The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster Page 2

  Her house had six of them, and each was fairly brimming with clothes that were either hung from or draped over every conceivable surface, since Annie was better with piles than hangers. And while she had the usual assortment of distressed jeans, cashmere sweaters, and Doc Martens typical of women her age, they were relegated to a single closet in the master bedroom to make room for her prodigious collection of vintage attire—corsets, flounced petticoats, crinoline, bustles, hoop skirts, and tea gowns, though she favored long sateen and velvet dresses of a cut popular at the turn of the twentieth century that, while clinging tightly to her neck, accentuated her figure.

  Annie adored Victorian clothing. And while she usually bowed to modern convention when, say, grocery shopping or hitting the gym, she could be seen, more often than not, sitting in a café or walking through a park looking like a ghost from another age.

  And speaking of age, determining Annie’s would have been an aggravating exercise. If asked, she might respond that she was “twentysomething,” but then again, she might not. She’d consider the question impertinent. And the closer she crept to the “thirty” side of “twentysomething,” the more impertinent she’d consider it. But she was undeniably lovely, a fragile beauty, possessing a face that looked as though it had been lifted from a cameo.

  She had honeypot eyes—the kind that could warm you from head to toe with a glance—and a smile to shame a politician. Her long auburn hair was often tied up in a bun that no one seemed to notice was a century out of date, but everyone who met her agreed she was a beautiful woman, made all the more so by her curiously clever turn of phrase.

  While her natural charms were obvious at a glance, to know Annie intimately, to understand what made her tick, required two additional pieces of information. First, she possessed a rather obscure talent, having the almost singular knack for maintaining her bone china without chips, cracks, or breaks. Indeed, the set she inherited from her godmother—a remarkable woman who insisted on being called Auntie Liza—lacked a single flaw, if one weren’t to count its outright ostentation.

  The second thing, perhaps a bit more relevant than the first— though Annie would argue the point—had to do with her health. It was uncertain at best.The culprit, you see, was her bone marrow. It wasn’t doing its job properly, spinning out just a fraction of the necessary number of red blood cells. Only Annie and her doctor knew the long-term prospects, and that was the way she liked it, pity not being her thing.

  Her best friend, Christian, was beginning to suspect something was amiss from the little clues she couldn’t help but leave behind, however.

  Unaware that her unblemished record with all things porcelain, as well as a good many other things, was about to change, Annie emerged from the closet sporting a straw boater’s hat, complete with ivory-colored tulle. She wandered into the kitchen to grab the cup of tea she’d left steeping before heading out back to her English tea garden. Stepping through her back door, Annie froze, too dazed to notice, let alone do anything about it, while her teacup slowly slipped from its saucer to break into three large pieces and a puddle of Earl Grey on the gravel of her garden walkway, a walkway with which she was unfamiliar.

  She stared at the fragments with hardly a trace of emotion as a faint tingling stirred in her stomach and absentmindedly slipped the saucer into one of the pockets of her sateen dressing gown. Leaving the pieces of the cup behind, she numbly walked down the path. There were roses everywhere—red roses, yellow roses, blue roses, and roses in every shade in between. There were shrubs and vines and carpets of roses. Roses were draped over trellises, bubbled from planter boxes, and piled over each other in beds like parfait rings. There were roses the size of her thumbnail that grew in clusters like grapes to roses the size of a dinner plate. And, blanketing the ground as if dabbed onto a canvas by Van Gogh were rose petals loosened by the breeze.

  Annie cupped a blossom in her hand, scaring off a ladybug before she even thought to make a wish. Bewildered, she followed it down the path until she reached a picket fence bordering a wheat field. Weaving between its planks were roses as pink and pale as a baby’s cheeks, and atop it, perched on the gatepost, was a brass letter box. She glanced at it while running her hand timidly along the top boards of the fence and looked uncertainly out over the field.

  Gathering her courage with a quick intake of breath, Annie stepped through the gate and began to wade, waist deep, into the frothy terrain, pausing when she spied a little cabin on the horizon with a wisp of smoke floating from the corner of its roof. There were no cabins in San Francisco of which she was aware. But, then again, there were no wheat fields either.

  Curiosity overcame her, and Annie made a giddy dash across the field in the direction of the cabin, only slowing long enough to admire a scarecrow that bore a striking resemblance to Mark Twain. Odd, she thought, but not nearly as odd as the wooden sign with hand-painted letters that she passed a few minutes later. It read: Pawnee County, Kansas. Pop. 673. Five miles due east of Sage as the crow flies. She stored that information for future consideration and arrived breathless and dizzy at the cabin.

  Finding herself sitting in a rather undignified heap, Annie realized that, only seconds before, she’d been about to knock on the cabin’s back door. Being a quick study, she didn’t need to be taught the same lesson twice. She pondered the existence of the cabin, the garden in her backyard, the state of things in general, and made a decision. She chuckled drunkenly, dusted off her hat, and hurried home to compose a letter.

  Gazing at the brass mailbox as she opened the gate to the picket fence, and feeling a little silly, Annie gave into temptation and opened the lid. In it sat a parched looking envelope, the words Greetings, Neighbor written on its face. Prying open the seal, Annie headed inside, reading the letter with an intensity that had her lips forming the words on the page.

  Once seated at her rolltop desk, Annie tapped her pen against her front teeth, chuckled once more, and began to write…

  May 17, 1995

  Dear Miss Grundy—

  I was surprised to find your letter in my mailbox this morning, primarily because I was unaware that I owned one at all.

  Let me address my alleged trespass on your property straightaway. I say “alleged” because, from my perspective, your back forty just landed itself in my garden.

  The fact that I live in San Francisco, along with my garden, seems entirely relevant to this exchange, even if I can’t immediately explain why, and is a matter we shouldn’t take too lightly.

  There’s more, and you might want to sit down for this one, dear. It has to do with the date at the top of your letter. You see, today is May 19, 1995, for me. So, I’m left to wonder how my back door leads to your back forty with a century and half a country between them.

  Let me introduce myself properly. My name is Annabelle Aster. It’s a bit of a mouthful, so just call me Annie. I’m twentysomething (mumble, mumble), live for books, adore Jane Austen, can’t bake to save my soul, and have a collection of Victorian apparel that would make Cora Pearl blush. While I’m not working at the moment, having decided to take a sabbatical for personal reasons, I do volunteer at the food co-op in the Haight-Ashbury three days a week. That’s a start, but if there is anything else you’d like to know, simply ask.

  I understand that you’re upset. Perhaps, I should be too. My reaction, though, has been altogether different. I’m over the moon! We have a mystery here. And until I find an explanation to our shared conundrum, I will simply offer my apologies. Though for what, I’m not certain.

  Sincerely,

  Annabelle Aster

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  Again and Again

  It was a curious thing, seeing the face again. Just this Saturday, as he was staring at the surf by Crissy Field, Christian had caught a glimpse of the face on the jogging path and was instantly struck by an uncomfortable familiarity, something akin to déjà vu. The moment was quickly forgotten. He saw the face again only yesterday when he
entered the supermarket, spying it out of the corner of his eye as the automatic door opened with a pneumatic hiss. The prickly sensation returned like an itch under the skin with the rush of cold air. He hesitated, trying to get a better view, but was hurried forward by a chain of customers marching through the door like a giant ungainly centipede, its legs rippling inharmoniously beneath sweat and nylon- cotton blends.

  And as he was crossing Church and Twentieth on his way to Annie’s house, Christian saw the face for the third time. His own had been pressed, inevitably, in a book. Christian was something of a reading opportunist— science fiction, primarily. He read while he ate breakfast. He read on his lunch break. He read before he slipped off to sleep each night. He even read while crossing Church Street, ignorant of gathering rain clouds— not the most brilliant activity if his aim was survival. But Christian wasn’t a survivalist. If he was, he’d work in any field but the one in which he found himself. He worked in finance.

  Christian glanced up from his book just in time to see the face walk past. The street noises stretched, deepened, and slurred as he considered the face and struggled to determine what about it made him so uneasy. His mind kicked into hyperdrive, which had the strange effect of reducing all movement to one-quarter time. The face froze only a few feet away, an enigmatic smile directed toward him. The person who belonged to the face was wearing a T-shirt under an orange flannel button-down with faded brown corduroys. If not for his surprise, Christian would have laughed at the corduroys. If he had more time, he would have found himself tickled by the slightly off-center combination of pattern and color in the shirt and pants. But the moment, however strangely long, was still just a moment.

  The cars crawled. A hummingbird inched forward like a slow-motion sequence in a National Geographic special, its wings undulating in the exquisite fashion of a Japanese fan dancer. A dog floated upward in the park across the street, a look of pure joy frozen on its face, eyes focused on a Frisbee hovering inches from eager jaws and spinning so slowly that you could read the word WhamO on it. Then, whoosh…time repaired itself and Christian was walking all too quickly past the face with the secret smile.

  Even after the man disappeared over a hill in the park, Christian wondered about the face and why it had muscled in on his consciousness. He’d never seen it before last Saturday. Or had he? Could the face belong to a spirit of his former life converging on his present? Did it belong to a Texas transplant like himself ? That could be bad. Christian had left behind some painful memories. He loved the state of his birth, he really did. It just seemed evident to him that Texas’s rugged landscape bred equally rugged people, and having judged himself as deficient in certain qualities essential to the tall and the proud, Christian had sought sanctuary farther west.

  Regardless, the face seemed to belong to someone he should remember. But he didn’t.

  Feeling ignorant and insecure, Christian stared in the direction where the man with the secret smile had disappeared and wondered if trouble was brewing. As if in answer, a drop of rain splattered on his cheek. He glanced at the gathering clouds, all bloated and black, with a bemused shake of his head, then crossed the street, walked down the block, and trotted up the crisply painted stairs to ring Annie’s doorbell.

  “Annie?” Christian called, rapping on the door. “Annie!” He shuffled his feet and peered through the lead-glass pane, looking for a flicker of movement in the foyer.

  As usual, on the days he had tea at Annie’s, Christian had given up his customary T-shirt and jeans for khakis, a collared, shortsleeved pullover, and black lace-up shoes. It was starting to sprinkle a bit more earnestly, and he was quickly moving from damp to wet as the wind drove rain onto the front landing. He knocked, and after a moment he banged, but there was still nothing. As many times as Annie had told him that her home was his, he never felt comfortable simply barging in. It just wasn’t a “southern” thing to do. But there was nothing for it unless he wanted to fill his shoes with water. Christian took out his keys, unlocked the door, and stepped inside, picking up the daily booty scattered on the floorboards beneath the mail slot. He glanced nervously down the hall before scanning the return addresses quickly, making a mental note of one from California Pacific Medical Center.

  Tossing the stack on the console table, he walked through the foyer, shoes squeaking, and past the fainting room where local lore had it that Beverly Aster, Annie’s bodacious great-grandmother, had briefly retired to loosen her corset during a formal dinner party (as was customary then). Thinking better of it, she tossed it and a few other “inconsequentials” aside in a snit as “devices of female subjugation” and boldly strolled out to greet guests in little more than her silk undergarments. Needless to say, there had been more fainting throughout the remainder of the house than in the room designated for it that night. Christian paused before the door, recalling the story, and smiled to himself before quietly stepping in the hall to peer up the stairwell.

  “Annie…you home?” He drummed his fingers on the banister a few times before hearing a voice drift thinly through the house.

  “I’m in the solarium.”

  Christian walked briskly down the hall, slowing as he entered the living room. The grandfather clock that normally slumbered in the corner awoke to announce the hour with four tired gongs while he looked around. Despite being quite large, the room felt cozy with its oversize, overstuffed furniture and rich, dark woods. Below the enormous bay window was a built-in seat covered with a crimson velvet cushion that ran from sill to sill.

  The room’s central feature was an enormous Persian rug. It normally housed a coffee table sandwiched between a pair of matching sofas but was, on this particular day, overrun by a mound of cushions. There was also an empty wine bottle—Christian laid odds on Cabernet—a plateful of crumbs whose origins were betrayed by a bag of Pepperidge Farm Chessmen cookies, and scattered reading material, fallout from another of Annie’s latenight reading sessions.

  Christian took a breath and let it out, caught between a grin and a grimace. Though he wasn’t sure that an entire bottle of wine was good for Annie’s mysterious condition, it was her life, and there was something about the scene he found oddly reassuring. Annie was such a force of nature that it was nice to be reminded that she was also quite human. When he threatened to put her on a pedestal, all he had to do was take a quick peek in one of her closets or inside her fridge. Aside from her garden, which she maintained to perfection, Annie was, quite simply, a slob, and chaos followed in her wake. She would go on a bender from time to time, manically washing, cleaning, and organizing, but her natural state was dishevelment, and her home would soon reflect it.

  Christian had recommended more than once as he put away dishes he’d found in the unlikeliest places—he’d found a teacup inside the grandfather clock once—that Annie hire a housekeeper, but she wouldn’t budge. She was quite pigheaded about it. In fact, she was quite pigheaded about many things. But her stubbornness was balanced by her loyalty, her sloppiness by her style, and her self-indulgence by her generosity. To be candid, he found Annie’s idiosyncrasies endearing. They made her more interesting and lovable, because without them, she would seem out of arm’s reach. Perhaps that is the way of friends, to love one another for their imperfections, not despite them, he decided.

  Rolling his eyes at this awkward philosophy, Christian gathered the cushions and arranged them on the window seat. He quickly collected the saucer, glass, and reading material and was assessing the need for a vacuum cleaner when he heard, “Dawdle all you like, Mr. Keebler, but I’m sticking to the solarium.”

  “I’m cleaning up your mess,” he yelled, snatching up the last magazine. He ran into the kitchen to dump the dishes in the sink, doing a double take as his eyes wandered across the back door leading to her garden. That’s new. The thought was a charitable one, to say the least, considering the door’s appearance. Further evaluation was curtailed when Annie called out a second time, and he hurried into the next room.
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  As he closed the solarium door behind him, the doorknob came off in his hand. The thing had been broken for months, yet Annie had never gotten around to fixing it. He jammed it in place, made another mental note to get it repaired—which he promptly forgot—and turned around.

  Annie was sitting in her wicker chaise beneath a riot of plants, staring out the window with a distant expression. Her left hand was resting on her cheek, and lying beneath her right hand on the arm of the chaise was a piece of odd-looking parchment. To Christian’s surprise, Annie was still in her morning robe, and her hair, usually gathered atop her head in a chignon, was tied back in a simple ponytail.

  He dropped the Simpsons comic with which he planned to tease her and looked at his watch. “Did I… Today is Wednesday, right?”

  Still looking out the solarium window, Annie replied thoughtfully, “Yes, why?”

  “You’re, uh…” He pointed shyly, wiggling his finger in place of the words that escaped him. “Are you having one of your spells, Annie?” he asked finally.

  He’d said the word before he could stop himself, and he rolled his eyes. Spells. Annie was endlessly amused by his southern colloquialisms. She said they were part of his charm, but he was always left feeling like a bumpkin, nonetheless.

  After a quick assessment of her clothes and the impossible state of her hair, Annie wrinkled her nose, letting a flutter of laughter bubble from her throat. “No, I’m not having one of my spells, and you’re just in time.”She shifted in her chaise, adding,“I have a riddle that needs answering, and I don’t think I can do it on my own.”