“But you had reasons you liked the play. You need to start with those.”
“Papers aren’t about liking things! They’re about showing how smart you are!”
And here were the tears again, or their angry cousins, though she was not, technically, crying. Her eyes were red and her cheeks mottled. “I really like Long Day’s Journey, too, I mean, I love it, when you guys were reading it out loud it was like, the most beautiful, awful thing—”
She stopped for breath and Penrose, helpless, waited for whatever would come next. “Why does everything have to be about reasons, and making everything into ideas. I don’t think that’s why you’re supposed to read anything, that’s not why people write plays, so somebody else can come along and turn it inside out and find all different ways to show how important they are . . .”
She stopped and tried to inhale the tears. “I guess I’m just not a very good English major.”
“Maybe not,” Penrose said. He could tell from her abrupt, startled expression that she had not expected him to agree with her. “But that doesn’t mean you’re wrong.”
“What should I do then, quit?”
“If there’s something else you’d enjoy more. I wouldn’t want you or anybody else to keep suffering through these classes. If that’s what you’re doing, suffering.”
He let a silence settle. The Zen of silence. The pure space of empty air. And this time he was rewarded. “I like the class,” Sarah Snyder said, in a normal, deflated tone. “I guess I like all kinds of things that don’t like me back.”
“That’s more common than you know. So I wouldn’t—”
There was more to say, but he stopped himself, and the girl was no doubt suspicious of him, thinking him melodramatic or senile or both, but he was listening to the sound of water trickling through the ancient pipes behind the walls. Hydraulics! As faint as perfume, as a chink in the rampart of cold, he felt a wafting current of warm air.
Penrose turned back to her. “Do you have your copy of O’Neill with you? Why don’t you get it out.”
Another struggle with the backpack. “Good. Turn to the end of Act I, where Mary and Edmund are talking. Start here, where Mary says, ‘I’ve never felt it was my home.’”
She looked perplexed. “What for?”
“For fun.”
She pondered this. The concept of fun. “But I’m not a very good Mary. I’m not old enough.”
“Do I look like your son Edmund?”
A shake of the head. She would have liked to giggle. “Right here,” said Penrose, tapping the page.
A slow start, the girl still uncertain of him now as well as herself. By the end of the first long speech she had her wheels underneath her and was hitting some of the right inflections—exasperation, resentment. Penrose’s irritable Edmund chimed in. Then Mary again, then Edmund, back and forth, guilt, denial, bitterness, all the paces of the addict’s dance. It was the most beautiful, awful thing. An ember flaring up as they breathed on it. Old sorrow made new again. Sarah Snyder’s free hand, Penrose noted, had begun to drum and twitch like Mary’s. She had the right instincts, underneath all that self-inflicted misery. He liked her, although she probably would not have believed it, that anyone would like or admire her for her own contrary self. She would not be happy, at least not anytime soon. She was too stubborn and full of grievance, her anger not yet a weapon she could wield. Penrose thought he should find a place for her in his book. He would make her a young acolyte or warrior, a foot soldier in the army of the righteous.
Wilderness
The train was finally in motion, creeping through the underground tunnels of Union Station, bumping onto a different track in the train yard, then making its slow progress through city intersections. In Chinatown it loitered on a siding, waiting for a freight train to pass. After that, some haunted-looking old factory buildings. It picked up speed to travel the wonderland of industrial waste at the Indiana border. Here was a field of above-ground piping and submarine-shaped tanks—pressurized
natural gas, Anna guessed—and a little farther along, the marching towers and glittering wires of an electrical plant, like a field of Christmas trees as imagined by aliens. Here the chimneys of a refinery, sending out stinking soot.
Anna turned away from the window. It felt like being confronted with her unmade bed when she was a child. Guilty consumer of electricity and gasoline, user of hair dryers, microwaves, watcher of television, buyer of bottled water. She figured she was in the proper state of self-chastisement to read Ted’s letter.
It was half a dozen sheets of paper, handwritten in thick, soaking blue ink. No one but Ted had time to write long letters anymore. No one else had time to read them. “Dear Anna Mae,” it began, which was not her name. Sometimes he addressed her as Anna Banana, or Anna Livia Plurabelle. When English majors go bad.
Dear Anna Mae,
Now that it’s fall, I’m starting to see more hawks. They ride the thermals through the canyons, silent, mostly, except for the occasional long, drawn-out hunting screech. It’s a falling away sound, a lonesome sound, and if you hear it at twilight, it tears out your heart, just the same as if the hawk itself had landed on your chest.
Anna put the letter down. The scenic view of Gary, Indiana, was preferable to Ted’s inflated prose. Ted had gone to live on a ridge in the Ozarks, ten miles from the nearest paved road. “Wilderness,” he called it, though it sounded more like economically depressed rural life. He was exploring the spiritual aspects of isolation and self-sufficiency. He was building a log house from a kit. He wrote in great detail about his solar panels, his generator, his well-maintained woodpile. The ink on the page had probably been concocted from wild berries and glycerin. This last was an unnecessarily mean thought, and she put it behind her. Thinking about Ted always seemed to require this sort of shifting of equilibrium from her, guilt replaced by scorn, then back to guilt again, with fondness leaking through the seams. Somewhere in the letter was probably another invitation for Anna to come live with him, since isolation and self-sufficiency had their limitations.
There were times when, in spite of everything she could imagine and dread—rusty well water, feeble organic soap,
the failing vegetable garden, the equivocal prospect of Ted himself—she considered it. Run off to the woods, breathe fresh air, cleave to a man and have him cleave to you, come what may. But she had the suspicion that Ted sent similar letters and similar invitations to all his old girlfriends, trying to increase his odds. “Oh, I guess I didn’t get a chance to tell you about Kathy” (or Lauren, or Beth), he’d say, once she showed up at his door, provisioned with flannel shirts, sugar, and a year’s
supply of Tampax. “I’d been meaning to write.” The other
woman would be feeding hens or processing a bucket of gnarled beans as Ted stood at the edge of the narrow, rutted road,
shouting instructions to Anna on how to turn around without breaking an axle. In her rearview mirror, Anna would see him wave good-bye, then drape his arm around Kathy, et cetera, the two of them turning their contented backs to her.
She was too good at this part. Imagining her own defeats, dismissing possibilities without considering them. Her character was built on some bedrock of cynicism, or maybe that was only the smart-aleck variety of fear. The train tracks ran parallel to a section of highway, bare fields sprouting the occasional shopping center or blocky, prisonlike apartment complex. Another four hours to go. Anna picked up the letter again and scanned the blue smears. The part about hawks went on for awhile, and then there was something about fencing, the difficulties of stretching fence, and then:
What do you think about right before you fall asleep? I try to think of everyone I know in the world (you, Anna! You!), name them and call them to mind. What are they doing, right that minute, and when will I see them again, if ever? I’m up here on my little piece of high ground, so far away from everything that at night I have to squint to see a light, but I tell you, I’m at the very center
of a network of humming thought.
The train rocked and shimmied. Anna’s Styrofoam cup of tea sloshed in an elliptical pattern and she reached out to steady it. She felt claustrophobic, both from the enclosure of the train itself and from the letter, hemming her in with its proclamations and its neediness. She drank half her tea and didn’t want the rest, so she stood, wanting an excuse to move. The car was full and she braced herself on the seat backs, walking carefully. She deposited the cup in the plastic-lined trash bin and kept going the length of the next two cars, trying to look purposeful rather than aimless.
It was Thanksgiving week and the train was crowded with college students, families with kids, and one wary-looking elderly couple, banished, Anna guessed, from cooking their own holiday dinner, shipped off to some hyper-competent daughter-in-law’s kitchen. In the club car, two dressed-up black ladies were comparing notes on their foot problems, the trials of fallen arches, bunions, heel pain. They appeared not to have known each other previously, but to have established some happy communion of ailments. “And you know,” one said, “with the Lord we have all the help we need.” “That’s true, praise God,” the other chimed in, not missing a beat. Anna felt a little pluck of envy. Where were her fellow sufferers, how would they recognize and console one another?
Anna was traveling to East Lansing, Michigan, to spend Thanksgiving at the home of her old college pal. Lynn, almost alone among their set, had achieved an intact and fruitful marriage. Her husband was a professor in the business school at Michigan State. Her two children had entered their surly teenage years, and Lynn was now free to get back to librarian work, as well as devote more time to her rewarding Audubon Club activities. For Anna, there was a Disneyland quality to the trip, a visit to Normal Land.
She imagined Lynn instructing her husband and kids, laying the groundwork for her arrival. “I don’t want to have to tell you to be nice to Anna.”
“Well duh, that’s exactly what you’re doing,” one of the rotten kids would point out.
“Yeah, why do we have to be nice to her anyway?” the other would chime in.
“Because she’s a guest here. And a dear friend of mine. And because she doesn’t have anybody else to spend Thanksgiving with.”
“Why not, what’s wrong with her?” Yukking it up by now.
“Nothing’s wrong with her. She just never stayed married long enough to have children.”
“That’s weird,” the kids would chorus, delighted now at the idea of the visiting freak.
She really needed to stop this. Try a little positive attitude. Or a lot. It would be good to reconnect with Lynn, a free ticket to the family feast, without any of the encumbrances of family. Anyway, she wasn’t some charity case; she could have organized Thanksgiving with friends or gone to her mother’s in Missouri. In fact, going to Lynn’s had been a way of avoiding her mother in Missouri. Most people had holiday destinations. Anna had escape routes.
Anna guessed they were in Michigan by now. The train made a series of stately curves, north, as far as she could tell, and there were stands of trees, dense and close-packed, and every so often they opened up to reveal a slatternly small town, gone in an instant, then more trees. She must have dozed off. The intercom woke her, announcing a stop in Kalamazoo. Kalamazoo! She hadn’t believed there really was such a place.
She was forty-one years old. The wreckages of two marriages and more lovers than had been strictly necessary trailed behind her like a busted parachute. She had a job which, like most jobs, could have paid her more and aggravated her less. In the last few years, she’d had problems with allergies, dry eye syndrome, brittle nails, constipation, all the diseases of a skittery nervous system. She had, in so many ways, failed to meet expectations. And yet she probably had about half her life left to march or mope through, and she could go out and snag her some happiness if she chose. She was entitled. It was in the Declaration of Independence.
Now the view from the window offered munching black-and-white cows, actual orchards, billboards promoting unborn babies and gun rights. Tawny farm fields swelled under a brisk gray sky. Here was even a fruit and vegetable stand, freighted with pumpkins and bushels of apples. She began to feel mildly hopeful. Live in the moment! Visualize joy!
It’s funny, Anna, because of course I came in part for solitude. I wanted the purity of it, I wanted to wake up in the morning and know that unless I chose to speak out loud, I’d pass the whole day without hearing a human voice. Well, that’s a certain kind of solitude, this diving into the core of yourself and seeing what’s down there under the water. But solitude is different than loneliness, and I’m here to tell you, the loneliest times I’ve ever spent have been in the company of other people.
Lynn had arranged to come to the Lansing station by herself to pick up Anna and drive her back to the house, “so we have a chance to gab.” Anna marshaled her luggage and walked a little distance from the concourse, anxious, as always, that she might be forgotten and unmet. But Lynn stepped out of the waiting crowd, a familiar face among the strangeness, like an optical illusion. They hugged.
“Was the train awful? You’re almost an hour late!”
“Fine, once we got going. Look at you. You are the very model of a modern Michigan matron.”
“Cut it out.”
“No, I meant, you have it down cold,” Anna backpedaled, because maybe it had been a crummy thing to say. “You look really together.”
Lynn sniffed. “I changed out of my sweatsuit. I have a really together sweatsuit too. Is that your only suitcase?”
Both the train and the station had been overheated and filled with lurking, unclean smells: bodies, perfumey lotions, the ancient contents of vending machines ground underfoot. They stepped outside and the sharp wind blew every scrap of it away. “Frigid,” Anna remarked, pleased. Chicago had been unseasonably warm and un-holidaylike.
“A front’s coming through, I guess. Here’s the van. If you say ‘soccer mom,’ I’m going to smack you.”
“It is a powerful, well-engineered vehicle. I like the decals. Are we going to have pie tomorrow? I want to wallow in pie.”
“Apple and pumpkin, from the bakery. Jay’s making a pumpkin cheesecake.” Jay was Lynn’s husband. “He has this whole menu of gourmet creations. Oyster dressing. Bourbon-glazed sweet potatoes. Onions baked with pomegranates. The boys and I said if we didn’t have a turkey and mashed potatoes with gravy and cranberry sauce, we were going to a restaurant.”
“I didn’t know Jay liked to cook.”
“He likes to compete. It’s the latest thing he can do better than me. He watches those TV shows where people cook for prizes and he makes fun of them. He threw out all of our old pots and pans and bought clunky Le Creuset ones. While you’re here, try to say something nice about his food.”
“I will be ravished by gastronomy,” Anna promised. She was enjoying the ride, perched up high in the passenger seat of the van. The elevation made the ordinary view of highway, office buildings, suburban homes, seem like a kingdom she surveyed. Carry on, she instructed her subjects as they went about their labors. I am well pleased.
She kept Lynn in the corner of her vision, biding her time, waiting for them not to feel strange to each other. The first words out of her mouth had been the truest, even though she regretted them. There was a kind of protective coloration people developed to fit their surroundings, so that in the suburbs one saw whole herds of fleece garments, turtlenecks, sporty shoes. Lynn had cut her hair short and permed it, some hairdresser’s version of a casual, fun look. Now it had flattened, like the pelt of an animal. Lynn had always been the light and shiny one, the up to Anna’s down. Something corrosive had been at work on her, but Anna was cautious about voicing any more opinions.
How long had it been since they’d seen each other? Three four five years? Lynn and Jay and their kids had been in Chicago for some kind of conference. Anna and her then-husband had met them for dinner at their hotel. The boys had been sub-adolescents, g
angly, inarticulate, suffering through every minute in the presence of adults. The two men had sized each other up and hadn’t much liked each other. Anna and Ex drank too much, gearing up for the fight they’d have once they got home. Lynn had been on alert about children’s table manners (“Sit up straight! Don’t put that whole thing in your mouth at once!”), and she and Anna kept up a false, sprightly banter, every so often giving each other private glances, meaning, they should have ditched all these unsatisfactory males and gone off on their own. “She does enough talking for all of us put together,” Ex observed later, one more thing to fight about. But he hadn’t been wrong.
Now they were setting themselves up for more of the same. Another reunion observed by bored family members. “We have to stop and pick up the pies,” Lynn said. “Are you hungry? Dinner tonight’s just sandwiches. The refrigerator’s full of Thanksgiving stuff.”
“Sure, let’s get a bite.” It was hard to sound enthusiastic when Lynn didn’t seem to be. “I got another letter from Ted,” Anna offered, thinking that might spark something. There were plenty of Ted stories. “He wants me to go live in the woods with him.”
“Well if you don’t, can I?”
Anna did turn around to look at her then. “Sure. I mean, I don’t see any reason why not.”
“Just a couple of weeks out of the year would do it. Like a retreat.”
“Old part-time Ted,” said Anna, reminiscing. “Not what you’d call dependable. Though he had his good points.” She wasn’t sure why she’d said this last part, except that it made her sound worldly, a connoisseur of men and their good and bad points. Which she guessed she was, but not in any way you’d want to brag about. “His heart was always in the right place,” she finished lamely.
“I guess he could be an option for you. In case nothing else works out.”
“Excuse me?” said Anna, a shocked half beat too late. “What, exactly, do you think I’m trying to work out?”
“Oh, you know. The man thing.” Lynn wrestled the van into a parking lot, scanned for spaces. “Like you’re always complaining.”
Do Not Deny Me Page 3