Tales of the City 07 - Michael Tolliver Lives

gazed into the distance. Brian cleared his throat and stood up.
    “Too many sodas,” he said, heading off to the bathroom.
    Once he was out of earshot, Shawna murmured, “Shit,” beneath her breath.
    “Sorry,” I said.
    “Nothing to be sorry for,” said Ben.
    Brian was gone for at least ten minutes. When he returned his face looked ravaged from crying. Standing, he addressed the three of us as a body.
    “Sorry, guys.”
    “No problem,” said Ben.
    “We have to call her,” said Brian. “We can’t let this happen without her.”

26
    Remembered Perfume
    Y ou try it sometime. You try finding a fifty-five-year-old housewife from Darien, Connecticut, whom you haven’t talked to for years. That place is a hotbed of cautious white people. It’s where they shot The Stepford Wives, you know. Both versions of it.
    Mary Ann had given me her number on 9/11, but it hadn’t worked since the invasion of Iraq. Shawna had a more recent number, but, typically, she’d mislaid it. My only option was to sweet-talk the nurse (he didn’t require much) into letting me use his computer.
    I tried Googling Mary Ann’s husband to no avail. There was plenty of stuff about his former business—and even a mention of his wife—but no phone numbers, of course.
    Then I remembered Mary Ann’s stepson, the Explorer Scout whose troop ran Darien’s ambulance service. Their website provided a phone number, so I called and got a recording: a croaky-voiced kid telling you to call 911 and not the Explorer post if this is “an actual emergency.” I just wanted the Explorer post, so I left a message: “If anyone in the post knows Robbie Caruthers, please tell him to tell his stepmom that Anna Madrigal is…very ill. This is extremely important. Thank you very much. The number she should call is…”

    The pizza made us sleepy, so we slept intermittently, slumped against one another outside Anna’s room. In the pearly-gray hour before dawn I took my cell phone to another wing of the hospital and called Irwin at home in Orlando.
    “Hey, bro,” he said.
    “Hope I’m not too early.”
    “Nah. Lenore’s up and fixin’ biscuits. You on the ground?”
    “No…well, yeah, but…I’m still in San Francisco…”… three…two…one…
    “…I won’t be coming back, Irwin. My friend Anna has had a heart attack, and…I have to be with her. I’m sorry.”
    A long silence, and then: “Mama’s got two days at the most, Mikey.”
    “I know that, Irwin.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Yes, you do, Irwin. Anna is family to me.”
    “More than your mama?”
    I took a breath and said it: “If I have to choose…yes.”
    Irwin sighed audibly. “Your old landlady, right? The one with the—”
    “Can she talk on the phone?”
    “Who? Mama?”
    “Yes.”
    “No way.”
    “Then I need you to help me, Irwin. I need you to tell Mama that I love her and I wish I could be there and…whatever she needs to hear…and I want you to tell her, if you haven’t already, that I’m glad she blabbed about Papa. Tell her: ‘Good for you, Mama.’ Tell her I’m proud of her. Tell her I’m glad she came out.”
    “Okay. That’s awful long but—”
    “How is Sumter doing around all this?”
    “He’s holdin’ up. He’s a tough little soldier underneath.”
    “I know,” I said, bristling at his implication. “He’s also a sweet gay kid who needs your support.”
    “That’s not funny, Mikey.”
    “I’m not trying—”
    “How could you possibly know that, anyway?”
    “How could you possibly not know it?”
    Silence.
    “No boot camps, Irwin. And no more snide remarks. That’s all I’m saying. Let him be who he is. Don’t deal with this the way Papa did.”
    The invocation of our father brought even more silence, but I think I got through to him. I was holding the cards now; Irwin had no choice but to listen.
    “Will you at least come for the funeral?” he asked.
    “Depends on how soon it happens, I guess.”
    “It won’t look right if you don’t.”
    “I don’t care how it looks.”
    “Right.”
    “I’ll try to be there, though. I really will.”
    I could picture myself at a funeral ceremony—two, three, maybe four days hence—but it wasn’t being held at a memorial park in Orlando. I was climbing the wooden stairway at the entrance to Barbary Lane, holding tight to Anna’s favorite vase (the Chinese ginger jar she kept on her dresser). There were at least a half-dozen people with me, so we would have to