I’d recounted the bookcase debate, the tug-of-war, and her fall to the floor when Ira interrupted again. ‘Let me get this straight,’ he said. ‘You’re telling me she crawled inside the bookcase?’ His voice cracked with mock shock. He affected an incredulous smirk and leaned over the coffee table, pointing the microphone at me. Carleen, of course, would have already told him every detail. But to humor him, and for listeners’ benefit, I said yes, as if he were hearing it for the first time—yes, she crawled inside. ‘May I?’ he asked. He stood from the ottoman and walked over to the empty bookcase, eyeballing it as he laid one hand on its top. Then he tilted the frame toward him and lowered it all the way to the floor, so that it was lying on its side. Finally—and this I was not prepared for—he got down on hand and knee himself, as if to inspect the crawlspace, and without a word he crawled inside. Hugging his knees to his chest, just as Fredricka had, he looked out at us. He’d taken the microphone in with him, and the way he held it up to his mouth gave him a strangely solemn, buried-alive aspect: like a mountain climber in an avalanched cave, recording his final testament. ‘So,’ he said, ‘to all you listeners out there. I just want you to know that I’m sitting inside the bookcase. Right now. My whole body. I’ve crawled inside, just like poor Fredricka. And I’ve gotta tell you: you would have to really want this bookcase to do something like this. It’s cramped. I feel silly. My—uh—head’s pressing against the top here. No dignity at all. And just think about doing this at seventy, eighty years old.’

‘And don’t forget,’ Michelle said, ‘that he was rocking it.’ She stood from beside me and joined Ira at the bookcase, grasping the frame. Fredricka had wanted it enough not only to crawl inside, she said, but to stay there at the risk of injury. Michelle rattled the bookcase, in demonstration. Then, looking at me, she said: ‘Show him.’ I didn’t move. ‘Come on. Show him how you rocked the bookcase.’ I glanced to Ira, scrunched between the shelves. His knees jutted to either side of his face, and his eyes looked wide and frightened, uncomprehending. Is this what Michelle wanted me to see? To understand that the fear in this face is what I had inflicted on Fredricka? In Ira’s terror-widened eyes, was I supposed to see myself as Fredricka saw me? My worst self reflected back.

Before I had a chance to react, Ira recomposed himself, angling the microphone toward me and proceeding with the interview. ‘Then what happened?’ he asked. Evidently he was planning to stay in the bookcase. I would have to address the story to his hunched form. This seemed to be what he wanted—like a director he was drawing a lively, naturalistic performance out of me. Recognizing my hesitation, he smiled. So I strode over and glared down at him. I impersonated myself goading Fredricka: you’re acting like a child, I recited at Ira—you’re being childish. How much longer do you think your bladder will even hold? Is this how you raised your son? Ira smiled again and made waterwheel motions with his free hand, encouraging me to keep it coming. ‘Is it?’ I asked. ‘Is it? Is this how you raised your son?’ When I reached Fredricka’s climactic shriek—‘MY SON IS DEAD!’—I actually did the shriek. In a scratch-throated witch’s voice I lamented at the top of my lungs that ‘my’ son was dead, then started coughing uncontrollably. Ira and Michelle both laughed.