Annie On My Mind (16 page)

We all three stood there, listening to Ms. Baxter stomping around, snooping. “Dear Lord, dear Lord,” we heard her moan as she went from one bedroom into the other. I looked helplessly at Annie. Sally was still staring at us. “
I—I
went over to your house,” she said to me finally, like someone in a dream. “I thought you might be sick or something, since you didn’t come to the meeting this morning …”

“Oh, God,” I said.

I had completely forgotten about the third committee meeting, the one at which I was supposed to rehearse my speech.

“Chad said you were here,” Sally was saying, “but I knocked and rang and yelled …”

“We didn’t hear you,” Annie said unnecessarily.

“... and when no one came even though it looked as if there was a light on somewhere upstairs and maybe down here too, I got scared it was robbers or that something had happened to you, and I didn’t know what to do till I remembered Ms. Baxter lived across the way, so I looked her up on the big directory at the gate and she was home and she said we better check before we called the police, so we both banged on the door and—and—Liza,” she said, looking at Annie, “you and she, you were—weren’t you?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Sally” is what I think I said. Then Ms. Baxter came downstairs and Sally made everything a whole lot worse by bursting into tears and moaning, “Oh, Liza, Liza, you were my friend, and … and you …”

“I was afraid for a moment I would find young men up there,” Ms. Baxter whispered, actually trembling as she put a maternal arm around Sally, “but what I did find—oh, dear heaven—is far, far worse—though I should have known,” she moaned, dabbing at her forehead with her handkerchief. “I should have realized right away.” She shook her head sharply, as if ridding it of something unpleasant, and then spoke more firmly. “I almost wish I had found young men,” she said. “Sodom and Gomorrah are all around us, Sally.” She looked with growing disgust at me. “We must face the truth. There is ugliness and sin and self-indulgence in this house—as I have long feared. And to think,” she said, regarding me as if I were a toad, “that the president of student council is a—a…!”

I was so upset, so hopeless at that point, that I just looked right at her, ignoring Sally, and said, “A lesbian? So the …” I stopped myself just in time. “So what?” It was at that moment that I heard Ms. Stevenson and Ms. Widmer come up the steps, thumping their suitcases down outside the door and wondering loudly but without any alarm yet why there were lights on. Then they realized the door was unlatched, and while we all stood there frozen, Ms. Widmer said, “I think we should get the police, Isabelle,” and Ms. Stevenson said, “Nonsense, Liza probably left it open by mistake—maybe she’s still here. After all, we’re early.” Then she called, “Liza?” and Ms. Baxter said, “Oh, you won’t want the police, Ms. Stevenson; it’s Miranda Baxter,” and the two of them came in. Ms. Stevenson nearly dropped her suitcase, and Ms. Widmer, suddenly very pale, did drop hers.

“Good evening, Ms. Baxter,” said Ms. Stevenson coldly, looking around. “Sally—Liza …” She looked inquiringly at Annie.

Ms. Baxter sniffed and shepherded Sally toward the door. “Isabelle Stevenson and Katherine Widmer, she said, sounding as if she were trying to be a judge pronouncing sentence—or as if she were trying to be Mrs. Poindexter, whale herself now. “I have feared that the relationship between you two was—is immoral and unnatural. I will not embarrass us all with specifics but we are neighbors and it has been clear to me for some time that you are not as distant toward each other at home as you are at school. But naturally I hoped I was wrong—oh, I hoped so very much—and I tried not to notice what—what was before me— And I told myself that as long as what you were didn’t affect the students, I could be charitable and hold my peace, that I would not cast the first stone …”

Here, as I remember, Ms. Stevenson glanced wryly at Ms. Widmer and said, “Good for you, Miranda, how very thoughtful.”

“But now—I come in here and find these two—these two young women practically—in flagrante delicto—having been given leave to feed your cats and obviously, given your choice of reading matter—I will not call it literature—having also been given leave to use your home as a—a trysting place, a place in which to …” Ms. Baxter took out her handkerchief and dabbed at her forehead; I could see that she was sweating and that maybe she even knew she was saying terrible things but that she felt she had to say them anyway. “... place in which to indulge in—in unnatural lusts …”

“That,” said Ms. Stevenson, eyes snapping, “will do, I think, Miranda—”

“Easy, Iza,” I think Ms. Widmer said, putting a hand on Ms. Stevenson’s arm.

“Look,” I said in a voice that immediately sounded much too loud, “I offered to feed their cats. They didn’t even ask me to. They don’t even know …” I realized just in time that it might be a good idea not to use Annie’s name. “... my friend here. I didn’t even know …”

“Liza,” Ms. Stevenson interrupted—thank God, because I think in my confusion I was starting to say I hadn’t known Ms. Stevenson and Ms. Widmer were gay. “Liza, the less said, I think, the better.” She didn’t say it in a particularly friendly way, and I felt worse than I had when it was just Ms. Baxter and Sally who’d walked in on us. “All right, Miranda,” Ms. Stevenson was saying, her voice taut, like a lion on a leash, “would you mind telling us, very quickly before you leave, just what you were doing here in the first place?” So Ms. Baxter explained about Sally, who was still staring at me and Annie as if we had at least five heads apiece, like end-of-the-world monsters. “And this poor child,” Ms. Baxter whined, nearly choking Sally in her protective hug, “this good, repentant child who has given so much of her time and of herself to Foster’s cause these last months—this child who may at times in the past have been misguided and unwise but who is, thank the good dear Lord, normal, with a normal young girl’s love for her young man—this child had to be dragged into this—this ugliness, this—this nest of …”

“But,” I protested angrily, “but it’s not ugly, there’s nothing …”

Ms. Baxter cut me off with her look. “Oh, my dear,” she said to Sally, “you can see now why Liza was unable to be a good enough friend to report you for that unfortunate mistake of yours last fall. Immorality in one way, I fear, leads to immorality in others. It’s a lesson we all can learn …”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” snapped Ms. Stevenson, her temper lost at last. “Miranda, I am not going to stand here and let you …”

Ms. Widmer quickly opened the front door. “I think it’s time for you to go, Miranda,” she said quietly. “You, too, Sally.”

“Oh, absolutely, Sally goes!” said Ms. Baxter, herding her in front of her. “And if you have a shred of decency left in you, you’ll send those two home, too.

Liza and her—her friend.” She smiled thinly. “They are minors, I believe.” I wanted to hit her for the way she said “friend.”

“Why don’t you go look it up, Miranda?” Ms. Stevenson said through her teeth.

“They are also,” said Ms. Widmer, “people—who at the very least have a right to tell their side of the story. To someone who will try to listen.” I glanced at Annie, who was in the corner by the stairs, hugging her lumber jacket around her. It was wool and I remember thinking irrelevantly that it must be scratchy against her skin. But Annie didn’t look as if she noticed. She also didn’t look as if she felt any more deserving of a friendly listener than I did. The saucepan helmets, I kept thinking, and the bed; how are we going to tell them about the bed?

“I trust you realize,” said Ms. Baxter as Ms. Widmer held the door open for her and Sally, “that it is my duty to report this entire incident to Mrs. Poindexter.”

“Indeed we do,” said Ms. Stevenson coldly.

Then they were gone, and the door was shut, and Ms. Widmer, who had been so collected, swayed a little and leaned against it. Ms. Stevenson put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Steady, Kah, we’ve lived through worse.”

Then she turned to me. I wanted to touch her, to at least reach out to her—even, for one absurd moment, to throw myself at her feet and moan, “Forgive us—forgive me!” I wanted her to blow up, to yell unreasonably the way she had once in the studio when someone hid an unpopular kid’s drawing and then someone else spilled black paint on it by “accident.”

But she didn’t do that. She just looked grimly from me to Annie and back again and said, “Let’s start with an introduction, Liza, shall we?”

“Isabelle,” said Ms. Widmer, “please. Let’s not …”

“Katherine,” said Ms. Stevenson, “what we have here along with a great many other things is a rather serious betrayal of trust. It doesn’t matter how compelling the reason,” she said, looking hard at me, “and I think you know now that Ms. Widmer and I can guess exactly how compelling it was—that’s still no excuse for the way you and your friend have used this house. No excuse.”

“No, Ms. Stevenson,” I said miserably. “I know it’s not. I—I’m very sorry.”

“And I am, too,” Annie said, stepping away from the stair-corner. “I—we both are. It was terrible of us, wrong —it’s awful, especially—especially since you’re like us—I mean …”

She was floundering; I was desperate to help her, but I couldn’t think.

“You are not,” said Ms. Stevenson, picking up a saucepan, “a bit like us. Even in our worst times, I don’t think we would ever, ever have betrayed anyone’s trust, not like this—not in a way that would give a—a person like Miranda Baxter license to—to …” I saw when she turned away that her fists were clenched, and then, horrified, I realized she was struggling against tears. Ms. Widmer touched her arm.

“Come on, Isabelle,” she said with amazing lightness. “At seventeen?” She turned to us. “Why don’t you go back up and get dressed—I gather you were upstairs?” I nodded painfully, and Ms. Stevenson turned the rest of the way away. But Ms. Widmer went on, as gently as before, “Isabelle and I will go down to the kitchen and make some cocoa. Give us—yourselves, too—about fifteen minutes. Then maybe we can all talk about this like rational human beings.” For a second I thought Annie was going to throw her arms around Ms. Widmer. But instead she just took her hand and squeezed it, hard. Ms. Widmer pushed Annie and me toward the stairs.

“Fifteen minutes,” she said. “Come along, Iza. Cocoa.”

“Cocoa!” I heard Ms. Stevenson exclaim as they went down to the kitchen and we went up to the third floor. “What I need is Scotch, dammit, not cocoa!”

“Well, then, darling, you shall have Scotch,” I heard Ms. Widmer say, and then we couldn’t hear any more.

We had the cocoa, and Ms. Stevenson and Ms. Widmet had drinks, but even though for a minute or two it looked as if we’d be able to talk, that didn’t last long. Ms. Widmer was the first to realize that we never had gotten around to the introduction Ms. Stevenson had requested; when we went down to the kitchen, she put her hand out to Annie and said, “I’m Katherine Widmer, as Liza’s probably told you, and that’s Isabelle Stevenson.”

“H-hi,” Annie stammered. “My name is Annie Kenyon. I—I’m a friend of Liza’s.”

Ms. Widmer smiled weakly and said, “You don’t say,” and we all laughed.

We laughed again when Annie and I explained, a bit self-consciously, about the saucepan helmets. But after that we all got very stiff, Annie and me hiding behind our cups and Ms. Stevenson and Ms. Widmer hiding behind their glasses. Ms. Widmer and Annie both tried to talk, but Ms. Stevenson just sat there, not exactly glowering but not very friendly either, and I couldn’t say a word. Finally after about ten minutes Ms. Widmer said, “Look, I guess we’re all too upset to sort this out tonight. Why don’t you two go home for now and come back tomorrow, for lunch, maybe.”

Ms. Stevenson glared at Ms. Widmer, and she went on quickly: “Or after lunch—that would be better. Say around two?”

Annie looked at me and I nodded, and then Ms. Widmer walked us upstairs to the front door.

“We stripped the bed,” Annie said shyly, putting on her lumber jacket again. “We could take the sheets to the laundry for you.”

“That’s all right,” said Ms. Widmer, although she looked a little startled. “But thank you.” She smiled, as if she were trying to convey to us that everything would be all right, but I saw that her hand shook as she opened the door, and I hurried Annie out ahead of me. I walked Annie to the subway, but we were both too upset to talk. Annie gave me a quick hug right before she went through the turnstile. “I love you,” she whispered, “Can you hold on to that?”

“I’m trying,” I said. I’m not even sure I said I love you back to Annie, although I know I was thinking it, and I know I thought it all that night when I couldn’t sleep.

Ms. Stevenson and Ms. Widmer seemed a little calmer the next day, outwardly anyway, but Annie and I were both very nervous. Ms. Stevenson came to the door in jeans and a paint-spattered shirt over a turtleneck; her hair was tied back, and there was, I was glad to see, a brush in her hand.

“Hi,” she said, a little brusquely but smiling, and seeming more relaxed and like herself, at least the self that I knew. She put down the brush. “Come on in. Kah!” she called up the stairs. “It’s Liza and Annie.”

“Be right there,” Ms. Widmer called back, and Ms. Stevenson led us into the living room. The orange cat, who was lying on a neat pile of Sunday papers, jumped into Annie’s lap as soon as she sat down; he curled up there, purring.

“He likes you,” observed Ms. Stevenson awkwardly, taking off her painty shirt and throwing it into the front room.

“I like him, too,” said Annie, stroking the cat. Then Ms. Widmer came downstairs, in jeans also, and I thought again about their being two comfortable old shoes and wondered if Annie and I would ever be like that.

“Well,” said Ms. Widmer, sitting down on the sofa. “I don’t suppose any of us really knows how to begin.” She smiled. “It’s funny, but the first thing that comes into my head to say is how did you sleep last night?”

“Horribly,” said Annie, smiling also. “You, too, Liza, right?” I nodded. “Well,” said Ms. Widmer again, “at least we’re all starting out equally exhausted. How about some coffee or tea or something to sustain us?” Annie and I both said yes, and then, while Ms. Widmer went down to the kitchen, Ms. Stevenson sat there with us for a few painfully silent seconds, and then she went downstairs too.