Pages for You

by Sylvia Brownrigg

  “He wants me back.” The closing punctuation of “obviously” hung in the air. The confidence in her! Anne would always have it: the certainty that there would be a trail of people following her, wanting her love and her beauty. Flannery saw that confidence, and through the polluted air now between them it no longer charmed her. Not tonight it didn’t. Flannery was not inclined to be one of that number. I took the road less traveled by, the romantic high-school students intoned to themselves when they read the famous Frost lines, which resonated with their wistful, independent selves. Flannery felt that way now. She would rather strike out on her own, far from the Anne-maddened crowd.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Anne said. Her face pleaded—for time, or sympathy. Her voice was low and humble. But Flannery could not rule out the possibility, now, that the humility was staged. When had the conversation between them become so theatrical? In the last hour or two? Or had it happened earlier, when Flannery was not looking carefully?

  “That’s easy,” Flannery said coolly, sipping the last of her ice water.

  “Oh, it is?” Anne allowed some sarcasm to seep in.

  “Sure.” Flannery spread her hands, palms up, in front of her, an opening gesture. She leaned in toward Anne. “Take him.”

  And Flannery left the table, allowing her former lover to pick up the check.

  Could it be that simple? Was that how these things ended? Did you just walk away, leave the room, pack your bag, and take the plane back to the city you had come from?

  It turned out not to be that simple. Flannery wanted to match the drama of her flight out here with the drama of an immediate flight back, but she realized, after making a quick phone call, that it was too late to leave that night and the soonest she could return was late the following afternoon. Flannery had planned to stay two nights, the first, the happy surprise of reunion, and the second, calmer love after a day’s exploration of New Mexican mesa or mountain, maybe even a fording of the Rio Grande. And now here she was, 11 p.m., 1 a.m. Eastern time, roomless and wandering, wondering which of the bad options before her to take. Find a room here at great expense, out of the fiery jealous conviction that she had to be in the same place as Anne to prevent le beau Jasper from reseizing her now, with the “Darling” all ready on his lips, and on hers? That, or she could crawl back to the El Dorado for a night of isolated misery. Or, even better—how low could these episodes go? how far down might someone like Flannery sink?—she could spend the night in her rental car, in the parking lot here, in nostalgic homage to the blighted state of Florida and a haunting fear of dead panthers.

  “Flannery.”

  A hand on her elbow. She pulled away instinctively.

  “What?” she said, not turning around from her blind progress down some random pastel corridor.

  “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

  The kindness in Anne’s voice—the one Flannery knew about, that was hers—nearly broke her.

  “I’m just—you know—I’m—”

  Her shoulders slowly caved; she lost a couple of inches of her native height to sinking her face into her hands, hiding her own sudden tears from the woman who had caused them.

  “Flannery,” Anne said, holding her arms around her. How was it, now, that they were something like the same height? Had Anne recently grown? “Come with me.”

  And, unable to articulate anything dignified like No, I can’t— Flannery did.

  Such nights are possible, and we survive them.

  It is a matter of sleeping next to the adored body you no longer have the right or inclination to love. Whether you are the one who casts off, or the castoff yourself; whether your arms are the recoilers, or the ones that reach wantingly, then pull back, remembering they are no longer wanted. Two bodies that are used to each other’s rhythms and sleep sounds, that know the turnings and breathings, know not to worry about that cough or that brief garbled grunt, that wildly flung arm or that stone-cold foot. Bodies that soon will not know each other’s night selves: will touch each other through jackets and jeans and the cooled-down air of reestablished acquaintance, if such a thing is possible between a given pair of ex-lovers. When she was twenty, Flannery would meet up with Anne on the university campus, when Anne came back to visit: they’d hug, have lunch as they had planned to, and it would go awkwardly, leaving them both distressed and dissatisfied. When Flannery was twenty-one, Anne would, strangely, appear at Flannery’s graduation, give her a tearful embrace, then vanish—only nodding at Flannery’s proud mother, not allowing time even for an introduction. When Flannery was twenty-eight herself, she would run into Anne in New York, entirely by chance, on Prince Street in SoHo. The two women, older and more beautiful in their different ways (finally Flannery had discovered how to wear her hair; finally she was comfortable with the length of her gait), would throw their arms around each other as if they were long-lost sisters. Jasper would watch benignly, as would Flannery’s smiling companion. A friend or a “friend”? It would not be clear.

  Now they slept together. Flannery did sleep, though she had expected a night of itchy, blanched awakeness. Not a bit of it. Her mind curled up with its unhappy news like a potato bug balling itself into its hard gray shell: no light could come in there. Flannery slept long and still, the sleep of the dead, next to a restless and remorseful Anne, who had already, internally, made the decision Flannery had bid her to.

  There had begun in Anne already, in the narrative Flannery later wistfully told herself, a slow, deep bleed of sadness. How could she willingly lose this glorious girl who had flown miles to see her, be with her, and love her? How could Anne release this Flannery freely back into her life and her future? With what foolhardy abandon was Anne going to let Flannery continue on alone, to make her infinite ongoing discoveries in her own and other people’s company?

  Anne kissed her lover’s shoulder with the tenderest lips so as not to wake her. Flannery wove the kiss into the texture of a dream. People are cruel, Anne had told her, and they will do anything, but surely that night she felt only kindness for her bright and brilliant Flannery.

  There was time still for them to get through together. A whole day in the vast promise of New Mexico. What a foreign notion, that this could be a chore and not a gift for these two women, the striking, elusive redhead and the smart, sleepy-eyed blonde. What a difference a day makes. How true it was! This was another item about growing up: you encountered all the clichés of love and loss and heartbreak. During your own convinced moment, however long it lasted, you suddenly thought, Right. That was what they meant! Flannery wondered idly what other trite revelations awaited her. Time heals all wounds: was that one coming? And how old would she have to be before Youth is wasted on the young hit her with the gusting truth of a spring storm?

  They could have separated, of course. Flannery offered her absence, a last selfless gift to Anne. In compensation for the surprise of her unwanted presence. “I can just peel off,” she said. “I have a car, you don’t have to babysit me.”

  “Oh, Flannery.” Anne’s back was to her as she sat on the hotel bed and changed into her top. She was still willing to change in the same room as Flannery, but seemed modest suddenly about showing her bare breasts. “Don’t be silly. I couldn’t let you do that. We’ll just—wander around together. I’ll show you the Old Town. It’s touristy mostly, but some of the old adobe buildings are wonderful.”

  “Think we’ll see any gators?” It was a private little joke, a mournful nod to their botched spring in Florida, but Anne was all forward-looking now and did not catch it.

  “Or we might have time to go to the petroglyphs—ancient carved markings, thousands of years old, on the rocks. I haven’t seen those, and I’d like to.”

  “Fine.” Flannery had next to no interest in stone carvings; it was a character flaw, no doubt. What was Anne now, a tour guide, planning sights and attractions for the two of them to visit? She had never seemed like a mother to Flannery, in spite of their charged teasing a
bout it. But now she could hear Anne’s suggestion as if in her mother’s dear, affectionate voice. “Petroglyphs, honey. Don’t they sound interesting?”

  Flannery fumbled into her clothes from the night before. She had worn a shirt she knew Anne liked on her, though it was no longer clear whether or not Anne would notice it. As she dressed, a plaintive truth rang out in Flannery’s head.

  I never asked to go to any of these places with you. I wouldn’t have cared if we had never gone anywhere. Yes—even Paris.

  We could have traveled enough for me if we had just stayed in your room.

  There were stores with soft-voiced white men selling Navajo blankets for vast sums of money; and small shops bright and weighty with silver and turquoise, staffed by longhaired women who might once have been hippies; and native New Mexicans seated against a long wall at the top of the square with jewelry displayed on the blankets before them. Flannery found the Old Town deeply depressing. The Ethnic and Labor History of the West: it was good that Flannery had been learning it, in small outrageous pieces, but how did knowing it help, when she was faced with such sights?

  She was too gloomy to go along with Anne’s forced light-hearted idea that they go try on cowboy hats or fringed suede vests. Shopping bored her. She had never before been bored in Anne’s company. “Let’s go,” Flannery said. The whole exercise seemed pointless.

  “Wait. I want to get you something.” Anne steered them into a store with a theme: chiles.

  Flannery was unable to hold back some sarcasm of her own. “What, you want to give me some salsa to take back as a souvenir? How special.”

  “No, no.” Anne escorted Flannery to the back of the crammed store. There, amid garish red potholders and dish towels, fridge magnets and key rings, Anne found a small plastic packet and plucked it off the wall.

  “Seeds?” Flannery was baffled. “Chile seeds?”

  “Yes.” Anne looked pleased. “Who knows? Maybe one day you’ll be a gardener. You can plant them then. They’ll last.”

  “I’ll never be a gardener. I’ve murdered a couple of Mary-Jo’s houseplants this year, though she was too nice to mind. My thumbs are black.”

  “I wouldn’t say your thumbs are black. I would say your thumbs are . . .” Anne lowered her voice. “Artful.”

  “Don’t say things like that to me anymore. It’s not right.” Flannery moved away from Anne over to the sticker section. Rolls of jalapeños awaited, ready to be peeled off to brighten or decorate. “I don’t want any presents from you. There’s nothing you can give me that will make this better.”

  Anne shrugged, but her eyes dimmed. “Fine. I’ll get them for myself. I’ll find a place with a garden when I move here.”

  It seemed to hurt Anne not to be able to make the gesture, but Flannery was past worrying about that. Anne put on her sunglasses as they returned to their cars for the last stop on this odd, melancholy itinerary. “I have already given you something, in any case,” she said as they unlocked their parallel cars, “that you can’t give me back.”

  “What? Your worldly wisdoms? A nodding acquaintance with Walter Benjamin?”

  Anne shook her head. Stung enough now by the sharpness in her formerly sweet girlfriend that she seemed reluctant to finish the thought. But she carried on with a schooling face that brought to mind the old, brief teaching assistant—Tuesday Anne.

  “You wait and see, Flannery,” she said. “One day, when you least expect it, you’ll use me. I’ll be your muse.”

  But Anne might not have been as confident as she sounded. Her voice was loud, but only with bravado, and behind her shades her green eyes were red. In case it was not true, or was not a generous enough gift—to the woman who hoped, one day, to write—Anne intended to leave Flannery with something more material. She had always had deft fingers that could move cleverly. Up at the petroglyphs Anne found a way to slip the chile seeds unseen into Flannery’s bag, where they would surprise Flannery later that night on the airplane, as she rummaged through her carry-on looking for butter-stained pages to read.

  “I don’t want to say goodbye at the cars,” said Flannery.

  “It’s not—come on, now, it’s not goodbye, as if we weren’t going to see each other again. I’ll be back in two days.”

  “I don’t want to say goodbye at the cars,” she repeated. Brave new demands surged through Flannery. Like a death-row prisoner, she felt confident that these late favors would be granted.

  “What are the other options? Do you want me to come with you to the airport?”

  “No. Don’t do that.” Flannery was emphatic. “It’s not an airport, anyway, it’s a Sunport.”

  “So what do you—”

  “Here.” Flannery stopped at a burnt red rock on which were sketched faint chalky lines, of symbols or figures. The petroglyphs required a certain amount of willed imagination to read. “Why not right here?”

  “What—” Anne stopped, slightly breathless. Flannery had been walking so fast she was almost jogging. “What, we shake hands here, and then—what?”

  “Just let me get back to my car and leave. You can check out a few more of those circles and arrows, up there.” She pointed toward a high rock formation they had not yet reached. “There’s nothing worse than people saying goodbye and then driving away in separate cars. I know, it’s a western thing. There’s nothing good about it.”

  Where did all this will come from, all of a sudden? How did the one who had never done any of this before know how to find the form for finishing? What Anne said was true, of course. This was not literally a last moment, or final frame. The mess of extrication was still to come. Ahead of them lay all those awkward sentences and hesitant requests, the broken dialogue that would unfold over the following weeks. Do you still have my blue shirt? And I’m missing my copy of Reflections and need it for something I’m working on . . . Worst of all: Perhaps you had better give me back my keys.

  Before Anne had the chance to say that one, Flannery would send them back to her, tucked inside a copy of the unread Walter Benjamin. Addressed to Anne Arden, care of the Department of Comparative Literature. Via campus mail.

  “So.” Anne stood, wrong-footed. “What’s your idea? We stand in the dust here and shake hands?”

  But Flannery was altogether over Anne’s wryness by now. She stood very tall on the rocky path. Straight, suddenly. Flannery had a grace in her height, if she could discover it. Maybe she was on her way, now, to discovering it.

  In any case, she was no longer reading Anne for clues. Flannery was looking east across the Rio Grande and the flat expanse of Albuquerque to the grand Sandias. The fading sunlight sharpened their edges, rendering them severely magnificent.

  “And so. Now—?” But Anne was arrested by the odd expression on Flannery’s face.

  “I saved your life,” Flannery said, watching the mountainous light. “Remember telling me that?”

  Anne almost smiled. “At that party? Sure I do.” To Flannery’s seriousness she said softly—as if not to wake a sleepwalker—“It was a joke. Remember?”

  “You were falling, and I caught hold of you.”

  “Right,” Anne said slowly. “But I wasn’t in any real danger. I wasn’t going to fall.”

  The light yawned between them, and time stretched itself elsewhere.

  “All right,” Anne said at last. To bring Flannery back, maybe, more than anything. Flannery did return briefly from the dusky solitude she had taken refuge in, back to those jade-worried eyes. She loved them still. Their Everglade green would color her vision for years. But Flannery was gone now, too. For her own self-protection, she had to make herself leave. All right, what? What had been the question?

  “Thank you, Flannery,” Anne said, her low voice a knife edge between sincerity and sarcasm, “for saving my life.”

  “You’re welcome,” Flannery replied, choosing to hear sincerity. Then she kissed Anne on those sweet lips and walked back down the steep, uneven path.

  Wise and fo
olish. Whose bright idea was that paradox? It seemed unnecessarily taunting as a term for a person’s second year into this educational adventure. If Anne and Flannery had still been together, they might have shared a knowing joke about the sophomore slump. Anne had occasionally made remarks, and not complimentary ones, about Flannery’s posture. She had not realized Flannery’s stoop was a self-effacement, an attempt to disguise her height.

  Flannery was disguising it less now. She was inclined to keep her head up more of the time, to look at the sky and the light on her walk to campus from the chic, book-filled apartment she now shared with Susan Kim. (The chicness was all Susan’s, but some of it wore off on Flannery.) Some mornings Flannery stopped off for breakfast at one of the half-dozen diners, Greek or American, that offered up their eggs and hash browns. One morning on a whim she bought a pack of Marlboros in a convenience store and then ate a cigarette-punctuated meal, just as she used to. The ash-flavored nostalgia soon struck her, however, as juvenile, if not foolish, and she thought it would be smarter, and wiser, not to try that stunt again. (Besides: she never had been convincing as a smoker.) Eighteen was too young, she told herself, to spend time looking back. She would have to get to the point—as she did—when reading a thick book of theory over black coffee was her own act and not an imitation of Anne.

  Over weeks Flannery came up with a long, looping route into campus that took her along one of the town’s broad, tree-lined avenues, where she could watch the season’s progressions toward its forthcoming splendor. The air began to bite and the temperature to drop, and Flannery felt her blood quicken with autumnal anticipation. October was always going to be the month for Flannery. Her new classes filled her with the promise of adventure; and her heart could hardly wait for the passionate hot fall of all those reds, yellows, and golds.