IN THE MIDDLE OF December, Anna left. I drove her to the Lamy train station, and on the way we stopped in Santa Fe.
“Hey, let’s go for lunch. We have plenty of time,” I said, trying to be cheerful but feeling like I might burst into tears at any moment.
“Okay, but I don’t want to miss the train.” Anna sat in the passenger seat, opening and closing her hands.
“Hey, Anna, would you cut it out? These are our last moments together. I’d like them to be meaningful. Could you at least act as if they were?” We pulled up at a sandwich shop in Tesuque.
“Sorry, Nell. I’m just nervous.”
“Would you quit calling me Nell? I’m Banana!” I got out and slammed the car door. I didn’t want her to leave.
“Hey, wait! We have to lock the car.” Anna went to my side, opened the door, pushed down the button, and then slammed the door closed.
I didn’t wait for her. I went into the restaurant and stood by the blackboard menu. Anna came up behind me and put her arm around my shoulders.
The waitress showed us to a table by the window and took our order. I asked for potato chowder. Anna had a sprout salad and lentil soup. It had snowed that morning and the blacktop was slick and wet. It stood out against the snow and the crystallized tree branches. A red Chevy pickup turned the corner onto a long dirt drive full of mud and slush.
“Hey, Anna, there’s a trailer park.” I pointed. “I remember hearing about a palm reader who lives there. Want to go? You should know your future before you leave.”
“Naw, Nell—I mean, Banana.” She was really trying. “I just want to be with you. No palm reader. I want just to pay attention.” A broad smile spread over her face. “Maybe I’ll write about us sometime.” She pretended her finger was a pencil and she wrote on the green tablecloth. “‘Nell, who liked to be called Banana, sat in the simple sandwich shoppe. She feared her friend leaving, but her friend knew they would always be together.’”
I grabbed the pencil from her, which was her finger, and began writing, too. “ ‘Nell had a sorrow in her, not only because Anna was leaving, but because Gauguin wanted Nell to leave, too. Once leaving began, it continued until there was nothing left.’ ” I liked my last line. It made me feel like a poet.
Anna looked at me. “So that’s it. What’s going on?”
“Gauguin’s sick of Taos.” I ate a potato chip that came with the soup.
“Will you go with him?” Anna asked.
“I don’t know. There’s only one thing I love more than Taos, and that’s Gauguin. He’s been wanting to go for a long time, but I haven’t given him much space to talk about it.” I shrugged. I wanted to change the subject. Anna nodded.
I studied Anna closely. I was determined to remember everything about her. Her knuckles were bigger than her fingers; her wrists were thin. Her hair, which was mostly straight, had a curl behind her left ear. She sometimes chewed at the ends of her hair and she clipped her fingernails short. She seemed calm, but I knew her to be nervous underneath, never sure that she was really sane.
She was telling me about a mare her mother still had. “Ginny is so old now, you look at her and she doesn’t look like a horse anymore.” Anna liked animals. They matched her silence. I think what I liked most about her was that she knew something about herself that no one could take away. Something nameless.
Just before the waitress came over to ask if everything was all right, Anna put a strand of hair behind her ear. I made that gesture bind me to her. “You’re not eating, Nell,” she said to me.
“No, I’m not hungry.” I turned the spoon around in the soup.
“Do you remember when we walked down to the Rio Chiquita after you’d eaten peyote buttons?” Anna asked. “You didn’t say one word the whole walk, and then when we got to the river—” I started laughing and nodding, knowing the end. “I thought you were into something really deep, like the oneness of nature. I was waiting for you to say something profound. Just when we got to the river’s edge, you stopped, looked at me intently, and said, in the most serious voice, ‘The frogs in Pittsburgh are as big as cocker spaniels.’ ”
When she said that part about cocker spaniels, I laughed so hard, I choked on my potato chowder. “Here, drink this.” Anna handed me a glass of water. I took a big gulp. A tear rolled down my cheek and I shook my head from side to side.
When we reached the station, there was only one other woman waiting for the train. She wore a net on her gray hair. At her feet was a shopping bag. We could see a box of tissues in it and what looked like crusts of sandwich bread in a plastic container. She wore a yellow cardigan and a heavy white shawl. Though it was December, it was hot in the sun. She sat on a bench, leaning against the station wall.
I leaned over and whispered in Anna’s ear. “Maybe she’ll give you a Kraft American cheese sandwich on the train, if you’re good.”
Anna crinkled her nose. We heard the train coming, and we stood up. Anna had two big gold suitcases and a box. I was going to ship the rest of her stuff. The front of the train passed and stopped ahead of us.
Anna grabbed me. “Nell, I’m gonna miss you.”
I helped her lift her bags up the three steps. Then she jumped down again. “Hey, Nell.” She bent to my ear, and in a whisper loud enough to be heard above the engines, she said, “If you didn’t have Gauguin, I’d be in love with you.” My head jerked around. She let out an enormous happy scream and jumped on the train. She smiled so big, I was sure her crooked front tooth would fall out.
I yelled above the train, “Are you serious?” She nodded vigorously, laughing so much I wasn’t sure whether to believe her. I gave her the finger. Under the big sky, the train pulled away, past the red cliffs. She waved.
I stood on the platform, watching the train disappear and listening as its sound became faint.
Now Anna was gone. No more malts at Rexall’s. Maybe that was a good thing, since she ordered vanilla anyway. I told her it was disgusting. She didn’t listen. I liked that about Anna. She had her own mind. What else didn’t she listen to? She didn’t listen when I told her about the way Gauguin made love. Now that I thought of it, I ought to be mad at Anna for not listening, but how could I be? I loved her and she had just now left on this train headed somehow for Nebraska and away from New Mexico.