by Andrew Roe
16
| John |
THIS, APPARENTLY, IS as close as he’s going to get; he can’t make it any farther on Shaker Street because of the traffic. So instead he pulls over and parks blocks away, resorts to sunglasses and a baseball cap as a half-assed disguise, sticks to the other side of the street as he approaches the house, noting the buildup of trash in the gutters, the proliferation of weeds and wheel-less cars, the skeletal trees that seem to have given up. Crossing street corners (Slauson, Mills, Oak), zombie-lurching his way down the block, ignoring the growing gnawing in his stomach—the last time he’d eaten anything was back in Barstow, a 99-cent cheeseburger at McDonald’s, inhaled while driving, not wanting to stop for longer than was necessary, fighting off sleep for the last fifty miles before finally popping the last two Mira-Cures. Christmas lights, cheap-looking Santas and Frostys and candy canes, ’tis the season, he’d almost forgotten. There’s wind, the warm Santa Anas rendering everything dry and vulnerable. The sun daggering down. Now in front of a house across the street from his, skulking like a teenager, hands in pockets, slouching guiltily, it’s just like he saw on TV: the people lined up, the tents and chairs, the crowded sidewalk, the blazing heat and buzzing activity. Some of them are holding signs (Bible quotes, his daughter’s name, various diseases and medical conditions, Y2K predictions); others are taking pictures and holding video cameras, filming. Standing there, he witnesses at least three hugs and one high five. Like a football tailgate party, he thinks. A few cops patrol by on foot, scanning the crowd, talking into their shoulders. Passing them is a guy with a Styrofoam cooler strapped around his neck, selling tamales and oranges and bottled water. John doesn’t see Karen anywhere.
OK then.
He’s right across the street.
He’s back.
He’s home.
He’s here.
The person who lives in the house he’s loitering in front of comes out to check the mail. John recognizes the man. He has a limp and sometimes uses a cane to walk. But he’s not super old. Middle-aged, kind of defeated. He’d always seemed a little angry, this guy, barrel-chested, collared short-sleeve shirts and slacks (always slacks), darting in and out of his house along with his wife, who was a little more friendly and would even wave now and then. John had never caught either of their names.
“You here for the circus?” his former neighbor asks, not looking at him, sifting through a stack of letters and junk mail with the skepticism of a judge dismissing evidence.
“Yeah, I guess so,” says John.
“The other day they had to call an ambulance. A woman passed out. Heat exhaustion. You hear the latest? The one about the heat causing people to forget their names, who they’re married to, their Social Security numbers, who the president is. I was reading about it this morning. Solar Inflicted Temporary Retrograde Amnesia, they’re calling it. SITRA for short. The heat makes you dumb, that’s all. Now it’s a thing. But of course people were saying she, this woman who passed out, she got so caught up with the holy spirit or whatever, and that’s why she passed out. Every day it’s something new. People walking all over my yard, leaving their crap all over the place. Takes my wife and me about a half hour to get out of here just to go to the store or bank. The mail doesn’t come until the end of the day now. Mailman can’t get through. I’m a subscriber of periodicals. Now I got to wait.”
John doesn’t know what to say. The neighbor shuts the mailbox.
“Didn’t you use to live around here? You look familiar.”
John yanks down the brim of his cap. And was he not wearing sunglasses, too?
“It was a long time ago,” says John.
“How long’s a long time?”
“Seven months, actually. It’s only been seven months.”
“Well,” says the neighbor. “A lot can happen in seven months, friend. Just look at all this.”
ALL THE WAY back, on the drive from Vegas to L.A., he played the “if only” game. If only, if only: those two stabbing words, how they collapse the chest and crowd the heart.
If only he’d been taller, smarter.
If only he’d applied himself in high school instead of dicking around.
If only he’d had the ability to recognize what was important, what mattered, and what, in the grand scheme of things, did not.
If only he’d stuck with learning to play the bass guitar.
If only he’d taken a different street, missed a light, sped up instead slowed down, slowed down instead of sped up, picked a different time or a different day to run the errand—an errand that didn’t mean shit, that was shit, that was nothing and yet everything. If only he’d been paying more attention to the traffic and other cars, reading minds and anticipating what was about to happen.
If only he’d gotten up more at night to take care of Anabelle when she was a baby and crying, crying, crying, like she was broken and could not be fixed.
If only he’d been more patient, more understanding, with his daughter. Then maybe the dynamic that developed between them (argumentative, combative) wouldn’t have grown and grown and grown until he was the type of parent he thought he’d never be: angry, exasperated, impatient, distant (he had morphed into his own father, which he’d sworn would never happen). You never know what kind of parent you’ll be until you become one.
If only he was a different man, a better man.
That whole time in Vegas (well, Henderson), not once had he gone to the Strip, not once had he visited a casino or seen a show or gone bat-shit crazy or done any of the things you’re supposed to do in Vegas, not once had he put a coin in a slot machine and pulled a lever and stood back and waited for a miracle. It seemed like yet another failure.
If only he’d said certain things to Karen, made her feel better instead of shittier. The right words at the right time could save you. They could save your wife and daughter, too.
If only he’d had the strength to stay. Then he wouldn’t be in this fucking mess. He wouldn’t be doing what he’s doing.
If only he believed in something. And wasn’t always dangling like this, making it up as he went, merely winging it instead of actually living his life. You reach that point. Why did thirty-one feel so old and far gone?
If only, if only: it could go on like that for hours, Monday-morning quarterbacking his way through his past.
It was never pretty.
HE DOESN’T GO in that day. He doesn’t go in the next day, either. Instead he becomes an inept stalker. Driving. Parking. Passing the house. Relying on the hat-and-sunglasses disguise. When he’s not stalking, he drives around, spends afternoons at the Wash N Go, subsists on vending machine food, sleeps in his car in the T.J.Maxx parking lot. He doesn’t call anyone. The people’s faces, the people he sees coming outside after having been inside the house, praying or whatever to his daughter: they look transformed, like they are now something else entirely.
WAS IT ALL true? What did it mean? Would his daughter really be different? Would his wife be different? Will she say no? Did she still love him? How much time is too much time—too much time to ever forgive? These are the questions he asks himself over and over.
“I KNOW IT’S the holidays and getting to Christmas, I know the timing is bad. Horrible, actually. Fucking horrible. But when is it ever good for something like this? But I had to, had to. I had to break free while I could still break free.”
John is sitting in one of Wash N Go’s red plastic chairs, awkwardly contoured for a species other than human, meaning he has to readjust his back or stand up every five minutes or so to avoid sharp pains shooting through his neck and spine. For the past fifteen minutes he’s been contemplating a load of clothes tumbling away in a dryer, imagining what if they were his clothes, if he was the person they belonged to, if he was the one who would eventually pick them up and then leave and then resume his already-in-progress life. The woman talks on her cell phone from the other side of the Laundromat, over by the tables fo
r folding clothes. She doesn’t even try to lower her voice. All of Wash N Go can hear. Except it’s just John and her, no other customers on this Tuesday (is it Tuesday?) afternoon. So why bother with being discrete?
“He doesn’t know yet,” the woman continues in a calm, matter-of-fact voice, holding up a pair of jeans for inspection before commencing to fold them. “He doesn’t know what’s coming when he gets home.”
The dryer stops. No one comes to retrieve the clothes. The woman finishes her phone call and laundry, and leaves. Then it’s just John. He goes to his car to check if there’s any change in the ashtray. There isn’t. The Corolla looks like it could disintegrate into a heap of dust and metal at any second. It smells like sweat and French fries and motor oil. Back inside Wash N Go he stands in front of the vending machine. It should be a verb: “to vend.” He would have gone with C7: Ruffles, sour cream and onion flavored.
Maybe she has a good reason to leave. Maybe it’s totally and completely valid.
THE NEXT TIME he doesn’t put on the cap or the sunglasses. He has to park even farther away now. That’s because it’s been announced that after the high school football stadium event on December 30 they will no longer be letting people into the house to see Anabelle. So there’s a mad rush, a final surge of visitors seeking help and salvation. They want to get in while they can. He read in the paper that the wait is now up to six hours. More and more people camping out and spending the night in his front yard.
There’s a camera crew, again—today there are actually multiple camera crews and vans and reporters roaming around, wielding microphones. The tamale guy is doing a brisk business.
One of the reporters, male, with brown surfer hair and an abundantly tanned face, approaches him and inquires if he’s willing to be interviewed. About the girl. About the last-minute hoopla. About why he’s here and what he’s come to ask for. He declines. The reporter moves on to the next person and the person says yes, sure, and launches into tales of a sister with diabetes, an abusive childhood, a friend whose two sons may or may not have autism.
Then John gets in line and waits his turn.
17
| Anabelle |
SHE DIDN’T WANT a birthday party. She would be seven, and then the next year she would be eight, and nine after that, and if she had a birthday party when she turned seven, which was soon, there would be people and presents and sounds and voices and eyes and adults and cake and candles and bodies and people. The time would be drip-drip-drip. The light from outside filling the house and making her sick. She would want to go outside and wait in the car. Lock herself in there. Once in the car, she would sit for a while and then open the glove compartment. She would look at maps. She would find things like melted crayons and paper clips and straws. The maps would be hard to fold and get back to the way they were before. Why did they call it a glove compartment? Her mother would come outside. Knock on the window. Are you sure? Honey? Sweetie? The glass between them, separating them. You didn’t put gloves in there, after all. Her father would try, too. We’re about to do the cake. You don’t want to miss the cake, do you? The window would be cracked, just enough to allow in some air. She’d breathe. Sit. Stare. Drip-drip-drip. She didn’t want a birthday party.
They’d talk about it, the birthday party. Over time, again and again. The day itself getting closer and closer. She’d say no every time.
“But isn’t there anyone you’d like to invite?”
No.
“What about Danielle from school?”
No.
“What about Aunt Tammy and Dom? What if it was just them, and here, here at the house?”
Fine. But no singing. A cake but no singing.
“It’s your birthday, Honey. Are you sure? Are you sure that’s what you want? You only turn seven once.”
I’m sure.
She was sure. The cake would be strawberry. An ice-cream cake from Baskin-Robbins. She’d lick the candles, the icing cold and sweet on her tongue. The night before her birthday, the night before she would turn seven, she had a plan. She’d stay awake until midnight when the change would actually happen, awake and aware of the exact moment when she went from six to seven, crossing over like that, becoming something else, something new, but also keeping the old, what she was before, the old her, plus the new her, she’d be both things at once, if that was possible, her face pressed against the glass, pressing harder and harder against the hot, hard glass, her skin burning like fire now, something or someone stepping on her head is what it felt like, running an errand at the time, she remembered being in the car and the radio on and a wild crashing and loud sound and her father’s loud scream, she remembered being there and not being there, being elsewhere, watching it happen like a movie, except she was there, she was in the movie, and not in the movie, the way her mother leaned over her and smelled like flowers and said shhhhhh shhhhhh. Sometimes things came back to her and sometimes they did not; it was a dream within a dream, floating, waiting, reaching out, people coming to her and asking her things and telling her things, and sometimes she wanted them to stop and sometimes it was fine.
SHE LISTENED, ALWAYS. It was different from other kids. It was like a superhero power she had. She knew. She listened. She heard things others didn’t hear.
The report card came in the mail that afternoon. They hadn’t talked about it yet. She watched her mother and father read it after dinner, passing the piece of yellow paper back and forth, in front of the TV, people arguing and laughing and falling down.
“You need to sign it,” she told them. “So I can bring it back tomorrow.”
They were still reading, squinting at all the grids and columns and letters and numbers. She hadn’t seen the report card yet, but she knew, she could tell by their faces, the squinting, the chins lowering, disapproving.
“Belle,” her mother said. “This has some really good things. Some really good improvements from last time. You’re making progress, and that’s good.”
Her father took the report card from her mother, pointed his finger at something, read to himself, shifted his stubbly jaw back and forth.
“Definitely,” he said. “Definitely some improvements. But Belle, we’ve got some things to work on. I’m seeing a lot of ‘needs improvement,’ ‘unsatisfactory,’ things like that. You don’t want to be unsatisfactory, do you? Don’t you like Mrs. Durbin?”
She did not. She did not like Mrs. Durbin, who favored the girls with perfect ponytails and the boys who raised their hands and always answered her questions correctly, so sure, so certain, always. She liked Mrs. Durbin even less than Mrs. Stinson from first grade.
Later, at night, after the report card had been signed and discussed and stored in her backpack, she brushed her teeth and went to bed and pretended to be asleep. But she wasn’t asleep. She lay there in the dark. The world would come to her. She didn’t move. Her parents were still talking and she listened.
“This part here, for example,” said her father. “ ‘Anabelle hasn’t developed habits of behavior that we would expect from a girl in the second grade. She does not accept the responsibility of a citizen who has to live with other people.’ What the hell does that mean anyway?”
Quiet, TV sounds, someone standing up and walking. It was like she was there in the living room with them, invisible and powerful.
“Belle isn’t your typical kid, John. We know this.”
“I just wonder if we should get her tested.”
“Tested for what?”
“I don’t know. The attention thing. Autism. See if she’s on the spectrum. Something might be going on with her brain.”
“She doesn’t need to be tested, John. We’ve been through this how many times?”
“I just feel like . . .”
“What?”
“Like we’ve done something wrong. That we’ve somehow created this situation ourselves.”
“You mean I’ve done something wrong.”
“No. I didn�
�t say that.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I didn’t say that and you’re jumping to conclusions. You’re inferring. Look. Have you talked to the teacher? What does the teacher say? Have I met her?”
“No, John, you haven’t.”
No one else had her name. No one else knew what she knew. She listened. She heard things. As long as she didn’t move, was as still as water in a lake: She heard things, knew things. She sometimes had the idea of writing these things down, like maybe in a book or something. But then they’d no longer be a secret. They’d be there, on the pages, for everyone to see. They’d no longer be hers.
18
Message Board of the Official Anabelle Vincent Web Site
Comments:
THE HOLY SPIRIT LED ME TO THIS SITE ... I FEEL THE PRESENCE OF GOD WHILE VIEWING THIS SITE ABOUT HIS MIGHTY WORK THROUGH HIS PRECIOUS VESSEL ... ANABELLE! I BEG HIS PRECIOUS ANOINTING AND BLESSINGS THROUGH THE MARVELOUS INTERCESSION OF THIS YOUNG SAINT! ANDERSON HOUSE MINISTRIES IS A COMMUNITY OF DISABLED MINISTERING TO THE DISABLED AND CARING FOR STRAY ANIMALS AND HOMELESS PEOPLE. THE EVIL ONE HAS CAUSED US SEVERE FINANCIAL HARDSHIP, HINDERING WHAT JESUS HAS CALLED US TO DO ... BY THE POWER OF THE HOLY GHOST THR UGH THE SANCTITY OF ANABELLE GOD SHALL SEND US FUNDING ENDING THIS CRISIS ... KEEPING ANDERSON HOUSE DOORS OPEN TO THOSE JESUS SENDS FOR HELP, HUMANS AND STRAY ANIMALS; AND ALL THE EVIL ATTACKS ON THIS MINISTRY AND MYSELF SHALL BE HALTED AT ONCE IN JESUS` MIGH Y NAME, THROUGH THE INTERCESSION OF THIS PURE HOLY ONE, ANABELLE.