Tales of the City 07 - Michael Tolliver Lives

how I think these days. Catastrophes are to be expected.
    She seemed to read my mind. “Was it a mistake?” she asked, touching the side of her head. “It’s fairly new.”
    “I like it,” I said.
    “I’m not so sure.” She rolled her eyes in self-punishment. “Why am I talking about my hair?”
    “Nerves,” I said, smiling. “In a minute I’ll be talking about mine.”
    She smiled back. “You really do look good, Michael.”
    “Thanks,” I said, shifting my extra weight in my Morris chair. She didn’t call me Mouse, I noticed. The name was an artifact now, part of who we used to be.
    “Where are Brian and Shawna?” she asked.
    “They’re already at Anna’s. I told them we’d meet them there.”
    “Great…she’s home now, then?”
    “Oh…no…I meant the hospital, actually.” I paused for a moment, choosing my words. “You should know…she’s still not awake. She may never be.”
    Mary Ann nodded. “I understand.”
    I had just begun to face this myself, but I’d already resolved, after lengthy discussions with Brian and Marguerite, to help create the sort of send-off that Anna would want: one without panic or regret or excessive sadness on the part of the survivors. We had that opportunity, after all. We had to make the most of it.
    “I hope I didn’t put you on the spot,” I told Mary Ann. “Brian asked me to call you, but, frankly, I wasn’t sure if I even had the right to—”
    “No. He was absolutely right. I’m glad you called.” She looked around the living room, taking it in. “This place just gets cozier and cozier.”
    “Thanks. Eighteen years will do that.”
    “And Thack’s…not around anymore?”
    I shook my head. “He took off ten years ago.”
    “Oh…I’m sorry.”
    “I’m not. I mean…it was awful at the time, but it brought me to where I am now. If you know what I mean,”
    “I do…actually.” As she fiddled with the piping on the slipcover I could see that her hands were the only place where her age was evident. I’ve noticed this about myself as well. We can fool ourselves about our changing faces, but our hands creep up on us. One day we look down at them and realize they belong to our grandparents.
    “Still,” she said, “you guys seemed happy. I was a little bit envious, to tell you the truth.”
    “It was good,” I told her. “For a few years, at any rate. He just got more and more angry.”
    “At you, you mean?”
    “At the world mostly…but I was there. I had to live with it. You remember how he was sometimes. It just got worse.”
    Mary Ann smiled in remembrance. “You called him your little Shiite.”
    “Well, that’s what you do, don’t you? Put a cute name on the shit that really bothers you…so it looks like you knew what you were getting.”
    “You’re right,” she said ruefully. I wondered if she was thinking of Brian (hadn’t she called him Mr. Mellow?) or the current husband, the retired CEO who flies his own jet and wears patchwork madras. She was clearly thinking of someone .
    “The thing is,” I said, “Thack did me a favor by leaving. I might never have noticed how little I was getting if he hadn’t taken it away.”
    She nodded slowly, arranging her hands carefully in her lap. “So…you’re single these days?”
    I did something I’ve never done with another living soul: I held up my left hand and wiggled my wedding band at her. The gesture was straight out of Cleveland, tailor-made for Mary Ann. Or at least the Mary Ann I used to know.
    She cooed appreciatively. “You went the whole route, eh?”
    I nodded. “Down at City Hall.”
    She smiled. “I thought about you when that happened.”
    “Same here. I wanted you to meet him.”
    “Really?” She widened her eyes. “So where is he?”
    “Down at the hospital with the others.”
    “How sweet that he cares about her so much.”
    I went to the mantel and grabbed the Big Sur photo—the same shot I’d sent to my mother. “His name is Benjamin McKenna.”
    “Well,” she said, perusing the photo, “he’s adorable.”
    “Yeah.”
    “And young.”
    I nodded solemnly. “He was in the Explorers with your stepson. That’s how I found you.”
    Her mouth went completely oval—like little Shirley Temple.
    “Kidding,” I assured her.
    “Oh, God…Mouse.” She giggled like the girl I used to know. “Why do you do that to me?”
    “I dunno,” I said. “You’ve just always been so…easy. Where’s yours, by the