The Appearance of Annie Van Sinderen

by Katherine Howe

  “Really?” I look up with new eyes at what had been Annie’s house, trying to wrap my head around what it must have looked like then. The pizzeria and the glass door make it really hard to imagine. No matter how hard I look, I just see a run-down apartment building on the brink of being condemned.

  “For real. Her folks must’ve been loaded.” Tyler sounds impressed. “Are you sure she’s really a . . . ?”

  I cut him off with a sharp look.

  “Sorry,” he says, shrugging his shoulders to fend off whatever it is I’m about to yell at him.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “Come on.”

  We make our way up the steps and ring the buzzer marked FATIMA.

  A long minute passes where nothing happens. I’m starting to get worried. What if the palm reader went out of business since Tyler and I were here? It wouldn’t surprise me. I mean, seriously, how much money can those people make? The neon sign is turned off, and the cheap velvet curtains are closed.

  Just then the buzzer crackles to life and an irritated woman’s voice barks, “What?”

  “Um. Madame Blavatsky?” I ask, putting my mouth close to the speaker.

  “Who wants to know?” the speaker crackles back to me.

  “Ah. This is Wes Auckerman? I was here last week. Helping on the film?” I’m trying not to sound like I’m apologizing, but it’s not working.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Tyler says, elbowing me aside.

  “What?” I say, raising my hands in self-defense.

  “Madame Blavatsky,” Tyler shouts into the speaker, “we’re here from the NYU security office, and we believe you to be in illegal possession of some sound equipment. Now, we’d hate to have to involve the police, and we’re sure you’d rather keep this matter private. So if you’ll just let us up, we can settle this quickly and let you get on with your day.”

  There’s a long, anxious pause while the speaker seems to consider what Tyler just said.

  Then the door buzzes to let us in.

  “Nice work!” I say to Tyler, impressed.

  “I remembered I left a mike behind by accident. Just a cheap one. No big deal. She’s so shady, though, I was sure she didn’t try to, like, return it or anything.” Tyler grins at me.

  The door on the second floor landing, the one covered over in black construction paper, is propped open on the dead bolt. We nudge it open and step inside. The room reeks of burnt candle wax and cigarette smoke. No wonder she had to use so much incense last time.

  “How was I supposed to know that was your microphone?” growls a withered woman in a cheap polyester kimono. Her hair is plastic-carrot orange, and it’s hard to recognize her without her turban.

  “Have you got it?” Tyler says.

  I’m impressed that he’s managed to maintain an air of authority, even when it’s obvious that we’re not with NYU security. We’re two nineteen-year-old guys in summer school, and one of us is wearing cargo shorts.

  “Oh yeah,” she says, waving an unlit cigarette at us. “It’s over there somewhere. Help yourself.”

  Tyler gives me a now-ask-her-whatever-it-is-we-came-here-for look, and moves off to the corner she vaguely indicated to hunt down his forgotten equipment.

  “Um. Madame Blavatsky?” I start. My hands are shoved deep in my pockets, because I never know what to do with them when I’m nervous, and being here most definitely makes me nervous.

  “Sheila,” she corrects me. “Sheila MacDougall.”

  “Sheila. Sorry. I was hoping I could ask you something.” I don’t know how to phrase my question without sounding totally nuts. But then, given the kind of stuff people must say to her, she’s probably heard everything before.

  “Shoot,” she says, drifting over to one of the folding chairs by the card table and settling into it with a sigh. She pulls a lighter out of her kimono sleeve—neat trick—and sparks her cigarette. She draws on it long and hard, holds her breath while looking down her nose at me, and then lets it out in a steady stream around the words “You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?”

  I suppress a cough.

  “Found it,” Tyler calls from the back of the room.

  “So, listen,” I start to say.

  “They’re shutting me down, you know,” the medium says conversationally.

  “They are?” I ask. “Why?”

  “Gonna tear the building down, they said. Build condos. Just what we need in the Village. More condos full of yuppies. You should’ve seen it when I first got here, in ’75. St. Marks Place. The Bowery. This building was full of musicians back then. Couple of artists, too, made stuff out of scrap metal they found in the street. Two drag queens shared the back parlor room. Oh my God, their parties. I saw Warhol at one of them, one time.” She takes a long drag, squinting one eye at me against the smoke. “The Guaraldis and me are the only ones left. They bought everyone else out. Forget it. Over.”

  She plants her cigarette between her teeth and leans back in the chair, balancing on its back legs. It looks precarious, and I’m afraid the kimono might fall open.

  “They’re tearing it down? When?” I ask, thinking about Maddie, who was squatting here. And Annie. I wonder if Annie knows they’re going to tear down her house.

  “How should I know? Soon. Next week? Tomorrow? All the same to me.” She stretches her arms up over her head, the kimono sleeves sliding down to her shoulders. I imagine I can see the outline of the girl she used to be, when she arrived in New York from wherever she came from. Golden hair, in a 1970s Farrah flip. Sharp, aquiline nose. She would’ve been beautiful.

  I wonder if all old people really just feel like young people trapped in old bodies.

  “Where will you go?” Tyler asks. He’s carrying the microphone and its wire all balled up in his hand.

  “Florida! My sister’s down there. Get some sun. Warm up. Finally. These winters, I tell ya.” She somehow yawns without dropping the cigarette. Also a neat trick.

  Tyler and I exchange a look, and he lifts his chin a fraction of an inch to prod me to ask my question.

  “Sheila. I’m . . . I need to find someone I met here. When we were filming,” I begin.

  “Oh yeah? I usually tell my clients that everything’s confidential.” She takes the cigarette between finger and thumb like Marlene Dietrich, taps the ash onto the floor, and then plants it back in her mouth and folds her arms.

  “I’m not talking about a client,” I say. I move over and pull up another folding chair across from her at the card table. I lean forward on my elbows and give her my most sincere, Midwestern-nice-guy puppy-dog eyes. They’re one of the only tricks I’ve got.

  She eyes me with suspicion.

  “I don’t know what you heard,” she says. “But I don’t deal out of here anymore.”

  Tyler stifles a laugh.

  “No, no!” I say, embarrassed. “Not that, either.”

  “So, what then?” She looks away, irritated.

  I glance at Tyler for reassurance, and he says, “Go on. Tell her.”

  I swallow hard. “What’s the deal with spirits?” I ask.

  “What do you mean, what’s the deal?” she mocks my earnest-sounding non-accent in a way that makes my ears burn red.

  “Like, somebody dies, right? And then what happens? Do they show up as a spirit right away?” I lean forward.

  She eyes me warily. “There’s different theories. Usually, they have to wait around awhile first. ’Til someone special comes along. Someone with the sight.”

  “The sight,” I repeat. “What’s that mean?”

  She looks at me like she can’t quite believe I’m as stupid as I look.

  “You know. Sight. Someone who cares enough to see them,” she explains. Which doesn’t explain anything at all, but whatever.

  “Okay. So, once they show up. How long’ve they got?” I
press.

  “Depends”—she takes another long drag of her cigarette—“on what they’ve done. Or what they’re trying to do.”

  “What do you mean?” Tyler asks, and I’m surprised to hear him sound worried.

  “Most people,” Sheila says, interrupting herself with a hacking cough. “Everybody does stuff they regret, in life. But sometimes, there’s that one special thing. That one thing that stands out from the rest. Something you’ve got to resolve. And that need to make things right, is even stronger than death. But you don’t get a lot of time to do it.”

  “Why not?” I ask, my eyelids blinking rapidly as I start to understand the gravity of what she’s saying.

  “How long do most important things take, in life? An hour? A day? A week, tops?” Sheila says with a shrug that exposes a few more inches of sun-stained shoulder inside the kimono. “You don’t get any longer in the afterward than you did the first time around.”

  Tyler and I exchange a look, and I can see in his face that he knows what I know.

  Annie is running out of time.

  “What happens if you can’t do it?” I ask, trying not to choke on the words. “Like, what happens if you can’t fix whatever that thing is, that you did?”

  Sheila’s penciled eyebrows go up.

  “Then you’re stuck,” she says.

  “What does ‘you’re stuck’ mean, in this context?” Tyler presses her.

  The medium smiles slowly, and says, “You should really be paying me, for this.”

  “Listen,” I say, digging in my shorts pocket for my wallet, hoping twenty bucks and a coupon for a free fro-yo will be enough of a bribe. “I need you to hold a séance.” I lean nearer, until my nose is only a few inches from her face. So close that I can smell the cigarette on her breath. “Please?”

  Sheila MacDougall stares long and hard at me, and then throws her head back with a braying laugh. She’s missing a couple of teeth.

  “Oh, honey!” she says, placing a mottled hand on my arm. “You poor dumb jerk.”

  I exchange a worried glance with Tyler, who looks as confused as I am.

  “What?” I say.

  “Kid,” she says. “It’s a scam! Come on.” She aims her next comment at Tyler, which is, “You knew that, right?”

  Tyler looks panicky. “What do you mean?” he asks, his voice tight.

  “A scam! You know. Tricks. There’s a button on the floor, turns the candles on and off. See?”

  Without warning, all the candles in the sconces along the wall flame into life. I’m so startled that I jump. I can smell a whiff of natural gas. In the clear truth of daylight her tricks look obvious and cheap.

  “But what about all those people I filmed?” Tyler asks. He sounds genuinely distraught. After all, he wanted to film people in transcendent states. That was his whole project.

  “Who, them? Oh, what difference does it make.” Sheila MacDougall grinds her cigarette out on the sole of her bedroom slipper, and drops the squashed butt on the floor. “People believe what they want. If I didn’t take their money, somebody else would.”

  “Okay,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “But the thing is, what if it actually worked, one time?”

  “What do you mean, worked?” She gives me a suspicious glare.

  “I mean,” I say, dropping my voice. “It worked. I have proof. And I need you to do it again.”

  She gives me a long look, presumably to see if I’m joking. I try to make myself look authoritative and serious.

  “We’ll pay you,” Tyler breaks in.

  She glances at him.

  “Those’re the magic words,” she says. “Hit the lights.”

  • • •

  For a long while, nothing much seems to be happening. We’re sitting around the card table in a watery darkness, because the summer afternoon sun is creeping in around the edges of the velvet curtains. Tyler and I are holding hands, which is weird, but then I’m also holding hands with a desiccated 1970s downtown type, so who’s to say what’s weird anymore. Sheila MacDougall is chanting, and Tyler’s eyes are closed. Tyler’s less afraid of seeming foolish than I am, I have to give him that. He throws himself into stuff, full throttle. My default, when I’m uncomfortable, is to get really self-conscious. And I’m uncomfortable most of the time. That’s why the camera makes everything easier. It gets my attention off myself.

  My eyes keep drifting to the ceiling in boredom.

  Divots. Too dark to count, though.

  I’m starting to think this was a stupid idea. I should’ve just waited for Annie in the library. Anyway, how do I know she’s even coming back?

  But she has to come back. The cameo, that’s her regret. She’s got to find it. And she’s got to find it soon. That’s the key, somehow.

  She’s got to come back.

  She’s got to.

  I fidget in my seat. Sheila grips my hand harder, as though trying to hold me in place.

  Sheila’s chanting grows louder. At my insistence she busted out the crystals and the Ouija pointer thing and everything, and I let my gaze come to rest on these stupid toys on the table between the three of us. Why am I doing this? I could just as easily be waiting for her in Washington Square. Sitting in the afternoon sun on a park bench, watching terriers and spaniels parade by on their way to the dog run. Pigeons pecking around. A few roses clinging to thornbushes, their petals starting to crisp and brown at the edges.

  Annie’s mouth, her lips like pale rose petals. I picture it, the tiniest of smiles pulling at her mole. Her weird curled hair. That delicious, musky smell she has.

  I smile privately to myself.

  “Psssst.” A faint whisper brushes up alongside my ear, so faint I think I might have imagined it. The fine hairs along the back of my neck stand up.

  I crack open my eyes, peeking between my eyelashes. I can just make out the silhouette of Sheila chanting, her head drooping to one side with the half-assed-ness of it, and Tyler with his shoulders hunched up and his eyes squeezed tight as though anticipating someone hitting him in the face. I don’t see anything else.

  My heart rate has sped up, though.

  I hold perfectly still, listening.

  The whisper, if that’s what it is, moves along the back of my neck and down my right arm. My nerves tingle with the aliveness of it, and I can feel a static electric current lift my arm hairs and move up the surface of my skin, all the way up to the roots of my hair.

  “Annie?” I mouth the word, barely whispering it so that the others won’t hear.

  “Wes?” the whisper answers me. It’s somewhere behind me, or to the right.

  I move my eyes slowly in their sockets, hunting for her shape. But it’s too dark; I can’t see anything.

  I stare long and hard at a point off to the right. I imagine I hear the faintest laughter, moving around the periphery of the room.

  “What are you doing?” the whisper asks, this time brushing against my left ear. I have to fight the urge to let go of Tyler’s hand and reach up to scratch my ear.

  “I was trying to find you,” I breathe.

  Tyler’s hand tightens on mine. I guess he can hear me. I hope I don’t sound stupid.

  The faint laughter intensifies.

  I look across the table at Sheila, who’s kept on chanting like it’s nobody’s business, totally indifferent to whatever Tyler or I might think.

  Is that . . . ?

  Wait. Is it?

  It is.

  Ha!

  Standing behind Sheila’s chair is the barest outline of a young girl, about seventeen, with curls combed forward over her ears. She’s in her same dress, with the low neckline with the bow in the middle, and loosely gathered elbow-length sleeves, the one Eastlin thought was stolen. As I stare she becomes more distinct, as if she were being reconstituted one atom
at a time, growing gradually denser and more real.

  Her eyes are bottomless pools of black, and she’s smiling at me.

  She holds a finger up to her lips.

  Then, behind the medium’s head, she waves her fingers and forms her mouth into an O, as if she were saying Woooooo! She tiptoes around in a circle, exaggerating like a mime, pointing at the medium and making faces at me.

  I can’t help it. I start cracking up. I press my lips together tightly to keep myself from laughing out loud.

  Annie sees me fighting not to laugh and then covers her mouth with one hand, pointing at me with the other. She swans around, pretending like she’s wearing a sheet. Then she mock-rattles some imaginary chains, rolling her eyes and moaning.

  “Dude,” I burst through my laughter, my eyes tearing up. I let go of the others’ hands and collapse, laughing on the table.

  Sheila must have noticed that I’ve stopped participating or something, because all at once the lights flood on and Tyler screams, “Holy crap!”

  He staggers to his feet and reels backward, a hand on his chest like he’s having a heart attack.

  “What’s going on? What are you trying to pull?” Sheila shrieks at us.

  Annie’s frozen in the middle of the room, arms raised, like she’s playing freeze tag.

  Tyler is gaping at her, his eyes so wide I can see the whites around his irises.

  “Holy crap!” he cries again. “You were serious!”

  “Who was serious? What’re you talking about?” Sheila MacDougall says, gathering her little crystals and stuff to her chest as if she were worried we’re going to steal them.

  My eyes bounce between Tyler’s horrified-yet-fascinated face, and Annie’s smiling one. She’s let herself become un-pretend-frozen, and is shaking out her skirts and patting her hair back in place. Sheila, though, is just looking at Tyler.

  In a flash I figure it out.