Threads: The Reincarnation of Anne Boleyn (45 page)

“You can hire a woman,” the doctor suggested.
“I know of one. Or you can leave it with family.”

Hearing this from where I sat, I rose and
joined them.

“I’ll take the baby,” I offered. “No one
could love her as much as I do.”

Emma’s husband nodded in gratitude and
relief, then hesitantly walked into his wife’s room to say
good-bye.

In that manner, in a way I would never, ever
have wished—a cruel and twisted answer to a prayer—I finally became
a mother.

I named the baby Margaret Ann, for it was the
name Emma had selected for a girl before she died. I called her
Maggie. I had always wanted a baby girl as I had never wanted any
other thing in life, and insisted against my parents’ wishes that
she call me “Mama”.

I could not put her down, when she was an
infant. I held her, and covered her with kisses, and changed her
dresses and hair ribbons several times each day. I held her in my
lap when I played piano, marveling and cooing over her cleverness
when she pounded the keys with her fists. I twirled her hair into
the neatest ringlets, sewed her the fattest ruffles, made her the
most cunning bonnets, and sang nursery rhymes until my voice was
hoarse. I prepared her food myself, not trusting the cook. I could
not bear the thought of her being cold and lonely in the night, and
had no husband to object, so I slept with my arms around her as if
she were a doll I took to bed.

She did not grow spoiled, as my mother had
warned, for I was strict with her and consistent in my
expectations. (“You have a gift for it,” my mother admitted.) She
grew to be open and sweet, kissing me impulsively and saying “I
love you, Mama,” conversationally each time the thought occurred to
her throughout the day. She helped with simple chores from the time
she was able to walk. She shared her toys, and rarely fought with
other children or cried. She never had a nightmare in her entire
life. I was proud in having somehow seen to it that she was happy,
for she clearly was a happy child. I would not have been as proud
if she were my very own, and was perhaps more proud, knowing a
child that was truly mine would never be so lovely to see as
Maggie.

Still, she was “a pistol”, in the words of my
father. Maggie was Emma all over again, mischievous, playful and
comical, always getting into trouble and always finding trouble
where I would never expect her to find it.

She had an imaginary friend who was always
responsible for her naughtiness. She sawed away at her cello with a
look of grim importance, but kept stolen sweets hidden in her
apron, and tucked them into her cheek whenever my back was turned.
She carried on lengthy conversations with puppets she’d hold in
either hand. She loved to dance and twirl about like “a gypsy
princess”, she said. She made up stories about the circus, to which
she planned to run away when she grew up. She liked gaudy,
whimsical things, and sometimes decorated the family dogs with
ribbons, bells, and flowers. She taught two of them to jump through
hoops, had them flip backwards, head over tail, and put on shows
for us in the yard. I once caught her standing on a tree stump,
trying to make the smallest dog walk along a clothesline.

Maggie dressed up in clothes from the attic,
wore quaint old-fashioned hats she found there in the dust, and
play-acted with her cousins when she wasn’t racing the dogs and
chasing the ducks around the yard, or climbing trees.

She made me laugh.

She called me one day from the top of the
attic stairs, “Come see Mama! Come look at me!” and I called back
that I was busy, and that she would have to wait.

Impatient to show me, dressed in a long satin
ball gown and a pair of dainty ladies’ dancing slippers that were
too large for her, she tried to maneuver the stairs, tripped on her
skirt and fell. Her neck snapped and she died, instantly.

We buried her beside her mother in the
churchyard, and the light of my life flickered out.

•
~
۞
~•

“I am not ready,” I say.

“Then just walk away.”

“Not yet,” I plead.

“Now,” says Henry. “Please.”

“It is still too soon,” I insist.

He says: “Please. It will be different. I am
different.”

A thought like a moan consumes me. No.
No.

But he is calling me.

Then there is silence, and I have a short
time to decide. I look upon him squalling in his new mother’s arms,
and hesitate.

They are all converging: Hal, Emma, Henry,
Katherine, Mother, Father, Mary, George, Elizabeth, the court, the
music room. They are all arriving, or will arrive, or have arrived
one by one in different places, with different stations in life,
with different plans to meet at different times. I am included in
many of these plans, if I choose.

I wait, perhaps a little longer than I
otherwise might have, then I select a situation.

I will walk away from Henry, I have decided.
I have not come here for him.

And so I am born. I shriek with colic.

And then I grow, and Henry grows.

We’ve returned to join the others. We’ve
chosen an interesting time when there are airplanes, and
automobiles, and telephones. There is also television, and shows we
sometimes watch simultaneously not knowing, of course, that the
other is. We watch The Mickey Mouse Club, and Howdie Doody, and I
Love Lucy, and Make Room for Daddy. We study American Bandstand (me
for the dance steps and the clothes, and Henry for the burgeoning
breasts), see a President shot in Dallas, and watch the first man
to walk on the moon. We both can sing the advertising jingle for
Lincoln Carpets. We both eat Cheerios for breakfast and have the
radio as a backdrop to our lives (I prefer classical music and
softer, melodic rock and roll whereas he prefers hard rock). We
join the Cub Scouts and the Girl Scouts at the appropriate times,
dress up in costume and go door to door for candy on Halloween, and
have, on two occasions, passed each other in crowds.

When the world begins changing in earnest,
when 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970 come, youth is taking sides for or
against social conformity and the war in Vietnam. We are
unofficially called upon to choose a side ourselves. Henry and I
are both riveted by news coverage of the Woodstock Festival, and
are drawn to the counter culture–the “hippies”–that flooded upstate
New York to attend. The whimsical outfits, the communal living, and
life on the periphery of society is a homecoming for us in a way,
but neither of us knows why that should be or, if asked, would
describe it quite that way.

Mostly, I’m attracted to the idealism and the
activism. People everywhere are standing up, fighting for this and
fighting against that, holding demonstrations and sit-ins,
marching, picketing and changing things that need to be
changed.

I don’t like the aimlessness, though, and the
lack of purpose inherent within some factions of this new movement.
I don’t like the promiscuity or the drugs. Still I’m drawn to it
all because it represents something that I have a yearning for, but
can’t quite put my finger on.

Henry is completely at home with all of it.
He appreciates the fact that women are now so easy to come by, and
so compliant.

As for the drugs, he’s there at the
forefront, experimenting with them all. In addition to this, he has
an alcohol dependency that will reveal itself in time. He is now
controlled by his addictions in much the same way as he was once
controlling, and is usually intoxicated to some degree from one
substance or another. He is in that state when I walk into a party
where he’s standing, leaning against a wall.

Had either one of us not gone to that party,
we would have crossed paths in some other way.

He sees me and stares. He experiences the
impact of an adrenaline rush he attributes to very good hashish,
and is suddenly fully cognizant with all of his senses on alert. He
pulls a pair of mirrored sunglasses out of his jacket pocket and
puts them on, even though it’s nighttime. He thinks I won’t notice
him watching me that way.

Knowing (even with the sunglasses) that he’s
staring, not knowing the impact I’m having on him, used to being
stared at and expecting it, I notice him but have no desire to meet
him. My internal alarm is going off. There is something about him
that makes me uneasy, almost as if I sense he’s dangerous. But
that’s not quite it. I don’t know what it is. It might only be that
I can’t see his eyes behind those awful sunglasses.

I flirt with the knot of men that surrounds
me (I always have a knot of men), but I’m not with any of them, nor
does it appear that any of them are making much progress with
me.

I fill my paper cup from the spigot of a beer
keg and sip one glass, but I pass the marijuana cigarette to the
person next to me, holding it out at arm’s length. I ignore the
lines of cocaine on the coffee table, and watch without interest as
people inhale them up their noses through tubes made from rolled-up
dollar bills.

I talk with my friends (these include
Valerie, whom I do not know is really Emma). The people I’m with
pass pills among themselves, but none of them leans over to ask me
if I would like any.

The man sees all this and makes mental
notes.

He continues to stare, rebuffs some friends
who wander over to chat and brushes off the overtures of two women,
but makes no effort to speak to me. He’s immobilized with fear. He
has started to walk over to me a hundred times and can’t. Almost
two hours pass without him leaving his place against the wall, even
to get another beer.

Finally, he can’t wait a minute longer, and
walks down the hall.

I notice that he’s left for the moment, and
I see him enter the bathroom. Sensing the act is faintly, purposely
malicious toward him—and enjoying it—I yawn, get up from the floor
where I’ve been sitting cross-legged, say a few rushed good-byes
and go home.

۞

I have no idea that he has been on the phone
describing me, asking everyone who I am and where he can find me
again. He knows my name, now. He’s become obsessed with finding me
and is single-minded in his pursuit. He prowls the usual hangouts,
driving from place to place with someone who says he knows
Valerie’s roommate (but not where she lives), ringing doorbells,
crashing parties and waiting in coffee houses, scanning crowds,
watching doors, asking questions, speculating on who my friends
are, and where they might be found.

“She’s a stuck-up bitch, man,” his
exasperated companion tells him, again. “She thinks she’s too good
for everyone. And, she’s got a mean mouth on her. Seriously. Don’t
give her the satisfaction of cutting you down.
I
wouldn’t.”

He steers the car onto a side street, and
cranes his neck to read the house numbers. They’re looking for a
party—or to at least be told where one is. They’re looking for me.
They think they’ll try an apartment that someone earlier today said
is Valerie’s.

Henry now knows that she’s my best
friend.

“Did you hear what she said to Eddie?” He
exchanges looks with his girlfriend who makes a face as if she’s
heard the story before. He turns around to Henry who is impassively
looking out the window in the back seat. “When he tried to put the
moves on her, she asked him if he was doing cocaine, right? Because
she said an ego like his ‘does not occur in nature’.” He says it in
a high mincing voice. He interrupts himself to ask rhetorically:
“Who
talks
like that, huh?” He continues: “So then she says
to him, ‘
There
fore, I conclude that you must be artificially
ego-enhanced.’
Ego
-enhanced. Snooty bitch. Like her point
was: who the hell did Eddie think he was, to ask her out?”

He does not mention to Henry that I once
turned him down too, nor does he tell Henry what I said to him to
send him scurrying away. Instead, he mimics me by tossing his head
with his nose in the air, and flipping his hair over his shoulders.
He mutters, “
There
fore I con
clude
!
THEREFORE
myew-myew-myew-myew-myew-I’m-a-snooty-little-bitch . . . ”

Henry snorts and hoots and slaps his thigh.
He can just see the look on Eddie’s cocky face. Eddie definitely
had it coming, but the story increases his terror of me. This isn’t
the first one he’s heard. I’m leaving them strewn behind me, and
word is getting around.

“He probably had his hand down her shirt,
knowing Eddie. He’s a slob.” Henry is still chuckling. “He was
probably also doing cocaine. So did it shut him up?”

“Nothing shuts Eddie up,” the girlfriend
remarks. “That came close, though. Hee hee.”

“Well, I don’t like her,” the friend tells
Henry (and his own pride) indignantly. “I don’t even
care
how hot she is.”

He realizes what he just said. “I don’t
personally
think she’s hot,” he says to his girlfriend. “I
personally
prefer brunettes, like you.”

“Nice catch,” she answers ominously, staring
at him. Then she addresses them both: “Would somebody please tell
me what the big deal is about this girl? Seriously. She’s okay, but
she’s not
that
pretty. She just has every guy in the world
thinking
that she is for some reason.” Then she mutters,
“Men are such morons. Honest to God.”

“She’s a goddess,” Henry says. The statement
does not invite discussion or rebuttal. Then he leans over and
whispers in sing-song, “
You’re
just
jeal
-ous . . . ”
She reaches back and whacks him over the head with her purse. He
ducks and laughs.

Her boyfriend chooses to ignore the question.
He can think of no response that won’t get him into trouble. He
pulls the car in front of a fire hydrant and parks (it doesn’t
matter because he doesn’t pay parking tickets anyway). He turns
around to Henry irritably.