Anna Lives in Theory

An entirely first draft, as yet un-critiqued story about getting fucked over and then dying. I must be in a good mood.

Anna Lives in Theory

Anna lives in theory. I am inventing her as I go. She is living inside the walls of our house, in the fabric of her old dresses that I have used to stuff the cracks lining the floorboards. Anna lives inside the ways I wash my face, my arms, my hair. Anna lives inside my armchair. Anna lives in theory. I am rewriting her as I go. Anna is a breath of air and coming through the window. Anna scares the neighbours when she screams through my mouth at night. I am channelling Anna, because Anna only lives in theory. Anna lives in pieces of her skin on the carpet I refuse to vacuum. Anna lives inside an urn on the mantlepiece. That one is not a metaphor. Anna saying Anna and marveling at the strangeness of her own name. I still remember how she used to do that. That part is real. Anna puts her shoes in rows inside the closet. Anna leaves them there for years. Anna bought so many pairs, and now I don’t know what to do with them. Anna is a spirit, a ghost, something silly like that, Anna is a memory. Anna lives in theory. Anna lives on paper. Anna lived here.

Kate came over today. Mourning Anna. Kate came over carrying casserole and a card, not meaning to be alliterative. Kate is in my living room, in Anna’s chair - Anna must have turned it into her chair after I left, because it smells more like her than it ever did like me. Kate is getting cheap perfume all over the way Anna used to smell, the way Anna lingers in my nostrils and in the air. Kate is crying, Kate is always crying, god I fucking hate Kate, I’ve always hated Kate. Kate’s name seems to rhyme with everything, and I think she likes it that way. Kate is wriggling around in my ears, telling me things about Anna, things that aren’t even true. Kate is talking about her generous spirit, and all I can think of is Anna refusing to leave old clothes out for the Heart and Stroke Foundation, because she wanted to sell them to the thrift store. Kate, Kate, fuck you Kate, and your casserole. I wish I could say I hate tuna, but I don’t. I actually really like it. Kate.

I am sleeping in the living room, on cushions on the floor. New cushions, bought today, half price and hard. Anna is in the sheets on the bed, even though I broke down and washed them today. Anna is in the pillows and the mattress. Anna’s scent is in the couch. Her farts are in the cushions, her drool is on the armrests. Anna’s hair rubbing against the back of the couch, her dirty hair, I smell it. I am sleeping on the living room floor, but only after I tried to sleep in the garage and almost froze.

Now it’s Peter and Peter isn’t crying, which is a relief, and... now he is. For fuck’s sake. Everyone is crying all the time, and I am just trying to spend the rest of my life quietly wasting away on the living room floor and not eating tuna casserole, but no, Kate has sent Peter over with more. Peter is running a hand over his bald spot, seeming to remember in the midst of his remorse that it is there, and rationing a tiny bit of his grief for his poor lost hair. Peter is telling me how he wouldn’t know what to do if he lost Kate, as if Kate is in a cage like a bird and always trying to escape, like she is a suicidal cat always trying to slip out the front door in search of coyotes and raccoons. As if I wore Anna to the pool and dropped her instead of putting her into my locker, and had to come home wearing only one sock. As if Anna were something I could fucking lose, and I remember how Peter would lecture me on colloquialisms that one semester he took a linguistics course, and I can appreciate the irony, so I must not be entirely catatonic. Peter making apologies for the casserole, but they are the wrong kind of apologies, apologies for it’s nature, not for the fact that it’s here at all. Peter is someone I don’t know at all, in the end. Peter, sitting all over Anna’s scent, just like Kate did, mingling his smell with hers so Anna’s favourite armchair that used to be my favourite armchair smells like what Peter and Kate’s bed must smell like and I want to yell at him, but I just roll over on the floor and stick my finger right through the cheddar cheese crust on the tuna casserole.

Anna laughing. Anna. Laughing. Anna’s whole face tilting forward, no thrusting, Anna’s chin sticking out at the bottom of her head, improbably propped on her neck almost at ninety degrees from her shoulders as she laughs. Anna laughing. Anna had the strangest laugh.

Anna touching my knee. Anna’s hand moving in vague circles almost forgetting she was touching me, Anna afraid of sincerity when were first together, ending every caress with a poke or a jab or a tickle. Anna winking at me across the dinner table. Anna crying. Anna sighing. Anna rhyming by accident. Anna, alive.

Oh, Kate again, lovely. Lovely Kate, lovely to see you. Kate fucking wearing the pendant that Anna left her, showing it to me and mentioning again Anna’s generous spirit, as if I want to see a piece of Anna resting between the age spots and freckles at the very top of Kate’s leathery cleavage. Fuck you, Kate, and your stupid breasts, wobbling around my house. Kate telling me I should get off the couch, to which I can’t help but point out that I am not on the fucking couch, nor have I been since Anna died, I am on the floor, and you can’t tell me to get off the floor, since even if I stood up I would still be on the floor, really, if you think about it, my feet would anyway, so why don’t you just leave me the fuck alone and go home and talk to Peter about how badly I’m doing. Kate making an offended Kate-face and me apologizing, but really I’m not sorry. I just don’t want the tuna casseroles to stop coming. I’m sort of getting used to them. Maybe they could have them couriered over. Kate is leaving. Kate.

Anna lived in Burnaby, when we first met. On a pull-out couch in an apartment building in Burnaby, and I took the bus from Kits to the the Skytrain, and the Skytrain to her house, and never remembered to pick up a piece of pizza for the guy who called me chief and always stood at the exit of the 29th Avenue station begging for change. Not once, and then she moved to East Van and I rode my bike to her house because it was close enough, and who can carry pizza while riding a bike anyway. Anna lived in Burnaby, Anna lived on 12th, Anna lived in Surrey for a summer when her bank account got hacked by that debit card scam that was going around like a common cold, Anna lived with me, and now Anna lives in theory.

I am going through Anna’s underwear drawer and thinking what a waste of perfectly good panties. Look, this pair is almost new. But who wants to wear panties that have been rubbing around on someone else’s crotch, even if only a few times. I would sell them to the thrift store, but it feels like a violation somehow, like I’m selling Anna’s vagina on the black market to people who can’t even afford new underwear. Anna had chronic yeast infections. I don’t know anything about yeast infections. Can you get a yeast infection from second-hand underwear? Anna’s panties are filling up drawers, crying out for her crotch like me, feeling dry and chafing like everything does since Anna died, hanging useless and limp between my legs since Anna died, Anna’s panties resigned to my hand instead of Anna from now on.

Anna sobbing, Anna crying, Anna nearly retching from the grief on the bathroom floor, Anna mourning herself and saying cancer cancer over and over again, marveling at the word as if it was her own name.

Anna right before she went, lying in a hospital bed, when I finally got up the courage to go and see her. Anna, nearly gone, four years after she first said softly “cancer” then again and again crescendoing to a scream on the bathroom floor, four years after I threw three pairs of underwear into a bag and left saying “cancer” in the car on the highway for 90,000 miles. Anna lying on her stomach glaring up at me when I finally came back. Anna’s body racked with spasms, they came every fifteen minutes almost exactly on the nose - really, it was uncanny - at the very end. Anna saying fuck you, Anna hating me, none of this forgiveness business you see so often in the movies when things have come to the crux of everything and people realize that despite it all the universal truth is that they love each other, no, Anna saying, “I am almost gone, you have nothing to lose, take some fucking initiative” and collapsing into spasms. Anna racked with pain, Anna, Anna, Anna, Anna, Anna, Anna, Anna squeezing my hand so hard and running it over her back and across her hips and between her legs, pressing so hard my nails scratched her skin, Anna wanting nothing except something to feel good at the very end, Anna hating me but hating pain more, Anna dying quickly, it seemed, with my fingers inside her, after four long years. Anna still biting the pillow in rigor mortis. Anna lives in theory.