Saving Anna Karenina
Part 38
Start with Part 1, and read a short synopsis of the original book.
Joan approached Anna and her companions, breaking off from the white coats. Today she wore a sweater with leopard print.
“Can we talk?” She glanced from Anna to Matyas.
They went to sit in a small office off the front salon. Joan sat back in the chair, silver jewelry hanging from her neck and her wrists, stark against her olive skin. She crossed her legs confidently and exhaled as she spoke, giving Anna the sense that she was still absorbed in whatever sexual activity had occupied her before she arrived at the sanitarium this morning.
“You seem to be doing a lot better.”
“I’ve found a book that’s a great comfort to me” Anna began. “It’s Danielle Stone. Do you know her? About a princess from Europe who goes sailing with her father in Asia. The captain is a rugged Australian. She falls in love with him. But the boat is hijacked by pirates, and this Australian must save the princess and her father. I must find this woman if she’s alive, Danielle Stone. Do you know if she’s a princess?”
Joan chuckled. “Danielle Stone. She is alive. I read once that she covered the walls of her house with hearts. She’s a very successful author.”
“Well perhaps she’ll receive me. We think the same way…you know, it didn’t work with Margaret and Jean, I don’t have patrons here in America anymore.”
Joan leaned towards Anna and tilted her head.
“Anna, I’m going to be very frank here, and I hope you’ll excuse my American candor. Danielle Stone is not going to take care of you and your son, and it concerns me that you want her to. We want you to be healthy, and if you keep seeking comfort in illusions, in fantasy, and expecting people to take care of you, you aren’t going to get better. Princesses, studs, and pirates are complete fantasies.”
“But I am a countess!” said Anna with growing anger. “And I’m sitting right here before you!”
“And you abandoned your child and became ostracized from society because of a romance that wasn’t at all good for you. You became addicted to drugs, and then fled your country — and time — as a refugee. And you couldn’t adapt to your new society. You continued to abuse drugs, you neglected your son, and now you are in a psychiatric hospital. Obviously, your choices aren’t working Anna.”
Anna was livid. Joan was just like Jean, just like all the cruel Americans. This talk all the time of “choices.” So absurd. As if defenseless orphans could make such things. They had no power, they depended on others for their status, and emotions were emotions — rulers of fate, dispatched by forces greater than a mortal could understand. By continuing to deny these facts, the Americans had just reinforced the disgrace that had taken her out of Russia, out of her mind. Snot flowed from her nose and she used her sleeve to wipe it away. This life was just one humiliation after the other. She was wearing the peacock dress, for heaven’s sake, after how many days in row? It was insufferable.
“I wish I could die,” she said in a cracking voice, putting her head into her hands.
“Anna,” said Joan, with kindness. “Look at me.”
Hearing her name being called in such a way made her want believe she could be reassured, that she didn’t have to die.
“You don’t deserve to die. You made some mistakes, but we all have. It’s what makes us human. I’ve certainly made my share.”
Anna looked up. “You have?” Joan was capable of changing Anna’s feelings drastically from moment to moment, like Vronsky. It could feel so good and so bad to be with them in a matter of sentences.
“God yes I’ve made mistakes!” Joan laughed hoarsely. “And your mistakes don’t define who you are. We’re talking a lot about them because that’s what got you into the hospital — you were so overwhelmed with how your decisions had backfired that you didn’t know how to continue living. Or maybe you wanted to punish yourself. But your life wasn’t always like this. From what I’ve read in your file, you functioned highly not long ago in St. Petersburg. You told one of the doctors that you had dinner parties every night. You were a good mother to your son. A girl at a ball compared you to a heroine in a novel. People idolized you. Can you remember that time in your life?”
“It was false,” said Anna with a tone of devastation. “I was false. I was empty. They only envied my pretense. I needed pretense because I had nothing real. And anyway, their approval doesn’t mean a thing. Who are they? A flock of sheep.”
“Your son doesn’t love a fake mother. Children have good radar for insincerity. You can be happy Anna without someone else filling up your heart. You can get your emotions under control and be happy with yourself. It will take time and work, and it might hurt, but in the end it’s worth it. You don’t need Vronsky, Jean, Margaret, or Danielle Stone. You can have people in your life because you want them, not because you need them. That’s the way relationships are supposed to be.”
“Maybe in your world. In ours, we are defined by who we marry and consort with.”
“Well that is true here too, on a superficial level. But don’t you think every human being, in any place, and any time, has been granted by nature the freedom to be fulfilled without depending completely on the reactions of someone else? The intensity of your passion may have seemed like happiness, but I can guarantee you that no one can sustain such extremes. All of our lives have a spectrum of intensity — we are not always madly in love, or having the best sex of our lives. There are plenty of boring, sad, not so nice moments in every normal life. It sounds like the thing with Vronsky turned sour and didn’t make you at all happy in the end.”
“I don’t aspire to normality.” Anna was thinking about the drudgery of the chores she probably was supposed to do in Brooklyn, instead of expecting the Italian landlady would.
Joan looked stumped for a moment. But she regained composure and appeared ready to disagree some more.
“I believe that eventually, you will want autonomy. You won’t need to put your life in someone else’s hands, give yourself away. You’ll want your life for yourself, to live and not to dream of.”
“I have to dream.” Anna gestured with her hands at the halls. “This reality is a horror.”
“Well, people are having the worst moment of their lives in here. But when you get out, well, things will be a lot better out there.”
Anna shook her head obstinately, thinking of the terrible dress style for women in the new world — all straight lines and grey and black. She thought of the horrible trousers of jean material.
“The dresses here, I don’t know why women buy them already made in the store rather than going to a dressmaker. They wind up in sacks that don’t flatter their figures at all. You might have a very beautiful woman in front of you but you wouldn’t know it.”
“I don’t think that the way women dress in New York is what’s bothering you.” Joan smirked in silence for a few moments, pushing her hair out of her face. “You spent an hour sitting next to our most threatening patient yesterday morning. How did you feel about that?”
“Who?” Anna almost laughed at the idea that anyone in the sanitarium could be dangerous.
“The man you were sitting with while you waited for breakfast.” Joan paused long enough to let Anna remember the man who taught her about cereal. “A lot of the patients won’t go anywhere near him. They’re afraid of him. And he shoved one of the doctors.”
“Oh, dear! Well, I didn’t realize.”
“It doesn’t matter if you realized. You showed quite a lot of strength in doing that, and generosity.”
“Well, he struck me as a harmless rogue.”
“And you’re probably right. But if you can relate to that patient, I am certain you can relate to plenty of people in New York City. I’ve also read in notes from the nurses that you had a long conversation with Devondrea. Is that correct?”
“Oh, yes. She’s an endearing character.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that. It makes me feel relieved. Because it means that you’re finding ways to identify with others, and feeling confident about yourself. It tells me that you might be able to build a life for yourself here, and take care of your son. Because we’ve been concerned about whether you will be capable of looking after Seryozha after you’re discharged from the hospital. Your illness has been very hard on him. Don’t forget that he may also be feeling displaced here, and unlike you, he doesn’t speak English.”
“When I thought of him yesterday, I fainted,” said Anna.
Joan nodded.
“I dreamed that I gave him spoiled bread, and he got sick. He is goodness.”
“Well then that will be your job when you get out of the hospital — looking after him. You can take him to school in the morning, meet his teachers, find out how he’s doing in school, and help him with his homework after you pick him up from school in the afternoon. You might meet some other parents. That’s how many people create their social networks in America.”
Anna looked blankly ahead.
“I know that in your previous life,” Joan continued after a beat, “servants looked after the children. But that’s not going to happen here. You are going to have to do that. And I think you’ll find it very fulfilling.”
“But it’s not undignified?”
“Raising children? No. How could it be? It’s the most natural thing in the world. Some say it’s the greatest gift nature can offer.”
“I don’t want you to leave me,” Anna said, changing her tone. “I need your help, please. I can’t adapt to these differences without any help.”
“We will continue to help you. You will come here three times a week to talk to me. The hospital will give you free care.”
Anna nodded with immense relief. Joan said a lot of strange things, and she seemed to think that the content of her talk was very important. But she could have been talking about horseracing and Anna would have been happy to sit with her, except in those moments when she was saying something critical.
“I’ve got to go now,” she said, putting her hands on Anna’s. “See you tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay!”
“Anna, you just chirped.”
“I chirped?”
They giggled as they left the room.
This is part 38 of a serialized novella being published each Thursday. It is a speculative sequel to Leo Tolstoy’s novel, Anna Karenina.
Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37
I’m the author of Oh, the Places Where You’ll Have a Nervous Breakdown.
This chapter is dedicated to Carole Freedman.
