Annie

It's raining, Annie.

Liza—Eliza Winthrop stared in surprise at the words she'd just written; it was

as if they had appeared without her bidding on the page before her. "Frank

Lloyd Wright's house at Bear Run, Pennsylvania," she had meant to write,

"is one of the earliest and finest examples of an architect's use of natural

materials and surroundings to …" But the gray November rain splashed

insistently against the window of her small dormitory room, its huge drops

shattering against the glass as the wind blew. Liza turned to a fresh page in

her notebook and wrote: Dear Annie, It's raining, raining the way it did when

I met you last November, drops so big they run together in ribbons,

remember? Annie, are you all right?

Are you happy, did you find what you wanted to find in California? Are you

singing? You must be, but you haven't said so in your letters. Do other

people get goose-bumps when you sing, the way I used to? Annie, the other

day I saw a woman who reminded me of your grandmother, and I thought of

you, and your room, and the cats, and your father telling stories in his cab

when we went for that drive on Thanksgiving. Then your last letter came,

saying you're not going to write any more till you hear from me. It's true I

haven't written since the second week you were in music camp this summer.

The trouble is that I kept thinking about what happened—thinking around it,

really—and I couldn't write you.

I'm sorry. I know it's not fair. It's especially not fair because your letters

have been wonderful, and I know I'm going to miss them. But I don't blame

you for not writing any more, really I don't. Annie, I still can't write, I guess,

for I already know I'm not going to mail this.

Liza closed her eyes, absently running her hand through her short, already

touseled brownish hair. Her shoulders were hunched tensely in a way that

made her look, even when she stood up, shorter than the 5'3″ she really was.

She moved her shoulders forward, then back, in an unconscious attempt to

ease the ache that had come from sitting too long at her drawing board.