“Earlier, a deliveryman pushed a cart covered with a gray tarp into the store and it looked like a wall, like the wall of regret we all kneel before. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Unfortunately, I didn’t see it,” the optician said, “but I can imagine that’s exactly what it looked like.”

“I didn’t have aching muscles,” Elsbeth said. “I had an imp.”

“I know,” the optician said. “But heat works wonders against imps, too.”

Elsbeth cleared her throat. “You were going to tell me something.” She sat up straight and folded her hands in her lap.

The optician ran his hand through his hair. He stood up and paced back and forth in front of the shelves with eyeglass frames and cases. Now and then he took a small, involuntary step to the right, as he always did when his inner voices accosted him.

Elsbeth considered what would be best for him. When he confessed his love for Selma, should she act surprised, and would she actually be able to say, after all these years, “Well, now, that is news”? She wondered whether she should advise the optician to tell Selma, and whether he might not have a stroke when he realized that he had spent decades trying to conceal a truth that was much too big to hide and so had been standing behind him for all to see.

“So,” the optician said, “Palm has absolutely no time for Martin.”

“I know,” Elsbeth said, and gave him an encouraging look.

“He has made it clear to Martin from day one. And he also chased away Martin’s mother.”

“I know,” Elsbeth said, and asked herself how the optician would segue to Selma. “And he probably beats Martin sometimes, too.”

“Yes, I’m also afraid of that.”

The optician was still pacing back and forth. “He shoots drunkenly at deer and doesn’t hit them. Once, on a binge, he threatened Selma with a broken bottle.”

“Yes,” Elsbeth said, and remembered that the optician had a habit of connecting the most disparate things; he could surely find a connection between Palm and his love for Selma.

The optician stood still and looked at Elsbeth. “This is the secret: last night I took a saw to the posts of his hunting blind.”

IT’S BEAUTIFUL HERE

Night was falling, and Selma repeated what she had been saying all day long: “Do exactly what you’d do on a normal day.” So I went to give Alaska a bath.

Since Alaska didn’t fit into Selma’s shower, I had to wash his front half first and then his back half while the rest of him stuck out of the shower stall. The door was open, and I heard Selma say to my father: “Everyone is afraid of my dream.”

My father laughed. “Mama, please, it’s nothing but nonsense.”

Selma got a box of Mon Chéri. “It probably is, but that doesn’t make things any better.”