I laughed. Sonia smiled at me, but Inga shook her head. “Next time, just say you have nothing to say.”

I don’t know why the picture of Sonia at that moment has fastened itself in my memory. She was wearing a pair of sweatpants and a ragged T-shirt with words on it. I’ve forgotten the words, but I remember her face very well. She was so lovely, my niece, just eighteen, standing in the hallway with her fine face, her large dark eyes, and that long lithe body. She looked like both her mother and her father, but that evening I saw only Max in her. God, I missed him. God, he could write. He tapped the underground in his stories—the harrowing nether regions of human life, articulated in a language we all understand. But Inga was right. He did get sadder, and he had a rough time sleeping. I remembered making a delicate suggestion to him once that psychotherapy or an analysis might be an adventure for him, and if that seemed impossible, an antidepressant might lift his low spirits, but he’d have to lay off the booze. Max had leaned close to me and clapped me on the arm. “Erik,” he said, “you mean well, but I’ve got a self-destructive bent, in case you hadn’t noticed, which I very much doubt, since you do this for a living, but people like me don’t go in for salvation. Crippled and crazy, we hobble toward the finish line, pen in hand.”

THAT NIGHT I dreamed that Inga and I were in a long corridor. Sonia was locked behind one of the doors. Inga was walking in front of me. Something was wrong with her legs, and she was limping. On her head she was wearing a red wig, which I found unsettling. I called Sonia’s name, walked to a door, opened it, and was greeted by a blast of light that illuminated, not Sonia, but Sarah, my patient Sarah, who committed suicide in 1992. “Sarah,” I said. “You’re here.” Her eyes were huge. She shuffled toward me with her arms open as if she wanted to embrace me. “Dr. Davidsen,” she said in her quaking, too-loud voice. “Dr. Davidsen, I can see!” I jolted awake, waited for my racing heartbeat to subside, and then walked downstairs for a glass of milk. I put on Charlie Parker, sat down in my green chair, and listened for a while until I felt able to return to bed.

SECOND-SEMESTER ENGLISH INCLUDED the ordeal of writing a proper research paper. I no longer remember why I selected Savonarola, the Italian reformer and martyr who drove the Medicis out of Florence. I had no problem with the subject matter. But I lost my way in the mechanics of research—endless note cards, each one with a special function that had to be filled out just so. More confusing was footnoting, with mysterious terms like ibid. and op. cit. Note cards were scattered in sorted piles throughout my room. As a temporary reprieve from my mental chaos, I checked on my mail. At the post office I opened a letter that instructed me to report to Fort Snelling on March 16, two days before the term paper was due. I returned to my room, swept up every wretched note card, and tossed them into a trashcan. After I went to bed that night, panic struck. What would I do if I failed the army physical?