52 THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER16, 2020
he enjoys looking at her. Of his children,
she’s disappointed him least.
He says, We can’t afford it.
Well, Grethilda says, we could sell
your yacht.
Public education’s good, Hans pro-
tests.
She’s miserable, Grethilda repeats.
She fakes gross illnesses to avoid school!
Her husband’s preference for their
daughter’s company has not escaped
Grethilda. But she never objects when
Hans praises Gretyl’s math skills, and
she limits herself to one Indian rope
burn per week.
Privately, Hans agrees that the girl’s
awkward. She slouches, doesn’t play
sports, seems morose. Sometimes ob-
serving her causes him pain. She used
to hug him voluntarily, call him Daddy.
Sometimes he thinks, It’d be good if she
were gone.
A
t school, the girl hunches. It lessens
the pain. She aces her geometry
test. During shop, she sands her chair
slowly. At lunchtime, she doesn’t eat.
What’s wrong? her friends ask.
My stomach hurts, she admits.
See the nurse, they say.
Honey, the nurse says. Women get
pains all times of the month.
She offers to send Gretyl home.
No, the girl says. She won’t bother
her mother. The girl has an unyielding
love for her mother. The mother’s re-
peatedly told the girl—while sobbing—
that she suffered a terrible childhood.
She was orphaned. She lived with cous-
ins, then strangers, then at a hairdress-
ing school! If it weren’t for the daugh-
ter, the mother explains, she’d be a doc-
tor now. She got an A-minus in college
biology. The daughter feels guilty. She
does not mention that the mother bore
Gretyl at forty. When the mother slaps
her, she does not slap back.
The mother, five-three, weighs a hun-
dred and fifty pounds. The girl, five-nine,
weighs a hundred and ten. It’s too late
for me, the mother sometimes says, sigh-
ing. Gestating you destroyed my metab-
olism. Now I can’t practice medicine.
Gentle snowflakes fall as the girl walks
home. She sticks her tongue out as she
climbs the hill. Approaching the house,
she removes kibble from her schoolbag.
She calls, Here, Mihos, come, Mihos, and
pours it into the bowl under the bush.
Inside, she bites into a cracker, then
feels nauseous.
An ivory Tibetan-wool rug covers
the floor of the living room. Bookshelves
bear Encyclopædia Britannicas, Bibles,
a stereo. Two couches, their cream-col-
ored upholstery inlaid with hundreds
of turquoise-and-gold-feathered pea-
cocks, face each other. They are the
mother’s pride and joy.
On one, she sleeps.
When Gretyl enters, one eye opens.
Storm tonight, she says. Ten inches.
Your father has a trip.
I hope he’ll be O.K., Gretyl says.
The mother sighs. You didn’t feed
that cat, did you?
Gretyl shakes her head.
Why do you hold your stomach?
Stomach ache, Gretyl says.
Jesus, the mother says. It never ends
with you.
The eye closes.
Later, the girl sneaks down to the
cellar. With difficulty, she carries up an
old wooden playhouse. She hides it
under the shining willow at the edge of
the yard and covers it with a tarp. She
brings over the now empty bowl and
calls the cat, but nothing comes.
At dinner, Gretyl can’t eat.
More for me! the father says. He
pulls the girl’s plate toward him.A
t nine, the eldest daughter calls and
Gretyl picks up. Hansa is twenty-
nine, a state congresswoman partnered
with an aerobics instructor. She left Cal-
ifornia to attend college in Boston and
stayed there. Hansa and Gretyl bothread three fantasy novels a week. They
both float fifty feet above their bodies
sometimes, before sleep. They walk fast
and like coffee. They’re beautiful, smart,
hardworking. But Hansa fears pain.
Can’t tolerate the tiniest needle. Gretyl
won’t blink when a drill’s ten inches into
her gut. Hansa plays tennis for hours.
Gretyl dislikes exercise. Hansa doesn’tunderstand remorse. But sometimes she
senses things. On this night, Hansa has
a feeling.
She asks how Gretyl’s doing.
Gretyl says her stomach hurts.
How?
Gretyl describes it.
Listen, Hansa says. It’s your appendix.
Hansa explains that, when an ap-
pendix gets infected, it must be removed.
If not, it ruptures and leaks toxic goo
into the gut, which causes sepsis, organ
damage, and, within a day or two, death.
Hansa says that she had these symp-
toms two years ago. She went to the
hospital, she says, despite her partner’s
skepticism. The doctors scoffed and
tested Hansa for eight venereal dis-
eases; eventually, however, they scanned
her abdomen, spied her enlarged ap-
pendix, and removed it. Six months
back, Hansa adds, their middle sister,
Piece of Shit, developed pains. Hansa
called, heard her symptoms, and urged
her to find a hospital. Piece of Shit re-
fused, because she wanted to teach her
Kaplan class. She went only because
her boyfriend insisted, and after the
doctors tested her for ten venereal dis-
eases they scanned her torso and saw
an infected appendix. It seems unlikely,
Hansa muses, that three sisters would
contract appendicitis within two years.
Particularly since they all live in differ-
ent states, and no known relative has
ever had appendicitis. It sounds, Hansa
says, like a fairy tale. But life, she adds,
is strange. Stress affects the immune
system in mysterious ways. They all
grew up in the same isolated, anxious
house. Perhaps their bodies, though
separated by distance, communicate
with one another. Who knows?
Go to the hospital, tonight, she says.
If you don’t, bad things may happen.
O.K., Gretyl says.
Hansa says, Promise?
Yes.
The parents are watching TV, eat-
ing chocolates, and drinking Irish cream.
The father’s adjusting the picture-in-pic-
ture function, which malfunctioned just
as the mother wanted to use it.
Gretyl relays what Hansa said.
The father’s eyes widen. Of his daugh-
ters, he hates the eldest most.
Ha! he says. Nice that she makes
the decisions from three thousand miles
away! Does she think she’s a doctor?