"My husband wants to see me again. He's brought our daughter with him, and she wants to see me, too."

"I know."

I looked for Dr. Jack's teeth, but he kept stroking his hand down his face, down his sideburns, beard, barely touching the hair above his lip. I looked but saw nothing white or yellow or even green. Maybe he never brushed his teeth. Used his hairy face to hide his sin. Or maybe the Nazis had torn them from his gums, and left him to either bleed or starve to death.

"Lou was here this morning. He wants you get better, that's why he's stayed away. But your sister wrote him a letter telling him how much you've improved."

"No, I haven't."

Now, he who had survived horrible, unspeakable torture was touching the arm of my chair. "Yes, you have."

"I'm sick."

"No, Kassie. You face your demons now, remember? Nobody hates you."

Then he let the silence hang in the room. Dangle and spin. Round and round like the spoon Aunt Lily swirled in the glass jar just before she drizzled the honey over her steamy pancakes. And we'd eat the pancakes. Me and Delia and Lou. Lou, the neighbor boy. Skinny, like me. People would point at us and say we were sticks. Bones. "Turn sideways, and we can't see ya'." But Lou would stand defiant, flicking them his wet tongue or flipping them his longest finger.

I knocked him down a hill once, in the snow, and the next summer I hit him with my bicycle when I turned my head to gawk at a boy with muscles. His nose bled both of those times. And I was sorry that I'd hurt him. But it was an accident. I didn't mean to.

I didn't mean to.

I remember jamming the soiled rags along the bottom of the garage door before I nestled myself behind the wheel of the Mercury. Fingers that weren't really mine turned the key, and the radio came on, blaring.

Lou had stopped loving me. He was tired of my insecurities. Exhausted with having to bolster my ego. "You're a woman, Kass," he'd said, yelled, swore. "For Chrissakes, act like it. Olivia needs a mother."

The engine hummed as Paul Simon whammed the nail on the head and sang of still being "crazy after all these years." But he didn't really know.

I don't remember anything past that line as the vapor surrounded me. I just knew I was killing Lou. I was steaming him from the fibers of my soul. If he didn't love me, and I was just some burden, what was there?

As much as I looked at the butts of bus boys, I never wanted them. I never wanted to touch the hairy legs of the stranger who sat beside me while naked men and women did things I'd only done in private. Nazis must have made those filthy films.

"I didn't think the fumes would get into the house."

What did you think would happen?

"I thought Lou would find me and wrap me in his arms when he saw how much he meant to me."

Bullshit.

"I thought the pain would end."

What pain?

"The pain of just being alive and not being able to really live."

Go away, you're just pretending. You have a layer you haven't peeled away.

I looked at Dr. Jack. He still hadn't said anything. But he smiled. It was odd. He'd never smiled at me before, but he was doing it now. And he had teeth. White, straight teeth that no crazy Nazi terror tool had touched.

"I loved my father," I said.

But it was a lie.