After Annie

by Anna Quindlen

“Stop thinking about the future,” Maude had told Annemarie the last time she went to see the Mennonites. “Be present in the moment.” She sounded Buddhist, but then Annemarie assumed all religions had more or less the same underpinnings. “How could anyone expecting a baby not think about the future?” she’d said. “If you do you will miss so much,” Maude said. “I have eight children, and the best times are when I see them as they are now and don’t think about someday.” Annemarie was automatically dismissive: “Someday” for Maude’s boys would be woodworking, farming, marrying a neighbor girl at nineteen. “Someday” for Maude’s daughters would be quilting, canning, marrying a neighbor boy at nineteen. But in the car, she was ashamed by that. She had had a someday that had veered into something else. She’d had a few, in fact. Annie had had one, and then none. Or maybe now she knew Annie’s real secret, that she would never die because her children lived on in the world, that Annemarie’s someday was now the child inside her, one heel pressed hard against a rib. “Do you have a name yet?” Kathy said. “Hope,” Annemarie said.