Saving Anna Karenina
Part 11
Start with Part 1, and read a short synopsis of the the original book.
THE WOMAN CALLED ALLISON sent text messages asking when Anna was available to go to an Alcoholics meeting. Anna didn’t know how to make text messages.
After a fortnight without any replies, Allison called. Sounding harassed about the verbal communication, she instructed Anna where to go at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday — to a church in the neighborhood over. Anna was willing enough to do what Margaret wanted, and bored, besides. She had found a regular driver named Diallo, with a black Town Car smelling of musk, who charged less than the yellow taxis and was centered already in her neighborhood instead of far off Manhattan. She summoned him in French, took a pill, and changed out of her dressing gown into the peacock dress.
Many minutes after he sounded the horn on the street, his car emitting a plume of steam into the dingy snow of the road, she continued to fuss, putting different things into her new gold purse and taking other things out. Then she checked her face again, and removed some of the pigment. She added a shawl, then changed out of the purple jacket into her new coat.
It was a brisk night, and the blast of heat and musk as she entered the automobile had a vacuum effect. She gave him the address.
“You are going to speak to God,” said Diallo.
“Perhaps,” she said. “It will do me good to leave the land of a lotus eaters for a bit. You know, I’m lazy in this house.”
Diallo said she wasn’t lazy, but always making errands. She smiled at his indulgence.
She arrived at the Gothic church ten minutes late. A young, blond woman stood on the street. She had a paper cup in her hand and she waved with squinted, smiling eyes as Anna exited the car.
“Nice to meet you!” she said, hugging her with childlike glee. Anna wondered why Allison treated her now like a long lost sister after such irritation about speaking to her on the phone.
They went in a back door and down a hallway to a paneled room in the back of the church. Women sat in chairs around a stage so that all faces were visible. On stage was a large desk with a hand-sewn flag bearing the words “Grateful Women Recovering.” They were greeting each other convivially.
“Hey girl!” said one older woman with a limp, embracing Allison and patting her back several times. She smiled at Anna with bashful sincerity.
They sat down as a woman with orange hair shooting straight up off her head and what appeared to be a tribal marking on her upper arm stood in front of a lectern and cleared her throat. As she shouted commandments about God being in power, people having no power, making amends and counting character problems, the audience droned along with her. But she interrupted herself to chortle, which brought some shrieks of laughter from the other women.
“Are there were any newcomers in the audience?” Silence came over the room and faces stared at Anna. Allison whispered that now was the time to introduce herself. Several others raised their hands.
“My name is Anita and I’m an alcoholic. I’m visiting from Bayridge.”
“My name is L.J. and I’m an alcoholic, I’m visiting my brother. Live in Jersey.”
At this point a woman came in late. Anna could not help but stare. Her raven-colored hair was thick as a mop on top of her head and she had a fringe that looked Parisian. The woman’s dark, large eyes were lined with black pigment and she wore brown leather pants. Her age was impossible to guess. Who would wear brown leather pants with all that black hair and pigment? Somehow, amazingly, the ensemble matched — more than matched. The woman was dazzling in her self-possession.
“Hi, I’m Sheila and I’m an alcoholic,” she said hoarsely. She then caught Anna staring. They locked eyes. Anna blushed and looked down. Allison nudged her.
“Are you going to introduce yourself?”
“Hello, my name is Anna,” she said, stopping herself from adding her second name. The women looked like they were waiting for her to finish. She didn’t know what else to say, so she smiled at them and then pursed her lips. Sheila was watching her, and when Anna said nothing more, she smirked and turned back at the stage.
“Okaaaaaay,” said the speaker. “Now I’d like to invite my friend Evelyn to come up and share for her 13th anniversary! You go girl!” The women clapped riotously and shouted out encouragements as a handsome older woman in gold earrings and a formal pink skirt suit walked up to the stage. The pill was starting to take effect and Anna was glad to be at the meeting now; it had the atmosphere of a party.
Evelyn began to speak about her life, calling herself drunk. Yet Evelyn didn’t strike Anna as drunk. She was very lucid.
“You think, and think, and think, and then you drink. The drinking is only 10% of it, the rest of it is — ”
“STINKIN THINKIN!” interjected several women.
Anna could definitely understand them. She didn’t care about opium, ever, in fact. She only took it to stop thinking about Vronsky. How could anyone blame her?
Evelyn said her mother had mistreated her, and that after Evelyn became pregnant at fifteen, the mother sent her away to live with a carousing sister.
Soon, Evelyn’s mother died, and then her brothers were killed by AIDS. She spoke clearly in English that Anna could follow when focused, but it was not easy to focus on a long monologue. When she checked back in, Evelyn was alone with the drunk sister and a son she didn’t look after. Her sister had a daycare, and the two sisters drank all day while they looked after other people’s children.
Anna didn’t have a mother or father either, and she detected some common strain in the women in the room — perhaps all orphans, whether princesses or paupers, wound up being tortured in relationships.
After Evelyn’s son overdosed on heroin, her sister was beaten to death by her boyfriend, and then Evelyn was diagnosed with cancer, she decided to stop drinking alcohol. Thirteen years ago, she said.
The women cheered. Anna too, she clapped her hands roughly. Evelyn left the stage and as she walked to her seat smiling, several women rose to embrace her.
The main speaker returned to the stage now and Allison tapped Anna.
“Amazing story, right?” she whispered.
“Indeed.”
Another woman now told her story, although she stayed seated. Anna let her thoughts drift to the time she had begun taking opium. It was in Moscow, when she couldn’t sleep. Alexei Alexandrovich had changed his mind about the divorce under the influence Countess Lydia. Anna missed Seryozha desperately.
At first, she had tried writing a children’s book to deal with this longing. But she quickly bored of it. The editor Vorkuev introduced her to the poet Dmitry Andreyevich, who suggested she write an autobiographical novel of her life. He had a fetish for nobility, she noticed, but she still found the suggestion appealing. He frequently visited Anna at home to encourage her. She was studying English, too.
Vronsky spent most days and evenings out of the house, attending political events, hunting, or riding his horse. But one day he stayed home to be with her. They drank champagne in the salon, and she made the terrible mistake of reading to him from her work. Anna selected an excerpt from the middle of the work, where her protagonist, the young princess Anastasia, was struggling through a lonely adolescence. She remembered every word.
Anastasia’s aunt didn’t want to hear about her feelings about young men, and she certainly didn’t want to hear about her bodily changes in the transition to womanhood. The maiden’s reflections on her studies, on politics, economy, or literature, were not welcome either.
‘We don’t talk about those things,’ the aunt would say to her niece. ‘How is your French accent?’ And then Anastasia would perform the most difficult poem she had learned from her tutor.
As she worked to follow all the social rules and become the prettiest little lady among her peers, Anastasia secretly dreamt of the family she would have one day, of the man who would love her and listen to her feelings, and the children she would allow to be free. She would have the best family in Russia, and be envied by all for the love and happiness she fostered.
Anna had stopped reading to see his reaction, and found him wincing. A chill went through her. How? Wasn’t his the perfect family she would create? Shouldn’t he be glad, grateful, embrace her?
“Feelings, feelings,” he had said mockingly. “You would do better to have your little Anastasia experience something that interests a broader audience than forlorn ladies.”
Anna had held in her outrage. “And what would you suggest that to be?” she had asked him.
“War, perhaps? My favorite novels are those about heroes.”
“You’re coarse then,” Anna hissed back.
Vronsky had placated her with more champagne, ignoring the outburst, and, eventually, he had come behind her and removed her dress.
Later, Anna had felt ashamed of herself. She knew he was right. The writing was awful, undignified. And since she didn’t care about battles or heroes, she stopped writing, and drank opium. She started to forget things — the day of the week, for example. And she mixed up events from dreams with those that occurred in reality.
Allison was touching her arm now.
“Don’t you want to share? I think it would be good, Anna,” she whispered. Anna didn’t know if she could speak in front of these strangers, but she didn’t want to disappoint Margaret.
