Evan Hunter - The Moment She Was Gone

“I am sorry, Annie. But...”

“You have some big emotional problems, Mommie Dearest. That’s why all your children consider you a threat to their happiness. Do you care at all about any of us? Do you care at all about me? Do you care at all about Mirko?”

“Mir...?”

“My Serbian friend! See? You’ve already forgotten all about him.”

“I’m sorry, Annie. I had no idea you’d found someone who...”

“Oh, stop it, will you, please? I’m not about to marry the man, so stop counting grandchildren on all your fingers and toes. Just tell me what the fuck you plan to do! I will not accept any more of your fanatical belief that I am not a sane person!”

“What would you like me to do, Annie?”

“Give me my stipend.”

“What stipend?”

“My fifty thousand dollars.”

“I don’t know what fif...”

“The stipend I’m entitled to, no strings attached, a genuine gesture of trust and good faith.”

“I can’t give you fifty thousand dollars, Annie.”

“Gee, what a surprise! I have plenty of friends from wealthy families who are given large amounts of money to do whatever they want, with the parents’ blessing and love. You give me a lousy hundred dollars a week, and you consider that a small fortune!”

“I’m sorry if you don’t think that’s enough, Annie...”

“No, it isn’t enough, and you know it isn’t!”

“... but I don’t have fifty thousand dollars to give you.”

“Then I’m leaving,” Annie says.

My mother looks at her.

“So leave,” she says.

“Sure, kick me out!” Annie yells. “You think I’m not wise to you? You give me money so you can control me. But when I refuse to do whatever you wish...”

“Go, Annie, okay?”

“... you cut off funds! That’s your way of maintaining control, you think I don’t know? There are control freaks like you riddling the entire health care system! I’m the relative who’s mentally ill? You call to tell them you have a mentally ill relative? You’re the crazy one, you controlling bitch!”

“Leave me alone, Annie. Go. Get out of here!”

“You think I don’t know all about you? I know more about mental health than anyone in this family! Heal thyself, physician! Look into your own crazy head! Hear what they’re telling you, madam!”

“Go!” my mother screams. “Get out, get out, just go! ”

“She waited till the middle of the night,” my mother says now. “I could hear her pacing in her room, and then I thought she’d gone to sleep because I couldn’t hear her anymore. But when I got up to go to the bathroom, I looked in on her, and she was gone. It’s my fault. I told her to get out. Oh dear God, I told her to... please... just... leave! ”

“It’s all right, Mom, come on,” Aaron says.

“No, it’s not all right!” I say. “She was in crisis, and you kicked her out!”

“What do you know about any of this?” my mother shouts. “Go talk to your little bookseller, you love her so much! Do you know what it was like, dealing with Annie all these years? I never knew whether I was talking to her or her goddamn voices! ”

“What!” I say at once.

Augusta picks up on it, too. “What do you mean?” she says. “Did you...?”

“You knew about her voices?”

“You all seem to think she hears voices...”

“No, Mom, wait a minute! When did you find out about her voices?”

“I didn’t.”

“You just said...”

“I didn’t know about them.”

“You said you didn’t know who you were talking to...”

“Leave me alone!”

“... her or her goddamn voices! When did you find out about them, Mom?”

“She knew about them,” Augusta tells Aaron.

“When, Mom?”

“I don’t remember,” she says.

“When was it, Mom?”

“I just told you I don’t remember.”

“Was it after she went to Sweden alone?”

“It could have been. I don’t remember.”

“Mom? Was that when Annie told you she was hearing voices?”

My mother says nothing.

“Mom?”

“Yes. When she got back from Sweden that time.”

“She was only sixteen! If you’d tried to get help then...”

“Stop it!” she says. “I did everything I could! I told her it was not unusual for a person to hear voices when she was depressed. I told her she’d experienced with Sven the exact same thing I’d experienced with her father. And...”

“Sven was a teenage crush! ”

“Yes, but he abandoned her the same way. And so we both experienced depression, and as a result...”

“Oh, Jesus, what are you saying, Mom? Did you hear voices, too?”

“Only because I was so depressed. I went to see a doctor. I was terrified. The voices were telling me to kill myself! I was thinking of killing myself!”

“It’s all right, Mom,” Aaron says.

“He told me hallucinations were a common symptom of depression. Your father had just abandoned me. The doctor told me it was perfectly all right for...”

“Perfectly all right? ”

“... for a depressed person to hear voices. Eventually, they went away. But I was so scared, so scared. And then... life is funny. I suddenly had more important things to worry about than your father and his girlfriends. My mother had cancer.”

“So you told Annie it was normal to hear voices.”

“If a person was depressed.”

“You told her it was fucking normal! ”

“Don’t tell me how I should have talked to my own daughter!” my mother shouts. “Were you the one hearing voices? Don’t you think I know I’m responsible for the way she is? Don’t you think I’ve blamed myself enough all these years?”

“You’re not to blame, Mom,” Aaron says at once, and takes her in his arms. “You knew something was wrong, so you went to see a doctor. Crazy people don’t do that.”

“Yes, she is to blame,” I say.

And the telephone rings.

The piercing sound shatters the stillness of the room, paralyzing us. No one moves for the phone. We turn to look at the ringing instrument, but no one reaches for it.

“Well, is someone going to answer that?” my mother asks.

Augusta is standing closest to the telephone table. She picks up the receiver.

“Hello?” she says.

And then, again, “Hello?”

She puts the receiver back on its cradle.

“Nobody,” she says.

“Annie!” I say at once. “Do you have caller ID, Mom?”

“No.”

“Why wouldn’t she talk to me?” Augusta asks, sounding hurt.

“Damn it, I should have picked up!”

“We didn’t know it was Annie.”

“We still don’t know who it was,” Aaron says.

“Who else would hang up?”

“At least we know she’s okay.”

“If it was her.”

The phone rings again.

Augusta is reaching for it.

“Leave it!” I shout, and grab for the receiver after the second ring.

“Annie?” I say.

“Hey, bro,” she says.

She sounds very tired, very far away.

“Where are you, honey?”

“Oh dear, where am I?” she says.

“Annie? Honey, tell me where you are.”

“Oh, you know.”

“No, I don’t. Tell me, Annie. I’ll come get you. We’ll go have a cappuccino together.”

“Oh nooooo, no more cappuccinos. I know you. You take a girl for a cappuccino, and next thing you know a psychiatrist is telling her she’s crazy.”