pressed the heels of her hands against her aching eyes the next morning and wondered what the downside of retiring at age thirty-six would be, aside from a severe lack of funds. Terminal boredom, probably. After spending hours last night alternately worrying about personnel problems at school and worrying about Bernice, she’d fallen asleep just as the sky was turning gray and woken up with one of those headaches that was impervious to feverfew and even acetominophen.
Yesterday had been endless. Three teachers on maternity leave, an outbreak of head lice, plus the latest mandate to come down from Washington, to be translated from bureaucratese into something even her boss, with his limited vocabulary, could understand. And of course, there had been Bernie’s surprise elopement yesterday.
Annie had promised herself she’d try again to get in touch with Eddie and see if they couldn’t meet somewhere. Asia. Africa. The moon. As engagements went, hers was extremely unsatisfactory. Sometimes she wondered why she even bothered to hang on to the pretense.
In the beginning she’d done it because it was all she had, or was ever likely to have, but that was before Bernice. Before she’d spent one more in a long line of restless nights, trying to peel back the layers of Annie Summers in case there was something underneath it all—heaven only knew what—that would explain why a lifetime of doing the right thing had brought her to a point where she couldn’t think of a single good reason for continuing to do it.
Except for the year she’d broken her leg in two places and the year she’d come down with a bad case of food poisoning, she’d earned perfect attendance records at school and Sunday School, simply because it was expected of her.
Outstanding grades? She’d worked hard to earn them because it was expected of her. Graduated with honors from an all-girl college for the same reason. Camp counselor, scout leader—she’d done the whole bit.
“It’s up to you to give back to your community, because of who you are,” her father had drilled into her from the age of pigtails, pinafores and piano lessons. Dutifully, she had obeyed, without ever wondering until it was too late just who Annie Summers was supposed to be. She’d done, and she’d been, and she’d given the very best she could do and give and be, sacrificing—
Well, not sacrificing a whole lot, if you didn’t count not being able to stay out late or date the boy she’d been dying to date in high school. Not that he’d ever asked her, but he might have if she’d had the courage to give the right signals.
As if she’d even know how to send a signal. At the age of thirty-six, she was engaged to a political activist who was determined to go out and save the world from hunger and decadent capitalism before he came home and settled down to carve out his own slice of the pie. She hadn’t heard from him in almost six months. But then, Eddie had never been a very good correspondent.
Some love life. So where did she get off, trying to manage Bernie’s love affair? Telling her she shouldn’t run off and marry a man because he might try to take advantage of her? Maybe they were taking advantage of each other. Taking advantage of whatever time they had left for whatever mutual pleasure it provided. If she was still waiting for Eddie by the time she was Bernie’s age, she might even start looking around for a lonely widower herself.
“Get off my feet, you noisy old tomcat.” She kicked aside the covers, dislodging the cat who had taken up residence on the foot of her bed sometime during the night, purring his fool head off and scratching his various itches.
Bleary-eyed, she made it to the kitchen to put on the kettle for tea. Glancing outside, she saw that the rain had stopped, but the clouds still hung dark and heavy and sullen. “Story of my life,” she muttered to the cat, who had decided to wrap his tail around her ankles to see if he couldn’t trip her into falling headfirst into the refrigerator. Unthinkingly she reached down and scratched him behind his ears.
By focusing on the morning paper while she ate her standard breakfast of fruit, tea and whole-grain cereal, she almost managed to avoid thinking about her immediate problems. To put things into perspective, there was always Washington, China and the Middle East.
The phone waited until she was halfway through brushing her teeth to ring. She caught it on the forth ring and gargled, “Hewwo?”
“Annie? This is Bernice, are you all right?”
“Of course I’m all right, if you don’t count having to swallow a mouthful of toothpaste. Where are you? What happened? Do you need me to come get you?” Bernice’s old junker was inclined to be temperamental.
“Why would I need you to do that?”
“Well, I don’t know, I only thought—Bernie, it’s barely eight o’clock in the morning, what’s going on?”
“Well, now that you mention it, you could do me a favor if you’ve got time. You said you were going to call, didn’t you?”
Annie patted her bare foot and waited. Bernie’s demands were never straightforward. “It’s Saturday. I’ve got time. If you want to try and get the whole mess annulled, I’ll meet you wherever you say, and I promise not to ask any questions, all right?”
“I don’t want to get anything annulled. Besides, it’s too late for that. And believe me, Harold doesn’t need any of that Vigaro stuff, either.”
“Any what?”
“You know. It’s been all over the news since last year.”
“Bernie, what on earth—no, don’t tell me, I don’t even want to know.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, I knew you’d be like this, you always are.”
“Like what?” Annie wailed, gesturing wildly with her toothbrush. “I’m not being like anything, just tell me what you called about, please!”
“You’re just waiting for a chance to say you told me so, aren’t you? You’re just like your father always was, you know that?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to deny it, but this was not the time. “Bernie, what are you calling about?” she asked with as much patience as she could muster. “Like Daddy? I’m nothing at all like Daddy. Daddy was the sweetest, kindest man alive.”
“Maybe, but he could be a real pain in the rear end.”
“So can I. What’s your point, Bernie?”
“It’s about Harold’s boy.”
“Harold’s what?”
“You met him yesterday. Tucker. He was here the same time you were, don’t you remember?”
“I remember,” Annie snapped. She remembered all too well. The memory had a lot to do with why she’d spent so many fruitless hours peeling back the layers of Annie Summers, trying to find out if there was anything worth salvaging under all those years of conditioning.
“Yes, well, Harold’s been trying to call him, but he doesn’t answer his phone, and—”
“You want me to go see if he’s all right? Bernie, have you lost your mind?”
“Oh, he’s probably all right—I mean, why wouldn’t he be? But the thing is, Harold forgot his blood pressure medicine, and he can’t remember Tucker’s mobile number, and it’s not listed,
