The Anna Papers

by Ellen Gilchrist

  “He used to cheat her at Chinese checkers,” LeLe said, turning to Adam. “That’s how he made money to bet on the races.”

  “Oh, don’t go telling that.” Phelan laughed. He smiled at Adam. “That was one summer when I was fifteen. Jesus Christ, I guess I’ll never live that down.”

  “He used to move the marbles when she got up to get him things to drink.” LeLe touched Adam’s arm, watched Phelan watch her do it.

  “Grandmother’s taking this hard,” Phelan added. “She was crazy about Anna. She made all her old buddies buy the books. She wouldn’t let them borrow hers. They had to send their chauffeurs down to the House of Books and buy them. I talked to her from the airport in Boston. You ought to go see her while you’re here, LeLe. She loved Anna. Anna always went to see her when she was in town.”

  “Everyone loved Anna. I loved Anna.”

  “She was good to people,” Adam said. “If she thought they were smart enough for her she’d do anything for them.”

  “She ignored the rest.” Phelan drank his airplane wine. “Well, shit, she’s gone. I never could imagine the life she led, going around to colleges, hanging out with professors. What did she talk to those guys about?”

  “She called me right before she did it,” Adam said. “She said she was calling to tell me goodbye. She kept saying goodbye. No matter what I said, she just said goodbye. I didn’t know where the call was coming from. Then she hung up.”

  “Push the button, LeLe. Get that stewardess back here to sell us some more of this trashy wine.”

  The stewardess brought the wine. LeLe and Phelan began to talk about old times. Phelan told her about a Kleingunther gun factory he was opening in San Antonio and LeLe told him about interviewing George Bush and then Phelan told her about going to New Orleans to pick up King and LeLe told him about her house in Sausalito. “Sitting on a hill overlooking the bay,” she said. “Falling off a landfill for two hundred grand of borrowed California money, what the fuck.” She giggled, got softer and softer. She liked where she was, sitting between two good-looking men on a darkened airplane was her idea of the right place to be, no matter what the reason. She was very soft, very sexy, a very sexy woman, sexy in a way that Anna had never allowed herself to be. Adam watched her talking to Phelan. He kept remembering once when Anna had returned from a trip to the West Coast wearing a pair of LeLe’s underpants. A very small lavender bikini with tiny violets embroidered on the crotch. “My cousin LeLe’s,” she had said, letting her skirt fall to the floor, “I asked her if I could borrow a pair of underpants and this is what she hands me.”

  “Come here,” Adam had said. “Let me see those little flowers.”

  He watched LeLe now, wondering what she was wearing underneath the brown skirt. He sat up, began to talk to Phelan about squirrel hunting. “Except for turkey hunting it’s the best,” Phelan agreed. “Except for turkeys. Everybody in Mississippi’s cultivating them now. They’ll give you a chase. They’ll dump on you from the trees. It’s like hunting monkeys.”

  “Well, I hope you don’t hunt monkeys. You don’t hunt monkeys, do you?” This from LeLe.

  “This wine’s okay,” Adam said. “Once you start drinking it.”

  “It’s what we have to drink on this airplane anyway,” Phelan added.

  “Wine is wine,” LeLe said. “And monkeys are monkeys and death is death and Anna’s dead.”

  She moved her arm close to Adam’s body. She was getting really tipsy, drinking on no sleep and no food. She felt the warmth of his jacket, the warmth of his chest. He was too cute to go to waste. If Anna wanted to go and kill herself and leave this good-looking man lying around the world unfucked, then to hell with it. She would fuck him herself. And anything else she wanted to do. Anything at all. “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck Anna jumping in the ocean without telling me.”

  “Well, I better go see about the boy,” Phelan said. “We’ll find you when the plane lands. Do they know you’re coming?”

  “Helen knows. I called Helen. She’s sending James Junior out. They let him out of the dope center for the funeral so they’re trying to keep him busy.”

  “I thought he was through with that by now.” Phelan stood up. “Did you hear the story about Daniel going out there to take him some shoes? Right after they cornered him and locked him up. Niall told me. James’s wife sent Daniel out there with a pair of tennis shoes so James Junior could get some exercise. And this nurse started trying to take Daniel’s history. ‘How long have you had a drinking problem?’ the nurse said.

  “‘I’m just here to deliver these shoes,’ Daniel said. ‘I’m just here to deliver my nephew’s tennis shoes.’ Then he drops the shoes at the nurse’s feet and runs out of the hospital. I can just picture him sprinting out of there. He used to run in high school, Adam. He was a great four-forty man.”

  James Junior was waiting by the gate. His girlfriend, Shelby, was with him and one of his old friends from his dope-running days. Olivia and Jessie were there too. They had come on a separate mission, to meet Anna’s baby sister, Louise, who was coming from Washington at twelve thirty. She had been off shooting a National Geographic film in Scotland and had been hard to find.

  “It’s a documentary about bagpipes,” Jessie said, giving LeLe a hug. “They are really weapons. It’s against the law to take them into the House of Parliament. This is my sister, Olivia. By Dad’s first wife. Olivia, this is our cousin, LeLe Arnold. She’s a reporter.”

  “I’m LeLe,” she said. She hugged the second child. Adam started to walk away, following King and James and Phelan. “Don’t leave me,” she said. “I want to go where you go.”

  “Sure,” he said, and returned to her side. LeLe introduced him to Jessie and Olivia. They looked like Anna, especially the smaller one. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but the resemblance was definitely there. He drew in his breath. Whatever desire he had begun to feel for LeLe was dissipating. Grief was returning. Real grief. He felt tears forming behind his eyes. The smaller girl kept watching him. Some of the tears began to fall.

  James Junior stood beside Phelan at the baggage carousel. King stood on the other side. Traveling with Phelan was never a simple matter. People never stopped showing up, phones never stopped ringing, someone was always ordering drinks, going off, coming back, buying or selling or renting a car or a truck, betting on something, getting on or off an airplane, carrying guns. When Phelan tired of this he lay down and took a nap. A Phelan-Nap, his friends called this strange event. He took a nap and then he got up and things began happening again. If you could live without sleep you could make it traveling with Phelan. If not, you had better stay at home.

  “What do you think of Jessie?” he asked King, using his low voice, the one he tracked with. King didn’t answer, and, as if in answer to a summons, Jessie came over to where they were standing.

  “This is my sister, Olivia,” she said. “Dad’s daughter by his first wife. This is Mr. Manning, our cousin,” she added, turning to Olivia. “And this is King Mallison, he’s from New Orleans.” She turned her full attention on this boy, drew him in, collected him.

  Olivia held out her hand, searched the grown man’s face, then turned to the boy with red-gold hair. He was the most beautiful person, male or female, she had ever seen in her life. More beautiful than a movie star or a rock star or any picture. He was perfect. He took her hand. He smiled. Then he turned his attention back to Jessie.

  Tennessee walking horses, Olivia was thinking. At the fair. She squared her shoulders, turned and talked to Adam.

  “I don’t live here,” she said. “I live in Oklahoma.”

  “I know. Anna told me about you. She was always talking about you.”

  “Was she?” Olivia asked. “I wish I had been there. When you were with her.”

  “I’ve got to get these bags,” King was saying. “We’ve got gun cases and a lot of bags. I better get them to the car.”

  “I’ll help you,” James said. He had just been talking
to his therapist about how people in his family acted like they owned anyplace they were. Now they were here, doing it in real life, taking over everything in sight, except each other. They came up against it when they faced each other. The girl from Oklahoma’s a strange one, he was thinking. I’d sure like to get in her pants. I bet she’s been around. I’ll bet she’s got some things to show Jessie.

  His girlfriend, Shelby, collected him before he could finish the thought. His old buddy, Ray, was standing against a wall by the public phones smoking a cigarette and trying to look cool. Ray’s too wasted to be real, James thought. Ray’s like an old song I’m tired of hearing. He walked over to the phone booth and told Ray to go on home alone. Ray had followed him out to the airport, waiting for something to happen. “Will I see you later, man?” Ray said. “You want to meet somewhere?”

  “Not tonight,” James answered. “I’ll call you sometime tomorrow.”

  “That’s cool,” Ray said, and put out his cigarette on the floor. Phelan was watching them. James could feel Phelan’s hunter eyes taking it all in.

  “Well, I don’t care if you think it’s cool or not,” James began, then backtracked and took Ray’s hand. “Take care, man, take it easy.”

  “I’m history,” Ray said, and moved like a whisper across the floor and out the glass doors.

  “Come on,” Phelan called out. “Come help us load these guns, James. I got some new thirty-eight-caliber rifles that will knock your eyes out.”

  Then Louise was there. She was the only passenger on a commuter flight from Washington and Raleigh-Durham. She came into the terminal wearing a green tweed suit and a very soft pale silk blouse. Very elegant, very thin, her high leather boots polished to perfection, her soft brown hair in a short pageboy, very smooth, very polished, very slick. The coldest and meanest and youngest of the Hand children. The most selfish, perhaps the most selfish person in the world, as Mrs. Hand was fond of telling her husband. “Louise is the most selfish person in the world. Did I make her that way, James? Am I responsible for her?”

  “You raised her, didn’t you?”

  “Well, they aren’t my genes. No one in my family has ever been selfish. No matter what else you might think about my family they aren’t selfish people.”

  “And you think the Hands are? You think my people are selfish?”

  “Your mother was a sweet woman.”

  “Louise is selfish because she’s spoiled rotten. Just like Sheila MacNeice. She even looks like Sheila. Now make me some dinner please, Annie, and don’t cry over spilt milk. Louise is what she is. At least she works for a living.”

  “I hate to think of anyone marrying her. She’d make a terrible wife.”

  “Annie.” Then Mrs. Hand would leave the subject of Louise’s selfishness and fix dinner for her husband and whoever else happened to be there or drop in.

  “Did they find the body yet?” Louise asked, allowing Jessie to embrace her, trying not to look at Olivia. She had been warned on the phone that the Indian girl was there. The Indian princess, Daniel’s souvenir of California.

  “This is Olivia,” Jessie said. “My sister. Dad’s daughter by his first wife.”

  “Oh, well,” Louise said. She had spotted Phelan by the baggage carousel. She had spotted the gun cases. She drew her mouth in. “I can’t believe none of my brothers came to get me. Where is Daniel? Where is Niall?”

  “They’re at the house with Grandmomma and Granddaddy. It’s terrible there, Aunt Louise. Everyone in town is there. The reporters call up Grandmother. And someone wrote this terrible thing in the paper about Aunt Anna setting a terrible example for young people and they should take her books out of the libraries and take back the award the governor gave her last year when she came home. The paper printed that and then it printed some letters that said the same thing. It just made things worse for Grandmother, and Uncle James and Granddaddy want to sue the Charlotte Observer.”

  “You need a haircut,” Louise said. “I can’t believe you did that to your hair.” Now Louise saw LeLe. She handed her makeup kit to Jessie, who handed it to Olivia, who held it. I should have known better than to come, Louise was saying to herself. Taylor told me not to come. He told me I wasn’t strong enough to do this yet but I had to come and here I am and I can’t get away until morning. I left the greatest opportunity of my life to come here. I walked off in the middle of a shoot and came here to see this. This Indian girl and Phelan Manning and a bunch of elephant guns and the newspapers saying nasty things about Anna. Well, she deserved it. Imagine doing anything as crazy as killing herself. A terrible death in the ocean. She could have used pills or gone to India or somewhere where we don’t know people.

  Louise’s eyes met Olivia’s. Olivia held the cosmetic kit. It was made of crocodile hide. She thought Louise was the most unhappy-looking person she had ever met in her life. That’s the Tennessee walker, she decided. Hobbled and crippled and about to fall apart. LeLe had seen Louise now and came over and put her arm around her.

  “Did they find the body?” Louise said. “Did they find a body yet?”

  “No.”

  “Then what are we going to bury? Why are we having this funeral?”

  “It’s isn’t a funeral, honey.” Phelan had joined them now. “It’s a wake.”

  It lasted six days. Back at the house people were beginning to smoke. People that hadn’t smoked in years were lighting up, bumming cigarettes from Daniel and Phelan, talking in hushed voices in small groups, moving out onto the patio and out into the yard, flicking cigarette ashes into watering cans and beside the birdbath, dropping cigarette ashes on the leaves from the ornamental cherry apple trees, leaving glasses on the picnic table and the old iron typing table painted with white enamel that had held Anna’s first typewriter when she was fourteen. The table had been on the patio for so long that everyone had forgotten where it came from or what it was originally for. Once, in the past summer, the last summer, Anna had been sitting on the patio with her mother and had recognized it under its ten coats of white paint, had meant to say something about it, had meant to say, Momma, that’s my old typing table isn’t it? But her mother had been talking away about James and the dope recovery hospital and would not be interrupted. Anna had listened to her with great tenderness, thinking how strange it was in a world full of poorly, oh, badly mothered people, to have had such a wonderful mother, such a great beginning. A mother who would deliver the latest in typewriters and typewriter tables to the room of her oldest child just because the child’s teacher had said the child could write. So there it was, Anna was thinking, right in the middle of my ruffled room, a typewriter table and a little black Royal typewriter. Maybe she knew there would be no babies for me. Maybe she knew I was going to need something special to make up for that. Who knows what we know, or in what sequence, all of us here on the planet Earth, which Freeman Dyson says we might have helped to make, might have dreamed up.

  In this particular sequence, in this particular group of homo sapiens, gathered at this particular house for this particular reason, on this day in this place these people were angry at the idea of their common and particular mortality and to make up for it, as a sort of limited South Charlotte Zeitgeist, they smoked, bumming cigarettes from Daniel and James Junior and Phelan.

  “Jesus Christ,” Daniel finally told Helen. “Go to the store and get us some cigarettes. Get some cartons.” He handed her a fifty-dollar bill and his car keys.

  “What are you going to do with her now that she’s here?” Helen said.

  “Who? Oh, the little girl?”

  “Olivia. Olivia. My God, it’s just like Anna to start that and then go kill herself and leave it to me to clean up.”

  “To you.”

  “Well, someone has to decide what to do with her.”

  “Helen, I’ve got a funeral to run. Please leave me alone. The little girl’s all right. She’s with Jessie out at the house. She’s okay.”

  “Mother told me to find out what you
plan to do about her.”

  “Nothing. I’m not going to do anything about her. It’s okay. Go get the goddamn cigarettes, Helen, or if you won’t, I’ll do it myself.”

  “I’m going.” Helen put the fifty-dollar bill down on the table. “Daniel?”

  “Leave it alone, Sister. If you say another word about that little girl I’ll break your goddamn neck. She’s with Jessie and she’s here and that’s that. Go get the cigarettes!”

  Helen walked down across the lawn and got into Daniel’s car and put it into forward gear and began to drive. If he thinks he can move her down here and just confront everyone with this he is crazy. She’s a nice little girl. I like her. She was doing just fine out there in Oklahoma where she lives, but she will never fit into Charlotte. Oh, my God, Anna is dead, goddamn you, Anna, for bringing all this horrible stuff on Momma and Daddy and bringing that girl right up in the middle of it. Who is supposed to pay to educate all of these children, do you think? Are you going to do it, selfishly dead as a doornail? Oh, my God, some fish is eating her right now, some shark. Helen drove madly down the street, barely missing a jogger. She slammed on the brakes, then pulled over to the side of the street and turned off the motor and began to cry. She cried for all the days of her life with Anna and all the things she and Anna had done. She cried for the time they went to see The Song of the South and the time they went to see Bambi and the time Anna screamed at a girl who slapped James at recess and the nights they slept together in Anna’s four-poster bed, curled up like spoons. Helen inside so nothing could get her and Anna’s arms curled around her and Anna’s voice telling her stories about the fairies who come to get good children and take them away to the land of lost dolls. I can’t make it, Helen thought. It’s no good now. Anna being eaten by sharks, already eaten and digested and her voice gone forever. There will never be that sound again. I will never hear her speak. And that girl is here and what in the name of God will we do with her? Momma is going to start liking her. And then what will we do? Oh, God, give me strength. Why have you forsaken me and why do Spencer and I have to be so mean to each other? No, he was nice last night. He was just as nice as he could be and is being so helpful to Daddy. I have to get back. DeDe is coming and Stacy, that little bitch, how did I bring such a child into the world? It’s all messed up now. Everything I had such hopes for. Well, I’ve got to get those cigarettes before Daniel gets any madder.