The narrator's apartment

The narrator's apartment is on 84th Street in Manhattan's Upper East Side in an expensive building with a doorman. She pays for this apartment with the inheritance money she received after her parents' death. (This money and everything it pays for are symbolic of the fact that money cannot buy happiness; the narrator would have been better off with parents who cared for her rather than parents who could afford to set her up in a nice apartment.) The narrator notes the gold buttons in the building's elevator, and describes the other tenants as "fortysomething married people without children...well-groomed, professional" (27). The rest of the homes on the neighborhood's block are townhouses and brownstones, and the building overlooks Carl Schurz Park, where she can see nannies pushing strollers and "Wealthy housewives" (70) who remind her of her mother.

Dr. Tuttle's office

Dr. Tuttle is the narrator's psychiatrist...