My Sweet Annie

14

JANUARY 16 2018

I will not be able to adopt a daily diary practice, that much is clear, but I find that as I go about my day I think a lot about the stories I have accumulated in this life of mine. There are so many of them. Writing them down gives me something to look forward to.

Today I will write about my Burton.

I was working at the deli in the grocery store when I met him. He was eighteen and freshly graduated, but he had not gone to our school and I didn't know him. He was in town because he had taken a job with his uncle to work on a farm, and had come to stay with him until he could afford his own place. He would come into the store once a week to buy enough sandwich meat and cheese for a week's worth of lunches.

Burton was not conventionally handsome, but something happens when you start to feel for someone: no matter how normal they might be, they become more beautiful in your eyes. A perfectly average looking boy might become movie-star gorgeous in the eyes of the girl who starts to love him. She can't help it, and he'll never know it.

That's what happened with Burt, I think. It was not love at first sight. He wore his hair a bit too long because he did not want to pay to get it cut. I'd always liked boys with dark hair but his was dishwater blond. His eyes were brown. He had a reddish complexion and blemishes. And he had a crooked tooth in the front.

But he was polite and sweet and shy, and I had never been the surer-footed one in a conversation. He always called me "miss" and treated me with respect, as if I were a grown lady and not just a girl. He hung around at the deli counter and talked to me about innocent things, like the weather, and the movies playing in the Eldora theater.

Eventually, I started to think with no experience in the matter that Burt wanted to ask me to one of those movies. Every time I saw him coming my way, my stomach would do a twist. My heart would flutter. I would wonder if he'd finally ask me if I wanted to go see one of those movies with him.

He never did.

One day, after Burt had been visiting my deli counter for nearly three months, he requested his usual pound of sliced ham and a pound of cheese. I took my time weighing it up.

"I've heard that the new movie playing is the best all year," he said, watching me lay another slice of cheese on top of the stack.

"Have you?"

"My friend took his girlfriend over the other night and said you just can't miss it."

"Wow. Sounds like a good one."

He nodded. He looked at my face and down again. He always did that, giving me a furtive look and then studying the options in the deli case, as if talking to me made him hungry for sandwiches. I wrapped his order and handed it over the counter to him, but just as he reached for it, I pulled my hand back and blurted, "Will you ever ask me?"

I could tell from the color in his face that he knew exactly what I meant, even though he said, "Ask you what?"

"I just get this feeling sometimes that you might want my opinion on those movies you're always talking about." I put the cheese on the counter, but I didn't take my hand away.

He looked at the cheese, at my hand, and up at my face. "I always want your opinion, but it seems like you never get over to see anything."

"I don't. No one's ever asked me."

He took the cheese, his fingers brushing mine. Oh, I tell you, that touch lit me up like a house at Christmas. I don't know that a boy had ever touched my hand before. "That's a shame," he said.

"That's what I thought," I said, hoping the butterflies wouldn't fly right out of my mouth.

He waited so long that I thought he wouldn't say it. I thought he would turn around and run right out of the deli, his tail between his legs.

"We'll go together," I decided abruptly. "We can see if your friend has bad taste."

To this day, I have no idea whether we would have gone out at all if I had not been bold enough to suggest it myself. But the date was perfect, the first real date I had ever had. Not many boys in our town were interested in dating a convict's daughter.

Burton saw me for who I was. He didn't know about my father until he asked me about him, and I told him the truth, and I don't think he saw me any differently after that.

After three dates, we were going steady. About four months later, we were engaged. These days it seems like such a short time. Tim was with Shanda for two years before he proposed and I would lose my head if Tabitha said "yes" to anybody before a year at least. It's been much longer than that with Colson and they still aren't planning a wedding. He seems like a nice boy, but I'm not sure if they'll get married and I don't mind that they aren't in a hurry. You should be certain before you go down that path.

Anyway, when you know, you know. And I am proud to say that he was brave enough to do the asking when it came to that.

We were married in the spring of 1959. By then of course Royal had already married Mary Ellen and they were living in Eldora. It was just Mom and me at home in this big old house and I moved into Burton's rental house in Myrtle after the wedding.

We were so busy that first year. Burton with work and me with keeping house and doing my painting. And soon enough I was pregnant and both of us were so excited to start a family.

A couple of years after that, Mom had a stroke, and we decided to move in with her to help keep the place. It was too much house for a woman alone, anyway, and Burton could tend to the yard and I could do the cooking and Mom could spend time with the baby. Melinda had just turned two when we moved out to the house. It was just perfect.

Then at Christmas, Burton was outside, climbing a ladder. He was hanging lights on the eaves. I was inside, hanging ornaments on the fresh evergreen tree. Mom was sitting in the living room with me, recovered enough to provide creative direction and to entertain Melinda.

I remember the cry from outside.

I remember the shadow that passed over the window. I didn't know what it was until later, after it was all over. Only then did I realize I had seen my husband falling.

I heard him hit the ground even though I was inside. The impact shook my bones. I ran outside to help him, frantic, and I begged him to be okay. I demanded that he be okay.

The coroner said that it was a heart attack and when he'd fallen, he had broken his neck.

He was twenty six years old. Only twenty six years old.

I am eighty years old. I shall be eighty one in March. And I can tell you now that Burton was still just a boy when he fell that day and died. He had so much living left to do.

We were meant to grow old together, but we couldn't. And I never loved anyone else.