The Anna Geller Invention - Brian Prousky

The Anna Geller Invention by Brian Prousky

Book excerpt

Thirty-two years ago, during a snowstorm, a woman who was a stranger to me came calling at my apartment on Beverley Street in Toronto. She told me her name was Anna Geller, though I know now she was using an alias.

When I opened the door, she was standing on the sidewalk with her back toward me.

“Hello?”

She turned around. “Are you Harvey Painter?”

I lived on the first floor of a converted duplex that contained five apartments and a common entranceway. There was no intercom and because of the hours I kept—working through the night and sleeping until mid-afternoon—I was in bed when the buzzer went off and it took me a couple minutes to get up, get dressed and get to the door.

“Yes, I’m him. I’m Harvey.”

The weather that day was everything the word miserable was meant to conjure up. Snow swirled in the air and the wind was jarring. The landing and steps were buried under a white dome and the fresh footprints that cut it in half were already filling in. The first thing I noticed about my visitor was her hair. It spilled down her back, on either side of the large knapsack she wore, and it was blonde but with other colours running through it, like wet sand on a beach. The second thing I noticed was how unprepared she was for the weather. She wasn’t wearing a hat or gloves, her coat was thin, and her boots were only ankle-high—though, strangely, she gave off the impression that she was unbothered by the conditions.

“My name is Anna Geller. You don’t know me, but I’d like to talk to you.”

She started walking up the steps inside the tracks she’d just made, and I had the feeling that if I didn’t move aside, she would knock me over.

“About what?” I asked.

She brushed past me without slowing down and I followed behind her in the narrow hallway. Clumps of snow fell off her knapsack.

“Your poem.”

“How did you find me?”

“The phonebook. It turned out I was close by.”

The door to my apartment was open and when she reached it, she looked back over her shoulder, questioning me with her eyes.

“Yes, that’s mine.”

She bent down and removed her boots, which were covered in a thin layer of snow. I was surprised to see that she wasn’t wearing socks.

I asked, “Which poem did you want to talk about?” though having had only one poem published, there could be only one answer.

A smile came over her face and I suspected she knew I was trying to make myself appear more accomplished than I was. But if she did know, she decided not to embarrass me and said, “Creation. But if there are others, I’d like to read those too.”

We entered my apartment and I closed the door.

“What is it about the poem you want to discuss?”

“The narrator,” she said right away, as if anticipating the question. “His presence in the poem.”

Creation had just appeared in the winter edition of The Verb, a pop-culture magazine whose readers were mostly, perhaps exclusively, university students. I was of the belief that only the people I’d told about the poem had read it. So, it was inconceivable to me that a beautiful woman had been drawn into my life because of it.

I said, “OK. Sure,” which was all I could think to say, even though she didn’t seem to be looking for my permission.

She took off her knapsack and coat and hung them on the doorknob. Water dripped onto the floor.

“We’re a perfect match,” I said.

We each had on a grey sweater and jeans and our feet were bare.

“On the surface,” she replied, smiling again.

I noticed that her face and hair were still wet—in the case of her hair, parts of it were matted-down like grass in the winter—and I said, “There’s a towel in the bathroom if you’d like to dry off.”

She looked beyond me into the apartment, and I watched her eyes dart about, as if she was scanning her surroundings for potential danger—though I was sure the result of her observations would be a feeling of pity not fear.

All my furniture was second-hand, purchased from thrift stores or given to me by my parents and a friend who moved to London. I had a round wooden table and two matching chairs, a faded couch that sagged in the middle, which made it more comfortable for sleeping than sitting, a small television set, a decent stereo, a plain desk on which my typewriter, rapidly approaching obsolescence, sat, and an old trunk that served as a coffee table and storage for sentimental items and dozens of books. Along the lone exterior wall were two big windows that rattled whenever a strong wind hit them and that were covered insufficiently by heavy velvet drapes adept at attracting dust. As for the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom, the best thing I could say about them was that they were functional.

I was about to repeat my offer, when her eyes ended their journey and settled on me and she said, “Thank you. I could use a towel.”

She walked by me, and I thought I smelled oatmeal, which was pleasant but caught me off guard. I took a deeper breath, confirming my original diagnosis, and said, “I’ll make tea,” though the bathroom door had already closed behind her.

I went into the kitchen and filled the kettle with water. I heard the toilet flush and then what I thought was the sink-faucet until the sound of running water became louder and I realized that she’d turned on the shower. I stared at the bathroom door, hoping it would open and that she’d ask me to join her. It had been a year since I was this close to a woman’s naked body and when the kettle whistled a couple minutes later, I was jolted from the fantasy I was having and jumped slightly. I made a pot of tea and turned my attention back to the bathroom door. I’m not sure how long my eyes remained fixed in that direction, but it was long enough for me to realize I wouldn’t be invited in.

I heard a pipe creak and the water shut off and I carried the teapot, two mugs, a small carton of milk and two packets of sugar into the living room and placed them on the trunk. I sat down at one end of the couch and waited for her to come out. Behind me I could hear snow lashing against the windows, which were rattling quietly. I looked down at my bare feet and discovered that my toenails had grown long and needed cutting.

While I waited, I thought about the last woman other than my mother or sister I’d had over to my apartment. Her name was Marla. She was a short-story writer who stole books from the library that employed her and gave them away as gifts. One evening she saw me reading The Collected Poems of Vasko Popa and when I left the library, she followed me outside and put the book in my hand. “No one will miss it,” she whispered. I could smell cigarette smoke on her breath. We went out for two weeks. She said she liked men who looked like they’d missed a few meals, which was an accurate reflection of my appearance back then. During our second date, she read one of her stories to me, about an optometrist who loses his eyesight, and I told her it reminded me of something Alice Munroe had written even though it didn’t, and she kissed me. Her mouth tasted sour, and I had to swallow quickly to stop myself from gagging. While we were together, she was never without a lit cigarette in her hand. She smoked during meals and in the back row in movie theatres. We had sex only once—it was in my bed, and she reached for her cigarettes and lighter the moment we were done and when she took her first drag, she made a more pleasurable sound than any of the sounds she’d made while I was inside her. Afterward I had trouble sleeping and each time I opened my eyes I saw her lying on her back with a cigarette in her mouth and her face bathed in orange light like an emissary from hell. When I woke up for good in the early morning, I’d developed a dry cough. I told her I was coming down with a cold or flu and that she should leave in case I was contagious. She said that she appreciated my thoughtfulness and kissed me on the forehead. After she left, I opened both windows, stuck my face outside, and gulped down the fresh air. It took six weeks for my cough to go away and for the outside air to drive the smell of cigarette smoke from my apartment.

The bathroom door opened, and steam drifted toward me and again I thought I smelled oatmeal. My visitor was standing at the sink looking at herself in the mirror. She had on a white T-shirt and pink underwear. Free of most of her clothing, her body looked small, similar to that of an adolescent girl awaiting a growth spurt, and with an exaggerated arch in her back, like a gymnast’s.

She walked out holding her sweater and jeans and draped them over the back of one of the wooden chairs.

“I hope you don’t mind.”

Her long hair was a bit more orderly though strands of different colours were still twisted around one another.

“Not at all,” I said truthfully.

She took a step in my direction and stopped suddenly.