The Anna Papers

by Ellen Gilchrist

  “I’m going back now,” Helen said. “I just wanted to take a break. I’ve got to finish some things before the other executor gets here.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “John Carmichael. I’ve told you that. He’s a poet.”

  “Carmichael?”

  “People call him Mike. Well, I really have to go. The trust is for the children, so this has to be done right. We have to decide what to send on to her agent.”

  “Well, bring him over. I’m sure he wants to meet Anna’s parents. Do you want him to stay here?”

  “No, he can stay there. He won’t have a lot of time. He’s a teacher. He’s taking his valuable time to do this for us.”

  “When does he arrive?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Well, your father is going to want to meet him.”

  “I’ll bring him over then. Maybe Sunday.” Helen kissed her mother and made her escape. She followed the flower beds to the street and began to walk back toward Anna’s lake. The birds of North Carolina flew before her, darting from oak to maple to hickory to walnut, feeding and singing. I hope this poet is nice, Helen thought. I would like to talk to a nice man about something I haven’t already heard a dozen times. I hope he’s not a disappointment.

  Mike Carmichael was not going to be a disappointment. He had never been a disappointment to anyone in his life, although he was sometimes a surprise, often a surprise, a surprising man, with great energy and strange darknesses. The darkness would fall across his face and his friends would think, I never knew this man. No matter what else happened to Helen Abadie, nee Hand, Mike Carmichael was not going to disappoint her. However, on this particular day, his plane was late.

  Helen wandered around the airport and bought and read a New York Times, then bought a Vogue and was deep into an article on cellulite when the intercom finally announced the plane. She stuck the Vogue in between the sections of the newspaper and walked over to the rail to watch for him. It was easy to pick him out. Then he was beside her, introducing himself, a broad, cheerful man, a sexy man, a very sexy man. She tried to shake his hand and the Vogue fell out from between the sections of the Times. She abandoned the newspaper and the magazine, dropped them on a chair. “I’ll bet you’re tired,” she said. “I’ll bet you’re worn out.”

  “Not at all. I want to see the papers, the stuff. I haven’t adjusted to her being gone, Helen. I’ve written six terrible elegies to her. Really bad.” He smiled and his dark eyes waited.

  “For a magazine? You wrote them for a magazine?” It was all she could think up to say. He took her arm and they began to walk out through the crowded airport. He was leading her as if he knew the way. They passed a concession stand and he stopped and bought a package of cigarettes and lit one as he talked. “An elegy is a poem you write for someone you loved that died. The best one I’ve ever read is one line long. ‘Who would I show it to?’ That’s the whole poem. Well, mine for Anna aren’t that good.” He paused. “But they aren’t for magazines.” He stopped and took a drag on the cigarette and looked at her again, very intently.

  “I guess everyone calls you Mike,” she said.

  “Mike,” he answered.

  “Come on,” she said. “I’ll find the car.”

  She let him drive. Also, he took charge of the rest of the day. As soon as they dropped his bag at Anna’s apartment he insisted on being taken to meet her parents. Mr. Hand had just driven in from Oklahoma and they had to hear all about that. Then they went to meet her brothers. They had a drink with Niall and one with James and then several with Daniel. By the time they got back to Anna’s apartment it was dark and they were reasonably drunk.

  “What about your husband?” Mike said. “Don’t I get to meet him?”

  “I told you he was busy tonight. He’s an insurance executive and there’s a convention in town. Besides, he doesn’t like to talk about Anna. He’s mad at her. He said at least she didn’t try to make it look like an accident. He said that’s the best thing he could say for her. He’s tired of me working on the papers.”

  They were still in the car, parked in front of Anna’s apartment. Helen opened the door and got out and walked up onto the porch and opened the door with a key. She pulled the key out of the lock and handed it to him.

  “So do you love this guy you’re married to, this insurance executive?”

  “No, but I’m married to him. We have five children. Oh, I don’t mean that. Of course I love him. It’s just the way things are with married people, you know. We run a business, a five-child circus. We don’t have a lot of time to be in love. Everyone’s that way.” She had stopped looking at him now. “I’ve got to get on home.”

  “You’ll come over in the morning?”

  “As soon as you want to start.”

  “I wake up early.”

  “So do I.”

  “Thanks for coming to get me. Taking me everywhere. I like your brothers and your folks. Nice folks.”

  “I’ve got to go.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

  “Well, goodbye.”

  “Goodbye.” He watched her until she had gotten into the car and driven off, then he went inside and began to circle the idea of reading Anna’s papers. He found a bottle of whiskey in the kitchen and poured himself a drink and, carrying it, he went into her workroom and began to poke around, making little sounds under his breath. He found a half-written story called “The Man Who Licked Cancer’s Ass” and read that for a while and then he wandered into the bedroom and took off his clothes and opened the closet door looking for a bathrobe. A white terrycloth robe was on a hanger and he put it on. Above it on a shelf was a flat cardboard box marked INTERIORS. He took it down and carried it over to the bed and opened it. He sat in the middle of the bed wearing the bathrobe and looking at the contents of the box. It contained a set of ivory Hear-No-Evil, See-No-Evil, Speak-No-Evil monkeys, a Fort Walton Beach, Florida, newspaper, dated September 13, 1968, with a fake headline that read “THE LIGHTS ARE ON FOR ANNA AND FRANCIS,” a jeweler’s box with a wedding ring, and a piece of white cardboard with a sign printed in the middle in inch-high block letters. AS IF NOTHING HAD HAPPENED, the sign said. There was also a packet of letters held together with a green and red plaid hair ribbon. He took out the first letter and began to read. “My lovely Anna, now we have lived through four seasons together. I have suffered August with you, and been out to watch the leaves lose their chlorophyll and held you in my arms the night ice turned the trees into gaudy miracles. ‘One must have a mind of winter, to behold the junipers shagged with ice. And have been cold a long time.’ We have been happy a long time. I don’t want either of us to forget that, no matter what happens next.”

  Mike put the letter carefully back into its envelope and turned off the light and lay down upon the bed. He lay on the bed in the darkness trying to sleep. In the night it began to storm, one of the wild storms that sweep across the Carolinas from the coast. Rain beat upon the windows and the roof. Rain banged the shutters and pounded the wooden floors of the porches. Rain fell on the lake and lightning made a circus of the sky above it.

  Mike had the packet of letters in his hand when Helen arrived at eight thirty the next morning. She had forgotten to call first. The doorbell was ringing. When Mike got to the door she was standing on the porch dripping wet and holding a grocery sack. Rain was dripping off her yellow rainhat down into her face.

  “I barely was able to get here. I thought I better come on over before something happened.”

  “What do you think will happen?”

  “I don’t know. A tornado. We have them. Or a hurricane. Look, I didn’t wake you, did I?” She came into the foyer and deposited her slicker on an umbrella stand. He was wearing the bathrobe and he was barefooted and he needed a shave. He hadn’t combed his hair since he had left Boston the day before. “Let me make you some coffee,” Helen said. “I went by the bakery and got some fresh rolls and butter. They make the butter by
hand.” They moved into the kitchen and Helen found the coffee maker and put the coffee on to brew. Then they walked into the living room and Mike laid the packet of letters on the coffee table. “Have you read these letters?” he said. “Francis Gautier was my favorite poet writing in the sixties. I don’t know if I can read these letters. I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “Where did you find them? I went through everything in the room. I didn’t find any letters from Francis. Or anything of his. Anna gave his papers to Yale, a long time ago when you could take it off your income tax. We talked her into it. We didn’t think she should keep all that stuff around. After the wreck.” Helen watched the belt of the white terrycloth robe where it fell between Mike’s legs. The rain poured down outside the windows. The smell of coffee was beginning to fill the room.

  “They weren’t in her office. There was a package on the shelf in the guest room. I looked in the closet for a robe and it was on the shelf.”

  “What else was in it?”

  “Mementos. Look, Helen, are you sure that coffee is all right?” He was looking toward the kitchen, from which came a burning smell and a gurgling sound. Like water falling to the floor.

  “Oh, my God,” Helen said, and ran into the kitchen. She had forgotten to replace the coffeepot under the spout. The freshly made coffee had dripped out all over the coffee maker and onto the cabinets and was now dripping onto the floor. She pulled the cord out of the wall and began to mop up the mess with a kitchen towel.

  “Can I help?”

  “No, well, I’ll be goddamned. What a goddamn mess. I don’t believe I did this. It’s because you have that bathrobe on.”

  “I’ll go get dressed,” he said, and took the cloth from her hand and finished cleaning up the mess.

  “We don’t have to read those letters,” Helen said. She had found another towel and was helping again. “Don’t read anything that makes you sad.”

  “It’s going to make me sad. It all makes me sad.”

  “I’ve been doing it for a month. It’s about driven me crazy. I don’t think I’m the same person I was a month ago. Well, at least I’m glad I didn’t find Francis’s letters while I was alone. She really loved that man.”

  “She should have loved him. I would have given anything in the world to know him. I didn’t know Anna until after his death. Come to think of it, I guess I met her the winter she brought those papers to Yale. I met her in New York right after that. At a friend’s. We were together a lot after that. I couldn’t believe it when she asked me to do this.”

  “Why do you think she asked you?”

  “I really don’t know. She said it was because she trusted me not to let anyone put terrible covers on her posthumous books.”

  “There probably won’t be any. There isn’t anything that’s finished. Everything that’s here is bits and pieces of things, nothing that’s done.”

  “That’s never stopped them yet, the vultures that come and clean up writers’ rooms.”

  “We aren’t vultures.”

  “Not yet,” he said, and dropped the towel into the kitchen sink. He wiped off the coffeepot and put another pot of coffee on to brew. “I’ll go get dressed, then we can get started.”

  “I’m going in there and read those letters,” Helen said.

  “No, we can do that later. Let’s start with the big manuscripts.”

  Many hours later the letters were still unread. First they ate the rolls. Then they drank the coffee. Then they went into Anna’s office and took turns handing each other pieces of paper. Then they went back downstairs. Then they started back upstairs.

  “I’ll never understand it,” Helen was saying. “Not as long as I live.”

  “There’s nothing to understand. ‘We owe God a death,’ as the playwright said.” He leaned against the banister. Helen was below him, looking up. She struck a pose she hadn’t used in years, legs apart, pelvis extended, hands in her pockets. She and Anna had called it the Lilli Marlene. She couldn’t believe the way this strange man made her feel, so hot, so burning and hot, the hot wild thing that made the babies, that sometimes even made Spencer seem exciting.

  “It’s raining so hard,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it rain this hard.”

  “Maybe the flood is coming. When I was a kid I was always waiting for the flood. I thought my old man was crazy because he didn’t build an ark.” He stopped and laughed and smiled at her. “One of the first poems I ever wrote was about being relieved to go work on the docks because at least I knew where a boat was, since we didn’t have an ark.”

  “Were you poor?” She looked so serious. If he had been poor she would have an excuse for desiring him. He watched her mouth go soft at the thought of him being poor. He shook his head.

  “I didn’t think of myself as being poor. I thought of myself as a good-looking sexy son-of-a-bitch who was irresistible to women. Young men don’t feel poor, Helen. Old men feel poor.” He walked down two steps and took her arm, pulled her up to his level. “Would you mind if I kissed you? I woke up this morning thinking about your mouth, what a gorgeous mouth you have.”

  “I don’t care much what I do this morning,” Helen said. She moved closer to him. “It’s Anna’s fault. It’s because we’re over here. Besides, this rain is never going to stop.”

  “Do you want me to kiss you, aside from that?”

  “Yes. I want you to. I want you to a lot.” He pulled her into his arms and held her there and then he kissed her for a long time. Then they went upstairs to Anna’s bedroom and turned down the covers on Anna’s bed. I didn’t expect this to happen, he was thinking. But I should have. Breadloaf or Aspen or Port Townsend, Washington. If there are writers and women in the same place, someone always gets screwed. It always ends up in a bed. Only this is Anna’s sister. Jesus Christ, Anna’s married sister.

  I deserve this day, Helen was thinking. All I do is work, work, work and worry, worry, worry. Nothing ever happens to me. Something should happen to me once more before I die. I never even want anything to happen. I had forgotten there was anything worth wanting.

  The afternoon rolled on by. Soon the floor was littered with Helen’s pantyhose and her bra and her silk blouse and her new gray skirt. With his sweater and his tie and his shoes and his shirt and his pants and his shoes and his socks. The light came in the skylights and then the light died and it was dark and they were still in the bed. “My God,” he said. “Where have you been all my life?”

  “Having babies. I have never been unfaithful to my husband once in my life. I want you to know that. And don’t get so far away. I’m scared.”

  “How many children did you say you have?”

  “I have five. And now I’m doing this. I’m an adulteress.”

  “It’s not going to change you because you slept with me. It’s all right, Helen. Look, aren’t we supposed to be somewhere? Aren’t people looking for you?”

  “Probably. I’m surprised they haven’t come over here.” He got out of bed at that and found his clothes and began to put them on. This was the sort of thing he had expected to happen to him in the South. He wanted to be dressed before it was time for the guns.

  Later, when Helen left to go pick up her husband and get dressed for dinner, Mike got the letters out and read them.

  Dear Anna,

  It is strange to be away from you on your birthday. I think the day you were born is the most sacred day of the year. I woke up this morning and wanted to call your mother and thank her for bringing you into the world. If I am gone more than another week and you don’t come up here that is seven days and nights that we can never get back. But I don’t believe in time anymore anyway.

  I saw Dick and Shirley’s little girl, Athena, last night and we talked about you. Tell her to come to my house, Athena said. Tell her to get in her car and drive fast. She has a sweat shirt with her name printed on the front. A white sweat shirt, size three, that says Athena in flamingo pink. Hurry up, drive fast.

>   Frank

  Dear Anna,

  You were asleep when I left and I didn’t want to wake you to tell you how nice your back is when you are asleep. The right side of your body curls around your left leg. Did you tell me you were bowlegged when you were a child? Or did I dream that? You should see how your bones curve in while you sleep. How strange sleep is. See you at four.

  Frank

  Mike put the letters back in their envelopes and tied the package back together and put it back in the larger package and put the larger package back on the closet shelf and then stood at the window for a long time watching the rain and smoking cigarettes all the way down to very small butts. Then he lay down upon the guest room bed and fell asleep. He slept until the phone rang telling him Helen and her husband were on their way to pick him up for dinner.

  If the night was strange the morning was stranger. Helen came over at eight in the morning and as soon as she closed and locked the door they lay down on Anna’s blue-and-white Karastan rug from Damascus and took off each other’s clothes and made love.

  “I don’t even care,” Helen said. “It doesn’t even matter to me. We’re all going to die anyway. All I think about at night is that I’m going to get it too, what Anna had. I’d have a mammogram every day if they’d give me one.”

  “Don’t say that. Don’t think like that.”

  “I tried to talk to Spencer about it and he wouldn’t even let me talk about it. He acts like it’s all right to think you’re going to die.”

  “It’s not all right. We should rail against it, despise it, fight back, do this.” He pulled her body closer to him, pressed her soft round butt into his legs, caressed her. “This is our revenge, Helen. We have always known that joy is our revenge.”

  “Let’s go upstairs,” she said. “Let’s stay in bed all day.” They left their clothes on the living room floor and went upstairs and got into the bed and made love again and then they fell asleep and slept until one in the afternoon.