A Small Town Dream (22 page)

“So, I stepped off the train in my hometown. My sanctuary.” He nodded his head slightly. “Soon as my feet hit the concrete of the train station, I no longer wanted to be there. Frankly, I no longer wanted to
be
.” The doctor no longer had to mask a reaction.

Annie had been seeing the Ph.D. psychologist—the one Dean Moore had recommended for anyone who wanted to continue work on their feelings about Connie Baker’s murder—twice a week since graduation, and sometime in early July, she had decided to postpone entering college until the following January. She had, as the doctor said,
a lot to process
. It was now Thanksgiving week, and they’d gone over this material before. But the psychologist asked Annie to repeat some of her feelings, because a week or so earlier, Parker Levitt’s lawyer had filed an appeal to save him from the death penalty.

“You were in a really tough place, weren’t you, Anne?”

“Yes, but it’s important that I didn’t want to be dead. I was not suicidal. I was not thinking of ending it all. Ending some, but not all.”

“You’ve said much of this before, but remind me what it was that you wanted to end.”

“I didn’t want to be a hometown girl, a daughter, a college student, somebody’s best friend, somebody everyone expected to be reliable, stable, predictable, or…” She trailed off. The doctor waited a moment. When a full minute had passed, he prompted her.

“Is there something new?”

“Actually, yes.”

“And what is that?” Annie hesitated then took a deep breath.

“I don’t want to be…
virginal
.” She felt as though the weight of the world had just dropped from her shoulders. The psychologist cocked his head.

“You’d like to lose your virginity?” She thought about it for a moment.

“Not exactly, I don’t think. More like, I don’t want to have to keep up this front of innocence.”

“It can be tiring to keep up a façade.”

“Especially in that town. I didn’t want to be who I had been—who I’d
had
to be—for eighteen years.”

“Let’s talk about Parker some more.” Annie laughed.

“I knew you were going to say that.” The doctor laughed.

“You’re on to me, Anne.” Annie smiled, then took another deep breath.

“Parker had done some damage to me. Well, a lot of damage. He hurt me in ways that could have lasted a long time. Longer than the train ride home. Longer than the following day. Longer than the month after.”

“That was a major undertaking, to visit a prison. To visit a
friend
in prison.”

“I still think about that. Often, actually.” The doctor nodded but didn’t comment. Annie had teased him about what she called Dean’s therapeutic use of silence. She smiled to herself, then continued unprompted. “It’s the thing that, when we sit around the table at Thanksgiving, and we make the rounds, everyone in the spotlight for a moment, speaking aloud what they’re thankful for. It’s hard, that moment.”

“What’s hard about it?”

“I used to, despite loving my family and the life I was living, I used to worry about failing.”

“How would you fail?”

“By not saying something...
worthy
of thanks. You know, something that everyone at the table would nod about.”

“Approve of.” A statement. Annie nodded.

“Yes, even just silent approval. I was always looking to get a high-five for my thankful.” At that they both laughed. “But that was then, stepping off the train. Being back home. That was then.”

“And now?”

“Now, I just open my mouth and what comes out is real and I am truly, truly thankful.”

“What are you thankful for?”

“I am thankful for the fact that I could have been in the absolute depths for the rest of my life but now I don’t care who nods. I don’t want the high-five any longer. I say what’s true in my heart, and it feels so good.”

“That’s’ a big step, learning that it’s OK to be honest with yourself and other people.”

“It feels so good, I feel like I’ve been saved.”

“How so?”

“I don’t mean like God or religion. I did the required church going, good girl stuff.”

“
Did
the required stuff? You don’t anymore?” Annie laughed.

“No, I go to church with my parents sometimes. But I was never as devout as I tried to appear.”

“For example…?”

“I did not believe that God actually intervenes in the minutia of our lives in this world. So, I don’t feel saved by God. Just so you know.”

“Then what saved you?”

“Realizing Paul was right, that Jack Kerouac would never have killed anyone, not even for love.”

“Did you tell Parker that?”

“I wanted to, but I didn’t think it would have any effect on him.”

“Did you
want
to affect him?”

“I have no idea. That train ride seemed far too short. When the conductor called out the name of the station, when he smiled at me with that fatherly concern and told me this was where I should get off if I was going to the prison, I wanted to say no. I wanted to tell him I needed more time. That I wasn’t ready yet.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because that was then, so of course I didn’t. I gathered my things like… Like a
good girl
and walked off the train. I still had about a twenty minute walk, maybe that would give me enough time. I hoped.”

“What did you hope for?”

“That maybe on the walk, it would all fall together, and I would know exactly what I wanted to say. I would sit down in front of Parker, say what I came to say and be free.”

“But that’s not what happened.”

“No, but it was my hope.”

“Why do you think it didn’t happen?”

“I really would have liked to talk to Dean before I went but, he wasn’t answering his phone or calling me back so, I had to go it alone.”

“Do you think Dean would have given you more courage?”

“Yes. I guess. I mean, visiting Parker was turning out to be more difficult than I had expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t really know.”

“So what did you do?”

“I stood on the platform of the train station and waited for the train to puff to life and pull away. I stayed on that platform until the train was a soundless black dot on the horizon. And then…” She trailed off, remembering. The doctor gave her a moment before prompting her, and she continued on her own. “Then, I waited an hour longer. Just standing, willing my feet to move. To walk.”

“Why didn’t you just wait for the train heading the other way and go back home?”

“I still don’t know. But, finally, after standing on that platform, being eyeballed by strangers, for over an hour and a half, my legs started to move me, and I walked toward the prison.”

“Alone.”

“Yes. Alone and still unsure of what I was going to say when I got there.”

“Do you know now what you’d have said?”

“No.”

“Does it matter?” Annie thought for a moment.

“Not really. Not anymore. And that, I think, is what saved me.”

“Not knowing what to say to Parker saved you?”

“No. Knowing that there was nothing I could say to Parker that would change anything.”

“That’s a pretty big realization. How do you fell about that?”

“I feel helpless, but I also feel…” Annie trailed off, then smiled coyly.

The doctor grinned then asked, “You also feel
what
?”

Annie Stewart smiled broadly.

“I feel free.”

The day after Thanksgiving, all Annie wanted to do was stay in her room. She told her parents she was tired, that she wanted to read, and rest, and write in her journal. She’d actually had another major breakthrough with the psychologist, but she wasn’t ready to talk about it.

“I just need some sleep, Mother,” she said as she gently shut the bedroom door. Her mother stood frozen in the hallway, her hands feverishly worrying a dish cloth. She waited for the right words to bubble up and spill out. She stepped forward, slowly placing her forehead against her daughter’s bedroom door and touched the wood lightly with her fingertips. She silently willed prayer, healing vibrations, answers, hope, through the wood, toward her daughter.

She closed her eyes, concentrated more, pushed all that energy through the wood, through the air, to her baby girl. Then she had turned to go when Annie spoke through the closed door as though her mother had spoken her thoughts aloud.

“Thanks for understanding. I love you, Mom.”

***

Late in the afternoon on Thanksgiving Saturday, Annie stepped into the kitchen. She had showered and dressed in a simple white blouse, a black pencil skirt, and thigh-high leather boots. She no longer looked like a little girl.

Her mother noticed but did not react. Annie sat down at the table.

“Hungry?” her mother asked. Annie shook her head. Her mother accepted this without protest even though she felt her daughter looked thin, looked sick and really should eat.

“I think I am going to go out, Mom.” Her mother continued cooking dinner, focusing on the task in front of her. Heightening her focus so as not to spook her daughter back into her room.

“That sounds nice,” her mother said, turning from the stove for a moment. “I have heard the new Italian place in the square, next to the shoe store, is supposed to be very good.” She turned back to her cooking. “I have been told, by people who would know, mind you, that it is authentic Italian food, like in Italy.”

“I’m going to a party, Mother. He is a boy from my graduating class and he’s very smart and he’s very nice.”

“That sounds lovely.” She turned the flame down under the pot on the stove and sat down across from her daughter. She smiled but didn’t feel it.

“Annie,” she said, wondering how to start, what to say. “You seem different. Is everything okay?” Annie shrugged. “All right, answer this, are you no longer happy?” Annie thought about it. The question, the way it was phrased. Her mother didn’t ask
if
she was happy, she asked if she was
no longer
happy. It implied that she had been happy.

“Do I not seem happy?”

“No, you don’t. You don’t seem happy anymore, and I miss that. I miss my Annie being happy.”

“I
was
happy, wasn’t I?” Her mother nodded.

The effect this answer had on Annie surprised her. Instead of feeling sad, longing for the past, Annie realized that she
had
been happy and only recently, that had changed. She hadn’t been pretending about everything, as she had so feared when she left the prison, when she left Parker. “I’m going to be happy again, mom,” she said to her hopeful mother, “I am going to be happy again very soon.” Her mother let out a sigh, relieved and having full faith in her daughter.