The Anna Papers

by Ellen Gilchrist

  She wiped her face on her sleeve and started the motor and drove to the 7-Eleven store and bought three cartons of cigarettes. Camel Filters and Pall Malls and Salem 100’s and took them back to the house and dumped them all out in a cut-glass crystal bowl on the dining-room table.

  LeLe and Adam checked into adjoining rooms at the Park Hotel. When the bellboy brought their bags, LeLe told him to unlock the door between the rooms. “I can’t be alone now,” she said. “I can’t do this by myself.”

  “Neither can I,” he answered. “Come on in. Stay with me.” LeLe lay down upon the bed and watched him hang up his suit. “I hope this is all right to wear. It’s the only suit I have.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes it does. We have to do right by her. Not let her down.”

  “Then don’t talk to reporters. Don’t say you were her boyfriend.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t do that. I wasn’t important to her, LeLe. I don’t know what was but it wasn’t me. She just liked to have me around when she wasn’t writing.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Well you might as well because it’s true.”

  “She wasn’t that cold.”

  “Not at first. When I first knew her she was so excited about the world.” He came and sat on the bed, still holding the coat hanger and his suit pants. “About the house, me, everything. Other people. Then, after she came back from New York, she was changed. Like the sharpness wasn’t there. Maybe she was sick.”

  LeLe was quiet. It seemed impossible that he didn’t know about Philip. Still, young men were so egotistical, maybe it had never occurred to him that there might be another man. Maybe he was waiting for her to tell him. Maybe he was pumping her. “Let me hang those up for you,” she said.

  “No, they’re all right.” He put the pants on a chair, then stretched out on the bed beside her. “What are we doing here?” he asked.

  “I don’t know but you can get closer if you want to.”

  “Could I ask you something?” he said. “Something very personal?”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “What kind of underpants are you wearing? I mean, what color are they?”

  Jessie and Olivia slept that night at Jessie and Daniel’s house. “You can sleep in the bed with me if you want to,” Jessie said. “Or you can take one of the guest rooms or whatever you want to do.”

  “I’ll stay in here,” Olivia said. “I’m not used to sleeping far away from other people. My grandmother always lets me sleep with her if I want to.”

  “Aunt Anna used to sleep with Grandmother when she’d come home to visit. One of Dad’s girlfriends that’s a psychologist thinks that’s so weird. She was always talking about it. I can’t stand her anyway. I guess she thought just because Aunt Anna was famous she wouldn’t want to sleep with her mother.”

  “Then where would Granddaddy sleep?”

  “In his room I guess. He has a room of his own. He has all his books about money in there. Are you going to call him Granddaddy?”

  “He told me to.”

  “I just have to get used to it.” Jessie was taking off her makeup with theatrical cold cream. A big black tin her mother had sent from London for Christmas. She smoothed great handfuls across her face, then rubbed it in. “What do you think of King?” she added.

  “I think he’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  “Are you in love with him?” Jessie wiped the cream from her face with tissues, then began to scrub her face with a green felt washcloth. Olivia was sitting on the bed. She was tired now and she was beginning to feel disoriented and she didn’t want to talk about King to Jessie. “No,” she said. “I guess he’s our cousin, isn’t he?”

  “He’s so far away it doesn’t matter. He’s our sixth cousin or something. His grandfather was Dad’s grandmother’s first cousin. So, are you falling in love with him?”

  “No, I just think he’s beautiful. He’s so strong looking. Like no one could knock him down. He looks like a great yearling. Oh, I shouldn’t say that. People aren’t horses. Don’t tell him I said that.”

  “I’m going to tell him you’re in love with him.” Jessie had gotten up and come to stand by the bed. She dropped the towel on the floor and began to turn down the covers on her side. “Come on, get under.”

  “Don’t tell him anything I say. I mean that. I don’t want you to say I said anything about him. Promise me, Jessie.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry. Olivia, I’m going to make up a nickname for you. Just for you and me. I’m going to call you Sissy or Sandy or Scooty or something cute. You wait. I’ll think of something.”

  “You swear you won’t say anything to him, anything at all about me?”

  “I swear. I swear to God. I could call you Sutter. That’s what Aunt Helen used to call Aunt Anna. She called her Sutter because she couldn’t say sister when she was little.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be called Aunt Anna’s name.”

  “Then I’ll call you Sissy. Goodnight, Sissy, sweet dreams.”

  “You promise.”

  “I will never say a word to him about you.”

  “Goodnight. I like being here with you.”

  “I do too. I’m starting to love you. I guess you could say we are in training to be sisters.”

  In the night Jessie woke up and shook Olivia awake. “Starr,” she said. “I am going to call you Starr. I always wanted to have a friend named Starr.”

  “Okay,” Olivia said. “It’s okay with me.”

  A few hours later Olivia woke up and slipped out of the bed and went into the guest room where she had left her things. She took a notebook out of her suitcase and began to write.

  Starr to Sun, Starr to King

  King of the Sun, King of the Moon,

  Light of the day and the night,

  What dark dream brought us here?

  Is this wrong or right? Bad or Good?

  Where the moon shines on you there the world ends for me.

  I am so lonely, Mother, speak to me from your cold bed.

  Father, Father, learn to look at me.

  She folded the poem in half and put it in the pocket of her suitcase. She was ashamed to have written such a self-pitying poem and slept the rest of the night alone to punish herself for her cowardice.

  Daniel came home at four and tiptoed down the hall and looked in on them. First on Jessie, sprawled out across her bed. Then at Olivia, curled up around a pillow in the guest room. She seemed so small, and, even in sleep, so serious. He covered her up and patted the covers with his hand. As he was walking out she opened her eyes and watched him leave. When he was gone she reached her hand up on the covers and felt the place where he had touched her.

  On the fourth day of the wake news arrived that another body had been found near Biddeford and Philip was going up there to identify it. At six in the afternoon he called to say it was not Anna.

  “We will have the service on Friday,” Mrs. Hand told him. “The children want to have it. Don’t come unless you really need to. You have work to do. There is nothing you can do to help out here.”

  “I need to come,” he said. “I’ll be there somehow.”

  Phelan and LeLe were alone in the Hands’ library. Phelan got up and shut the door. Then he came back to the sofa. A fire was burning in the fireplace. He watched it for a while. “You need to tell that kid about Philip,” he said finally. “Someone needs to tell him who he is.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’ll know. Because a man doesn’t need to meet his girlfriend’s lover at her memorial service at ten o’clock in the morning on a workday. He needs to get back to school. Maybe you could get him out of here before Friday.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Maybe if you told him he would leave.”

  “You tell him.”

  “No, you do it.”

  “Why do I have to do it?”

  “Because you’re the one that’s sle
eping with him.” He smiled at her, then he got up and poked at the fire.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him Anna’s doctor is coming. I’ll say he used to be her boyfriend.”

  “You’ll do great. You’ll do it fine.”

  “I don’t know, Phelan. I just don’t know.” It is Wednesday afternoon, LeLe was thinking. Then Thursday, then Friday, then we will all go home and I will go back to being lonely. Everything will be the same, except if I want to call up Anna on the phone I am one hundred percent and completely out of luck. LeLe began to cry. It was the first time she had cried all day. Phelan leaned over the fireplace, poking at the logs and crying too.

  Friday morning was beautiful and clear. The trees of Charlotte were brilliant in the fall sunrise. Brown oaks and river birches and yellow walnuts and willows and elms. Silver maples turning the palest of golds and dark crimson maples at the corners of yards. Burgundy hawthorns and purple dogwood, carpets of purple and gold and dusty orange beneath the trees.

  Her feet have walked across this yard, Mrs. Hand thought, and went back inside and lay back down upon the bed. It was the first time since Helen and Daniel and Niall had come with the news that she had really faced the knowledge that Anna was gone. She picked up a small gold case containing photographs of her parents and closed it and held it beneath her bosom on the bed. The sharp edges of the case cut into her skin. Outside the French doors the birds flew from the feeders to the oak trees and down onto the lawn and back again. I have to get up, she thought. I have to set an example. I have to find that child from Oklahoma. I have to take her into my bosom. I should have kept her here with us last night. Oh, Anna, my precious little baby girl. My own little precious girl. My precious baby girl. I have to go and find James. I have to see if James is awake.

  She got up from the bed and walked barefooted into the guest room and found him sitting up in bed reading a book. He had been crying again. She walked over to the other side of the bed and got in beside him and cuddled down into his chest. There was nothing to say and neither of them said a thing.

  Phelan Manning’s sister, Crystal, was staying at the Hands’ house for the duration of the wake. She was up and dressed and in the living room with her three-year-old daughter, Crystal Anne. She was trying to keep Crystal Anne quiet. She had dressed the child in a crushed brown velvet dress with a white lace collar and white silk tights. Now she was trying to fit the child’s feet into a pair of white patent leather shoes that she hadn’t worn since summer. The shoes were too tight and Crystal Anne refused to put them on.

  “Then wear your brown shoes,” Crystal said. “No one is going to be looking at your feet.”

  “Yes they will. Brown doesn’t go with white.”

  “Yes it does. It looks just fine. You have a white collar on your brown dress, don’t you?”

  Crystal Anne walked down the length of the living room to a table at the end with a big gold mirror hanging above it. There was an arrangement of flowers on the table. “I can’t see,” she said.

  “Wait a minute.” Crystal moved the flower arrangement to the floor. Then she pulled a chair up in front of the table and Crystal Anne stood up on the chair and inspected herself. “See,” Crystal said. “Brown and white.”

  “The brown shoes are lost. The brown shoes are gone.”

  “No they aren’t. Stay right there and I’ll go get them and you can see how they look.” Crystal went back to the room where they were staying to search for the shoes and Crystal Anne began to do a dance for her reflection. It was a dance based on her Barbie Pet Show set. “Oh, the girls were going to the show with their dogs. They were putting on their blusher for the show.” The door opened and Crystal Anne’s uncle Phelan came in with LeLe. “Crystal Anne,” he said. “How wonderful you look in your dress.” He scooped her up.

  “My shoes are too little. I have to wear my brown ones.”

  Crystal came back in carrying the brown shoes. She kissed her brother and handed them to him. “Put these on her, please, while I talk to LeLe. Louise is ready. She’s back there somewhere.” The door opened and Adam entered.

  “Has Annie gotten up yet?” LeLe asked.

  “I haven’t heard a sound.”

  “It’s eight thirty. We have to leave soon.”

  “Go wake them up.”

  “Ask Louise to do it. Oh, never mind, I will.” Crystal left the room. She met Mr. and Mrs. Hand coming down the hall. They were completely dressed, ready to leave for the church. “I’m sorry I didn’t get up to make you breakfast,” Mrs. Hand said. “I should have been up sooner.”

  “We were fine,” Crystal said. “There was nothing to do.” She embraced the older woman, held on to her. Then she embraced Mr. Hand. Light was pouring into the hall from the doors that opened into the bedrooms. I never thought I would live to see this day, Crystal was thinking. To begin to bury my friends. I didn’t really think this day would come.

  Then they went into the living room and everyone was there. Coming in all the doors at once, Daniel and Jessie and Olivia and Daniel’s girlfriend, Jean Winters, and Helen and Spencer and DeDe and Kenny and Winifred and Lynley and Stacy and Kenny’s wife and James and Putty and Little Putty and James Junior and Aleece and Niall and Louise. They all milled around the living room and kitchen and den hugging each other and getting sadder and sadder. Then they all began to go out the doors and out into the yard and into the cars.

  LeLe took Adam’s hand, led him out the front door of the house into the front yard. Seven huge old live oak trees commanded the yard. Their dark shadows made a network on the lawn. A taxi drove up at the end of the oak-covered lawn. A man in a dark suit got out and paid the taxi driver and began to walk toward the people getting into cars. Helen disengaged herself from her mother and walked down the yard to meet him. She took his arm and led him toward her parents. LeLe steered Adam toward a car holding Phelan and Louise and King. She hadn’t told Adam about Philip after all and she wasn’t going to. As soon as the service was over she was going to drive him out to the Charlotte airport and put him on a plane to take him back to Vanderbilt University where he belonged. She wasn’t going to dump the knowledge of Anna’s lover on Adam this day or any other day and she had told Phelan so. “Who was that?” Adam said.

  “I don’t know,” LeLe said. “Some old friend of Helen’s.”

  The cars began to drive in the direction of the church. James and Putty and James Junior were in the front seat of James’s Buick. “I want to talk to you later today,” James Junior said. He was talking to his father. His mother looked out the window. He had already talked to her.

  “Okay, shoot.”

  “I’m not going back to that place. I’ll go to AA meetings every day if I have to but I won’t go back to that place.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “I don’t need to be there, Dad. I’m not going to do any more drugs. I won’t go back. You can’t make me.”

  “This is Phelan’s doing.”

  “No, this is my own doing. I’m okay now. I’ll go to AA. You can go with me if you don’t believe it.”

  “Then what are you going to do?” His mother had decided to join the conversation. “It’s too late to go back to school this semester.”

  “I’ll get a job. Phelan said I could work for him while he’s here. He’s going to stay until January. He said I could be his gofer.”

  “His what?”

  “His errand boy. He has a lot of things to do for his grandmother and the businesses she owns. She still owns that paper plant in Clover and he’s going to be spending time over there so he said I could ride back and forth with him. Uncle Niall thinks it’s a good idea.”

  “Niall has always worshipped Phelan.” This from Putty.

  “How do you know, Putty?” James Senior put in. “You don’t know a damn thing about Phelan and Niall. We’ll talk about it this afternoon,” he added, to his son. “After we get through with the funeral. My sister is dead, son. I wish you would
try to remember that for the next few hours. Grandmomma and Granddaddy and Aunt Helen and Uncle Niall and Daniel and all of us have lost our sister. We’ll work on your problems when we get through with this morning. And, Putty, you just stay out of this. I don’t need you in on this today. You’re the one that had to go and spend fifteen thousand dollars locking the boy up.”

  “Well, I think you could say he has profited from it.”

  James Junior put his left hand on his father’s arm and his right hand on his mother. “It’s okay, everybody,” he said. “Calm down. I’m sorry I brought it up. She’s right, Dad. It was a good thing to do. I’m glad I went to the hospital and now I don’t need to be there anymore. Let’s all just calm down.”

  “My God,” this from Little Putty in the back seat. “I’m going to throw myself out of this car if you all keep arguing.”

  “Me too,” Aleece said. “I’m jumping out on the pavement.”

  The church stood on its sloping lawns. It was made of brick from the time of Thomas Jefferson. Brick painted white. Its bell tower rose into the clear blue sky. Behind the church a row of elms rode along the crest of a hill. Above the elms small white cirrus clouds moved slowly along the sky.

  The minister stood in the doorway waiting to greet the family. The driveway was packed with cars. The church was full of the people from the cars. The Hand family filed their way into the sanctuary.