Not My Annabella

Annabella thinks she is the custodian of the happy ending in her narrative. She slips through gravity into a character she decides. I watch her from the wings of the theatre of our house, with a mug of tea, and try to enjoy the show.

I like Rapunzel best, and Lady Macbeth least. Ophelia and Juliet make me think.

A tourist in her own life, sightseeing here and there, a magpie picking up roles to take home.

Words remembered from some place, but she summons my attention, delivers them sincerely as if her own sweat exists in every syllable; and as I bend down and kneel at her feet with a proposal on my lips drying like spit, she hurts me with sworn untruths.

I cannot stomach the drama in an empty theatre, her performing as if I am the lights, the music, the audience, so we walk to the park where she can have her audience. I indulge this once.

We hire a rowing boat. Annabella tells me she loves me which sculpts the clouds into angels and unicorns. The sun is shining and daffodils and tulips in the park decree it is spring. She smells of lavender and her voice, singing The Owl and the Pussy Cat, tickles my ears.

Annabella wonders how the oars sound as they caress the water; if our boat leaves an echo on the river the way someone’s laughter does on a listener’s smile; if the swans make a sound when they glide and stop, glide and stop, and how the eddies sound to the fish beneath.

Her hand trails in the water like a vapour trail in the clouds. She likes to leave a mark wherever she goes—my Annabella.

And she loves me, she says. And it is spring, and we are rowing nowhere in particular, and I close my eyes, just for an instant and pretend she isn’t lying.

Raindrops land on my eyelids. April showers. As I row the boat back the way we came, I think of the umbrella stand in our hall. It is always empty because she leaves them whenever she remembers to take one. She used to joke it was a way of making it easy for family and friends to buy her a present.

I bought her one once – a duck handle, which she said she adored – for two weeks.

Am I an umbrella of hers waiting to be held, only to be forgotten? Are there enough umbrellas in the world to catch her lies like rain?

Back at home, I say I need a shower. My hurt needs to be wet. The soreness lubricated after her abrasive tongue. Standing akimbo in the shower cubicle with the tiles swimming in and out of vision, I resolve to possess a greater beauty than her: the pure truth.

It has to be done.

Annabella is cooking something aromatic for supper, but it will go to waste. Soon she will know my feelings, and I will need to shower again.

~ Louise Worthington