The Moment She Was Gone

10

The piercing sound shatters the stillness of the room, paralyzing us. No one moves for the phone. We turn to look at the ringing instrument, but no one reaches for it.

“Well, is someone going to answer that?” my mother asks.

Augusta is standing closest to the telephone table. She picks up the receiver.

“Hello?” she says.

And then, again, “Hello?”

She puts the receiver back on its cradle.

“Nobody,” she says.

“Annie!” I say at once. “Do you have caller ID, Mom?”

“No.”

“Why wouldn’t she talk to me?” Augusta asks, sounding hurt.

“Damn it, I should have picked up!”

“We didn’t know it was Annie.”

“We still don’t know who it was,” Aaron says.

“Who else would hang up?”

“At least we know she’s okay.”

“If it was her.”

The phone rings again.

Augusta is reaching for it.

“Leave it!” I shout, and grab for the receiver after the second ring.

“Annie?” I say.

“Hey, bro,” she says.

She sounds very tired, very far away.

“Where are you, honey?”

“Oh dear, where am I?” she says.

“Annie? Honey, tell me where you are.”

“Oh, you know.”

“No, I don’t. Tell me, Annie. I’ll come get you. We’ll go have a cappuccino together.”

“Oh nooooo, no more cappuccinos. I know you. You take a girl for a cappuccino, and next thing you know a psychiatrist is telling her she’s crazy.”

“Honey, where are you? Tell me, okay?”

“I’m someplace safe. Don’t worry, Andy. You don’t have to worry about me. I’m okay now.”

“What’s that noise I hear?”

“What noise? I don’t hear any noise.”

“That sound? What is it, Annie?”

“Let me talk to her,” my mother says, and snatches the phone from my hand. “Annie?” she says. “Honey, I’m so sorry we argued yesterday, there was no need for that. I love you, Annie, I love you with all my heart. Please come home, and we’ll work out some way to...” She looks at the receiver. “Annie?” she says. “Annie?” and turns to us, a surprised look on her face. “She’s gone,” she says, and gently replaces the phone on its cradle.

“What’s her cell phone number?” I say. “You must have it someplace.”

“I don’t remember her giving it to me.”

“If she gave it to you, where would it be?”

“In my book.”

“Where’s your book, Mom?”

“The desk there.”

With a sideward dip of her head, she indicates a drop leaf desk on the wall just inside the entrance door. Aaron and I start for it in the same moment, almost colliding. We back off, and then start for the desk again. I reach it first. There is a small key in the drop leaf front. I twist the key, hold it to pull open the flap.

“Where, Mom?” Aaron asks.

“It should be there someplace.”

“Where?” I shout, and the phone rings again.

“Don’t anybody touch it!” I yell, and run across the room for it, the phone ringing twice, three times, I yank the receiver off the cradle.

“Annie?”

There is an instant’s surprised silence.

Then a man’s voice says, “May I speak to Helene Lederer, please?”

“Who’s this?” I ask at once.

“My name is Jason. If you have a moment, I’d like to explain the advantages of the ultimate mileage card. Is this Mr. Lederer?”

“Goodbye,” I tell him, and hang up. “If it rings again, please let me...”

The phone rings.

I snatch the receiver from its cradle.

“Hello?”

“Where’d you go, Andy?”

“Don’t hang up, honey.”

“Just don’t put Mom on again, okay?” she says.

“I won’t.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. Where are you, Annie?”

“On my way to the North Sea,” she says.

“Are you at an airport?”

“In a sense, bro, in a sense.”

“What’s that sound, Annie?”

“Beats me. Listen, I want to tell you something.”

“Tell me.”

“Do you remember when we thought a raccoon was breaking into the house? That was me. Andy.”

“I know. You told me.”

“I did? What a big-mouth, huh? I was watching the road for Daddy.”

“I know.”

“You think he’s ever coming home, Andy?”

“I don’t think so, hon.”

“Does he really have another little girl?”

“I’m sure he doesn’t. You’re his little girl. Annie. Tell me where you are, and I’ll come get you.”

“You don’t have to worry, I’m okay.”

“I just miss you, hon. Tell me where you are.”

“Just don’t worry about me, okay?”

“Annie... is that the wind I hear?”

“I don’t know what you’re hearing, Andy. I’d better go now,” she says abruptly, and hangs up.

Aaron sees the look on my face.

“What?” he says.

“I know where she is,” I say.

“Where?”

“I’ll be back,” I say, and start for the front door.

“Let me come with you.”

I turn to him. My hand is already on the door knob.

“I’d better go alone, Aaron.”

Our eyes meet.

Aaron nods.

“Good luck, bro,” he says.

I open the door and step out into the hall. Behind me, I hear my mother say, “Don’t call the police!”

I close the door on her words, and walk swiftly to the elevators.

There is more traffic in the streets than anyone might expect on a hot weekday in August, when most New Yorkers are at the beach or in the mountains. And though I keep urging the turbaned Sikh cabbie to please step on it, his dark-eyed gaze meets mine implacably in the rear-view mirror. He drops me off on the northeast corner of Columbus and Seventy-second. I turn the corner and hurry eastward, toward the park. There is a dry cleaning establishment that wasn’t there sixteen years ago. There is also a deli I don’t remember. The candy store seems familiar but I do not recognize the Korean man behind the counter.

The building we lived in for so many years stands like a white-brick fortress between two shorter red-brick buildings that flank it like bookends. A green awning with the address on it in white stretches toward the curb. There was no uniformed doorman when we were living there. Neither is there one now. There is, instead, a short sturdy man in his sixties, wearing jeans and high-topped workman’s shoes, and a blue denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms.

The years have been kind to Mr. Alvarez.

His complexion is smooth and his dark eyes sparkle, and the mustache under his nose is neatly trimmed. He turns as I approach the building, smiles, asks, “Help you, sir?” and then recognizes me. “Andrew?” he says. “Andrew?” and holds both hands out to me. I take his hands. Grinning, he keeps staring into my face. “How are you, Andrew?” he asks. His accent is as thick as it was when I was a boy growing up. “Are you looking for your sister?”

“Yes. Is she here?”

“She got here about an hour ago. I let her go up the roof to see the pigeons. Is that okay?”

“Sure, thank you, Mr. Alvarez.”

I am thinking she was wandering the city all night long. She just got here an hour ago. I am thinking I may not be too late.

“Is she all right, Andrew?”

I hesitate for a moment.

Then I say, “No, Mr. Alvarez, she’s very sick. Can you please call the police for me, tell them to send an ambulance? I’ll be on the roof with her.”

“She works for the FBI now, your sister?”

“No,” I say, and rush into the lobby toward the elevator bank. I push the button, and the doors slide open. I move into the car, press the button for twenty-three.

“Is your father still painting?” Mr. Alvarez asks.

But before I can answer, the doors close.

The big metal fire door to the roof is closed, but not locked. I twist the knob, and shove the door open, and come out onto a tarred roof that is blisteringly hot in the noonday sun. I turn automatically and at once toward the pigeon coops on the right. The birds huddle on their perches, cooing softly, gently rustling their wings.

Annie is sitting on the floor of the roof, in the shade of the pigeon coops, her back to them, her arms around her knees, her head bent. She is wearing a light chiffon shift that riffles in the breeze. Her hair is blowing around her face. Twenty-four stories below, I can hear the rush of traffic, the incessant murmur of the city. I walk to her swiftly.

“Annie?” I say.

She looks up.

“Hi,” she says. “Which one is Lyo-lyok? I looked at all the geese, but I couldn’t tell which one she is, they all look the same to me now. None of them have identities anymore.”

“I don’t think she’s here, honey.”

“Oh, sure, she is. She’s going to fly me to the North Sea.”

“I don’t think so, honey. Come on, let’s go home.” I say, and reach for her hand.

“No!” she shouts, and recoils from me, her eyes wide.

“It’s me, honey,” I say. “You don’t have to...”

“I know who it is, don’t tell me who it is.”

She squints at me, brushes hair out of her eyes.

“So you found me, huff?” she says. “You knew where to find me.”

“I heard the pigeons.”

“I knew you’d figure it out. Did you tell Mama where I am?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Don’t tell her.”

“I won’t.”

“She’ll call them again.”

“Don’t worry.”

“Do you know what she did?” she asks, and turns to me, her eyes wide. “She called some twerp at a so-called health facility, and told her I’m mentally ill, can you believe it? That’s another way of stealing a person’s identity, you know. They declare you mentally ill, and bingo, they steal your identity! It’s a very sophisticated way of controlling a person. Once you own a person’s identity, you control that person, you see. It’s like getting raped. If you rape a person, you own that person for the rest of your life. Because you’ve violated her mind and her body. It’s all about control, it’s all about identity. If you can’t keep your own identity, what’s the use? That’s why I had to get out of there, Andy. Because Mama called them, and they were onto me.”

“I didn’t tell her where you are, honey.”

“She’s crazy, you know. She hears voices. She told me she hears voices. Can you believe it? She looks just like a regular person, doesn’t she? But Morgan le Fay used to be able to assume different forms, too, you know Do you remember when Kay and the Wart first met her? Lying on a bed of lard, that was so funny! She wasn’t beautiful at all, just this big fat slob lying in all that lard, ick! Mama’s a messenger of the Great Oppression, you know, come to abolish the Tantric religion. I was warned by my guru,” she says, and looks directly into my face.

Her eyes are wide.

I think of Archimedes the owl. I remember my father reading to us. I remember the little girl who was my precious sister, Annie.

“Fire comes out of Mama’s mouth,” she whispers, “did you know that? She told me it was my fault Daddy left, because he didn’t want so many children, and she wouldn’t let him smoke in the living room. He wasn’t expecting two of us, you see, he didn’t know there’d be twins. So he told her to get rid of me, and when she wouldn’t he left with his bimbo, is what she told me. But smoke was pouring out of her mouth when she said it, so I knew it wasn’t true. Well, you’ve seen the smoke, you know what it’s like.”

I sit beside her.

She does not try to move away.

Together, we sit in the shade, our backs to the coops.

“No one holds my hand anymore,” she says.

I take her hand in mine.

“No one likes me,” she says.

“I like you,” I say.

“Well, you,” she says, and smiles. “Dear Andy.”

She puts her head on my shoulder.

She seems so tired.

We sit holding hands like children.

I can remember the two of us running in the park together, hand in hand. I can remember the two of us in school together, our hands popping up whenever a teacher asked a question. She was so smart, my sister. So beautiful. My twin. My dearest twin.

“Mama’s such a liar,” she says, shaking her head. “It wasn’t my fault Daddy left, it was Sven’s.”

“Come on,” I say, “let’s go home. We’ll worry about Mama later.”

“No, Andy, we’ve got to worry about her now,” she says earnestly. “She wants to put me in a strait jacket again. Have you ever been in a strait jacket, do you know what that feels like? If Daddy had known what they were doing to me, he’d’ve been there in a minute! He writes to me all the time, you know, we correspond regularly when I’m abroad. He told me all about why he left, never mind Mama’s story. The minute he found out what Sven and I were doing in Stockholm, he booked a ticket. By the time he got there Sven was already gone, of course, well, sure, he’d already stolen my identity, what did he care?”

“Annie, why don’t we just...?”

“No, why don’t we just not!” she shouts, and suddenly drops my hand, and gets to her feet, and begins pacing back and forth before the parapet. “Just leave me alone, okay? I have people telling me day and night that I should be ashamed I was even born, for Christ’s sake, as if I have to apologize for my dual identity! Once you let them steal your identity, you know, they put you in a strait jacket,” she says, and nods, and moves swiftly toward the parapet, and leans over it to look down to the street below. I reach for her and she backs away, almost losing her balance. I stand motionless, afraid to move toward her again, afraid she will throw herself over the parapet if I touch her.

“Once you’ve lost your identity,” she says, pacing back and forth again, “they can smell the contamination all over the world, the other predators, the rapists, they come at you like a swarm of bees after honey, that’s the price you pay, but nobody wants to hold your hand anymore,” she says, and sighs deeply, and turns to me, her back to the parapet now, her hair blowing in the wind, across her eyes, blowing in the wind.

“There’s so much traffic,” she says, squinting her eyes in pain. “So much damn traffic.”

“Yes, come away from there,” I say.

“Not in the street, bro. Here,” she says, and touches her hand to her forehead. “So much traffic. It gets so noisy, bro.”

“I know it does, honey. But we can help you. Let us help you, okay?”

“Oh help me, sure. Help! Help!” she screams in mock terror, and then giggles like a little girl. “The way Dr. Lang helped me, right?”

And suddenly, she sits on the parapet.

And swings her legs over the side.

I almost reach for her.

But she will jump.

Her dress riffles in the wind.

She begins mumbling, not talking to me anymore, talking instead to whatever voices she hears within. Here on the stillness of this scorching roof, the tar so hot it is bubbling in places, the traffic below muted, the voices of the city hushed and distant but rising like an invisible cloud, my sister listens to her own inner voices, and I hope to God they’re not telling her to jump off this roof, I hope to God they are not.

I hold out my hand,

“Annie,” I say. “Take my hand again, okay?”

“They say you’re smarter than I am.”

“No one’s smarter than you are, honey.”

“Everybody’s fucking smarter than I am.”

“Annie, honey... let’s get off this roof, okay? Let’s go someplace where we can talk.”

“We are talking, bro.”

“Give me your hand, hon. Let me help you...”

“I don’t need help! What’s wrong with you? Everybody thinks I need help, what the fuck is wrong with you people? Why do you think I need help?”

“To get off the... the edge of the... the roof there, is what I meant. To help you get down, is what I meant.”

“I can get down all by myself, believe me. I can get all the way down to the street all by myself, so don’t give me any help, okay? I know just where you’re coming from. Go home, okay?”

“Not without you, Annie.”

“Yes, without me. You don’t want to take me home, Andy, I’m mentally ill, go ask Mama, go ask Bellevue or whoever the fuck she called, ‘Are you the party with the mentally ill relative?’ ” she asks in a squeaky little nasal voice. “Jesus, the people in the health care system! Why don’t they just leave me alone? All I want to do...”

She stops.

Squints.

Shakes her head.

“I don’t know what I want to do anymore,” she says. “I’m not even sure my work’s any good anymore, do you think it’s any good?”

“Yes, I think it’s...”

“I just don’t know anymore. I’m so scared it’s not good anymore. I mean, if no one wants to buy it, how can it be any good, am I right? I thought... if I could find someone who liked my work... I mean, really liked it... I mean, my work is me, Andy, it’s my soul, it’s everything I believe. If I could find someone who appreciated it, someone who could really love what I do, then he could love me, too, don’t you see? That makes sense, doesn’t it? Instead of being told how worthless I am all the time? And then... if I could find this man... we could travel together — I really know a lot of beautiful places in this world, bro — we could travel everywhere together, oh just everywhere! I could show him all the beautiful places I’ve been to, I’m not stupid, you know, I really do know a lot about the world. I could take him everywhere, everywhere. But...”

She shakes her head, turns to look into my face.

“There’s no one,” she says.

She shakes her head again.

“I’m all alone, bro, I’m so terribly all alone,” she says, “I’m so lonely all the time,” and suddenly her eyes well with tears.

“Annie,” I say, “you don’t have to be alone.”

“Don’t let them put me in a strait jacket again.”

“I promise.”

“I’m so afraid they’ll put me in a strait jacket again.”

“No. No, they won’t. I’ll tell them not to. No one will hurt you, Annie, I promise. Let me help you. Please, honey. I want to help you.”

She shakes her head.

“We’re not even twins anymore, Andy. We’re so different now.”

“We’re still twins,” I say.

“I loved being your twin.”

“You still are, honey.”

I hold out my hand to her.

It is trembling, but it is there for her to take.

“There’s too much traffic,” she says.

“I don’t care, Annie.”

“Too much noise,” she says, and shakes her head as if to clear it.

“Give me your hand, Annie. Please, dear sister, take my hand. Please. Take my hand, Annie. Please.”

She opens her eyes wide. She searches my face. Suspicion crosses her eyes, and then fear again, and for just a moment, something resembling hope. She thrusts her hand out suddenly, as if against her will, as if forcing it through an invisible barrier, and I grab it at once, firmly, and pull her off the wall, and into the safety of my arms.

She is trembling with fear. Somewhere on the street below, I hear sirens approaching. She looks up into my face Her eyes are wide and frightened. She begins trembling more violently.

“No, don’t worry,” I say.

Her eyes search my face.

“I’ll be here,” I assure her, and in that fleeting moment before she is again gone to her voices, I see in her eyes the distant glistening hope that one day she will become whole again, one day she will truly recover from that terrible moment — so very long ago — when first she lost herself so completely.

“I promise,” I say.

And she nods, but does not smile, my dear sad sister, and says something I cannot comprehend as I lead her away from the edge of the roof.