Clip from Annie On My Mind

It's raining, Annie.

        Liza -- Eliza Winthrop -- stared in surprise at the words
she'd just written;  it was as if they had appeared without
her bidding on the page before her.  "Frank Lloyd Wright's
house at Bear Run,  Pennsylvania,"  she had meant to write,
"is one of the earliest and finest examples of an architect's
use of natural materials and surroundings to ..."
        But the gray November rain splashed insistently against
the window of her small dormitory room, its huge drops
shattering against the glass as the wind blew.
        Liza turned to a fresh page in her notebook and wrote:

Dear Annie,
        It's raining, raining the way it did when I met you
last November,  drops so big they run together in ribbons,
remember?
        Annie,  are you all right?
        Are you happy,  did you find what you wanted to find
in California?  Are you singing?  You must be,  but you
haven't said so in your letters.  Do other people get goose-
bumps when you sing,  the way I used to?
        Annie,  the other day I saw a woman who reminded
me of your grandmother,  and I thought of you,  and your
room,  and the cats,  and your father telling stories in his
cab when we went for that drive on Thanksgiving.  Then
your last letter came,  saying you're not going to write
any more till you hear from me.
        It's true I haven't written since the second week you
were in music camp this summer.  The trouble is that
I kept thinking about what happened -- thinking around
it,  really -- and I couldn't write you.  I'm sorry.  I know
it's not fair.  It's especially not fair because your letters have
been wonderful,  and I know I'm going to miss them.  But
I don't blame you for not writing any more,  really I don't.
        Annie,  I still can't write,  I guess,  for I already know
I'm not going to mail this.

        Liza closed her eyes,  absently running her hand through
her short, already touseled brownish hair.  Her shoulders
were hunched tensely in a way that made her look,  even
when she stood up,  shorter than the 5'3" she really was.
She moved her shoulders forward,  then back,  in an un-
conscious attempt to ease the ache that had come from
sitting too long at her drawing board and afterwards at her
desk.  The girl who lived across the hall teased her for be-
ing a perfectionist,  but since many of the other freshman
architecture students had arrived at MIT -- Massachusetts
Institute of Technology -- fresh from summer internships
with large firms,  Liza had spent her first weeks trying dog-
gedly to catch up.
        Even so, there was still an unfinished floor plan on her
drawing board,  and the unfinished Frank Lloyd Wright
paper on her desk.
        Liza put down her pen,  but in a few moments picked it
up again.

        What I have to do,  I think,  before I can mail you a
letter,  is sort out what happened.  I have to work through
it all again -- everything -- the bad parts,  but the good ones
too -- us and the house and Ms. Stevenson and Ms.
Widmer,  and Sally and Walt, and Ms. Baxter and Mrs.
Poindexter and the trustees, and my parents and poor
bewildered Chad.  Annie -- there are things I'm going to
have to work hard at remembering.

        But I do want to remember,  Liza thought,  going to her
window.  I do want to,  now.
        The rain hid the Charles River and most of the cam-
pus;  she could barely see the building opposite hers.  She
looked across at it nonetheless,  willing it to blur into --
what?  Her street in Brooklyn Heights,  New York,  where
she'd lived all her life till now?  Her old school,  Foster
Academy,  a few blocks away from her parents' apartment?
Annie's street in Manhattan;  Annie's school?  Annie her-
self,  as she'd looked that first November day ...

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