Annie Times Four

After he and the boys leave, Annie, all cried out, continues to lie on the bed, staring at the ceiling and replaying that film of those days so long ago in her head. She opens the door and enters that dangerous section of her mind, the one that she has tried to shut off with a huge “Do Not Enter” sign for so much of her life, because it just opened too many other doors, and led to too many other questions, questions that she did not have the answer to. She had never quit missing Autumn, missing that little loving and warm baby growing inside of her. From the very beginning she had felt Autumn -- for she knew even then that she was a little girl -- inside her, bonding so closely with her, the thread of their souls dancing together, weaving an intricate, beautiful pattern in this multi-hued fabric of her life. As she wondered what Autumn would look like with the little diamond earrings twinkling from her earlobes, her mind wandered back to Dan and that day her life started spinning out of control.

The phone was ringing and Annie hurried to get it. She had spent the night at Gail’s and was just walking in the kitchen door and setting her stuff on the counter when it started ringing. She rushed to answer it before anyone else could, and was delighted when she heard Dan’s familiar voice on the other end. After asking what she was up to, and how it went at Gail’s last night, he asked if he could see her that Saturday morning. She was nervous and she did not want to ask her mom if he could come over, sure her mom would answer with her dad’s often repeated litany about how the girls were not allowed to have boyfriends until they were 15 years old, and how she was almost a year shy of that magical date when she would somehow be grown up enough to warrant a boyfriend. Then Dan reminded her of the obvious, which was just exactly who did she think her mom thought she was talking to every night on the phone? She could certainly see the reasoning in this; after all, their house was not a forty room mansion with extension phones in every room where she could hide out and talk in private, with no one even knowing she was on the phone. It was a fairly typical ranch style house for the early 70’s, and the phone was smack dab in the middle of the kitchen -- fastened to the kitchen wall, with about a two foot cord between the receiver and the base -- the kitchen, which was the most used room in the house, the common gathering place, with everyone talking in it or walking through it. It would stand to reason that her mom probably did know who she was talking to each night, that her mom probably did know that she had a boyfriend. So she told Dan to give her an hour to build up her courage, and then call back.

When Dan called back a little over an hour later, giving her the extra time to work up that courage, excited about the possibility of seeing her, he happily asked her how it went. Was the answer the yes he had been waiting for? No, no. Her dad got wind of her plans and put a stop not only to that Saturday morning’s plans, but to all of her future plans with Dan. He was not allowed to call anymore. She was not allowed to see him, or any other boy, unless it had to do with baseball or something of the sort, no more boyfriend calls. No more Dan calls.

“But,” she whispered into the phone as she was telling him the news “I will be able to see you at the basketball games.” Only that was not the case because there were no more basketball games scheduled between their schools. Just as they got started, it seemed, they were over. Annie and Dan were no longer. She could no longer see Dan or even talk to him on the phone. She was crushed. How could her dad be so mean?

She stomped back to her bedroom and closed the door. Pauline was standing in front of the mirror taking rollers out of her hair so Annie moaned to her about how mean her dad was. Pauline responded that, like usual, she just did not get it. She should have figured out if it was a good time to ask, instead of just barging in there and asking. Annie retorted that she did not know her dad was home, last she heard, he was going to be gone a few more days. Pauline, her superiority clearly showing, told her that he had called earlier, when Annie was still at Gail’s, to say his business was completed. He was coming home. Just my luck, Annie thought, he walked in the door just as I was asking Mom. What am I supposed to do, get a weather report? Find out if the skies are sunny or if there are tornadoes looming? If she knew her dad was going to be home, she sure would have known about the tornado watch – or was that a tornado warning? – and she would have asked at some later date, when the weather was a whole lot sunnier and more conducive to the changing seasons of Annie growing up and having a boyfriend.

Annie moped around the house for the next few weeks, mad at her dad’s idiotic rules about the girls and dating. After all, Pauline was only 14 and was not to be 15 for a few months when she started to date. How did that happen? Just because her dad knew his dad and liked the guy? Was that it? She continued moping around and being mad at her dad for quite a while, until the moping got depressing and the being depressed got sickening. Besides, somewhere along the line, life got in the way and after a few months, it was summer, and who wants to mope around and be depressed all summer long? It was not that she forgot Dan, she most certainly did not, but she did not want to be sad all summer long either, so she tucked him away in a special place in her heart, that place reserved only for Dan, where only Dan could be.

What a fun and carefree summer it turned out to be! Now that she was done with elementary school, she was not a kid anymore. High school was right around the corner. She felt like she was a true teenager and on the way to something so special, and though she couldn’t define what that something special was, she just knew she would be covered with it.

High school. She could not wait, but yet, she could. She had to admit, if only to herself, that she was nervous about it because the school would be so big, with so many different people. But one thing was for certain, if she ever had another boyfriend, she would make sure that her parents never knew about him. Nope. She knew the weather report for that one. Heavy fog, no visibility. She would figure out the phone thing later, or maybe they would live in a mansion with forty rooms by then, and each kid would have about five rooms to them self.

It was a summer filled with baseball, which she was to find out later they played a whole lot differently than other people. They did not want the pitcher to strike the batter out, no matter which side they played on. They wanted the batter to hit the ball! They wanted action! They wanted fun! When they were done playing baseball for the day they would try to figure who could steal how much from their parents’ liquor cabinets, and then make plans to drink it later in the night, preferably when their parents were sleeping and not in tune to the fact that their kids were not. Not even were their kids not tucked snugly in their beds, their kids were not even home, but were in the middle of whatever field looked good that night, drinking their liquor and glad their parents were not sitting up at home worrying about them.

Yes, it was a fun and carefree summer; a time spent wallowing in the easy familiarity of family and friends she had known for years, resting safely on the beach of childhood, getting ready to sail off into the gentle waters of high school and the rest of her teenage years. With all the kids at home that summer, their house was a boisterous and noisy haven with their favorite albums always on the stereo, the phone ringing and friends trailing in and out of the house.