Nancy Garden Annie on My Mind

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whole
time Mr. Kenyon and his mother told stories about Italy, and Mrs.
Kenyon
laughed and prompted them. Mr. Kenyon's father, who had died in
California, had been a butcher in his village in Sicily, and cats
used
to follow him all over because he fed them scraps. That was why the
Kenyons still had cats; Mr. Kenyon said life just didn't seem right
without a cat or two around. Chad was right that he was neat.
I can't really remember what Annie and I did during the next couple
of days
of vacation. Walked a lot--the Village, Chinatown, places like that.
It's
Sunday that's important to remember. It's Sunday that I've been
thinking
around the edges of ... Have you ever felt really close to someone?
So close that you can't understand why you and the other person have
two
separate bodies, two separate skins? I think it was Sunday when that
feeling began. We'd been riding around on the subway, talking when it
wasn't too noisy, and had ended up at Coney Island. It was so late in
the season that it was deserted, and very cold. We looked at all the
closed-for-winter rides, and at a few straggling booth owners who
were
putting battered pastel-painted boards up over their popcorn or
dime-toss or win-a-doll stands, and we bought hot dogs at Nathan's.
There were only a couple of grubby old men eating there, I guess
because
most people don't have room even for Nathan's the weekend after
Thanksgiving. Then we walked on the empty beach and joked about
hiking
all around the edge of Brooklyn up into Queens. We did manage to get
pretty far, actually, at least well away from the deserted booths,
and
we found an old pier sort of thing with a lot of rotting brown
pilings
holding back some rocks--I guess it was more or less a breakwater--
and we
sat down, close together because it was so cold. I remember that for
a
while there was a seagull wheeling around above our heads, squawking,
but then it flew off toward
Sheepshead Bay. I'm not sure why we were so quiet, except that we
knew
school would start again for both of us the next day, and we wouldn't
be
able to meet so often or so easily. I had my senior project, and
student
council if I was reelected, and Annie had to rehearse for her
recital.
But we'd already worked out which days during the week we'd be able
to
see each other, and of course there would still be weekends, so maybe
that wasn't why we were so quiet after all ... Mostly it was the
closeness. It made my throat ache, wanting to speak of it. I remember
we
were both watching the sun slowly go down over one end of the beach,
making the sky to the west pink and yellow. I remember the water
lapping
gently against the pilings and the shore, and a candy wrapper--Three
Musketeers, I think--blowing along the beach. Annie shivered. Without
thinking, I put my arm across her shoulders to warm her, and then
before
either of us knew what was happening, our arms were around each other
and Annie's soft and gentle mouth was kissing mine. When we did
realize
what was happening, we pulled away from each other, and Annie looked
out
over the water and I looked at the candy wrapper. It had gotten
beyond
the pilings by then, and was caught against a rock. For something to
do,
I walked over and stuffed it into my pocket, and then I stayed there,
looking out over the water too, trying to keep my mind blank. I
remember
wishing the wind would literally blow through me, cold and pure and
biting. "Liza," Annie called in a quiet voice. "Liza, please come
back."
Part of me didn't want to. But part of me did, and that part won.
Annie
was digging a little hole in one crumbling piling with her
fingernail.
"You'll break your nail," I said, and she looked up at me and smiled.
Her eyes were soft and troubled and a little scared, but her mouth
went
on smiling, and then the wind blew her hair in wisps across my face
and
I had to move away. She put her hand on mine, barely touching it.
"It's
all right with me," she whispered, "if it is with you."
"I--I don't know," I said. It was like a war inside me; I couldn't
even
recognize all the sides. There was one that said, "No, this is wrong;
you know it's wrong and bad and sinful," and there was another that [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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