"That's what I was thinking before," Annie said--we were walking now,
toward the subway. "But next year's far away, too." I wondered if it
really was. On the subway, Annie's mood changed, and mine did too. After
we sat down, Annie whispered, "Have you ever stared at people's noses on
the subway till they don't make sense any more?" I said I hadn't,
and then of course we both stared all the way to South Ferry, till
people began scowling at us and moving uncomfortably away. We rode back
and forth on the Staten Island ferry for the rest of the afternoon,
sometimes pretending we were going through the Panama Canal to
California after all, and sometimes pretending we were going to Greece,
where I was going to show Annie the Parthenon and give her architecture
lessons. "Only if I can give you history ones," she said. "Even if they
hardly teach it at all at my stupid school."
"How come you know so much then?" I said, thinking of our
improvisations.
"I read a lot," she said, and we both laughed. After
about four trips back and forth, the ferry crew caught on that we'd only
paid once, so the next time we pulled into St. George, Staten Island, we
got off and hiked up one of the hilly streets that lead away from the
ferry slips, till we got to some houses with little yards in front of
them. Annie said, serious again, "I'd like to live in a house with a
yard someday, wouldn't you?" and I said, "Yes," and for a while we
played a quiet--shy, too--game of which of the houses there we'd live in if
we could. Then we sat down on a stone wall at the corner of someone's
yard--it was beginning to get dark by then--and were silent for a while.
"We're in Richmond," Annie said suddenly, startling me. "We're early
settlers and ..." Then she stopped and I could feel, rather than see,
that she was shaking her head. "No," she said softly. "No, I don't want
to do that with you so much any more."
"Do what?"
"You know. Unicorns. Maidens and knights. Staring at noses, even. I
don't want to pretend any more. You make me--want to be real." I was
looking for some way to answer that when a woman came out of a house
across the street, carrying a mesh shopping bag and leading a little dog
on a leash. When she reached the corner, she put the shopping bag into
the dog's mouth and said, "Good Pixie, good girl, carry the bag for
Mommy," and we both burst into helpless laughter. When we stopped
laughing, I said, awkwardly, "I'm glad you want to be real, but--well,
please don't be too real. I mean ..."
Annie gave me a funny look and said, "Annie Kenyon's dull, huh?"
"No!" I protested. "No, not dull at all. Annie Kenyon's ..."
"What? Annie
Kenyon's what?" I wanted to say fascinating, because that's really what
I was thinking, but I was too embarrassed. Instead, I said
"Interesting," but then that sounded flat, and I knew Annie couldn't see
my face clearly in the twilight anyway, so I added "Fascinating" after
all. I thought magical, too, but I didn't say that, even though just
sitting there in the growing darkness with Annie was so special and so
unlike anything that had ever happened to me before that magical seemed
like a good word for it and for her.
"Oh, Liza," Annie said, in a way I
was beginning to expect and hope for. Then she said, "So are you," and I
said stupidly, "So am I what?" Instead of answering, Annie pointed
down the street to where Pixie and Mommy were coming back. Then, when I
was looking at them--the streetlights were on now--Annie said very softly,
"Fascinating." Pixie was still carrying the shopping bag, but now it had
a head of lettuce in it. Pixie was so low to the ground that the bag was
humping along the sidewalk. "I hope," Annie said, "that Mommy's planning
to wash that lettuce." We sat huddled together on the wall in the shadow
of some big trees, watching until Pixie and Mommy were back inside their
house, and then we walked back down to the ferry slip, shoulders
touching. I think one reason why we didn't move away from each other was
because if we had, that would have been an acknowledgment that we were
touching in the first place. We each called home to say we'd be late,
and on the way back in the ferry we stood as far up in the bow as
possible so we could watch the lights in Manhattan twinkling closer and
closer as we approached. We were the only people on deck; it was
getting very cold. "Look," said Annie. She closed her hand on mine and
pointed up with her other hand. "The stars match the lights, Liza.
Look." It was true. There were two golden Lacework patterns now, one in
the sky and one on shore, complementing each other. "There's your
world," Annie said softly, pointing to the Manhattan skyline, gold
filigree in the distance.
"Real, but sometimes beautiful," I said, aware that I was liking Annie's
hand touching mine, but not thinking beyond that. "And that's like my
world." Annie pointed up to the stars again. "Inaccessible."
"Not," I said to her softly, "to unicorns. Nothing's inaccessible to
unicorns.
Not even--not even white birds."
Annie smiled, as if more to herself than
to me, and looked toward Manhattan again, the wind from the ferry's
motion blowing her hair around her face. "And here we are," she said.
"Liza and Annie, suspended in between." We stood there in the bow for
the whole rest of the trip, watching the stars and the shore lights, and
it was only when the ferry began to dock in Manhattan that we moved
apart and dropped each other's hands.
7
Two days later, on Wednesday,
Annie managed to get out of her school long enough at lunchtime to
smuggle me into the cafeteria--a huge but shabby room as crowded as Penn
Station or Grand Central at Christmas. While we were sitting there
trying to hear what we were saying to each other, a tall gangling kid
unfolded himself from his chair, took at least a foot of heavy chain out
of his pocket, and started whirling it around his head, yelling
something nobody paid any attention to. In fact, no one paid any
attention to the boy himself either, except for a few people who moved
out of range of the swinging chain. I couldn't believe it--I couldn't
believe anyone would do that in the first place, and I also couldn't
believe that if someone did, everyone would just ignore him. I guess I
must have been staring, because Annie stopped in the middle of what she
was saying and said, "You're wondering why that guy is swinging that
chain, right?"
"Right," I said, trying to be as casual about it as she was.
"Nobody
knows why he does it, but in a few minutes one of the carpentry teachers
will come along and take him away--there, see?" A large man in what I
guess was a shop apron came in, ducked under the flying chain, and
grabbed the kid around
the waist. Right away, the kid froze, and the chain went clattering to
the floor. The man picked it up, stuffed it into his pocket, and led the
kid out of the cafeteria. "Annie," I said wildly, "you mean he does that
often? Why don't they take the chain away from him--I mean permanently?
Why don't they ... I don't know, you did mean he does it all the time,
didn't you?" Annie gave me a partly amused, partly sympathetic look and
put down her chocolate milk carton. "He does do it all the time, once a
week or so. They do take the chain away from him, but I guess he has an
endless supply. I don't know why they don't do anything else about him
or for him, but they don't seem to." She smiled. "You see why sometimes
I prefer white birds."
"And unicorns and knights," I answered. "Good Lord!"
"When I first came here," Annie said, "I used to go home and cry, at
night. But after about two months of being terrified and miserable, I
found out that if you keep away from everyone, they keep away from you.
The only reason I never tried to transfer is because when my mother
works late I go home at lunch to check on Nana. I couldn't do that if I
went to another school."
"There must be some okay kids here," I said, looking around.
"There
are. But since I spent my whole freshman year staying away from
everyone, by the time I was a sophomore, everyone else already had
friends." She smiled wryly, criticizing herself. "It isn't just that
people in New York are unfriendly. It's also that I've been unfriendly
to people in New York. Till now."
I smiled at her. "Till now," I repeated.
After lunch, since I was going to meet Annie at her apartment
late that afternoon, I went to the Guggenheim Museum and tried not to
think too hard about what might be happening at her school while I was
safely looking at paintings. But I kept thinking about it anyway, and
about how depressing a lot of Annie's life seemed to be, and about how I
wished there was something I could do to make it more cheerful.
The day before, after Annie got out of school, we'd gone to the New York
Botanical Garden, where I'd been a couple of times with my parents, and
Annie went wild walking up and down greenhouse aisles, smelling the
flowers, touching them, almost talking to them. I'd never seen her so
excited. "Oh, Liza," she'd said, "I never even knew this place was
here--look, that's an orchid, those are impatiens, that's a
brome]iad--it's like a place we used to go to in California--it's so
beautiful! Oh, why can't there be more flowers in New York, more green
things?" As soon as I remembered that, standing halfway up the spiral
ramp that runs through the middle of the Guggen-helm, I knew what I'd
do: I'd buy Annie a plant and take it to her apartment as a sort of
thank-you present--thank you for what, I didn't really know, but that
didn't seem to matter much as I rushed back outside to find a florist. I
found one that had some flowering plants in the window. "Do they have
these in California?" I asked the man. "Sure, sure," he said. "They have
them all over." That didn't tell me much, but I was too nervous to ask
any more questions--even to ask what kind of plant the one I wanted
was--it had thick furry leaves and was covered with light blue flowers.
By then I knew that blue was Annie's favorite color, so I decided it
probably wouldn't
matter what kind of plant it was. The pot had hideous pink tinfoil
wrapped around it, but I took that off in the slow elevator in Annie's
building, and stuffed it into my pocket. I remembered to knock at
Annie's door--she'd told me the buzzer didn't work and in a few minutes a
quavery voice said, "Who is it?"
"Liza Winthrop," I said, and then said it again, louder, because I heard
something rattling under where the peephole was. When the door opened, I
had to look down suddenly because I'd been ready to say hello to someone
at eye level. But the person who opened the door was a tiny,
fragile-looking woman in a wheelchair. She had wonderful bright blue
eyes and a little puckered mouth that somehow managed to look like
Annie's, probably because of the smile. "You must be Annie's frien'."
The woman beamed at me, and as soon as I heard her accent I remembered
that Annie's grandmother had been born in Italy. Sure enough, the woman
said, "I'm her Nana--her gran'ma--come in, come in." Deftly, she
maneuvered the wheelchair out of the doorway so I could step inside.
"Annie, she help her mamma make the turk'," Annie's grandmother said. It
was a second or two before I realized that "turk" was "turkey," but the
wonderful smell that struck me as soon as I was inside told me my guess
was right. "We make him the day-before"--it was one word, beautiful:
"day-before"; when she said it, it sounded like a song. "So on
Thanksgiving we can have a good time.
Come in, come in. Annie! Your frien', she's here. What a pretty
flower--African violet?"
"I--I don't know," I said, bending a little closer
so Annie's Nana could see the plant's flowers. "I don't know a thing
about plants, but I just found out Annie likes them, so I brought her
one." I'd never have dared admit to most people--most kids, anyway--that
I'd brought Annie a present, but this lovely old lady didn't seem to
think there was anything odd about it. She clasped her gnarled hands
together--and it was then that I knew where Annie had gotten her laugh as
well as her smile, because her grandmother laughed in exactly the same
way. "Annie, she be very happy," Nana said, her bright
eyes twinkling
into mine, "very happy--you wait till you see her room, she loves
flowers! Annie, look," she said, turning her head toward Annie, who had
just come out of the kitchen, her hair braided and wrapped around her
head, a dish towel around her middle, and her face red from the heat of
the oven. "Look, your frien', she brought you a frien'." Nana and I
chuckled at her joke as Annie looked at the violet and then at me. "I
don't believe this," Annie said, her eyes meeting mine above her
grandmother's softly gleaming white hair. "You brought me an African
violet?" I nodded. "Happy Thanksgiving."
"Oh, God, Liza, I suppose you're going to tell me this is part of your
real world, too, right?"
"Well," I said, feigning modesty, "it's real, all right."
"Real world, what you talk?" said Nana. "Annie, you push me in the
kitchen so I can help your mamma. Then you go with your frien' and
talk." Annie winked at me as she took the back of her grandmother's
chair, and Nana reached out and squeezed my
hand as Annie started to wheel her past me. "I like you, Lize," she
said, pronouncing my name the way Chad often did. "You make my Annie
happy. She's so sad sometimes." Nana made the corners of her mouth droop
down like a tragedy mask. "Ugh! Young girls, they should laugh. Life's
bad enough when you're grown, you might as well laugh when you're young.
You teach my Annie that, Lize, okay?"
"Okay," I said, looking at Annie.
I think I held up my hand when I said it. "You promise, good! Annie,
she's laugh' more this week, since she met you." Annie wheeled her
grandmother into the kitchen and I stood awkwardly in the hall, looking
down its dingy walls into the living room. I could see part of a very
worn carpet that must once have been bright red, and a lopsided sofa
with some stuffing working its way out around the edges of a couple of
patches, and a faded photo of the Roman Coliseum hanging on the wall
next to a cross with a dry palm leaf tucked behind it. "Nana's," said
Annie, coming back and pointing to the cross. "The rest of us aren't
very religious. My mother's Protestant, and I don't know what I am."
She'd taken the towel from her waist, but her face was still red and a
little shiny from the heat. A wisp of her hair had begun to come loose.
I wanted to push it back for her. "Nana adores you," she said.
"I adore
her." I answered, as Annie led me through the living room and down a
shorter but dingier hall to her room. "Listen, I take it as a solemn
pledge," I said, as Annie stepped aside in the doorway so I could go
into the small room, "to make you laugh, like she said. Okayy?"
Annie smiled, but a little distantly, sat down on the edge of her narrow
bed, and motioned to the only chair, which was at a table that was piled
high with books and music scores and seemed to be working as a desk. "Okay,"
she said.
"I like your room," I told her, looking around and trying to keep away the
awkwardness I was beginning to feel again. The room was tiny, but full
of things that obviously meant a lot to Annie, mostly the books and
music scores, but also several stuffed animals--and, as Nana had said,
plants, what seemed like hundreds of them. Because of them, you didn't
even notice right away that the desk-table was scarred and a bit
rickety, that the bed was probably an old studio couch, and that one
window had a piece of cloth stuffed in part of it, I assumed to keep
out drafts. There was a big feathery fern hanging in the window and a
pebble-lined tray with lots of little plants on the sill. On the floor
at the foot of the bed was a plant so huge it looked like a young tree.
"Oh. come on," Annie said, "it's nothing like your room. Your room
looks--shiny and, I don't know--new." Her eyes followed mine to the huge
plant near the bed. "That's just a rubber tree from Woolworth's. I got
it when it was little--only ninety-five cents' worth of little."
"Well, it must be a hundred dollars' worth of big now. Hey, I mean
it. I like your room. I like your grandmother, I like you ..." For a
minute, neither of us said anything. Annie looked at the floor and then
went over to the rubber tree and flicked something invisible off one of
its leaves. "I like you, too, Liza," she said carefully. She had put the
African violet on the desk-table, but now she picked it up and took it over to the
windowsill, where she made room for it on top of the pebbles.
"Humidity," she said. "They like that, and the pebbles help. I mean, the
water you put in the tray for it helps--oh, damn." She turned away from
me suddenly, but something in her voice made me grab her hand and pull her
around to face me again. To my astonishment, I saw that she was nearly
in tears. "What's the matter?" I asked, standing up, a little scared.
"What's the matter? Did I do something?" She shook her head, and then
she rested it for a second on my shoulder. But when my hand was still on
its way up to comfort her, she moved away and went to her bedside table,
where she fished a Kleenex out of a box and blew her nose. "Yes, you did
something, you jerk," she said, sitting on the edge of the bed again.
"You brought me a present, and I'm such a sentimental fool, it's making
me cry, and I'm upset because I don't have any money to get you a
present, but I wish I did."
"Oh, for God's sake," I said, and I went over and sat next to her and
put my arm around her for a second. "Look, I don't want you to give me a
present. That's not what this is about, is it?"
"I--I don't know," Annie said. "I never really had a friend before--that's
what I was sort of trying to tell you today in the cafeteria. Well, I
did in California, but I was a lot younger then, even if I did think I
was going to die when she moved away--we were both in sixth grade then."
"You're the jerk," I said. "Presents aren't part of it, okay? I just
knew you liked flowers, that's all, and that was exciting to me because
I never knew anyone who did and I can't make anything grow to save my
life. Maybe it's a thank-you present for showing me Staten Island
and--and everything." Annie sniffed loudly and finally smiled. "Okay--but
that's not what this is about, either, is it?
Thank-you presents--that's no good."
"Right." I got up and went back to the chair. "Tell me about your friend
in California. If you want."
"Yes," said Annie. "I think I do." For the next hour or so, I sat there
in Annie's room while she showed me pictures of a pasty-faced,
dull-looking little girl named Beverly and told me about how they used
to go for walks on the beach and pretend they were running away, and how
they used to sleep over at each other's houses, usually in the same bed,
and how they giggled and talked all night and sometimes kissed each
other--"the way little girls sometimes do," Annie said, reddening--I knew
Annie had been pretty young then, so I didn't think anything of it. And
then I asked her about her grandmother, who turned out to have made all
Annie's clothes till her fingers got too stiff from arthritis. Annie
said she sometimes listened to Nana breathe at night for fear she was
going to die suddenly. After a while, Annie and I went into the kitchen,
where there were several cats milling around in that sideways way cats
have.
We sat at a round table with orange plastic place mats on it and sniffed
the roasting turkey and talked to Annie's mother, who was mousy and
tired-looking but nice, and to Nana, who didn't seem to me to be
anywhere near dying. We drank grape juice and ate a whole plate of some
wonderful Italian cookies filled with figs and dates
and raisins. When I left, Nana made me take a bagful of cookies home to
Chad.
The next day, in the afternoon, the doorbell rang just as I'd finished
my second piece of pumpkin pie, while Dad was telling the same story he
told every year, about when he and his brother swiped a Thanksgiving
turkey and tried to cook it over an open fire in the weeds in Maine,
where he grew up. I pushed the buzzer and ran down to see who it was and
it was Annie with a short, stocky man with a black mustache, who turned
out to be her father. There was a yellow cab double-parked in the
street. Annie looked as if she'd rather be on another planet. Mr. Kenyon
took off his little squashed cap and said, "We don't mean to interrupt,
but Annie, she say she come down to see you this afternoon, and I say
Thanksgiving is a family day and maybe you don't want company, and she
say maybe I don't want her to go, so I bring her down. You gave her
such a nice present I thought maybe you and your mamma and poppa and your
brother might like to come for a ride with us in the cab. That way all
the families stay together and can get to know each other, too." I
looked dubiously out at the double-parked cab and then I saw Nana's
cheerful face in the window, behind a fluttery wave. "We always take my
mamma for a ride in the cab on holidays," explained Mr. Kenyon. I could
tell from Annie's face that she was absolutely perishing with
embarrassment, and I wanted to signal her that it was okay, because it was.
I could understand how she felt, but I thought her family was terrific.
"Let me go ask," I said, and ran upstairs. Annie came after me and
grabbed me on the first landing. "Liza, I'm sorry," she said.
"He--he doesn't understand this country--I don't know, he's been here
since he was twenty, but he still thinks he's back in some Sicilian ..."
"I like him!" I shouted, shaking her. "I told you--I like your
grandmother and the cats in your kitchen, and your mother, even though I
don't know her very well, and I like your plants and your room and you,
except when you're a jerk to be so worried that I'm not going to
like--whatever!"
Annie smiled sheepishly and leaned against the wall. "I think it's
jerky, too, she said. "I mean of me. It's just that well, I'm always
worried that people are going to laugh at them."
"Well, I'm not going to laugh at them," I said. "And if you are, I'll go
live with them and you can come here and live in stuffy old Brooklyn
Heights and go to Foster Academy and almost get expelled for piercing
ears and--Annie?" I said, as soon as it struck me. "Are you jealous? Is
that what this is really about? Do you envy me?"
"No," said Annie softly.
Then she laughed a little.
"No, I don't, not at all. You're right that I don't like the school I go
to or the neighborhood I live in--but no, I wouldn't want to--to swap with
you or anything." She smiled. "I guess you made me realize that just
now, didn't you?"
"Well, good," I said, still angry, "because if you do want to swap--if
that's all I mean to you, forget it." I surprised myself, I was so mad.
"Oh, Liza, no," Annie said. "No. That's not what you mean to me. It's
not like that at all, not at all." She edged away from the wall and then
faced me, dropping a quick curtsy. "Will the Princess Eliza please to
come for a ride i in the magic wagon of the humble peasant? We will show
her wonders--gypsies--seagulls--shining caves--the Triborough Bridge ..."
"Oh, you nut!" I said, reaching for her hand. "You--unicorn." For a
minute we stood there looking at each other, knowing with relief that it
was all right again between us.
Dad and Mom and Chad decided to stay
home, though they came downstairs at my insistence to meet Mr. and Mrs.
Kenyon and Nana. I think I was trying to prove to Annie that they
wouldn't laugh at her family, either. Good old Chad--when he and Mom and
Dad were going back in and Annie and I were standing by the door, he
turned to Annie and said, "Your dad's neat, Annie--what a neat cab!" I
could have kissed him. We drove all through Brooklyn and up into Queens
that afternoon, and then back down through Central Park, and the whole
time Mr. Kenyon and his mother told stories about Italy, and Mrs. Kenyon
laughed and prompted them. Mr. Kenyon's father, who had died in
California, had been a butcher in his village in Sicily, and cats used
to follow him all over because he fed them scraps. That was why the
Kenyons still had cats; Mr. Kenyon said life just didn't seem right
without a cat or two around. Chad was right that he was neat.