The Anna Papers

by Ellen Gilchrist

  It was raining in North Carolina and all along the Eastern Seaboard. A dark soaking rain that filled the rivers and turned the highways into danger zones. Anna drove home from the airport with the windshield wipers beating time to the radio. She was thinking as hard as she could. It was the modern world, surely there was a way for Olivia to know more than one world, a way for her to visit this older world and partake of some of it. Surely there was room for one little sixteen-year-old girl. Anna remembered the way Olivia had pulled herself up into the saddle, the lift of her neck, the strange quiet energy, the unanswered questions, the veiled threats, to do what? To write to Jessie? That wasn’t veiled, she had said it in the car. Anna stopped at a lonely all-night Convenient Store and put a quarter in a telephone and called her brother.

  “I went to see her.”

  “I was sure you would. Well, tell me what happened. What is she like?”

  “She is ours, Daniel. I would bet my life on that. And she’s very pretty and she’s powerful, strangely powerful. You’ll be surprised, I think.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I told the aunt I’d send them money and I told them we’d send her to college and she said she was going to write to Jessie. She’s mad at you for not coming to see her.”

  “Goddamn you, Anna. I don’t believe you did this to me.”

  “I did what I had to do. It’s your turn now. She might write to her, Daniel. She really might.”

  “When are you coming down here?”

  “As soon as get the house packed up. I want you to stop being angry with me about this. I want you to face this.”

  “Well, Sister, that won’t be the first thing you want that you might not get. Where are you? Are you at home?”

  “No. I’m at a filling station and it’s raining. I’ll talk to you again tomorrow. Can I call you at the office in the morning?”

  “No, I’m leaving town and don’t say anything to Jessie, Anna. Leave Jessie alone. I mean that.”

  “All right. I won’t say anything to Jessie. But someone had better tell her soon.”

  “Goodbye, Sister.” He hung up and Anna replaced the receiver and stood by the telephone watching the rain fall upon the earth. I don’t think I’m getting anywhere, she decided. All these years and I think I just get dumber and dumber and dumber and dumber.

  The next week Anna packed the rest of her things and left the mountains. Loaded it all on a moving van and moved home to Charlotte. In a week she was being sucked down into the vortex of the Hand-Manning-McGruder world as if she had never left. Both of her unlisted phone numbers were in her mother’s address book and were being given out right and left to her cousins as far away as Louisiana and to any librarians or English teachers who thought they could make Anna’s life more interesting. Also, both brothers, one of her sisters, and ten nieces and nephews with their combined excesses and miraculous escapes and occasional purposeful moves were walking in and out of her brain all day. The Hand family of Charlotte, North Carolina. The Hand eyes and the McGruder nose and pale skin and dark tragic red hair, left behind by the Irish Catholic strain. Also, light blonds and dark blonds and extra-wild freckled strawberry blonds. Pigment, Anna decided. We need some pigment to water this stuff down. She thought of Olivia. Well, the genes were definitely not being watered down in that beautiful girl in Oklahoma. The most amazing thing was that she had found Anna all by herself. Had recognized her family through Anna’s books.

  “This is my name,” she had said to her aunt Mary Lily, bringing home a book of Anna’s essays she had found in the school library. She had already discussed the possibility of kinship with her English teacher. “Look, Aunt Mary Lily. This is my name and these pictures look like me and you said this is where my father came from. From Charlotte, North Carolina. Here, where this lady comes from.”

  “You don’t want to go into that.” Her aunt was terrified. She knew that Olivia was on the right track. She hung her head. Twisted her hands together. “Leave it alone,” she said. “You have his name. You must not bother him aside from that.”

  “I want to see him. I want to talk to him and see him.”

  “Not yet. Wait until you are sixteen years old and I will ask him to come and visit you.” Her aunt waited, frightened by the talk, and Olivia withdrew.

  “Should I fix a meat pie for dinner again?” Mary Lily said. “Out of the venison Andrew brought for us? Would you like that, my little angel?”

  “It would be nice,” Olivia said. “It would be very nice. I am sorry if I bothered you.”

  “When you are sixteen years old. Then we will see.”

  But Olivia could not wait and when she had read all of Anna’s books she asked her teacher what to do and the teacher said to write Anna in care of her publisher. The letter was forwarded and arrived on a cold day in New York City. Anna went down the elevator and opened her mailbox and took out the letters and threw half of them away and then stood leaning against a wall and opened the beautiful little blue envelope from Oklahoma. She was amazed at what she was reading. How strange, she thought, to live in the world and know its wildness and fecundity and till be surprised by birth and death, fertility and growth, the dark power of sex, life insisting upon itself, repeating and creating, breaking off and ending. All these still have the power to surprise and frighten us. So Anna stood leaning by the mailboxes and was surprised and enchanted by what she read on the pale blue stationery with yellow roses on the corner and on the envelope beside the stamp.

  Dear Miss Hand,

  I am your niece, Olivia Hand. I am the daughter of your brother, Daniel. My mother was named Summer Wagoner and they were married in 1967 in California. I have the marriage license. I never knew my mother so I would like to know my father and his family. I have read all your books and I think they are wonderful. I am enclosing a photograph of myself. I am five feet four inches tall and weigh 110. I have reddish blonde hair. I am writing for our school newspaper. Here are some pieces of writing I have done. Please write back to me.

  Olivia de Havilland Hand

  Now Anna was back in Charlotte and one of the main reasons she was there was to help resolve this business of Olivia.

  7

  Late fall, nineteen hundred and eighty-four. Charlotte, North Carolina. Anna sat in a circle of books. Outside, night was falling on the lake. A lone duck sailed on a line of red light. A waltz was playing on the stereo. Anna was reading a book about quantum mechanics. The wonderful zaniness of that world intrigued her, made the world of books seem safe and almost orderly. Light and particle, she was thinking. Division and grace and ten live nieces and nephews walking in and out of my mind all day. What could compete with the randomness and wonder of that?

  Her youngest niece came tearing in the door. Jessie, Daniel’s adored child, Olivia’s half sister. She was wearing enough Giorgio to fill an auditorium. The Giorgio preceded her into the room. The Giorgio drowned out “The Blue Danube Waltz.” Anna walked over and turned the stereo down. “What’s that perfume?” she asked. “What are you wearing?”

  “Is it too much? You think it’s too much?” She was taller than Anna, but with the same wide face, the same high cheekbones, the same pale skin.

  “It’s a little too much. You have to be careful with that stuff. What’s up? What’s going on?”

  “I got the job.” She moved back. She lowered her eyes. She shimmered and trembled and was wonderful and was sixteen. “The Blue Danube” rose to a crescendo and she did a little dance with her hands.

  “How wonderful,” Anna said. “Anyone would want you. I told you that. When do you start?”

  “On Monday. Listen, the manager took me in his office. He said he thought I was twenty-one when I walked in the door.”

  Anna closed her eyes, then shook it off. “What about your music? You won’t have time for lessons.”

  “It can wait. I have to have some money that I don’t have to ask Dad for. I want this job, Aunt Anna. I can’t wait to start. I get fo
ur dollars an hour and eight dollars on Sunday and maybe after Christmas they’ll keep me on. If I’m good at it.”

  “You’ll be good. Come over here and sit by me. Let me smell your Giorgio.” Jessie came and sat on the arm of the sofa. Anna ran her hand down the soft white wonder of the child’s arm. Such skin, she thought, so fine and new. Like velvet. Once a man I was leaving told me I could go if I would leave my skin behind. I was so young I didn’t even know that I was wonderful, didn’t even know that I was soft. I didn’t know a thing. Does Jessie know a thing? I wonder if she knows how much I love her. “The bridge is love,” the poet said. “The only survival, the only meaning.”

  “I just love you to death,” Anna said. “Will you play for me? The things you’ve been composing. I love to hear them. Please play them for me.” Jessie took her aunt’s hands and held them, pleased to be reminded of her music. She was wearing a thin gold bracelet with a gold acorn for a clasp. Her wrists were perfect, the skin on her hands was perfect, the fingers so long and light, a musician’s hands. “I’ll come play for you later,” she said. “As soon as I get my homework done. We got a letter from DeDe. Did I tell you that?”

  “What did she say?”

  “She got her real estate license. So she can work in the afternoons and paint in the morning. She’s going to bring her boyfriend with her at Thanksgiving. They’re going to stay with us because Grandmother won’t let them sleep together at her house and neither will Aunt Helen.”

  “Well, some of you can stay here if you need to. There’s room here.” Anna sighed. There went Thanksgiving.

  “I’ve got to go,” Jessie said. “I just wanted to see you.” She stood up, shimmered again. “Come and see us sometime. You never go anywhere, do you?”

  “Not much, not anymore.” Anna stood up beside her, took her arm, went with her to the door. “I’m glad about your job. I’m proud of you.” She stood in the door watching as the child got into her car and drove off, still waving. Then she went back into the house and locked the door and took the telephone off the hook. I need to write awhile, she decided, a perfectly valid thing to do in a universe of particles and sixteen-year-old gene carriers. If someday they read my books what will they think of me? Will they remember how I seemed to them this year and wonder who the other persons were? The invisible organization of energy, all flowing in and out of one another, and mind, what part does thought play? What are we transmitting? I asked a physicist that question once and he wrote me back and said, We transmit information. I was dazzled by the simplicity of that answer and hated myself all day for being stupid. But I am not a scientist. I am a writer and can only do what I know how to do.

  If I could tell one more story, and tell it absolutely straight, tell exactly how it was and how it seemed and what the people said and did and seemed to think. How they loved and hated and plotted and pleaded and demanded. How they were never satisfied. All is yearning, the Buddha said, but Arthur told me not to put the Buddha into everything I write. But I have to get it right, like Jessie’s music that she makes up. She doesn’t even call it composing, God bless her dazzling humility about that. Music is the most mysterious thing of all, and Jessie is going to work in a department store instead. Well, talent doesn’t have to be plowed like a field. She’s happy, she knows who she is. And if the knowledge of Olivia harms her it will be my fault. But it can’t harm her. She needs the truth, needs to welcome it and learn to always welcome it. Still, Charlotte, North Carolina, what a hard town to be honest in. Calm down, Anna. Settle down.

  Anna worked for a while in a desultory manner, finishing the copyediting for a magazine article about a canoe trip. Then she plugged back in the phone and called Daniel. “Did she come home yet?”

  “No.”

  “I thought she was going to do her homework.”

  “She stopped at a friend’s. The Larkin girl.”

  “Are they smoking dope, Daniel? I want you to watch her very carefully these next few years. These damn drugs are everywhere now. I don’t think you know what you’re up against.”

  “I’m doing everything I can.”

  “Is she passing?”

  “No. But we got a tutor.”

  “Tell her I called. Tell her to call me when she comes in.”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  “Daniel?”

  “What else do you need, Sister Anna?”

  “I know none of this is my business.”

  “You’re right, it isn’t.”

  “What do you hear from Sheila? Is she satisfied to let you do whatever you like with Jessie? Are you paying her off, or what?”

  “She’s over there in London doing coke with queers and pretending to make television shows. And yes, I’m paying her off and the more coke she snorts the more she can’t get hold of my daughter and fuck her up and turn her into a queer, so does that satisfy you, Anna, or would you like to stick your nose into that too while you’re at it?”

  “You’ll be glad I went to see Olivia. Someday you will thank me for it.”

  “Well, keep out of my problems with Jessie. She’s the jewel in my crown, Anna. She’s the only thing I’ve got and I’m going to keep her and raise her my way. She’s doing just fine and she isn’t taking dope and I like her. I like her just the way she is.”

  “I like her too. I think she’s wonderful. But I wish she had more time for her music.”

  “She doesn’t need some goddamn queer musicians fucking with her, Anna. She needs to learn to read.”

  “She can read.”

  “Barely. Enough to get by. If you want to do something for Jessie, get her to read something.” He paused, “But not your books. She isn’t ready for that yet.” The line went quiet. Finally, after what seemed a long time, Daniel spoke again.

  “How’s your article coming along?”

  “What article?”

  “The one about the rivers that Daddy was helping you with.”

  “Oh, it’s all right. I guess I’ll finish it today.”

  “Finish your work, Sister. Don’t worry about us. We’re okay.”

  “That’s good advice. I’ll try.” She hung up the phone and went back to work in earnest. Taped up the ends of her fingers with adhesive tape and typed happily along for an hour. The phone started ringing in the middle of the best paragraph. Maybe I won’t forget the end, she told herself and answered the phone. It was Putty, the wife of Anna’s oldest brother, James. She was calling to see if Anna wanted to go with her to visit her son who was locked up in the chemical dependency ward of the Baptist hospital.

  “I know it would mean so much to him if you would come,” Putty said. “He was asking about you last week.”

  “When are you going?”

  “For lunch tomorrow. We can have lunch with the inmates. I thought it might give you some ideas for your writing.”

  “I bet it will. Okay, come pick me up. What time?”

  “About eleven thirty. Oh, I’m so glad you can go.”

  “I’ll see you then. I have to go now, Putty. I’m working.”

  “Call your mother when you get time. She was worrying about you.”

  “Okay. See you tomorrow then.” Anna hung up. Then she started giggling. It was so funny. It was hilarious. Day after day they called each other continuously. No wonder none of them ever got anything done. Maybe there’s nothing that needs doing, Anna decided. Maybe it’s better to sit it out. Maybe they’re right and I’m wrong. Maybe all we’re supposed to do is eat and sleep and talk on the phone and give each other advice and shore each other up. But I’m not normal anyway. I’m with the ones that crawled through caves carrying scaffolding to paint the caves. Crawling through openings so narrow no modern man could squeeze through one, carrying oil lamps and pigments and scaffolding, for God’s sake. I’m in that group whether I like it or not and can’t do this other normal thing. So I might as well go on and finish the piece if I can remember the other half of that goddamn paragraph.

  At nine the n
ext morning Putty called Anna back to say she was going to pick up James’s girlfriend, Shelby, and take her along to visit him. Then Shelby decided to take her little niece, Treena, and then Treena’s brother, Andrew, decided to come along. By the time they arrived at the hospital they looked like a flying circus. Anna wearing old slacks and a sweater, her hair tied back with a gold barrette. Putty dressed up in a wool dress. James’s girlfriend, Shelby, in a jumper and blouse and the little children in Superman and Supergirl shirts with capes.

  “I don’t think we ought to take these children in here,” Anna said.

  “It’s just a hospital,” Putty answered. “Besides, it might cheer James up to see the outside world.”

  “Let me stay downstairs with the little children …”

  “It’s all right, Anna. They know me here. James is on the board. Oh, hello there. Nice to see you again.” They had passed through the doors and into the reception room. A drugged-looking boy was lounging on a black sofa. A woman in a nightgown came walking by. A girl waited with her parents. The two small children stopped to examine a jar of plastic-covered mints. A phone rang down a hall. Then an old Junior League buddy of Putty’s appeared from a door marked DIRECTOR. She was wearing a black business suit and a white blouse with a ruffle. A large cameo was pinned to her lapel. She embraced Putty and spoke to the children and then to Anna. “I like your books,” she said. “But I haven’t read the last one.”