The Appearance of Annie Van Sinderen

by Katherine Howe

  “A cameo,” the woman repeats.

  She runs a finger down a long list. Then she flips a page.

  She flips another page.

  I’m so nervous and afraid that I fear I’m going to scream, and if I scream, what if somehow the woman will be able to hear me? My ability to effect change in the world waxes and wanes. Sometimes I can touch things, and sometimes I can’t. I can be seen in certain glimpses, but not in others. My feelings can sometimes bring me into sharper relief. As when I rattled the bars of the cemetery gate: My horror brought my hands into firm-enough condition that I could grasp the bars and make them move.

  As I’m thinking these things, the young woman’s head snaps up, and she looks straight at me. I freeze, thumbnail in mouth, holding my breath.

  She stares right at the spot where I’m standing, but her eyes aren’t focused on me.

  “Is everything okay?” Maddie asks, her gaze jumping between me and the woman.

  The woman frowns.

  Then she turns slowly back to the book.

  “Yes,” she says. “I’m just jumpy.”

  I exhale as silently as I can, and while the woman’s attention is distracted, Maddie glares quickly at me, telling me with her eyes to keep quiet. I shrug, and mouth, I didn’t do anything! Maddie shakes her head.

  “All right,” the woman says. “It looks like we have a few cameos in the Van Sinderen collection. Do you know which one it is?”

  “Um,” Maddie says, biting a lip. She looks at me, eyebrows shooting up in inquiry.

  “It’s red,” I whisper. “A ring. With Persephone on it.”

  “Is there a . . . red one?” Maddie asks.

  “Hrm,” the woman says. “Doesn’t say. Why don’t I just bring them all out?”

  “All right,” Maddie says.

  A few minutes pass while the young woman disappears into wherever it is that she goes. I pace to and fro behind Maddie’s chair, a finger twisting my curls.

  “What if it’s not here after all?” I say.

  “It’ll be here,” Maddie says, inspecting her fingernails. Eastlin made her wipe off the chipped black polish.

  I hear a faint buzzing sound, like a tiny bee caught behind a wardrobe door. Maddie reaches into her bag and pulls out a little glass box like the one Wes carries. She peers at it critically. Then she grins.

  “That’s a great idea,” she says aloud.

  “What is?” I ask, rushing to look over her shoulder.

  “The boys have decided where we should meet for you to put the ring on, when we find it,” she says to me, her head cocked to one side.

  “Where?” I ask, worrying my hands together

  “You’ll see,” Maddie says.

  Just then the woman reappears carrying a tray with a few small boxes on it of varying degrees of antiquity. She sets the tray in front of Maddie and seats herself at the table. I tiptoe up behind the woman and peer over her shoulder.

  “So,” she says. “This one’s been dated to 1867.” She passes a large brooch to Maddie, with a woman’s face in profile, alabaster on ebony. The nose looks a bit like Beattie’s, but that could be my imagination.

  Maddie glances at me, and I shake my head.

  “That’s not it,” Maddie says. “I’m looking for one that’s older.”

  “Hmmm,” says the woman, consulting her finding aid. “What about this one? Estimated to be 1840s.”

  She opens a small leather box and reveals another brooch surrounded by gold filigree. It’s another woman, with delicate white curls against a pale blue background.

  Maddie raises her eyebrows at me. This time, the woman follows Maddie’s gaze over her shoulder, and stares again at the space where I’m standing. I hold perfectly still, not even daring to breathe. Then I shake my head with the tiniest movement I can manage.

  “Nope,” Maddie says, startling the woman, who jumps in her seat.

  A sheen of sweat has formed on the historical society woman’s forehead. It gleams under the artificial lights.

  “Is it cold in here?” the woman asks uneasily.

  “Not that I’ve noticed,” Maddie says. But she also is looking nervous.

  I retreat a few steps away, withdrawing into a shadow cast by one of the filing cabinets.

  “Which is the oldest one?” Maddie asks, stirring the boxes in the tray. She picks up a tiny cardboard one and opens it. There’s a tuft of cotton wool inside, and Maddie starts to peel it away.

  “Here, let me,” the historical society woman says, reaching for it.

  “But it’s mine,” Maddie says, pulling the box away. The woman’s hand knocks against the box, and in the struggle the box slips out of Maddie’s hand and falls to the floor.

  The box lands hard and something small comes flying out, skittering across the floor like a skipped pebble until it comes to a rest against the toe of my slipper.

  The gold band is dented and crushed into almost an oval shape, and a thick layer of grime lines the setting that holds the red sliver of shell in place. The carving is less fine than I remember, the white form of Persephone dulled and chipped in places. The shell-red background has faded to a burnished oaken brown. But there’s no question.

  It’s mine.

  My cameo.

  My heart lurches in my chest, a rising pressure as the memory of Herschel floods my limbs, flushing my skin. I catch my breath to choke back a sob.

  “Be careful!” the woman remonstrates Maddie, getting to her feet and hurrying to pick the trinket off the floor where it rests against my toe.

  She kneels at my feet, her finger and thumb grasping the gold band. She freezes. She’s staring at my shoe, it’s unmistakable. From my shoe she stares in dawning horror at the hem of my dress, up my skirts, tipping her head back to look up to my face, when she lets out a throaty scream.

  I flee into the shadows, bringing my fist to my mouth to force myself silent, leaving a coil of burnt smoke in my wake.

  The archivist falls back on her heels and stumbles haltingly to her feet.

  “Are you all right?” Maddie asks, eyeing her warily.

  The archivist is shaking. With a trembling hand, she puts the ring into Maddie’s waiting palm.

  “I . . . I . . . I’m . . .” The archivist is staring hard into the shadows where I’m hiding.

  Maddie holds the ring up to the light, turning it this way and that. “Persephone!” she says brightly. “This is it. Thank you.”

  She slides the ring onto her right ring finger. It fits perfectly.

  The archivist’s breath is coming quickly, and a bead of sweat is trickling down her hairline.

  “Do you need me to sign anything?” Maddie asks. “Or can I just go?”

  “I . . . that is, you should really . . . Um . . . ,” the archivist stammers. She’s staring into the shadows where I fled, looking to see if I’m really there. I bite down on my thumb, forcing myself not to move.

  “Listen, I’m in kind of a hurry,” Maddie says, pushing her chair away from the table and standing up. “You can just handle any paperwork for me, right? You don’t really need me to sign anything.”

  She looks coolly at the panicked woman cowering at the table, who nods fiercely.

  “Y-y-y-yes, that would be fine,” the archivist says. “Go. Please.”

  Maddie’s shoulders shake with silent laughter, and she winks at me. When she does, my fear vanishes. I let myself smile, and step out of the shadows.

  “Great! Thanks. You’ve been a big help.” Maddie strides over to me, loops her arm through mine, and indicating the archivist with her chin, says, “Say thank you, Annie.”

  “Thank you!” I chirp as sweetly as I can.

  But the archivist doesn’t hear me over her wretched scream.

  CHAPTER 14

  Where the hell are they?”
I ask no one in particular. I am seriously starting to freak out, and there’s no sign of them yet. What if something happened? What if she went away without me?

  A woman jostling by with two small kids in tow, all wearing matching I NY sweatshirts, gives me the hairy eyeball as she passes me on her way to the observation deck.

  “They’ll be here,” Tyler assures me, keeping the camera trained, for some reason, on my feet. Typical art guy. For some reason they love carving the body up into its constituent parts. He’s promised me I can use this footage for Most, so my documentary is going to have a seriously arty look for a change.

  “Relax, Wesley,” Eastlin says from his vantage point leaning against the wall.

  “How can I relax?” I say, gripping the mop of hair over my forehead and giving it another tug. “You relax! There. See how that sounds?”

  “You have to keep it together, man,” Tyler remarks. He pans over to Eastlin and zooms in on his face. Eastlin’s eyes are closed.

  “Maddie’s sure they got the right one?” I ask.

  “Mmm-hmmm,” Eastlin says.

  A whole group of kids on a band trip or something all descend on us en masse. They’re like fourteen or fifteen, all new breasts and big teeth and big feet, and they’re in identical lime-green T-shirts. On the back of the T-shirts I see that they’re from Madison, and they go to my rival high school. They whoop and holler, shoving one another like puppies as they mass at the door to the outdoor deck, and then go spurting through it with a squeal. I shudder as I watch them go. God. All I want in the world is to get into NYU.

  Well. Not all. Perhaps not even most, anymore.

  “Ugh.” Eastlin rolls his eyes. “Kids.”

  Eastlin is twenty.

  “They’re sure, though? Annie recognized it?” I press. When we were looking at them on the internet, they basically all looked the same to me. Different colors and whatever, but that’s it. What if they got the wrong one?

  “Dude,” Tyler says, swinging the camera back around to my face. “They got it.”

  I can’t hold still. I wander over to the window by where Eastlin’s leaning and press my forehead to the glass. I have never felt more anxious in my entire life. I’m so anxious there’s a good chance I’m going to explode, and then Eastlin and Tyler will have to clean my intestines off this plate-glass window.

  “She said they were in a cab,” Eastlin says. “It should just be a couple more minutes.”

  “Why don’t you go out and have a look?” Tyler says. “You haven’t been here yet, right?”

  Tyler has appointed himself ambassador to my rube’s awakening in Manhattan. He’s even talking about making me to go a Broadway show, before I leave at the end of summer school. Wicked or something. Except I hate musicals, and I hate heights, and I don’t want to leave, and all I can think about is what’s going to happen when Annie finally puts her cameo ring back on.

  I’m supposed to go home in four days. Four days is nothing. Four days to fit in everything I haven’t done. I haven’t walked the full length of Broadway. I haven’t been to a punk show in the East Village. I’ve only been to Brooklyn, like, twice, both times with Tyler. I haven’t been to Yankee Stadium, or Chelsea Piers, and I’ve only been to the High Line once, and it was so crowded I could barely move.

  I’ve done everything in Madison a million times. When I think about Madison now, it’s all in tones of gray and beige. New York unspools before me in Technicolor, those saturated reds and blues of expensive film stock and flickering lights. I want to go backstage at the Abraham Mas show and watch Eastlin dress girls of such impossible thinness and beauty they seem almost like insects. I want to go to the gallery in Chelsea and see Shuttered Eyes installed in one of those white rooms with concrete floors that make everything, no matter how mundane, look rare and expensive. I want to collaborate with Tyler on his next film project, and maybe see my own work projected in one of those galleries. I want to see where Maddie moves after the squat she shares with Janeanna gets bulldozed for new condos. I want Tibetan dumplings in Jackson Heights and knishes on the Lower East Side and barbecue in Harlem and congee in Chinatown and pupusas in Washington Heights and eggs at four in the morning no matter where you are. I want Preston Sturges retrospectives at Film Forum and shuffleboard in Brooklyn and EDM in a warehouse in Red Hook that I’ll never find again. I want to live New York City. Not live in it, but live it. I want to be alive, right here. Right now.

  It’s what I want most in all the world.

  A finger pokes my upper arm, startling me out of my obsessing. It’s Tyler, who says, “Come on. They’re here.”

  I turn around and spot two young women with similar faces, both in tattered burgundy dresses and old-fashioned hair, making their way slowly through the crowd. Maddie is leading Annie by the hand, and Annie has her other hand over her eyes like a blindfold. She’s grinning. As Maddie approaches, she presses a finger to her lips to keep us from saying anything.

  Tyler fires up the video camera, and Eastlin pushes himself off the wall where he was leaning. We gather around Maddie and Annie.

  “Okay,” Maddie whispers. “Keep them closed. Promise?”

  “I promise,” Annie says.

  A short family, a mom, a dad, and three little kids, all five feet tall or less, circle past us, talking together in Spanish. The mom pushes the glass door open to the observation deck, and a chill breeze blows into the room where we’ve been waiting, carrying with it the sounds of car horns and shouting school children.

  “Where are we?” Annie asks.

  “It’s a surprise,” Maddie says. “Come on. Eastlin, you help me steer her.”

  Eastlin blanches and doesn’t move. It’s funny to me that he’s so suave and jacked, but when it comes to Annie and her . . . situation . . . Eastlin’s afraid.

  “Here, let me,” I say, circling my arm around Annie’s waist.

  At my touch, Annie catches her breath, and her body shivers against mine.

  “Trust me,” Maddie murmurs into her ear. “This is perfect.”

  We three walk haltingly to the door. God, I hate heights. I really, really don’t want to be doing this. Tyler steps in close with the camera to catch the expression on Annie’s face, and he bumps into me without really meaning to. It makes something in me snap.

  “Will you watch it?” I shout at him.

  He glances at me over the eyepiece of his camera, giving me a hurt look. “Yeesh. Sorry.”

  Maddie, meanwhile, has pushed open the glass door and is steering us out onto the observation platform, right up close to the fencing that curves up and back over our heads. I swallow to get rid of the sickening dizziness snaking through my body.

  “Ready?” she whispers to Annie.

  Annie nods. “I’m ready.”

  “Okay. Look,” Maddie says, giving Annie an encouraging squeeze.

  Annie drops her hand from her eyes and stands frozen, unbreathing, looking down at the immense tapestry of the city spreading south from beneath her feet.

  We’re on the main observation deck of the Empire State Building, a place I know only from Sleepless in Seattle and King Kong (the original, not the remake). From here we can see all the way to the Battery, the skyscrapers of downtown looking like children’s toys clustered together at the point at the bottom of the island. Seagulls wheel by in the distance, and the Hudson is dotted with sailboats and ferries. The sun burns high overhead, and its light glints off the glass of the skyscrapers. Summer haze clings to the shore of New Jersey, obscuring our view of Jersey City, so Manhattan floats in a cloud by itself, hemmed in on both sides by imaginary rivers. Yellow taxis creep up and down the veins of Manhattan, pedestrians crawl along the street so far below us that they look like pill bugs.

  “Oh my goodness,” Annie breathes. She rests her hands on the diamond-patterned bars of the observation deck, leaning her forehead ag
ainst it, like she’s straining to break free.

  “Come on,” Eastlin urges me to step closer. “You’ve never seen it, either.”

  My mouth has gone bone dry. Visions of Vertigo and plunging down hundreds of stories to my death crowd in around me, and I get light-headed and Eastlin has to catch hold of my elbow. God, I’m a wuss.

  “I can’t,” I say, my voice sounding strangled.

  Annie turns to me and smiles. The breeze stirs the curls over her ears and makes the lace along her neckline flutter. She holds a hand out to me.

  It’s me. She wants me, next to her.

  I hesitate, and then I grasp her hand tightly, swallow once very hard, and step to the edge of the observation deck.

  “Look at this,” she whispers to me. “Look at all of those people, living. Just look at it all.”

  Clutching her hand in mine, I grip my free hand on the bars and peer over the edge. I tremble with terror, and press myself against her. Annie doesn’t look afraid. Her bottomless eyes are bright, her rosebud lips parted, as though she were drinking it all in.

  “I can see it all, Wes,” she breathes, staring with wonder down at the city. “I can see the blocks where they’ve plotted out the streets, but no houses are built yet. Look! I can see the cow fields and the streams glistening through the hills. There’s the Five Points. I can see our town house. There’s Brooklyn ferry landing, down by Herschel’s uncle shop, I can see it between the wooden masts and the rigging. There’s the steeple of Trinity Church! I can see everything!”

  “Annie. Aren’t you scared?” I whisper into her hair.

  But she fixes me with a delighted smile and says, “No. There’s nothing to be scared of.”

  I’m distracted by the whir of Tyler filming us, poking the camera over our shoulders and peering down the edge of the skyscraper. More children thunder by behind us, and I hear Maddie say, “Whoa!” and giggle as she nearly gets knocked over by the wave of them. I’m distracted by an elderly man escorting a woman with support hose rolled up under her knees, digging through his pockets to find a quarter to feed into one of those owl-shaped telescopes. It’s too much to take in all at once. It’s happening too fast.