Tales of the City 07 - Michael Tolliver Lives

“That’s all?”
    “Does it take more than that?”
    “Well…usually.”
    I smiled at her sardonically. “In the strange twilight world of the heterosexual.”
    Anna wasn’t having it. “In anybody’s world. When did she last try to leave him?”
    “Just before he died. Almost twenty years ago.”
    “Well, that’s even more peculiar.”
    I shrugged. “It sort of…solved the problem, I guess.”
    “Dear…how could it have solved anything ? There must be huge unresolved feelings. No wonder she wanted to tell you.”
    “I guess.”
    “You know . It’s mostly the un spoken things that always cause trouble later. They find their way out of us one way or the other.”
    I wondered for a moment if that was code of some sort, if she was really referring to my awkward silence in the tower when she called me her son.
    But I knew she didn’t work that way.

    Shawna, amazingly, was on time, striding into the café in a butt-gripping tweed skirt that embraced her calves almost as snugly. She wore big clunky librarian glasses and her hair was more Bettie Page than before, draped on the back of her neck like a sleek black pelt. I thought of Mona, strangely enough, someone Shawna had met only once or twice as a child and did not particularly resemble. There was the same sense of fashion, though—studied and anarchistic all at once—and the same bubbling volcanic spirit. It gave me an unexpected pang. I wondered if Anna ever noticed the similarity.
    “You guys,” Shawna piped as she approached the table. “I have to show you something really fierce.”
    “And a good afternoon to you,” said Anna.
    Shawna kissed Anna on the top of her head by way of a greeting, then twiddled her fingers at me. “You look like you’re finished. Is this a bad time?”
    “No,” said Anna. “It’s a wonderful time.” She pushed back her chair and attempted to rise, wobbling slightly in the process.
    Shawna reached for her instinctively, supporting her under the elbow. “It’s not that far, don’t worry.”
    “I’m fine,” said Anna.
    “We’ve already been up to the tower,” I explained, casting a glance at Shawna. “We’re a little pooped.”
    “No problem,” said Shawna, turning back to Anna as she steered her out of the café. “That bag is the bomb, by the way.”
    “Thank you, dear. It was my mother’s.”
    “No shit? At the whorehouse? How fierce is that?”
    Shawna has lately been fascinated by the fact that Anna was raised in a brothel in Nevada. Anna had no shame about this, of course, but she felt the need to clarify things.
    “It was actually her good bag. She took it into Winnemucca with her. Usually to church.”
    With her free hand Shawna petted the bag as if it were a small, delicate mammal. “The velvet’s held up beautifully.”
    Anna nodded. “It was much better in those days. The velvet.”
    “I’m sure.”
    “I’ll put your name on it.”
    Shawna looked puzzled.
    “The bag,” Anna explained. “I’ll put your name on it.”
    Shawna shot me a stricken glance, grasping her meaning. “Say thank you,” I told her.
    “Oh my God,” said Shawna, looking moved and a little bit shaken. “Thank you…yes…thank you so much, Anna.”
    “Where are we going?” asked Anna, all business again.
    “Just up one level,” Shawna replied. “This thing just blew me away.”
    The object of her awe was an early-twentieth-century oil by Arthur Bowen Davies called Pacific Parnassus . It was basically the ocean side of Mount Tam, Marin’s own pinnacle of the gods, made riotous here by swirling fog and golden slopes above a cobalt sea. It was painted in 1905 but it could easily have been yesterday. The things that made it enchanting were still here, still ours. I saw what Shawna meant. Or thought I did.
    “This is what I’ll miss,” she said. “You know?”
    “I do,” said Anna. I knew she’d be missing Shawna as much as any of us, but her tone was more celebratory than sad.
    I told Shawna the painting was captivating, but I’d expected something a little more avant-garde from her.
    “The guy was totally avant-garde. He was practically a pagan. He identified with the Ashcan school…and he was even a Cubist for a while.”
    “Still…this could be a jigsaw puzzle.”
    “I’ll forget you said that. Look closer.”
    I leaned into the painting, studying the landscape. “Is there a giant penis in the clouds or something?”
    “Close. Check out the mountainside.”
    It took me a