Annie on My Mind

Chapter five

"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