Annie on My Mind

Chapter six

I can't really remember what Annie and I did during the next couple of days
of vacation. Walked a lot--the Village, Chinatown, places like that. It's
Sunday that's important to remember. It's Sunday that I've been thinking
around the edges of ... Have you ever felt really close to someone?
So close that you can't understand why you and the other person have two
separate bodies, two separate skins? I think it was Sunday when that
feeling began. We'd been riding around on the subway, talking when it
wasn't too noisy, and had ended up at Coney Island. It was so late in
the season that it was deserted, and very cold. We looked at all the
closed-for-winter rides, and at a few straggling booth owners who were
putting battered pastel-painted boards up over their popcorn or
dime-toss or win-a-doll stands, and we bought hot dogs at Nathan's.

There were only a couple of grubby old men eating there, I guess because
most people don't have room even for Nathan's the weekend after
Thanksgiving. Then we walked on the empty beach and joked about hiking
all around the edge of Brooklyn up into Queens. We did manage to get
pretty far, actually, at least well away from the deserted booths, and
we found an old pier sort of thing with a lot of rotting brown pilings
holding back some rocks--I guess it was more or less a breakwater--and we
sat down, close together because it was so cold. I remember that for a
while there was a seagull wheeling around above our heads, squawking, but then it flew off toward
Sheepshead Bay. I'm not sure why we were so quiet, except that we knew
school would start again for both of us the next day, and we wouldn't be
able to meet so often or so easily. I had my senior project, and student
council if I was reelected, and Annie had to rehearse for her recital.

But we'd already worked out which days during the week we'd be able to
see each other, and of course there would still be weekends, so maybe
that wasn't why we were so quiet after all ... Mostly it was the
closeness. It made my throat ache, wanting to speak of it. I remember we
were both watching the sun slowly go down over one end of the beach,
making the sky to the west pink and yellow. I remember the water lapping
gently against the pilings and the shore, and a candy wrapper--Three
Musketeers, I think--blowing along the beach. Annie shivered. Without
thinking, I put my arm across her shoulders to warm her, and then before
either of us knew what was happening, our arms were around each other
and Annie's soft and gentle mouth was kissing mine. When we did realize
what was happening, we pulled away from each other, and Annie looked out
over the water and I looked at the candy wrapper. It had gotten beyond
the pilings by then, and was caught against a rock. For something to do,
I walked over and stuffed it into my pocket, and then I stayed there,
looking out over the water too, trying to keep my mind blank. I remember
wishing the wind would literally blow through me, cold and pure and
biting. "Liza," Annie called in a quiet voice. "Liza, please come back."

Part of me didn't want to. But part of me did, and that part won. Annie
was digging a little hole in one crumbling piling with her fingernail.

"You'll break your nail," I said, and she looked up at me and smiled.
Her eyes were soft and troubled and a little scared, but her mouth went
on smiling, and then the wind blew her hair in wisps across my face and
I had to move away. She put her hand on mine, barely touching it. "It's
all right with me," she whispered, "if it is with you."

"I--I don't know," I said. It was like a war inside me; I couldn't even
recognize all the sides. There was one that said, "No, this is wrong;
you know it's wrong and bad and sinful," and there was another that
said, "Nothing has ever felt so right and natural and true and good,"
and another that said it was happening too fast, and another that just
wanted to stop thinking altogether and fling my arms around Annie and
hold her forever. There were other sides, too, but I couldn't sort them
out. "Liza," Annie was saying, "Liza, I--I've wondered. I mean, I
wondered if this might be happening. Didn't you?" I shook my head. But
somewhere inside I knew I had at least been confused.

Annie pulled her collar up around her throat and I wanted to touch her
skin where the collar met it. It was as if I'd always wanted to touch
her there but hadn't known it. "It's my fault," Annie said softly.
"I--I've thought sometimes, even before I met you, I mean, that I might
be gay." She said the word "gay" easily, as if it were familiar to her,
used that way.

"No," I managed to say, "no--it's not anyone's fault." I
know that underneath my numbness I felt it made sense about me, too, but
I couldn't think about it, or concentrate on it, not then. Annie turned
around and looked at me and the sadness in her eyes made me want to put
my arms around her. "I'll go, Liza," she said, standing up. "I--I don't
want to hurt you. I don't think you want this, so I have hurt you and,
oh, God, Liza," she said, touching my face, "I don't want to, I--like you
so much. I told you, you make me feel--real, more real than I've ever
thought I could feel, more alive, you--you're better than a hundred
Californias, but it's not only that, it's ..."

"Better than all those white birds?" I said around the ache that was in
my throat again.
"Because you're better than anything or anyone for me, too, Annie,
better than--oh, I don't know-- better than what--better than
everything--but that's not what I want to be saying--you--you're--Annie, I
think I love you." I heard myself say it as if I were someone else, but
the moment the words were out, I knew more than I'd ever known anything
that they were true.

Dear Annie, I've just been remembering Thanksgiving
vacation, and the beach near Coney Island. Annie, it makes me ache for
you, it ...

Liza crumpled the letter, then smoothed it out again, tore
it to shreds, and went outside. She walked beside the Charles River in
the cold. The air was brittle with the coming winter; one sailboat
struggled against the biting wind. The guy in that boat's crazy, she
thought absently; his sail will freeze, his hands stick to the
mainsheet and they'll have to pry him loose... Annie, she thought, the
name driving everything else away, Annie, Annie ...

8

School seemed strange the Monday after Thanksgiving. In a way it was
nice to be back because it was familiar but it also seemed irrelevant,
as if I'd grown up and school was now part of my childhood. I was almost
surprised to see the ballot box in the main hall, and kids dropping
folded pieces of paper in it. It wasn't that I'd really forgotten the
election; it was just that it was part of my old world, too, and it had
lost a lot of its importance. So I was quite calm when after lunch we
were all told to report to the Lower School gym, which doubled as an
auditorium, for "a few announcements." Ms. Baxter gave me a big cheerful
smile, I suppose to be forgiving and encouraging, but Mrs. Poindexter,
in a purple dress I'd never seen before, her glasses dangling, looked
grim. "I must've won," I quipped to Sally. "Look at her--she looks as if
she's swallowed a cactus." But Sally didn't laugh. In fact, I soon
realized she must be nervous about something, because she kept licking
her lips and she was clutching a couple of index cards, shuffling them
around, picking at the corners.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said Mrs.
Poindexter--her usual way of addressing large groups of us--"I have two
announcements. The first and briefer one is that Eliza Winthrop will
continue as head of student council." There was quite a bit of applause,
and school began mattering more to me again. "And the second," Mrs.
Poindexter said, holding up her hand for silence, "is that Walter
Shander and Sally Jarrell have very kindly agreed to be student
chairpeople for our fund-raising drive. Sally has a few words to say. Sally!"

Sally got up, still fidgeting nervously with her index cards.

"Well, I just want to say," she piped, "that I realized over
Thanksgiving what a terrible thing I--I did with the ear piercing and
all, and Walt and I talked over what I could do to make it up to the
school, and then this morning Ms. Baxter said Mrs. Poindexter wanted
students to get involved in the campaign. And so then I thought I could
do that, and Walt said he'd help. I--I really want to make up to everyone
for what I did, and this way, if anyone on the outside finds out about
it, the ear infections, I mean, it'll be easier for Mrs. Poindexter and
everyone to say that I'm really sorry ..." I swallowed against the sick
feeling that was creeping up my throat from my stomach. It wasn't that I
didn't think it was a nice thing for Sally to do--I did--it was that she
seemed to be doing it for the wrong reasons. "If the campaign's a
success," she was saying, "that means that Foster can go on giving
people a good education. Later, Walt and I will tell you about some
dances and rallies and things we're planning, but right now I wanted
first of all to apologize, and secondly--well, to ask for your support
in the campaign." She blushed and ran back to her seat. There was
applause again, but this time it was uncertain, as if the other kids
were as surprised and as uncomfortable as I was about Sally's making so
much of the ear piercing--she made it sound as if she thought she'd
murdered someone.

But Mrs. Poindexter and Ms. Baxter looked like a couple of Cheshire
cats, one large and one small. "How was I?" Sally asked. "Great, baby,
terrific," Walt said, hugging her. "Wasn't she great, Liza?"

"Sure," i said, not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings.

After school I
went to the art studio to do some work on my