newspaper was put in Kay’s hands. These she was to scatter on the floor during the course of the wedding dance. This crude, stained basket with its improvised string handle and its rubbishy contents spelled out the fullness of her disgrace. Clearly she was being punished, but why? She did as she was told, shuffled and kicked and turned, always a shameful half-second behind the others, and threw paper on the floor, knowing she was doomed and powerless. Something was wrong, but she didn’t know what. Who would she have asked? And what would she have said?

Kay, who is fifty, has no children of her own, but is interested in the way children think and the questions they like to ask. For example: is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? (Which is it?-Kay’s looked it up but can’t remember.) Do these querying children, she wonders, really want an answer? Or is there a kind of hopeful rejoicing at the overlapping of categories, a suggestion that the material and immaterial world spills out beyond its self-imposed classifications? What is the difference between sand and gravel? Between weeds and flowers? Between liking and loving?

It occurs to her that these children may be bluffing with their bright, winning curiosity, being playful and sly, and masking a deeper, more abject and injurious sense of bewilderment. There is, after all, so much authentic chaos to sort out, so much seething muddle and predicament that it is a wonder children survive their early ignorance. How do they bear it? You would think they would hold their breath out of sheer rage or hurl themselves down flights of stairs. You would think they’d get sick and die.

“Do you know Philip Halliwell?” a woman asked Kay.