After Sarah fell asleep Annabelle sat at the kitchen table, listening to the refrigerator humming, staring at the worn linoleum. She thought about her performance review and anticipated Daryl’s comments:
Oh, she’s a fine writer but she has this obsessive-compulsive problem. Gets involved with large engineers and spends too much time writing friendly electronic messages. Has slightly better than rudimentary knowledge of the stock market; could be developed but she hates Wall Street, wishes all those fat dogs would roll over and die.
Writes quickly, meets or exceeds all deadlines. Uses names of obscure poets in all examples requiring proper names. Doesn’t talk at meetings. Just works for the money, doesn’t stay late because she has a young daughter. Gets emotional because she’s in the process of a divorce but hides it well. Wears nice clothes.
A lump welled in her throat. She began shaking her head.
The telephone rang. It was 10:30 p.m. She hesitated, and then answered it.
“Hellloow,” he slurred.
She said nothing.
“Annie,” he said, “I have to talk to you. It’s important.”
“I’m sorry Dennis but I can’t talk right now.”
“We have to talk.”
“You need to sign the papers in front of a notary. Have you done that yet?”
“What you been doing?” he said.
“I’m going to bed now. Goodnight.”
“I’m coming back, Annie. I need you.”
“Stop this. OK? Just stop this!”
“I know you want it. Just give it up, all right? I know you better than anyone. I’m coming over.”
Annabelle hung up. The telephone rang again and she disconnected it.
To: ABonney
From: EWRIGHT
Snow dream…You and Sarah are running
around and around waving your hands
catching snowflakes on your tongues.
Peace,
Eddie
P.S. Lunch today! Please!
She closed her office door, then swivelled her chair so that she could face Eddie. She had turned off her computers and sounds from other offices muffled in.
Eddie opened a plastic shopping bag and pulled out a sandwich. Annabelle’s sandwich was neatly arranged on a plastic plate on her desk.
“What kind of sandwich is that?” asked Annabelle.
“Alfalfa sprouts and mayonnaise,” he said.
“Really?” She laughed.
“Yes,” he smiled.
“So is mine!” she said. “I never met anyone else who ate plain alfalfa sprout sandwiches before!”
“Neither did I,” he said, taking a bite.
Annabelle paused.
They chewed for a while. Both sandwiches were made with light rye bread.
“When I met you I thought you were about twenty-five,” she said, having eaten quickly, trying not to talk with her mouth full. “How old are you?”
He laughed. “I’m thirty-five. I’ll be thirty-six in June.”
“You’re two years older than me! I guess it’s your long hair. It makes you look very young.”
“I always wanted long hair, but if you don’t like it I’ll get it cut.”
Annabelle stared at him. “Why would I ask you to do something like that?” she said, carefully wiping her hands with a white paper napkin, then pulling a wad of red satin out of her briefcase.
“I don’t have time to finish this at home,” she explained, starting to sew gold sequins on the collar. “This is Sarah’s costume for her play Friday night. She’s going to be an elf.”
As she sewed she spoke, picking at threads of a long story.
“Dennis called again last night. I wish he’d just sign the papers… as he has promised… so many times…”
Eddie frowned at her.
“You said you met Barbara in college?” she asked.
Eddie nodded.
“I met Dennis in college. But I guess it was different from your situation.”
“How so?” he murmured.
“It really was a lot like my novel, you know. Having read that, you already know some of the story.”
The room was quiet. Annabelle sewed.
“What was the story?” said Eddie, finally.
“Oh, you know, I was falling apart emotionally then; all that stuff from my childhood kept surfacing. So I ended up moving in with Dennis and getting a job doing house-cleaning. That helped me pull myself together. I mean it enabled me to suppress a lot so that I could keep going.” She looked at him again.
“So moving in together led to getting married?”
“Well, yes. We got married because of Sarah but it’s not fair to blame it on her.”
She looked up and saw Eddie staring at the palms of his massive hands, curled on his lap.
She continued sewing. “Well, OK, you know how in my novel Germaine bled so much as a child because she was abused? Well… that was autobiographical. And when I was a teenager my mother said a doctor had told her I wouldn’t have children. So I always thought I’d never have them. Dennis certainly didn’t want children, and I thought it would never happen.” She shook her head and stared into space. “But then, when I actually did get pregnant, it was just this miracle! And there was no way I could even consider an abortion. So because he couldn’t convince me to have an abortion he insisted that we get married and I agreed. Can you believe how ridiculous we were?”
She glanced at him again, self-consciously searching his face for a response. He nodded.
“And then what?” he asked.
She paused, poking the needle through another tiny sequin eye, “I don’t mean that I regret having Sarah – I’ve never regretted that – Sarah is the light of my life! I just never should have married Dennis. It would have been easier to be a single mother. All my friends said it would be a marriage made in hell. He’s just so incredibly irresponsible. It was like I had two children instead of one.”
She stopped. Now Eddie was staring out the window. He tilted his ear towards her, whispering, “That must have been hard.”
“I really started to hate him.” She stopped, surprised by her words.
“I mean,” she quickly added, “it was hard to be married to someone I had to take care of, who didn’t help with anything. So he’d leave me and I’d leave him. I kept moving from one apartment to another because of that and even though we were legally married we rarely spent any time together… Then, about three years ago, we separated and didn’t see each other at all. He didn’t bother to see Sarah. He never called her or anything. So I thought that was it, we’d finally get divorced.”
She paused and let out a long sigh, glancing out her window at thick winter clouds. “But then things got really complicated. My sister asked me to take care of my mother for a few weeks but that turned into two years. My mom has Alzheimer’s disease… uh… or something like that… but that’s another story. Anyway, when she came to live with me I was in denial of all that. I just figured she couldn’t remember things because she was dealing with all the years of stress… all the years of stress created by my father. My father is not a kind man. But I ended my relationship with him many years ago.”
Eddie was looking out the window. She sighed again. “Yeah. So… We were living in an old slum apartment then and I was always worrying. There was no place for my mom to go during the day, she couldn’t go to school with Sarah or to work with me and there were no elder services in the town where we were living, so I’d write notes and tape them all over the walls.”
Eddie nodded. Annabelle smiled and paused, shaking her head, remembering.
“I wrote notes about everything – where to find food, arrows to the bathroom… warnings about using the stove… I always worried that someone would come to the door and she’d let them in while I was out. I used to call her from work about five times a day to check in.”
“That was tough,” whispered Eddie.
“Oh, it got worse. Then some truly horrible people moved in upstairs and I was just beyond terrified all the time about that… then Dennis started calling me again. I was so lonely – and scared – that I started seeing him again. Because… I felt we at least had some protection with him around. And of course I didn’t think twice about lending him a lot of money again… and I finally decided to give it one more try so we rented a little shanty in Gardenia… probably the only low-budget housing in town… But a few weeks after we all moved in together my mom started wandering and I had to find a nursing home for her. That was unbelievably hard. I hated to have to put her there but I had absolutely no other choice. And then, of course, Dennis took up all his old habits.”
“So that’s when you filed for the divorce?”
She examined the shiny satin and started sewing again.
“Well, I’m still trying to file for divorce. He just won’t sign those papers. But there were so many events leading to it… Finally he told me he was moving to California, so I said OK, I’ll file for divorce and he said OK. So I found the apartment I live in now, but now, of course, he won’t sign the agreement and says he doesn’t want to move to California, and doesn’t want a divorce.”
She lowered her voice: “In the past, whenever I’d ask for a divorce he’d threaten to fight for custody of Sarah. He doesn’t have any grounds to stand on, but the thought of a custody battle just terrifies me… How did I get started telling you all that?”
When she looked up from her work, Eddie was looking down. Annabelle thought about ladies’ sewing circles and how gossip starts. It’s so darn easy to talk and sew. Why did I tell him all that?
“I know a great therapist you could see,” he said, “I saw her during my divorce from Barbara and she helped me a lot.”
Oh God, now he really thinks I’m crazy.
“Oh, I’m OK,” she insisted, “I’m sorry I bothered you with all this. I really shouldn’t have told you all that.”
“No, that’s OK; I just think she could help you. I’ll get you her number.”
Annabelle hesitated. “Well, how much does she charge for a visit?” she asked, picking up her needle again, trying to evade the subject.
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll pay for it.”
Annabelle looked up from her sewing.
“Um. I can’t possibly ask such a thing,” she said, shaking her head.
“Well,” said Eddie, still looking at the carpet, “I can’t counsel you because I’m so madly in love with you.”
Annabelle stared at him and tried to form words. Finally he got up and left her office.
She waited for him to return. Then she folded the costume, stuffed it in her briefcase, and walked down the hall.
Daryl’s door was open. She knocked on it.
“Do you have a minute?” she asked.
“Sure,” he said, “come on in.”
She closed the door behind her.
“What’s up?” said Daryl, motioning for her to sit down.
“Daryl,” she said, slowly, sighing and sitting, “Ed Wright just told me that he’s madly in love with me.”
Daryl paused. They were both silent.
“Well,” Daryl suddenly said, “he never told ME that! And I’ve been working with him a lot longer than you have!”
Annabelle smiled and shook her head while Daryl chuckled.
Finally Daryl said, “The rumour mill has it that you and Ed have been floating around together. You’ve been seeing him for a while, have you?”
“No. We’ve been sending each other electronic-mail messages for a few weeks. I let him read my novel. We’ve had lunch a few times. So this is pretty sudden.”
“Is this a problem?” asked Daryl. “Do you like him?”
She touched her fingers to her lips. “Um. I just love him,” she heard herself whisper.
“So what’s the problem?”
“What do you mean? I’m still trying to get divorced.”
“I’ve worked with Ed off and on for about four years now and I can tell you that he’s one of the most decent, good natured human beings I’ve ever met. He’s got a great attitude about life. If he says he loves you and you love him, then that’s not a problem. You could do a lot worse!”
Annabelle smiled and sighed. “Believe me, I know about doing worse. But how can he just come out and say that, just like that?”
“I guess he loves you so he told you. I guess that’s part of why he has a great attitude about life. I know I’d never be that impulsive with anyone. And I also know that I need an attitude adjustment.”
Annabelle continued smiling, continued shaking her head.
“You think it’s OK?” she asked eventually.
“You don’t need my permission,” he said.
Annabelle returned to her office and read her new electronic-mail messages.
To: ABonney
From: EWRIGHT
Subject: Untitled
I am sorry that
I hurt your feelings when
I told you that
I loved you.
It is raining.
To: ABonney
From: EWRIGHT
Subject: Untitled
It’s still raining
the pine cone has refused
to speak with the bonsai tree
It was God
that made me
leap naked, young again
into the brook
Splashing! Cold water
Clear sandstone and blue sky.
Will you forgive me?
Or do I have to move to Idaho?
To: EWRIGHT
From: ABonney
Subject: Untitled
oh my goodness.
Idoloveyou
so much
but i am afraid
i want to be with you
please don’t go to Idaho
“Did you get my response to your poems?” she asked, holding the telephone’s receiver in her quivering left hand.
“Yes,” he whispered, “I read it.”
“Can you walk with me to my car tonight so we can talk?”
“Yes.”
At five they met by the elevator on the eighth floor; neither spoke until they were sitting in Annabelle’s station wagon. She moved the front seat back to accommodate Eddie’s long legs.
“Um. What do you want from me?” she finally said.
“I don’t want anything,” he said.
He reached for her hand and held it. The moist warmth of his immense palm startled her. He leant over to kiss her. She backed away before his lips could reach her.
He looked out the window.
It had stopped raining. The December sky was black with streaks of azure, strange lines of blue madness. Rush-hour traffic hummed on the streets below the parking garage.
Eventually she forced herself to address her suspicion.
“Do you want to be my lover?” she asked, her voice breaking.
Eddie glanced at her and smiled.
“No,” he said, “that’s not it.”
She was relieved and disappointed.
“Then what do you want?”
“Just walk with me.”
“What do you mean?”
Eddie slowly breathed and sighed, “I just want you to walk with me. I want to give you the family you never had.”
His response made her even more suspicious. He had briefly described his brothers and his parents, but he’d also mentioned an ashram in western Massachusetts and now she wondered whether he wanted her to join some kind of religious cult.
“What do you mean?” she repeated.
“I want to marry you,” he said without hesitation, “I want to have children with you and marry you…”
Staring at the steering wheel, she quietly, nervously, inadvertently, sighed – a tiny half-laugh. Sarah had gone to a friend’s house after school so she didn’t have to hurry home as usual; she had a few minutes to spare.
“But you hardly know me,” she said at last. “How can you say you want to marry me?”
“Intuition.” He paused for several moments. “I knew I wanted you the first time I saw you. I only loved one other woman before you and it wasn’t my wife. It was a girl I went out with in college but she left me for God. She left me to become a nun. Maybe I could have stopped her but I didn’t. So I married Barbara just because I liked the idea of being married and she was willing. She wanted to get married and we both wanted to have children. It was a counter-culture thing to do in those days because nobody was getting married then, especially not as young as we were. But I didn’t love her and I married her anyway and we both suffered for it. I’ve had a few relationships since my divorce but I didn’t love them either so I’ve spent more time breaking up than being in the relationships. Finally I decided that when I found the woman I wanted I would let intuition guide me and I would just tell her, without fooling around, and I would do everything I could to make her want me too. So that’s what I did. I’m sorry if I upset you by telling you that I’m madly in love with you, but I am, that’s all. I’m crazy about you Annabelle. That’s all.”
She shook her head again, wondering why he was crazy about her.
“I do want to have more children,” she whispered. “You really want more children?”
“That’s been my dream for years.” He smiled.
“I have to go,” she said. She turned her head, paused, then said, “I love you too,” while looking away from him.
“Can I have a kiss?”
She shook her head. “I can’t yet.”
He nodded and got out of the car.
“I’ve been thinking it over,” said Dennis, “and I’m not agreeing to a divorce, ever. I’m going to fight you all the way on this.”
Gripping the receiver in her clammy left hand, Annabelle sighed.
“Dennis, you’ve been doing this for years. You abuse me then you say you’ll fight the divorce after I leave you.”
“I never abused you.”
“I’ve made a 147-item list of what you’ve done to me. I’ll submit it as an affidavit if I have to.”
“You suck,” he said, then paused, then continued. “You really fucking suck,” he shouted, slamming down the phone.
Two hours later he called back.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Annabelle said nothing.
“Just have dinner with me.”
“No.”
“I’ll do anything to make it up. I know the idea of moving to California was stupid. I like it here in Gardenia; I’m not leaving now. I could give up this place and move in with you and Sarah. Sarah needs to have her father around.”
“What about all the years you weren’t around? What do we do about those?”
“I’m sorry. I will change. I will. Let’s just have dinner and we’ll talk about it.”
“No.”
“Then I’m going to fucking run you through the wall!” he shouted and Annabelle hung up this time.
Sarah’s sleeping breath sounded laboured but at least she wasn’t wheezing. It’s just a mild cold. Annabelle quietly stood and listened to the tiny night-time sounds, Sarah’s breathing, and the furnace tapping.
Issues:
Resolutions:
To: ABonney
From: EWRIGHT
I know it hurts a lot. The reality is that you’re doing amazingly well. You’re not being selfish. You’re being clear with what you need. Please don’t feel sorry about involving me in this stuff. It has become central to both our lives. Like it or not I’m sharing it with you. I want to hold you and make the pain go away.
I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.
I
Love
You,
Eddie