“Let me go ask,” I said, and ran upstairs. Annie came after me and grabbed me on the first landing. “Liza, I’m sorry,” she said.
“He—he doesn’t understand this country—I don’t know, he’s been here since he was twenty, but he still thinks he’s back in some Sicilian …”
“I like him!” I shouted, shaking her. “I told you—I like your grandmother and the cats in your kitchen, and your mother, even though I don’t know her very well, and I like your plants and your room and you, except when you’re a jerk to be so worried that I’m not going to like—whatever!”
Annie smiled sheepishly and leaned against the wall. “I think it’s jerky, too, she said. “I mean of me. It’s just that well, I’m always worried that people are going to laugh at them.”
“Well, I’m not going to laugh at them,” I said. “And if you are, I’ll go live with them and you can come here and live in stuffy old Brooklyn Heights and go to Foster Academy and almost get expelled for piercing ears and—Annie?” I said, as soon as it struck me. “Are you jealous? Is that what this is really about? Do you envy me?”
“No,” said Annie softly. Then she laughed a little. “No, I don’t, not at all. You’re right that I don’t like the school I go to or the neighborhood I live in—but no, I wouldn’t want to—to swap with you or anything.” She smiled. “I guess you made me realize that just now, didn’t you?”
“Well, good,” I said, still angry, “because if you do want to swap—if that’s all I mean to you, forget it.” I surprised myself, I was so mad.
“Oh, Liza, no,” Annie said. “No. That’s not what you mean to me. It’s not like that at all, not at all.” She edged away from the wall and then faced me, dropping a quick curtsy. “Will the Princess Eliza please to come for a ride i in the magic wagon of the humble peasant? We will show her wonders—gypsies—seagulls—shining caves—the Triborough Bridge …”
“Oh, you nut!” I said, reaching for her hand. “You—unicorn.” For a minute we stood there looking at each other, knowing with relief that it was all right again between us.
Dad and Mom and Chad decided to stay home, though they came downstairs at my insistence to meet Mr. and Mrs. Kenyon and Nana. I think I was trying to prove to Annie that they wouldn’t laugh at her family, either. Good old Chad—when he and Mom and Dad were going back in and Annie and I were standing by the door, he turned to Annie and said, “Your dad’s neat, Annie—what a neat cab!” I could have kissed him. We drove all through Brooklyn and up into Queens that afternoon, and then back down through Central Park, and the 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 said, “Nothing has ever felt so right and natural and true and good,” and another that said it was happening too fast, and another that just wanted to stop thinking altogether and fling my arms around Annie and hold her forever. There were other sides, too, but I couldn’t sort them out. “Liza,” Annie was saying, “Liza, I—I’ve wondered. I mean, I wondered if this might be happening. Didn’t you?” I shook my head. But somewhere inside I knew I had at least been confused.
Annie pulled her collar up around her throat and I wanted to touch her skin where the collar met it. It was as if I’d always wanted to touch her there but hadn’t known it. “It’s my fault,” Annie said softly. “I—I’ve thought sometimes, even before I met you, I mean, that I might be gay.” She said the word “gay” easily, as if it were familiar to her, used that way.
“No,” I managed to say, “no—it’s not anyone’s fault.” I know that underneath my numbness I felt it made sense about me, too, but I couldn’t think about it, or concentrate on it, not then. Annie turned around and looked at me and the sadness in her eyes made me want to put my arms around her. “I’ll go, Liza,” she said, standing up. “
I—I
don’t want to hurt you. I don’t think you want this, so I have hurt you and, oh, God, Liza,” she said, touching my face, “I don’t want to, I—like you so much. I told you, you make me feel—real, more real than I’ve ever thought I could feel, more alive, you—you’re better than a hundred Californias, but it’s not only that, it’s …”
“Better than all those white birds?” I said around the ache that was in my throat again. “Because you’re better than anything or anyone for me, too, Annie, better than—oh, I don’t know— better than what—better than everything—but that’s not what I want to be saying—you—you’re—Annie, I think I love you.” I heard myself say it as if I were someone else, but the moment the words were out, I knew more than I’d ever known anything that they were true.
Dear Annie, I’ve just been remembering Thanksgiving vacation, and the beach near Coney Island. Annie, it makes me ache for you, it …
Liza crumpled the letter, then smoothed it out again, tore it to shreds, and went outside. She walked beside the Charles River in the cold. The air was brittle with the coming winter; one sailboat struggled against the biting wind. The guy in that boat’s crazy, she thought absently; his sail will freeze, his hands stick to the mainsheet and they’ll have to pry him loose… Annie, she thought, the name driving everything else away, Annie, Annie …
School seemed strange the Monday after Thanksgiving. In a way it was nice to be back because it was familiar but it also seemed irrelevant, as if I’d grown up and school was now part of my childhood. I was almost surprised to see the ballot box in the main hall, and kids dropping folded pieces of paper in it. It wasn’t that I’d really forgotten the election; it was just that it was part of my old world, too, and it had lost a lot of its importance. So I was quite calm when after lunch we were all told to report to the Lower School gym, which doubled as an auditorium, for “a few announcements.” Ms. Baxter gave me a big cheerful smile, I suppose to be forgiving and encouraging, but Mrs. Poindexter, in a purple dress I’d never seen before, her glasses dangling, looked grim. “I must’ve won,” I quipped to Sally. “Look at her—she looks as if she’s swallowed a cactus.” But Sally didn’t laugh. In fact, I soon realized she must be nervous about something, because she kept licking her lips and she was clutching a couple of index cards, shuffling them around, picking at the corners.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Mrs. Poindexter—her usual way of addressing large groups of us—”I have two announcements. The first and briefer one is that Eliza Winthrop will continue as head of student council.” There was quite a bit of applause, and school began mattering more to me again. “And the second,” Mrs. Poindexter said, holding up her hand for silence, “is that Walter Shander and Sally Jarrell have very kindly agreed to be student chairpeople for our fundraising drive. Sally has a few words to say. Sally!”
Sally got up, still fidgeting nervously with her index cards.
“Well, I just want to say,” she piped, “that I realized over Thanksgiving what a terrible thing
I—I
did with the ear piercing and all, and Walt and I talked over what I could do to make it up to the school, and then this morning Ms. Baxter said Mrs. Poindexter wanted students to get involved in the campaign. And so then I thought I could do that, and Walt said he’d help.
I—I
really want to make up to everyone for what I did, and this way, if anyone on the outside finds out about it, the ear infections, I mean, it’ll be easier for Mrs. Poindexter and everyone to say that I’m really sorry …” I swallowed against the sick feeling that was creeping up my throat from my stomach. It wasn’t that I didn’t think it was a nice thing for Sally to do—I did—it was that she seemed to be doing it for the wrong reasons. “If the campaign’s a success,” she was saying, “that means that Foster can go on giving people a good education. Later, Walt and I will tell you about some dances and rallies and things we’re planning, but right now I wanted first of all to apologize, and secondly—well, to ask for your support in the campaign.” She blushed and ran back to her seat. There was applause again, but this time it was uncertain, as if the other kids were as surprised and as uncomfortable as I was about Sally’s making so much of the ear piercing—she made it sound as if she thought she’d murdered someone.
But Mrs. Poindexter and Ms. Baxter looked like a couple of Cheshire cats, one large and one small. “How was I?” Sally asked. “Great, baby, terrific,” Walt said, hugging her. “Wasn’t she great, Liza?”
“Sure,” i said, not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings.
After school I went to the art studio to do some work on my senior project. Sally and Walt were there, bent over a huge piece of poster board, painting, and I had to admit that Sally looked happier and more relaxed than I’d seen her for some time. Maybe, I thought, doing this won’t be so bad for her after all.
“Hi, Liza,” Walt called cheerfully, as I rummaged in the supply cabinet. “What shall we put you down for? We’re making a list—how much do you think you can pledge?”
“Pledge?” I asked, not understanding.
“That’s the word Mr. Piccolo says fund raisers use,” Sally said proudly. “It means, how much do you promise to give to the Foster Fund Drive. Doesn’t that sound good, Liza—Foster Fund Drive? So—um—metaphoric.”
“Alliterative,” I grumbled, sitting down.
“Welcome back, Liza,” Ms. Stevenson said, peering out from behind her easel, where she was working, as usual, on what we all jokingly called her masterpiece; it was a large abstract painting none of us understood. “Thanks,” I said, poking a pair of dividers down so hard I made a hole in my paper.
“Ms. Stevenson’s pledged twenty-five dollars,” Sally said sweetly, waving a small notebook.
“I don’t know what I can give yet, Sally, okay?” I told her.
“Okay, okay,” she snapped. “You don’t have to be that way about it.” Then her angry expression vanished as if it had been erased, and she got up and put her hand on my shoulder. “Oh, Liza, I’m sorry,” she moaned. “It’s me who shouldn’t have been that way. I’m sorry I snapped at you for being uncertain.” She patted my shoulder. Ms. Baxter, I thought; she’s been talking to Ms. Baxter—that’s what it is. But of course I couldn’t say that.
“It’s okay,” I muttered, glancing at Walt, who shrugged. Ms. Stevenson dropped a large tube of zinc white, and Sally and Walt nearly crashed into each other trying to be first to pick it up for her. I pushed away from the drawing table, muttered something about homework, and ran out of the art studio. Before I even thought about it consciously, I was in the phone booth in the basement, dialing Annie’s number. As I waited for someone to answer, I reluctantly noticed the paint peeling off the steam pipes that ran along the walls, and a big crack that ran from the ceiling almost to the floor. All right, all right, I said silently. I’ll do something for the silly campaign!