Tales of the City 04 - Babycakes

Perry?”
Another nod.
“Did he can me?”
“Brian … you broke the guy’s jaw. They could just as easily have had you arrested.”
He thought about that but said nothing.
“They took him to St. Sebastian’s. They had to wire his jaw.”
He nodded.
“What was it this time?” she said.
He had no intention of adding jealousy to his list of cardinal sins. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.
“Swell. Terrific.”
“Look … he made another crack about a gay customer. He told an AIDS joke. I didn’t mean to hit him that hard. He’d been spoiling for it all day….”
“Why didn’t you tell me about it?”
He shrugged. “I was going to. I didn’t want to fuck up our weekend before it started.”
She stood there blinking at him.
He still wasn’t sure, so he asked again: “They canned me, huh?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry you had to be there to catch the flak.”
“He was nice about it,” she said.
A small boy and his father, both brilliantly redheaded, trotted past his field of vision on their way to the locker rooms. The boy tripped on the laces of his Keds, and the father stopped to tie them for him. The tableau cut Brian to the quick, underscoring everything that was missing from his life.
“Earth to Brian, earth to Brian.” Mary Ann coaxed him back into the here and now with a bemused smile.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “What can I tell you?”
“I don’t want you to be sorry. I want you to tell me the truth. Jesus, Brian … if we can’t talk to each other, who can we talk to?”
“You’re right.” He nodded, feeling the weight of his guilt begin to lift.
“It’s not just you,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well … I’m just as bad about that sometimes.”
“About what?” he asked.
“You know … telling the whole truth. I gloss over things because I’m afraid of … damaging what we have … because I don’t want to lose you.”
He had never known her to lie, and he was touched by this unlikely confession. She wasn’t explaining her own motivation so much as letting him know that she understood his. He cupped his hand against her wet cheek and smiled at her. She stuck her tongue out at him, ducked under the water, and goosed him. The crisis had passed.
He noticed that Mary Ann drank a little more wine than usual at dinner, but he matched her glass for glass. By the time their raspberries and cream had arrived, they were both just a couple of silly grins hovering in the candlelight. A gut instinct told him this was the moment to open Topic A again.
“I hated that job, you know.”
She reached over and stroked the hair on the back of his hand. “I know.”
“Sooner or later I would’ve quit anyway, and this way … wasn’t half bad.”
She waited awhile before saying anything. “I’m kinda sorry I missed it, actually. It didn’t look dumb, did it?”
He shook his head.
“Heroic?”
He tilted his hand from side to side to indicate something in between. She laughed. “And now,” he said softly, “I have all this time on my hands.”
Her smile became a photograph of a smile. She knew exactly what he was saying.
“You said to tell the truth,” he said.
She nodded. Her smile had disappeared.
“The way I see it, John Lennon was a househusband, and he did all right … and I bet he spent a lot more time with that kid than Yoko ever did….”
“Brian …”
“I’m not saying you wouldn’t love the kid or anything. I just mean you wouldn’t have to be as involved with it as I would be. Hell, women bore the brunt of that for centuries. There’s no reason we can’t make it work the other way around. Don’t you see? Wouldn’t it be great to have this little person around who’s … a mixture of you and me?”
Her face was unreadable as she pushed back her chair and dropped her napkin on the table. Was she pissed? Did she think he had gotten himself fired to force her into this position? “What about our raspberries?” he asked.
“I’m not hungry,” she replied.
“Are you … upset?”
“No.” She cast her eyes at the neighboring tables. “I brought us here to tell you something, but I don’t want to do it here.”
“O.K. Fine.” He got up. “What about the check?”
“It’s on the tab,” she said.
They went back to their room, where she brushed her teeth and told him to put on his windbreaker.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“You’ll see,” she said.
After slipping into one of his old Pendleton shirts, she produced a large brass key