The bell rang again and she went to the door and opened it. A tall fat man stood on the threshold holding his hat.

“Sussman,” he said, holding a card up like a police badge, “Mort Sussman of Sussman and Raines. We’re brokers for this section, Mrs. Levy. We sold you and the other members of your . . . ah . . . community these houses.” His face was heavy, he had big pores in his nose, and he looked greasy even in the cold. “Can I come in?” he asked.

“It’s not convenient. . . .”

“Ah, I should have called. But what I have to say won’t take long, and it’s extremely important.”

There was something wrong with the deed to the house and they were going to lose everything. She knew it was immigrant thinking, her grandmother’s thoughts in her head; they’d closed on the house with lawyers, and brokers, deed searches and title insurance. But the fear stayed and made her feel savage. She wanted to take this fat, ugly man right into the living room, to see Allan lying back on a chintz couch in the sun, member out and gleaming, pointing at his chin. When she was young, she’d have done it, out of defiance.

They said she did everything out of defiance; her mother said she married Adam out of defiance, her father said she beat up her brother Danny for the same reason. She would trap Danny in the park, in a tent of willows at the foot of Seventy-­ninth Street. He was bigger and older but he wouldn’t fight, and once she got so enraged she bit him hard enough to draw blood. When her mother saw the wound, she sent Rachel to her room without supper, and Rachel sat on her bed without moving until her father came in with his glass of brandy. He sat in front of the window and looked at her for a long time. Then he said, “I love you, Rachel.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Do you love me?” he asked. She nodded.

“Then why do you hurt my son?”

Thoughts came to her—because he won’t fight and he went to Hebrew School and had to go to shul on Saturday whether he wanted to or not. But no one cared if she was there Saturday, Sunday, or any other time. In two years, Danny would be bar mitzvahed, even though they weren’t religious, and she would be nothing. Fighting her meant recognizing her. He was strong and she knew he’d beat her good. But that wasn’t the point. Combatants were equals of a sort, and that’s what she wanted. But she didn’t know how to say any of it, so she was quiet.

Her father waited, then said, “You hurt Danny, to defy us, why?” She still didn’t answer.

“Where does it come from—all this defiance? Do me the kindness to explain. . . .”