She was observing a marriage; in the midst of it, its essential nature eluded her. She waited for a revelation. It never came. Thomas had his routines, as fixed as rituals. His parents went about their tasks without consulting each other. They took turns cooking, but Max was responsible for disposing of the garbage and shopping for groceries, Eva saw to the laundry. On Saturdays, they cleaned the house together. In the evening, Max played chamber music on their record player. Eva called it chamberpot music. She preferred Paul Robeson or folk singers, Benny Goodman or Fats Waller.

Thomas had violent tantrums during which he rolled on the floor like an infant madman, screaming till he choked. At other times, he was a self-absorbed little boy who amused himself by piling objects on other objects. Sometimes he lay in his father’s lap, sucking his thumb, staring dreamily up at the ceiling. Eva fed him his supper, her elbow on the table, a spoon thrust out toward Thomas’s open mouth. She drank a whiskey neat while she was feeding him, talking idly to Max about the day’s events. When Thomas flung a jar of applesauce into the air, he observed his mother implacably as she exhorted him. Mild arguments occurred about domestic matters—a leaking faucet, a chair leg that needed mending. Except for the child’s rages, the climate of life was lenient, forbearing. Yet Annie felt a mystery, some concealed drama of temperaments, an excess of emotion that was not so much dissembled as it was restrained. It was not to be found in the hard-surfaced quality of political talk, and she could only speculate about what went on behind the Shores’ closed bedroom door at night. She struggled against such speculation, but it won out, awaiting her every turn of thought.

Once she picked Thomas up from the floor during one of his seizures. He bit her hand so it bled. Eva grabbed the wounded finger. Annie was astonished to feel Eva’s hands trembling. Max washed away the blood, his face stony. “I don’t know why,” Eva said, over and over again, as Max wound a piece of gauze around the finger. They both looked haunted. An hour later, it was as though nothing had happened.

Annie was frequently present during political discussions, sometimes between Max and Eva, sometimes when visitors came. She was not exactly excluded but they talked around her in such a way as to make it clear she could listen but not participate. She didn’t, in any case, wish to take part. Phrases became familiar without ever yielding up their meaning. The world was laid out before her in blocks, like Thomas’s constructions, capitalists, workers, colonial peoples, the masses, the elite, the intelligentsia. In her mind, Annie, like Thomas, kicked away the blocks. It was a wearisome language despite the energy with which it was spoken.