Tales of the City 06 - Sure of You

but something happened.”
    Burke nodded. “Fair enough.”
    “The seventies were our sixties, so to speak.” Michael contributed this inanity and regretted it as soon as it tumbled out of his mouth. “This decade talk is ridiculous. Everybody’s experience is different.”
    “Maybe so,” said Thack, still addressing Burke, “but you should know something about the gay movement if you’re doing a story on AIDS.”
    Burke looked confused.
    “Did I get that wrong?” Thack turned to Brian. “Didn’t you say he was…?”
    Brian shrugged and gestured toward his wife. “That’s what she said.”
    “Oh.” Mary Ann looked flustered for a moment, then addressed Burke. “I explained that that’s why you’re here. To do a story on AIDS.”
    “Oh,” said Burke. “Right. Of course. I drifted there for a moment.”
    Mary Ann seized a bottle of wine and held it out. “Who needs a little freshener?”
    Almost everyone did.

    After dinner, while the group was resettling in the living room, Michael headed off to take a leak. On his way back he passed Shawna’s room and found the little girl wielding a crayon at her child-sized drafting table.
    He spoke to her from the doorway. “Hi, Shawna.”
    She looked over her shoulder for a moment, then continued drawing. “Hi, Michael.”
    “Whatcha drawing?”
    No answer.
    “Just…art, huh?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Can I come in?”
    “May I,” said Shawna.
    He grinned. “May I?”
    “Yes.”
    He stood behind her and studied her work, a jumble of brown rectangles scribbled over with green. In the corner, inscribed on a much smaller rectangle, was the number 28.
    “I know what that is,” he said.
    The child shook her head. “Huh-uh. It’s a secret.”
    “Well, it looks to me like Anna’s house.”
    She gazed up at him, blinking once or twice, apparently surprised at his cleverness.
    “That’s one of my favorite houses,” he said.
    She hesitated a moment, then said: “I like it ’cause it’s a on-the-ground house.”
    He chuckled.
    “What’s funny?”
    “Nothing. I agree with you.” He touched her shoulder lightly. She was wearing a white ruffled blouse and a midi-length blue velvet skirt, obviously meant for company. Yet here she sat, stately and alone at her easel, like some miniature version of Georgia O’Keeffe.
    He went to the window and peered down on the silvery plain of the bay. A freighter slid toward the ocean, lit up like a power station yet tiny as a toy from this height. Directly beneath him—how many hundred feet?—the house in Shawna’s drawing slept unseen in the neighboring greenery.
    He turned back to the child. “Anna’s gone to Greece on vacation. Did she tell you that?”
    Shawna shook her head. “I don’t go see her anymore.”
    “Why not?”
    Silence.
    “Why not, Shawna?”
    “Mary Ann doesn’t want me to.”
    This threw him, but he didn’t respond. The kid could make up some pretty off-the-wall stuff. Especially when it came to Mary Ann. It was bound to be more complicated than that.
    Shawna asked: “Are you gonna make that noise tonight?”
    “What noise?”
    “You know. Beep, beep.”
    He smiled at her. “Not for a few hours.”
    “Can I see it? I mean, may I?”
    “Well, you could, but it’s in my overcoat, and that’s on the bed in…”
    “Is she giving you a hard time?”
    Michael turned to see Brian standing in the doorway. “No way,” he said.
    “How’s it going, Puppy?”
    “O.K.”
    “She’s done some beautiful work,” said Michael.
    Brian looked at the picture and ruffled his daughter’s hair.
    “Hey…not bad. What do you call it?”
    “Art,” said Shawna.
    Brian laughed. “Well, O.K. Makes sense to me. Did you tell Michael what you’re gonna be?”
    Shawna gave him a blank look.
    “For Halloween,” Brian added.
    “Oh…Michaelangelo.”
    Michael was impressed. “The painter, eh?”
    “No,” said Shawna. “The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.” Michael looked to Brian for translation.
    “You don’t wanna know,” said Brian. “It’s an actual thing. She’s not making it up.”
    “Teenage Mutant…?”
    “Ninja Turtle,” said Shawna.
    “We’re going for Turtle mostly, with just a hint of Ninja. Wanna come along? It’s Halloween morning. Mary Ann’ll be at the station.”
    “What is it?” he asked.
    “Just a thing at the school. A parade or something.”
    “Well…”
    “We’d be back by eleven, tops.” Brian winked at him.
    “O.K., then.