Hausfrau Read Online Free PDF Page B

was that theology that troubled Anna most of all. Anna had no qualms laying this anxiety directly at the feet of the Swiss; it was their adopted son John Calvin who insisted that it was impossible for sinners to consciously choose to follow God, taught that all are fallen, preached that all are lost. He called us slaves to depravity, helpless to the whims of Divine Will. There’s nothing we can do to free ourselves. The fate of every soul is foreordained. Eternity’s determined. Prayer is pointless. You’ve bought a ticket, but the raffle’s fixed.
So what’s the use of worrying if there’s nothing to be done?
That was just it. There was no use. So whenever this crisis presented, Anna would remind herself that one way or the other, it didn’t matter. Either her fate was predecided or she had no fate. There was nothing she could do to change it. Therefore when she worried it was never for very long.
    Oskar Benz was a beloved pastor. By all accounts. How generous he was. How wise. Discerning. Gracious. Sage. But Anna knew nothing of him as a husband. That wasn’t a conversation she’d had with Ursula. She assumed he’d been good to her. They smiled in their photographs. Ursula still wore herwedding band. Beyond that she didn’t know. Was he romantic? A good kisser? Kinky in bed? Violent behind closed doors?
This is none of my business,
Anna thought.
If Ursula isn’t telling, I won’t ask.
    Daniela’s eyes glossed with adoration when she spoke of her father. “I loved him
so,
” she pined to Anna. “I miss him every day. A father’s the most important man in any girl’s life.” Anna’s only response was sad silence. She was twenty-one when her own parents died in a car accident two weeks after her college graduation. She’d loved her father too—both her parents—but after sixteen years the ardor had dissipated (though Anna would likely have never described her affection for them with that word to begin with). “I dunno,” she told Doktor Messerli, when the Doktor asked her to classify her relationship with her parents. “It was normal. Unremarkable.”
    The Doktor pushed on Anna. “Try harder.”
    Anna closed her eyes and searched her memory. “Positive. Liberal, maybe. Reserved, occasionally. Polite, always. Sufficient.” They were good. They loved her. She loved them back. Anna left this out.
    “Mm.” Doktor Messerli jotted.
    “What?”
    Doktor Messerli suppressed a chuckle. She rarely laughed. “Interesting how our souls seek equilibrium. We search out the familiar. The familial. That which we know and have known since perhaps even before we were born. It’s inevitable.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You have described your parents?”
    “Yes.”
    “You’ve also described the Swiss.”
    Bruno rarely spoke of Oskar. They’d skied and hiked together,camped and fished. Bruno was a good father; Anna assumed that Oskar was as well. Bruno stopped going to church long before Anna had met him and she’d never asked him what he thought about God.
Not once,
Anna thought.
Is that right? That can’t be right?
She had no idea what he believed. Asking would have embarrassed them both.
    A T SEVEN A . M . THE bells began to ring. Those bells. Mornings they roused her, evenings they soothed her, and during the dark, marauding hours before dawn they companioned her. They rang on every hour, and twice a day they pealed for a continuous fifteen minutes. They rang on Sundays before church. They rang at weddings, funerals, and national holidays. As many people hated them as were indifferent to them. Few loved them. But Anna did. The ringing of the bells may have been her singular Swiss joy. Anna stopped herself from fully admitting this with her daughter in her arms.
    Polly eventually defeated her pain with sleep and Anna tucked her into her crib once more then slipped out of the room.
She’ll be okay,
Anna told herself.
It’s the newness of the pain that brings the screaming.
A new pain that Polly