Read Mary Ann in Autumn Online
Authors: Armistead Maupin
Mary Ann in Autumn (19 page)
T
he worst thing about trimming dead fronds from tree ferns was the itchy brown dust that clung to Jake’s skin every time he tackled the job. If the ferns were tall, like the ones in this particular garden, the nasty shit would fall into his eyes whenever he looked up, or creep down his collar onto his neck, like the needling remnants of a haircut. As pleased as he was about his newly forested forearms, all that hair was a magnet for fern dust, and he would find himself—as he did now—scratching like an addict in withdrawal.
“You okay?” Michael was stacking the fronds for removal to the truck. “I could spell you for a while.”
“Nah. I’m good.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
Jake was trying hard to make an extra effort, since he planned, any minute now, to ask a favor of Michael that probably couldn’t come at a worse time. Business was lousy, and Michael’s shoulder was giving him more trouble than usual. If that weren’t enough, Michael seemed weirdly distracted and distant today. Jake was even starting to wonder if Michael had guessed what was coming and wasn’t happy about it.
Still, there was no way to do this but to do it.
“Feel like some coffee?” Jake asked.
Michael didn’t answer right away, as if this were a really difficult question. “Sure,” he said, finally. “That would be good.”
The garden they were tending was only a block from the Marina Green, so they hosed off their faces and arms and took their thermoses down to a bench by the bay. The sky was clear; there were more sailboats than usual for a late-autumn day.
Jake pulled a Clif Bar from his shirt pocket and offered it to Michael.
“No, thanks.”
“You sure? I got two.”
“Yeah . . . thanks.”
Jake hesitated, then took the leap: “Is something goin’ on, boss?” Technically, of course, Michael was his business partner, not his boss, but Jake was still using the b-word and wasn’t sure if he would ever stop. It was a term of respect, more than anything.
Michael gave him a hangdog look. “How could you tell?”
Jake shrugged. “Well . . . for one thing, you’re not humming.”
“Humming?”
“You know . . . while you work.”
“I thought that annoyed you.”
“It does, but . . . I figure it would take something pretty big to make you stop.” Jake tore open the Clif Bar and bit off a chunk. “You wanna talk about it?”
Michael gazed morosely at the water. “Mary Ann is in the hospital. She has cancer. I’m waiting for word right now.”
This relief that Jake felt, if only briefly, turned into shame as soon as he saw the tears on Michael’s cheeks. At least he thought that’s what they were. Michael’s eyes were always leaky, especially in the open air, so it was hard to say for sure.
“Why didn’t you say something before?” he asked.
“She asked us not to. She didn’t want a lot of drama around it. Please don’t mention it to Anna. Or Shawna, for that matter. Not for a while, anyway. We’ll know a lot more by this afternoon.”
“What are they doing, exactly?”
“She has cancer. She’s having a hysterectomy.”
Jake just stared at him silently. At first he thought Michael was making a twisted joke, until he remembered that people didn’t joke about that.
“I know,” said Michael. “I know.”
It took Jake a while to say anything. “You coulda told me. I woulda kept quiet about it. I coulda been really helpful. I’ve been reading up on it.”
“I know. I just thought . . . I dunno.”
“You just thought what?”
“That it might somehow . . . rain on your parade.”
Jake nodded slowly, absorbing that. “My hysterectomy parade.”
Michael smiled sheepishly. “You know what I mean. It’s a whole different thing for you. Yours will be cause for celebration. Hers . . . not so much.”
“It will be if they get the cancer out.”
“You’re right. Of course.” He laid his hand on Jake’s knee and shook it, as if he were shaking off that terrible word. “So . . . it’s all you want for Christmas, huh?”
Jake felt his face go hot.
Anna must have spilled the beans already
.
“If it’s the wrong time, boss . . .”
“It might be exactly the right time. Ben and I have been talking about going to Maui for Christmas.”
“Really? But . . . then we’d both be off work.”
Michael shrugged. “And neither one of us would have to feel guilty.”
This was something of a revelation to Jake. “You feel guilty about that?”
“Of course. Every time you’re working and I’m not. We’re in this together, buddy.”
Now there were tears in Jake’s eyes, but they had nothing to do with the bite of wind off the bay. He had simply realized that he’d just cleared the last obstacle to his dream.
“You sure about this, boss?”
“Absolutely. I’ll go with you to the hospital, of course. We’ll just be recuperating in different places.”
Swiping at his eyes, Jake told him that Selina and Marguerite had already offered to help during the surgery, but that he appreciated the offer just the same.
“Well . . . that sucks. This is the second hysterectomy I’ve been barred from this month.”
Jake grinned. “You’re not barred, boss.”
“Mary Ann told me it was a ‘girl thing.’ ”
“Well . . . you won’t get that from me.”
“No . . . guess not.” Michael smiled faintly.
“I’d just rather have a buddy waiting for me on the other side.”
“That’s pretty much what
she
said.”
There was a long, peaceful silence as they both gazed out at the bay, where a square-nosed freighter was sailing out toward the Golden Gate.
Finally, Michael said: “Anna tells me you’re seeing someone.”
Jake shook his head. “Not really. Not in the usual way.”
“Is there a ‘usual way’ around here?”
“He was only here for a few weeks.” Jake decided on the spot not to mention the reason for Jonah’s visit, since it would only endanger the fragile beauty of what had happened before he left. “He lives in a place called Snowflake.”
“Where’s that?”
“Arizona.”
Michael widened his eyes optimistically. “That’s not all that far away.”
“Oh, yeah it is.”
Michael chuckled.
“He wasn’t the right one, anyway. We were on different journeys.”
“Well,” said Michael, “if you were good for each other . . . even for a while . . . sometimes that’s enough.”
For Jake, it was enough to know that another man had desired him enough to risk everything—even the promise of everlasting life—for a kiss.
A
t first there was only a face, floating free in a borderless nimbus.
“Welcome back, Mrs. Caruthers.”
It was such a sweet face, too, so full of kindness that it might have belonged to an angel at the gates of heaven, and she actually entertained that possibility for a moment or two. But it made no sense at all. How could you be welcomed
back
to heaven? And since when did angels have blue titanium lip studs and fauxhawks?
The nimbus melted, like frost in sunlight, and the whole person appeared.
“I’m Seth,” he said. “The nurse.”
“Hey, Seth.”
He was fiddling with a tube—a drip of some sort, she assumed. “You were such a champ,” he told her with a smile. “You did just great.”
Good for me,
she thought.
But what does that mean?
“You barely lost any blood at all,” the nurse added. “Two teaspoons at the most.”
Until now, she had never even thought about how much blood might be involved.
“Did the doctor say if—?”
“She said to tell you the procedure went very, very smoothly.”
“Really? Two verys?” She was starting to wonder if this was how they handled patients when the news was too horrendous to be presented by a nurse. She didn’t need to be told that she was the world’s best patient; she needed to be told that she had the world’s most cancer-free insides. Was that asking too much?
The nurse smiled at her again. “The doctor will be by later to tell you in person.”
“What did the pathologist say?”
“Can’t help you there, I’m afraid.”
“Right . . . of course.” She remembered being told that it would take three days to get the results. She decided to focus on being grateful that she hadn’t died on the table.
The nurse laid his hand gently on her shoulder. “Get some rest, Mrs. Caruthers.”
“Please . . . Mary Ann.”
“Mary Ann,” he repeated.
“Thanks for saying hello, Seth.”
“C’mon. This is the best part of the job.”
“Just the same, thank you.”
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
T
HE NEXT TIME SHE DRIFTED
into consciousness, she heard DeDe and Dr. Ginny in quiet conversation across the room, so she kept her eyes shut and eavesdropped. It was scary to do this, but she wanted to make sure Seth hadn’t been sparing her the truth.
“You’ll need to get her up and walking,” Dr. Ginny was saying.
“Tonight?”
“Just down to the end of the hallway. Take your time about it, but do it. It’ll help with the healing.”
“Okay.”
Ask her how it went, DeDe! No, don’t ask her!
“I expect the incisions to heal rather quickly,” said Dr. Ginny. “It helps that she was already so fit.”
“I know. It’s so annoying.”
Dr. Ginny chuckled. “It’s just Pilates.”
“No, it’s genes, dammit. Have you ever seen a picture of my mother? We were born to be hens.”
Their soft laughter was encouraging, if not especially informative.
Surely they wouldn’t be laughing if the news had been bad.
S
HE WAS AWAKENED BY A
metallic rattling that sounded like medical machinery. She opened her eyes with a vague sense of dread, wondering if something had gone wrong and she was back on the operating table. But it was just DeDe, methodically removing dishes from a gingham-lined picnic basket and arranging them on the bed tray.
“Hey, missy,” she said, realizing her charge was awake.
“Hey, pretty lady.”
“Oh, they
did
get you blitzed, didn’t they?”
“What’s this?”
“Don’t worry. It’s not from the hospital. D’or dropped it by a little while ago. We have a nice homemade fruit salad and a lovely
boeuf bourguignon
from Fleur de Lys. Also yogurt and cookies for dessert.”
Just the sight of this fare made Mary Ann nauseous, but she did not have the heart to tell DeDe. “Look at you,” she said instead. “You’re like Grace Kelly in
Rear Window
.”
DeDe snorted. “More like Thelma Ritter.”
“Stop that. You’re beautiful. We have to work on your self-esteem.”
A strained silence followed. DeDe looked misty-eyed, making Mary Ann wonder if catastrophic news was imminent.
“Dig in,” DeDe said at last.
Mary Ann took a bite of the fruit salad, and issued an appreciative “Yum.”
“I’m so happy to be here with you,” said DeDe.
Mary Ann set down her fork, no longer able to bear the suspense. “What have you heard?”
“You haven’t talked to Ginny yet?”
“No.” She had stopped breathing altogether.
“Oh, Jesus . . . well . . . she said the cancer doesn’t seem to have spread to your lymph nodes and your tissues look really good . . .”
“But?”
DeDe shrugged and grinned. “No buts. None that
I
heard, anyway.”
“Seriously?”
DeDe took Mary Ann’s hand. “Would I lie to you, missy?”
There was a cursory rap on the door before an orderly charged into the room with a rollaway bed. “Do you have a preference?” he asked DeDe.
Finding that question hilarious, Mary Ann giggled.
“Don’t mind her,” DeDe told the orderly. “She’s high as a kite. Over against that wall would be fine, thank you.”
The orderly positioned the bed as directed. It was ridiculously narrow. The mattress was sheathed in a thick plastic cover that could easily repel any conceivable bodily fluid. Mary Ann heard it crackling as the orderly tucked in the sheets.
“You can’t sleep on that,” she told DeDe as soon as the orderly was gone.
“Shush.”
“Well, at least get out of the damn Chanel and make yourself comfortable.”
“Not yet. We have to take a little walk later on, and I’m not going out there in my jammies.”
Mary Ann smiled at her knowingly. The Chanel was DeDe’s own suit of armor, and apparently she thought she might still have use for it.
D
R.
G
INNY STOPPED BY THAT
afternoon and made DeDe’s report official. They wouldn’t be totally out of the woods, she said, until they got the lab reports, but things looked really good. As usual, Mary Ann found herself infatuated with the surgeon and her goddess-like aura of confidence. She envisioned her uterus resting in those strong, elegant hands, no longer capable of poisoning the rest of her body. She had not tried to picture what happened before that. She knew Dr. Ginny had made some very small incisions in her abdomen, but she wasn’t sure if her uterus had exited that way or through her vagina. She didn’t want to know, really. Not now. Not for a while. Maybe never.
“Thank you for her,” Mary Ann told DeDe, as soon as the doctor had left.
“My pleasure.”
“It was sweet of her to stick around.”
“Actually . . . I think she has another one here this afternoon.”
“Another what?”
“Hysterectomy.”
“Oh.” Mary Ann remembered how many notches Dr. Ginny already had in her oncological gun and reminded herself that that was why she was so good at her job.
“What’s the matter?” asked DeDe, catching her crestfallen expression. “You jealous or something?”
She was, sort of. There was no denying it.
B
en was back in his studio, still pleasantly buzzed from his long swim at the Y, when Michael called from a job in the Marina to say that Mary Ann’s surgery had gone very well. He had just heard the news from DeDe Halcyon-Wilson.
“That’s great, baby.”
“I know, isn’t it?”
“So she’s getting out tomorrow?”
“Yep.”
“What do we need to do?”
“Nothing, apparently. Just let her rest and help her walk around a little. But here’s the thing, sweetie . . . DeDe and D’or have offered to put her up for several days until she gets the lab results, and I was wondering how you’d feel about that.”
This seemed like a trick question to Ben. He wondered if Michael was testing his devotion to Mary Ann. “How do
you
feel about it?”
“Well . . . they’ve got a huge house in Hillsborough . . . with a staff, I think . . . so she’d probably be more comfortable there.”
Ben hesitated. “But?”
“Well . . . frankly, I think she’d rather be with us.”
“Has she told you that?”
“Well, I haven’t spoken to her yet, just DeDe, but—”
“Why don’t you ask her, then?”
“If I do, she’ll think we’re trying to unload her. I know how she is. And she’ll agree to it whether she wants to or not.”
“Do you think maybe she asked DeDe to ask you because she’s afraid of hurting
your
feelings?”
“No . . . I don’t . . . honestly.”
“Then . . . we’ll make her comfortable in the cottage. We’ve already told her she can do it, so we’ll do it.”
Ben wondered what was going on here. Was Michael jealous of DeDe’s attention to Mary Ann? Did he think he would somehow fail Mary Ann if he didn’t insist upon taking care of her? Or maybe—and this was where it got murkier—he was trying to prove that he wouldn’t desert her in her hour of need as she had once deserted him?
The truth, whatever it was, lay beneath the sediment of their shared history, and Ben had not known either one of them long enough to dig it out.
He wrestled with business for several hours, calling it quits around four o’clock. It was awful how the Zen calm achieved from making something beautiful with his hands could be so quickly erased by the demands of taxes and billing statements. But, over the years, he had learned to face the fact that art could not be practiced without the eventual use of numbers—not if you wanted to keep on doing it. His business had been successful for that very reason. At least it
had
been, before the recession.
He swung away from the computer, rubbing his eyes. Roman was watching him intently from his doughnut bed across the room, sensing even now, from the creak of Ben’s Aeron chair and the slow, gray death of the skylight, that it was time to hit the road. The dog was already at the door, his tail thrashing like a flag in a red-state parade, when Ben removed the leash from the filing cabinet. Then, as an afterthought, he snatched the Chuckit! from his desk drawer, causing Roman to begin crooning with joy. That blue plastic ball launcher could mean only one thing: a trip to the beach or the park.
The beach would have been nice, given the clear skies, but Ben figured it would be chilly at Crissy Field and downright cold at Fort Funston, so he took Roman to the Collingwood dog park. When they came through the gate, he counted only three other humans on the field, though there were at least a dozen dogs.
Dogwalkers,
he concluded, with a shiver of disdain, since dogs being led around en masse brought a weird energy to the park. They just stood around looking bored and displaced, like schoolchildren on a field trip, refusing to play with each other when they weren’t ganging up on the rest.
Today, however, Roman had found a familiar face: Blossom.
While the terrier and the doodle wrestled, Ben spotted Blossom’s doting dad sitting alone on a bench at the far end of the park. He had no choice but to acknowledge Cliff with a wave, but he was relieved when the old man seemed not to have noticed. After their exchange at the Y, he’d had enough Cliff for the day. He wasn’t sure what they’d talk about this soon. For all his implied tragedy, Cliff just wasn’t that interesting.
He looked back at the roughhousing dogs, grateful for a reason to turn away from the old man, but Roman quickly lost interest in Blossom and ran off to harvest a tennis ball. Blossom looked crestfallen for a moment, then left to join the listless dogs on the chain gang. When Roman returned to deposit the slobbery ball at Ben’s feet, Ben obeyed the implied command and flung it across the compound. Roman was already halfway there when the ball hit the cyclone fence. He caught it in midair on the second bounce and pranced back to Ben, ridiculous and beautiful, his whole body shouting triumph.
Ben wondered sometimes what would happen if the capricious electricity in Roman’s brain fired at a time like this. How would the other dogs react to a grand mal seizure in their midst? Or the people, for that matter, who might get the wrong idea about the foam on Roman’s lips. Would he be able to stay by Roman’s side, comforting him until the seizure stopped, or would he have to cope with a larger madness? And what about the postictal period? How would he clear
this
room while Roman went nuts?
They’d been lucky so far; the seizures had been at home—or at least inside—so the situation had never arisen. Maybe it never would. Maybe Roman’s morning dose of potassium bromide would be enough to keep the beast within him at bay. The main thing was that the seizures not be allowed to come too close together. Otherwise they would begin to dig a sort of neural trench that would make it easier and easier for them to happen.
Ben knew he could easily dig a trench of his own. When it came to dealing with the epilepsy, there was a fine line between caution and constant dread, and it would cheat them both if he crossed it. He wanted to share his life with Roman. He would not be one of those fretful neurotics who robbed their dogs of all spontaneity and fun.
•••
R
OMAN RETRIEVED THE BALL AT
least a dozen times before taking time out to slurp water from a bowl at the entrance to the park. Blossom, meanwhile, had joined Cliff at his bench at the end of the park. She was sitting at the old man’s feet, barking insistently, though Cliff seemed oblivious to it. His hands were clamped to his knees, and he was rocking slowly back and forth, as if keeping time to his own private dirge.
He was crying, Ben realized. Sobbing.
Ben got up and walked casually in Cliff’s direction. He didn’t want to draw attention to the old man’s state, but he couldn’t ignore it, either. As he drew closer, he could hear Cliff’s whimpering—a terrible sound, like an animal caught in a trap. He sat down next to the old man and laid his hand lightly on Cliff’s back.
The sobbing continued, as if Cliff were still alone.
“Is there something I can do?” Ben asked finally.
The old man shook his head, then wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his parka. “It’s too late for that. It’s too late for everything.”
“Would you like to talk about it?”
Blossom was barking again, so Cliff scooped her into his arms and petted her, obviously trying to compose himself. “My wife is dead,” he said at last.
“Oh, damn . . . I’m so sorry.”
“I got the word this afternoon.”
“Was it . . . a natural death?” That came out sounding totally awkward, but Ben thought it would have been rude to ask if Cliff’s wife had died of old age.
“I don’t know what it was,” said Cliff. “They didn’t tell me.”
Ben was remembering what Cliff had said earlier at the Y—that his wife hadn’t been “with him” for a while. “I take it she wasn’t living with you?” he said.
Cliff shook his head. “No. But that wasn’t my doing. That’s the way she wanted it. She started using drugs . . . a few years after we got married. She ended up needing the drugs more than she needed me. She just went off the rails and never came back.”
Ben nodded.
What could you say about that?
“I tried to give her a good life.”
“I’m sure.”
“We had one, too, for a good little while.” Cliff pulled the terrier closer until she was licking the side of his face. “Didn’t we, Blossom? We were a family back then.”
Ben found himself moved by this flash revelation of Cliff’s domestic life. “How did you meet?” he asked, trying to draw the old man out of his suffering.
“She was working in a shoe store in West Portal. I was looking for some shoes. Prettiest thing you ever saw. Black hair. Green eyes.”
“How old was she?”
“Um . . . thirty.”
“And this was . . . ?”
“Ten . . . twelve years ago.” Cliff gave him a melancholy look that was tinged with a curious sheepishness. “Think I was robbing the cradle?”
Ben smiled at him. “Not in my book. Love is love. My partner is twenty-one years older than I am.”
Cliff absorbed that for a moment. “That’s right,” he said.
This puzzled Ben. “You’ve met him, you mean?”
“No . . . but . . . I think I saw you with him here last summer. Handsome, stocky fellow? Gray mustache?”
“That’s him.” Ben was still baffled. Michael almost never came to this park. He preferred Stern Grove, out near the ocean, where Roman could run in the grass.
“It’s good to have somebody,” Cliff said, staring vacantly into the distance. “I never saw my wife anymore . . . not for years . . . but just knowing she was still . . . out there made it a little easier to be alone.” There were fresh tears on the old man’s face, but he didn’t bother to wipe them away. “Funny how that works.”
Ben scrambled for something positive to say and ended up scratching Blossom’s silky belly. “These little critters can be really good company.”
“Yeah . . . for a while. Then nothing works anymore. Not even love.”
There was a strained silence. Scratching the dog had brought Ben close enough to smell Cliff’s rotten, gin-infused breath, so he leaned away as subtly as possible.
“Would you do me a favor?” Cliff said after a while.
“Uh . . . sure . . . if I can.”
“Would you see she gets a good home, if anything happens to me?”
“Oh . . . Blossom, you mean?” Ben knew very well what he meant; he was just stalling while he searched for an acceptable excuse. As much as he sympathized with the old man’s situation, this was not a burden he was willing to assume. “You know, Cliff . . . we don’t have a whole lot of room at our house, and Roman tends to—”
“I didn’t mean you. Just see that she’s not left alone.”
“But . . . you understand . . . I really wouldn’t have any way of
knowing
if something happened to you.”
“Oh, you’d know,” Cliff said vaguely. “Word gets around.”
“Still I don’t think you should take that risk. It’s better to contact the SPCA. They’re a great outfit, and I’m sure they have provisions for that sort of . . . advance-need situation. If you like, I can look into it for you . . . get the number.”
It was excruciatingly clear that Cliff was feeling rejected. “I know how to look up a number,” he said.
“Well . . . of course, I didn’t mean—”
“I need to be alone now.”
“You bet. Of course.” Ben rose from the bench, now feeling like a total piece of shit, but glad to be excused anyway. “Take care, okay? I’ll see you soon.”
He didn’t look back once as he headed for the gate with Roman.
I
T WAS ALMOST DARK WHEN
he got back to the house, so he poured himself a tall brandy and took it out to the garden, where a gibbous moon was rising in the lavender sky. He should have done something to help Cliff. He knew that. In his stumbling, shutdown way Cliff had been reaching out, and Ben had effectively ignored him. What was that about, anyway? Was it too personal an act to take responsibility for this old man’s dog? Or at least make an effort to see to it that someone else did?
Yes. It was. No—it was too
familial
—and Ben didn’t want to be an in-law to all that wretchedness and regret. Cliff was just a guy he knew from the dog park; he felt pity for him, but he was repelled by him as well, and he didn’t want their casual connection to become something more formal. It was that simple.
The sad thing, Ben thought, was that Cliff had probably received this reaction his whole life. His social uneasiness seemed part of his very constitution. No wonder he was feeling the loss of someone who had actually married him, however briefly. If his wife had become an addict, Ben couldn’t help wondering if the drugs had driven her away, or if Cliff himself, in his all-consuming cloud of despair, had driven her to the drugs.
Ben was a little drunk now, so he went into the kitchen to get the irises he had bought on his way home from the dog park. He wanted the cottage to be a welcoming place when Mary Ann got back in the morning. Finding a vase on the shelf above the stove, he filled it with water and fluffed the irises for a while. It felt good to commit this small act of generosity in the churning wake of the larger one he had just dodged.
When he put the irises on Mary Ann’s bedside table, he saw a T-shirt on the bed next to a gift bag and a spiral of pink paper ribbon. The shirt read
PINYON CITY: THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
. He had seen that T-shirt before—lots of them, in fact—gathering dust in his favorite general store. It was touching to think Mary Ann had cared enough about their trip to the mountains, even while it was going on, to commemorate it this way. And the fact she had done so on her own made it seem that much more sincere.
He stuffed the T-shirt into the bag and put the bag with her other things on a shelf in the closet. Then he stripped the bed and hauled the linens to the laundry room. She would have clean sheets when she got back, and that would be a good way of saying that she was starting over now, that things could only get better from here on out.