Hunting Annabelle, page 3
“Not really.”
“Are you still experiencing the...visual phenomenon?”
She wants to say hallucination but doesn’t want to upset me. Phenomenon is the word she’s settled on and she seems proud of having come up with it, as though she invented the word just to please me and is happy it has succeeded.
“Yep,” I say.
“Well, that’s all right. We are a work in progress.”
I look out the window and twist my bracelet a little tighter.
“Have you spoken with anybody this week?”
I will not mention Annabelle. I shake my head vehemently. My hair falls down over my right eye and I let it stay there, more comfortable with part of my face covered. I let my gaze wander up to the painting of geometric shapes in black, white and primary colors. A trail of yellow polka dots runs through the middle of it like an asteroid belt. I often look at it during my sessions, trying to make it become something concrete: a deconstructed pizza, a bin of child’s blocks hurled into space, a rabbit with triangles for ears.
Dr. Shandra is talking. I try to give her my attention. “What was that?”
“Maybe you can give it a try today?”
“Maybe.”
“I want you to try. Just try. Can we agree on that?”
I shrug.
“Are you never lonely?”
I study the ripped knees of my faded black jeans. “I dunno.” “What the hell do you think?” I want to scream.
“You’re rehabilitated. It’s time to start—”
I open my mouth to argue and then snap it shut. The Bible says, “Whoever guards his mouth preserves his life; he who opens wide his lips comes to ruin.” I remember sitting on the hard folding chairs in Sunday School while the teacher rambled about the power of words and the need to use them wisely. One time when I was around eight, I remember answering my mother’s usual “What did you learn today, Sean?” with “I think the Devil talks a lot. Like a salesman. But then why do church people talk so much?” She’d stared at me for a moment, her eyes narrowing. She herself is not a woman of unnecessary words, so she didn’t ask me to elaborate. She turned away, her hand tightening on mine, and continued our march toward the car. Our life is just that: an eternal purposeful march toward my mother’s planned destination, her steps firm and single-minded, my gait bumbling as I try to catch up, knees knocking together, head scattered and restless.
Dr. Shandra clears her throat. I’ve missed a good portion of her speech.
“Are you feeling all right?” she asks.
“A little fuzzy,” I admit.
She frowns. “Is this typical for you?”
“Just since the new, you know.” I think about it for a minute. “Whatever new meds.” My tongue is heavy.
“The change in your antidepressant?”
“I dunno. I just take whatever my mom puts in the pillbox.”
She speaks to me for a little while but I’m in a vacuum. I play with my jelly bracelets, fashioning some of them into a ring-bracelet combination thing that’s going to be very difficult to remove later.
Then I get blurry for a while, I don’t know how long, and I find myself outside again on the sidewalk in front of the building, like time is a ribbon that has folded itself together and offered me a shortcut from then to now. The air is muggy and smells of exhaust. Overhead, the sun shines hot through an overcast sky, diffusing the light and sending heat waves into foggy rainbows off the grimy windshields of the parked cars that line the busy four-way street. I hold perfectly still for a long moment, racking my brain for memories of the last part of the session, but they won’t come. I hate this, losing time. I’m so tired of this. I can’t remember what it was like before the meds, but I remember feeling like my head was clear, not full of bees and smog.
I don’t have time for this. I haul myself back into reality. I have to hurry. Annabelle is picking me up in an hour.
* * *
At home, too nervous to eat breakfast, I hover around the kitchen near the answering machine. I rewind the squeaky tape and listen to a message over and over again, waiting for the doorbell to ring. The message is from my grandmother. It’s in Korean so all I catch is my mom’s Korean name, Min-Jung, and a few basic words like hello and goodbye, but the sound of my grandma’s voice reminds me of my extended family in San Francisco. She only leaves messages in Korean so I’ll know they’re not for me. She won’t even utter my name.
When my mom relocated here, she did so because she was being offered a position at the medical center in Austin. I wish we could have stayed in San Francisco. I had envisioned leaving the asylum and returning to all the things I’d missed so badly. I think I had even harbored hope that I could see my family again someday. I didn’t yet know I’d been disowned.
My grandmother will never forgive me. I understand that now. The rest of my family always does whatever she says; she’s the matriarch. Once she’s made up her mind, there’s no changing it, and she says I’ve brought disgrace on the entire family. I’d never been that close to them anyway, I suppose. My mom has an older brother who is obviously the preferred sibling. We only saw them for holidays and the occasional church event—my grandparents became Christians after World War II and are extremely religious—and even then, it felt strained and obligatory. My uncle and his family are always at my grandparents’, and my cousins speak fluent Korean. After a childhood filled with Hispanic nannies, I know more words in Spanish than Korean.
When my last nanny took the stand at my trial, she’d broken down in tears. “Sean is a good boy,” she’d insisted in trembling, accented English that still sounded like Spanish no matter how hard she and I worked on her pronunciation.
It had made me cry, too, right there with all those people watching me. I’d hidden my face in my arm and had struggled desperately and unsuccessfully to suck the tears back into my face.
I am a good boy, I’d thought desperately, sobs quaking my bony shoulders.
Afterward, when the judge dismissed us for lunch, my lawyer had squeezed my shoulder and whispered in my ear, “Well done, Sean. Well done,” and even my inner monologue felt like a manipulative, well-planned lie.
The doorbell rings.
I push Stop on the answering machine. My grandmother’s voice is cut off with a screech and a click. I inch toward the front door, sliding my feet grudgingly on the slick white tile. Through the foggy glass blocks that surround the front door, I see a person-sized shadow.
The doorbell rings again. I breathe slowly, in through my nose, out through my mouth the way Dr. Shandra taught me, the way that is supposed to calm me down when I’m feeling anxious.
The bell rings one more time. If I don’t answer it now, she’ll surely leave.
Okay, then. I grip the handle and swing it open, swathed in surrealism when Annabelle appears in all her colorful spotlessness, standing shyly on my porch with copper and shadows flickering all around her like propane flames on a windy day.
“Hi,” she says.
I nod. I can’t speak.
“Am I...is this the right day?”
“Of course. I’ll just get my stuff and be right there.” I turn around.
“Can I come in?”
“Oh.” My heart beats faster. It hadn’t occurred to me that she’d want to come in. “Sure,” I say, lingering on the sh sound. She steps in and I close the door behind her.
She stuffs her keys into the pocket of her pleated shorts. She looks at the white leather couch, the plush peach carpet, the spotless white walls. “Stylin’,” she says.
“My mother,” I explain, wondering if it makes me sound immature.
I make my way across the living room to the stairs. “I’m just gonna grab my backpack and stuff. Be right back.”
“Is that where your room is? Upstairs?” She’s following me. My heart pounds harder. This is not good—my mom would freak out—but what am I supposed to do?
“Your room is upstairs?” Annabelle repeats.
“Yeah. But...” I pause, awkward. We’re not supposed to wear shoes in here, but she clearly doesn’t take her shoes off in her own house. I don’t feel right making her do it in mine.
“What?” Annabelle asks.
“Nothing. It’s this way.” She follows me up the carpeted steps.
“No siblings?” she asks. “Just you and your mom?” Her voice echoes in the stairwell.
“Just us.”
“No dad? I’m sorry, it’s just—my parents were divorced and I’m an only child, so...”
I turn around and smile, afraid she feels rebuked. “It’s okay. No. No dad.”
“Divorced?”
“Yeah. He moved back to Korea when I was a little kid. I don’t remember him at all.”
She makes a little sympathetic noise.
“Don’t worry about it. Honestly.” I lead her the rest of the way upstairs. In my room, I hurry away from her, relieved to put some distance between us. “I’ll just be a second. Let me get my stuff.” I start organizing my pencils and then stop. Is it safe to carry pencils around when I’m with her? I study the sharp tips. I used them yesterday and it was fine. Could I...would I? I don’t think so. I pack them into my backpack.
Annabelle interrupts my paranoid train of thought. “Did you just move in or something?”
“What? No. Why?”
“It’s so empty.”
I look around, surprised. Bed, desk, dresser, bookshelf, shelf with stereo, all with the same reflective black finish. “What do you mean?”
“There’s furniture but no decorations, nothing extra.”
“It just...never occurred to me to decorate.”
“But you’re an artist.”
I consider, looking at the white walls. “I guess this doesn’t seem like my space to decorate. It’s my mom’s house. I never planned to stay here so long.”
She spots the intercom panel by the door. “Shut up,” she gasps. “You have one of these?” She pounces on it and presses the talk button. “Mission control here, what is your status?” she says in a mock-NASA voice like the one that broadcasted on all the networks a few months ago when the Challenger exploded.
I can’t help but laugh. “I don’t even know if it works,” I confess. “My mom won’t let me use it.”
“Oh my god. You’d have to disconnect it if you lived with me. My roommate would kill me.” She moves to the shelf above my bed; it’s full of matching sketchbooks bound in black leather, the regular kind you buy at Aaron Brothers. There are about twenty lined up on the right side of the shelf; the left side is full of mismatched sketchbooks from my younger days.
“What are these?” she asks.
“My sketchbooks.”
“May I?”
I hesitate. “Sure, I guess. That one on the end is fine. That fat black one.”
She rests a knee on the black-and-white bedspread and tips the one I’d indicated off the shelf with a delicate finger. She opens it to a place in the middle. “You draw people at Four Corners all day? These are all tourists?”
I shrug.
She frowns down at the page. “You write things about them here. Do you interview them?”
“No. I guess I...kind of make up life stories for them.”
“You’re incredibly talented.” She puts the book back onto the shelf and reaches for one of the smaller volumes. “Are these from—”
I leap across the room and take the book from her. I return it to the shelf. “Sorry. It’s just...those are from when I was younger. They’re more private.”
“I’m so sorry.” She’s red in the face.
“No, it’s fine. I’m sorry.”
I return to packing my backpack and she moves to my closet. She slides it open and flips through the clothes. “Do you wear all these? They don’t really look like you.”
I zip up my bag and join her. Her shampoo smells fresh and summery. It’s all I can do to keep from kissing the back of her neck.
She gives me an inquisitive look and I remember her question. “Oh. No. My mother buys me all of those. Hoping I’ll wear them. Which I won’t.” There’s a row of button-down shirts and slacks, clean blue jeans and polo shirts shoved to the side. In the middle are all my faded, ripped black shirts and jeans.
She touches an old black shirt. “She doesn’t like what you wear?”
I smile with one side of my mouth. “That’s putting it mildly.”
“She wants you to be preppy?”
“Collegiate,” I correct her, using my mom’s favorite word.
“But you don’t go to college. Or, wait. Did you already graduate?”
“I didn’t go. She’s hoping I will. My cousins are in college,” I say in my best imitation of her bossiest voice, and Annabelle laughs.
“Your mom seems controlling,” she says.
It’s such a relief to hear her say that. “She is.”
“I mean, you’re, how old?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Right. She shouldn’t be buying you clothes.”
“I’ll tell her you said that.” I smile to myself. While I think this is partly cultural, it’s nice to hear someone agree with me.
She wanders to the tightly made bed and sits on the edge with her tan legs crossed, one sneaker tapping in midair, her Keds bright white against fluffy, hot-pink socks. She looks like some fairy-tale princess who wandered in here by mistake.
I shove my hands in my pockets to stop the itching. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Why...why...” I feel my cheeks burning, which says a lot. I don’t blush easily. Finally I spit out, “I guess I don’t understand why you’re here.”
She pauses and then says, “I thought we were going to hang out today. You promised to show me all the secret passageways.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Embarrassment crawls around inside my gut.
“What do you mean, then?”
I look into her eyes. “I mean, why do you want to hang out with me? You’re—” I gesture to her metallic beauty. As though to illustrate my point, copper flames flicker through her hair like a fiery halo.
The corners of her eyes crease, like she’s trying not to smile. “I like you. You’re...interesting. I don’t know. Why does anyone hang out with anyone else?”
“I’m Korean, for one. White girls in Texas never like Asian guys.”
She feigns a gasp. “You’re Asian? I hadn’t noticed.”
I can’t help but laugh. “Shut up.”
“Actually, I had guessed Filipino.”
“I’m just tan from the sun.” I lift up a corner of my shirt to show her my pale stomach.
“Ah. Well, that’s going to be a problem. I only date certain types of Asians.” Her grin is wide now, dimpling her cheeks.
Date. She’d said date.
“Is there any other reason I shouldn’t want to hang out with you today?” she teases. “Any other physical traits you think I should, you know, really take heed of?”
“I dress weird. Especially for Texas.”
She laughs, stands up, and runs a hand along the shorn side of my head and then down the long hair that covers my eye. Her touch sets off all kinds of little alarm bells and prickles inside me. “I figured you were just really bad at shaving. Or were recovering from brain surgery.” Quickly she gets up on tiptoes and kisses my cheek. “Stop being stupid. You’re a handsome, weird guy and I like you. Can we go climb buildings now?” Playfully she pinches my feather earring and tickles my ear with it. “Come on, Sean, I need a day off. You have to take my mind off the corpse I’ve been dissecting.”
Handsome. She said handsome.
Unable to resist the giddiness that rises up in my stomach, I grin, bashful. “If you promise to tell me more about the corpse.”
“I’ll tell you everything.” She excuses herself to use my bathroom, and I look around my room with my hands buried in my pockets. She’s right. There are no posters on my wall, nothing decorative.
She comes out of the bathroom and squeezes my arm. “All right. You promised to show me secret passageways and you’re not getting out of it.” She pushes past me and trots down the stairs, leaving me to follow her with my heart and stomach and hands all tied up, itching and filled with ice and butterflies.
Chapter Three
Against all my instincts, I decide to try to enjoy the day. When will I get a chance like this again? How can I not be a little bit happy?
By now I’m fascinated by Annabelle. I learn things about her: first, she wants to be a doctor because she loves helping people. She volunteers at the campus women’s crisis line and talks passionately about the increase in sexual violence and correlation with underage drinking. She lives with a roommate in an apartment off campus. She works part-time in a restaurant called Duke’s, which is known for its employment of young waitresses who are forced into a uniform of short shorts and skimpy tank tops.
I’m surprised by this. “That doesn’t bother you? You don’t seem the type. Med student and all.”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. The men can be creepy, but the tips are way better than anywhere else I’ve worked. My family... I don’t have any money coming in from them.”
She loves horses and grew up in a small town outside Dallas. She says it’s a hick town and seems a little ashamed of it. She is an insane climber and beats me to a few roofs, which is impressive. I’m trying so hard to focus and keep time flowing forward at a normal pace. It’s exhausting, not being able to retreat into my medicated stupor, but I don’t want lose a moment of this day.
I show her all the rooftops and all the secret passageways I can, sneaking her into the paths between rides that look more like tunnels tucked between Hollywood-style building facades. We explore the secret areas where the actors’ changing rooms are and where the ambulance docks are hidden. I lead her to the service stairs that run up the back of the three-stories-high fake skyscraper in Future Land I call the High Tower, making sure no one is watching, which is just a formality. This is shift change time and the rides are manned by a skeleton crew while a new shift of workers takes over for the night.
