by Cheryl Klein
“Oh, it was nothing, I’m sorry we didn’t call, Al, really. God.” Jody pauses. “This woman, Athena, sang. I hate her songs, actually, they’re sissy songs, all about flowers and peace. Meg would have hated it.”
Jody’s voice is pulling Anna Lisa through a burning building. She has to keep calling “Marco” to Jody’s “Polo” as her lungs fill with smoke. “And you… you’re moving? You and Imogen?”
Jody takes this as a cue to return to a tougher cadence. “Yeah. She’s sadder about it than I am. Her heart was more in the colony. But no money is no money, you know? At first the city tried to make all these little improvements—new street signs and stuff—but then I guess the Clarksons decided it would be easier to just start over somewhere else. There was a fire at the Lilac Mines Hotel a couple of weeks ago. People are saying someone did it for the insurance. Who wants to stick around Lilac Mines now anyway?”
A small voice inside Anna Lisa says, I do. “Could I visit you and Imogen?” she asks. She says it humbly, but she’s sure that Jody will say yes. It will be as it was a dozen years ago, Jody’s strong, thick arms welcoming her, initiating her. “Either at your new place or before you go?”
There is a silence. The thing in Anna Lisa’s stomach and throat pushes and pushes. Jody says, “I don’t think that would be a good idea.” Anna Lisa recognizes it as the voice Jody used to talk to men at the mill, the ones she feared and did not respect.
“But it’s been so long,” Anna Lisa protests. “You can’t still…”
“Al. You left. You left Meg and Lilac Mines and us. That’s fine, okay, I mean, that was your decision.” Jody pauses. “Anyhow, I thought you should know what happened. I’m calling all Meg’s exes.”
And so while Jody has stayed the same gruff nurturer in Anna Lisa’s mind, Anna Lisa sees that she has changed in Jody’s. She arrived in Lilac Mines an innocent, the victim of a world that never even gave her a word for what she was, but now she has Meg’s blood on her hands. Jody is calling to fill her in on a part of the story she has missed, out of respect for Meg’s past, but she’s not inviting Anna Lisa to join the next chapter. Shakily, Anna Lisa puts the receiver back on its hook. She waits to begin breathing again.
When she finally takes her dinner out of the oven, it is small and hard and black, and the gust from the oven is so hot she thinks her eyelashes are melting. She is disappointed, in a way, that the smoke is a result of something so mundane. That the world has not bent and burned as a result of Meg’s departure from it.
She eats two slices of plain bread. Although she can’t quite taste them, she marvels at how the chewed up food slides down her esophagus. It seems as if her throat should collapse, in sympathy. But all the proper valves open and let it into her stomach, where it sits patiently, waiting to be broken down by a pond of yellow bile. All these functions work, as if Meg is not dead. She keeps waiting for the world to end. While she waits, she flips through pictures of eggs and bunnies in Woman’s Day. She turns the TV on and then off. She makes a wobbly list of names on a crumpled supermarket receipt: Gertrude, Isabella, Persephone, Carmen, Natasha. She goes to the bathroom and vomits her chewed-up food into the toilet. Terry is still at school. He stays and stays. Until 8 o’clock, 9 o’clock.
Anna Lisa studies the picture of Meg that she keeps between eggplant and bell pepper in Jewels on the Vine: Exotic Vegetables that Anyone Can Grow. She took it that day they drove all the way to Columbia. They drank sarsaparilla at the old-fashioned soda fountain, then whiskey at a biker bar. It was happy hour, but almost empty. Anna Lisa had to pee on the way back, so they pulled over to the side of the road. She found a tree skirted by tall, soft new plants. Then she found her camera in Meg’s trunk and took the picture. Meg smiles brilliantly into the mountains. Not at Anna Lisa. Not then, not now.
Maybe, Anna Lisa thinks, the world is not ending because it is waiting for me to end it. If she carries on like usual, Meg will never be dead; she’ll just remain another thing Anna Lisa is deprived of. It would be so easy to keep Meg at her cool, back-of-the-mind temperature. But for the first time the thought of carrying on like usual seems unbearable. Why should Meg have all the fun and all the tragedy? she thinks bitterly. She cannot let the world progress without her any longer. More than she needs to be part of the gay world or the straight world, she needs to be part of the turning world, the one that spins and shakes and explodes under the weight of history. A surge of energy replaces her bread-and-magazines numbness. She begins to pull clothes from her closet. Jeans and tops and coats and scrubs. The blouse with the billowy collar that Terry loves, the mannish brown button-down he hates. The sea-foam bridesmaid dress she’s supposed to wear at Suzy’s wedding next Sunday. She piles them on the bed like dozens of flat, sleeping bodies. In the back of the closet she finds a duffel bag, crumpled and dusty from years of not traveling.
Ending the world means finding the end of the world. Going to it: the mining town that’s always threatening to slip down the mountain. It is running to, not running away. She will no longer hide in the world’s crevices, where she is dry and safe but so constrained that her bones have grown to match the shape of her cage.
It’s just after ten when she arrives at her parents’ house. Suzy answers the door with her hair half straight, half curled. She is wedding-thin, dressed in a bright pink, flowered nightgown. She manages to radiate maturity and youth at the same time, the trick of a 27-year-old bride.
“Oh, hi,” Suzy says. “I’m worried my hair won’t hold the curl long enough to take pictures and everything. What do you think?” As if there’s nothing strange about her sister showing up unannounced so late at night. As if the hair gods heard her prayer and summoned an advisor. Anna Lisa pushes past her and into the living room, where Martin is tying bows on bunches of dried flowers. Weddings are like funerals: the flowers and the expensive cloth and the longing.
“Hey, Anna Lisa,” Martin says, his face displaying a resigned sort of surprise.
Anna Lisa sits on the arm of the couch. She doesn’t want to let herself get too comfortable. “I came by because, uh, remember when I lived in Lilac Mines all those years ago?”
“Sure.” Suzy wrinkles her eyebrows. She’s just beginning to take in Anna Lisa’s puffy face and mish-mash of clothing: pink nursing pants, Fresno State sweatshirt, snow boots.
“Well, I just got some news. My… my girlfriend, from back then, she died.” She said it. Girlfriend and Died. The good thing that led to the terrible thing that could, maybe, lead to another good thing.
“Oh, Nannalee.” Suzy’s voice is sweet and sunken. It’s the first time she’s ever called Anna Lisa “Nannalee” to comfort her, rather than to be comforted. She hugs Anna Lisa so tight that she teeters on the edge of the couch, and it seems that she knows Anna Lisa didn’t mean “girlfriend” the way that most girls would. “What was her name?”
“Meg,” Anna Lisa says. The name bursts from her mouth and crumples as soon as it touches air. Is this the thing that was growing inside her, demanding to live in the world? It’s taken everything to say it. She is exhausted by the effort, and slumps against Suzy’s tanned shoulders. Anna Lisa’s parents are in the doorway, groggy from near-sleep.
“Not more wedding hysterics,” Eudora Hill sighs. She is happy and relieved that her youngest daughter is getting married, but she has declared frequently that she’s too old for the fuss of a big wedding. The implication is that Suzy should be too old to make a big fuss as well.
“No, mother, it’s Anna Lisa. Her—friend—passed away.”
“My girlfriend died,” Anna Lisa repeats. The two words seem linked now. As if her freedom and her tragedy cannot exist separately from one another. My husband Terry is alive, she thinks. The ugly reciprocal.
“I’m going away. Back to Lilac Mines, I’m not sure for how long,” she announces.
“After the wedding?” Anna Lisa’s father says, still sleepy.
“No, now. Suzy, I’m sorry. But I have to go.”
“Is there a funeral?” Eudora asks, puzzled.
“No, it’s not that…”
“It’s a friend from a long time ago, right?” Eudora continues. “Maybe you could send some flowers. People will understand that you can’t miss your sister’s wedding. Not when you’re the matron of honor.”
“But I loved her,” Anna Lisa protests. “And it’s more than that—”
“Well, your friend isn’t going anywhere now,” Gerald Hill grouches.
“Gerald, don’t be tasteless,” Eudora says. She takes Anna Lisa’s hands in hers. Her arthritic fingers are knobby and reassuring, like the exposed roots of the black oak tree in their backyard. “Surely you could wait a week,” she says to Anna Lisa.
“All I’ve done is wait,” Anna Lisa pleads. “Please understand. I was in love with Meg.”
She watches her mother’s face. Something moves behind her eyes, like a fish swimming far below the water’s surface. She puts her lips together. She drops Anna Lisa’s hands.
“Meg. Was she the one who gave you that strange present at your shower?” Eudora asks searchingly.
“Yes! The desert glass.” It was the last thing Anna Lisa put in her duffel bag. It was like dragging her heart to the car.
“Well.” Eudora is quiet. Anna Lisa can see her face hardening, second by second, and she wants to tell her mother, Don’t think that way. It’s so much work. It will rip you apart. “Well,” Eudora says again, “obviously Meg was a troubled young lady. I don’t know what kind of shenanigans she talked you into as a teenager, but I hardly think they’re worth missing your sister’s wedding for.”
Suzy’s face is torn up, blotchy beneath her half-halo of gold-streaked curls. She understands: this is Anna Lisa’s turn. “Mother, Daddy,” Suzy says, “it’s really okay.” She guides them to the couch. Martin blinks and moves over. “Nannalee needs to go. I’ll still have Marla and June. Marla will be thrilled to be promoted to matron of honor. Anna Lisa is so good, she always does such nice things for all of us.”
“Like run away and leave us to worry about her for more than a year?” Eudora demands.
“Mother, please,” Suzy replies calmly, “that’s old news.”
Eudora’s eyes are pond-blue and ready to spill over. “And what does Terry think about all this?”
Anna Lisa doesn’t answer. She understands the ache of old news. It’s why she lets Suzy do the explaining, and walks slowly and decisively out the front door and into the night.
Chester A. Arthur Elementary is just two years old, a squat, mustard-colored building guarded by topiaries in the shape of zoo animals. One of the Forgettable Presidents, Terry explained, that’s what they’re actually called. The night is mild too. The air feels delicate, as if it could easily be pushed toward summer-hot or icy-cold. Terry’s classroom is in the first of three short hallways, between a hippo and a giraffe. There’s a yellow glow coming from the high windows. So he’s here. Anna Lisa half thought he wouldn’t be. In a way, she’s relieved—the world is spinning around her, but Terry is still Terry, a man who pours all his unfulfilled desires into red smiley faces at the top of arithmetic tests. The door is locked, so she knocks. “It’s me,” she calls.
“Annie, what a surprise,” he says. The classroom is chilly, but Terry’s cheeks are pink above the beard he’s recently grown. He keeps it neatly trimmed and the effect is distinguished, as if he teaches college students rather than fifth graders. He’d be a good catch for someone, Anna Lisa thinks. She feels very far away from him, although he’s inches from her face. He kisses her lightly on the lips. She hasn’t gotten more than a peck on the cheek in a while. He smells like Windex, or maybe the whole classroom does. He looks at her expectantly.
“I got a phone call,” she says.
“Is it your father?” Terry would never admit to being superstitious, but he has a habit of calling out bad fortune before it can manifest.
“No.”
“Is it.?”
“Terry, just listen. It was Jody, she’s an old friend of mine from Lilac Mines.”
“From where?” Terry always forgets. She’s given him a vague account of her year there, but for him it holds the same weight as the year she took Latin. It might be any year, just a handful of days.
“Lilac Mines, the town I lived in.”
“Right. I’m sorry, Annie, these tests have made me really preoccupied.” The big teacher’s desk behind him is empty except for a blotter and a pencil holder decorated with macaroni. “So… Jody.”
“She called and told me that another friend of mine, Meg, that she, well… committed suicide.” When she speaks, it sounds like blasphemy. “She killed herself, and… and actually, she was my girlfriend.”
“Annie, that’s terrible.” He takes her burning face in his hands. She feels like she’s trapped in a vice.
“Not my girlfriend like Nancy-Jane,” Anna Lisa says quickly. “I mean, she was my… ” Anna Lisa can’t bear to hurt him. “She’s dead and I have to go back to Lilac Mines.”
Terry’s hands fall to his sides, a gesture identical to her mother’s. His lips are a small O lost in the forest of his beard. Anna Lisa resists the urge to comfort him, to tell him that it was so long ago; Meg was the only one; he has been good to her. She concentrates instead on the timeline stapled above the blackboard: 1776 to 1945 in ten feet.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Terry begins, bewildered. So many conversations have begun or ended this way. Terry, always waiting for a story Anna Lisa can only tell in a language he doesn’t speak. Now they’re both exhausted. Terry takes hold of Anna Lisa’s chin again, but this time his grip is tight. It gives her something to struggle against. “Was that it all this time?” he asks angrily, voice tighter than his fingers. “You were a dyke?”
Her ears ring. She hears it spelled DiKE, like on the slip of paper attached to the braid flung at Meg’s house years ago, when it was her house, too. His voice is mean but contained, a neat scroll that will write her out of existence: not you are a dyke, but you were. Not just you used to be a dyke, but you used to be mine. She’s already receding from Terry’s life the way she disappeared from Meg’s. She might as well be dust. She jerks her head back and escapes his grip. She watches him search for the cruelest words possible. He can’t do worse than dyke, than the past tense.
“Pauline!” he yells suddenly. He’s shouting into the quiet nighttime classroom. His eyes seem loose in their sockets. Anna Lisa has never seen him this way. She’s been craving it, she realizes, the same way he has longed to un-tether her. “Pauline! Come out, I want you to meet my wife!”
Slowly, the door connecting the two fifth grade classrooms opens. From the darkened classroom emerges Miss Ernst, the other fifth grade teacher. Anna Lisa met her once, at the school’s Open House night. Your husband is a wonderful teacher, she had gushed. Her red-brown hair is messy now, and there’s a streak of frosty lipstick on her chin. She’s wearing jeans with a bright yellow scarf threaded through the belt loops. She looks slightly wild, like a carefree college girl—student to Terry’s history prof persona—as opposed to the polite girl Anna Lisa met at Open House. It irks her that Terry might be attracted to all the qualities she so carefully erased over the past eight years.
Pauline Ernst composes herself in a matter of seconds. She looks nervous, but not ashamed. She stands with her hands clasped in front of her. “I’m so sorry you had to find out this way, Annie, honestly. And just after your lover died, too.” She says “lover” too easily, like she grew up with the concept. She says it the way a young woman who lounges in the dark while her own married lover talks to his wife might say it. And she says “Annie” in a way that connects her, casually and deeply, to Terry.
“I’m going to Lilac Mines,” Anna Lisa repeats, not looking at Pauline Ernst. “I’m not coming back.”
It is only later, when Anna Lisa is willing her exhausted body to sleep for a few hours at a motel on Route 49, that she thinks about Terry’s version of the e
vening. Did he think that she announced her permanent departure because of Miss Ernst? Did he think he was powerful enough to be the cause of things?
She eats the remainder of her truck-stop sandwich in her pajamas on the bed. Crumbs fall on her lap. She still can’t taste anything. It’s as if her tongue has left her body to go live with Meg in some vague but flavorful ever after. During her years in Fresno with Terry, she learned to be patient, to endure the absence of sweet and salty and sour. Now she will wait in Lilac Mines for her sense of taste to return… for something.
But what if Terry was right? What if circumstance rather than will is pushing her, even now? She hates him for spoiling her gesture, for being so pure in his own transgression. He is part of an ancient and romantic myth: man with unloving wife falls for passionate young woman. There will be rumors at the school and he will have to face Anna Lisa’s family, but he’ll always have the myth.
She crumples the cellophane wrapper and tosses it in the metal wastebasket by the bed. She opens the drawer of the nightstand, and removes the Bible. It smells like fake leather, stiff and inky. She doesn’t open it, just lets it sit on her lap, appreciating the weight. She hasn’t prayed in years; she’s not sure if she’s ever said a sincere prayer. She’s cast little nets of hope into dark nights, yes, but she’s never asked God for anything and promised something in return. It always seemed easier just to brace for fate. But now, with her shaking hands on the motel Bible, she says a prayer to Saint Julian. “Let me be a traveler,” she whispers, “not a murderer.”
ANYONE COULD LIVE HERE
Anna Lisa: Lilac Mines, 1974
She drives at night, in the world of 18-wheelers and white moths that turn to pancake batter on her windshield. One moth, brown-speckled and half the size of her palm, affixes itself to her driver’s side mirror. It hangs on through Ragby, Rawhide, Peppermint Creek, Angels Camp. She sees it every time she switches to a faster lane. It is a grotesque and unnerving creature, with its hunched thorax and fuzzy antennae, but she develops a reluctant admiration for it. She’s not entirely sure that it’s alive, but how could it cling to the car if it wasn’t?
