Anne-Marie (short story)

By: effervescentjoy Mood: disappointed Date: 03/16/2008 23:05:12 Music: None

“Anne Marie”

            Twenty years ago, Anne Marie’s hair was copper-orange. Now it’s a dull, dusty gray, the color that coats every surface of her cramped apartment. One mismatched, overstuffed room in a complex in downtown Rochester displays her entire life. Her furniture is old and worn, and all of it was abandoned on the front lawns and curbs of total strangers. The couch and armchair are hideous- relics from the days when fabric prints covered in ugly brown flowers were the hot new design.

            Her bed is small, and always made, with a dark purple comforter and yellowed sheets.  It’s placed in the corner, exactly opposite the small kitchenette and miniscule bathroom. The one small, cracked, dirty window doesn’t let in much light, even on the rare days of sunshine. Anne Marie doesn’t need sunshine, though. She’s found her own light to hang on the dull gray, dusty walls of her apartment- the whole place practically drips with crucifixes.

            The image of Christ, hung on the cross, is intensely comforting to Anne Marie. It’s nice to be reminded that someone has suffered more than she has.

            Every morning, she wakes up at six AM, and rolls herself out of bed. The first thing she does kiss the nickel cross that she hangs around her neck- her only piece of jewelry. She dresses herself in mismatched, stained clothes that were purchased in the Salvation Army, or acquired from donation boxes at Saint Matthew’s church. She spends several minutes working the tangles out of her long, iron-colored hair, using her fingers and an old comb with most of the teeth missing. Sometimes she wakes up early to take a shower, but more often she leaves her apartment unwashed, and makes her way to the seven o’clock mass at St. Matthew’s.

            Anne Marie has neither a car, nor bus fare, so she makes the forty-five minute walk every morning, teetering this way and that like some kind of precarious penguin waddling down the sidewalk. Most people assume, at first glance, that she must be well-off, considering her girth, but the simple fact is that healthy food is an expense that Anne Marie can never afford. She fills her fridge twice a month on her welfare check, and spends almost all of her time at church. Perhaps she was just genetically disposed to being overweight.

A closer look at her unwashed hair, and the stains on her clothes would suggest the truth. One sad, sincere smile with gaping holes where teeth used to be would proclaim it: “Life is hard, but we are never alone!”

She spends her entire life in church. Sometimes, while sitting there, staring up at the icons, displaying the life of Christ, she wonders if she’ll turn into a stone statue, like the images of saints that line the dark room. She wonders if she would be allowed to guard this holy place with all of the other stone images. She wonders if she has prayed long enough.

She wonders what all of the other people who sit in church with her think about, while they are sitting there. The building has such a contemplative silence. Do they think about the rest of their day? Mentally plan their shopping lists, or the errands they need to run? Do they use their thoughts to distract themselves from everything they’ve ever regretted? Or do they, like Anne Marie, meditate on their mistakes as they sit in the dark church, on the cold, uncomfortable pews?

Anne Marie spends all her time thinking. She doesn’t like to talk much- not anymore. When she was younger, before her sin, Anne Marie’s friends would tease that she never stopped talking, never came up for air. She used to love attention. She was sweet, and popular. But, twenty years later, where did all of those friends go? Anne Marie spent remarkably little time wondering about them. They were probably paying their baby-sitters, or baking bread, or working their nine-to-fives. They were probably busy being mothers.

Anne Marie spends some of her time thinking about what it would’ve been like to be a mother. She tries not to think about it too often, because it always makes her cry. It’s not enough to be pregnant and to give birth. That, Anne Marie has decided, is not being a mother. Being a mother is more involved. Being a mother is breastfeeding and changing diapers. Being a mother is afternoons at a local playground, and paper-bag lunches. Being a mother is more than the phantom fetus that she feels kicking at her insides while she tries to sleep.

Mostly, though, Anne Marie spends her days walking to church, and home again. The hallway leading to her apartment smells of mildew and overdue rent. The faded paint peels away from the water-logged walls. Both of the numbers proclaiming Anne Marie’s apartment have rusted and fallen off. The knocker has long since fallen apart; likewise, the doorbell hasn’t worked since the year it was installed. Anne Marie never bothered to fix any of these things. She had no use for them, because no one ever came to visit her.

Therefore you can imagine her surprise when one day, after years of the same daily routine, Anne Marie returned home from church in the late afternoon to discover that there was a girl sitting on her doorstep. She looked to be about twenty years old. Everything about her was dark. She was wearing a dark dress with some kind of corset, and a great deal of dark jewelry. The piece of jewelry that stood out most to Anne Marie was the large silver pentacle that hung around the girl’s neck. The girl wore dark boots that came up to her knees and seemed to be covered in buckles that didn’t look like they served any actual purpose. The inch of bare skin between the hem of the girl’s skirt and her boots was a glaring white. She was already very pale, almost sickly, and that look was enhanced in her face by the dark eye makeup she wore. The girl’s hair was mostly black, except for an inch of roots, which were a gleaming copper-orange.

The girl looked up at Anne Marie, and Anne Marie stared back at the girl. They drank in each other’s presences. The girl played with one of her many rings. Anne Marie clutched the nickel cross around her neck until her knuckles turned white. Slowly, the girl stood, never once taking her bright green eyes off of Anne Marie’s face. Those eyes were almost hypnotic- they were the same color and shape of a pair of eyes that Anne Marie had once been desperately in love with, back when she was a girl.

“Are you Ms. Anne Marie McNaleson?” the girl asked. Her voice was as dark as her appearance, low and musky.

“Yes, my child,” Anne Marie replied warily, “Who might you be?” Her voice sounded as if it was dusty from lack of use.

“Well, uh…” The girl turned a silver claddagh ring around and around on the ring finger of her left hand. She shifted her weight nervously. She had not expected this encounter to be quite so awkward, nor had she expected Anne Marie to be quite so large, or old, or unwashed. She stared at her buckle-covered boots for a few moments, and then looked back up at Anne Marie.

“My name is Jen. Jennifer. Jennifer Winton. May I come in?”

Anne Marie recognized the surname, but said nothing. She couldn’t find the words to make a short, polite excuse for the state of her apartment, or her life. Instead, she opened the door and ushered Jennifer inside, tottering over to a cupboard and taking out a cracked glass. She filled the glass with ice, and then with water, and set it down on an uneven end table near the sofa.

Jennifer, picking up on this wordless cue, sat down on the sofa and quickly began sipping the water. It tasted metallic, and was obviously from the tap, but she said nothing. Instead, she looked around the room, absorbing her surroundings with a tense resistance. Every time her eyes found a crucifix, they narrowed slightly, until she could barely see anything in the room and had to blink very hard to restore them to usefulness. She finished her drink quickly, because the water was bleeding out of the crack very slowly and soaking her hands as she held the glass.

“I don’t have a microwave,” Anne Marie said as she sat down next to Jennifer, holding a mug of water with a significantly larger crack, “So there’s no tea or coffee.” Jennifer nodded absent-mindedly. Anne Marie found herself unable to tear her eyes away from the pentacle hanging around the girl’s slender neck. She found herself thinking that Jennifer would probably be pretty if she wasn’t so dark and pale all at once. It confused the eyes.

“The… adoption agency said that you were living here. I just wanted to come by. To see you. To meet you, I mean,” Jennifer was surprised by sudden inability to articulate exactly what she meant. Her friends often told her that she was a great conversationalist- and teased her for talking incessantly.

“Would you like some bread? I can make you a sandwich, if you’d like,” Anne Marie stood up quickly, walking back to the kitchenette. She could feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand up as she looked at that girl, that creepy little gothic girl sitting on her sofa. She found herself wondering how it was possible to know someone without knowing them at all. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

“Did you want to meet me? Did you ever even think about it?” Jennifer could feel her eyes prickling with the threat of tears. Had the adoption agency somehow gotten the address wrong? They must’ve gotten the address wrong. And the name. They must’ve gotten the name wrong as well. This fat, smelly, toothless old woman couldn’t possibly be her birth mother. But at the same time, Jennifer knew that there hadn’t been any mistakes. Except her. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

“Do you like peanut butter? I don’t have any jelly, but when I was a girl, I used to eat peanut butter sandwiches,” Anne Marie’s voice seemed to be shaking off the dust. It was lighter, airier, as if she was letting pieces of herself fall away with every sentence.

“I’m allergic to peanut butter, Mom,” Jennifer snapped. She wanted to be angry at the whole world for bringing her to this dark, cramped apartment, but she knew better than that. It was her own feet that carried her, and she had no one else to blame.

Anne Marie’s eyes drifted up slowly from the loaf of cheap, pre-sliced, store-brand bread on the counter. They proclaimed a sad truth: “Life is hard, and sometimes we’re completely alone.” There were a few moments of absolute silence. Finally, Anne Marie broke it with a small, tight-lipped smile.

“I’m sorry, my child. You must be mistaken. I’m not a mother.”