Annie on My Mind

Chapter ten

I
didn't think much about the rally or the fund-raising campaign. I had
gone to both the meetings the "committee of three" had before vacation,
and had reluctantly agreed to write a speech and rehearse it at our last
meeting--the one during vacation--and give it at the rally. Nothing I said
convinced Sally and Walt that I'd be terrible at it. Walt had gotten a
newspaper reporter his older brother knew to say he'd "cover" the
rally, which didn't make me any more relaxed about my speech. "Can't you
see it?" Sally had said at our last meeting, I suppose to entice me with
dreams of glory. "'Student Council President Tells What Foster Means
to Her--Encourages New Students to Apply.'"

"With one of those smaller headlines underneatt," said Walt, "saying
'Our School, Cry Students.' Hey, that'd really get them, I bet! I wonder
if we could get some kids to chant that--spontaneously, of course."

"Don't count your speeches before they're written," I said, trying
feebly to be funny. "Or your chants, either." It's not that I meant to
avoid the speech; once it became clear I'd have to make it, I did try to
work on it. In fact, Annie and I must have spent nearly all afternoon
that first Friday trying to work out what I could say that wouldn't
sound phony. And by the time she got through going over it with me, I
actually found there were quite a few reasons why I thought Foster was a
good school. But then came the second week, and Annie and I became more
comfortable with each other, and the speech and the third meeting slowly
slipped far from my mind.

13

It was nearly the end of vacation--Thursday morning of the second
week--that I couldn't find the orange cat, so when Annie got to the
house, we hunted in all the places we knew he usually hid. Finally
Annie said maybe he'd gone upstairs, and she went up to the third floor
to look for him. It's funny, since we were practically living in the
house by then, but neither of us had yet been up there. I think we still
felt it was private; that it was okay for us to take over the rest of
the house, but not where Ms. Stevenson and Ms. Widmer slept. After Annie
had been upstairs for a few minutes, she called to me in a funny voice.

"Liza," she said, sort of low and tense. "Come here." I went up the
narrow stairs and followed her voice into the larger of the two
bedrooms. She was standing beside a double bed, the cat in her arms,
looking down at the books in a small glass-fronted bookcase. I looked at
them, too.

"Oh, my God," I said then. "They're gay! Ms. Stevenson and
Ms. Widmer. They're--they're like us ..."

"Maybe not," Annie said cautiously.

"But ..." I opened the glass doors
and read off some of the titles: Female Homosexuality, by Frank S.
Caprio. Sappho Was a Right-On Woman, by Abbott and Love. Patience and
Sarah--our old friend--by Isabel Miller. The Well of Loneliness, by
Radclyffe Hall. The cat jumped out of Annie's arms and scurried back
downstairs to his brother. "It's funny," Annie said. "I never met them,
but from everything you told me, I--well, I wondered."

"It never even crossed my mind," I said, still so astonished I could
only stare at the double bed and the books. Certainly at school Ms.
Stevenson and Ms. Widnier never gave any hint of being gay--and then it
hit me that the only "hints" I could think of were cliches that didn't
apply to them, like acting masculine, or not getting along with men, or
making teacher's pets of girls. True, once Ms. Stevenson got mad when a
kid made a crummy anti-gay remark. But I'd heard my own father do that,
just as he did when someone said something anti-black or anti-Hispanic.
Annie picked up one of the books and flipped through it. "Imagine buying
all these books," she said. "Remember how scared we were?" I nodded.
"God, some of these are old," Annie said, turning back to the books in
the case. "Ms. Stevenson and Ms. Widmer must go back quite a long time."
Then she closed the bookcase and came over to me, leaning her head on my
shoulder. "It's terrible," she said, "for us to have been so scared to
be seen with books we have every right to read." She looked up and put
her hands on my shoulders; her hands were shaking a little. "Liza, let's
not do that.

Let's not be scared to buy books, or
embarrassed, and when we buy them, let's not hide them in a secret
bookcase. It's not honest, it's not right, it's a denial of--of
everything we feel for each other. They're older, maybe they had to,
but--oh, Liza, I don't want to hide the--the best part of my life, of
myself." I pulled her to me; she was shaking all over. "Annie, Annie." I
said, smoothing her hair, trying to soothe her. "Annie, take it easy,
love; I don't want to hide either, but ..."

"The best part," Annie repeated fiercely, moving out of my arms.
"Liza--this vacation, it's been--" She went back to the bookcase, thumping
her palm against the glass doors. "We can't close ourselves in behind
doors the way these books are closed in. But that's what's going to
happen as soon as school starts--just afternoons, just weekends--we should
be together all the time, we should ..." She turned to me again, her
eyes very dark, but then she smiled, half merry, half bitter. "Liza, I
want to run away with you, to elope, dammit."

"I--I know," I said; the bitterness had quickly taken over. I reached for
her hands. "I know." Annie came into my arms again. "Liza, Liza,
nothing's sure, but--but I'm as sure as a person can be. I want to hold
on to you forever, to be with you forever, I ..."

She smiled wistfully. "I want us to be a couple of passionless old
ladies someday together, too," she said, "sitting in rocking chairs,
laughing over how we couldn't get enough of each other when we were
young, rocking peacefully on somebody's sunny porch ..."

"On our sunny porch," I said. "In Maine."

"Maine?"

"Maine. We were both calmer now, holding hands, smiling. "Okay," Annie
said. "And we'll rock and rock and rock and remember when we were kids
and were taking care of somebody else's house and they turned out to be
gay, and how tense we were because we knew we'd have to spend the next
four years away from each other at different colleges, not to mention
that very summer because I had to go to stupid camp ..."

We pulled ourselves out of that room, we really did. We went into the other
bedroom, because we had to do something and because we were curious, and
it was just as we expected; the other bedroom didn't count. All the
clothes were in the two closets in the big bedroom and in the two
bureaus there, and in the bureau in the other room there were only what
looked like extras--heavy sweaters and ski socks and things like that.
The bed in that room was a single one and the sheets on it looked as if
they'd been there for years. It was just for show. "We won't do that,"
Annie said firmly when we were back downstairs in the kitchen, heating
some mushroom soup. "We won't, we won't. If people are shocked, let them
be."

"Parents," I said, stirring the soup. "My brother."

"Well, they'll just have to know, won't they?"

"You going to go right home and tell Nana you're gay, that we're
lovers?" I asked as gently as I could.

"Oh, Liza."

"Well?"

"No, but ..." I turned down the gas; the soup was beginning to boil.

"Bowls." Annie reached into the cupboard. "Bowls."

"And if you're not going to run home and tell them now, you probably
won't later."

"They won't mind so much when I'm older. When we're older." I poured the
soup into the bowls and opened a box of crackers I had bought the day
before.

"It won't make any difference. It'll be just as hard then."

"Dammit!" Annie shouted suddenly. "Speak for yourself, can't you?"

My soup bowl wavered in my hand; I nearly dropped it. And I wanted to carry
it to the sink and dump the soup down the drain. Instead I poured it back
into the pot, reached for my jacket, and said as calmly as I could, "I'm
going out. Lock up if you leave before I get back, okay?"

"Liza, I'm sorry," Annie said, not moving. "I'm sorry. It--it's the
bed--knowing it's there when the sofa's so awful, and knowing it's going
to be so long till we can be together again, really together, I mean.
Please don't go. Have your soup--here." She took my bowl to the stove and poured my soup back in it. "Here--please. You're probably right about my parents."