A CASE FOR ANNIE By Bridgette Shade

     He thinks he’s shielding me from the truth. Concealing his feelings by hiding in the back room, sitting on the edge of the bed where our girl used to sleep, talking on the telephone behind closed doors. But I know. I hold my hand over the cordless and listen in on his conversations with the links in the prayer chain.

     “At least she knows Jesus,” the blue-hairs tell him. “Don’t know how a body gets through this life without knowing Jesus.”

     Clyde clears his throat and says, “Soon, God willing, she’ll be with him. Her suffering will be no more.  It’s in our sights now, Sisters… the Coming of the Blessed End.”

     Forty years I’ve been inviting Clyde to come to Jesus and now he decides to pick up the cross? A wooden cross to boot – big as a shrunken head, dangling from his neck on a canvas string. Took to whittling in his ‘retirement’ and it makes me sick – picturing him there in my church, offering up prayers for his ailing wife. Couldn’t trouble himself to attend when I was singing in the choir, to drag himself away from the damn diner on a Sunday morning to sit next to me and the children in the pew. A sixty-five-year-old man with all his hair and teeth must look like a T-bone steak to those widowed wolves. Setting up shop by the telephone, waiting for news of my passing so they can ease the grieving process with their green rice casseroles and powdered cleavage.

     But they don’t know Clyde like I do. When he’s not fielding calls from female parishioners, he’s stroking that ferret our boy dropped off with his laundry load three years ago. Unnatural creature’s Clyde’s pet now. He holds it by the throat and works his way down, pumping his fist the length of its spine, squeezing it like a tube of toothpaste. I tell him the thing can’t possibly be enjoying that treatment and that its eyeballs are likely to come squirting out of its head if he keeps on the way he’s going. Then he gives it up for awhile and paces the upstairs hall. Runs down the steps to the landing by the front door, pivots, peels out in his tube socks before sliding down the second set in a panic – like he’s in a big rush to catch the rinse cycle. But I know it’s so he can sneak into the garage and puff on a cigarette every other minute on account of him thinking I lost my sense of smell along with my hair.

     We quit while Jimmy Carter was in office. Decided it was best for the children but at least it gave us a reason to stand close together. To be comforted by the taste of one another’s mouth. Within that cloud of smoke, words came easily. There was a tenderness coming off the flame he held first to my face and then his own. In clean air, there was always something else to do. A pot to scrub. A furnace to repair but I never stopped missing that first pull on my lungs or the connection that cloud created.

     Now I’m too weak to climb the stairs, he thinks it’s a fine time to recapture the days of youth.  “I ain’t dead yet,” I call down to him from the living room, where I have been assigned to the sofa because I refuse to live out my days on a rented hospital bed. “I know what you’re up to. If you have to smoke, do it in here. Don’t sneak around like a silly child.”

     But he won’t smoke indoors. Our girl’s allergic. Sometimes I think he forgets she’s been down there straddling the Carolinas since college – shacked up now with that sorry excuse, Carl. They don’t visit much. She’s a great one for turning green in the car, especially now she’s growing our first grandbaby inside her. But Clyde’s hoping. Every time a car door shuts or opens, he bolts to the window like a prisoner of war, like a soldier who’s been left behind.

     I can’t blame him – for that. These days, I look more like a whoopee cushion than a woman: flaccid from the neck up, bloated in the middle. My insides bulge and shift. My hair, except for a few optimistic sprigs sticking out at the temples, is all but incinerated. My pants are too tight and my sweaters are too baggy. I wear Clyde’s shapeless white tee-shirts and spit-up on them hourly. I can’t eat or sleep and there’s a considerable amount of moaning. But there’s Annie to keep me company. She’s been with me from the beginning – never once shuddering at the sight of me, which is more than I can say for most people.  All I’m asking is to be laid out with her on top of my head. Clyde says he’d sooner put me in the frosted wig. That Annie’s seen better days. Her tattered rim makes me look unkept, and he doesn’t want people thinking I’ve been neglected. I couldn’t give two figs what he’d sooner see. The wigs make my scalp itch, and Annie’s my only true friend.

     “It’s not me,” I tell him.

     “Of course it won’t be you. You’ll be ascending into the bosom of Abraham.”

     Clyde knows that’s not at all what I mean and that I’m too tired to argue.  But I still have time to win my case for Annie. Two months at least – doctor said. Should make the most of it and rescue the old pictures from my closet. Separate the memories for the children: me with the boy in his little league uniform; me with the girl in her cap and gown. Most days though it takes all my strength just to lie in our living room. Write in the diary. Swallow the painkillers so I can roll over and reach to rub Annie’s ribbon between my fingers. Watch the sun stream carelessly through the window panes.

 

     “A waste of energy.” That’s what I tell Clyde and some of the men from church as they heave ho in with the new stove. “And watch you don’t scratch up the floor. Our boy laid the woodwork himself.”

     Two of the burners on the old stove hadn’t worked in ten years. I finally convinced Clyde to replace it – and while he was at it, to add on a double-oven and cherry wall cabinets – and no sooner did he have the old veneer at the curb, exposed wires hissing from the sockets – my treatments stopped working.

     “You took too damn long,” I moan from the sofa. “Leave it.” Clyde ignores me. Goes about waving his arms, directing the men with the stove.  “I said, leave it!” I throw a can of ginger ale at his head. I miss of course, but I manage a mess for him to clean. Clyde picks up the can and apologizes to the men. His face is burning with shame. “Don’t you apologize for me,” I tell him. “You’re the one to blame.”  And just as I’m about to whip my bed pan into the kitchen, Sandy comes out of the bathroom carrying a Dixie cup full of pills.

     “Simmer down, Edie,” she whispers and takes Old Annie from the end table, props her on my head. “Or I’ll give you an enema in front of all these men.”

     It’s gotten to where I need to hear the ding dong of the doorbell. Sometimes I imagine I hear it when I don’t.  I know when the bell dings it means Sandy’s standing on the other side with the meds, a bag of blue-skies in her hands. She’s about my age – somewhere at the end of the middle – but sturdy. Sandy takes fine care of me. I don’t worry she’ll spin me off onto the thread-bare carpeting when she changes my sheets. When she tells me to simmer down, I listen. I trust she’s speaking on behalf of my best interests. She wants me to live – unlike some other people around here.

     Funny thing is, as long as I feel like death, I know I’m still a ways from its doorstep.  Mother had been spitting up blood and sucking on the oxygen for months. Too weak to squeeze back when I gripped her bony hand, let alone climb out of bed to wash herself or boil a kettle. One morning I arrived to find her vacuuming crumbs from the toaster oven. She roasted a chicken and insisted on showing me (again) how to properly mash the potatoes. That night she went to sleep and never woke up.

     Reminds me of the day my girl was born. How I washed and ironed all of Clyde’s uniforms before noon, not knowing that by supper I’d be shaking from the hormones, pressing that girl to my breast. Watching her bend into a rainbow when she yawned.    

 

     Lost track of the days. Last thing I remember, it was my birthday. Rain fell in chards against the hickory, chiseling away at its shaggy bark. I could hear crows at the curb, cawing and pecking over the trash. I was dripping with sweat and dying of thirst. I peeled back the sheets and steadied myself to stand. Told Clyde I needed to get dressed. Wanted a strawberry milkshake and I was going to drive myself. We wrestled and Sandy wedged herself between us, sticking me with a needle in the backside.

     But it must have been worse than that because today the house is clean. Clyde’s an angry cleaner.  And since I’ve been awake, he’s barely spoken a word. All I know is I was having the most wonderful dream. I was dancing with our grandbaby, my long red hair tickling his cheeks. He was cooing and gurgling and Joni Mitchell was singing about California and before I knew it, I was sitting beside that man in church again. Feeling a thrill each time his knee gently rubbed against mine. Twenty years and I can still feel the pulp of his lips on my lips, the warmth of his chin on the back of my neck. 

     Clyde walks past me on his way to somewhere else. He doesn’t even pause. I might as well be a cactus. “Guess what, Clyde? I’ve seen our grandbaby. It’s a boy, and he’s got red hair. Can you believe it? Finally a child who looks like me.” He shakes his head like he’s considering talking to me, but before he has time to respond, the door bell rings.

     “Edie…” Clyde calls up to me with his nicest, nicety-nice voice.

     “Yes, Dear…” I figure it’s Sandy. She must be laughing her face off out there. “What is it, honey pie?”

     “The Reverend’s here. He’s stopped by to pay us a visit. Wants to know if it’d be alright he comes up for a while.” 

     The Reverend?  Who called him? I’m feeling fine. I’m just fine.  “The Reverend?” I shout-whisper down to him in disbelief.

     “Cheese-n-rice, Edie!”

     “Well – get rid of him.”

     “No Ma’am.” I can tell he’s serious so I reach for Annie, but she isn’t on the bed-side table. The Reverend is half-way up the steps and I don’t want him to see me like this. I rip off the neckerchief I’m wearing as a bib, shine it up on the sheet, and tie it to my head – leaving just enough time to drag my tongue across my teeth.

     “Father. So nice of you to stop by,” I say.  The Reverend would have to know that when I’m in my right mind, I’m fully aware of the fact that we are Presbyterian. And I am in my right mind today – for once. But I don’t want him to feel he’s wasted his afternoon on the trip, so I give him my best far-off stare; dial up the delirious a notch.

     “You look well, Edie.”

     “Sure I do, Father. I’m basking in the glow of your presence.” He loosens the knot on his scarf. Pulls a tissue from his sweater pocket. “Would you like a glass of tea, Father? Clyde – run get Father a glass of tea.”

     “Okay, Edie. OK. If the Reverend wants a glass of tea…”

     “Don’t trouble yourself there, Clyde. Some water would be just fine, a splash of lemon if you have it.”

     “I’m glad to see you Father. A little surprised, to be sure. I’m sorry I haven’t been at services lately. You understand, don’t you, Father – given the circumstances? But I’ve been meaning to call you. There’s some Psalms I’d like you to read – you know, when it’s time. What’s that one I was telling you, Clyde? The one where the three strangers come to visit Abraham and Sarah. Turned out two were angels and one was Jesus…”

     “That’s not a Psalm, Edie. It’s a parable, from Genesis I believe. Reverend?”

     “Parables don’t have names in them, Clyde,” I say. “Come on, what was that one? The sheep and the goats…the rich man and his dogs licking the beggar’s sores? I know it. I just can’t remember.” Clyde says something under his breath and the Reverend rustles the brown paper bag next to him on the Lazy Boy. “What Clyde? What? Speak up,” I say. “You’re mumbling again.”

     “I said you can’t know something and forget it at the same time. Either you know it or you don’t.”

     “Oh. I see. Maybe I should’ve said I knew it. Would that please you, Clyde? If I change the tense of the verb?”

     “I don’t care how tense the verb is. You can’t know it and forget!”

     The Reverend makes like a referee with his arms and says, “I brought you something. It’s a birthday present. Hope you don’t mind it’s late.”

     “Mind? Clyde, come sit down and let’s have a look at what Father’s brought me…Really, it’s so kind of you to come bearing gifts. The last thing I was expecting…Oh. How lovely – a new hat.”

     “Little birdie told me you’d been needing one. Truth be told, the Mrs. picked it out. Said it brought her to mind of you.” 

     Clyde gets up and walks back into the kitchen. He’s fingering his back pocket, fondling his smokes.

     “It was awfully kind of you to think of me. Trouble is I already have a hat. Isn’t that right, Clyde? Where is Annie? Did you carry her down with the laundry by mistake? My husband’s become a regular domestic, Father. Did you know that? You ought to see him in my apron. Don’t just stand there, Clyde. Bring me Annie.”

     “Can’t,” he says pacing, looking down. “Don’t have it.”

     “For pity’s sake, Clyde, go find her.”

     “The hat’s gone. I pitched the ugly thing. A man can only bear so much.”

     “What’s that got to do with anything? What you can bear?”      “You were calling his name. You were crying out for the arms of that man!”

 

     Clyde disappears into the hallway and the Reverend and I sit in silence. It’s all I can do to suck air. Run my hand over the place where she should be. My Annie, my beautiful Annie. I lift my legs and slide off the sofa, kneel beside it and weep. The Reverend says Clyde’ll come around. He’ll consider the state of mind I’ve been in. The pain and the mood-altering medications, but the last thing I care about now is Clyde coming around.  What I want is Annie. I need Annie.

     The Reverend fidgets with his scarf. Suggests I not upset myself further. Instead I grab his water glass and hurl it at the white wall. Just then Clyde slams open the bedroom door and storms the living room. He throws Annie onto the floor next to me. I don’t reach for her. Afraid I’m hallucinating again. Worried I’ll go for her and she’ll disappear like sand through my hands.

     “Take it,” he says. “Take the one thing I’ve got left. Just bury it down there in the dirt where I can’t be near to it – Jesus, Edie – there’s bound to be some of your hairs stuck to it-”

     “Oh, Clyde-”

     “No, forget it. Go on. It means more to you than anything – that’s clear as crystal. Take it already!” He bends to pick up Annie but falls to the ground in pieces first. While his face is buried in his hands, I dust Annie across my cheek. I return her safely to the end table then I go to him. I am surprised at how nimbly I move. How strong as if I could lift a bus from his broken body. I rock him like one of the children – his head cradled in my arms until the sound of the door closing behind the Reverend jars us apart.

     “Where’s the fire?” I joke because it’s the only way I’ve ever known to go on living. Clyde says nothing. We both say nothing.

     The clock chimes five, and I wonder what’s in the freezer. I feel like I could eat the couch cushions. Chew on the china thimbles in the shadow box. I want to roll up the carpet, trap us like pigs in a blanket. Hide us in the hollows of my bones. “Please,” I finally say.

     Clyde tugs the pack of smokes from his back pocket. Slips a Pall Mall between his lips and flicks open the Zippo I gave him as a wedding present. He takes my hand and a long drag. Stares up at the ceiling and empties his lungs. Exhaling a cloud.

 

 

 

Bridgette Shade lives in Pittsburgh and teaches writing with an emphasis on social justice at Waynesburg University. Her work received First Honorable Mention in the 2010 Dana Awards and has appeared in Clapboard House, Caper Literary Journal, Compass Rose, The Oral Tradition and Voices from the Attic. She is the Fiction Editor for WEAVE Magazine.