My mother had been wondering if she should leave my father. This question filled her from head to toe. She only ever asked herself, but she asked it so often and with such intensity that she never had time to find an answer. The constant questioning even caused her to hallucinate. Looking at the funeral wreath ribbons, she did not read “Sincere Condolences,” “With Deepest Sympathies,” or “In Eternal Memory,” but “Should I Leave Him?” in a bold and suitably decorative font.

“Should I Leave Him?” didn’t just appear on the funeral wreath ribbons. It was everywhere. When my mother opened her eyes in the morning, the question was already wide awake and dancing under her nose. It swirled in her cup when she poured milk into her first coffee of the day and formed in the smoke of her first cigarette. It dusted the coat collars of the customers in the flower shop or stuck in their hats. It was imprinted on the wrapping paper for the flowers and it steamed from the pot when she cooked dinner.

The question could also get violent. It rooted around inside my mother the way you rummage in a bag for your keys. It fished everything out of my mother that it didn’t need, and that was a lot.

“Are you actually listening to me?” I sometimes asked when telling her I’d learned something new—how to tell time, say, or how to tie a bow. And my mother would reply, “Of course I’m listening, sweetheart,” and she would try to listen, but her question was always louder than anything I was saying. Much later I wondered if the question would have given up and made room for me if Selma and the optician hadn’t always been there, if I hadn’t always had them to turn to, if they hadn’t invented the world together.

“So, what’s the matter, Luisy?” my mother asked.

“I’m afraid something will happen to Martin because of Selma’s dream and because of Palm.”

My mother stroked my hair. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Are you even listening to me?” I asked.

“Of course I am. Why don’t you just go over to Martin’s and cheer him up,” she said, and a customer from the next village came in, so I ran to Selma’s.

The baying dogs in Palm’s yard were on long chains. Alaska stopped at the fence. Selma and I pressed up against the side of the house. The dogs lunged at us, but the chains yanked them back mid-leap. They fell backward, but immediately scrambled onto their feet again.

I grabbed Selma’s hand. “Do you think the chains will hold?” I asked.

“They won’t break. Palm has good chains,” Selma said.