Their marriage counselor was a collector. The obligatory African masks yes, but in addition, life-sized wooden statues of ebony warriors, enormous clay urns, exotic weavings, and at least a dozen fertility figures. Isabel found the place claustrophobic, made a point to enter before Gary to claim the chair by the window. It was her husband who had to deal with the clutter.

“So?” Dr. Schott extracted their file from a stack on her desk. She looked from Gary to Isabel. “Where were we?”

Gary motioned toward Isabel with an open hand. “The Bodhi can answer. I went first last time.” Isabel looked away. This name-calling was new. 

During their sessions she often found herself gazing out the window having drifted from the overcrowded office, the conversation, their problems. Her focus would rest instead on a cool stand of sequoias outside. The redwood’s feathery green branches lightly grazed the glass of the window and shivered delicately in the slightest of breeze. Without the trees Isabel doubted she could survive the counseling sessions. She said, “I believe we were discussing forgiveness.”

Dr. Schott nodded. “That’s right. Last week we decided each of you needs to do some active forgiving before the relationship can move forward.” She tapped her fingertips against the file. “How did the exercise go?” Dr. Schott had a fondness for exercises. The previous week she’d asked Isabel and Gary to create forgiveness cards. Three by five index cards with the words, I FORGIVE YOU, written on them. They were to hand them to one another as conflicts arose.

They never did the exercises. In fact, the exercises they hadn’t done compiled quite a list: They had not gone to the park to take turns pushing each other on the swing and they had yet to leave each other little gifts in secret hiding places. The hiring of a sitter once a week for “date night” seemed the most implausible of all. Jamo, their son, was their only glue. 

Still, Isabel was unable to stop imagining the cards she might have made. Using a red marker, she’d form the three words I FORGIVE YOU in the elaborate curling style she used as a girl in her school notebooks. She could even add some stickers. A red heart maybe or some tiny flowers or a baby-faced cupid pointing his delicate arrow at the bold words. But granting forgiveness seemed presumptuous. Suppose Gary didn’t think he’d done anything wrong and she passed him one of her flowery notes. He’d get pissed, and they’d be even worse off than they were. Besides, Gary was the one who needed to forgive, not her.

Isabel said, “We never made the cards. We never do any of the exercises. Surely you’ve noticed.”

Dr. Schott tilted her head and raised her eyebrows. Isabel guessed the counselor was accustomed to dealing with recalcitrant couples.

Dr. Schott turned to Gary, “How did your week go?” Gary always used his time to vent. In the early sessions Isabel attempted to interrupt him, to put in a little defense for herself, but Dr. Schott raised her palm, the experienced traffic cop. 

Isabel figured it out. Gary was allowed to vent as much as he wished for it was she who’d had the affair. She’d used up her time already and with someone else at that. 

Gary’s monologue stayed consistent. He said, up until the day he’d learned about the affair, his love for Isabel was unfathomable. That even now his anger and hurt felt as fresh as ever. It went on and on. Same old, same old. “Fuck you, Isabel,” was usually an indication he was drawing to an end.

As for the therapist, she nodded her head from time to time and sipped tea from a small exquisite Tibetan teacup.

After Gary finished his tirade Dr. Schott turned to Isabel who felt as if she’d been caught napping. “Do you know what it’s like to be lied to? Let me read you this.” Dr. Schott had a passion for literature. The most current issue of The New York Review of Books rested on her desk. Today it was a passage by the poet Adrienne Rich.

When we discover that someone we trusted can be trusted no longer, it forces us to reexamine the universe, to question the whole instinct and concept of trust.

In the previous session Dr. Schott had brought up something similar, misquoting the ancient Buddhist scholar Shantideva. Betrayal is like a single flash of lightning destroying years of trust and love. 

Isabel said, “Yes, I understand how hurtful I’ve been.” Gary appeared unmoved. He looked at the floor and used the tip of his smooth black shoe to work at the corner of a prayer rug.

Dr. Schott believed in the benefits of symbolic imagery. Early on, she suggested to Gary that he collect some fist-sized rocks, one for each grievance. He was to put the rocks in a backpack and wear it for the week. This was to create a physical awareness of the weight of his anger. Isabel had gone as far as to buy a new backpack at the camping store. She left it in the kitchen but Gary ignored it, and soon Jamo took it over for his school things.

The small red light near the office door brightened, indicating their time was up and new clients were waiting. Isabel scooted forward to the edge of her chair. Maybe they’d get away without one of Dr. Schott’s exercises. She knew it was of no use when the woman said, “Before you go, I have a suggestion.” Isabel sat back.

“This may seem extreme, but whenever I have a situation such as yours . . .” Dr. Schott trailed off for a moment. “When one partner is experiencing great difficulty in letting go of their anger, this exercise has proven completely effective.” She opened the bottom drawer of her desk and removed a sheet of instructions. 

Dr. Schott said, “I want the two of you to take a walk together. Hike far out into the woods, away from everyone. On this hike to a remote spot you should bring along a paper bag and a pair of scissors. Once you are certain that you are alone and won’t be disturbed, Gary, I want you to take the shears and cut all of Isabel’s hair from her head. Cut as much of it as you can.” The counselor paused to let this sink in.

Isabel involuntarily reached up and touched her hair. Her hair was her pride. Lush auburn ringlets which framed her face and bounced when she walked. Even after taking her vow she could not adhere to the severe short style of the other Buddhist chaplains. Whenever she was on duty at St. James she pinned it up in a bun. Little tendrils were always escaping.

She glanced over at Gary and saw the small twitch of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

Her two sisters, both gingers with frizzy orange Brillos, adored her hair. Isabel was the family looker and they loved her for it, although it often felt a bigger life was expected. As a child she’d once heard her mother say, “Isabel’s the one to pull us up out of this rubble.” 

Sadly, she’d done no such thing. She’d as good as turned her back. Sure, there were generous checks tucked into the boxes of California citrus she sent each year at Christmas, but she had yet to visit. Even phone calls were rare.

Dr. Schott nodded in her direction. “Isabel, you are to collect your shorn locks and put them in the paper bag. Take them home with you to keep.”

 “For what?” 

“The next time Gary gets mad at you I want you to bring out the bag of hair and show it to him. You won’t need to say anything. He’ll see it and remember what you gave up for him. His ability to forgive will grow stronger.”

Isabel smiled in spite of her alarm. She feigned nonchalance. “Is it really such a big deal to have a shaved head? These days it’s almost stylish.”

Gary said, “She can get her Buddha on and walk around looking like a monk.” Isabel wanted to protest, but did not. Dr. Schott wouldn’t appreciate the interruption.

“I thought she was a good person. Someone to trust. Well, think again. Even her work, the chaplaincy gig, was a ruse.” He held up both hands and touched his fingers together in the ohm mudra. “Isabel, the sacred faker.” 

She couldn’t keep quiet. “I wish you’d see the precepts as koans, rather than inviolate rules.”

Gary glared at her. “What about our wedding vows, Isabel? Are those koans as well?”

Dr. Schott held up her hand. “Enough. This is not a meaningless austerity. It won’t be as easy as you think.”

Gary leaned toward the counselor. “Since arriving in California my wife has become very caught up with her looks.”

Not true. Gary was the one caught up with appearances. He often complained that her clothes were too dowdy. He didn’t hesitate to point out the extra pounds she’d put on since moving to America. Part of her understood his behavior for Silicon Valley was an overly-competitive place. The moms at Jamo’s school were so lithe and thin. Many of them spent their free time working out at a gym. Pilates Zone, Ballet Barre and Soul Cycle were right around the corner. Why, last fall, she’d attended a Botox party at one of the mom’s homes. She’d shown up thinking it was a committee meeting.

Dr. Schott passed the instructions to Isabel. “This exercise hasn’t failed me yet. For centuries, throughout history, women’s heads have been shaved in chastisement for adultery. This is nothing new.”

Gary and Isabel filed out of the special exit which allowed privacy. Dr. Schott touched Isabel on the arm as she passed. “How is your son?” 

“Better now,” Isabel said. “Thank you for asking.”

◆

“It’s the year of the Dragon,” Jamo announced the following morning as Isabel slipped into an old fleece jacket of Gary’s for the walk to school. “Except, I’m not a dragon—I’m a sheep.” Jamo dropped to all fours. “Baaaaa! Baaaa!”

“Do you mean that you were born in the year of the Ram? I never knew that.”

“I need grass. Me and Kevvy are both sheep. We want to put some grass in our lunch boxes.” Jamo laughed to himself, and Isabel understood that he was imagining opening the lunchbox full of grass in front of his friends. 

She adjusted the backpack on his shoulders. “Let’s go then. We’ll stop by the meadow.” 

The meadow was not much of a meadow, just the vacant lot next door. Weary of looking at the empty dirt-filled parcel, she’d secretly sown a cover crop of winter ryegrass, the same kind which grew along the country roads leading out of Dublin.  

Last autumn, by the bright shine of a harvest moon, she broadcasted the seed by hand. Now the grass was knee high. Jamo pulled a handful, and coarse clods of dirt came up clinging to the roots. 

  “I’ll bring scissors tomorrow so we can cut the roots away. Can you wait?”

Jamo nodded and they continued their walk to school.

Once she was back home, Isabel filled the kitchen sink with hot soapy water and immersed the little plastic parts of the inhaler Jamo used earlier that morning for his asthma treatment. This was a morning ritual.

After he learned of her affair, Gary moved out. He was away for one night only when Jamo began gasping for air. At the hospital, the doctor explained that their son was an asthmatic with a particular set of triggers. His airways started to constrict whenever he felt anxious or upset. The doctor called Jamo a walking barometer, laughing at his own clever term. Neither Isabel nor Gary found it amusing. Their son measured emotional climate in every breath. Gary moved back home, into the spare room, and Isabel set up a camping cot next to Jamo’s bed so she could check his breathing throughout the night. At the end of the hall their own bedroom loomed useless and vacant.

Gary stopped by the house midmorning. This was a new habit of his, coming home from work at odd hours. Checking on her, Isabel supposed. Sometimes she wondered if he wasn’t hoping to catch her up to no good. She stayed where she was in the laundry room sorting their whites from the darks. She listened to his footsteps as he trod through the house into one room and out the other until he located her by the washer with a handful of his dirty undershirts. He stood in the doorway. His words were terse. “Company dinner tonight. Line up the sitter.” With a jerk of his head he pivoted and made his way back through the house. This is as bad as it can get, Isabel told herself.   

◆

She understood the man she was seeing was ending it before he’d ever said a word. By then she and Paul were meeting once, sometimes twice, a week. They met in the mornings north of town at a small motel out on Cross Mountain Highway and always rented the same room, room number seven, located farthest from the road.

A young Indian couple ran the motel, and Isabel found the couple to be much nicer than most of the people she’d met in California. Each time she booked a room they spoke kindly to her in a friendly quiet way. The wife was lovely with fine aquiline features and lustrous dark hair falling almost to her waist. One time, Isabel entered the office to find the husband slowly brushing his wife’s long tresses. She’d felt a rush of embarrassment to witness such intimacy. When handing the key back across the desk she’d get the crazy urge to ask the couple over for a Sunday afternoon barbecue. They struck her as people who’d be content with a simple meal and a game of horseshoes or cards.

Paul was a musician and at first, he too seemed like a person who preferred a simple life. They met at the Menlo Zen Center where she attended Monday morning meditations. Paul almost always arrived late and he often placed his zafu next to hers. Last summer she signed up for additional instruction in the Four Immeasurables and as it happened, Paul was the teacher. After class he offered to take their group out for coffee. He squeezed into their booth next to her. She thought his interest was empathetic for she was shy about speaking up in class. Sitting with Paul reminded her of late nights out with Gary in Dublin at the Brother Hubbard or the Fumbally where they would spend hours sharing their opinions, discussing ideas, and later on after they fell in love, making plans. 

Nowadays it seemed the only thing Gary wished to talk about was the money he could earn on his stock options or how much their house was worth. It was still a type of planning, but her heart wasn’t in it. Gary was controlled by his career. She understood now that he’d been driven all along. It was the reason he’d left America to go to Ireland—to speed up his career advancements, but she’d not given much thought to his ambition back then, her own drive being miniscule.

Isabel was working the late shift the night Gary showed up at St. James’s with a searing sore throat. The nurse gave him two paracetamols and ordered fluids. Isabel, just one bed away, was sitting vigil with an old man at end of life. Near dawn’s light Gary asked her out over the dead man’s body. Audacious yes, but the dead are dead. They became inseparable. Within the year they were engaged. She agreed to marry without hesitation, without once considering the possibility of leaving Dublin or moving away from her family.

What Gary called his “golden opportunity” arrived just before Jamo’s third birthday. In his new job his presence was required at corporate functions and often with wife on arm. Americans were bowled over by her Irish accent. Gary’s investors would walk up to her and demand, “Say something,” without even a proper hello or how are you. She told Gary she felt like a puppet. His answer was curt. “Deal with it.” He reminded her that his career was their future. The dinners were the least of it. Gary’s CEO was a mixed martial arts fanatic, and once every month or so they were required to fly out to Las Vegas. The violence in the ring made Isabel’s stomach turn.

The musician had no interest in material pursuits. That first evening at the café she and Paul fell into easy conversation around music and singing. He invited her to a backyard concert for the following Sunday afternoon. Gary was away traveling for business in China. She called the sitter and thus it began.

Too soon though Paul wanted more than she could provide. He struggled with depression and needed someone who could listen to his worries, someone to console him. In Dublin it had been her job to do just that, but now it was asking too much. She had Jamo to take care of and she had her husband. There wasn’t enough left over to nurture Paul. She could show up at the roadside motel, and they could make love, but that was as much as she had to offer.

When her lover began to understand her limitations he broke off their meetings. The sadness she felt wasn’t only about the end of their affair for what was the affair in essence but a distraction from her isolation? The sadness came also from understanding how far she’d fallen; how very lost she’d become.

◆

The old cinema in Palo Alto had been converted into a bookstore but maintained the intimate feeling of a movie house. With rows and rows of books and soft roomy chairs the place gave Isabel comfort. After the love affair ended she began spending those open mornings at the bookstore. She felt she could not return to the Menlo Zen Center, that was Paul’s territory. At the bookstore she sat and read and sometimes she meditated.

She found a copy of the book Dr. Schott had read from, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence, by Adrienne Rich. She settled into a favorite chair near the children’s section.

…we are thrust back onto some bleak, jutting ledge in a dark pierced by sheets of fire, swept by sheets of rain, in a world before kinship, or naming, or tenderness exist; we are brought close to formlessness.

She closed her eyes and sank deeper in her chair. She focused on her breath, the cool sensation of the inhale at the tip of her nose and a moment later, the warm release of her exhale. Her meditation was cut short when Christine, a mother from Jamo’s kindergarten class, popped her head over a bookshelf and boomed, “Isabel, is that you?”

Isabel cringed. Bookstores should be treated like libraries—speak softly, move quietly. Christine, a tall blonde always brimming with energy, came around the end of the aisle. “Dear one! I’ve been so very worried about you and I’ve been meaning to call.” Christine threw back her head and her pale hair cascaded over her shoulders. “But, you know how busy we all are these days.”

It was true. People were busy. On these winter mornings the elderly or the homeless were the only ones filling the chairs inside the bookstore. Isabel closed her book and looked up at the woman standing above her. “Why worried?” she asked. It was a reflexive response, but she was genuinely curious. Isabel thought of Christine as being too involved with her pet project, a charity fashion show, to notice much else. Isabel understood that her attitude toward Christine was judgmental.

“Why, the divorce,” Christine said. “Jamo told my Ashley about it at school a few weeks back. Jamo said you and your husband, what is it, Jerry?  Jamo said you two are splitting up.”

Isabel felt her face flush. Jamo was telling classmates his parents were divorcing. This, after they’d carefully explained on the day Gary moved out they were simply taking some time apart. Their son hadn’t bought it. The trip to hospital had told them as much. Isabel sat up straight. “We most certainly are not.”

“Ashley insisted.”

Isabel cut her off. “I said, Christine, we most certainly are not getting a divorce.” She could barely keep her voice under control. She stood up so that the woman could no longer loom over her. “Ashley must have made a mistake.”

A year earlier she wouldn’t have dreamt of speaking this way, but under duress her convictions flew right out the window and all her practice went with it. She was weak. Weak for her clinging, for wallowing around in the pain of homesickness, and for the craving. For wanting back the old Gary.

Christine must have detected her anger. She stepped away. “Well, I guess you should know.” Then an instant later, “And I’m just so glad! One more divorced couple in kindergarten class is the last thing we need.” She swept a silky strand from her face. “Marriage isn’t easy work, but somebody’s got to do it.”

Isabel nodded dumbly and tried to smile. She felt completely empty.

That night, after Jamo was asleep, she slipped off her cot and went into the family room where Gary was watching television and working on his laptop. “Sorry to disturb you,” she said. He didn’t look up but this was nothing new. It was the very kind of behavior which drove her to the musician. She’d entered the room to tell Gary about her encounter with Christine at the bookstore but she changed her mind. She asked, “Do you want to cut all my hair off?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m serious. If it’ll help, let’s do it.”

“Please,” he said. He looked up from the screen. “Don’t torment me any more than you already have.”

 “If we don’t talk to one another we can’t make it any better.”

Gary reached for the remote and switched off the television.  He closed his laptop and stood up. “Isabel,” he said. “It’s never going to get any better than this.” 

She turned away quickly, her heart caving in. She went into their bedroom and sat down at the vanity. The wasteland of the empty room felt like an accusation. 

In her chaplaincy work she’d specialized in end-of-life care. The other students who were mostly middle-aged mothers and grandmothers kept asking her why a woman so young would wish to focus on end-of-life? But it suited her, her pensive nature, her inherent seriousness. She liked the starkness, the realness of end-of-life work. Her mother was proud of her. Both sisters too. She wasn’t a nun but it was close enough. 

After Gary came along, the work no longer fit her. Why would a young woman choose to focus on the morbid? It became difficult to spend time at the side of the dying. Her compassion never left her, but her interests changed. The move to America offered an escape. She promised herself, when she returned to chaplaincy practice she would work with children. Rollicking impulsive lively children who had their whole lives before them. 

She and Gary agreed that she’d wait one more year, until Jamo was in school for the full day, before returning to work. She should have gone back earlier. Instead of taking a lover. Her true self, her purity, had evaporated in the face of adversity. All the metta, all the compassion in the world could not atone for her actions. She picked up her hairbrush and began the nightly ritual of one hundred strokes. She could hear Gary moving along the hallway, the door to the guest room clicking shut.

◆

Once more, they were at the counselor’s office. Dr. Schott rested her hands on their file. “Well, where were we?” She looked from Gary to Isabel.

Gary turned toward Isabel, but she shook her head. “No, you begin.” She switched her gaze out the window. A dark raincloud hovered just beyond the sequoias. Inside the office the air felt heavy. She remembered a similar rainy afternoon the week before, when she and Gary were on their way to a company gathering at the Rosewood Hotel. They stopped at a traffic light on Sand Hill Road not far from his office and a beggar, a man about their own age, stepped off the median. He came up to the car and tapped lightly on the glass. 

Gary rolled down his window. “You again? Christ!”

“Gary, please.” Isabel reached over and touched his arm.

 “Last week in this very spot, I offered this guy a job. Can you believe it? He asked me for money and I gave him my card. We need a janitor over at the office.”

Isabel hoped the man couldn’t hear the scorn in Gary’s voice. He sounded so put out, so disgusted as if all of humanity had let him down instead of this one poor man out on the street. But, of course, it was she who’d let Gary down. She pushed away the thought.

Gary smacked the steering wheel. “The fucker never even phoned me.” He turned to the man who was dripping wet in the rain. “What about a wife, dude? Got one? Would you sell me your wife? I bet you just would. Still got my card? Send her on over.”

Isabel caught her breath. She’d never seen Gary so base, so cruel. The light turned green and she pointed. “Can’t we go now?” Gary stepped hard on the gas and the man jumped away.

Dr. Schott cleared her throat. “Gary, why don’t you begin today?”

 He said, “She keeps following me around the house. I can’t get any work done.”

“Is she trying to pick a fight?” 

“No, but she’s wanting something.”

Dr. Schott looked at Isabel. “What is it that you wish from Gary?” The therapist sounded sympathetic.

Isabel’s voice trembled. “I don’t know…somehow I thought that we . . .” she faltered. It felt as if all their future depended on her answer. “I thought if we came here and if I apologized, maybe Gary could forgive me. I hoped that we could be a couple again.” She thought back to Christine in the bookstore. “Even if it is just for Jamo’s sake and nothing more.”

Gary wouldn’t look at her. His lips were pressed so tightly together the skin around his nostrils turned color to pale green. He seemed barely able to contain his anger.

Dr. Schott patted the small wooden footstool near her chair. “Come here,” she said to Isabel. “Come sit by me.”

Isabel moved across the room without hesitation, and as soon as she did a great wave of grief rose up inside her. She felt like a child at her mother’s knee. Dr. Schott rested a hand on Isabel’s shoulder. “I can see how much you’re suffering.”

Dr. Schott turned to Gary. “I believe Isabel wants to be a couple again for reasons extending beyond your son. I believe she loves you and is truly sorry for her transgression.”

Sitting next to Dr. Schott made Isabel feel stronger. She looked at Gary. “I miss the intimacy we used to have, our ease in being together.”

The counselor gave Isabel’s shoulder a squeeze. “We’ve been working on this for some time now Gary. Can you picture the two of you together as a couple again? Not right away necessarily but sometime down the road. Can you see you and Isabel reunited in an intimate relationship?”

Gary didn’t answer. He stretched his long legs out across the carpets. He cracked his knuckles and clasped his hands behind his head. 

Isabel wondered how he could be so calm when so much rested on this one moment. 

Gary said, “I don’t know. I just don’t know. Jamo needs us together, true. But it’s like a trap. I come home at night to do my duty and be with Jamo.” He dropped his arms. “Isabel is a stranger to me now. I really can’t imagine her as a part of my life.” 

Isabel felt sad, almost sick, but not surprised.

◆

For almost a week, Isabel and Jamo forgot about the grass they planned to cut for his lunchbox. Then Jamo remembered and once more they left early for school. This time Isabel brought along the kitchen shears. They went into the meadow where she carefully cropped handfuls of cool ryegrass. At school, the teacher took up the project and brought out a small wooden trough. Jamo was so excited. For a moment it was hard for Isabel to imagine her son ever worrying about his parents. She kissed him on top of his head and said goodbye. This small sweet boy was the real victim of her recklessness. His world could not become unfurled. 

She walked home slowly trying to sort it all out. Gary was gone or as good as gone. Paul had not been there in the first place. Throughout the affair he’d never come close to filling the ragged hole inside her. It was foolish to have imagined he would. She felt exhausted from her constant worry, her looping mind that never let go. She took a deep breath and tried to escape by chanting a mantra, right thought, right action, right words. The very best words for Gary would have been no words at all. Truthfulness is a precept yes, but it often comes at great cost. 

Anger was what Shantideva had written about in the Bodhisattva. Anger described as a single flash of lightning which could shatter good works gathered over a thousand ages. 

She should have spared Gary her confession no matter how angry she was with him. It was an error in judgment. She told him in bed of all places. 

Before entering the house, Isabel stopped at the garage and placed the scissors in the car. She went inside and grabbed her keys along with a blue plastic bag from the Sunday paper. There was a place out in the foothills she knew about. It was private yet easy to reach—just a short way off the road in the woods. It wasn’t so far out that she’d miss Jamo’s pickup time. She and Gary hiked there a couple of years ago not long after their move to California. Jamo was so small Gary carried him in a backpack.

On the drive out, Isabel passed the little motel where she and Paul used to meet. She imagined the Indian couple inside the office. They’d be watching TV, the wife sitting nearest to the door the way she always did. By the light of the flickering screen you’d see her long dark hair spilling over her shoulders and into her lap.

Isabel drove beneath great stands of giant sequoias. She looped off the main road into the deeper foothills. The place where she parked wasn’t a parking lot at all but more of an informal pullout. She gathered her items and set off into the woods. The fast pace of too-hot-to-handle Silicon Valley fell behind her and was replaced by a cool misty calm. Time measured differently in the forest, by dripping dewdrops and dappled sunlight. After a few minutes of walking, she found a flat spot at the base of a tall tree. She dropped to her knees. A rush of birdwing occurred somewhere above her—a hawk maybe, or perhaps a dove.

She closed her eyes and bowed her head. Her hair fell forward. Within the dark tent of it, the loamy scent of the earth embraced her senses. It was the same kind of thick moist air she’d breathed all her life in Ireland. She inhaled deeply and held in her breath. She felt rooted to the spot, almost at home. She might stay there forever. She released the breath and let her chant begin. Samma sati, Samma kammanta, Samma vaca. She said it again and again. For the briefest instant she felt a sliver of redemption. With head bowed and eyes squeezed shut she swept her hands across the ground in search of the scissors.