Tales of the City 04 - Babycakes

sort of ersatz halo behind his head. Michael couldn’t help wondering if there was a masculine equivalent of madonna.
“Welcome home,” Brian beamed.
Michael shook his head in amazement. “Look at you.”
“No … look at this face.” He meant the baby.
Moving to his side, Michael peered down into a tiny pink fist of a face. Brian jiggled the baby. “Say hello to your Uncle Michael, Shawna.”
“Shawna, huh?”
“Connie named her,” Mary Ann put in.
“Shawna Hawkins,” mused Michael. “That works.” He looked around the room. “A crib and toys and everything. You guys have been busy.”
“No,” said Mary Ann. “Connie had them already.”
“Oh.” He sympathized with her confusion. “It happened awfully quick, didn’t it?”
“Awfully,” she nodded.
“Instant baby,” said Brian.
Mary Ann opened a drawer and removed a sheet of pink-and-green stationery. “Here’s the note she left.” She handed it to Michael. It was scented. Mary Ann, it read, Please take care of my precious angel. Love, Connie. She had sketched a smile face next to the signature.
“It’s just like her,” said Mary Ann.
Michael nodded.
“Poor thing,” she added.
“Well,” he offered, “at least she had the comfort of knowing who the new mother would be.”
“I knew her too,” said Brian. “I dated her.”
“Once or twice,” said Mary Ann.
Looking down again, Brian extended his forefinger to Shawna. Five little fingers clamped around his. “We met at the Come Clean Center,” he said.
“Pardon me?” Michael frowned.
“The laundromat in the Marina.”
“Oh.”
Mary Ann glowered at them both. “I don’t think little Shawna needs to press that in her book of memories.”
“Who’s the natural father?” asked Michael.
Mary Ann took the note from him and returned it to the drawer. “It’s apparently some guy who took her to the Us Festival. She wasn’t really sure. She just wanted a baby.”
Michael was sorry he had asked. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.
“No,” agreed Brian, “it doesn’t.” He smiled at Michael. then turned to his wife. “Does it?”
“Not a bit,” she replied.
An awkward silence followed, so Mary Ann added, “I just feel a little dumb, I guess. Our baby just … shows up on our doorstep. I feel as if I should’ve done something to earn it.”
“You did something,” said Brian.
She gave him a funny look which puzzled Michael.
“I mean that,” said Brian, looking down at the baby. “It’s the thought that counts.”
Mary Ann seemed vaguely unsettled. “Well … we just wanted you to meet her.”
“She’s wonderful,” he said, and he meant it.
When he finally trudged downstairs to his apartment, he found a joint taped to the door with a note: Smoke this and catch 40 winks before supper. AM. He removed it, smiling, and let himself in.
There were only a few traces of Simon remaining: a half-empty bottle of brandy, several Rolling Stones, alien numbers scribbled on the pad by the telephone. The place looked pretty much the same. Nothing special, just home.
A joint and a nap sounded like a great idea. He remembered his suitcase and retrieved it from the landing. Dumping it on the sofa, he snapped it open and felt around for his toothbrush. In the process he discovered a small cardboard box imprinted with the logo of a gift shop in Moreton-in-Marsh. There were holes punched in the side of the box.
He lifted the lid and found a tiny porcelain fox nestled in tissue paper.
With this note: Find a good home for him. Love, Wilfred.
    Requiem
C ONNIE’S MEMORIAL SERVICE WAS HELD IN A SMALL funeral chapel in the Avenues. Mary Ann and Michael arrived early and sat in the back, out of earshot of the others. Moments later, a priest emerged from a door near the altar and began organizing index cards on the podium.
“Hey,” whispered Michael. “Isn’t that Father Paddy?”
She nodded.
“I didn’t know Connie was Catholic.”
“She wasn’t. I asked him to do it. These funeral home services are so … you know … cold-blooded. I thought it would be nice if she had a real priest.”
He nodded.
“I feel so awful, Mouse.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I guess because … I don’t deserve to have her baby.”
“C’mon now.”
“I don’t. I was so mean to her.”
“Look … she wouldn’t have done it if she didn’t think you were a good person.”
She didn’t answer.
“You know that’s true,” he said.
“It’s not just the baby,” she replied.
“What else,