Annie and the Wolves

by Andromeda Romano-Lax

  Annie asked, “So you work with people who are . . . or were . . . ?”

  “Rescued. I work with young girls, mostly.”

  “How do they do, later in life?”

  “Some do very well. And some don’t.”

  “Why the difference?”

  “I wish I knew. People can have the same set of experiences, and some sail onward while others sink. But what I see most often is girls who seem perfectly well, who appear productive and even gay. You find out later they’re not the same people underneath.” Giselle must have caught the shift in Annie’s expression, because she added, “It isn’t all so discouraging, I promise you! It’s one reason I travel to meet other women—to be instructed and encouraged. Have you heard of Bertha Pappenheim?”

  “Sorry.”

  “She’s unified most of the Jewish women’s organizations in Germany. It’s even more impressive if you know her personal history. Before she discovered activism, she was a very sick young woman. Paralysis, loss of speech, not to mention the nightmares and hallucinations she suffered!”

  Giselle turned back to the topic of Pappenheim’s published writings and organizing triumphs. Annie knew she was supposed to be interested in that part—women’s rights, labor issues, various kinds of reform. But she couldn’t resist asking, “The hallucinations, what were they caused by?”

  “Hysteria, supposedly.” Giselle wrinkled her nose apologetically. “It’s a ridiculous, overly generic diagnosis—a way of ignoring women’s real complaints, most of the time.”

  “Did they perform surgery on her?” Annie had heard of that, as well as strange manipulations involving a woman’s intimate regions.

  “Nothing so drastic. She was treated by a Viennese doctor. But here’s the curious thing, which I find hopeful in my line of work. He gave her no medicines. He didn’t bathe her in ice water or confine her with straps or do anything to her physical person.”

  “Then how was she cured?”

  “They talked.”

  “About?”

  “Whatever emotional upset was producing her symptoms, which made them vanish entirely.”

  “They only talked?”

  “That’s all.”

  4

  Ruth

  When Ruth stepped into the house, a 1970s relic with a moss-covered roof, surrounded by black spruce and balsam fir trees, her landline was ringing. She got to the phone on the fourth ring. It was Jane Holloway, calling to apologize for the security hassle.

  Ruth reached for her purse. “I can be back in fifteen minutes.” There would be time for a few slides at least, and then she’d leave Holloway with the handouts she’d prepared. Better than nothing.

  “Let’s reschedule instead. How’s next Thursday?”

  “Let me see.” As if she had some packed agenda to check.

  “And as long as we’re starting over, I have a second class I’d like you to speak to, the same day. They’re younger, not as familiar with the time period, but now I’ll have time to get them ready.”

  It was gracious of the teacher to pretend this redo was an enhancement, allowing Ruth to maintain her dignity.

  After another round of apologies, Ruth microwaved a cup of tea, grabbed an ice pack and went outside, lowering herself into an Adirondack chair on the porch. Once she started reading the journal, she would ignore everything else. If she didn’t ice, she wouldn’t sleep well tonight, and here, on the porch, there was sun, at least, one of autumn’s final gentle days in advance of a long northern winter.

  The cold had just worked its way through her pants and into the muscles around her leg when a car pulled into her driveway and the boy stepped out. He called to her, “I told you it was only three minutes by car.”

  She looked at her watch. “School can’t possibly be over yet.”

  “Soon enough. Holloway let us go to the library. I told her I was helping you with your laptop, so she said I could take off a few minutes early, plus give you this.”

  He held up her thumb drive like a winning ticket—but for what? She couldn’t imagine why anyone, never mind a teenager, would be so interested in paying her a call.

  “You want to work on the laptop now?”

  “Nothing better to do.”

  He was still carrying his jacket. He’d taken off his flannel and tied it around his waist; underneath was a close-fitting, bright purple T-shirt that said rockets. She noticed that he was thin, but not scrawny, as she’d thought. And he didn’t slouch. He had the confident, conscientious, shoulders-back posture of someone who performed. Thespian crowd, maybe.

  “You don’t have homework?” she said.

  “Only the most boring stuff.”

  Boredom she could understand well. Ruth had been in the hospital for several weeks, then home with a cast and in too much pain to do anything for months. With a broken body and a brain clouded by meds, she had found little to do but doze with television on in the background: The Crown at first, then sitcoms and finally cooking shows—the only two possible outcomes being whether the dishes were delicious or inedible.

  Scott had recommended Reece. Holloway likewise knew he was heading over to help her and evidently thought that was normal and positive. Ruth didn’t feel uneasy in Reece’s presence, she just felt . . . a surprising familiarity.

  “We haven’t even talked about how much you charge,” she said as he stepped up to the porch.

  “Fifty dollars. My standard fee for a tune-up.”

  “That’s not much.”

  “It’s easier money than making espresso, which I also do.”

  “So you’ve worked on laptops before.”

  “If I hadn’t, would you want to hire me?”

  When she hesitated, he smiled. “It’s really easy, actually. You could do it yourself. Start with a utility to remove unwanted files and extensions—”

  “Okay. I’ll stop you right there. Fifty dollars is fine.”

  She removed the ice pack, started to stand up slowly, and sat back down again, surprised by the pain. She knew how she looked: eighty years old instead of thirty-two. This was ridiculous. But that was always her thought, and it never helped. She took a sip of her tea and prepared, pushed herself up to a standing position again, then went inside the house, gesturing for him to follow.

  A half hour later, Reece was running the defrag from the kitchen table she’d half-cleared for his work while she did the dishes, trying to look busy until the chore was done and she could see him out. The journal was where she’d left it, on the coffee table in front of the couch.

  He stood up and wandered toward the nearest bookshelves, which lined the kitchen as they lined every other room: presidential biographies, American Indian wars, Victoriana. She waited to see if he’d pull out a book, but he didn’t. She remembered the feeling from when she was younger, trying to find the right corner of history to step into. There was just so much, most of it unapproachable and seemingly irrelevant. Then you found one person or event, tugged that single thread and waited to see if something tugged back.

  She asked, “How much longer will this take?”

  “Hard to say. Could be thirty minutes.”

  He started to pull something out of his pocket—his phone, she assumed. He would lose himself in YouTube, Facebook or Instagram, probably. Instead, he pulled out a Sharpie marker and started rubbing his thumb against the cap. A nervous tic.

  “I think we’re wasting time,” he said.

  Why had he just said that?

  “I think so, too.”

  Why had she said that? The words were out before she could think, but now she found herself frowning, embarrassed, as if an enormous burp had just slipped out.

  Ruth wanted to add, If we’re going to work together, you need to think historically, whether it’s the distant or recent past: technological changes, social context. An
d you have to stop smoking. Your body is a temple.

  She heard her inner monologue and thought, Work together? She didn’t even know this kid.

  And, Your body is a temple? That wasn’t even a phrase she used. It was bad enough to have a senseless thought. Worse to have one in a voice that didn’t seem like your own.

  She pointed at his shirt. “Rockets—is that a band?”

  “Cheerleading, although the other guys call it ‘tumbling’ to save their reputations. It’s a gymnastics alternative that some of us started because we refuse to run around to really bad music with smiles on our faces. The senior who founded it graduated, so I took over this year. It’s a stupid name, but we’re not bad.”

  “You’re a cheerleader?”

  “Cheerleaders were all men once.”

  True. She knew that. “But Rockets isn’t your passion?”

  “It’s not high art. But it’s something to do for an hour. Which still leaves the rest of every day to be bored.”

  “Is there anything that does interest you?”

  “Used to be dance,” he said. “Ballet, modern.”

  “Used to be?”

  “Also computers. But that’s like saying you like some type of car when what you mean is you want to go somewhere. What I mean is, I don’t actually care about the car. I don’t want to code or work for Google or Microsoft, which is what teachers assume, just because I can optimize a laptop and I like to look things up. Sometimes I think I hate the Internet, actually, but I can’t stay off it, because I’m just looking.”

  “That’s normal.”

  “No, it’s not.” He squinted. “I’ll have my fingers on my phone like I’m supposed to be searching for something, but I don’t know the right terms to type in. You know? There’s this feeling, like I was just about to do something. Just about to find something out. But I’ve already lost it.”

  “Have you ever described that feeling to anyone? Maybe a school counselor?”

  “At school they’d just say I have ADD, like I’m not paying attention, or OCD, because I can’t stop wanting to search.”

  “And your parents? What do they say?”

  He rolled his eyes. “My mom likes me to take zinc.”

  “Does that help?”

  Ruth detected a hint of a smile. No words were needed.

  One of Ruth’s arguments about not being ready for kids anytime soon had been that she didn’t know how to talk to children. Teens were even harder. To which Scott had replied, You don’t have to talk most of the time. You just have to listen.

  “I like to solve problems,” Reece said. “But I don’t have any good ones at the moment. I mean, obviously, I don’t know what I don’t know.”

  “Okay,” she said, sympathizing. And deciding.

  “Okay what?”

  “I’ve got a problem, or maybe a puzzle, which could be a hoax. But I’m really hoping not.” She took a deep breath. “You might learn something interesting.”

  Ruth pulled the bubble-wrapped package from the box, shaking her head. The journal should have been wrapped in glassine or tissue paper, then further supported by firm boards and cushioned so it wouldn’t slide in the box, to start.

  “Reece?”

  They’d relocated to the couch in the living room. Now he looked over her shoulder, studying the plastic-wrapped book in her hands.

  “Yes.”

  “If you ever send a very old, rare journal to someone, don’t wrap it in non-breathable plastic. With big temperature changes, you’re asking for condensation.”

  “I will absolutely remember that. What are we waiting for now?”

  “We’re reminding ourselves that research takes time, no matter what nervous collectors or greedy dealers might want to think.”

  “Right.”

  Reece had taken the Sharpie out of his back pocket and was holding it between two fingers, restlessly tapping his knee. Ticka-ticka.

  “Just a second,” she said.

  Ticka-ticka.

  “Shhhh.”

  Ticka-ticka-ticka-ticka.

  Ruth placed a hand over Reece’s in order to stop the sound. He tensed in response.

  Maybe he didn’t like being touched. Or maybe he was just a weird kid. In a swift, martial arts-like motion, he flipped her hand over—not roughly, but with firm intent—and held her wrist—still gently—and tugged her arm to his knee. He pulled off the Sharpie lid with his teeth. He set the tip of the black marker on the soft underside of her forearm.

  When she didn’t yank her arm back, he started drawing. In less time than it took to breathe, she had an infinity loop matching his own.

  When he’d lifted the pen, she withdrew her arm and rubbed her wrist.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I don’t know.” He looked as surprised as she did. “Because you told me to.”

  “Just now?”

  “No, before. Or . . . later?”

  “What do you mean, ‘later’?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  She tried to summon indignation—it wasn’t right for a guy to reach out and grab a girl or woman. But this had felt more like another tic than a real attempt to subdue her, and besides, his own alarm had preempted hers. He was rattled, and whether or not it made any sense, she wasn’t. Almost as if she’d expected it.

  She pulled her arm into her sleeve. “Okay.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Let’s forget about it.”

  “Yeah.”

  She really wasn’t the teen-mentoring type.

  “Just don’t do that again.”

  Ruth opened the journal gently, her fingers barely touching the edges.

  The first page was written in German: heavily slanted cursive; ink faded to a light brownish-purple.

  “What is it?” Reece asked.

  Her reading of German, a grad school requirement, was serviceable but rusty. The first words that jumped out at her referred to ears and eyes, myopia and mild deafness, and beyond that, problems breathing. She’d have to use a dictionary to confirm, but not until she’d had a chance to skim further. The writing was hard to read, penned in a consistent hand, but dense and embellished, with long tails on the letters.

  She skimmed five or six pages, turned another page, and sat up straight.

  Two capital letters were written at the top of the first page: “ZN,” followed by compact paragraphs of handwriting—in English this time.

  With effort, Ruth started to read aloud.

  The mind . . . has an uncanny way . . . of saving us from unendurable pain.

  Sometime after three in the morning, there is a sound of screaming brakes, and then the two locomotives collide, sending her flying across the narrow train compartment.

  Ruth could picture: North Carolina. And the time: 3:20 a.m.

  Nightclothes billowing, she seems to float: the pink- and gold-striped wallpaper gleaming behind her, her gown and the wallpaper and the entire railcar glowing as the train topples.

  Reece’s breath was loud in Ruth’s ear. “You can’t go any faster?”

  “No.” She returned to the script.

  One car topples off the tracks, dragging the next in apparent slow motion, resisting gravity, like feathers drifting, falling slowly, light shining between each perfect white barb.

  There. Hovering. Luminous. There.

  She is lost for a moment in the memory . . .

  “What is it?” Reece asked.

  “It looks like an account of the train crash, 1901.”

  “Annie Oakley’s train crash?”

  Ruth hadn’t explained anything to him prior to opening the journal. “How’d you figure that out?”

  “Holloway told us you were going to be talking to our class about Annie Oakley. We had to read her Wikipedia page.”


  Ruth continued studying the slanted letters, which closely adhered to the ruled lines, also handwritten: a ledger that could have started out bound or as loose sheets, bound later.

  She didn’t need to grab her phone or a file or a book off the shelf to make the comparison. She was already sure, because she had seen Annie Oakley’s rounded, inelegant scrawl enough times. The sharpshooter was deprived of an education in her early years, a fact that shamed her. Ruth knew that this dense and formal cursive wasn’t Annie’s.

  That was a problem. But only the first.

  Ruth looked at the handwriting again: in places it looked more like hand-penned classical music than like handwritten prose. The little a's and e's and o's were so small and tight that they were completely filled in with ink. The d’s looked like quarter notes. No one wrote like that anymore. To Ruth, it seemed elegantly European.

  “It looks old,” Reece said.

  “Possibly.”

  “How would you know for sure? Test the paper? The ink?”

  “Both. And you can also study the text itself, looking for individual words or phrasings that give hints about culture and time period. If you have an author in mind, someone who has left behind other indisputable works—”

  “You can analyze the handwriting,” he interrupted, excited.

  “—but it’s easier than ever to fake handwriting digitally, so you shouldn’t rely on that. And you can use stylometric analysis to search for patterns in punctuation or a preference for particular words, but only if you have a known sample for comparison.”

  He started to drum his fingers on his thighs, restlessly awaiting more information. “I don’t really get that word: uncanny.”

  “It means strange.”

  “Sure it does. Uncanny valley. That’s a term used in robotics. But who says that? Uncanny? Did anyone say that back in Annie Oakley’s time?”