After Annie

by Anna Quindlen

“This is ridiculous, Annemarie,” and the sound of empty black air afterward,

with grimy white siding. A decade had passed, and her adrenaline still

looking at it, so that her heart felt as though it was trying to bust out of her throat and into her lap. A decade

two buddies in the living room who had looked at each other when the artist

wearing pajamas calls you to a nursing home and says

Just “wow,” so that you couldn’t even say exactly why it was mean, except that you knew it was. “Beth Landsman’s daughter is the class queen bee,” her mother had said to Annemarie last year, and Annemarie said, “Well, of course she is. Apple, tree.” The code. Ali had never really cracked the code. She’d called Annemarie, who was supposed to come for the weekend but hadn’t. Maybe, as close as the two Annes were, Annemarie could tell her what her mother would have said about Jenny and Jenny’s father. She’d left a message and Annemarie hadn’t called her back. Then she’d left another message, and Ali thought maybe