The Appearance of Annie Van Sinderen

by Katherine Howe

  “Your gran. Says hello. She’s very fond of you, you know. You ever send her a thank-you note, Wes? It’s the right thing to do.”

  “GOD. Yes. What happened at lunch?” I say, divot totals forgotten. Fairy dust is sparkling in the corners of my field of vision.

  “Well, the three of us had a good long talk,” Dad says. “And the upshot is, we think it’s a great idea. We’ve signed the forms for you to transfer.”

  What?

  What?

  “YES,” I shout, getting to my feet and holding my arms over my head like a prizefighter after the knockout. Eastlin jumps up and echoes my yes in a quiet whisper, then does a disco victory lap around the room. “Oh my God. DAD. Thank you! Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you!”

  “I’ll bring them by your screening tomorrow. Then you can get everything in before we leave,” Dad says. Mom’s voice in the background adds something, and he says, “You’re going to have to help out, though. Depending on your aid package. You’ll probably have to get a job during the school year.”

  “I know. That’s okay,” I say in a rush, already thinking I can ask Professor Krauss if she needs a research assistant. Or, hell, maybe Eastlin can get me a job at Abraham Mas. Then I can dress skinny Upper East Side girls, too. Or, screw it, I’ll work at Tyler’s dad’s dry cleaning shop, I don’t care.

  “That’s assuming you get in. Let’s just hope this film of yours is good, huh, Sport?”

  All the air rushes out of me like a popped balloon. As if I needed another reminder about how important workshop is. Steven Auckerman, undermining for the win.

  “I think”—I pause for dramatic effect—“I think Most is going to be different from anything they’ve seen. I know it.”

  “All right then. So, listen. Your mom and I will see you at the screening tomorrow, and you can’t make her feel bad if she cries, got it?”

  “Got it,” I say, and I become aware that I am grinning. In fact, I’m grinning so hard I’m a little concerned the corners of my mouth will meet around the back of my head and the top of my head will fall off. “Okay, Dad. See you.”

  “Bye.”

  Click, and Eastlin is already standing on his bunk in an attitude of supreme pre-celebration. “OH MY GOD,” I shout, tossing my phone on the bed and gawking empty-handed at Eastlin.

  “Spill!” my roommate demands.

  “I’m transferring. I’m going to NYU,” I say. “If Most is good enough, I’m going to NYU!”

  I’m worried I’m going to cry, I’m so excited.

  “I KNEW IT,” he says. “That’s awesome!”

  Eastlin comes in for a fist bump, which turns into a bro-hug with a lot of back pounding.

  “Yeah,” I say, my eyes glazed.

  I have to tell Tyler.

  And Maddie. I really have to tell Maddie.

  “Oh, stop begging,” Eastlin says.

  “What?” I say, reaching for my phone already so I can text them. Oh my God. Oh my God. It has to be good enough. Right? It has to be. I can’t have come this far, learned this much, only to have it all fall apart when I’m on the cusp of getting everything I want. Can I?

  I’m completely freaking out. Completely.

  “About rooming for next year. I mean, stop begging already. It demeans us both,” Eastlin says lightly.

  I grin at him.

  “Okay,” I say.

  Eastlin smiles at me. Then he shrugs like he’s pretending not to care. “I’ve gotta be losing my mind,” he sighs, shaking his head. “Straight boys never pick up after themselves.”

  • • •

  Tyler’s keys are jingling again, his leg all jumpy, and for a second it feels like no time has gone by at all, except Deepti’s cheering section has taken the day off.

  I’m back in the screening room, and I’m staring at the ceiling to make sure that if I actually do throw up, I will at least choke to death on my own vomit rather than embarrass myself by getting it all over the floor. I made my parents sit in the back instead of with me, because I just couldn’t handle the look on my dad’s face if Professor Krauss rips my film. Cannot. Possibly. Handle it.

  “It’s tight, Wes,” Tyler whispers to me.

  I grunt in response, because I’m too nervous to talk.

  I’m feeling good about Most. I think.

  Mostly.

  Ha! Hilarious, Wes. I am hilarious.

  I remind myself that I don’t really know any of these people. Not really. If it turns out that Most sucks, then who cares? I’ll get a C, I’ll go back to Madison, I’ll finish my communications degree, and then . . . and then I’ll . . .

  Then I’ll work in a shoe store and spend the rest of my life reliving the moment I almost had everything I wanted.

  Well, it doesn’t matter, because none of these people will be there, whatever I do, and in a year nobody will care that some kid from the Midwest showed a crappy, self-indulgent documentary film during his summer film school workshop screening. Only I will know.

  Somehow this thought doesn’t do anything to calm me down.

  “Okay, simmer down, kids,” Professor Krauss says from the podium. We’re all restless, the faculty as well as the students. Summer is winding down to an end. “Our first victim is Mr. Diegetic Sound himself, Wes Auckerman, with a digital video documentary he’s calling Most. Hit it.”

  That’s all? No intro, no welcoming parent blather, nothing? We’re just going to . . . watch it?

  Remember, I tell myself. You don’t actually know any of these people. If they hate it, it doesn’t matter.

  But nothing I can say to myself will make any difference. The fear is there, and it’s eating at my entrails like a parasite, and I want so badly for the movie to be amazing and I’m so afraid that they will laugh, and nothing I can do now will make any difference. The lights go down, my classmates settle into a hush, the numbered countdown begins (I cut it in, because it’s my movie, and I’ll do it how I want it done). And then, the screen lights up with what should be a hazy, out-of-focus shot of Annie’s face. That perfect mole, those bottomless black eyes. I hold my breath, and my classmates do, too.

  But the screen only shows the empty bench by the lake where Annie van Sinderen told me what she wanted the most in the world.

  EPILOGUE

  I’m still laughing when I step out of Professor Krauss’s office and peer at my phone and find a text from Maddie.

  U coming over? it asks.

  Yes, I reply. What time?

  How’s now?

  Perfect, I respond, and stuff the phone in the pocket of my cargo shorts.

  I pause in the vestibule of the film department, looking up and down the hallways lined with posters of movies made by Tisch grads. A couple of girls walk by, giggling under their hands and pointing at me. I don’t recognize either of them. After a second of debating back and forth, they come up and one of them goes, “Um, excuse me, but are you the guy?”

  I can’t stop myself from grinning.

  “Um. Yeah,” I say, tugging at my Ramones T-shirt. “I’m the guy.”

  “Oh my God,” one of the girls says, laying a hand on my arm. “I could not believe what people were saying about your film.”

  “Aw,” I say, waiting to feel myself blush, but not feeling it. “Thanks.”

  “Seriously,” the other girl says. “I was at the screening, ’cause my girlfriend was in your class? And it was awesome. I mean, I loved all the people you talked to, but I kinda felt like the voids were the best part, you know? In the park, and in the pizzeria. They gave it a really terrific pace, you know? Like a meditative break, to give us time to reflect on desire?”

  “Aw,” I say. There’s the blush. I knew it was in there somewhere. The pizza of embarrassment. “That’s really cool of you to say.”

  “What did Krauss think?�
�� the first girl asks.

  “It was epic,” the second girl says to the first. “She totally freaked-out-loved it. Like, I didn’t know she ever gave A’s for anything. Seriously.” To me, she goes on, “So are you taking advanced documentary workshop in the fall? I’m going to be in that one. I think you and I should form a study group.”

  “That would be awesome,” I say. “Yeah. I’m definitely taking that class. Study group, totally. That would be amazing.” I’m nodding while I’m talking, and I’m grinning, and while I give the documentary girl—whose name proves to be Jordan—my cell number so we can get in touch in September, which is only four weeks away, I feel myself growing taller and lighter. Yeah, I am going to be in that class.

  Because Krauss just told me my transfer went through.

  I shove my hands in my pockets and lope to the elevators.

  Where R U? I text Maddie while I wait. The elevators here take forever, I’m not even kidding. She told me she and Janeanna were scoping a new squat, about ten minutes from the film department. But I haven’t seen it yet.

  My parents, the phone vibrates back. Come pick me up?

  My eyebrows shoot up.

  OK, I respond. But the thought of facing those sepulchers on Park Avenue fills me with a sick sort of dread.

  You remember the address? the phone trills.

  Park Ave, right? What number? By now I’m inside the elevator, and it’s creaking its way to the lobby.

  LOL!!!! Maddie texts back. U so funny. I’ll show you the new squat after.

  The elevator doors groan open.

  How am I funny? I text her as I head out to the street to hail a cab. Going to the Upper East Side is like taking a trek to the Himalayas, practically.

  A cab pulls up just as her response vibrates in my hand. Duh. It’s Jane Street. 341. Hurry up!

  “What?” I say aloud, staring down at my phone in bafflement. Is the star of cracks in my phone screen making me unable to read? Jane Street? But that’s in the West Village.

  “In or out!” the cab driver shouts at me. A black car behind him lays on the horn.

  “Sorry,” I say, getting flustered. “Never mind. It’s okay. I’ll walk.”

  “Asshole!” The cab driver flips me off. But I’m too busy staring at my phone to get upset about it.

  I cross Washington Square Park, heading west. Is she messing with me? Maybe she’s kidding.

  You’re *sure* it’s not Park Ave? I text as I pass Waverly Place and cut north.

  Um. Yeah? she texts back, followed by a bunch of emojis with their tongues sticking out and their eyes crossed. I laugh and stuff the phone in my pocket.

  I pass a bodega and remember the rules of Maddie’s Luddite fregan collective. I pick up some potato chips, a tray of barbecue tofu and broccoli, a thing of bananas, and a six-pack of Colt 45.

  The sun’s dropped lower by the time I get to Jane Street, and my arms are tired from carrying groceries. The building number she gave me proves to belong to a modest brownstone with a nail place downstairs. I’m pulling out my phone to text her that I’m there when the door opens and she’s there, biting a lip.

  “Your hair,” I say without thinking.

  “What?” she says, reaching a finger up to touch it.

  Maddie looks amazing. Amazing, and . . . nervous? She smiles down at me from the doorway, fingering the folds of her dress. She’s still punked out, but with a slightly softer edge. Maybe a little more grunge than punk. She’s in a soft floral dress with her combat boots today, and her hair is down, instead of in the beehive.

  Her hair is blue. Blue as ashes.

  “You changed it,” I say.

  She smiles at me uncertainly. “Um. No. I didn’t?”

  “Um,” I say, staring at her. The stare goes on just a little too long, and then I remember that my arms are tired because I’ve been carrying this grocery bag, so I say, “Hey, listen, so I brought some groceries. For the collective. All vegan. I think.”

  Her eyes brighten. “Oh! Really? That’s nice of you.”

  But she doesn’t make a move to, like, come take the bag from me, or invite me in, or anything.

  “Yeah,” I say, unsure. “There’s, um. Some tofu, and some bananas, and—”

  “Maloulou? Is that him?” a resonant male voice calls, and then a middle-aged guy appears in the doorway behind her. He’s in a painter smock and his graying hair is in a ponytail.

  “I thought your dad was a banker?” It spills out of me, while Maddie and her father exchange an amused glance.

  “He’s as smooth as you said,” Maddie’s dad remarks.

  “Sorry,” I mumble. “Mr. Van Sinderen, I’m just sort of . . .” I don’t know what I’m trying to explain, because nothing about this seems familiar. Or rather, it does, but I can’t shake this feeling that something is off. Something’s changed.

  “You guys dropping stuff off at the collective?” he asks Maddie. “If you see Janeanna, tell her her dad’s almost done with the plans for the community garden.”

  “Sure, Dad,” Maddie says with a roll of her eyes.

  “Um—” I start to add, but I don’t know where I’m going with it.

  “Do you want to leave?” Maddie interrupts before I can embarrass myself further.

  “Leave?” I’m confused.

  Her dad laughs, says, “You kids have fun,” and disappears back upstairs.

  “Well,” Maddie says, looking up at the sky. “It’s nice out. I thought maybe we could go to the park.”

  She’s right. The sky has this soft, lovely grayness to it, cloudless, but pale bluish white. Like a moonstone.

  “All right,” I say, and Maddie smiles a huge grin and comes tripping down the stairs like a kid, landing next to me with a stomp of her boots.

  By the time we get back to Washington Square, my arms are really killing me. We settle on one of the benches in the park, not far from where I filmed that guy for Most. The one who was obsessed with flying on the Concorde, even though it doesn’t exist anymore.

  Wordlessly Maddie fitzes open two bottles of Colt, handing one to me in a brown paper bag. We sit in silence, sipping our terrible malt liquor, watching the life of the park pass us by. Moms in yoga pants with babies in strollers, teenage girls about to start high school, an old Korean man holding his wife by the arm, both bent nearly in half with age. Dogs tussle in the dog run, and a young guy breaks it up. In the distance, someone turns on a radio. Vintage Beastie Boys. “Intergalactic.” It’s all as it should be. And yet, different.

  “So, guess what?” I say, leaning on the bench with an arm along the seatback, behind Maddie’s shoulders, but in a casual way.

  “What?” she asks. She settles herself into my arm, and I feel a brush of the flesh of her shoulder against the crook of my elbow. Where our skin meets, the patch of my skin starts to tingle.

  “I’m transferring,” I say. I’m keeping it light. I’m not looking at her. That way, if she doesn’t react, it’s okay.

  “Oh yeah?” she says, just as lightly. “To Tisch?”

  “Mmm-hmmm,” I say. I take a swig of my malt liquor and have to stop myself from spitting it out. Damn, that stuff is nasty.

  “Huh,” she says. “So it went through?”

  I allow myself a sidelong glance in her direction.

  She’s smiling.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  I’m smiling, too.

  “Yeah, well. Guess what? I’m starting next semester at City College,” she says. “So. I’ll be around. The collective’s got another space lined up for September. In Brooklyn, I’m pretty sure Janeanna said.”

  Also without looking at me. Instead she’s twisting a ring on her finger. Some kind of dark brown carved shell. A terrier has his paws up on the chain-link fence across from us and wags, and Maddie smiles and waves at him. The gold
band glints in the sun.

  “Arlo!” a woman calls from inside the dog park, and the terrier disappears.

  “Yeah?” I say. Maddie glances quickly at me, as if gauging to see if I consider her starting at City College to be good news.

  “Yeah,” she says.

  We’re staring at each other now, and a moment of static electricity passes in the space between us. Her eyes are wide and black and nearly bottomless, the lashes trembling.

  “Good,” I say, and I take her cheeks in my palms. I study her, to make sure this is okay, and then I lean in and kiss her.

  We stay like that, locked together, tofu on our laps and my hands holding her cheeks, our lips pressed together. My glass Colt 45 bottle rolls unheeded off the park bench next to me and cracks in two on the cobblestones. It’s probably only a minute that we sit like that, a still point frozen in the swirling eddies of life in Washington Square Park.

  But a minute can be an eternity, sometimes.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  A few months ago, a man from my insurance company came to inspect my New England house. This is one of those grown-up responsibilities one never thinks about in high school; it turns out that a lot of adulthood involves thinking about things like gutters and doctor’s appointments and paperwork. But I digress. The man nosed around my rickety old house, taking measurements, checking smoke detectors, and before long he noticed a lot of books on the shelves with my name on the spine. It came out that I was a novelist, and he asked me what I was working on just then—I was working on this book, as it happens—and I told him I was writing a ghost story that never used the word ghost. He nodded sagely and informed me without a trace of irony that I didn’t have to worry—my house wasn’t haunted. He’d been in ones that were, of course. Sad houses with thick presence. Houses that wear the misery in their pasts like winding sheets.

  Ghosts are hard to categorize, but scratch the surface of reason and you’ll find that most of us harbor secret beliefs about them. While writing this book, I heard innumerable stories from friends, neighbors, and strangers of inexplicable footprints, eerie sensations, and crawling skin. At a cocktail party at a southern university where I was teaching fiction one semester, a woman mused to me that she didn’t see how you could be a Christian and not believe in ghosts. She herself had, at one point, been awakened in the night by the specter of her mother.