The Moment She Was Gone

7

Two days before Christmas Annie called from Maine to say she was going to be all alone on Christmas Day, and if she didn’t have such a bad cold she would help serve meals to the homeless but she didn’t want to be spreading her germs, so what should she do?

My mother was off skiing, and Aaron and his family were spending the holidays with Augusta’s mother in New Jersey (great surprise!) so what could we do but invite Annie to come down and stay with us? Actually. I was the one who did the inviting.

“I’m not sure I want her here again,” Maggie said.

“It’s just for a few days,” I said. “It’s Christmastime, Magg. Where’s your Christmas spirit?”

“Honey, please. I don’t want her here. I don’t want FBI agents chasing her up Second Avenue again.”

“Come on, FBI agents.”

“Well, it’s what she told us, isn’t it?”

“Well, she did live with a translator for the UN, you know, so it’s entirely possible...”

“Oh, now you think the FBI is after her?”

“Of course not. Nobody’s after her, per se. I’m just suggesting that security checks are routine when...”

“How about the radio transmitter in her cooze? Is that routine, too?”

“She never said she had a radio trans... and really, Magg, I find that vulgar.”

“Well, gee, I’m sorry, but it’s not my cooze that has a radio transmitter buried in it.”

“Look, what’s the big deal here? She wants to come down for Christmas. I really can’t understand what the big...”

“Do what you want to do, okay? She’s your sister, invite her, don’t invite her. But I promise you, if she starts talking about FBI agents again, I’m calling Bellevue.”

“She won’t start talking about FBI agents.”

“Good. Cause I’ll have you both put away,” Maggie said.

“Sure, sure.”

“Sure, sure,” she said.

Annie came down by train on Christmas Eve.

She was bundled in a blue ski parka and long muffler with alternating blue and red stripes wrapped several times around her neck, and a blue woolen watch cap pulled down around her ears. Her cheeks were red and her eyes were watery, but I thought that was due less to her professed cold than to the frigid weather we were experiencing. I took her duffel and tossed it into the trunk of the taxi, and we drove back to the apartment where Maggie had made a roaring fire (albeit of cannel coal) in the dining room fireplace. We drank homemade soup and ate thick buttered bread, and went to bed shortly before midnight. Annie didn’t do her mantras that night. The next morning, she was running a temperature of a hundred and four degrees, and shaking from head to toe.

We were still living in the apartment over the store. The closest hospital was Beth Israel, on First and Sixteenth. In the taxi on the way there, Maggie asked my sister if her medical insurance was up to date. I mean, a person is burning up with fever, you figure she’s going to be in the hospital awhile, and you’re wondering if her HMO is going to take care of this.

“Oh yes, certainly,” Annie said. Her teeth were chattering. I was holding her in my arms. “Whenever I go away, I leave instructions with Sally Jean.”

“Who’s Sally Jean?” Maggie asked.

“My closest friend. You remember, don’t you? The UN translator?”

“Is she in Maine now?”

“No, I don’t know where she is just now. She moves around a lot. But she takes care of my HMO bills whenever they come in.”

“How does she do that?” I asked.

“She sends them the money.”

“How?” Maggie asked. “Cash? Credit card?”

“We have an arrangement,” Annie said. “My health insurance is in perfect order. Don’t worry, I’ll give the hospital this little card I carry in my wallet.”

When we got to the hospital and while Annie was being wheeled into the emergency room, Maggie asked me, “Did you ever meet this Sally Jean?”

“No. But Annie’s mentioned her before. They used to room together in Amsterdam.”

“So how come she pays Annie’s bills for her?”

“She used to do translations for the UN.”

“What kind of non sequitur is that?” Maggie asked, and kissed me on the cheek.

Our internist arrived a half-hour later, examined my sister, and asked at once if she had recently been in any country where she might have contracted malaria. Well, it so happened that the last country Annie had visited (and this was where she also ate yams and shat in the woods) was one that announced in big signs at the airport MALARIA IS ENDEMIC IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA.

I don’t know how Dr. Ernst knew at once that malaria was what Annie had. But upon questioning her further, it became apparent that not only did she have it, she also knew she had it.

“It comes and goes,” she told him. “The high fever, the shakes.”

Maggie and I stood by silently, listening. I was thinking, She knew she had malaria. She knew before she called from Maine. She came to us knowing she had malaria.

“How long have you been aware of these symptoms?” Dr. Ernst asked.

“Ever since I got back to the States.”

“And when was that?”

“In April.”

“You’ve had the symptoms regularly?”

“Well, on and off. I thought what it might be... you see, some fellow religious pilgrims and I...”

“Pilgrims?”

“I’m a Tantric adept,” she said. “In Papua New Guinea, I hooked up with some other followers of the religion, and we were singing and chanting in the jungle one night, in the dark, and it was a marvelous and wonderful experience, transporting, in fact. So when I developed a fever a few weeks later, I thought it was due to this very high level of consciousness we’d achieved. This absorption into the cosmic weave.”

Dr. Ernst looked baffled.

“Are you attributing malaria to some inspirational religious experience?” he asked.

Annie merely smiled at him as if she alone, and perhaps her guru, knew all the secrets of the universe.

“Why didn’t you check yourself into a hospital in Maine?” Dr. Ernst asked her. “If you knew you were sick...”

“Actually, I’m afraid of hospitals,” she said. “I don’t like medication.”

“Well, Miss,” Dr. Ernst said, “you’re in a hospital now, and I’m prescribing medication, and you had damn well better take it if you know what’s good for you!”

Annie looked surprised.

In the corridor outside, Dr. Ernst said to me, “Your sister seems rather childish, doesn’t she?”

On her second day in the hospital, when the quinine had brought her fever down, and she was no longer shaking, I told Annie that the hospital wanted to know how she planned to pay her bills, and asked if I could have the HMO card she carried in her wallet.

Annie looked at me.

“The thing is,” she said, “Sally Jean and I had a parting of the ways before I left for India. So she probably let the insurance lapse while I was gone.”

“I thought she was your closest friend.”

“Yes, she is. It’s just that she comes and goes a lot.”

“So what are you saying? You don’t have medical insurance?”

“You know I don’t trust the health care system.”

“Yes, I know that. But you’re in a hospital now, Annie...”

“Yes, Andy, thank you for informing me of that fact. I never would have guessed otherwise.”

“So how do you expect to pay for your stay here?”

“I thought you said you were going to take care of me.”

“I didn’t mean...”

“You said, ‘Don’t worry, Annie, I’ll take care of you.’ ”

“You were running a temperature of a hundred and...”

“It’s what you said.”

“I meant I’d get you to a hospital.”

“Where I’m supposed to pick up the bills, right? I have a little jewelry shop in Maine, you expect me to...”

“Annie, please, there’s no need to get upset about this. Just tell them you don’t have health insurance and can’t afford to pay for your stay here. They can’t kick you out, you’re a sick person. That’s against the Hippocratic Oath. Okay?”

“Sure,” she said. “Okay.”

When I went to the hospital the next morning, she was dressed in street clothes and sitting in a chair beside her bed, her face grim, her hands folded in her lap.

“What are you doing out of bed?” I asked.

“I’m leaving the hospital.”

“Why?” I said.

“Because you won’t pay my bills.”

“I can’t pay your bills, Annie. I can hardly afford to pay my own bills.”

“Oh, poor little school teacher,” she said.

“Don’t mock me, Annie.”

“Anyway, I don’t have to stay here. I’m cured already.”

“You’re not cured. Dr. Ernst says...”

“What does Dr. Ernst know?”

“His specialty is infectious diseases.”

“I don’t have an infectious disease.”

“You have malaria.”

“If I had malaria, it’s gone now. I don’t have any fever...”

“Malaria hides. That’s why you...”

“Hides?”

“Dr. Ernst says it hides.”

“From whom?” she asked, and grinned at me slyly.

“A characteristic of the disease is that the parasite hides. You can think it’s gone, but it isn’t. That’s why you have to take the medication for the full course. That’s what Dr. Ernst says.”

“Where’s Dr. Tannenbaum?”

“Who’s Dr. Tann...? Annie, Dr. Tannenbaum was our family doctor. We haven’t seen him in almost seven years!”

“He’d tell them to discharge me, all right.”

“I doubt that very much.”

“Oh yeah? I’m telling you he’d have me out of here in five minutes flat.”

“He’s probably dead by now. In any case, Dr. Ernst feels you should stay in the hospital until he’s sure they...”

“Dr. Ernst isn’t my doctor. Anyway, if nobody’s going to pay my bills, why would they want me to stay?”

“I don’t know what they do in cases like yours,” I said. “I do know they...”

“What do you mean cases like mine?” she asked, and suddenly sat bolt upright. “What’s that supposed to mean, cases like mine?”

“Cases where the patient is incapable of...”

“Incompetent?”

“Incapable. Of paying your own bills, is what I was trying to say.”

“You said you’d pay my bills!”

“Annie, I said nothing of the sort.”

“You said you’d take care of me!”

“That’s right, I took you to the hospital...”

“What good is taking me to the hospital if you won’t pay my bills!”

“Annie, I can’t get into debt to a goddamn hospital!”

“Oh, but I can, right?”

“They’ll make some arrangement with you, I’m sure. They have ways of dealing with people who don’t have health insurance. I’ve already told them I’m not responsible for your bills.”

“You went back on your word, is what you mean.”

“I never said I’d...”

“You promise me one thing, and then you do another.”

“I did not promise...”

“You think I don’t know how much school teachers make?”

“A fortune, I’m sure. The point is...”

“Sure, joke about it. You always joke about it when it gets serious.”

“The point is I never said I’d pay your bills, and I’m not responsible for them now. I can’t stop you from leaving the hospital if you want to...”

“Damn right you can’t.”

“But if you want my advice...”

“Shove your advice.”

“... you’ll stay here till they’re sure they’ve got all the bugs.”

“I’m not staying here. I’m waiting for my discharge papers right this minute. You think I’m going to stay m a place that’s charging me a fortune for giving me medication I never asked for?”

“You were burning alive with fever and shaking yourself to death. Annie, what the hell is wrong with you? Can’t you see...?”

“Oh, now there’s something wrong with me. You break your word, so there’s something wrong with me.”

“Look,” I said, “if you want to check out, check out. I can’t stop...”

“Fine, asshole,” she said. “Just go fuck yourself, okay?”

I stood there speechless, and then I nodded, and turned, and walked out of the room without saying goodbye. I did not begin crying until I was in the corridor outside. A woman was standing by the elevators down the hall. I turned away from her, and dried my eyes and my face with a clean white handkerchief. When the elevator arrived, I let the woman precede me into it. I looked off once down the corridor toward Annie’s room. Then I stepped into the car, and the doors closed.

When I told Maggie what had happened, she said, “Why didn’t you take her to a psychiatrist when I asked you to?”

“Because I really felt you were overreacting.”

“No, it’s because you didn’t want to hear she was sick, Andy.”

“That wasn’t it. Don’t you think I’d help Annie if I thought she needed help? I’d be the very first person to...”

“No, you’d be the very last person.”

“She’s my twin, Maggie. Of course I’d...”

“That’s right.”

“... help her. I’d do anything in my power to help her.”

“Your twin, yes,” Maggie said. “You’re afraid that if she’s nuts, you may be nuts, too.”

“No, Maggie, that’s not it,” I said.

“Then what is it, Andy?”

“That’s not it,” I said again.

By the summer of 1991, my mother had almost succeeded in murdering the Connecticut house. She never had it painted, never took care of any problems with running toilets or leaky roofs, never replaced broken or cracked flagstones in the walk leading to the front door, never patched gutters or leaders, allowed weeds to overcome and finally overthrow what had once been a vast green lawn, permitted yellow jackets to infest the turrets and gables, never had the chimneys cleaned or the trees pruned, just stood back from the house as if enjoying its slow and inevitable demise, as if watching my father himself dying in its stead. And when at last one night my father’s studio did in fact collapse to the ground in a horrendous thunder storm that almost destroyed the main house as well, she put the property on the market, and would have been content to sell it for a third of what it might have been worth had she lovingly nurtured it over the years.

By that summer, my mother could no longer convince any prospective New York renters that the house was worth occupying even on a week-to-week basis. When she invited Maggie and me up for the weekend, we were frankly surprised. We didn’t know she was even using the house anymore. But it was a sweltering day in the city, so we packed a bag, and caught an eleven-oh-five train from Grand Central, and were in Connecticut shortly after noon. A taxi dropped us at the house at twenty to one. My mother was already in a bathing suit.

“Hello, hello,” she said, “how was the ride up?”

“Easy,” I said, and took her hands, and kissed her on both cheeks. “Are we going to the beach?”

“Later.”

“Not me,” Maggie said. “Not today.”

“Come,” my mother said. “I have a surprise for you.”

The surprise was Annie.

I had not seen her since that day in the hospital, almost seven months ago, when she’d memorably advised me to go fuck myself. I wasn’t sure I was too tickled to see her now. She was wearing pink shorts and a purple tube-top blouse, her blond hair pulled to the back of her head in a pony tail, her face still festooned with all her little silver rings. Except for the ornaments, she looked much the way she’d looked when we were growing up together in this house, barefoot and suntanned, a big bashful grin on her face as she came down the steps from the porch, and opened her arms wide to me, and said, “I’m sorry, bro, forgive me.”

I hugged her close.

Maggie stood apart, watching us.

“Will you forgive me?” Annie asked. “Please? I don’t know what got into me, Andy, I really don’t. I never use such language, you know I don’t. I guess it was just the trauma of learning I had malaria, of all things... I mean, who gets malaria these days? And then discovering Sally Jean had let my HMO lapse like that, how could she have been so irresponsible? Please forgive me, Andy. Pretty please?”

“Twenty lashes,” I said. “Bread and water for a week.”

Annie laughed and hugged me close again, and then took my hands in both of hers, and held me at arms’ length and said, “Let me look at you. Have you put on weight?”

“Just a few pounds.”

“You should make sure he watches his diet, Magg.”

“You’re looking well,” Maggie said.

“Thanks,” my sister said. “Clean Maine living, you should come up sometime.”

My mother was standing by, listening to all this apprehensively, pleased now that Annie and I seemed to have put our differences behind us.

“So who’s for the beach?” she asked.

“I’m not a beach person,” Annie said.

“I just got my period,” Maggie said.

“Thank you for sharing that, darling,” my mother said. “Looks like you and me, Andrew. Are you game?”

The way Maggie later tells the story, my mother had left some white wine in the fridge and some sandwiches on the kitchen table. The women carry those out to the back of the house, and are sitting on the lawn, eating, drinking, chatting, when Annie mentions that she plans to take another trip sometime soon, for parts as yet unknown...

“I’m still doing research, in fact,” she says. “I thought I might go back to Sweden. The people there are very tolerant of religions not in the mainstream.”

“I’ve never been there,” Maggie says.

“You should go sometime. You’d enjoy it.”

“Will Sally Jean be going with you?”

“I haven’t seen Sally Jean for months now,” Annie says. “We had quite an argument, you know, about her letting my insurance lapse. She claimed she made all the payments when they came due, tried to put the blame on the company, can you believe it? I knew she was lying, she’s such a damn liar. I mean, it was bad enough I had to be in a hospital, the things I know about the health care system. But to have them doubt my word? To have them suspect me that way?”

“Suspect you what way?” Maggie asks.

“Oh, you know. Thinking I was trying to pull a fast one. Like get free health care or something. They were probably told to keep a special eye on me. Dr. Ernst probably told them I’d ‘attributed malaria to some inspirational religious experience,’ were his exact words, mocking me like that.”

“When did you plan to go?” Maggie asks, getting off the subject of hospitals; everyone in the family knows how Annie feels about the health care system.

“Oh, I don’t know. The shop m Maine isn’t doing too well, you know. And I don’t have many friends up there, to tell the truth. I had a lot of friends in Sweden. That’s where I first met Sally Jean, in fact, well, never mind her. I’ll tell you, Maggie, I hope I never see her again. She’s to blame for all my problems.”

“Well, the hospital’s behind you now, Annie. The main thing is that they were able to cure you. You haven’t had any relapses, have you? No chills? No fever?”

“No, I’m fine. But...”

“So really, you should...”

“But I’m not talking about the hospital, don’t get me started on hospitals. Anyway, who knows if I’m really cured? Who knows what kind of drugs they gave me in there? Ever since they linked me to her in Amsterdam, when we were rooming together, they won’t leave me alone. They think I may have had something to do with those translations she made for the Russians. When there was still the cold war, do you remember?”

“Yes,” Maggie says, “I remember.”

“They just can’t get it in their heads that I had nothing to do with it! They keep coming around in their damn blue jackets, I really feel I should call someone about it, their harassment. But who can I call? If they can reach someone like Dr. Ernst, I mean who knows how far their influence extends? Their control?”

Bees are buzzing in the clover. It is a hot, quiet, lazy afternoon. Maggie has no idea how close she is to treading dangerous ground. She hesitates a moment, and then, tentatively, she says, “You know, Annie, have you ever thought about discussing this with someone?”

“Discussing what with someone?”

“These people who follow you around and...”

“I am discussing it with someone. I’m discussing it with you.”

“I meant someone qualified,” Maggie says.

Annie looks at her.

“Maybe you ought to talk to someone before you leave the country again.”

Annie keeps looking at her Then, all at once, she nods, and gets up, and goes into the house. Maggie thinks she is going inside to pee. She is gone some three or four minutes, just enough time to find what she wants in the kitchen drawer. When Maggie turns again, she sees Annie coming at her with a claw hammer raised high above her head. The next thing she knows, it is crashing down on her left shoulder. She thinks Annie will hit her again, but instead she just yells, “Go fuck yourself, asshole!” and hurls the hammer onto the grass, and runs out of the yard.

Maggie sits alone on the lawn, stunned, her shoulder bruised and throbbing. She is still sitting outside when my mother and I return from the beach at a little past four, but she is now holding a towel full of ice cubes to her shoulder.

“What’s wrong?” I ask at once.

“Annie hit me with a hammer,” she says.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” my mother says.

“Mom, she hit me with a fucking hammer!”

“And I don’t appreciate that language.”

“Gee, I’m terribly sorry, but that’s what your daughter did.”

“Let me see that,” I say.

“It’s all swollen,” Maggie says, sounding very much like a little girl. She lifts the towel for a moment. Her shoulder is a puffy mass of discolored flesh, blues and reds blending into purples. “There’s the hammer,” she says, and gives an angry toss of her head to indicate where it is still lying in the grass.

“Where’s Annie?” my mother says.

“She left.”

“Left?”

“She hit me and ran off.”

“She didn’t hit you, don’t be silly,” my mother says. “Where is she?”

“Is everyone in this family crazy?” Maggie asks. “I’m telling you she hit me with a hammer, and you’re telling me I dreamt it?”

“Is she in the house?” my mother asks, and turns on her heel and immediately walks toward the porch and into the house.

“Call the police,” Maggie tells me.

“No, I don’t want to call the police.”

“Andy, she attacked me!”

“I’d better go find her,” I say, and start for the car. “Mom!”

My mother comes rushing out of the house.

“She’s not here,” she says. “What’d you say to her?”

“Mom, where are the...?”

“What did I say...”

“... car keys?”

“... to her? How about what she said to me?”

“What’d you do to provoke her?”

“She called me an asshole! She told me to go fuck myself!”

“My daughter doesn’t use such language. And she’s not a violent person. You must have provoked her in some way. I’ll go with you,” my mother says, and we both start for the car.

“Andy!” Maggie calls.

My mother hands me the keys and throws open the door on the passenger side. I turn to where my wife is sitting with the towel pressed to her shoulder.

“Andy,” she says very softly, “your sister hit me with a hammer. You should have her committed.”

“No, I can’t do that,” I say, and get into the car, and insert the ignition key, and twist it. The engine roars into life. Maggie is still sitting there when I back the car out of the driveway.

My mother and I search all the back roads for the next two hours, but we cannot find Annie.

Annie is gone again.

When we get back to the house, so is Maggie.

It is three minutes past eight when she arrives at Volumes and Tomes. I am standing outside the shop waiting for her. She is wearing this morning a dark blue pleated skirt, sheer blue pantyhose, black French-heeled pumps, a white blouse with a stock tie, and a gray jacket. She reminds me of the private-school girls you see walking along Madison Avenue on their way to or from school. The gray jacket is lacking only a school crest to make what she’s wearing look like a uniform.

Maggie is a quite beautiful woman. When I first met her, I thought she was the most beautiful — but you already know that. Back then, she wore her black hail long to the shoulders... well, like a raven helmet. She now wears it cut much shorter. Her brown eyes are so dark they almost match her hair exactly. She wears no lipstick these days. I gather she considers this a “bookish” look. We greet each other perfunctorily. We do not even shake hands. It is strange that two people who made such passionate love together — at least in the beginning — cannot even shake hands in greeting anymore.

“To what do I owe the honor?” she asks.

“Annie’s gone again,” I tell her.

“So what else is new?”

“She may be schizophrenic,” I say.

Maggie looks at me.

“She was hospitalized in Sicily. They diagnosed her as schizophrenic. She hears voices, Magg.”

She keeps looking at me.

“What do you want from me?” she asks.

“I have to talk to someone.”

“Why me?”

“You’re the only one I know.”

It starts over coffee, it ends over coffee.

“You’re looking well,” Maggie says.

In all the years I was married to her, I never found the courage to correct her grammar. She is an educated person, a bookseller no less, and I am a teacher of English. But she still says, “You’re looking well” instead of “You’re looking good,” and she still says, “I feel badly about this” instead of “I feel bad about this.” When we were married, I used to wince at these grammatical lapses. We are no longer married. I no longer care if she uses “Between you and I” for “Between you and me.” That was the worst of her assaults on the English language, and she used it with supreme confidence and maddening regularity. But I no longer care. I no longer care about her at all. That is the sadness of it.

“Thank you,” I say. “And so are you.”

She nods. Makes a slight moue. The facial expression says either “I know you’re being nice,” or “I know I look tired,” or simply “Who cares what you think anymore?” which would put us on an equal footing. It is so sad. It is so fucking sad, really.

“So what’s this about Sicily?” she asks.

I tell her what happened there. I tell her the doctor in Sicily thought Annie was schizophrenic...

“Thought?”

“Well, apparently she told him she hears voices.”

“Apparently?”

“Well, I don’t know what his credentials are, actually.”

“But he’s a doctor, isn’t he?”

“A psychiatrist, yes. Presumably.”

“Presumably,” she repeats.

“Annie denies all of this, you realize.”

“Mm. So you went to Sicily, huh?”

“Yes. To pick her up.”

“The good brother,” Maggie says.

There is an edge to her voice. For the longest time now, there has been a note of bitterness, or sarcasm, or even controlled anger whenever we discuss Annie. All at once, I wish we weren’t sitting here together. All at once, I feel this is a huge mistake.

“Get you something?” a waitress asks.

“Just coffee,” Maggie says.

“Coffee and a toasted English,” I say.

The waitress pads off toward the counter. The shop is relatively quiet at this hour of the morning. On the avenue outside, there are men on their way to work, wearing suits and carrying dispatch cases, Soccer Moms who have just dropped the kiddies off at school, some of them in exercise clothes they will later wear to the gym, nibbling their lips, worrying. Everybody in this city worries. Especially since the attack, everyone worries.

“So how was Sicily?”

“I didn’t see much of it.”

“I always wanted to go to Sicily,” she says almost wistfully. She shrugs, shakes her head, is silent for a moment. “So when did Annie vanish?” she asks.

I do not like her use of the word “vanish.”

“My mother discovered her missing at two this morning. She went to see a psychiatrist here in New York last week...”

“A psychiatrist?” she says, surprised. She knows how my sister feels about the health care system.

“Yes. I took her to see a woman named Sarah Lang.”

“The good brother,” Maggie says again. “So you think this woman may have frightened her away, is that it?”

“I don’t know what caused it this time,” I say.

“Or any time,” Maggie corrects.

“Two coffees,” the waitress says, “a toasted English.” She puts our order on the table, takes two packets of Equal from her pocket, sets those down as well, asks, “Anything else?” and, when she receives no response, goes back to the counter again. Maggie lifts her cup. She sips at the coffee. It is too hot. She purses her lips as if scalded. I suddenly remember that she cannot abide her coffee too hot. I suddenly remember this.

I remember, too...

And this comes back to me as if rolling on a loop of film which I can stop at will, frame after frame rolling past some hidden gate in some secret projector, flashing suddenly on the screen of my mind...

I remember driving through Massachusetts with Maggie.

She is wearing a pink blouse, a white summer skirt, sandals. Her knees are propped against the dash board, the skirt falling back onto her thighs. The windows are wide open, her long black hair is blowing in the wind. She is sipping coffee from a cardboard container.

We are on the way to her mother’s house.

There are mountains on either side of the highway.

Maggie is going home.

She turns to me suddenly. There is a little girl’s grin on her face.

“Nice, huh?” she says.

Grinning over the coffee container.

Nice, huh?

Yes, I think now. It was nice, Maggie. Sometimes it was nice.

She adds milk to her coffee cup, sips at it again, testing it. She looks across the table at me. Her dark brown eyes are very wide.

“I still don’t know why you’re here,” she says.

“I want to apologize.”

“Ah.”

“I should have called the police that day.”

“Yes, I think you should have.”

“Maybe we could have helped her.”

“I don’t know about that, but it sure as hell wouldn’t have hurt our marriage.”

“I’m sorry, Magg.”

“Yes, well, easy come, easy go,” she says, and turns her head away, her eyes avoiding mine.

We are silent for several moments.

“Did you ever hear Annie talking to herself?”

“No.”

“Not that day?”

“Never.”

“Aaron thinks she does.”

“Thinks?”

“Well, knows. He says this black girl... well, she must be a woman by now... Pearl Williams, she used to play keyboard in Annie’s band. Aaron says she witnessed an incident... well, an episode, I guess, you’d call it... in Georgia. There would seem to be no... well... doubt... that Annie hears voices.”

Maggie says nothing. She is staring at me across the table now.

“But you still don’t quite believe it, do you, Andy?”

“I believe it,” I say. “I think she may hear voices, yes.”

“May.”

“I guess she hears voices.”

“You guess.”

“I know she hears voices, all right? I think they may have spoken to her this time. I think that’s why she’s gone. Because they told her to leave. I don’t know, Maggie. I don’t know what the fuck these voices tell her or don’t tell her!”

The waitress turns to us. She seems ready to come to the table, ready to ask us to leave if we can’t maintain at least some small measure of decorum here. I want to tell her Hey, lady, my sister is a lunatic who may be about to harm herself or others, so what do you expect here, the New York Public Library?

“How do you know they spoke to her this time?” Maggie asks.

“My mother heard her talking to them.”

“Saying what, exactly?”

“Mumbling. Nothing coherent. I think she might have been talking to the television set.”

“That doesn’t sound good, Andy.”

“I know. What should I do, Magg?”

“I don’t know how to advise you.”

“I just want to help her, Magg. I don’t know how to help her.”

“Poor Andy,” she says.

It seems for a moment that she will reach across the table to take my hand. She does not. It occurs to me that she will never again take my hand. Ever. I don’t know why that should bother me so much. We’ve been divorced for almost ten years now. I don’t know why that should bother me now.

“You should have believed me,” she says.

“I should have.”

“You should have cherished me more.”

“I did cherish you, Magg.”

“Ah, but not enough, not enough.”

We sit there across the table from each other.

She sips at her coffee again.

Nice, huh?

I want to tell her that once I loved her very much. Once I adored her. I want to tell her that I don’t know what went wrong with us, but something did, and it’s a terrible dreadful shame, but I did love you, Magg, a whole lot. I loved you to death.

“I just want you to know there’s never been anyone else but you, Magg. I don’t know what went wrong with us, but there’s never been another woman. I just want you to know that.”

“Andy,” she says, “there’s been another woman for as long as I’ve known you.”

And before I can ask her what the hell she’s talking about, she says, “Your sister.”

We part on the sidewalk outside, like strangers. Like strangers, we do not even shake hands. She walks off in her direction, I in mine. There was a time when we would turn to look back at each other, the way lovers do. Mimed to each other. Folded our arms across our chests, opened them wide to say I love you, I love you. Once, twice, sometimes three or four times before we lost sight of each other. There was a time.

I do not turn to watch her now.

I feel certain she is not watching me, either.

I start up First Avenue, toward Twenty-third. I’ll catch a crosstown bus there, and then connect to an uptown subway on Broadway. It is a bright clear morning in New York. This is still only August, but there is the promise of September in the air. I am wearing gray slacks and a tropical weight blue blazer. I am wearing a white shirt open at the throat, and gray socks, and black loafers. Normally, in August, during school vacation, I wear jeans and a T-shirt all day long. But today, my sister is gone, and I do not know to which police detective or hospital official I may soon be speaking. I am not dressed formally, but I am dressed respectably, for whatever encounter with bureaucracy may lie ahead.

I do not want to go back to my mother’s apartment. I do not want to sit there with a family that has been lying to me for the past sixteen years. I do not want to revisit the human debris there. The clutter here in the streets is by contrast tumultuous and rich with life. I walk unseen among lovers and tourists, children and their grandparents, pets on leashes. I can remember mornings and afternoons in this city with my mother and Annie, the pair of us larking ahead of her on the sidewalk, my mother walking proudly behind us.

Where did we lose her?

Where has she gone this time?

I try to piece together the shattered fragments, the minuscule bits of mosaic that together form Annie’s past. Is there something there that will lead me to where she is now? But she has never left a trail before, my sister. She is as secretive and as skilled at deception as any of the imaginary FBI agents she believes are pursuing—

It suddenly occurs to me that perhaps Annie herself is a secret agent!

I burst out laughing.

A woman walking past looks at me as if I’m crazy.

“Sorry,” I say to her, and raise my eyebrows and pull a face and hunch my shoulders in apology.

But why not, actually?

Isn’t it possible that Sven Lindqvist in Stockholm was the recruiter who enlisted her? She came back to the U.S. as a sleeper, only to be summoned abroad by him several months later when she received an urgent message to sell all our band equipment and rush back to Stockholm, where for the first time she was to meet her European counterpart, the infamous UN translator named Sally Jean. Sven has been her control ever since. It is Sven who sends her all over the world on secret assignments. It is Sven who brought together the team of surgeons who spirited her off that Air France flight and installed a radio transmitter in her skull or her rectum or wherever. It is Sven who sent her down to Greenwich Village that New Year’s Eve to spy on the guys from Dartmouth and Harvard, two hotbeds of Communist activity. It is Sven who brought her back from India disguised as a Tantric adept in baggy pants and sandals with hennaed hair and a silver circlet over her right eye and lice that were probably radio transmitters in their own right. It is Sven, too, who arranged for the agent Wally Hennessy (ah-ha! A booking agent, or an FBI agent?) to send The Gutter Rats on a tour of the South, where Annie would contact her Georgian counterpart, Harley Welles, disguised as a redneck policeman, and henceforth exchange vital nuclear secrets hidden in her urine, which she generously sprayed all over Harley’s uniform leg and polished black shoes while the black secret agent Pearl Williams stood by taking discreet notes. It is Sven who arranged for her to rendezvous once again with Sally Jean in Amsterdam, where she scattered broken glass around her bed and searched her bags for secrets.

It is Sven who kissed her only twice in the moonlight, but captured her mind forever.

All entirely plausible.

I am smiling now.

I don’t care who thinks I’m crazy, I am smiling.

I walk in brilliant sunshine, smiling.

I do not want to go back to that apartment on Eighty-first Street, but I don’t know where else to go, or what else to do.

And suddenly, I feel so utterly alone.