Tales of the City 02 - More Tales of the City

people from—”
    Frannie cut her off with a jingle of the bedside bell. “Emma, dear … you’re giving me a headache.”
    “Yes’m.”
    “Now, what I’d like to know is … Emma, I trust your opinion a great deal. I think you know that, and … Do you think I need a face-lift, Emma?”
    Silence.
    “You do know what a face-lift is, Emma?”
    The maid nodded sullenly. “Cuttin’.”
    “No … well, yes, that’s part of it, but it’s a complete cosmetic process that’s really quite common these days. I mean, lots of ladies—”
    “White ladies.”
    “Don’t be impertinent, Emma.”
    A quarter century of faithful employment at Halcyon Hill entitled Emma to the scowl with which she now confronted her mistress.
    “Miss Frances, the Lord gave you a perfectly fine face, and if the Lord had intended for—”
    “Oh, poo, Emma! The Lord doesn’t have to go to Opera Guild meetings!”
    “Ma’am?”
    “I’m so old, Emma. And everybody I know looks like … Nancy Kissinger! I’m nothing but an old turkey gobbler!” She pinched the flesh along her cheekbone. “Look at that, Emma!”
    Emma’s expression was dour. “Mr. Edgar wouldn’t like that kind of talk.”
    Frannie rolled over in bed and pushed out her lower lip. “Mr. Edgar is dead,” she said dully.
    When Emma was doing the laundry, Frannie locked the bedroom door and phoned Vita Keating. The furtiveness of this act made her realize that, even at fifty-nine, she was not an adult. She had always been answerable to someone.
    Edgar, however, was gone now; Emma was all she had left. Vita, thought Frannie, had never known that kind of emotional servitude. Vita was a trailblazer, a vigorous independent whose nineteen-fifty-something Miss Oklahoma title had spurred her on to runner-up stardom in Atlantic City and a Republican husband in San Francisco.
    A hostess of impeccable credentials, Vita sometimes shocked her stuffier peers by shattering long-established social traditions in the city: She was, after all, the first socially registered localite to pair denim place mats with Waterford crystal. And she did the cutest things with bandannas.
    Who else but Vita had the panache to show up at the Cerebral Palsy Ball wearing a gingham granny dress and twirling a lasso? She was such fun.
    Naturally, she laughed heartily when Frannie blurted out her request.
    “My face man? God, honey, for all I know, he’s bottling sheep semen in Switzerland. His last patient was a total washout—some poor woman in Santa Barbara who ended up looking like the Phantom of the Opera.”
    Frannie couldn’t hide her disappointment. “I see,” she said glumly.
    “Have you thought about the shots?” chirped Vita.
    “The shots?”
    “The sheep semen, honey.”
    “Vita!”
    “Well, I couldn’t agree with you more, but Kitty Cipriani says it’s made her a new woman. Personally, I think someone’s pulling the wool over her eyes!” Vita roared with laughter, and Frannie, despite her ever-blackening mood, joined in with her.
    Finally, Vita said abruptly, “How old are you, Frannie?”
    The question stung more than it might normally have. Vita was Frannie’s junior by at least fifteen years. “I’m asking for a reason,” Vita added apologetically.
    “Fifty-four,” said Frannie.
    “Oh. Too bad.”
    “Don’t rub it in, Vita.”
    “No, honey. I mean, it would help if you were sixty.”
    “Why on God’s green earth would that help?”
    Vita chuckled throatily. “I won’t tell you unless you tell me your real age.”
    Frannie hesitated for a moment and then told her.
    “Ooh, boy,” said Vita. “Ooooh, boy!”
    “Vita, what in the world are …?”
    “Just you wait, Frannie Halcyon! Just you wait!”

The Cruise Begins
    T HE AGONIES OF LAST-MINUTE PACKING, A LINGERING cold and a nerve-jangling PSA flight to Los Angeles all but disappeared when Mary caught her first glimpse of the Pacific Princess.
    “Oh, Mouse! It’s so white!”
    Michael poked the flesh of his forearm. “We’ll blend right in, won’t we?”
    Mary Ann didn’t answer, lost in the majesty of the huge, moonlit ship. There was something scary yet exhilarating about this moment. She felt like a skydiver, hurling recklessly through space, knowing that this time would matter, this time was real, this time her chute had to open.
    The cabdriver looked over his shoulder at the couple in the back seat. “You folks married?”
    “Shacked up,” said Michael, provoking the expected glare from