Flumes Vol. 4: Issue 1, Summer 2019 | Page 38

By Christmas the visits to 1000 Park ceased. Annette announced that we were broke and alone. She downed increasing numbers of pills to help her sleep. She took to her bed, emerging only for her thrice-weeklyappointments with her psychiatrist. MR was given the boot, and she received no visitors except her internist. The double doors between her room and the short hallway to mine were always closed.

That winter I was more alone than in Boston. I missed my school on Marlborough Street. I missed the sounds of music from the Victrola and grown-ups drinking in our big living room. I missed Lena. And I missed Rex, who neither wrote, nor called, nor came. Nor, as my mother was quick to tell me, did he send the $50 per month he had agreed to contribute toward my support in exchange for freedom from married life and me.

* * *

In May, just after my eighth birthday, I got off the school bus at the corner of 62nd Street and Park, and there, instead of Anna Petersen, was Annette.

“I’m back,” she said, leaning against a lamppost to gather her strength, “I’m back for good.” We were both in tears as I put my scrawny arm around her slender waist, and we slowly negotiated our way back home, keeping step with each other as we had done in Boston, never walking on the cracks. True to her word, she spent less and less time in bed each day. She got up in the mornings and made me breakfast, as she had done in Boston, and spent time with me in the evenings. She even took me roller skating in the park—and insisted on roller skating herself in short-shorts, which were just coming into fashion abroad but were unheard of in the States.

The dogwoods were in bloom and the air full of promise.

THE END

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