Enough About Love

ANNA

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ANNA STEIN IS ABOUT TO TURN FORTY. She looks ten years younger in these well-heeled circles where the norm is more like five. But the imminence of this expiration date and the witchery of the number itself send a chill through her, and to think she still feels she is in the comet’s tail of her teens. Forty … Because she thinks there is a before and an after, as in commercials for hair products, she is already living in mourning for what has been and in terror of what is yet to come.

Childhood memory: Anna is seven, one sister, two brothers, the youngest barely talking yet, she is the eldest. It is not easy being the big one, the one who is argued with because the others are too little. But Anna the charmer managed to remain her mother’s favorite. She sits her brothers and her sister around her in a semicircle. The golden light pouring through the window is that of a day coming to a close, probably a Sunday spent in the country. She is standing, book in hand, reading out loud. She spices up the story, which is too straightforward for her liking, with dragons and fairies, ogres and princes, and it all becomes very muddled, she even gets lost herself in places. The children listen to their happy, glowing big sister, fascinated, captivated, frightened too. Gesticulating wildly with her arms, sometimes jumping about, Anna mimes the action and makes sure her intonation sustains the attention of her young audience. She has no doubt: she will be an actress, or a dancer, or a singer.

At fifteen, Anna ties her black hair up to reveal the nape of her neck. She triumphantly inhabits her brand-new woman’s body: she wears leopard-skin leggings and high heels, aggressive bras. She dreams of a life in the public eye, a career under the spotlight, and the names of cities — New York, Buenos Aires, Shanghai — make her swoon. She starts a rock band with herself as the singer, and baptizes them Anna and Her Three Lovers. The lead guitarist, bass player, and drummer are all in love with her, after all. In vain in all three cases, one a little less than the others, but so little.

At twenty, Anna looks elegant in her medical student’s white overalls. She chose one that barely fit her, sacrificing comfort for elegance, wearing it open one button too low at the front, and, as her shoes are the only other thing that show, she puts a great deal of energy into picking them out. Often they are fluorescent. Over the years she becomes Dr. Stein. Intelligent but with a dilettante attitude, she passes every exam: she is probably too proud to mess up in her studies. She is not yet proud enough to dare to want to fail. The adventurous life that would have required so many transgressions is now further and further from her, and she knows that, despite her long legs and beautiful breasts, she will never dance in cabarets. Her mother is a doctor and Anna becomes a psychiatrist, she marries a surgeon, also Jewish, they have two children, Karl, then Lea. “A little Jewish business,” she sometimes laughs. But she has kept something from when she was twenty, a hint of nostalgia for the bohemian: a bold quality in her walk, a light in her smile. Her own tactful way of admitting that she has never completely given up the idea of the stage.

Yes, Anna became Dr. Stein. But does she completely believe it?

Once when she called the hospital to speak to a colleague, she said confidently: “Hello, could I speak to Dr. Stein please?”

Utterly stunned, she hung up immediately, praying the receptionist had not recognized her voice. It was more than an hour before she had the courage to call back.