Read Online Annie On My Mind by Nancy Garden - Free Book Online

apartment and see your room.”
    “Supper,” I said, looking up to see what color the traffic light was, and then crossing the street with Annie, “is sometimes pretty informal on Sundays. Maybe Mom will even invite you …” Mom did, and Annie phoned her mother, who said she could stay. We had baked ham and scalloped potatoes, so it wasn’t one of our informal and easily expandable Sunday suppers, which usually was eggs in some form, cooked by Dad. But there was plenty of food, and everyone seemed to like Annie. In fact, as soon as Mom found out Annie was a singer, they began talking about Bach and Brahms and Schubert so much that I felt left out and revived a friendly running argument I had with Dad about the Mets versus the Yankees. Mom got the point in a few minutes and changed the subject. Toward dessert, I started panicking about my room, which was a mess—so much so, I suddenly remembered, that I almost didn’t want to show it to Annie after all. It’s a fairly large room, with a lot of pictures of buildings fastened to the walls with drawing tape, and as soon as we went inside I saw how shabby some of the drawings had gotten and how dirty the tape was. But Annie didn’t seem to mind. She went right to my drawing table—that was actually the best thing about my room anyway—on which was a pretty good preliminary sketch for my solar-house project. Right away she asked, “What’s this?” so I started explaining, and showed her some of the other sketches I’d done. Although most people get bored after about five minutes of someone’s explaining architectural drawings, Annie sat down on the stool by the drawing table and kept asking questions till nearly ten o’clock, when Mom came in to say she thought it was time for Dad to take Annie home. At that point I realized that Annie really seemed interested in architecture, and I felt embarrassed for starting that show-off argument at dinner instead of listening to her talk. Dad and Chad and I all ended up taking Annie home on the subway, which turned out to be a longer trip than we’d expected. On the way I tried asking one or two questions about music, but it was too noisy for conversation.
    Just before we got to her stop, Annie gave my hand a quick squeeze and said, “You don’t have to do that, Liza.”
    “Do what?”
    “Talk about music with me. It’s okay. I know you don’t like it all that much.”
    “Liza,” Chad called, “I can’t hold this door all night. Girls!” he said disgustedly to Dad when we were finally out of the train. “I like music fine,” I said to Annie, falling behind my father and Chad as we all went up the stairs to the street. “Really. Why, I …” Then I stopped, because Annie was laughing, seeing through me. “Okay, okay,” I said. “I don’t know anything about music. But I—am—willing to,,,”
    “Fine,” said Annie. “You can come to my next recital. There’s one before Christmas.”
    By this time we were up on the street, and for the few blocks to Annie’s building I tried again to ask her questions, nontechnical ones, about the recital and what kinds of songs she liked to sing and things like that. She seemed to be answering carefully, as if she were trying to make me feel I understood more than I did.
    “Well,” said Dad when we got to Annie’s building—a big ugly yellow brick oblong in the middle of almost a whole block of abandoned brownstones—”why don’t we see you up to your apartment, Annie?”
    “Oh, no, Mr. Winthrop,” she said quickly—and I realized that she was embarrassed. “I’ll be fine.”
    “No, no,” Dad said firmly, “we’ll take you up.”
    “Dad …” I said under my breath—but he ignored me, and we all rode silently up to the fifth floor in a rickety elevator that seemed to take long enough to get to the top of the Empire State Building. Annie’s front door was near the elevator, a little to the left down a dark shabby hall, and I had to admit that Dad was