Wrong. The matriarch’s face became an Apache death mask. Aflame with embarrassment, Mary Ann sought DeDe’s eyes for guidance. “The problem,” explained DeDe, “is Nancy Reagan.”
Mary Ann nodded, understanding nothing.
D’orothea’s lip twisted wryly. “At least, we all have the same problem.”
DeDe ignored the remark. “Mother and Mrs. Reagan have never been the best of buddies. Mother thinks she may have been … blackballed from the state dinner.”
“Thinks?” snapped Mrs. Halcyon.
“Whatever,” said DeDe, handling Mary Ann’s mortification with a sympathetic wink. “You’d better scoot, hadn’t you? C’mon, I’ll walk you to the door.” She rose, making it easier for Mary Ann to do so.
“Good luck,” said the matriarch. “Look pretty, now.”
“Thanks,” she replied. “Bye, D’orothea.”
“Bye, hon. See you soon, O.K.?” Away from the old biddy, she meant.
“Where is she going?” Edgar asked his grandmother.
“To be on TV, darling. Anna, precious, don’t scratch yourself there.”
“Why?”
“Never mind. It isn’t ladylike.”
“The kids are looking great,” Mary Ann said. “I can’t believe how big they’re getting.”
“Yeah … Look, I’m sorry about all that squabbling.”
“Hey.”
“D’or hates these scenes. She’s O.K. when it’s just Mother, but when Mother’s with her friends …” She shook her head with weary resignation. “D’or calls them the Upper Crustaceans. There’s a lot of the old radical left in her still.”
Maybe so, thought Mary Ann, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to remember that the woman in the Zandra Rhodes gown with the understated smudge of purple in her hair had once toiled alongside DeDe in the jungles of Guyana. DeDe’s own transition from postdebutante to urban guerrilla to Junior League matron was equally rife with contradiction, and sometimes Mary Ann felt that the embarrassment both women suffered over the monstrous inconsistencies in their lives was the glue that held their marriage together.
DeDe smiled gently at her own dilemma. “I didn’t plan on having a family like this, you know?”
Mary Ann smiled bark at her. “I certainly do.”
“Anna called Edgar a faggot the other day. Can you believe that?”
“God. Where did she pick that up?”
DeDe shrugged. “The Montessori School, I guess. Hell, I don’t know…. Sometimes I think I haven’t got a handle on things anymore. I don’t know what to tell myself about the world, much less my children.” She paused and looked at Mary Ann. “I thought we might be swapping notes on that by now.”
“On what?”
“Kids. I thought you and Brian were planning … God, listen to me. I sound like Mother.”
“That’s all right.”
“You just mentioned … the last time I saw you …”
“Right.”
“But I guess … the career makes it kind of difficult to …” She let the thought trail off, apparently shamed into silence by the realization that they sounded like a couple of housewives pounding a mall in Sacramento. “Tell me to shut up. O.K.?”
They had reached the door, much to Mary Ann’s relief. She gave DeDe a hasty peck on the cheek. “I’m glad you’re interested,” she said. “It’s just that … things are kind of on hold for the time being.”
“I hear you,” said DeDe.
Did she? wondered Mary Ann. Had she guessed at the truth?
The rain was clattering angrily on the canopy above the restaurant’s entrance. “Are those your people?” asked DeDe, indicating Mary Ann’s camera crew.
“That’s them.” They looked wet and grouchy. She didn’t relish the thought of making them wetter and grouchier. “Thanks for the tip,” she told DeDe.
“That’s O.K.,” her friend replied. “I owed you one.”
The Baby Thing
BRIAN HAWKINS FOUND HIS WIFE’S NOTE WHEN HE GOT home from work, and he went up to the house on the roof to await her appearance on television. The tiny penthouse had been his bachelor pad in the old days, but now it functioned as a TV-room-cum-retreat for all the residents of 28 Barbary Lane. Nevertheless, he still seemed to use it more than anyone.
He worried about that sometimes. He wondered if he qualified as a full-fledged TV junkie, a chronic escapist who needed the tube to fill a void he was no longer capable of filling himself. When Mary Ann wasn’t home, he could almost always be found in his video aerie, lost in the soothing ether of the Quasar.
“Brian, dear?”
Mrs. Madrigal’s voice startled him, since her footsteps on the stairway had been drowned out by Supertramp singing “It’s Raining Again” on MTV. “Oh, hi,” he said, turning to grin at her. She was wearing a pale green kimono and her hair hovered above her angular face like random wisps of smoke.
Pursing her lips, she studied the television, where a man in his underwear was threading his way through a forest of open umbrellas. “How very appropriate,” she said.
“Really,” he replied.
“I was looking for Mary Ann,” the landlady explained.
It was a simple statement of fact, but it made him feel even more extraneous. “You’ll have to wait in line,” he said, turning back to the set.
Mrs. Madrigal said nothing.
He was instantly sorry for his pettiness. “She’s got a hot date with the Queen,” he added.
“Oh … another one, eh?”
“Yeah.”
She glided across the room and sat down next to him on the sofa. “Shouldn’t we be watching her channel?” Her huge Wedgwood eyes forgave him for his irritation.
He shook his head. “She won’t be on for another five minutes.”
“I see.” She let her gaze wander out the window until it fixed on the intermittent blink of the beacon on Alcatraz. He had seen her do that so many times, as if it were a point of reference, the source of her energy. Turning back to him, she shook his knee playfully. “It’s a bitch, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“Being a media widower.”
He came up with a smile for her. “It isn’t that. I’m proud of her.”
“Of course.”
“I had just … counted on being with her tonight. That’s all.”
“I know the feeling,” she said.
This time he was the one who looked out the window. A small pond had formed on a neighboring rooftop and its surface was being pitted by yet another downpour. It wasn’t night yet, but it was definitely dark. “Do you have a joint?” he asked.
She cocked her head and mugged at him—a reaction that said, “Silly question.” ‘Then she foraged in the sleeve of her kimono until she located the familiar tortoiseshell case. He selected a joint, lit it, and offered it back to her. She shook her head, saying, “Hang on to it.”
He did so, without a word, for almost a minute, while Michael Jackson minced down a make-believe street protesting that “the kid is not my son.” It wasn’t all that hard to believe him, Brian decided.
“The thing is,” he said at last, “I was going to talk to her about something.”
“Ah.”
“I was going to buy her dinner at Ciao and take her to Gandhi and talk to her about Topic A one more time.”
She was silent, so he glanced at her to see if she knew what he meant. She did. She knew and she was pleased. It made him feel a lot better. If nothing else, he would always have Mrs. Madrigal on his side.
“You can still do that,” she said finally.
“I don’t know …”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean … it scares the hell out of me. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to make her say no one more time. This lime … it might sound like she means it.”
“But if you don’t at least talk to her …”
“Look, what good would it do? When would she find the time, for God’s sake? Toni
ght is so fucking typical, you know. Our private life has to take a back seat to every dumbass little news story that comes down the pike.”
The landlady smiled faintly. “I’m not sure Her Majesty would appreciate that description of her sojourn.”
“O.K. Maybe not tonight. The Queen is excusable….”
“I should think.”
“But she’s done this half a dozen times this month. This is always the way it is.”
“Well, her career is terribly …”
“Don’t I show respect for her career? Don’t I? That can be her career, and the baby can be mine. That makes a helluva lot of sense to me!”
His voice must have been more strident than he had intended. She stroked him with her eyes, telling him to calm down. “Dear,” she murmured, “I’m the last person who needs convincing.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I guess I’m practicing on you.”
“That’s all right.”
“It’s not like we have that much time. She’s thirty-two and I’m thirty-eight.”
“Ancient,” said the landlady.
“It is for making babies. It’s shit-or-get-off-the-pot time.”
Mrs. Madrigal winced, then arranged a fold in her kimono sleeve. “Your metaphors need work, dear. Tell me, when exactly did you last talk to her about this?”
He thought for a moment. “Three months ago, maybe. And six months before that.”
“And?”
“She keeps saying we should wait.”
“For what?”
“You tell me. For her to become an anchor, maybe? That makes a lot of sense. How many pregnant anchors have you seen?”
“There must have been some,”
“She doesn’t want to,” he said. “That’s the bottom line. That’s the truth behind the excuses.”
“You don’t know that,” said the landlady.
“I know her.”
Mrs. Madrigal peered out at the Alcatraz beacon again. “Don’t be too sure about that,” she said.
That threw him. When he looked for clues in her face, her brow seemed to be furrowed in thought. “Has she talked to you?” he asked. “Has she said something about … the baby thing?”
“No,” she answered hastily. “She would never do that.”
He remembered the time and reached for the remote control. At the slightest touch of his finger, Mary Ann’s face appeared on the screen, only slightly larger than life. She was standing in an alleyway behind Trader Vic’s, smiling incongruously in a deep blue sea of cops.
“My goodness,” beamed Mrs. Madrigal. “Doesn’t she look just splendid?”
She looked better than that. A rush of pure affection swept over him. He smiled at the set for a few proud moments, then turned back to his landlady. “Tell me the truth,” he said.
“All right.”
“Does she look like a woman who wants to have a baby?”
Mrs. Madrigal’s forehead wrinkled again. She spent a long time scrutinizing Mary Ann’s face. “Well,” she began, tapping a forefinger against her lips, “that hat is deceptive.”
Volunteer
MICHAEL TOLLIVER HAD SPENT RUSH HOUR IN THE Castro, the time of day when the young men who worked in banks came home to the young men who worked in bars. He watched from a window seat at the Twin Peaks as they spilled from the mouth of the Muni Metro, stopping only long enough to raise the barrels of their collapsible umbrellas and fire at the advancing rain. Their faces had the haggard, disoriented cast of prisoners who had somehow tunneled to freedom.
He polished off his Calistoga and left the bar, then forked out three dollars to a man selling collapsible umbrellas on the corner. He had lost his last one, and the one before that had sprung a spoke, but three dollars was nothing and he embraced the idea of their expendability. There was no point in getting attached to an umbrella.
Deciding on a pizza at the Sausage Factory, he set off down Castro Street past the movie house and the croissant/cookie/card shops. As he crossed Eighteenth Street, a derelict lurched into the intersection and shouted “Go back to Japan” to a stylish black woman driving a Mitsubishi. Michael caught her eye and smiled. She rewarded him with an amiable shrug, a commonplace form of social telepathy which seemed to say: “Looks like we lost another one.” There were days, he realized, when that was all the humanity you could expect—that wry, forgiving glance between survivors.
The Sausage Factory was so warm and cozy that he scuttled his better judgment and ordered half a liter of the house red. What began as a mild flirtation with memory had degenerated into maudlin self-pity by the time the alcohol took hold. Seeking distraction, he studied the funk-littered walls, only to fix upon a faded Pabst Blue Ribbon sign which read: DON’T JUST SIT THERE—NAG YOUR HUSBAND. When the waiter arrived with his pizza, his face was already lacquered with tears.
“Uh … are you O.K., hon?”
Michael mopped up quickly with his napkin and received his dinner. “Sure. I’m fine. This looks great.”
The waiter wouldn’t buy it. He stood there for a moment with his arms folded, then pulled up a chair and sat down across from Michael. “If you’re fine, I’m Joan Collins.”
Michael smiled at him. He couldn’t help thinking of a waitress he had known years ago in Orlando. She, too, had called him “hon” without ever knowing his name. This man had a black leather vest, and keys clipped to his Levi’s, but he reached out to strangers in exactly the same way. “One of those days?” he asked.
“One of those days,” said Michael.
The waiter shook his head slowly. “And here we are on the wrong side of town, while Betty is having dinner at Trader Vic’s.”
Michael skipped a beat. “Bette Davis?” The waiter laughed. “I wish. Betty the Second, hon. The Queen.”
“Oh.”
“They gave her a fortune cookie … and she didn’t know what it was. Can you stand it?”
Michael chuckled. “You don’t by any chance know what the fortune was?”
“Uh …” The waiter wrote in the air with his finger. “
‘You … will … come … into … a … great … deal … of … money.’ ”
“Sure.”
The waiter held his hands up. “Swear to God. Nancy Reagan got the same thing in hers.”
Michael took another sip of his wine. “Where did you get this?” This guy was awfully nice, but his dish seemed suspect.
“On the TV in the kitchen. Mary Ann Singleton has been covering it all night.”
“No kidding?” Good for her, he thought, good for her. “She’s an old friend of mine.” It would tickle her to know he had bragged about that.
“Well, you tell her she’s all right.” The waiter extended his hand. “I’m Michael, by the way.”
Michael shook his hand. “Same here.”
“Michael?”
“Yep.”
The waiter rolled his eyes. “Sometimes I think that half the fags in the world are named Michael. Where did they ever get this Bruce shit?” He rose suddenly, remembering his professionalism. “Well, you take care, hon. Maybe I’ll see you around. You don’t work in the neighborhood, do you?”
Michael shook his head. “Not usually. I did this afternoon.”
“Where?”
“Across the street. At the switchboard.”
“Yeah? My friend Max worked there for a while. He said it was exhausting.”
“It is,” said Michael.
“This one guy called every other afternoon, while his wife was at her Dancercise class. He usually wanted Max to be … you know … a butch trucker type. Max said it took him ages to come, and he said the same thing over and over again. ‘Yeah, that’s right, flop those big balls in my face.’ Now, how the hell you can flop your balls in some guy’s face over the telephone …”
“Wrong place,” said Michael, feeling a faint smile work its way out.
The waiter blinked at him. “Dial-a-Load?”
Michael shook his head. “The AIDS ho
tline.”
“Oh.” The waiter’s fingers crept up his chest to his mouth. “Oh, God. I am such a dipshit.”
“No you’re not.”
“There’s this phone sex place upstairs from that new savings and loan, and I thought … God, I’m embarrassed.”
“Don’t be,” said Michael. “I think it’s funny.”
The other Michael’s face registered gratitude, then confusion, then something akin to discomfort. Michael knew what he was wondering. “I don’t have it,” he added. “I’m just a volunteer who answers the phones.”
A long silence followed. When the waiter finally spoke, his voice was much more subdued. “My ex-lover’s lover died of it last month.”
An expression of sympathy seemed somehow inappropriate, so Michael merely nodded.
“It really scares me,” said the waiter. “I’ve given up Folsom Street completely. I only go to sweater bars now.”
Michael would have told him that disease was no respecter of cashmere, but his nerves were too shot for another counseling session. He had already spent five hours talking to people who had been rejected by their lovers, evicted by their landlords, and refused admission to local hospitals. Just for tonight, he wanted to forget.
A Hard Time Believing
IT WAS ALMOST MIDNIGHT WHEN MARY ANN GOT HOME. A winter full of rain had left a moss-green scum on the wooden stairway to Barbary Lane, so she climbed it cautiously, holding fast to the rail until she felt the reassuring squish of eucalyptus leaves under her feet. She noticed that Michael’s lights were still on when she reached the lych-gate at Number 28. For some reason, that worried her, activating an instinct that might roughly be described as maternal.
She hesitated on the second-floor landing, then rapped on his door. He appeared moments later, looking rumpled and a little discombobulated. “Oh, hi,” he said, raking his hair with his fingers.
“I hope you weren’t asleep.”
“No. Just lying down. C’mon in.”
She stepped into the room. “Did you catch my little coup, by any chance?”
He shook his head. “I heard about it afterwards, though. The Castro was all abuzz with it.”
“Really?” The upward inflection of her voice was a little too girlish and eager, but she was hungry for reinforcement. Her secret fear was that her performance had been clumsy and sophomoric. “What exactly were they saying?”
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