The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

“What’s that?” she asks.


“What, my phone?” I say, but calling it a phone doesn’t really sum it up.

“Your . . . phone?” She cranes her neck to look at the screen.

“Yeah. You know. Like a telephone. Only small. And no wires.”

Annie’s looking at me with a smile of complete amusement, and I’m starting to figure out that I maybe should have paid more attention in AP US history. They had telephones back then, didn’t they? One look at Annie trying to keep herself from cracking up tells me that of course they didn’t.

“It’s like a tool,” I try again. “You can talk to people, or you can send messages. Like letters, I guess. You can read newspapers, listen to music.”

“Read? Like a penny paper?” she asks me.

“Um. I guess?” I say. “It’s cool. You wanna see?”

I hold it out so she can see the face of my phone.

“It’s cracked,” she says.

“Yeah. I dropped it in the subway,” I say, and then immediately wonder if I need to explain what a subway is. God, how old are subways? I don’t even know.

She peers at it, and then glances up at me.

“How do I make it work?” she asks.

“You just swipe it. Like this.” I demonstrate, scrolling through several texts from Tyler, and then accidentally swiping to my text exchange with Maddie. My ears flush pink, and I quickly swipe back to Tyler, but I don’t think Annie noticed.

“Here,” I say. “You try.”

She doesn’t take the phone from me, but places her finger on the screen, eyes alight with curiosity. She swipes. She swipes again. Nothing happens.

“Am I doing it wrong?” she asks me.

“Um . . .” I watch her try again, but the screen doesn’t change.

Annie tries a few more times, beginning to look crestfallen. When she touches it, the screen doesn’t respond. It dawns on me that the phone doesn’t know that she’s there. It looks like she’s here, in the world, standing next to me. But she’s not really here.

“Don’t worry. Sometimes they just don’t work,” I say, trying to make it sound like it’s not a big deal. I don’t want her feelings to get hurt. I shove the phone back in my pocket and take her gently by the elbow, leading her across the street past a row of idling taxicabs and black cars.

“My sister, Beattie, loves letters,” she remarks, gazing off into the distance.

“Beattie?” I ask.

“Beatrice,” she says. “She’s twelve. When she was little I used to post letters to her pretending to be Dietrich Knickerbocker, telling her stories of when Manhattan Island was enchanted. Mermaids in the Collect Pond. Indian spirits along the riverbank. Mysterious ships sailing up the Hudson on dead calm days with no wind. She loved them.”

We’re strolling up LaGuardia Place, heading for Washington Square Park. Annie watches the face of each passerby, peering at them with interest. Old women, babies, teenagers, it doesn’t matter. She looks closely at everyone, and I can tell that she’s filing them away, in her mind. Annie remembers things. She’s a watcher. Like me.

I bet Annie would really love movies.

“Why’d you stop?” I ask. “Writing imaginary letters for your sister.”

Annie’s eyes turn sad, and she says, “Mother made me. Said Manhattan was no place for enchantment.” She stops and looks at me. “Isn’t that an awful thing to say? I always hated her for saying that.”

I’m surprised. Annie doesn’t seem like the kind of person to use the word hate very often. I’m on the point of asking her more, but we’ve reach the southern edge of the park, and she stops up short, grasping my arm.

“Oh!” she gasps, a huge smile breaking over her face. “Look at it!”

“What?”

I follow her gaze, trying to see what the big deal is. It’s just a park. I mainly think of it as the place where they shot Billy Crystal leaving Meg Ryan for the first time in When Harry Met Sally . . . It was right by that big arch.