The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

The doors ping open and Annie and I get off, walking faster than usual down the hall to find what we want. After several minutes of me showing my ID, inventing an independent study topic out of thin air, showing the inside of my bag, promising that I don’t have a pen, and being led through a couple of glass doors, I’m finally parked at a long library table covered with foam blocks and told to wait a couple of minutes. All the while Annie stays at my heels, sometimes making faces at me over the shoulder of the reference librarian. Once she strides with exaggerated stiffness and formality over to a disused card catalogue abandoned along one of the reading room walls, puts a finger to her lips, and curls her other finger into the handle of one of the drawers.

Slowly, deliberately, she pulls the drawer open. I watch her do it, holding my breath. She skips back to my side giddy with mischief.

“How did you do that?” I whisper to her.

She’s laughing so hard she can’t answer me at first.

“Annie! Come on! How’d you do that?” I insist.

She’s leaning her head on my shoulder, wiping laughter out of her eyes. “I don’t know,” she says, gasping for breath. “I just did.”

“Dude. You’re gonna get me kicked out of here,” I point out. “Also, I’d tell you that was totally ripped off from a movie I saw from the eighties, except you probably wouldn’t know what I was talking about.”

“Dude,” she says, in a mocking voice. “Come on! It was funny!”

The librarian returns with a medium-size cardboard box, places it on the table in front of me, together with a pair of white cotton gloves, and says, “If you have any questions, I’ll be right over there.” It’s just like a scene in National Treasure, except without explosions.

The librarian goes to return to her desk, and sees the card catalogue drawer open. She looks briefly at me, the likeliest culprit. I shrug, trying to look innocent. The librarian gives me the stink-eye and walks over and closes the card catalogue drawer.

Annie is laughing so hard she’s having trouble not falling over.

“Shhhh,” I say out of the corner of my mouth. “You’re going to make me laugh, too!”

“Sorry!” she says. “You’re right, you’re right.”

She smooths her curls out of the corners of her mouth, then settles her hands primly on the table in front of us.

“Wes. May I please see if my cameo is in the box?” she asks with exaggerated care, teasing me for how neurotic I’m being.

“Be my guest,” I say.

She gives me a long look.

“What, you can open drawers but not boxes?” I ask, incredulous.

“I don’t know! Sometimes I can move stuff, and sometimes I can’t. Anyway, I think you should do it.” She casts a meaningful glance over her shoulder to where the librarian is sitting.

“All right. You have a point,” I say.

I put on the gloves and open the box.

My first impression is that it’s full of junk. It’s like the box you keep under your bed and forget about until it’s time to move, and then you don’t know what to do with it, because it seems a shame to throw everything away, but the truth is you never look at it so it might as well not exist. Packets of birthday cards tied together with ribbon, yellowed wedding invitations, a party horn from a 1920s New Year’s Eve. Somebody’s passport from 1938. A couple of curled photographs of unsmiling 1910s people in dumpy ankle-length dresses and drooping hats. Annie looks into the box with awe while I gingerly start pawing through everything.

Quickly I’m able to see that if there ever was any jewelry in here, it’s long gone. Nothing in here has any value. Not jewelry-type value, anyway.

“I don’t think we’re going to find your cameo here,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t really think we would,” she says with a sigh.

I pull out different bundles of correspondence and lay them out on the table one at a time. None of them look old enough to be hers. Most of the stuff in here is from the early twentieth century. Late nineteenth, max, I’m guessing. It’s impossible to tell who anyone is, though I spy Annie’s last name on some of the cards and letters.

“What’s that?” Annie asks, pointing.

I gingerly lift out a piece of paper folded into a tight square, so old that it’s turned brown and curling. There’s even sealing wax on it, which is crazy—I’ve never actually seen sealing wax before, except in movies. I guess I knew people really used it, but even so. I lift the paper on my palm and hold it out to Annie so she can see it.