Annie on My Mind

Chapter six

senior project. Sally and
Walt were there, bent over a huge piece of poster board, painting, and I
had to admit that Sally looked happier and more relaxed than I'd seen
her for some time. Maybe, I thought, doing this won't be so bad for her
after all.

"Hi, Liza," Walt called cheerfully, as I rummaged in the
supply cabinet. "What shall we put you down for? We're making a list--how
much do you think you can pledge?"

"Pledge?" I asked, not understanding.

"That's the word Mr. Piccolo says fund raisers use," Sally said proudly.
"It means, how much do you promise to give to the Foster Fund Drive.
Doesn't that sound good, Liza--Foster Fund Drive? So--um--metaphoric."

"Alliterative," I grumbled, sitting down.

"Welcome back, Liza," Ms.
Stevenson said, peering out
from behind her easel, where she was working, as usual, on what we all
jokingly called her masterpiece; it was a large abstract painting none
of us understood. "Thanks," I said, poking a pair of dividers down so
hard I made a hole in my paper.

"Ms. Stevenson's pledged twenty-five
dollars," Sally said sweetly, waving a small notebook.

"I don't know what I can give yet, Sally, okay?" I told her.

"Okay, okay," she
snapped. "You don't have to be that way about it." Then her angry
expression vanished as if it had been erased, and she got up and put her
hand on my shoulder. "Oh, Liza, I'm sorry," she moaned. "It's me who
shouldn't have been that way. I'm sorry I snapped at you for being
uncertain." She patted my shoulder. Ms. Baxter, I thought; she's been
talking to Ms. Baxter--that's what it is. But of course I couldn't say
that.

"It's okay," I muttered, glancing at Walt, who shrugged. Ms.
Stevenson dropped a large tube of zinc white, and Sally and Walt nearly
crashed into each other trying to be first to pick it up for her. I
pushed away from the drawing table, muttered something about homework,
and ran out of the art studio. Before I even thought about it
consciously, I was in the phone booth in the basement, dialing Annie's
number. As I waited for someone to answer, I reluctantly noticed the
paint peeling off the steam pipes that ran along the walls, and a big
crack that ran from the ceiling almost to the floor. All right, all
right, I said silently. I'll do something for the silly campaign!

"Hello?" came Nana's gentle voice. "Hi," I said--I never knew whether to
call her Nana to her face or not. "This is Liza--is Annie there?"

"Hello, Lize. Yes, Annie's here. How you been? When you come see us?"

"I'm fine," I said, suddenly nervous. I'll come soon."

"Okay. You not forget.
Just a minute, I call Annie." I could hear her calling in the
background, and was relieved to hear Annie answer, and I closed my eyes,
trying to visualize her in her apartment, only it was the beach that
came back to me, and I could feel myself starting to sweat. But it still
made sense to me; every time that scene came back to me, it made sense.

"Hi, Liza," came Annie's voice, sounding glad.

"Hi." I laughed for no
reason I could think of. "I don't know why I'm calling you," I said,
"except this has been a weird day and you're the only part of my life
that seems sane."

"Did you get it?"

"Get what?"

"Oh, Liza! Did you get reelected?"

"Oh--that." It seemed about as far away as Mars, and about as important.
"Yes, I got it."

"I'm so glad!" She paused, then said, "Liza, I ..." and stopped.

"What?"

"I was going to say that I missed you all day. And I kept wondering
about the election, and ..."

"I missed you, too," I heard myself saying.

"Liza?" I felt my heart
speed up again, and my hands were
damp; I rubbed them on my jeans and tried to concentrate on the crack in
the wall. "Liza--are you--are you sorry? You know, about--you know."

"About Sunday?" I realized I was twisting the phone cord and tried to
straighten it out again. I also noticed a bunch of juniors coming down
the hall toward the phone booth, laughing and jostling each other. I
closed my eyes to make them go away, to stay alone with Annie. "No," I
said. "I'm not sorry. Confused, maybe. I--I keep trying not to think much
about it. But ..."

"I wrote you a dumb letter," Annie said softly. "But I didn't mail it."

"Do I get to see it?"

She hesitated, then said, "Sure. Come on up--can you?"

I didn't even look at my watch before I said, "Yes."

It was cold and very damp outside, as if it were going to snow,
but it was warm in Annie's room. She had some quiet music on her rickety
old-fashioned phonograph, and her hair was in two braids, which by now I
knew usually meant she hadn't had time to wash it or that she'd been
doing something active or messy, like helping her mother clean. We just
looked at each other for a minute there in the doorway of her room, as
if neither of us knew what to say or how to act with each other. But I
felt myself leave Sally and school and the fund-raising drive behind me,
the way a cicada leaves its shell when it turns from an immature grub
into its almost grown-up self. Annie took my hand shyly, pulled me
into her room, and shut the door. "Hi," she said. I felt myself smiling,
wanting to laugh with pleasure at seeing her, but also needing to laugh
out of nervousness, I guess. "Hi." Then we both did laugh, like a couple
of idiots, standing there awkwardly looking at each other. And we both
moved at the same time into each other's arms, hugging. It was just a
friendly hug at first, an I'm-so-glad-to-see-you hug. But then I began to
be very aware of Annie's body pressed against mine and of feeling her
heart beat against my breast, so I moved away. "Sorry," she said,
turning away also. I touched her shoulder; it was rigid.

"No--no, don't
be."

"You moved away so fast."

"I--Annie, please."

"Please what?"

"Please--I don't know. Can't we just be ..."

"Friends?" she said, whirling around. "Just friends--wonderful stock
phrase, isn't it? Only what you said on the beach was--was ..." She
turned away again, covering her face with her hands. "Annie," I said
miserably, "Annie, Annie. I--I do love you, Annie." There, I thought.
That's the second time I've said it.

Annie groped on her desk-table and
handed me an envelope. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't get any sleep
last night and--well, I couldn't tell you a single thing anyone said in
school today, even at rehearsal. I'm going to wash my face."


I nodded, trying to smile at her as if everything was all right--there's
no reason, I remember thinking, why it shouldn't be--and I sat down on
the edge of Annie's bed and opened the letter.

Dear Liza,

It's three-thirty in the morning and this is the fifth time I've tried to
write this to you. Someone said something about three o'clock in the
morning being the dark night of the soul--something like that. That's
true, at least for this three o'clock and this soul. Look, I have to be
honest--I want to try to be, anyhow. I told you about Beverly because I
knew at that point that I loved you. I was trying to warn you, I guess.

As I said, I've wondered for a long time if I was gay. I even tried to
prove I wasn't, last summer with a boy, but it was ridiculous. I know
you said on the beach that you think you love me, and I've been trying
to hold on to that, but I'm still scared that if I told you everything
about how I feel, you might not be ready for it. Maybe you've already
felt pressured into thinking you have to feel the same way, out of
politeness, sort of, because you like me and don't want to hurt my
feelings. The thing is, since you haven't thought about it--about being
gay--I'm trying to tell myself very firmly that it wouldn't be fair of me
to--I don't know, influence you, try to push you into something you don't
want, or don't want yet, or something. Liza, I think what I'm saying is
that, really, if you don't want us to see each other any more, it's
okay.

Love

Annie

I stood there holding the letter and looking at the
word

"Love" at the end of it, knowing that I was jealous of the boy Annie'd
mentioned, and that my not seeing Annie any more would be as ridiculous
for me as she said her experiment with the boy had been for her. Could I
even begin an experiment like that, I wondered, startled; would I? It
was true I'd never consciously thought about being gay. But it also
seemed true that if I were, that might pull together not only what had
been happening between me and Annie all along and how I felt about her,
but also a lot of things in my life before I'd known her--things I'd
never let myself think about much. Even when I was little, I'd often
felt as if I didn't quite fit in with most of the people around me; I'd
felt isolated in some way that I never understood.

And as I got older--well, in the last two or three years, I'd wondered
why I'd rather go to the movies with Sally or some other girl than with
a boy, and why, when I imagined living with someone someday, permanently
I mean, that person was always female. I read Annie's letter again, and
again felt how ridiculous not seeing her any more would be--how much I'd
miss her, too. When Annie came back from the bathroom, she stood across
the room watching me for a few minutes. I could tell she was trying very
hard to pretend her letter didn't matter, but her eyes were so bright
that I was pretty sure they were wet.