Anna

ANNA

Anna sat quite still in her black, straight-backed chair, the picture of timeless dignity, strength and purity.Anna was an enigma. She was excruciatingly old, so old that her skin should have looked like it had been painted on the back of a dried-out canvas. But it was as fresh, translucent and as free of blemish as her soul.

For decades Anna had been expected “to die any day now.” Yes, they had expected it, day-after-day, but year-after-year she had disappointed them. In some ways, Anna regretted disappointing them. She had been raised in a strict Episcopalian home in which living up to the expectations of one’s family was almost a sacred trust. Surviving so long had not been Anna’s idea. Her own mother, Martha, had seemed ancient to Anna as a young girl. Anna had thought she—Anna—would never live so long; her mother was 29 at Anna’s birth.

Anna had been born old—wrinkled, wizened, slightly blue. She had survived her bouts of pneumonia and bronchitis in the cradle of her slave-nanny wet-nurse’s gentle arms, rich breast milk and fiery chest poultices. A middle child, she had been nurtured in an incubator of compassion, sibling rivalry and, when well, benign neglect.

Anna’s feet rested on a small brocade foot stool. She gazed at the toes of her black leather kid-skin boots, protruding demurely from the hem of her heavy skirt. She wriggled her toes imperceptibly. The boots were a bit snug, but she couldn’t reach the button hook to loosen the dozen buttons that secured them. “It was nice of them to bring the stool and chair, but my legs do get quite stiff with sitting,” Anna mused. “But better than leaving me propped up in a corner or against a wall. I am far too frail and tired to stand.”

These days Anna travelled occasionally but spent most of her time in museums – the National Museum of Luxembourg Palace, the Musee d’Orsay, the Louvre. Today it was the De Young Museum in San Francisco. She loved the clean, open spaces, perfect temperature and the quiet murmur of voices—the very antithesis of the dreadful pawn shop that Jemmie had left her in that time. She had been feeling so poorly that day, but then he came to fetch her and, thank the Lord, she’d never been to such a place again.

“Dear, Jemmie. What a tizzy he was in when I sailed from North Carolina and arrived, unannounced, at his London flat. He didn’t think I knew about his mistress—he rushed her off to a nearby hotel just as my carriage pulled up—but a mother knows about these things, has a sense of it.”

A commotion in the center of the gallery drew Anna’s attention. Her eyelids fluttered in admonition of the young couple that had come flip-flopping into the room. They draped themselves onto the settee and pulled notebooks and iridescent pens out of their bulging backpacks. Their artistically tattered blue jeans—his baggy, hers, skin-tight—their tattoos, pierced ears and lips and multi-colored hair, marked them as high school students. They giggled, chomped their gum and compared the pictures in the brochure they shared to the paintings on the walls. Occasionally, they would arise with bodies all a-tangle, stare closely at one painting or another, and scrawl a note on the brochure. They studiously ignored the old woman sitting in the chair across the chamber from them.

A large pink bubble emanated from the girl’s brightly rouged lips. It popped, startling Anna. “Gracious me. I’m not deaf, you know. Such manners. And how they do paw each other. They think we old people don’t know passion. H-mph. I could tell them a thing or two. Why I was younger than they are—just a wisp of a girl—15 or so as I remember. George.” How she had adored him, a West Point man. A man he was, too, 16 years her senior. But first he chose to marry Anna’s best friend. The poor creature died after giving him three children. Then George came to his senses and realized Anna was all grown up. What a life they had. They were off to Russia so George could build the railroad for the Czar. They had five children of their own in addition to his first three. “Passion, indeed.”

Anna loved Mother’s Day with all the children frolicking about. “Especially that day in 1934.” What a celebration that had been. How special she had felt. She cut her eyes at the two posturing and posing in front of each painting. “Now those two. They look like Nobody’s children.”

Anna’s arthritic fingers twitched in her lap, neatly draped with her last presentable gown. “Look at their raggedy clothes.” She smiled to herself. “I’m embarrassed to admit that I have a hole in the heel of my left stocking. I should tend to my darning and not spend my hours sitting here.” She clutched a lace handkerchief. She had tatted the hanky herself. She sighed faintly. It was the last of her really pretty things—the hanky and her lace bonnet. She would have reached up to pat her head covering but refrained out of modesty. “It is rather risqué, the way I’ve let the ribbons hang loose. I really must tie them up as soon as I’m before a proper looking glass.” Anna observed the young woman’s tight, short bodice and low-slung trousers that left the girl’s bosom and midriff exposed in an unseemly manner. Anna shifted her foot slightly and tugged minutely at her skirt to show a bit of ankle.

Anna had been “somebody” in her day and was married to somebody important, too. She and George had lived well and entertained lavishly. She had corresponded with a multitude of friends and had her own embossed, monogrammed stationery. Later, Anna had been a gracious hostess while living with her son, Jemmie, in London. His friends had been duly impressed with Anna’s North Carolina charm, hot biscuits, fruit preserves and buckwheat cakes. ”My palate has dulled but a stack of those cakes could still bring tears to my eyes,” Anna confessed.

The young couple elbowed their way through the crowd. She heard the girl grumble, “Why’s everybody staring at us, huh? We got as much right to be here as the next bum.”

Anna tried to turn her head. She wondered if the young people would look at her – not the way they had glared at the throng of people but in a friendly, respectful way. “Nowadays, youngsters assume our spirits are reflections of our mortal, crumbling clay and turn away in abhorrence. They don’t seem to know that we old people still feel pretty inside and yearn for the small niceties of life.”

Here and there in the gallery, parents dragged their resisting children from one exhibit to another. Crowds edged near Anna, pointing and gesturing, and speaking in loud whispers. “Such a din,” Anna said to herself.

The young couple kept apart from the other visitors, and Anna. The old woman missed having her family about her. “I loved my family, but I’ve outlived everyone I knew – husband, my dear and esteemed friend James Gamble, all the children, stepchildren.” Anna had sat by the bedsides of over 20 of them, waiting for the good Lord to do his will. The people who moved her chair from time-to-time were relations, too, but her bloodline had been so diluted over her life’s span that she didn’t recognize kin anymore. She heard the couple laugh. “I suppose those young people even share a drop or two of my Carolina blood. Here they come.”

Anna’s intelligent dark eyes shone in the muted light of the museum hall. “I wish I could raise my head a bit to see them better. Why are they peering so? You’d think I had freckles on my nose.”

The young woman’s stubby finger pointed to a spot above Anna’s head. “Look here, Rick. Here’s that butterfly thing.” She cocked her head to one side. “She doesn’t look so very old, does she?” As she scrutinized Anna’s classic features, she lightly stroked her own cheek, made flawless by the judicious use of cosmetics. The girl reached out as though to touch the old woman’s face but pulled away.

If Anna could have blushed, she would have. “I’m very proud of my complexion. I was famous once you know.”

The girl smiled and nodded. “Reminds me of Grandma.” She toyed with the antique locket that hung about her neck. “Grandma’s older than the hills; I don’t think she’s ever gonna die. Least ways, I hope not.” She leaned against the young man’s shoulder, still looking at Anna. “Rick, you think we’ll ever be that old?”

Anna’s eyes gleamed warmly. “You just might, child. We’re more alike than you may think.”

The girl poked at the brochure. “It’s called ‘Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1.’ Duh. That’s original.”

Anna grimaced. “Not everything was grey and black, my dear. You should have seen that pair of red garters George gave me.”

Rick read from the pamphlet. “James McNeill Whistler immortalized his mother, Anna Matilda—that’s the same as your name, Mattie—Anna Matilda Whistler, in his 1875 portrait which he called ‘Arrangement in…’ He looked blankly at the girl. “Mattie, what’s ‘immortalized’?”

Mattie punched her companion on the shoulder. “You live forever, stupid.” A frown creased her forehead. “Like that could ever happen.”

If the youthful pair had been the least observant, they would have noticed Anna’s stern breast heave a wistful sigh.