If the Anne of yesteryear could see and feel and touch, with fingers not yet calloused and palms not yet feathered with lines; if she could perhaps cup the trembling chin of the Anne-of-now, perhaps she would be able to ease the pain.
Perhaps.
---
"And who would have thought that a belly could be such a bothersome thing?" comes the question and a sigh mingled with the heat of an unexpectedly warm spring day.
"Not a belly, love, but a child."
Anne leans her head against the windowpane; feels the pen slipping from her hands before it falls against the floor. The papers, scribbled over and pockmarked with notes, come down as well, to settle and to rest in a rising tide about swollen ankles and a hem in need of mending.
He does not move to pick them up.
---
"Mother, isn't this you handwriting?"
"Oh, let me have a look at those, dear."
"…And with the fall of eventide came a whisper through the half-bent firs…"
"How lovely! Is that a line from Tennyson?"
"Tennyson? Oh… no, it's from…"
"Oh, do wait! Let me guess!" --a head bent in thought, another in wonder. Has it really been so long?
"Is it Wordsworth?"
"Or perhaps Byron? Or Browning?"
"No, no. Give those here. It's no one; nothing. These trunks are full of wasted space, and we must clean them out before they sprout mold. Hand them here, child."
The scent of years never to return again, wafting through the rooms and out the open windows; a mingling of dreams and dying fir in the meadow beyond the house.
---
"Are you happy dear?"
"Why of course, Gil. You do ask such silly questions at times."
"Happiness is not a requirement in life, Anne."
"Is that to say we make our own happiness?"
A silence, a hand reaching for another-- "No. I'm afraid we must depend on others for that."
"And are you happy Gil?"
"At times."
Oh! The sting of truthfulness!
"And is it because I fail you in certain duties?" A hint of that bold familiar temper, now freshly awakened after so many years of slumber. But it is too late, he is merely tired on this cold winter evening.
"No, Anne. It is because at times you fail yourself."
---
Could it really be the same Diana?
"Isn't it delightful how far the world has come, Anne? I was so devastated when Cordelia moved away, but now we can keep in touch with these lovely portraits they send us twice a year. Isn't photography wonderful, Anne? Do you remember the portrait we sat for together?"
"Yes… here it is--"
"Oh! You've kept yours. I'm afraid mine has been lost for some time now. How funny it is to look at this."
"Sometimes I catch myself looking at it, Diana… and I find myself asking who the girl gazing back at me could possibly be. It seems we've changed so."
"Changed! No! You're still the same auburn-haired slender thing. It's I who have changed, just look at these rolls!"
This laughter is something new; the smile does not quite reach the eyes, thinks Anne. When she is at last alone, she holds the photograph with shaking hands; a finger grazes the smile of the girl before her.
"Who are you?" She whispers in the light of a flickering candle, "and where have you gone?"
The looking-glass has grown dark, and the world at times seems to sail through a sepia sunset. She hides the photograph in a box with a lock, beneath a stack of shriveled paper and a jumbled dash of letters; ashen pronouns.
---
"Dearest of Annes," reads the tarnished letter in a hand that almost whispers of familiarity.
"And so now you are a married woman, with children of your own. I suspect there are twins in your future, or my future I should say. Have the years been good to you, and have you built your House of Dreams? I've had so many dreams for you, Anne spelled with an E. So many lovely daydreams and afternoon-dreams and morning-dreams, and of course night-dreams... not to mention the loveliest of them all, those dusk-dreams; I do love that word, and how splendid it is to close one's eyes when the sun has not quite set and the moon not yet risen, to count the stars and to Dream!
Oh, Anne! Do you remember..."
The rest fades before her eyes; she realizes that no; she does not remember.
---