Tales of the City 04 - Babycakes

thing.”
“That’s good.”
“I just thought you should know. It can be bloody embarrassing sometimes.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I appreciate that.”
He heaved a long sigh, then turned and surveyed the landscape.
“Is that really Wales?” she asked.
“No,” he replied. “It’s not, actually. But you can see it from the folly. The most distant ridge is the Black Mountains. You can see the Malverns too.”
She stood a silent vigil with him, then said: “I don’t understand it.”
“What?”
“How you can just … dump all this. Surrender Easley to that lard-assed bitch down there.”
He turned away. “I’m not surrendering Easley.”
“Well, what would you call it?”
“Mona …” He plucked a clump of moss off the parapet. “Easley is just a job. I’m bloody tired of that job. I know what you’re saying, believe me … but I can’t be two people at once.”
All but lost in the scenery, a white van bounced along the one-lane road from Easley-on-Hill. “If I’m not mistaken,” said Teddy, “that’s the caterers.”
“Looks like it,” she said. It made her a little queasy to realize that other people—lots of them—had been mobilized to act upon a split-second decision she had made one rainy night in Seattle.
Teddy heard the uncertainty in her voice. “Are you all right, Mona?”
“Sure.”
“The tobacco, eh?”
“Yeah. I think I could use a nap, actually.”
“Of course.” He gave her a kindly smile. “Get some rest.”
She patted him on the shoulder and climbed into the dark innards of the attic. When she got back to her room, she eased shut the door to the minstrels’ gallery, since she could still hear the ghoulish whirring of that Polaroid in the great hall. Sleep wouldn’t come, however, so she braced herself for conflict and headed down the hallway toward Michael’s room.
He was there, propped up in the window seat with an old Country Life opened against his knees. Wilfred lay on the bed—-stomach down, knee bent—watching him. When she cleared her throat, Michael gazed toward the door. “What’s this?” he asked. “More gruel already?”
She managed to smile. “I thought we could talk.”
“O.K.,” he said blandly.
Wilfred did a somersault on the bed. “And children should leave.” He headed for the door, stopping to give Mona a peck on the cheek.
“You aren’t a child,” she said.
“Twenty minutes,” Wilfred replied.
She crossed the room and sat in the armchair flanking the window seat. “He’s such a doll,” she said.
Michael shrugged. “Looks like it’s mutual.”
“Well … he’s got a big crush on you, I can tell that.”
He blinked at her, then looked out the window. “Is that a problem?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I worry about him … what he’ll do when I go home.”
“What about … his family?”
“There isn’t one. He was living with his father, and his father ran off. He killed a man.”
Mona frowned. “Sounds like Wilfred’s better off.”
“I don’t know. Is nothing better than something?”
She could feel him getting heavy and moved to avert it. “Works for me,” she smiled.
Remaining sober, he turned away from her. He had changed in lots of little ways, she realized. It was almost as if he had bequeathed his flippancy to Wilfred. He seemed cold and colorless, drained of his irony.
“Any messages?” he asked at last.
“Uh … for who?”
“Barbary Lane. No one’s heard from you for years.”
“It hasn’t been that long,” she said.
“A year and a half, then. How’s that?”
She could see Wilfred on the hillside, a tiny smudge of yellow and brown climbing toward the folly; he looked like a bumblebee from this distance. “I’ve been sorting things out,” she told Michael.
“I know,” he said. “Since nineteen sixty-seven.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“Then don’t use that crummy excuse.”
“Mouse …”
“You could have dropped a postcard, for Christ’s sake! You moved and never gave us your new address. Your phone wasn’t listed …”
“I didn’t have one half the time.”
“You could’ve called us, then. Something. What is it. Mona? Are you cutting us off? What the hell is happening? Do you know how much you’re hurling Mrs. Madrigal?”
The last one stung a little. “Look,” she said, “I didn’t wanna check in with you guys until I had my shit together. You knew I wasn’t dead or anything. I just wanted to show up on your doorstep one morning out of the blue … with some