As
soon as I sat down next to Annie she switched positions and laid
her head in my lap. I was content watching the houses standing
in their little gardens. They seemed startled, as if the train
had interrupted them in an act of privacy. I was happy thinking
of the people inside having something to eat or watching television.
As we passed one house, joined in an endless series to others exactly
like it, I saw a young woman squeeze a full-sized double mattress
through her window. It snapped open in the air and landed
soundlessly on the patio. She leaned out and looked down on
it and then we sped past out of sight. I once read that moments
like these define modern human existence. The world passes
at such a rate it is almost impossible to know anything for certain.
For every action witnessed, any number of details or gestures go
unseen that make it impossible to decide what an action really means.
Was the house on fire? Was she a prisoner in need of a soft
landing for her escape? Had she discovered a betrayal that
had taken place on that disgusting mattress? Or, did the mattress
simply need getting rid of and why bother carrying it down the stairs?
I was concerned by the possibilities. It is far more reassuring
to imagine simple lives passing behind darkened windows. I
was content with this thought until I looked down at Annie again.
This was the moment I have alluded to. She had fallen into
a deeper sleep; her skin had slackened, vibrating partially from
the motion of the train. Her lips were parted, her eyes held
effortlessly closed. She was truly asleep and I was horrified.
The usual competence and energy in her face, the privacy, was nowhere
to be found. I hardly recognized her. I could see into
her open mouth, her crooked teeth, the velvet ribbon of tongue and
the dark cave entrance of her throat. I suddenly felt overwhelmed
by the thought that everything would not be all right. Terrible
things could happen to such a face, I decided. I put my hands
around her chin and her forehead and tried to hold her still, but
it didn't help. I had to wake her.
She blinked and looked
up at me without recognition and then only slowly, she began to
look awake. "What is it?" she asked, glancing up
at the window.
The man sitting across
was now watching us. When I returned his gaze, he frowned
and looked out again. "What is it?" she repeated.
"What's the matter?" She looked up at me with alarm.
"You looked so..."
I paused. I didn't know how to say it. I felt really
very emotional. "I don't want anything terrible to happen
to you." The man looked at us again and let out a small,
incredulous chuckle. Annie reached up and awkwardly cupped
my chin in her palm.
"Don't worry,"
she said. She was being kind, although she seemed irritated
to have been woken. She moved her hand back and forth over
the stubble on my jaw until her grip slowly slackened as she drifted
back to sleep. I shook her once more and she emerged again
with that same expression of underwater horror. "What?"
she asked.
"I'd like to marry
you," I stuttered and glanced up at the man sitting across
from us. His hairless eyebrows rose above his pink face.
She looked at me for a
long moment. Her face did not change from one second to the
next and then she put her small hard hands on the back of my neck.
She smiled, but suddenly tears bubbled up and overwhelmed her expression.
They were tears of joy, she explained, but she looked miserable.
She pulled my head towards her and kissed me. I cannot be
sure if it was my breathing or perhaps Annie's, but I think the
man might have let out a sigh before turning back to the window,
to the landscape that had been replaced by the first dreary neighborhoods
of the city.
"Do not be a fatalist,"
said Maureen when I told her this story. "Your father
is a fatalist, it's simple-minded." Although she did
not say so, it is also un-American.
I had called her to tell
her that Annie and I were engaged. Maureen wanted to know
if I was in love with Annie and I said that I was. She asked
me how I knew and I recounted the story, exactly as I just have.
She said I had it all wrong. "Love," she told me,
"is not fear of what you might lose."
"Have you never felt
that you had something that it would just kill you to give up?"
I asked.
"Oh, Gordon,"
she said. "You've never felt that strongly about anything.
Not even as a child. You've always been quite self-sufficient.
If I've done anything for you, I think that might be it."
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