Manhattan Beach

Since childhood, Anna has traveled between the masculine world of her father and the feminine, domestic world of her mother and sister. She accompanies Eddie on his expeditions, becoming an accomplice of sorts, instrumental to his gaining preferment with superiors like Dexter. Although she has the masculine privilege of being out in the world, Anna draws on traditionally feminine soft skills— discretion and social agreeableness—to help her father with his business ventures. Her diplomatic skills continue at the home, where she lies to her mother to cover where she and her father have been.

In the world of her mother and sister, Anna is a practical helper and nurturer. The world the three of them inhabit—dancing until “all of them grew flushed” and “the small apartment shook and rang with a cheer,” which helps them try on coquetry and relive Agnes’s forsaken career as a Follies dancer—is “like a language that turn[s] to gibberish when [Eddie] listen[s]” (28). This gibberish parallels with Lydia’s echolalia, which Agnes and Anna attempt to respond to and Eddie does not. In their domestic realm, away from the outside eyes that would judge Lydia as freakish, they express themselves without being self-conscious. Nevertheless, Anna learns to sew, dance, and serve as a caretaker for Lydia.