Anna Lambert Lived and Died 

by KERRY CLARE 

For years I maintained a series of lists inside a spiral notebook. In careful handwriting, my tidy characters, the headings in capital letters. One was THINGS I'VE NEVER DONE, which I'd amend to THINGS I NEVER DID now. Death makes such a list manageable and finite.  

      That I never spat watermelon seeds, slept naked, farted audibly, licked cake batter from a spoon, screamed, ate snow, pierced my ears, got drunk, wore nail polish, earned a paycheque, stole, sashayed, jived or boogalooed. I was never waltzed, ravished or slapped either; however, I was kissed, twice. MORE THAN I EVER EXPECTED. But I never got out enough while I still had the chance.

      THINGS WHICH I REGRET. That list goes on and on.

      I regret dying two days shy of my thirty-third birthday. Thirty-three years just like Jesus. Imagine if I'd been a carpenter. A carpenter, to sum me up in a word, instead of the many fumbling words required to pin down this meagre existence. Aged thirty-two years and three hundred sixty-three days: Neighbours described Anna Jean Lambert  as a quiet woman who lived with her parents and her twin sister. A member of the Spring Street First Reformed Church, a talented crocheter. She worked in her garden during the summer months. There is more to me than that, of course, but how could they possibly know? The many words were actually quite generous, though my sister is the gardener. I rarely ventured that far out into the sun.

 

Until my death, our twinship had been the single remarkable thing about me. Jean Anna Lambert is my elder sister by seven minutes, though our parents confused us as infants and thereafter were never sure which was which. So my sister and I were interchangeable, until we grew to know better. Eventually, Jean claimed her name, the graceful tail of its J, which was fine by me because I liked Anna anyway. Spelled the same way forwards and back, my name was a mirror image just like I was.  

      The photo released to the newspapers is actually of Jean, standing beside Niagara Falls. I have never seen Niagara Falls, but Jean went five years ago. She used to disappear like that, coming home days later with stories to tell, of wonders of the world and the men who sat beside her on the bus. One of those men might have snapped the photo, or else Jean had asked a stranger. She had a whole album of photos like this, Jean next to attractions as some kind of proof, looking concerned that the flash wouldn't go or a finger might obscure the lens.

      Jean in the picture at Niagara Falls is wearing a yellow raincoat, her hair wet from the spray. Downcast eyes, her body cut off at the waist-she looks sturdy. That adjective applied to either us if anyone cared to comment. Though comments were unnecessary- Jean and I never needed to be told how we looked. We could see from the outside. Neither of us were what anyone called pretty, though I used to fantasize about becoming handsome as I grew older. The plain girl's metamorphosis in all the books I used to read, and I never stopped hoping life might turn out like that. Though clearly it didn't, as I never read any book about a plain girl choking on a chicken wing.

 

I have achieved a selective omniscience with death, and it's peculiar what I know. That it will rain tomorrow, for example, then the sun will come out and it won't rain again for days. The city will implement a ban on lawn watering, until a downpour one Tuesday that lasts until the end of August, stopping for only hours at a time. People will take the weather personally.

      I know that no one has found my notebook. That my bedroom door is closed, the way I left it that morning. It will stay shut for months, until someone goes in to dust, and even then the notebook in the drawer won't be touched.

      I know my mother hasn't been out of bed for more than a few minutes since receiving the news, and my father has hardly said a word. Every day he goes down into the cellar, sits beneath the window and looks up at the one patch of sky he can see from there. Both of my parents are secretly ashamed of their wavering faith, though neither suspects such a thing of the other.

      I also know the man who kissed me twice will never learn what happened. I don't occupy his consciousness the way he does mine.

      Yet with all this knowing, I still can't imagine my sister. Omniscience only stretches so far, and Jean Anna without Anna Jean is impossible speculation. What Jean sees without me to report it to, or how she views herself without my reflection. Asymmetrical dinners at the table, or the matter of sleep without me in the room beside hers. What is life for her without me to balance the earth, to pin her to the ground like gravity? 

      I can't imagine my sister's face. I have this paper in my hands, Niagara Falls, but the image doesn't translate. She's a smudge on newsprint, a greyish blur, and when I close my eyes, she's as dead as I am.

 

UNCHARACTERISTIC THINGS I'VE DONE is brief. For most of my life, I was fine in my skin, accepting of limitations. My sister said fear held me back, but I was comfortable. My life may not have read well on paper-an unworldly existence, the trappings of piety, my seeming devotion to tedious handicraft-but I slept in a warm bed every night, enjoyed good home cooking three times a day, and our airy house with its polished floors for sliding was guarded by the shade of leafy trees. I spent whole days out on the veranda swing, sipping iced tea from a straw, inhaling the lilacs, so there are pleasures I have known.

      Of course, I suspected the world might have offered more, but I was happy to go without. No need to stow away on buses, crash cotillions, or brown my pasty legs until they freckled. To sample exotic drinks, or finger-foods from faraway places. Jean was entitled to whatever she liked, but I liked what I had already.  

Only four times exactly did I dare step beyond my proverbial veranda. UNCHARACTERISTIC THINGS: that I refused to eat meat between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five; that I once, anonymously, entered a local poetry contest and was awarded second prize; that I tried and tried to make our mailman fall in love with me; and that I signed up for a drawing class, discovered I had no talent, but found out what a man looks like without his clothes on.

If I had lived to tell the tale, my last day would have made this list longer, though it started out as usual. Being awakened by my mother at half-past seven. My father had sold his store the year before, but we still got up together every morning, took our breakfast at the table. My mother had made whole-wheat pancakes which I had without syrup because I was watching my weight. The eighth of a honeydew melon on the edge of my plate was shaped like a smile.

      After breakfast Jean said, "Any plans for the day, Anna?" and I asked what she had in mind. We were still at the table with my father, hidden behind his paper. My mother was washing dishes. Jean said, "I was thinking about the fair, the horticultural exhibition. Do you want to come?" 

      I said I didn't know, though I did. I'd pretend to consider most plans Jean proposed, with no intention of anything but sitting down with a book.

      But my mother said, "That does sound nice Anna. It would do you good." My parents thought I spent too much time alone, and they worried less about Jean when we were together.  The day was still long. There'd be time enough for the flower show and my book, and the fair would be a break from such a chain of same-old days. So I told Jean I'd go with her. She was surprised but didn''t seem unhappy. We'd go over after lunch, she said, and then she went upstairs to wash her hair.

      Though the day was bright and we both tended toward sunburn, Jean didn't put a hat on. I wore mine, floppy and blue. Jean's hair was frizzy already in the heat. I thought she had more grey than I did, though I wasn't sure-I'd never seen the back of my head. I was wearing a pale-pink t-shirt and blue-jeans, and Jean a yellow sun dress, sleeveless. Her fleshy upper arms jiggled when she reached to smooth her hair in the hall mirror as my mother reminded us to be back in time for dinner. Jean said of course we would. Then we kissed her powdery cheek, called out goodbye to my father, and set off for the fairground.

      It was a ten-minute walk to the edge of town, just before the country starts and the roads all turn to gravel. On the way, Jean talked about the horticultural exhibition-who was slated to win, who'd been shut out for the ninth year running, how Kirby Everett's geraniums were overrated. Jean knew it all-she loved flowers and society, and here it was all rolled up into one. Though she'd never entered the flower show herself. Jean is a talented gardener, cultivating geraniums more luscious than Kirby Everett's, but as much as she goes on about me hiding from the world, she's as scared of it as I am.

 

It was the 178th Thomastown Fair, and the sounds and smells reminded me of being little though I was tall enough to see above the crowd now, to notice the rickety rides were risky, and old enough to turn my nose up at a candy apple at that time of day even though Jean bought one. With crowns on her teeth, she should have known better, but she said the fair wouldn't have tasted right without it. Then she grabbed my arm, pulled me through the midway, across the parking lot, and inside the hall where the horticultural exhibition was underway.

      Everybody there knew Jean. She walked along taking bites out of her candy apple so when people called out, "Hiya, Jean Lambert," her mouth was too full to answer. Instead she waved, finally swallowing and saying to them, "Have you met my sister, Anna?" She'd push me into the conversation, take another bite of her apple, and expect me to say something. But I couldn't, not right away. So whoever it was would say something to me like, "Do you garden too? I've seen the flowers around your place, and they're beautiful."

      But our gardens had nothing to do with me. I'd tell them that and speak too quietly. They'd say, "Pardon?" and I'd repeat myself. The awkwardness would get to Jean, who'd pull me along. "Good luck," she would call to whoever was vying for a ribbon.

      The gladioli were being judged at the back of the hall and Jean and I went to see them. "A bit stunted, don't you think?" Jean said behind her hand. The judges were going around with clipboards and serious expressions, and the exhibitors didn't seem to know whether to smile or stare at the ground. It was all very dull and I shifted my weight. Straw on the ground, probably dragged in from the livestock show. I wanted to go outside to see the outsized gourds, but Jean grabbed my arm and pulled me toward somebody else. She'd finished her candy apple so she had no trouble. She tapped this man on the shoulder and he spun around. "I knew it was you, Royal," she said. "By the shape of your shoulders I knew, from all the way across the room. Have you met my sister?" she asked. "No, you're not seeing double." She laughed like a horse.

      Royal was about as tall as he was skinny, and Jean had to crane her head back to meet his eyes. "Go on, Anna," Jean said in a hiss, nudging me with her elbow. "Shake hands."

      But Royal held up both his hands, covered in soil. "Afraid not," he told me, shrugging his shoulders. He smiled and I could see why Jean liked him. "It's nice to meet you though-Anna?" Jean hadn't really told him my name. "I'm Royal Wallace," he said. "Marigolds."

      "You've got a great chance today," Jean said to him. His flowers were on the table behind him. Jean reached over and rubbed a petal between her thumb and forefinger.

      Royal said, "You're twins? Funny. I wouldn't have thought so."

      "No?" Jean let the flower go and the pad of her thumb was stained orange. She looked at me. "Well, you could probably say I'm the talkative one." 

      Royal asked, "And which one are you?" I loved his eyes. He looked at me like I was the only person around for miles.  

      Jean began to tug on my arm, pulling me away, and Royal called out, "Are you two coming back later for the judging?"

      "Maybe we will," said Jean, shouting over the crowd. Then we were outside in the sunshine, Jean muttering, "It's always the same trouble with you," before storming off ahead.

 

What was always the trouble with me is that I was a poor negotiator of human interactions. I'd say too little or too much, either way emerging too conspicuous, and I'd feel embarrassed. Jean would be embarrassed for me.  

      Once I'd caught up with her, she said, "Sometimes I think you're trying to make a fool of me." I assured her I wasn't. "There I was, introducing you to someone nice. Introducing you to my friend, and you didn't say anything."  

      "I didn't know what to say." 

      "Well, it's hardly difficult. 'Hello, nice to meet you.' I didn't think you'd need  a script." She was being hard on me. She knew the way I felt; she'd been lost enough herself.

      I said to her, "You never got to see Kirby Everett's geraniums." 

      "I don't have to see them to know they've wilted."

      We fell into step. "I'm sorry," I told her.

      "I know. It's just hard, always watching out for you."

      "He didn't think we looked like twins."

      "Hmm?"

      "Your friend, Royal Wallace. He said he didn't think we looked alike."

      "I wonder what he thought we looked like then?"

      "I don't know what he thought."

 

What I have recounted here: QUOTIDIAN DETAILS, or THE WAY IT GOES. That day nothing had been remarkable yet, except for Royal Wallace. His row of flower faces smiling like golden buttons.  

      WHAT HAPPENED NEXT: Jean and I got ice cream cones and sat down on the edge of the Rotary Fountain. Children were wading, their parents not heeding posted warnings of electric shock, so I kept my back to them. Some water splashed against my elbows, and it felt good. My ice cream was strawberry, Jean had chocolate, and the tension between us passed.

      We were just finishing our cones when a very fat man approached. Wearing a massive t-shirt to his knees, "CFLM-FM The Flame" across his chest, spelled out in red and yellow letters. "We're looking for a volunteer," he said, as we squinted into the sun to see him. "For a contest. Just one more person. Either of you ladies interested?"

     "I don't think so," said Jean, nibbling the tip of her cone.

     "Come on," he said. "We need one more girl. The one we'd lined up just dropped out and I'm in some kind of a fix. It's easy. All you got to do is eat. Could you do that?" "No thank you, said Jean.

     "How about you?" he asked me.

      "We said no," said Jean.

      He leaned before me, over his belly, his hands on his knees. He kept his voice quieter now. "Can you speak for yourself?"

      I could feel his breath on my face. "I guess I could do it," I said.

     The man said, "Really?" and Jean said, "Anna, I don't think-"

     "I'll do it," I said. I stood up, balled my serviette in my fist, stuffed it in my pocket.

     "Well, then we've got to hurry," the man said. "We're starting in just a few minutes." He was Jack Wyre, he told us on the way to the bandstand. Across the back of his shirt was printed, "Classic Rock and Alternative Hits," flames rising from the hem. He stopped and turned around, told us, "I do the lunchtime show on the Flame-the Live Wyre." When Jean told him that we didn't listen to local radio, he looked confused.

    "Well," he said. "I guess that's all right."

    We arrived at the bandstand and I was taken to my place at a table where two men and a woman were waiting. Jack Wyre asked for my name, his big ear close to my mouth so I could whisper. A small crowd was before us sitting on haybales, and I saw Jean in the third row. Her lips were pulled tight. I took a deep breath. And then Jack Wyre's voice blasted from the speaker beside me, announcing the beginning of the Fourth Annual CFLM-sponsored Thomastown Wing-Eating Contest, introducing me and my competition.

 

Aside from my anonymous foray into competitive poetics, I had never tried to win anything. My whole life I had been predisposed to second place (at best). I'd never yearned for admiration, glory, or attention. So the sensation I experienced that day up in the bandstand was new to me: I wanted to win. For Jean, for Jack, for Royal Wallace and his marigolds, I wanted this to be a victorious day, for the first time in my life a crowd of eyes upon me. I could see Jean out there, fanning herself with her hand. Around her people were cheering as a bowl was set down before Herbert the Hoover. My bowl was next. We weren't to begin until Jack Wyre banged a gong, then I took the top off my mountain of bones.

      A chicken wing-eating contest is the opposite of delicate. Herbert wasn't holding anything back, and he was all I had for pacing. So I started to eat, watching my competitors out of the corner of my eye, how they'd pick a wing up in each hand, hold it from the knuckle and inhale the meat right off the bones. We tossed the bare bones into the buckets set in front of us. The sauce was honey garlic, entirely palatable, and I'd longed to eat like this my entire life, to give in to indulgence, to cast restraint aside.

     Though I have made clear the startling number of things for which my abilities range from mediocre to nil, there is my sense of rhythm. This sense is not necessarily musical, as I'm pitchless, but given the chance, I think I could have danced to save my life.

     I used to dance in my bedroom with the door shut and the drapes drawn, to whatever was playing on my clock radio. Somehow, once the beat was firm in my head, I could start moving one way and the rest of me would follow. Moves I'd seen on television, in musicals, moves I felt were right as my shoulders rolled and my hips swayed. As I danced, I'd watch myself in the mirror. I was a plain, sturdy woman who looked old for her age, but I could dance, and nobody in the world knew that.

     But I think that crowd on their haybales suspected something. Jean had her chin in her hand, looking disgusted at the spectacle, at the unmistakable fluidity of my disposal of the bones and how I picked up one wing after another in a blur of hands and arms, at the swiftness with which I slurped the meat from those bones, coordinating chewing and swallowing. Once the rhythm was established, I couldn't have stopped if I'd wanted to. The motion was self-propelled, and the bones in my bucket soon began to pile high.

    Herbert the Hoover flinched for a moment once I'd got under my spell, pausing to wipe his chin, disbelieving that such an inauspicious late-entry could usurp his title as reigning champ. I could hear my name from the speaker-just Anna because Jack Wyre didn't know my last name. He was speaking faster, his tone like the announcer of the baseball broadcasts my father listened to. "She's going for it, there's no stopping her now." As though I were a batter taking a wild chance on home. I maintained the motion. Faster, faster. I'd never eaten so much all at once. I suppose I must have been feeling ill, but my physical revulsion was overwhelmed by the euphoria. This was a performance, and I was the star. Over my grimy hands, I could see Jean, one eyebrow raised. I don't know that I had ever surprised her before, but I was going to today. I was going to win a prize with my very own name on it.

    There were two wings left in the bowl when I picked up the one that would be my last. I held it in my left hand, greasy fingers clutching the knuckle still, but something was unhinged. With the same momentum that had allowed me to devour seven pounds of chicken in fewer minutes, I sucked the meat from the bones and a piece of bone came off with it. I inhaled it right into my windpipe where it stuck, and when I gasped for air I only lodged it further. I dropped the knuckle and brought my hands down, upsetting the bucket before me. The Hoover must have seen his chance because he didn't stop. Jack Wyre's voice was blasting in my ear.

      "And Anna's out, finished. The Hoover pulls ahead again, with Ricky the Eater right behind him. The Hoover has just avoided an upset. It's a miracle. She came so close to the finish. No one could have foretold a race like this. It's official-the Hoover remains the champ. Ricky the Eater comes in second, followed by Big Barb Watts and Anna in the fourth position. What a show, folks. What a show."

      It had been a minute since my last breath but nobody had noticed. Herbert the Hoover had climbed on the table, started beating his chest. Heaps of bones were being kicked through the air, but my trachea was stopped fast with that one small chicken bone. My hands were on the table and the Hoover walked across my fingers. I didn't know how the table was holding his weight. I brought my hands to my throat and held them there.

      "And so the Hoover goes wild. He's won a $500 gift certificate for wings at Jerry's in downtown Thomastown. All our competitors will be taking home a one-size-fits-all CFLM-FM-The Flame t-shirt. I would like to thank all of you for supporting our event today."

      I was slipping into cardiac-arrest. The world was starting to swim. Somebody noticed me finally-perhaps because I was turning blue. Jean's face came closer and closer and then faded away. She was holding on to my shoulder, shaking me. Jack Wyre had realized I was choking and he had put down his microphone. He knelt down behind me, slipped his arms around my body in a tight embrace and I became the shape that his arms made. I couldn't feel his thrusts as he tried to dislodge that wing, but I felt the warmth of his body behind me, around me. I could hear him shouting out for a doctor, and I felt Jean holding on to my shoulder. The last time I saw her. Over and over, she was calling our name.

 

Wherever I am now is whatever I imagine. I think of the porch swing, the light in our sunroom, the inside of my mother's arms. I even try to imagine beating out Herbert the Hoover as chicken wing eating champion, blue ribbon on the highest podium, but my thoughts won't go there-it never happened.

      Time doesn't move forward, but envelops me instead. I hover in a currency constructed of my past. This is easy. I lived life on such a small scale that its amalgam is peaceful, breezy. MORE THAN I EVER EXPECTED. Even though I can't find myself here, or my sister, which is more or less the same thing. Perhaps that is the point.

      Sometimes I imagine her life still mirroring mine, imagine that she is as lost as I am, wandering around in the world still alive but feeling nothing when she reaches up to touch her face. It's shameful, I know, to wish disembodiment upon anybody, but it comforts me to think we're still together in experience, if not actual presence. Naturally, I feel less alone this way.

  Of course, there are other days, days when all the sunny afternoons I ever knew converge to make a light so bright I am uplifted. I am strong enough to let her go then. I want my sister to be solid, standing, sturdy even-alive. I can't imagine her, but I think of the space she occupies, the world all around her. The whole thing is spinning, and I want her to be feeling how that feels. 

 

Kerry Clare reads and writes in Toronto, where she lives with her husband and daughter. Her fiction, essays and reviews have appeared in publications including Room Magazine, The New Quarterly, Canadian Notes and Queries, Quill and Quire, and The Globe & Mail. Online, she writes about books and reading at her blog, Pickle Me This.