Regrets Only Susan Messer Spring There she was, my daughter's piano teacher, beside the big blue mailbox, in this freethinking town on the edge of Chicago. Let's call her Anna. "Hey, Anna," I called, waving as I came up the street to the post office. "Hey," she said, waving back. She was in her early 30s, and tall, lanky. I was in my mid-40s, and small. She was dressed in a plain, straightforward way—a white blouse, Gap chinos. Sensible shoes. I concluded early on in our friendship that, unlike me, she did not have two feather boas stored in her closet. After her life turned the fateful corner, and she hated herself, she described herself as schoolmarmish. Before that, though, when she'd felt strong, grounded by the sense that she had chosen her look and her style, she said, "I don't like to think of myself as a female; I like to think of myself as a person." * * * "How are you doing?" I said once I reached her. Cars swarmed around the curb, jockeying for position, while we stood slightly outside the fray. "I just dropped my bank deposit into the mail box," she said. People moved around us, up and down the stairs, into and out of the heavy old post office doors with their brass moldings and depictions of mail delivery methods over the ages. "Oooph," I said. "What are you going to do?" It was a fine spring day, which perhaps lightened the mood around this little mishap. "I don't know," she said. "I'll go in and tell someone in a while." She brushed her fingers through her short, feathery hair, a warm, light brown. Not fussy, but well groomed. "I guess I'm distracted." [End Page 57] "I guess so," I said. I thought of the bank deposit, all her piano-teacher income, lying amidst the confusion of letters. I thought of the unfriendly post office clerks—surly even when faced with the simplest request—despite the glorious marble and brass building they worked in. "Do you have a few minutes?" she asked. "Sure," I said. She wanted to tell why she was distracted: Let's call him Louie. Louie lived in California, but he had come to town for a few days to hear Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. His brother was conducting, chorus and all. * * * If the regular rehearsal accompanist had been available and asked someone other than Anna to substitute. If Anna hadn't so loved the Beethoven. If Anna hadn't decided, in the last days of rehearsal, to sing in the chorus. If the conductor had not seen her in the crowd after the performance and called out, "We're going to celebrate. Why don't you join us?" If she'd followed her instinct (tired, sore throat) and gone home. If her throat had been even sorer (from singing all the high notes), perhaps she would have gone home. * * * Imagine an illustration in a magazine, she said as we stood by the busy post office curb. A dinner party, in gray, but two people in full color. Anna and Louie, sitting beside each other. She'd seen him in the crowd after the performance and thought, "There's trouble." But at the dinner, he seemed wonderful. "Do you ever want to get married?" he asked as they sat beside each other, in full color. "Sure," she said. Laughing. "And kids? You want to have kids?" "Sure," she said. Laughing some more. Perhaps her throat hurt less by now. And he said laughing, "How many?" "I don't know," she said. "Four, five, six, seven." "That many?" "Yes," she said. "I want a cacophonous house." * * * Anna lived in an efficiency apartment in an old brick courtyard building. Her piano, along a wall of the apartment's one room, was an upright, with a spectacularly high-gloss black finish. This was possibly her most flamboyant accessory. Her bed was a futon with a navy...
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Jun 1, 2008
Andrea Adolph 
Open Access