Evan Hunter - The Moment She Was Gone

“I remember, yes,” I said.

“Augusta’s father gave us a thousand dollars as a wedding gift.”

“Yes?”

“Annie stole it.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Andy, please, she stole it.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Believe it, don’t believe it. Kelly saw her putting the envelope in her hand bag.”

“How old was Kelly? Eight, nine? You took the word of...”

“She was ten. And she’s my daughter.”

“Be that as it may.”

“What’s that supposed to mean, Andy?”

“It means some ten-year-old kid tells you...”

“My daughter, Andy. Not some ten-year-old kid. My daughter told me she saw Annie slipping that envelope in her hand bag. And I believed her. Period.”

“Fine. What’s this got to do with Annie hearing voices?”

“I kept wondering why she’d done such a thing. Annie? Sweet little Annie who used to sit on Daddy’s lap when he read to us? How could she steal a thousand bucks from her own brother on his wedding day?”

She didn’t, I’m thinking. You want an answer? Okay, she didn’t. Your daughter was wrong. Or she was lying. Or maybe both. Annie is not a thief!

“Augusta refused to have her in our house after that, can you blame her? But I kept wondering. I mean, this was Annie, my little sister. How could she do a thing like that? Then when she got into that mess in Georgia, I started thinking about it all over again. Maybe because she’d stolen a thousand bucks...”

“No, she didn’t, Aaron.”

“Oh yes she did. And the fine in Georgia was a thousand bucks, too, some coincidence, huh? Mama paid the fine, of course. Mama always pays, doesn’t she, she never learns.”

I’m thinking, You’re the rich man, Aaron, why don’t you occasionally bail out our sister? Why do you always leave it to Mama?

“But why just a fine? She assaults a police officer, and no charges are brought? No trial? Not even an appearance before a local magistrate? Nothing? Just, hello, goodbye, thanks for visiting Georgia? So I began thinking, Gee, maybe my sister’s a thief and a liar. Otherwise, why...?”

“She’s neither, Aaron.”

“Okay, maybe just the voices are liars and thieves.”

“How do you know there are voices?”

“Do you remember the Welcome Home party Mama gave her? When she got back from the tour that fall?”

“I remember.”

“Pearl Williams was there.”

“Pearl...?”

“Who used co play keyboard with the band?” he says. “She told me what really happened in Georgia.”

In addition to the band itself, and the Gulliver family (minus Augusta, who as usual has matters to take care of in New Jersey) Annie has invited to the party some kids we knew from Ambrose Academy. There are maybe twenty to thirty people in the apartment when she announces that the band will now perform “For your delectation and elucidation,” she says, grinning, “a few select tunes from our recently concluded triumphant tour of the South. Pearl?” she says. “Guys?”

The Gutter Rats actually manage to play three full numbers before Mr. Alvarez, the super, comes upstairs to politely ask if we can tone it down a little, he’s getting complaints from the neighbors. The band is grateful for the respite. They’ve been touring all summer, and they’ve “picked their fingers to the bone,” as one of the guitar players tells Aaron. The mood in my mother’s apartment on Seventy-second Street is one of celebration and good fellowship, everyone suddenly descending on the dining room table where my mother has set out wine, and sandwiches she herself made for the occasion. My sister flits like a firefly among the members of her band and our former school mates. Aaron takes a chair alongside Pearl.

“It’s so good to meet you at last,” she says. “Annie’s told me such wonderful things about you.”

He can’t imagine Annie ever having told anyone anything nice about him, but he nods in acknowledgment, raises his wine glass in a silent toast, sips, puts the glass down on the end table beside him, and is picking up his sandwich when Pearl says, “She seems okay now, doesn’t she?”

He doesn’t know who she means.

“Annie,” she explains. “She seems to’ve gotten over what happened in Georgia.”

“Oh, yeah, that was something, wasn’t it?” he says.

“Never saw nothin like it in my life,” Pearl says, shaking her head. “Her losin it that way.”

The way Pearl tells it...

But first she takes a sip of her wine, and glances to where Annie is standing chatting with the girl who was co-captain of the soccer team before she broke her leg...

The way she tells it, there were no clues that anything might be wrong with Annie until that morning in May, in Atlanta, when she attacked the waitress.

Pearl knows, of course, that Annie has been all over the world. She never ceases telling everyone and anyone about her travels all through Europe and Asia and her spiritualistic explorations and discoveries and eventual conversion to the Tantric religion. Pearl has seen (as who could not?) the silver circlet in Annie’s tongue and the other through her left nostril and the third over her right eye, respectively purchased in Katmandu, Hong Kong, and Sri Lanka. Pearl has even seen (they were roommates, after all) the swastika tattooed on Annie’s right buttock with the mysterious words Ek Xib Chac and Chac Xib Chac straddling it in red and in black. Pearl — like my brother Aaron — believes that Annie is a trifle eccentric, but hey, man, most rock musicians are, and for a white chick, she can sing up a fuckin storm. So everything’s cool until that morning in May, when suddenly a waitress in a pink uniform in a cheap little diner in a dinky Georgia town outside Atlanta seems threatening to Annie.

Pearl isn’t even aware of it at first, she’s busy with her sausage and eggs. They were up till two in the morning, and this is now close to noon, and they’re sitting opposite each other in one of the booths, neither of them wearing makeup, Annie in a halter top and jeans, Pearl wearing overalls over a white T-shirt. This is 1986, and this is the enlightened South, and a black girl eating yellow scrambled eggs can sit at a table with a white girl licking purple jam off whole wheat toast.

But something is bothering Annie.

Aaron is listening intently now. Presumably, Pearl’s tale will lead inexorably to The Urination Incident and the real reason my sister got arrested. Across the room, one of the Ambrose girls begins giggling.

“She’s watching me,” my sister says.

Pearl looks up from her plate.

“Who?” she asks.

“Don’t look at her,” my sister whispers. “She’ll know.”

Pearl thinks she’s kidding at first. My sister does great imitations, so surely she’s doing one of her bits now, pretending to be a fugitive on the run, or an undercover detective, or whatever, her eyes darting toward the counter where a redheaded waitress in a pink uniform is sitting smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper.

“She knows,” my sister whispers.

“Knows what?” Pearl asks. “Who?”

“The waitress. Don’t look at her.”

Pearl turns to look at her again.

The waitress is not paying them the slightest bit of attention. She looks like any other waitress in any cheap roadside diner anyplace in America.

Annie is suddenly out of the booth.

She goes to the counter.

“I’m onto you,” she whispers.

The waitress swivels her stool around. She is facing a young blond girl in blue jeans and a red halter top, nineteen, twenty years old, somewhere in there, rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, standing in front of her with her hands on her hips, green eyes blazing, lips tightly compressed, hissing words through teeth virtually clenched. The waitress doesn’t know what she’s trying to say or what the hell’s bugging her.