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It’s a funny concept, guilt. The first emotion Mrs. March could ever remember feeling. She had been around three years old, toilet trained but not yet proficient in the art of wiping. Her parents were hosting a luncheon. She couldn’t recall exactly who was present, or why she and her sister Lisa were allowed to sit at the dining table, but in the midst of eating her pureed vegetables—perhaps through some Freudian connection—she felt the unavoidable call of nature. She looked to her mother, who was presiding at the table a few chairs away. Pushing her chair back noisily, her linen napkin falling to the floor, she made her way to her mother, her pudgy hands gripping onto chair finials. She reached Mrs. Kirby in the middle of a shrill, rippling laugh, of a kind never heard in the apartment unless guests were present. On tiptoes, Mrs. March cupped her hand and whispered into her mother’s ear, her nose brushing one Chanel clip-on: “I have to go to the bathroom.”

Her mother sighed, asking “Can’t you hold it in?” through gritted teeth. When Mrs. March shook her head, her mother dismissed her with a flick of her hand.

Mrs. March still dreamed of it some nights—the shadows of her dangling feet on the tan marble as she perched on the guest bathroom toilet. She had used that particular bathroom, presumably, because it was nearest to the dining room. So that her mother could hear her when she called out to her—“Mommy! I’m ready, Mommy!” After what felt like an impossibly long time (what if she never came?), her mother appeared, furious, muttering under her breath, “Couldn’t you have waited? . . . shouldn’t be my job . . . Lisa never . . .” She wiped her daughter’s behind with such force it left her raw. Afterwards, whenever Mrs. March called for her mother from the bathroom to come and wipe her, the help would appear in her stead.

That was Mrs. March’s first experience with guilt.

Then, aged four, she had received a lavish dollhouse on Christmas, bursting into tears upon tearing off the gift wrap.

“What is it?” her mother asked. “Isn’t it what you wanted?”

She nodded and continued to cry, snot running down to her lips.

“Ugh, she’s so spoiled,” her sister Lisa said, holding her own present—an elaborate chemistry set—with mature dispassion.

Mrs. March hadn’t, at that moment, been able to explain that she had in fact wanted that particular dollhouse, that she had fantasized about it ever since first glimpsing it in the FAO Schwarz catalog. And now here it was, a mammoth Victorian, complete with miniature paintings in gilded frames and working light fixtures and a porcelain bathroom. She’d done nothing to deserve it, hadn’t worked for it the way she would for a gold star sticker in her preschool class. She had merely asked for it, and now here it was, in her undeserving hands.

Lisa rolled her eyes, saying, “Jeez, it’s not that big a deal. You’ll get what you want next year,” as Mrs. March wept quietly.

Guilt was for the brave. Denial was for the rest.