Long Division (26 page)

Once I've over-tequilaed myself, I wander into the hallway by the restrooms for a moment of quiet. I get out my phone and scroll through the list of contacts. I stop at Gus. And I want to call him. It's a very base, drunk instinct. I want to call him and ask him to pick me up because I am drunk and because I know he will do it. He will walk me into my house and make sure I have a glass of water or two. Will he remove my loafers and lay me out on the bed? Will he remove the elastic that's holding together my ponytail because he will notice that it is oppressively tight? Will he leave a sleeve of saltines on the bedside table? Will you, Gus? Will you do it for me because I am your best friend ever? Will you do it for me better than David would do it? Will you do it for me better than you would do it for anyone else? My finger is hovering over the send button, and even in my sloppy alcohol brain fuzz I realize that this is the first time since seventh grade that I have ever hesitated to contact Gus Warren. And so I don't do it. Jennifer Petrucci's husband drives the two of us home. And though I'm a crumpled wad of booze-soaked cotton in the backseat—not saying more than a squeaky “thank you” the whole way to my house—I am awful thankful for the Petruccis' company.

 

And the next day, I'm not entirely alone either. I've got this bulbous-nosed troll of a hangover.

 

Under my contract as an employee of the Tacoma public schools, I'm obligated to work five days after the last day of school. Those three days are always a weird mix of depressing and liberating. I wear flip-flops and the kinds of sleeveless dresses that Barfley would never deem appropriate for the classroom. I blast loud rock or hip-hop music that is riddled with unabashed profanities. I fill out final report cards and tear down bulletin boards. I take inventory of supplies and pride in the fact that none of my students will be repeating third grade.

With my hangover troll snoozing heavily in the space between my eyes, I rip down the giant mural of the water cycle. The cumulus clouds, fat with cotton balls, the rain drops of silver tin foil, and the river of blue-tinted plastic wrap. I love the water cycle. So efficient and orderly. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, you get used to the water. A week or so without rain will occasionally make me uneasy. Like something isn't right with the earth. Like there's a glitch somewhere in the rotation. Liquid. Steam. Ice. It's all the same thing. Oh, to be something that can manifest itself in three different ways, but still be essentially, chemically, beautifully the same! As I'm ripping off the blue paper sky, I start to think about what the fuck I'm going to do for the summer. Last summer I worked for a month at a YMCA day camp and spent a lot of time preparing elaborately grilled meals
¹¹⁴
for David. I missed the deadline for the YMCA thing, and as of last week all the spots were filled. Could Teacher Annie gracefully transform into a line cook at a homey diner? Could she evaporate into a steamy cocktail waitress? Or should she freeze up in front of her television and wait for that hott hott day in early fall when her boyfriend will be home to rekindle a love once vibrant and melt her back to normal again?

I'm standing still with a wad of crumpled paper in my hand when I hear a knock at my classroom door. I toss the paper in the trash and walk over to the door. It's Gus!

“Hey. I thought you'd be here.”

“Yep. Here. All alone!” I lift my arms to point out the empty space, the lack of braided pigtails and dirty sneakers. “What's going on, Gus?”

“Well.” He says this with Excitement, and it's nice to have the big
E
back in my classroom after a day's absence. “I have something for you. I'm really stoked about it. And I have to give it to you right away.” Gus is smiling, breathing a little heavy, and reaching for the satchel/ man-purse that hangs from his shoulder. He pulls out a book. It's a slim beige paperback with a sepia-toned font on the cover. It looks like a literary magazine from a college campus, printed on an expensive woven paper afforded by a generous university budget, and chock-full of youthful attempts at highbrow literature. My first thought is that Gus has had something published and that he's here to present me with a copy. But then, he's never been one to toot his own horn.

“What it is?” I say moronically as I take it from his hands. And then I read the cover:
Annie Harper's Journal.
What?!! “Whaaaa?” I say, stunned by the look of my name in such a dignified typeface. I momentarily and absurdly assume that Gus has hacked into my computer, found this, my giant tapestry of rambling words, and printed it out and had it bound at the local Kinko's. But the volume is a little too stately for Kinko's. And for another pathetic moment I wonder if Gus has written a journal he wishes were mine and filled all the pages with gushing romantic fantasies about him. What a lunatic I have become. As I open the cover, he starts to explain.

“It's a real published book, Annie. About this woman named Annie Harper who lived in Mississippi during the Civil War. Then I notice the subtitle:
A Southern Mother's Legacy.
“I just got it in the mail yesterday, so I haven't read much, but it's her account of home life during the Civil War. A historian stumbled upon her handwritten journals and turned them into this book. Isn't it incredible?” I don't know if Gus means that the book itself is independently incredible or that it's incredible because I am also Annie Harper and I am also a woman on the home front and I am also trying to write about it.
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I decide he must mean the latter. In a way.

“But
I'm
Annie Harper.” My voice is meek and quiet, and suddenly I feel like a fraud. Like she's already done it, but with larger risks and more sophisticated prose. With a sharper understanding of the political situation and with a courage that's comprised of more than goofy humor and self-pity. AND WITHOUT ALLOWING HER RELATIONSHIP TO DECOMPOSE. Before I even read it, I know that I am the weaker, stupider, more annoying, more boring Annie Harper. I flip past the title page, the acknowledgments. I don't even stop at the stuffy photographs of Annie Harper the First posed in her starched high collars and boned bodices. I skip right to the first page of the introduction, and stuck in the middle of the editor's commentary is a snippet of Annie Harper's prose.

She's done it. It's like she's wrote my fucking thesis statement for me back in 1876. By goddamn mother-loving candlelight! It takes just moments of scanning the editor's introduction and the first few pages of the text to ascertain that Annie Harper wrote this journal for her daughter. For the sake of posterity. It occurs to me that this is a concept that my generation might be neglecting. Perhaps it relates to the whole lack-of-artifacts problem. What will our electronic era leave behind? Big, fat nothing. Especially when we only care about being recognized now. Off I went, trying to document, not for the educational purposes of others, but for the benefit of myself. Give me kudos for my bravery and charm. Don't let me bother giving guidance to my descendants. Let me be hapless in my commentary. No worries if the things I say grow to shame my future children and cause them to legally divorce me in their early teens. No problem! I do not mind! I realize I've been silent and stunned for a few long moments, and I look up at Gus, who hasn't moved.

“How did you find this?” I turn to the copyright page and see that the book was published in 1983 by the Flower Mound Writing
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Company in Denton, Texas.
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There was a second printing.

“The Internet,” Gus says.

“The Internet?” I say, like I'm the old Annie Harper and have never seen a typewriter.

“Yeah, you know. The World Wide Web.” Gus looks a little nervous.

“You Googled me?” I don't mean it to sound so harsh and accusatory.

“Yeah. So what. I Google stuff.” I let the awkwardness settle for a moment, and then I hug him. I feel his fingers clasp momentarily behind my back and I get one nice breath of fabric softener and something vaguely breadlike.

“Thank you so
so
much, Gus. This is amazing. An artifact. A treasure. You are a treasure finder.” We let go.

“You're very welcome. I knew you'd like it. And I thought maybe it could help you some.”

“I'm getting by,” I say. Silence. Silence. Silence. “Hey, it's summer. I made it to summer.” Our smiles widen simultaneously because we both know it's coming. I've lobbed Gus an easy one and he's winding up, ready to blast it out of the park. His voice is robust and so happy when he says it:

“It's gonna be a great summer!”

F
or obvious reasons, today I'm calling my book
Annie Harper's Journal
, and I've just discovered that copyright rules don't apply to titles. Just the actual text. So I can use it. Flower Mound Writing Company will have to print thousands more copies because after everyone reads my book they'll naturally want to read her book too. And I don't have to worry about being all good anymore. If I move forward with the idea that this writing is a mere log, a raw, uncut journal (rather than a neatly wrapped, Chicken Soup for the Wartime Soul memoir), then who will blame me when my heart emerges a little black and tattered? I can tell the truth and hopefully not be loathed for it. Who knows? Maybe Annie Harper the First will be just as much a sicko. And people will love to read the two texts together. Serious Literature people will write academic papers about the similarities between the Annie Harpers. What my book says about her, and hers about me. Some great-great-great-granddaughter of Annie Harper the First will probably contact me and we'll be interviewed together on
The View.

After Gus left my classroom,
¹¹⁸
I sat down in the Book Nook with
Annie Harper's Journal.
I had this rush of hope similar to when I found the soldiers' wives' blogs. I thought: Here it is. An artifact. This must be helpful, authentic, and sincere, because someone thought it was worthwhile to print a thousand copies and sell them for $7.95 apiece. I read the first ten pages or so, where Annie described the political state of Mississippi before the war and how her grandfather raised her to be more literate than the average Southern girl. Other Annie Harper had a writing style that was confident, proper, and direct. She saved heavy emotional lines
—When the polls closed November 4th, 1860, Liberty covered her face with her mantle and fl ed from her unhappy children, to return no more for sixteen years—
for when she really wanted to drive her point home. But after those first ten pages, I got bored. I wanted to hear Annie Harper talk about Annie Harper. Emancipation, Secession, Whigs, all very important Civil War things, but hey, Mrs. Harper: You guessed wrong. We
can
find all that in the “history of the times.” I want to know how bad she misses her husband. I want to know what she's cooking for dinner. Oh wait, what her slave is cooking for dinner. I hate Annie Harper.

I've resolved to set
Annie Harper's Journal
aside for a few weeks. I need some time to recoup from the flurry of the end of the school year, to get my ducks in a row for summer, and to lasso my heart so I can sink my hands into its most ridiculous nooks and crannies and pull out a reasonable prognosis regarding sweet, sweet David Peterson. I want to give
Annie Harper's Journal
a good, serious study. I want to come back to Gus for a critical discussion about all the interesting ideas and observations that I will certainly glean from the text. I don't want him to think I tossed the gift away; I just want to give my name twin the serious read she deserves. More on Annie Harper the First to come. I promise.

On the way home from my last day (the real, no-students last day) at Franklin Elementary, I stopped at the farmers' market
¹¹⁹
to pick up some of the season's first strawberries and some fresh greens for dinner. The farmers' market is in the parking lot of a shopping complex that includes a Goodwill, an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet, and a sex store. But the location manages to be a good fit for the market and draws a varied mass of customers: couples who stumble upon the market after picking up a few S&M toys; hip, alternative high school kids who just purchased second-hand Levis; and those who come by every week on purpose. And since it's a farmers' market—loaded with organic things earthy and leafy—I wasn't surprised at all when I ran into Gina. She was examining a bundle of scallions, peering into their tubey roots like they were actually alien tentacles about to communicate some brilliant message about the future of humanity. I walked over to say hello. I hadn't seen Gina since the camping trip, so I thought it would be nice to catch up.