The Anna Papers

by Ellen Gilchrist

  At some point in the evening Helen remembered Olivia. She took Daniel into the kitchen. Mrs. Hand’s maid, Victoria, was there, with her sister, preparing food, asparagus casserole and a roast. Victoria was weeping as she cooked. Helen envied her that. Helen squeezed the hand Victoria offered her and took the extravagant sympathy that accompanied it. Victoria’s sorrow was twofold, empathy for Mrs. Hand and regret that she had taken advantage of Anna’s poor eyesight and inattention to detail to never really clean the corners in the apartment when she helped out over there. They will all see it now, she was thinking. When they go over there to sort out her things.

  “I’ll help you with Anna’s apartment,” Victoria said. “If you need help with that, let me know.”

  “I will,” Helen said. She took a piece of asparagus in her fingers as she pulled Daniel past the ovens and the breakfast table into the pantry.

  “You need to call that child in Oklahoma and tell her,” Helen said. “Before she hears it on the news.”

  “Oh, God, I hadn’t thought of that. I don’t think we should do that.”

  “Of course you should. She adored Anna.”

  “All right, I’ll do it later. I’m glad you remembered. What will I say to her?”

  “Tell her the truth. There aren’t going to be any secrets about this, Daniel.” He was quiet and Helen went on. “Eat something. Get some food. We’ve got to stay here tonight. We all have to sleep here. Send for some things if you need them.”

  “I’m all right. Daddy has everything I need.”

  “It couldn’t be true. How could this be true?” Helen put her arms around her brother and they held each other, surrounded by the cake pans and Waring blenders and breadboxes and flower vases of their childhood. They could have opened the breadbox at any moment in their lives and found soda crackers and graham crackers and vanilla wafers and whole wheat bread and dry cereal. A big black breadbox that had come from a river house on the Catawba River they had gone to every summer when they were young. Helen opened the top. Everything was there. She took a handful of vanilla wafers and held them out to her brother. They ate the cookies in silence, then Helen started again.

  “You need to call her right away.”

  “Goddammit, Helen, don’t start in again.”

  “Well, it has to be done soon. I’ll call her if you want me to.”

  “I’ll call her. I said I’d call her. When I get time.”

  “She’ll hear about it on the news.”

  “You’ve told me that. All right, I’ll call her now. What should I say?”

  “Just call her up and tell her. Perhaps you should ask her to come to the service. No, I don’t suppose that’s necessary.”

  “I’ll decide if it’s necessary. Jesus, Helen, you’re worse than Anna. Stop sticking your nose into my goddamn business, please. I’ve got a funeral to run.” He stared down at the top of her head. Her soft little permanent wave was not holding up very well this week. She had missed her appointment at the beauty parlor when news came that she had to go to Boston. She pushed the curls up around her temples.

  “I look like hell. I know that. Well, do you want me to call her then? Someone has to do it, Daniel. We can’t let that child read about this in a newspaper.” He gave up. He was not going to overpower Helen tonight in this pantry.

  “Okay. I’ll call her. I’ll call her as soon as I can. You go take care of Mother. Don’t leave them alone in there to greet people.” Helen left and Daniel stopped in the kitchen and fixed himself a drink, three jiggers of scotch and four cubes of ice and no water, and, carrying it, he went into the library to make the call. When he picked up the phone Phelan Manning was on the line. He was on his way to Charlotte with his nephew, King Mallison, Junior. He talked to Daniel for about ten minutes and as soon as Phelan hung up, James Junior called from the hospital. Finally Daniel went into the kitchen and fixed a second drink and walked out the back door and around through the yard to his mother and father’s part of the house, a bedroom and guest room joined by a bathroom. The guest room was an octagonal-shaped room with many windows, which looked out on a rose garden. When the Hand children were small the room was used as a sick bay. Any child who was sick was put to bed in there so that Mrs. Hand could hear them if they cried.

  Daniel sat down on the bed to make the call. The bed was covered by a yellow and blue chintz bedspread that matched the trim on the wallpaper. Daniel sat with his hand on the telephone looking back and forth from the bedspread to the bedside lamps, which were cast in the shapes of shepherdesses holding crooks. Once, right after the room was decorated, Daniel had spent two days there recuperating from having his wisdom teeth extracted. He had been eighteen years old, on his way to the university in two weeks’ time. It was the very heart of August, the hottest part of summer, and Mrs. Hand had come in and out of the room bringing fans and ice packs and glasses of cool weak tea, which he sipped through bendable straws. In the night he had heard his mother and father talking about him in the adjoining room.

  “It had to happen now,” his mother was saying. “Why did this have to happen now?”

  “It’s only his wisdom teeth,” his father answered. “Daniel’s got worse problems than having his wisdom teeth pulled the week before he goes off to school.”

  “He’s too young. We should have held him back. It’s your fault he started so young. He was too immature and he should never have gone that soon.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Annie, would you let me get some sleep. Come here, I want to hold you.” Daniel had put the pillow over his head so he would not hear the rest. He sat on the bed now and ran his hand across the chintz bedspread. It had been the height of style when his mother folded it across a chair during his recovery to keep him from bleeding on it as he healed. I have to call that little girl, he thought. That goddamn Helen’s going to drive me crazy if I don’t, so, what the hell.

  The line was busy to Olivia’s house in Oklahoma. Daniel tried the call several times but the line kept being busy. He gave up. Then he went into the living room and found Jessie and told her he had been trying to call her sister.

  “Do you think she will come here, to be here?” Jessie asked.

  “Oh, I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

  “Why not? Why wouldn’t it? She might feel left out.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Jess. Just leave all that to me. I thought you were going to get your clothes. Phelan’s coming. He’s bringing his nephew from New Orleans. They were on their way to go hunting so he’s got this kid with him. Do you remember King Mallison from New Orleans?”

  “Why couldn’t she come if she felt she wanted to?”

  “Jessie, take your car and go on out and get your clothes. Bring me a shirt if you think about it.”

  “What kind?”

  “White oxford cloth, a dress shirt. Anything, go on.” He left her then and went to see about the guests and she got in her car and drove out to their house.

  Olivia was waiting for her aunt Mary Lily to have a prescription filled. She had left her homework and gone with her aunt to a store on the edge of Tahlequah because it wasn’t good for women to be out alone at night in that part of town. Her aunt was standing in a long line of customers at the Economy druggist’s window. I wish we didn’t have to use food stamps for everything, Olivia thought. When I get older, we won’t have them. We will pay for things with cash because I am going to make enough money for everything. I am going to be a pilot if I have to or whatever I have to do. A newspaper editor might make a lot of money. I know I can do it. I don’t have any doubts about it. I will never turn in a food stamp or a welfare check or take charity from anyone, even my father. I am a Hand and we don’t take coupons. She turned to the magazine rack, picked up a USA Today and there was Anna’s picture, on the front page. “Noted Author Dies by Drowning.” She read the story quickly, then walked over to where her aunt was standing. “My aunt’s dead,” she said. “It can’t be true. How could she die?” She l
eaned into her aunt Mary Lily’s soft black coat.

  There was a letter in the mail to Olivia from Anna but Olivia wouldn’t get it for many days. Dear Olivia, the letter began.

  I am only writing three letters before I do this thing. This is the last one. It is to say I love you and beg you to forgive me and to understand. I can’t bear pain, can’t be in the power of other people, even in a hospital. It is a fault of character and has limited me in many ways. I write that but I am not sure I believe it. Live a long and happy life. Create if you can and always wonder and always laugh. Don’t be afraid to love or to cry. Love Jessie and care for her. Don’t tell her I wrote to you or, if you do, say this letter is for her too. It is. I’m in a hurry now. Everything is so good and goes too fast. It has given me great joy to know you were in the world. Thank you for finding me. There is a provision in my will to help with your education. Someone will contact you about it later. Forgive me. Love and love and love—

  Aunt Anna

  “I have to go there,” Olivia was saying now. “I have to go to Charlotte to be with my father and my sister. I have to go to her funeral.”

  “Yes,” Mary Lily agreed. “It would be right. What should we do?”

  “Is there money in the bank now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we must go home and call the airport in Tulsa and see when they have a plane.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now. Go on, get the prescription for Grandfather. Then we must leave.” Mary Lily turned back to the line and explained the problem and the other customers allowed her to be waited on next and when she had collected the prescription she and Olivia left and drove as fast as they dared to their house. Olivia made a reservation on a plane, then tried to call her father’s home. The phone rang for a long time. At last Jessie answered it.

  “I want to come there,” Olivia said. “I read about it. It can’t be true.”

  “Dad called you. He tried and tried to call but the line kept being busy.”

  “I have an airplane ticket. To come tonight. Can I come there, Jessie? Is that all right?”

  “Come on,” she said. “I’ll meet your plane. When does it get in?”

  “At five thirty in the morning. Will it keep you from getting to school?”

  “School doesn’t matter. I can’t go now anyway. Oh, God, you wouldn’t believe what’s going on. They can’t even have a funeral. It’s so terrible. It’s terrible. Everyone is crying and standing around. Granddaddy had to go to bed. He never goes to bed. No one ever saw him cry unless he wanted something he couldn’t have. And listen, she knew she had it and she told our friend Brian, he’s a doctor, that she would go into the hospital and instead she went off to be with this man she loves and then she did it. It’s unbelievable.” Jessie paused for breath. “Listen, they found cyanide in her car. We think she got it out of our cousin James’s darkroom. He used it for making blueprints. Or else she bought it at a camera store. James is getting out on leave from the hospital tonight to check to see if any of his is missing. He thinks it might all be his fault. He was crying like crazy when I talked to him. He’s as bad as Granddaddy. Listen, we don’t know what will happen to Grandmother. She’s acting like it’s some kind of wedding. She keeps saying, ‘I don’t know how we’ll have a wedding if we can’t find Anna.’ The police have been there four times. And these reporters.”

  “Are you sure you can meet me? I could get a taxicab. I have plenty of money.”

  “No, I’ll be there. Dad’s at Grandmother’s. Don’t tell him you’re coming. I’ll come get you. What’s the number of the flight? Listen, I was such a disappointment to her. I think I may have made her sick. I wouldn’t go to my piano lessons. She got me lessons with this wonderful teacher she knows and I didn’t go half the time. Listen, don’t bring many things. You can wear my clothes.”

  “It’s Delta flight four forty-six. It gets there at five thirty in the morning.”

  “I’ll be there.” Jessie hung up the phone. It was dark in the living room. She turned on a lamp. Took one of her father’s Camel cigarettes out of the package and lit it. She sat in the dark, smoking, squeezing a few tears out of the sides of her eyes. I’d better take a bath and change clothes and get some makeup on, she decided. I may have to be up all night.

  Olivia’s family hovered around as she packed a few things in a suitcase and brushed her teeth and combed her hair and tied it back with a long blue scarf. She took off the dress she was wearing and put on her best school clothes. Her navy blue skirt and a long-sleeved white blouse and a navy blazer. Her grandfather had polished her shoes while she was packing. He held them out to her now. Olivia pulled navy blue knee-socks onto her legs and then sat on the edge of the bed and laced the brown shoes. She stood up and kissed each of her grandparents goodbye, very seriously and slowly. Her grandmother reached in her pocket and took out a ten-dollar bill and put it into her hand.

  “You should have told your father,” her aunt said, as she was taking her to the airport. “He should know that you are doing this.”

  “It’s all right,” Olivia answered. “It’s how Jessie does things. She’s probably told him by now.” She giggled. “She’s probably told ten or eleven people by now.”

  The plane was almost empty from Tulsa to Dallas. A drunk man from Jackson, Mississippi, kept trying to talk to Olivia. She had very obviously been crying. “What’s wrong, little girl?” he kept asking, but the stewardess interrupted him and took a seat beside Olivia. “You’re going to a funeral?”

  “My aunt died. She was a writer.”

  “Oh, I read all the time. What’s her name?”

  “Anna Hand.”

  “I know that name. Sure, I think I’ve heard about her books. Look, let me make you some hot chocolate and you let the seat back and try to sleep.”

  “I can’t sleep.”

  “You can try.” The stewardess brought pillows and a thin blanket and tucked the girl in. “I’ll get you some chocolate.” When she returned, carrying a cup of instant hot chocolate, Olivia was asleep. The stewardess sat down across from her and drank the chocolate herself. She was thinking about her own aunt, who had married a Seventh-Day Adventist and run off to Texas with him, leaving her three cousins to be raised by their grandparents. Nobody had even cared when she died.

  Olivia was dreaming of water. She dreamed Anna was swimming in the water wearing the shirt she had worn the day she came to visit. The first time she had seen her, walking down off the ramp of the airplane in a soft blue shirt, bigger and sweeter looking than her pictures, with her hair pulled back in a chignon, very simple and open, so easy to love. “Let’s go get lunch,” her aunt had said. “Let’s go talk.”

  “I had so much to say to her,” Olivia said in her dream, then woke up and began to cry again. The stewardess put the cup of chocolate down and sat beside her and held her hand. “You ought to be glad you had an aunt to love,” she said. “My aunt was such a bitch her own children didn’t care when she died.” By the time the airplane got to Dallas the stewardess and Olivia had exchanged addresses and phone numbers and become fast friends.

  Jessie put some clothes in a suitcase and drove back over to her grandmother’s house. Her cousin James had just arrived and she started to tell him that Olivia was coming, then changed her mind. James knew about the marijuana she got at the beach and she was afraid he might tell on her and she’d be locked up too.

  She wandered into the dining room where people were fixing drinks and started to tell her father but he was talking to a man named Mr. Alsop who always asked her embarrassing questions so she gave that up.

  She watched her aunt Helen moving around the crowd and started to tell her, then changed her mind. Aunt Helen might start going crazy and take charge of going to the airport.

  Jessie went into the den and sat down beside her grandmother and let her grandmother pet her. She’ll be glad when Olivia is here, Jessie decided. It will give her something to think about except Aunt Anna swa
llowing cyanide. Only the week before Jessie had come by her grandmother’s one afternoon after school and shown her grandmother a picture of Olivia.

  “I’m sick of everyone pretending like they can’t tell you this,” she had said. “Even Aunt Anna won’t tell you because Daddy told her not to.”

  “I know about it,” her grandmother had said. “Helen filled me in. Helen tells me everything whether I want to know it or not. I say, Helen, don’t tell me so much. Please spare me the details.” Mrs. Hand adored her youngest grandchild. She adored Jessie for being beautiful. She adored beauty in any form and the children and grandchildren who possessed it could have anything they liked from her. The others could have anything they liked because she felt sorry for them for not being beautiful. “What does she look like?” she had said.

  “Well, there’s the photograph. Look at it.”

  “I can’t tell anything from this.”

  “She looks like me. She looks like Aunt Anna.”

  “Her mother didn’t look like us. I knew her mother, Jessie, don’t forget that. That was one of the worst weeks of my life, when that happened. Her mother looked like a Spaniard.”

  “She’s half Indian, Grandmother. Her mother was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian. It’s something to be proud of. Her great-grandfather was the president of the Cherokee Nation. She’s really nice. It doesn’t matter who your mother is. Or your father. It’s who you are.” Jessie buttered a piece of homemade salt-rising bread and chewed it as she lectured. “You can’t meet her if you’re going to act like that. Why do you say she looked Spanish?”