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The Expectation of Isolation

by Clara Sherley-Appel

Annie woke up Mondays and Wednesdays at six-thirty, showered, brushed her teeth and went to work. Back then, she worked as a pharmacist at Rite-Aid, filling prescriptions for Valium and Vicodin and other things meant to take the pain away. There were days when Annie wondered what, precisely, that pain was, and other days when she was really pretty sure she knew. If you’re a human being and you live long enough, you’re bound to hurt someone somewhere somehow and, Annie thought ironically, that was what was so painful about being human. Not that we deal with hardships and hurts, but that we cause them, willfully and consistently. So Annie told herself that she would never hurt another human being.

Tuesdays and Thursdays, Annie took classes and did her residency at the hospital. She saw many, many sick people and many, many poor people. They were all afflicted. Some were curable. Some were not. Annie regularly saw a girl in oncology. She was twenty, and her blood had turned against her. Her body was destroying itself from the inside out, and this girl asked for help and Annie could do nothing. But the girl thanked Annie—for trying. So Annie knew that she would always try to help, despite sometimes being helpless.

Fridays Annie worked at the restaurant as a hostess. She thought of business-men and business-women who came in, entertaining a varied clientele in myriad ways. She thought of how we say things—eating out, going out to the movies, leaving on vacation. All these words implied an exit. Our lives are too boring, she thought. We involve ourselves in mindless routines so that we can make money so that we can escape our mindless routines. So Annie vowed that she would never get into a routine where she felt the need to escape.

With Annie’s jobs, Monday through Friday, her weekends were her own, and she valued them. Often, she did nothing. Often, she went out and walked in the sun. Often, she stayed in and slept late. Always, her activities were solitary. It was not that she desired solitude, though she was not against it. Annie lived with the expectation of isolation. Her values had brought her to one conclusion: humans were terribly cruel creatures. Better not to involve oneself with them.

As would be expected, Annie’s house was immaculately clean. White furniture, white rugs, white walls, and, as a doctor and a pharmacist, Annie always wore white clothes. Colorlessness and shapelessness were, to her, admirable traits, though she knew that her exact efforts not to stand out made her do exactly that. Others looked at her strangely, expecting a woman tightly wound and incapable of being touched. Annie, too, had this expectation. Unlike those who looked upon her and desired to save her from herself, Annie had no such desires. She was simply determined to get through life and not to make it more or less than it actually was. People seemed obsessed with life’s preciousness. Annie was of the opinion that you had no choice about being born and you had no choice about dying, so you might as well not get all spiritual about the bits in between. There was no life not lived, no special flavor that was not arbitrary. You simply got up, did what a combination of choices and wills brought you to do, and slept. She did not feel the need to take unnecessary risks, nor did she feel the need to avoid risk altogether. She simply knew that circumstances would change and refused to care more than was reasonable about any one person or thing. And with that thought, Annie drove to work on Wednesday morning and died in a car crash at 7:18 am on August the first, 1999.

Annie’s sister, Lilly, got the call at 9:22 am on August the first, 1999. She was at home with her daughter, who was sick with strep throat.  Lilly was eleven years Annie’s senior at the age of 35. She listened, was shocked, and called her husband, Dean. “I have to go help out,” Lilly said, and Dean understood. He said “I’ll try to get off of work early and take Sibyl”—Sibyl was their daughter—“that way you can leave earlier.” Lilly, Dean and Sibyl lived Fresno, CA and Annie died in Pasadena.

Next, Lilly called their mother, Theresa. She said “I need you to sit down” and she told her mother exactly what she knew. Annie had been driving in to work when a semi crashed through the median and drove her car into another. She had been crushed in the crash and died twenty minutes later as rescue workers were trying to extract her. “Mom,” Lilly said, “I’m going down tonight.” Their mother lived in Vermont and wouldn’t be able to make it until the next day. “I’ll call you when I have a hotel.” They agreed on the details, such as they were, and hung up.

Annie’s work colleagues were informed over a loudspeaker system. They were told to observe a moment of silence, but most of them broke it to ask each other “did you know her?” They had all seen her. No one, however, could say that they had known Annie Logan. It was tragic, they agreed. She was very young. And with that, most of them sighed and moved along, returning to their work. It was a quick shuffle, and then it was over. Annie Logan would be quickly forgotten.

Dean told his boss that his sister-in-law had just died. “My daughter is sick,” he said, “and I have to take care of her for a few days so my wife can go to the city to take care of things,” he said. When was the funeral? his boss wanted to know. They didn’t know yet, Dean told him. It would take a while to prepare the body. She died in a particularly gruesome car crash.  So you weren’t expecting this? Dean was asked. “No. No, we weren’t. She was very healthy.” Dean was excused from work, and he went home.

On the way home, he flicked on the news radio.  There was nothing about the crash.  Perhaps, Dean thought, they were too far north.

But in the city, the crash was everywhere.  Karen was driving to work when she was swamped with traffic.  Irritated, she scowled at the world.  “Rubber-neckers,” she said to herself.  Traffic build-up.  She turned on the news.  Sure enough, there was a 5-car pileup on the 110 involving a semi.  Two casualties.  Karen raised an eyebrow wearily, resigned to sitting in traffic for at least another hour. 

It would take time to clean things up, so Karen called into work.  Karen worked with an ad agency in the city, but she lived in Long Beach with her two children.  She and her husband had divorced the year before when she found out he had been sleeping with another woman—or rather, three other women.  She was angry, but had tried to contain her anger so that her kids might still grow up well adjusted.  They didn’t need to know their father was a rat-bastard, she thought.  But as she thought it, she was covered with a sense of remorse.  He wasn’t that bad.  He was a good enough person that they had managed to fall in love and marry all those years ago, and stay together for a long time.  She wondered, often, why he had strayed, but she hadn’t the courage to ask him.

Freeway traffic crept along.  Karen sat in her car, absent-mindedly listening to the news.  There were wars, murders, accidents—in general, a great deal of death and destruction—but Karen could only think of the death and destruction that had occurred within her own family.  Pieces of her had died, and certainly the family she once called her own had been destroyed.  As she came closer to the scene of the crash, where a young woman named Annie Logan lay dead on a stretcher, covered in a sheet and drenched in a mixture of blood and motor oil, Karen wondered ever-so-briefly if the two “casualties” had left people behind.  But traffic cleared and Karen moved on.

“She didn’t have a will,” Lilly told their mother, “so it’s hard to know what she might’ve wanted in the way of a funeral.”

“Of course she didn’t have a will!” Theresa said into the phone, “she was twenty-four!”

“Well, that aside, what do you think?  She was so private…”

Theresa sighed.  “Oh Lilly, funerals are for the living anyway.  But if she was private, she would probably want a private affair.”

“Yeah,” Lilly said, “that makes sense.”

“When is Dean getting in?”

“I don’t know.  I’m not sure if he’ll even be able to make it with work and all.  I’m going to call him when we get off the phone.”

“Doesn’t he want to be here?”

“For me, yes, but he barely knew Annie.”

Theresa shook her head, and though it was inaudible, Lilly was aware of what was taking place on the other end of the line, “For that matter, you barely knew Annie.  I barely knew Annie and I’m her mother.”

“True enough.”  There was a pause.  “Mom?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think Annie was religious?”

Theresa thought for a long time in silence.  “I don’t know.  In a way, it would seem to fit…but it’s also so out of character.”  Another pause.  “Are you?”

“Not really.  I’m not sure what I believe.”

Theresa laughed.  “I think the same can be said for most rational human beings.”

Brandon picked up the morning paper on August the second and was shocked to see a picture of a young woman he’d seen only days before on the front page.  Annie Logan, med student, died in a car accident.

He didn’t know her, not in the remotest sense.  He’d gone in to the pharmacy to pick up an asthma inhaler for his six-year-old son.  Annie had been efficient but cold.  Her smile seemed only a courtesy.  He remembered her because the experience had caused him some uneasiness.  Nonetheless, an hour after their meeting, he had forgotten all about Annie Logan, right up until that morning, reading the paper.  He called his wife over from the other room.

“Emily, look at this,” he called.  Emily sauntered over, glanced at the picture in the paper and turned to her husband with a quizzical glance.

“Did you know her?” she said, a slight hint of “why haven’t you told me about this woman” in her voice.

“No, not really.  She filled Drew’s prescription at the pharmacy the other day.  I remember her because she was kind of weird.”

“Weird?” Emily asked.

“Yeah, just very off-putting.  Very cold.”

Emily laughed “No bedside manner?”

“Yeah, something like that.”  Brandon paused and shook his head.  “Weird.”

“Hmm?”

“What?  What’s weird?” Emily asked.

“Just the way people are connected.”  Brandon was thoughtful.  “She was really young.”

Emily scanned the paper.  “Yeah, it says here she was only 24.”

“Crazy.”

Gabe Parker also found out about Annie Logan’s death through the paper, though his relationship to her was much different.  Once, Annie Logan had been a student—particularly bright—and Gabe had taught her many things in and out of the classroom.

As he read the article and accompanying obituary, a wave of remorse swept over him.  He wished he had treated her better when they were together, though he also wished they had never been together.  Their affair had been a passionate one, and Gabe had delighted in seeing this very unlikely side of Annie Logan which few would ever see.  But he was older, much older, and he was married—a fact of which Annie had been unaware.  He used to call her his angel.  She scoffed at the name, claiming angels were pristine creatures, divine ones.  Annie had no desire to be divine.  Too late now, Gabe thought.

He read on, about her accident, about her life.  She had been incredibly bright and incredibly adaptable.  As he read, Gabe had the sudden desire to call his wife, and he did.

He said “Carol, let’s go out tonight, on a real date.  For old time’s sake.”

She agreed.

As soon as the funeral was announced, calls poured in.  People—some who had known Annie and many who had not—wanted to come.  Lilly was shocked.  Her younger sister had always been a hermit.  How could she draw so many people in her death?  She didn’t know what to do.

“Well, I say let them come.  Funerals are—“

“—for the living, I know,” Lilly said.  “Thanks Dean.”

“No problem.  You call me if there’s anything else you need.”

“Are you coming?”

“Yeah, baby, tomorrow.”

“Alright.  Can you put Sibyl on before we hang up?”

“Sure thing, Lil.”  There was a brief shuffle as their daughter came to the phone.

“Mommy?”

“Hi, Sib.  What’s up?”

“Hi mommy!  Daddy says we’re going on a plane tomorrow.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“And then we’ll get to see you.”

“That’s right, sugar pea.”

“I miss you.”

“I miss you too, pumpkin.”

“Okay.  Bye.”

“Bye.”

Layne was another lover, if you could call him that.  His relationship to Annie had been much like the rest of her life—cold, emotionless.  It was purely physical, and they had both known it.  When he read the funeral announcement, he had no desire to go, though he was curious.  Annie Logan…what a strange girl.

The next day, he rode his motorcycle down to her old apartment with a bouquet of white roses.  He hesitated to knock on the door, knowing relatives and possibly friends would abound and so he left them, withering, on the doorstep.  But someone had heard him and came to the door as he was jogging down the steps.

“Hello?” a female voice said.

“Hi,” Layne answered.

“Why are you here?” the voice asked.

“I knew Annie.”

“Do you want to come in?”

“No.”  He gestured to the roses.  “Those are for her.”

“Okay.  Thank you.”

“Goodbye,” he said as the body of the voice stooped to pick up the flowers and returned indoors.  Man, that was awkward, he thought.

The sick girl in oncology was named Erin Camden.  It was Thursday, and she was expecting Annie, but Annie did not come.  She called the nurse-in-residence.  “Um, do you know where Annie Logan is?”

The nurse seemed surprised but, softening, sat down beside her.  “You haven’t heard?” she asked.

“No,” Erin shook her head.  “Wha-what happened to her?”

“She died.  On her way to work a few days ago.”

“Oh my God,” Erin clasped a hand to her mouth.  “How—is she—oh my God.”

The nurse was taken aback.  She hadn’t known anyone to be truly upset over Annie’s death.  “Were you…close to her?”

Erin paused and took in a breath.  “Not exactly.  I mean, I saw her twice a week and she was always cordial with me…it’s just…” she paused.  “It’s just that I never thought anyone on the staff would…would die before me.”

They looked at each other, Erin and the nurse, for a long time.  Finally, the nurse said “Erin, you might not die at all.”

Friday, a man walked into the restaurant where Annie once worked and asked “Where is that cute little girl of a hostess who’s always here when I come to lunch?”

The hostess filling in for the dead Annie Logan answered “Do you mean Annie?”

“Yeah,” the man said.  “The blonde.  Very cute.”

“She’s…well, she died.  It was all over the news.”

The man raised his eyebrows, clearly surprised.  “She died?  Wow.”

There was a long pause.  Silence.  The man thought about his daughter, who was about Annie’s age.  “How did it happen?”

“Car crash,” the hostess replied.

“Huh.”

“Do you want me to seat you?” she asked.

The man paused, and then looked the hostess in the face.  “Yeah,” he said.  “Yeah.”

The next day, they buried her in the ground.  Several dozen people attended, most of them strangers who felt affected by the crash or by Annie, but no one spoke.  Not even Theresa, not even Lilly, could think of any words to say about their kin.  The funeral ceremony passed and then there was a great silence as dozens of people, tied loosely—if at all—to Annie Logan, wandered around her grave.  There she was, twenty-four, buried beneath the earth.  She would never speak again.